What We Kill

by Howard Odentz

  Myers deflates, even though there isn’t much of him there to begin with. He looks even scrawnier than before. Finally, he turns to me and motions to my arm. “Let me see it again.”

  This time I actually do roll my eyes. “Whatever,” I say and hold out my left arm. The new isosceles scar is still burning, and I wince. Myers leans in and stares at the puffy little triangle, the one that I’m never going to be able to explain.

  He whistles. “That’s what they do,” he says. “They mark you.”

  “Oh my God, shut up already,” I snap at him.

  “It’s true,” he says. “The government wants you to think it’s not, but it’s true.”

  “Seriously,” I tell him. “You need to stop.” I don’t want to hear any more about Myers’ obsession. Aliens don’t exist. They don’t abduct people in the night and stick magic wands up their butts. They don’t leave strange scars on their victims after wiping their memories.

  That’s only on TV, and it’s not true.

  Marcy’s eyes fill up with tears but she refuses to blink them away. Instead, she lets them overflow and run down her cheeks. “I don’t remember anything,” she says. Anders is silent. He continues his creepy, blank stare. His GQ face is as hard as a brick.

  “I don’t either,” I grimace.

  Myers opens up his mouth, presumably to drive home his alien theory, which would make so much sense in an alternate universe where aliens do exist, then closes it again. Finally he says, “I should remember my own eye falling out.” He hooks one finger in his mouth and pulls it out with a pop. My stomach does acrobatics. Silence drapes over all of us again, and we sit quietly, nursing our collective wounds.

  Suddenly, I become acutely aware of an empty feeling in my pocket and realize that my phone is gone.

  “Crap. I don’t know where my cell went.”

  “I’ll call it,” Myers says, but quickly realizes that his phone is gone, too.

  “Pffft. All gone,” Anders whispers again, but this time he splays out his long fingers like a magician who’s done a cool trick.

  It’s not cool at all.

  Marcy takes a deep, ragged breath, and more tears drip down her face. She should be happy. She’s finally gotten what she’s always wanted. Anders is right there with his head in her lap. Still, even I know that she doesn’t want a broken Anders. She wants a bright and shiny Anders who winks at her from the basketball court after making a shot, or steals tater-tots from her tray during lunch in the Meadowfield High School cafeteria.

  I reach down and rub the little triangle on my arm and try to blot out the pain. I can feel the perfect angles under my thumb like skin Braille. Burns like this one never go away. I’m branded like a cow. I’m branded for life.

  Baa. Baa. BAAAAA.

  A chill runs up my spine. Somewhere in the back of my skull I hear that sound—sheep crying.

  Baa. Baa. BAAAAA.

  Baa. BAA. BAAAAA.

  BAA. BAA. BAAAAA.

  Without warning a wave of nausea smashes into me with such force I almost topple over. Dark visions swim across my brain.

  I see eyes—big, black eyes, looming over me, boring into me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say they’re alien eyes like in Myers’ stupid TV shows. Bile rises up my throat. I almost puke, but I don’t. Puking right now would be the worst possible thing in a long list of really awful things.

  Besides, I’m convinced those eyes aren’t real. If they are, I’m not sure they’re even human.

  I puke anyway.

  A lot.

  5

  “ARE YOU OKAY?”

  Myers is standing next to me as I sink my feet halfway up to my shins in the muddy waters of Turner Pond. My stomach won’t stop twisting and turning around my insides and little beads of sweat pop out on my forehead.

  “I’m fine,” I say to him, which is such a monumental lie that he looks at me with his one good eye like I’ve gone crazy.

  I hug myself with my burning arm. “I’m fine,” I say again as the cries of sheep echo in the back of my mind.

  Off in the distance, a faint wail pierces the morning. I squint and look up into the sky. This time, instead of the town fire alarm, I hear the sound of police car sirens, which are completely foreign in Meadowfield.

  Ours is a good town. We’re good people. We don’t hear police car sirens or see flashing red and blue lights, not unless it’s during Meadowfield Days on the town green and there’s a parade or something.

  I turn and look back at Marcy, with her soft curls and beautiful face, and Anders’ head in her lap. She matches my stare, so I try my best not to let my eyes do a once over. I don’t want her to feel even more self-conscious about only having panties and Myers’ sweatshirt to cover herself.

  “Anders is bloody.” I say. That’s not entirely true anymore. He’s still splotchy, but the water got most of it off. His clothes are another story. If he’s smart, he’ll bury them, but he’s not anything now except close to catatonic.

  “Yeah,” says Myers. “And you’re pukey.” He reaches up and rubs his head, not where his eye is supposed to be, but along his temples. “I have a killer headache.”

  I step out of the water, reach down, and wipe the pond scum off my legs. Meanwhile, Marcy tilts her head up to the sun. Her nostrils flair a tiny bit. “I don’t understand how we can’t remember anything,” she says. “And I feel awful.”

  I lick my lips. “Try puking,” I say, being totally honest. “I think I feel a little better.” Of course my brain is still all fluffy but it doesn’t do any good to state the obvious.

  Another police car siren slices through the morning.

  “I should be there,” says volunteer fire-nerd Myers, even though none of us even know where ‘there’ is. Something’s happening outside of The Maze—something not right—but something’s happening inside The Maze, too, and I suddenly feel an urgent need to get away from Turner Pond, Prince Richard’s Maze, and all the dead leaves.

  I want to feel pavement underneath my feet.

  “I’m going to get something for you and Anders to wear,” I tell Marcy. Then I look over at Myers. “There’s an eyepatch on a coconut in my bedroom,” I tell him.

  “The creepy pirate one with the painted teeth?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “The creepy pirate one with the painted teeth.”

  “But what about my parents?” he whimpers. “I’m so screwed.”

  “Tell them the truth,” I say. “You lost your eye. That’s the truth.”

  I take a deep breath and slowly let it fill up my insides. I do it again, three, maybe four times. A third siren swirls through the morning, this time high and fast. It comes and then it’s gone.

  We all look at each other, and Anders closes his eyes really tight and puts his hands over his ears.

  He’s broken somehow. Someone or something has reached inside his brain and scooped out the part that’s supposed to be Anders Stephenson, leaving him a mushy mess.

  Pffft. All gone.

  “I’m going,” I tell them all. I roll my shirt sleeve down over my arm, mostly to cover the burning triangle, and start walking away from them down Little Loop.

  “My parents are gone for the weekend,” Marcy calls out after me, like I don’t already know that the Coles went to the Indian Casino down in Connecticut for their anniversary. They decided that Marcy was finally old enough to stay alone and not get into any trouble. They were wrong. “You know how to break in?”

  I don’t turn around as I keep walking. “In the garage,” I say loud enough for her to hear. “On the ledge under the steps.” Then I keep going, wanting to get away from my friends, Turner Pond, and everything.

  Five minutes later, after some twists and turns, I reach the chain that crosses the exit to The Maze and Meadowfield Street bey
ond. There are cars going back and forth, because to the left of the maze is the entrance to the highway and Springfield’s dinky skyline off in the distance. I take a deep breath, step over the chain, and take a right onto the sidewalk.

  It’s almost three miles to home. I walk quickly, but not too quickly. I don’t want anyone wondering why I’m out for a stroll on a Saturday morning without my friends and with a confused look on my face.

  I snort.

  No one in Meadowfield would even care about me or what I’m doing.

  As I walk, my thoughts wander back to the sheep. We don’t have farm animals in Meadowfield. We’re a big, square patch of suburbia where you can’t even have a rabbit hutch in your backyard. I only know that because Myers had a pet rabbit a couple years back that stunk up his basement so much that his parents made him keep it outside in a wooden hutch. His next-door neighbor, Mrs. Horowitz, complained to the town that it was unsightly. Myers ended up having to get rid of the hutch, his rabbit, and everything, and he moped around for weeks.

  But sheep?

  There aren’t any sheep for miles—not until you cross over the border to Connecticut and hit Tobacco Alley where all the farms are.

  So why are they in my head?

  Why?

  I close my eyes and start walking a little faster, but not too fast. In a town where everyone knows everyone, I feel paranoia clinging to my insides like I did something wrong and now everyone knows what I did.

  I can’t keep my eyes closed, though. When I do, I see big black orbs staring at me again.

  Huge.

  Thankfully, I don’t scrunch up my face when I start crying. The tears start to flow. For all I know, they’re glistening on my face in the sunlight, and I look like one of those diamond-covered vampires.

  That, or some other kind of monster.

  6

  I MANAGE TO MAKE it almost all the way home—down Meadowfield Street, past the library, through a cluster of neighborhoods where the wealthy of the wealthy live in big brick colonials, alongside Elm Knoll Park, and almost in sight of Meadowfield High School before the inevitable happens and I run into someone I know.

  “You look like shit, man,” says Grafton Applewhite. He’s on a mountain bike, wearing soccer cleats and a Meadowfield soccer uniform. It’s Saturday morning. There must be a game.

  “Whatever,” I say. I can’t think of anything else worthwhile to let slip from my lips. I’m not friends with Grafton Applewhite, but he plays sports with Anders, and Anders has made it crystal clear to anyone and everyone that his friends aren’t to be messed with, no matter what.

  Grafton used to be a total dick in junior high school. I remember he labeled me ‘lard ass’ once, then called me out to the dunes after school because he said he wanted to beat the fat out of me.

  Back then, I almost shit my pants. I didn’t know how to fight, but when you get called out to the dunes after school, you have to go. If you don’t, you’re a pussy for life.

  I remember hiding in the bathroom during F Block—Social Studies—afraid to leave the building once the bell rang. Thankfully, the ceiling started echoing with the sounds of a downpour outside. By the time last period ended and I got up the courage to leave the bathroom and school, I knew full well that the dunes would be empty. Everyone who normally gathered there wasn’t interested in seeing blood drain away in the rain.

  The next day, with my heart pounding in my chest most of the day for fear that the dunes were still looming in my future, Anders got to Grafton Applewhite in the gym locker room before Grafton ever got to me, and punched him in the head.

  Grafton never bothered me after that.

  But today, of all days, he seems like he wants to be friends.

  “I mean, you really look like shit,” he says. “Just saying.”

  “Bad night,” I mutter and keep walking. Grafton pumps his bike a couple times to keep pace with me.

  “No kidding,” he chuckles. “I saw you at The Stumps last night. You were pretty wasted.”

  The Stumps.

  The Stumps?

  We were at The Stumps?

  After the freak storm in 2011, there were so many downed trees that the town took the far end of Miller Road, where it dead ends near the dump, and piled everything there. After a while, the woods behind the enormous pile of uprooted debris became known as The Stumps—a prime party spot.

  “I don’t remember being at The Stumps,” I tell Grafton as I reach over with my right arm and rub my left. It’s true. I don’t remember anything about The Stumps, or last night, or being hammered like Grafton says I was.

  Grafton bursts out laughing, and all of a sudden I want to be back in junior high school again so I can be the one to call him out to the dunes and beat his face into a bloody mash. “No doubt,” he snorts. “You, Anders, that weird kid you hang out with and . . .” Grafton licks his lips. “And Marcy Cole.”

  The burning in my left arm starts throbbing, and I bite my lip.

  “Okay,” I say, trying to figure out a way to tell Grafton to get the hell away from me. I’m confused and in pain, and all I want to do is get home and find clean clothes for Anders and Marcy, and a coconut’s eyepatch for Myers.

  “Must have been something good,” he says. “Share next time.” Then he pushes on the pedals of his bike, speeds up, and heads off toward the high school parking lot and the playing fields beyond.

  I watch him go, still all gummed up and confused.

  The Stumps.

  We were at The Stumps.

  The four of us—me, Marcy, Anders and Myers—aren’t exactly part of the popular crowd. Anders has his jock friends, and I’m sort of friendly with some of the kids in chorus, but Marcy and Myers stick to themselves or to us. We’re not Stumps-kids. We may want to be, but we’re not.

  Still, even if we were at The Stumps last night, and even if we were wasted, there would be something in my head telling me it’s true. There would be a little electrical synapse firing off a tiny loop of brain-film that would play over and over again, making me realize that, yeah, we were there, and we were partying like the jocks and the cheerleaders and anyone else who considers themselves part of the popular crowd.

  But there’s nothing.

  All there is inside my fuzzy memory is big, black eyes and a soundtrack right out of a slaughter house.

  My tears start to bubble up again and I let them have their way.

  Drippity drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  Drip.

  7

  BERYL KAHN IS A therapist, but she’s not, really.

  Beryl, which my mother demands that I call her instead of ‘mom,’ is an intuitive counselor. That’s a fancy way of saying she’s a psychic, at least in her own mind.

  She also has a fancy way of parenting, meaning she doesn’t parent at all. She’s too busy getting high, or meeting with desperate clients, or meditating, to worry about something as trivial as a kid.

  We have money. Everyone in Meadowfield has money, but Beryl Kahn’s money comes from a trust fund that my grandparents set up a long time ago. If not for an endless supply of cash from my dead grandma and grandpa, we wouldn’t be living on Primrose Lane.

  We’d be living in a shelter.

  As I slowly walk up Primrose Lane to our sprawling ranch house with the curved driveway and the purple door, and pumpkins strategically placed on the front porch because Halloween is Beryl’s favorite holiday, I briefly wonder how I’m going to explain to her where I was last night.

  Then I realize that no explanations will be necessary. We have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in our household. It’s really more like a ‘don’t ask, don’t care’ sort of thing.

  The front door is unlocked. I’m hoping that I can quietly slip in and hang a left down th
e bedroom hallway without having to stop and engage Beryl in any kind of conversation. Hopefully, she’s all the way in the den so she won’t hear me.

  Hoping is for suckers.

  Beryl is in the kitchen, drinking her millionth cup of coffee for the day. All her holistic vitamins are spread out on the table in front of her next to her giant pill box. Her hair is rolled up into a ball on the top of her head, with fabric and chopsticks holding it together. I don’t know what you call the outfit she’s wearing. It’s tie-dyed, flowy, and psychedelic.

  She looks like a carnival gypsy.

  I at least have to say ‘hi,’ to her. Niceties are still upheld in our household. There’s no reason to be rude.

  “Good morning,” she says absentmindedly before I have a chance to greet her first. She picks up an amber bottle and shakes out a handful of vitamins. “One, two, three,” she murmurs as she drops them into her huge pill box which should probably be used for nails instead of pills.

  “Beryl,” I say back, and slightly nod my head.

  My mother and I are random talkers. Nothing we ever say to each other is too deep. She doesn’t look at me. Instead she picks up another bottle of pills, lowers her trendy, progressive glasses, and stares at the label. After a moment, she tilts her head backward and holds her arm out as far as she can.

  “St. John’s Wart,” she muses. “I wonder if St. John knows his legacy is an ugly growth?” I don’t say anything back. Beryl is bizarre. I don’t feel like being bizarre this morning. “Oh, well,” she shrugs. Then she unscrews the cap and shakes another handful of pills out onto her palm.

  In most households, someone my age staying out all night would probably constitute at least a ‘where in the hell have you been?’ or an old fashioned ‘you’re grounded.’ That doesn’t happen here.

  Nothing happens.

  I slowly shift from one foot to the other, searching for words to fill her awkward lack of interest. Finally, I come up with something. “I heard the town fire alarm,” I say. “And police cars.”