The Summer the World Ended

by Matthew S. Cox

  After a long, awkward stare, he lifted his gaze from her chest to her face. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Or maybe he was drifting through space.

  “Wanna help me spark this piece of perfection?” He held up the joint.

  She scrunched her face. Eww. “Uh, I thought that one was like awesome or something. You wanna burn it?”

  Luis flashed a dopey grin, appraising his work. “Yeah, it is like, proportional to the ratio. You’re right.” He set it on the table and pulled out a flip phone. “I should take a picture of it first.”

  So they do have cell service here.

  Riley stood and wandered away, headed for the door. Kieran bumped into her from behind.

  “You okay?”

  She spun around to face him. Her response died at the tip of her brain, her body paralyzed by a momentary odd tingle in the bottom of her gut. Looking at a picture of a guy wasn’t anywhere near the same as having one close enough to touch. He didn’t stare at her the same way Lyle did―bored indifference, or the way Luis did―something between ‘is that a girl?’ and ‘where am I?’ His eyes held a mixture of curiosity, pity, and something else she couldn’t place.

  “Sorry, the guys are a little odd sometimes. Lyle has a lot on his mind since he’s trying to get into the Air Force. One more year of school first though.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her flip-flops. “I should go.”

  “Never played on an Xbox. I don’t know how anyone could get used to aiming a FPS with those little joysticks. Havana is such a nightmare even with a mouse.”

  Her head snapped up. “A mouse? All the top players have controllers, even the PC users. Havana’s got nothing on Refinery for suck. So small… it’s like ‘use a shotgun or don’t bother.’”

  “Small maps can be fun, just use a fast runner with knives or akimbo Glock 18s.”

  Riley let off an exasperated sigh. “I hate those maps so much I don’t even play serious. I just act like a squeaker and piss people off.” She raised her voice to sound like a six-year-old. “Which button makes the knife work?”―she made a squishing noise, and giggled―“oh, found it.”

  He fixed her with a narrow-eyed squint. “That was you?”

  “No effing way.” She gasped. His voice was deep enough to sound like a grown man over the headset. One hand clamped loose over her mouth as uncontainable laughter got her. “What are the odds…” that I’d be virtually knifing a guy that lives near my dad while my Mom dies in the next room. Giggling became crying.

  “Kidding. Hey.” He grabbed her hand. “Sorry, I… Uh…” Kieran scratched his head. “Have no idea what about that was worth making you cry.”

  “I’m…” She closed her eyes and let the breath out of her lungs before wiping her face on her… lack of sleeves. Crap. “Sorry. That was me. Not your fault.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” He tilted his head, seeming unsure if he should smile.

  “Yeah.” She glanced at the bar pool table behind her. “Your voice reminded me of someone I killed.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “Xbox.” She winked.

  Kieran chuckled and gestured at the table. “Ever play?”

  She shook her head, folded her arms, and offered a doubtful look as he ran to grab a pair of sticks. He racked and wandered over, holding up the white ball and a stick.

  “You break.” He pointed. “Put the white ball there and try to hit it into the pack as hard as you can.”

  She grabbed the cue. “I’ve played on Mom’s computer, I know how the rules work… just never for real.”

  Her confidence evaporated when her stroke glanced off the cue ball, sending it curving with a limp spin. He caught it before it disrupted the rack and waved for her to try again. She whacked it dead center on the second try, not bothering to use any of the fanciness she’d gotten used to in the virtual version. Nothing went in.

  She half sat on the edge of the table, waiting with one hand on the stick and the end between her feet while Kieran tended to customers. He took a shot when he returned, leaning in and hitting the ball seemingly at random. When a solid dropped, he almost grimaced as if he’d wanted to miss on purpose. He noticed her eye roll and sank two more before the cue ball wound up in a place he had no decent shot.

  He chatted about a couple games, mostly about various editions of Call of Duty, which had occupied most of her gaming life as of late. It made her long for Amber, but also brought something familiar back into her life. Talking to him got easier as time went on, and she found herself growing more and more annoyed whenever he needed to take a break to run around the dining room. He hadn’t thrown the kind of time at the game she had. At one point when he left her alone to escort a group of three obvious tourists to a table, she sulked at the fading green felt. Talking about the game left her simultaneously homesick and hopeful.

  He hurried to the kitchen, and returned to her a minute later. “Did you take your shot?”

  “No.” She glanced at the clock. “I should go. Dad’s gonna be waiting for me in like ten minutes.” Don’t wanna know what he does if I don’t show up. He already hates this town. She handed him back the stick. “Thanks.”

  “Okay.” He set them on the table, hurrying around the end. “Gimme a minute?”

  “‘Kay.”

  He jogged through the swinging door again. She slipped one foot free of its flip-flop and tapped her toes on the spongy foam. Her ‘epic’ summer was sure turning out weird.

  “Let me walk you out?” Kieran approached, smiling. “Mom’s got the floor for a few minutes.”

  She almost declined, but thought back to the maniac in the white van. “Sure.”

  Before she changed her mind, she grabbed his hand. Kieran didn’t object.

  They walked out the door, across the tiny parking lot to the street, and down a block and a half to where the Hernandez Grocery sat on the corner between NM 51 and a road not much bigger than a dirt path.

  She looked around, finding no trace of Dad yet. “He’s supposed to pick me up here.”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  Riley related the story of the idiot in the white van.

  “Doesn’t sound familiar, which means he’s probably not local. I wouldn’t worry about it. Road rage burns out fast. He probably wouldn’t have hit you once he got a good look at you.”

  “Why?” She smirked. “Because I look like a kid?”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “You look so sad and lonely.”

  Thank you Captain Obvious. “Yeah well. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

  “I’m not talking to you out of pity.” He let his arm fall. “No one else around here has dreams. No imagination. They’re all happy in this dust. I want to climb the ladder, do something with my life. Not spend it in a hole in the ground. I see that in you.”

  “Yeah well, I’m not from around here.” She clenched and released her toes. “Dad’s sure the whole town hates him for being an outsider.”

  “You have to admit coming to town once every three months and buying a hundred cans of pasta is a bit odd.”

  She covered her mouth with both hands to mute the sudden laugh. “Yeah.”

  He squinted at a few people watching them from the next block. “People around here don’t like ‘odd.’”

  “Am I odd?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “No.” He grinned. “You’re perfect.”

  Oh, my God. Her face flushed. “Uh…” Wow. Awkward.

  “I like talking to you.” He glanced to the right at an approaching dust cloud. “Looks like your old man’s right on time. It’s about thirty seconds from being six.”

  She forced her way through embarrassment enough to look up. The sight of the tan Silverado at the head of a rolling beige cloud chased away her worry.

  “We’re going to the movie theater on Thursday, you wanna come along?”

  I didn’t think they knew what movies were out here. “Uh, sure… if Dad’s okay with it.”
>
  Dad drove by and pulled a U-turn in the parking lot of the Hernandez Grocery. Brakes squeaked as he came to a gentle stop in front of them.

  “Great,” said Kieran. “See you then?”

  “Sure.” She looked at the truck. “If, well… Yeah.”

  Riley climbed in, pulled the seatbelt on, and offered a halfhearted wave as they drove away. She bit her lip and stared down at her legs. After a moment, she pulled open the glove box and examined a jumble of papers and envelopes. A black, rubberized pistol grip lay at the bottom, a bit of a silver barrel visible on the other side.

  Holy crap, he wasn’t kidding.

  She slammed the hatch closed.

  “Who was that?” asked Dad. “Same boy from the restaurant?”

  “Yeah. His name is Kieran. His parents own Tommy’s.”

  “Did he ask you anything about me or what I do?”

  I tried to resist the waterboarding and jumper cables, but I caved in and told him you were overprotective. “Nothing unusual.”

  “Define ‘nothing unusual.’”

  “They asked why you avoid town and said you act ‘odd.’ I told them you worked a lot and didn’t have time.”

  “Not bad. Did you get the feeling that anyone followed or observed you suspiciously?”

  “No. That place is so boring, I think the dust has dust.” She rambled through a brief description of her afternoon, leaving out the bit about the joint. Not that she had any great temptation to try pot, but she had no temptation at all to endure the lecture she figured it would start.

  “I feel a little guilty having you cook.” Serious Dad went out the window. He loosened his grip on the wheel and relaxed his posture, even smiled. “I can heat up some SpaghettiOs if you want to be lazy.”

  “We still have stew left, and that’s just a microwave away. Should eat it before it goes bad.”

  “You are my daughter. So practical.”

  Yeah. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. For once, she looked forward to going back to her new bedroom, even if it was in the middle of absolute nowhere.

  ad jostled her shoulder, waking her out of the first decent night’s rest she’d had in weeks. Desert cold made it so nice to sleep. The little clock on her nightstand read 07:59 a.m. She whined and rolled back under the covers. Dad chuckled on the way out.

  “Okay, sleep in, hon. I’ll warm up some breakfast.”

  “Wait.” She stretched. “Why are you waking me up at eight in the morning in the summer? I thought we got to sleep in.”

  “I need to be operational in case things escalate. I’m technically working.”

  “Oh. Right.” She drifted in and out of consciousness. A momentary recollection of last night’s waterboarding joke returned in the form of a fleeting dream of being strapped down on a wooden locker room bench while four copies of Dad poured warm SpaghettiOs over a cloth on her face. “Gah!”

  Riley leapt out of bed and darted through the house, skidding to a halt in the kitchen where Dad fixed himself a cup of coffee. Out of breath, she put a hand on the wall and gasped. He smiled at her, looked her up and down, and chuckled.

  “Those pajamas are adorable.”

  Teal flannel with a white collar, and little smiley faces for buttons on the top. The last time I wore these, Mom was still alive. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Mom bought them for me when she had to replace the skirt that asshat Hensley spilled coffee on. Riley looked away and down, folding her arms across her chest. Don’t cry. The sound of a mug settling down on the counter came a few seconds before Dad’s arms circled her and pulled her tight. She clawed her fingers into his shirt, holding on. Smells like Dad.

  She waited a moment before she risked using her voice. “Wanna watch a movie later? I brought some blu-rays.”

  “What do sea creatures have to do with movies?”

  “Dad, you’re such a dork.” She let go and gathered stuff to make breakfast, eyed the pot, and helped herself to a cup of coffee.

  The sugar in the cabinet was yellow, not to mention a solid brick. No milk in the fridge.

  “I’m serious…” He looked it.

  “While you were hiding in a cave, they replaced DVDs.” She nudged the fridge closed. “Dad, you got any powdered creamer?”

  “Nawp. Drink it black. That way you’ll never be disappointed if you don’t have the fluff. Besides, if you really like coffee, you can taste it without all that crap in it.”

  Riley took a sip, grimaced, and forced another. “Ugh, how long did it take you to get used to drinking it black?”

  He attacked the scrambled eggs she placed in front of him before the plate was out of her hand. “Don’t remember having it any other way.”

  She slipped into the seat across from him, crossed her ankles, and let her legs swish back and forth while dumping black pepper on everything. “How old were you when you had coffee the first time?”

  “Eleven. We stopped at this little pancake shack at random one day. I ordered coffee out of curiosity. The waitress seemed more shocked than my mother. When no objection came from the parental unit, I got coffee.” He looked up with a mischievous grin. “I had no idea what the little white buckets were for until months later.”

  “I never met your parents.” She made a toast-scrambled egg sandwich.

  “My father wasn’t around much. Never did get a straight story outta Mom. Ran off, got killed, got arrested. It always changed. After a while, I stopped asking. Mom was a strange duck. Always thought God would watch out for her. I didn’t have a lot of use for the invisible man in the sky, so she got cold and distant. As soon as I was eighteen, I was out, and that was probably the last time I saw her.”

  “Wow…” Riley let her sandwich drop to the plate. “I’m sorry.”

  “Long past now, Squirrel.” He made a sheepish smile at her visible wince. “Sorry. Her loss though. Mom chose her superstition over her son.”

  She studied the pattern of browns on the side of the bread, searching in vain for an answer to the question nagging at the back of her mind. Mom had been a staunch atheist. Riley grinned. She so would’ve given me crap about asking her to watch over me yesterday. The old man at the funeral certainly didn’t make much of a case for faith. Was everyone religious as mean as him and the paternal grandmother she never met?

  Probably not. Guess it’s just my bad luck again.

  Dad rushed off to the radio as soon as he finished eating. Riley picked at her breakfast, sitting at an angle on the chair, taking black coffee in small sips while Dad leaned over his electronics like a buzzard. When her plate held only crumbs, and she couldn’t slurp any more coffee out of her mug, she put the dishes in the machine and trudged to her room, grabbed a towel, and headed for the bathroom at the end of the little interior hallway.

  She made a quick pass in the mirror on ‘zit patrol,’ happy to find none, and shirked out of her pajamas. A shower passed in no great hurry, after which she wrapped herself armpit to knee in the towel and darted to her bedroom.

  As soon as she pulled the towel off, the doorbell rang. Riley jumped but rolled her eyes, reaching for her underwear drawer. Dad’ll get it.

  “Riley? See who it is…?” he yelled.

  “In a minute, I’m…” not going to yell ‘naked.’

  She hurried into her panties, skipped a bra, and grabbed the first pair of jean shorts she saw. The top item in the shirt drawer turned out to be a pink spaghetti-strap shirt. Without thinking, she rushed out of her room to the front door.

  A skinny man in a grey jumpsuit and baseball cap leaned right and left, peering in. He had a few days’ worth of beard on his face, shaggy black hair, and an Adam’s apple sharp enough to cut with. The low diesel rumble of a truck engine rattled outside. Riley pulled open the door and a blast of warm air hit her shower-dampened body, making her aware of quite a bit of exposed skin. Bare shoulders, only a layer of thin cloth over her chest, and shorts small enough to make Dad faint if he saw her. Mom allowed that particular pai
r only because she had sworn to always wear them over leggings.

  Oops.

  The delivery man’s hurry evaporated to a leering grin. Already bulging frog-eyes got bigger as he ogled her legs. “Hey, cutie.”

  She clung to the door, ready to slam it in his face and scream if he twitched. “Who are you?”

  “Got a delivery for a…” It took him a few seconds to peel his gaze off her thighs and check his clipboard. “Christopher McCullough.”

  “That’s my dad.”

  He flicked his eyebrows up twice. “Is he here?”

  Yes, fifteen yards away and surrounded by enormous guns. “Yeah, he’s on the phone.”

  “You look old enough to sign. C’mon and show me where I can put it.”

  She blushed. “W-what?”

  “The car?” He pointed with the clipboard behind him, where Mom’s Nissan Sentra sat on top of a flatbed truck.

  For a moment, she forgot about the way this man stared at her and crept out onto the porch. When she caught him trying to stare down her top, she jumped back with a yelp and clamped her hands over her chest.

  “Perv!” She backed into the house. “Dad!”

  The man’s face reddened, and he coughed.

  “One moment, sir.” The sound of headphones hit the desk. “What is it, Riley?”

  The driver waved his hands at her, pleading.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Mom’s car is here. Where do you want it?”

  “Next to the truck is fine,” yelled Dad.

  The guy bowed at her like a gracious monk.

  “I didn’t want him to kill you.” She crept up to the door, half-hiding behind it. “Leave it by the Silverado.”

  “Sorry,” he whispered and ran to the truck.

  Beeping rose up outside as he backed the truck up, jockeying it around to line the car up with the drop off point. Riley raced to her room before Dad could see how she had dressed, and changed into shorts a hands’ width longer as well as a bra and full tee shirt. By the time she got back to the porch, Mom’s car was on its wheels and the driver wound a winch cable back up the inclined ramp.