by Shawn Jolley
Eden nodded and placed his own hand on the shovel.
"We do solemnly swear to… to..." He paused, looking at Eden.
"...to never speak of what we saw today, to each other, or to anyone else."
"Peace," Dustin added, throwing his hand into the air like it was the end of a team huddle. This was followed by a loud banging from inside the trailer and slurred yelling that Eden couldn’t understand.
"Peace," Dustin repeated, jumping to his feet.
"What?" Eden asked, standing up, but Dustin had gone into the trailer and the banging and yelling had stopped. Then, Eden thought about how much trouble he would be in if he didn't go home immediately.
Every part of him said not to walk back home in the dark alone, but his mom would begin to worry, even if she had been the one who had sent him outside in the first place. He decided the best way for him to get home safely was to sprint.
Nobody was there to guide him, but he managed to not trip for the first hundred feet or so, but that’s where his luck stopped. Eden’s foot slid on a stone and his body pitched forward causing him to come down hard on his knees. The skin tore off and he was conscious of the burning sensation whenever his leg swung forward for the rest of the way. When he got to the backyard he turned around but there was nothing to greet him but darkness.
The back door was locked so he went around and entered through the front. His mom wasn’t near the entryway, so Eden stepped into the kitchen. She was pulling out another plate for his dinner and didn’t bother looking up as he came in. "Did you put the basketball away?" she asked. Her attention was on her cooking.
"Yes," Eden lied. He hoped he sounded more convincing than he felt.
"Did you make a friend?"
Truthfully, Eden didn’t know, so he said, "I think so."
She eyed him suspiciously, and he was afraid she was about to argue with him, but she didn’t. She didn't even mention how dirty his pants were. "That’s good. She’ll probably be in your class tomorrow."
"What? It’s a boy," said Eden.
"Oh! I thought the only kid your age over there was a girl. Maybe the Veres's moved."
Silence followed for the rest of dinner. Eden was angry with his mom for having supposedly known who was down the dirt road. She had set him up even though her plan had failed. He pretended to eat even though he had lost his appetite, then headed to his room to think. He could hear her doing dishes as he sat on the side of his bed and stared at the floor.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think straight; his thoughts came to him in jumbles. He saw the long trash bag and the person carrying it, but he couldn’t see the person’s face. They had the bag wrapped around their neck in one image, and, in the next, they were rolling it into the trench. The whole situation sickened him and he wanted to wake up from this dream because it had to be a dream, but that didn’t happen. It wasn't a dream.
He heard his mom close her bedroom door on the other side of the house, and he closed his own. After making sure the blinds were shut tight he slipped beneath his covers and tried to fall asleep.
The room seemed bigger than usual, and he felt smaller. The house was still, and he was in total darkness. Outside, a cricket chirped once, then was silent. Eden couldn’t hear anything, and he thought that scared him more than if someone had been scratching at his window.
2
Sunlight filled the quiet house. Eden slid out of bed, having tossed and turned the whole night. His room was light but not light enough. He went to the bathroom, took a shower, and quietly got dressed for the day.
When he went to the kitchen for breakfast, his mom wasn't there. This wasn't unusual. She slept until noon most days, why, he didn't know, but he thought she might have made an exception for his first day of school, especially since they were in a new town. Apparently, he had been wrong.
The pantry had plenty of cereal boxes. He picked out his favorite and poured a bowl. As he chewed, he thought about his mom. He wished she would find a job and stop moping around the house. She needed friends or coworkers more than him.
But employment was hard to come by in Fracture due to its small geographical size and population. He knew she had applied everywhere: the school, the town hall, the police station, the gas station, the movie theater… even going so far as to inquire at the church to see if anything was available, but with no luck.
Eden realized he had only eaten two bites of cereal, so he dumped the rest of it into the sink. His stomach tightened every time he thought about the previous night even though he was doing his best to ignore what had happened. He felt stupid for letting his imagination run wild.
The trash bag could have been filled with anything. Lots of things, besides a body, are long and skinny, he thought: rebar, pipe, rolled-up posters… really big posters that bend slightly in the middle. He looked at the stove clock and decided to step outside to see if Dustin was walking to school. He didn't even know how old he was, but he hoped they were in the same grade.
He walked along the dry dirt road until he reached the spot where he had crouched with Dustin the night before. The sun was barely over the horizon and his basketball was still on the ground. The smell of dandelions reached him; and, for a moment, he noticed beauty in the land around him.
The trees stood tall and motionless in the stillness of the air, and a blue jay landed on the fence. Looking at the ground, the bird's head twitched from side to side. It was more than likely hoping for a tasty worm, then it flew away. Eden’s eyes followed the bird until he couldn't see it any more, and he remembered the rest of Fracture and what an ugly town it was. He sighed and looked down the road toward the trailer park. Nobody was there.
At twenty minutes to eight, Dustin still wasn’t anywhere to be seen. As much as Eden didn’t want to go to school, he decided he couldn’t be late on his first day. His mom would go ballistic. She would yell at him for being tardy and possibly lecture him on how his lack of punctuality would hurt her chances of getting a job.
Her mock voice was already bouncing around in his head: "Do you think? No, you don't. You're too selfish to realize how your actions affect those around you—" The voice was violently shoved out of his mind.
He walked toward the town center where the school was located. His mom had pointed the small building out to him on the same day they had moved to Fracture. The school was right off Main Street almost a mile from the house.
The road he walked on now was named Ardburn Avenue after his grandfather who had built the house and painted it blue. Unlike most of the roads in Fracture, Ardburn Avenue had evidence of once being properly paved; though, the only road in Fracture with a sidewalk was Main Street.
As Eden turned the corner from Ardburn Avenue onto Main Street, the school came into view. A few kids were outside on the front steps waiting for the final bell to ring. When it did, they reluctantly stepped through the bright-blue entrance. Only a few of them looked old enough to be going to a middle school.
A dented metal trash can with a red spray-painted lid sat on the lawn next to the steps with some rusty snow shovels hidden behind it. All in all, the red brick building was only slightly bigger than the big blue house where Eden lived.
He walked up the front steps and followed two girls who looked about his age through the doors and into a short hallway. The two of them were walking slowly, but he didn’t bother going around them, mostly because he didn't know where he was going.
"I can’t believe summer is over," said the girl on the left. She was wearing a pink backpack and was a little taller than the girl on the right. They both had the same sandy tan complexion.
"At least it hasn’t started snowing yet," replied the second girl. Her backpack was identical in style to the first, but it was blue.
"Don’t jinx it."
"That’s not even possible."
"I guess. I wonder how our new teacher will be. I hope I like her. Can you imagine if we didn't like her?" The first girl nodded her head mindlessly.
"Can you imagine how—" Eden accidentally stepped on the talking girl's heel and she stopped and looked over her shoulder, stepping aside when she saw him.
He couldn't think of anything to say. Red in the face, he passed them. The blue-backpack girl giggled a little, while the other turned away. Eden didn’t look back and finally noticed a group of students standing around a piece of paper that was taped to the wall.
When he got closer, he saw that it was a list of student names along with where they were supposed to go according to grade: kindergarten - twelfth. He didn't know why he had expected Fracture to have more than one school.
Classroom number eight at the end of the hallway was where he needed to go. All of the other students looked like they were going into classrooms with numbers that corresponded to their grade level. He made it to the end of the hall and looked at the classroom door. A large sign hanging on the wall read "Welcome to Eighth Grade". He walked inside.
The classroom was extremely small and the majority of it was taken up by twelve desks: three rows by four columns. Nothing in the room looked new, including the carpet and ceiling tiles. Only a few kids were there, and Eden didn’t recognize any of them, except for one. Dustin was sitting on the back row in the far corner. An empty desk stood next to him. Eden caught his eye, walked over, and sat down. Neither of them said anything.
A second later, the two backpack girls walked in and made their way to the desks in front of Eden and Dustin. They sat down and laughed. Eden glanced at Dustin but he had pulled a book from his backpack and was now staring at the cover. The book didn't look interesting to Eden; but, then again, he wasn't much of a reader.
A short skinny man walked through the classroom door and turned to the small class. His suit, which should have been black, but looked gray, tightly covered his large body. There wasn't much hair left on his head. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then he raised his hands to quiet everybody down even though nobody was talking. Eden noticed his fingers were rather chubby and short. He lowered his arms to his sides.
"I’m Principal Bolt for those of you who don’t know." His eyes flickered to Eden, and lingered, before jumping to the other students. "You all have a new teacher this year, but she won’t be starting today, so it will be my privilege to teach you."
"Where is she?" asked a squeaky male voice from the somewhere nearer the classroom door. Somebody sighed and the two girls in front of Eden looked at each other.
Principal Bolt looked at a red-headed boy in the second row and said, "Not here." He opened his mouth again to speak but was cut off.
"Who is she?" The boy sounded too curious for his own good. Eden glanced over at Dustin who had started reading the jacket of his book. Eden quietly coughed and Dustin looked up oblivious to what was going on. When he saw Eden look to the redheaded boy, he simply rolled his eyes and shook his head, then went back to reading.
"Please be quiet, Mr. Cloud." Principal Bolt waited until the boy leaned back in his chair before continuing. "I don’t want any of you to miss out on any wonderful learning opportunities this year, so today we are watching an educational film."
The kid with red hair began coughing loudly without covering his mouth. Principal Bolt waited patiently for him to finish, but it seemed after a while that he wasn't going to stop. The principal stared at him without any concern on his face. Eden noticed Dustin smiling over his book along with a few other students who were looking around. After half a minute, Principal Bolt spoke over the coughing, his voice agitated. "Are you feeling alright, Mr. Cloud?"
The kid stopped coughing and said, "What? I’m fine, thank you very much." The tone of his voice lingered somewhere between kindness and sarcasm.
Principal Bolt looked like he wanted to say something else to "Mr. Cloud" but he didn’t. Instead, he excused himself to get something from his office and stepped out of the room. The boy referred to as "Mr. Cloud" whispered something to a chubby girl sitting next to him and they both laughed. She had a horribly dry laugh. The more Eden looked at her, the more he was convinced that she wasn't chubby after all and that her clothes were simply too small.
Eden leaned over to Dustin and said, "From the way the principal was talking, it sounds like we only have one teacher? Shouldn't we have more?"
Dustin looked perplexed. "Have you seen our town? We're lucky we have a school."
Eden hadn't thought about this. "Oh. So, where is the teacher?" He was hating Fracture more and more.
"I'm not sure. Maybe they had trouble finding someone to fill the position. That happened when I was in third grade, but they had someone on the second day." He went back to reading his book, and Eden started daydreaming about a proper middle school. He couldn't believe he was actually missing school.
"Ardburn?" Principal Bolt was back at the front of the room with some reading glasses on and a clipboard in his hand. The room had gone silent.
"What?" asked Eden.
"‘Here’ will do, thank you."
"Oh, here," said Eden, his voice cracking. Everyone laughed, especially the red-headed kid and the girl sitting next to him. Eden wasn't used to being called by his mother's maiden name all by itself. His last name was actually Burns-Ardburn, but he had decided to ditch his father's last name just as his mom had during their move to Fracture.
Principal Bolt smiled a little too long and continued down the role: Cloud, Jeex, Jones, Veres, and Veres. Eden hadn’t noticed it before, but the two girls in front of him were twins. They seemed to be having a quick and wordless conversation that mostly consisted of dry giggling with each other while Principal Bolt took roll.
Eden learned Dustin’s last name was Jeex, and the redhead's full name was Tony Cloud. The girl sitting next to Tony was Anna Jones. That was the entire eighth-grade class.
Principal Bolt took off his glasses, placed the clipboard under his arm, and said, "Good news. Everybody is here."
"Except the teacher," said Tony. Eden couldn't see Tony's face, but he imagined he knew what it looked like by the way he talked, and it was rather ugly.
Principal Bolt glared at Tony and turned his attention to the old tube television in the corner. He bent over and opened the cupboard underneath it. After a moment of rummaging, he stood back up holding an old dusty VHS in his hand. Eden couldn't believe it.
The principal wiped the case on his sleeve and put the tape in the VCR which was blinking "12:00" over and over on its display. The TV clicked on, but the background was faint, fuzzy and had flashing black and white dots on the screen.
"Guess it’s got to be rewound," he murmured while fiddling with a large remote control.
A second later a humming sound filled the room, and a minute after that, some cheesy elevator music crackled out of the TV's speakers. Principal Bolt turned off the lights and everyone waited for the old screen to brighten up enough for them to see what was happening.
The first thing Eden saw was a man in a trench coat walk in front of the camera and look into the distant horizon of a dry desert. The film cut to a close-up of the man’s face, and he spoke. "Excavation. The fun of digging holes and uncovering secrets long since passed."
Dustin groaned, put his head down on his desk, and closed his eyes. Eden thought about doing the same thing. The elevator music changed to a faster-paced piece with drums and trombones in the background. A new scene slid in from off screen, pushing the old one out.
The man was now in front of some ancient ruins, still talking. "…to witness the destruction of so great a city as this would have been something. Today, all we can do is uncover evidence and put together the story of the past." The movie continued like this for the next two hours. If Eden heard the phrases "to see with your own eyes" and "would have been something" again, he was going to scream.
When the lunch bell finally rang, Dustin was asleep. Eden poked him in the side just as Principal Bolt flipped on the lights. Tony was asleep too, and he had drooled all over his desk. The principal noticed and crinkled his nose.
&nbs
p; "Enjoy your lunch," he said with a yawn, and everyone got up and left the room.
The school didn't have a lunchroom, but it did have a kitchen and a small counter next to the front office to pick up lunches. Eden scanned the hallway and guessed that there were about sixty kids walking around, talking with each other, and eating their lunches. Some of the kids returned to their classrooms to eat lunch while others sat down in the hallway.
Eden sat down with Dustin on the school's vacant front steps and looked down at his piece of meatloaf. Dustin, who had chosen the second school lunch option, had received some greenish food neither of them could identify.
"Want to trade?" asked Dustin.
"Not on your life." Eden ate a bite to solidify his point.
Dustin looked back at his lunch and reluctantly stabbed the least suspicious piece of food he could find. They ate slowly, enjoying the shade from a nearby group of quaking aspens.
As they ate, Eden thought about the previous night. The oath to never talk about it bothered him. How could he have made such a rash decision about something so mysterious and conversation worthy? He decided to bring it up in a roundabout way. "So, how long have you lived in Fracture?"
"My whole life. Well, that I can remember. I was born in Helena, but my parents died before I was one. My Aunt Heather was my only family left, so I came here." Dustin shook his head for a few seconds and let out a big sigh. They sat in silence after that, just eating. When Dustin finished, he took his foam tray to the red-lidded trashcan. Eden swallowed the last of his meatloaf as Dustin sat back down. He decided to forget his tactics and the oath.
"Have you thought about last night?"
"A little," said Dustin without missing a beat. And like that, something binding and sure linked them together. Eden threw away his tray and nodded his head. He knew he hadn't been dreaming, but having someone else confirm that the events of yesterday had happened was comforting all the same. Dustin had answered Eden's question. He didn't have to answer it, but he had, and Eden knew that that was important.
