Black Chuck

by Regan McDonell

  The café’s back door opened again, and it was Alex, at last.

  “Du-fresne!” he woofed cheerfully when he saw Réal.

  “Sup, Janes,” Ré said. The boys clamped their hands together briefly.

  The girls came out the door behind Alex, and Ré didn’t know whose eyes to meet first, so he chose neither. He sat sideways in the driver’s seat and waited for them to come to him.

  “Where the hell were you?” Sunny asked. The edge was still in her voice, but she sounded tired.

  “Not hungry,” Ré said, not looking at her.

  “No, I mean, all day where were you?” Sunny said. “I texted you a hundred times.”

  He lifted hard eyes to hers. “I said, not hungry. I had shit to do. What do you care?”

  “Who doesn’t have shit to do?” Sunny rolled her eyes.

  Ré looked sideways at Alex, raising his brows, and Alex shrugged. Hurricane.

  “So. What now?” Alex asked the girls. They offered no answers. Sunny just crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.

  “Well, ain’t this just a peachy way to spend a Saturday?” Alex drawled, leaning back against the Buick and putting his elbows on the roof.

  After a pause Sunny said, “Let’s go to the lake!”

  Evie and Réal both answered at once.

  “No!” said Ré.

  “I can’t,” said Evie.

  They flicked a look at each other, and Sunny looked at them, eyes wide and then narrow.

  “Fine,” she said. “If no one wants to do anything fun tonight, then I am going home. You all suck.”

  She went around to the other side of the Buick and yanked open the door. She leaned down, putting her hand on the seat, and hissed, “Is there something you two would like to share with us?”

  Ré just stared at her, mute.

  She retreated, lifting her hand, and then she looked down. She rubbed her fingers together, then looked at the passenger seat, eyes going wide again. Ré saw what she was looking at. A fine dusting of lake sand filled the creases in the vinyl.

  A second later Sunny whirled away.

  “Alex!” she barked. “Get in the car.” She slammed the door of her dad’s sedan and started the engine like she was kicking a horse.

  Alex gave Réal a goofy smile, then loped over to the other car. Evie just stood there, looking abandoned.

  Ré looked at her. “I think maybe you should get in,” he said, nodding at his passenger seat. “I think we need to talk.”

  Evie’s shoulders fell, but she nodded and went around to the far side of the Buick. She waved at Sunny, but Sunny just threw the sedan in reverse and tore out of the parking lot, grit flying.

  “What was that all about?” Evie asked.

  Réal shook his head and let out a breath. “You really don’t want to know.”

  9

  E

  “Do you want to come in this time?”

  They were parked across from Evie’s drive, looking up at the house again.

  “Is that okay? Is your mom home?”

  Evie looked at her phone. Her mom would be up soon to get ready for work. “It’s fine,” she said.

  She led him into the house and straight up the narrow, steep staircase to the attic.

  “Take your shoes off,” she said. “It’s quieter.”

  The staircase bisected the attic. On one side was a bedroom with sloping ceilings, on the other a small bathroom. Evie went to the bedroom and sat on the bed. Ré stood in the doorway, looking around.

  “Come in,” she said. “Close the door.”

  He did that, then stood in the tallest part of the room, in the middle of a circular rug made of rags.

  “So. You want to talk?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “We should. About last night, and about some other stuff.”

  Evie’s stomach flopped. She gripped the edge of the bed beneath her and nodded.

  “How you feeling today?” he asked, eyeing her. “A little crazy still?” He scratched behind his ear; she suspected he was more nervous than itchy.

  She swallowed, looking down at the colorful rag rug beneath his feet. She’d had that rug forever. She used to lie on it and think about all the different pieces it had been made from, all the bigger parts that had been ripped up and twisted into that spiral. Where had they all come from? Did each one have a story, a whole life, before finally ending up as her rug?

  “Ev,” he said.

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re standing over me,” she blurted. The distance between them made her anxious, like she was under a spotlight. “Sit down. Please?”

  He looked around for a chair, finding one at the desk behind him. But he stepped over and sat next to her on the bed instead.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Better.” She heaved a breath, looking down at her knees.

  It was stuffy in her room. It always got too hot in summer, too cold in winter.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said quietly, thinking of Sunny’s words. Pepé Le Pew said it sucked.

  “Are you?” he asked. “’Cause I’m not. Not really.” He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his hands, pressing his thumbs together.

  She looked at him, the side of his face. His tanned skin had a thin sheen of sweat.

  “I mean, I’m not sorry I kissed you,” he corrected. “The rest, I don’t know.”

  “I think I kissed you, actually,” she said.

  He smiled, but still didn’t look at her.

  Then he said, “The thing is”—and although they shouldn’t have, the words hurt before they’d even left his lips— “things are really complicated right now.”

  “I know,” she said, and looked down at her knees again. There was a very fine white scar on her left leg, arcing around her kneecap. “Because of Shaun.”

  “Not just Shaun. That is fucking huge though.” He took a deep breath. When he exhaled, she felt him shake. “Ev,” he said, “there is a whole bunch of other stuff I gotta think about before I can think about last night.”

  She thought again of Sunny, how she’d been so angry with the boys earlier, with all of them. She thought about how she hardly knew Ré, how he’d always moved on the periphery. Shaun’s dark, unknowable shadow. “Secrets?” she asked.

  He smiled with just the corner of his lips. “Yeah, secrets,” he said. “And, I mean, what about the baby? What are you going to do?” At last he turned to look at her. “I’m not judging in any way. I only want to know how to help you, what I should do.”

  Evie closed her eyes. The baby.

  It wasn’t even a real thing. Just an alien swimming through her, not connected to anything—not to Shaun, not even to herself. A tiny, distant star inside her that she couldn’t even feel. The thought of it just made her sick all over again. She pictured her mom raising a kid alone, sixteen years on, no days off. She thought of Shaun’s nan. Of Shaun, abandoned. Evie flopped down onto her side, into the pillows, and covered her face, trying hard not to cry.

  Ré did nothing at first. Said nothing. Then he moved, tentative, bedsprings bowing under his weight as he lay down behind her. He wrapped his arm around her, knees up under hers, tucking her into the curve of him and holding her, breathing until they both fell asleep.

  R

  Ré dreams he is wrapped around the rib cage of a large creature whose breath expands through him, pushing into him, pinning him down. It doesn’t hurt, but he is unable to break free. He is carried by the creature as it moves across a snow-covered plain. Searching, hungry.

  He can’t see what lies ahead, only what circles behind—six howling wolves. They are fearless. They lope up through chest-deep snow and sniff the air, then discuss in yips and barks what they have found: a sinner, a killer. And the creature keeps moving forward, ferrying Ré along.

  Between the trees, white eyes stare out at him, white antlers move. The creature is taking him to them.

  Something takes his hand,
curves into him, pulling him closer, and he feels his arm begin to stretch, thinning like gum until his hand falls off completely. Then his other hand goes. His teeth crumble. He collapses, boneless ash, into the snow.

  E

  Evie woke to Ré’s crying, the back of her neck damp with his breath. It was the same painful sound as in the car the day after Shaun was found. Sharp, wheezy breaths, a high, rasping whine. She rolled over in his arms to face him, tucking her head under his chin, cheek to his collarbone, fitting herself into him.

  Her arm snaked out from under his to wrap around his body and pull him tight against her. She held him as he cried, and he held her, arms closing around her like a soft trap.

  R

  When they woke again, it was dark.

  He sucked a breath and rolled onto his back, rubbing his eyes with his fist.

  “What time is it?” he asked, voice thick with sleep. She stayed curled up, not looking at the clock. “Ev, I gotta go.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay,” she mumbled.

  He looked at her, fingers touching her hair. “I didn’t mean to stay,” he said. “I guess I didn’t sleep much last night.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re complicated right now.”

  He laughed softly. “So are you, Ev.”

  She smiled, tucking into him again for one last moment.

  Then she rolled onto her back and stretched out, toes touching the brass rails of the footboard, hands stretching between the headboard rails to touch the wall.

  He propped himself up on one elbow and lowered his other hand to her belly. The bump was almost nothing, just a slight rise, a firmness of flesh, but he imagined that what he felt was alive. That it kicked and swam against his palm, a selkie child.

  Ré was the first of five sons. He’d touched the pregnant belly of a woman before. But it hadn’t felt like this—like strange wonder leaping in his skin.

  His heart began to tap, tap, tap. His breath became heavy. He knew he shouldn’t—there were so many reasons why he shouldn’t—but he did it anyway: he pushed up the hem of her thin shirt.

  His fingers fell to her bare flesh, and the heat annihilated him.

  “Evie…” he breathed, heart stomping through his throat and his hands and his legs so hard it shook him.

  All the things he wanted to say. A tide of secrets ebbed against his tongue, pushing him to speak, to lean down and whisper against her throat. How good would it feel to just tell her everything? To confess it all. Be absolved…

  He bit his lips together and closed his eyes.

  Fuck.

  He pushed away.

  Scrambling onto his heels, he scrubbed his hands over his face to wake himself, to break her spell. He felt like he’d been sucking carbon dioxide, breathing her breath until they were both suffocating. The small, hot room was thick with dreams, loosening his grip on things. Like she’d done last night, in the water, in his car—luring him out from reality toward something that felt like hope.

  “I gotta go,” he said, not looking at her.

  He crawled over her and opened the bedroom door, desperate for air. He stuffed his feet into the shoes he’d left on the landing, feeling her eyes, big and blue, pinned to his back. But he didn’t want to look. Couldn’t look. He couldn’t stand to see the hurt in those eyes, if there was any—or feel his own if there wasn’t. He just had to get away.

  E

  After the roar of the Buick had faded down the road, Evie sat up in bed. She drew Shaun’s long blond hair from her pocket and stretched it again between her fingers. In the dim light, it looked fragile white, not gold.

  “Can you feel that?” Shaun had asked, low and sweet. Wrapped up here together, under the patchwork quilt, winter sunlight filtering through the curtain. His arm draped heavy around her, his heart beating slow against her ribs.

  “Can you feel mine?” she’d asked him back. His laugh was no more than a murmur into her hair.

  Can you feel my heart?

  As close as she’d ever got to saying I love you.

  Evie stood and took a journal from her desk drawer. Her mom had bought it for her as a place to keep all the things she’d stopped saying aloud, but she had never really used it.

  At first she hadn’t lived through anything interesting enough to put down on paper. And then later, when she had, it was nothing that should sit between such pretty covers.

  She wound Shaun’s hair into a small loop and tucked it inside the journal, replacing the book in the drawer. Nearly a year of her life in one tiny thread.

  She went down to the kitchen, flicking lights on as she went. The ticking clock was joined by cricket song floating in through the open windows and, far off, the mournful call of the trains that passed by Nan’s.

  Her stomach growled fiercely. She’d slept the entire afternoon away and now felt raw and empty. It must have been days since she’d last eaten properly, without everything making her want to barf.

  She grabbed a can of soup from the cupboard and dumped it into a pot.

  It was Saturday night. Saturday nights used to be for all of them, together. Drinking and laughing in Nan’s front room, Nan deaf and asleep upstairs. Or, when it was warmer, prowling along the train tracks, climbing fences. Racing cars at the edge of town.

  Tonight, instead, they were scattered. Each one falling away from the next—all the ties that had once bound them growing thinner and thinner.

  On the breakfast table was a note from her mom.

  Hi, Ev—Car out front. Boy in the attic. Do we need to talk??

  Evie folded the page in half and put it back on the table. A pointed thing turned in her gut. She still hadn’t really talked to her mom yet. Of course, her mother knew that Shaun was dead. The whole town knew. But even when he was alive, Evie had kept him to herself. She’d never had the right words to explain him to her mother. That was exactly why her mom had bought the journal—to keep her from bottling everything up.

  Her mom was always going on about letting in the light, getting some fresh air, seeing the bright side. But what exactly was so bright and fresh about Evie’s life? Every chance it got, all it did was hurt—even with Shaun, who was supposedly perfect. And what was the point in talking about that? In writing it down so she’d never, ever forget how much it all sucked?

  How could she talk to her mom about a thing like Shaun? Her mom hadn’t even known she had a boyfriend when he’d slept two nights out of three in that brass bed upstairs. And now he was dead. Writing it down was never going to change that, and there was no point in talking about it now.

  Besides, her mom trusted her—she couldn’t work nights if she didn’t. And she worked nights ’cause they needed the money. They always needed the money. So the sneaking out, the drinking, hopping fences, Shaun…confessing it all now would only break that trust, and that was something Evie knew they couldn’t afford.

  She slumped down at the table and put her hands over her face. They filled instantly with tears. But she didn’t know if it was really Shaun she was crying for.

  10

  R

  Réal avoided the hill on Monday morning. He pulled into the parking lot late and ducked into the school by the side door, racing to class just under the bell. As he slid into his seat, a nagging feeling bit at his gut. He tried to lose himself in the algebra under his elbows, but his gaze kept sneaking out the window, almost like he knew that cop car was going to pull up when it did, right where his eyes had been waiting for it.

  Seeing it, though, he swallowed. He inched toward the window, watching the officers stride across the lawn and disappear from view. And when the old black phone on the classroom wall rattled its bell, he just knew it was for him.

  The teacher spoke into it briskly, then turned and pointed at him, like the Grim Reaper digging a bony finger through Ré’s chest. “Dufresne,” he said. “Downstairs. Pronto.”

  And then everything just lifted right off his head.

  He stood up like he
was on strings, not saying a word, and marched out of the room.

  His ears buzzed and his chest felt like water, like even his organs were abandoning him. But he felt weirdly okay about it all. The sleepless nights, the terrible dreams, the memory of blood and violence. It was all over now. He could breathe again. It was done.

  As his feet numbly touched each step down to the main floor, his mind itched to rebel against the strange calm his body felt. He eyed the side door. He could still run. But no. If they were asking for him by name, they already knew everything. It was time, he thought, to face the fucking piper, or whatever it was they say.

  His dirty Vans squeaked against the polished hall tiles, announcing him. They were still flecked with Shaun’s blood, with his own. Through each little classroom window, he saw faces turned toward blackboards, heads ducked to notes. Exams started next week. And then he would have graduated, been done with this place. If only.

  He put his hand on the door to the main office, took a breath and pushed.

  Inside was the usual Monday morning chaos. Three kids already lined up on death row—the hard wooden bench that faced the high counter where detentions and suspensions were doled out. He knew the bench well, but not the faces. Just puppies. Fresh meat. They all stared at him with big eyes, the famous Ré Dufresne, tough old dog.

  He stepped up to the receptionist’s desk, knowing he’d likely be fourth on that bench by the end of this conversation.

  She held a finger up as she spoke into the phone in an already exhausted voice. He slid his hands into his back pockets. The room smelled like hot printer ink and cheap coffee. Chemical and poisonous. There was paper everywhere, bright sticky notes, plastic folders, shitty carpet, artificial light. What a place to work.

  To his left, past the high counter, he could see the frosted-glass door of the principal’s office. Behind it, dark shapes moved like things in murky water. Like the wolves in his dreams, licking their teeth. He closed his eyes. He imagined that he could hear what they were saying about him right now.

  Same things everybody said.