He visibly exhales.
“Better?” I say, even though I don’t quite get what the difference is. I once asked Myers what it felt like to have a missing eye. He told me it felt like nothing. It’s only skin.
“No,” he says without releasing the death hold his stick arms have around his frame. “Really. Not at all.”
I exhale, too. “Things aren’t right,” I say. “How’s your head?”
“Feels like it’s going to fall off my body,” he grumbles. “And don’t even get me started on whatever the hell is going on with Anders and, well, you know.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But weirder things have been known to happen.”
“Name one,” he says. “I can’t wrap my head around it. The last I checked, Marcy and Anders weren’t a thing.”
“Last I checked, they were never a thing,” I say as I brush past Myers and step over the low-slung chain that leads down the path toward Big Loop and Little Loop. The truth is we’ve always known Marcy wanted something more, but Anders kept his distance. Otherwise all our lives would have been too weird.
Myers follows after me, chattering away about his stupid eye and our collective lack of memory. I wish he’d shut up.
“And what’s going on in town?” he finally blurts out like he expects that I’m this enormous fountain of knowledge that can spew forth answers on cue.
At first, the whole idea of telling Myers about Sandra Berman and what’s happening across the street from where she used to live seems so difficult that I almost don’t say anything at all. I keep walking, my fingers slowly rubbing the bandage on my left arm. The stinging is still there, but I’m becoming good at not thinking about it. I have too many other things that I have to think about.
Ultimately I decide to talk, but when I open my mouth something other than the subject of Sandra Berman comes out. “Do you remember being at The Stumps?” I ask, not turning around.
“What? No,” he says. “You mean where everyone parties?”
I don’t expect Myers to say anything other than exactly that. Like I said, we’re not the kind of kids who hang out at The Stumps. “Yeah. Do you remember anything about being there last night?”
Myers snorts. “I don’t remember anything.”
“Me neither,” I say as I continue to walk.
“And why would any of us be at The Stumps anyway? I have less than a year left in this hellhole of a town. Why would I want to screw up my wonderful memories of Meadowfield High School by getting my face pounded in over there?”
Myers isn’t kidding. The Stump crowd isn’t our crowd. The Stump crowd makes fun of our crowd, except for Anders.
No one makes fun of Anders.
“I saw Grafton Applewhite,” I begin.
“Hate him,” Myers says. It’s really hard not to hate someone who only leaves you alone because one of your best friends has imposed a moratorium on him touching you.
I lick my lips. “Yeah, well, I saw Grafton Applewhite when I was walking home and he told me that the four of us were at The Stumps last night, and we were hammered.”
Myers stops. I’m still not looking at him. I want to get to Anders and Marcy as soon as I can. More importantly, my brain is so crowded without a way to process everything that’s crammed inside of it, I want to shut my eyes. However, the leaves under Myers’ shoes stop their kinetic crinkling which makes me stop and turn around.
“That makes no sense,” Myers says. He’s standing in the middle of the path with his arms still wrapped around his body, but now he’s wearing that stupid eyepatch over his eye. For Myers, Halloween has come early this year.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I say to him.
“I . . . I . . . that makes no sense,” he says again, but his voice trails off into nothingness. He closes his good eye and furrows his brow, like he’s trying to remember the essence of a dream even though everyone knows that you can’t remember dreams once you wake up.
Like Anders says, they’re ‘Pffft. All gone.’
Myers lets go of himself and reaches up, his thumbs rubbing his temples and his fingers splayed out so he looks like some sort of weird pirate reindeer.
“I remember,” he whispers. “I remember . . .” Then Myers takes a deep, raspy breath and starts to shudder. “Big eyes,” he says. “They come at night and stand at the end of your bed, and they make you get up without doing anything but staring at you, and . . . and . . .” Myers literally falls down on one knee. I don’t know what to say or do.
I don’t know anything.
“Myers?” I whisper, but he doesn’t hear me, because now he really is in that dream that you can’t remember except for the parts that you can never, ever forget.
“Put this in your mouth,” he murmurs, but not to me. It’s more like he’s telling a story about someone else who was told to put something in their mouth.
Before I have a chance to say anything, his other leg buckles and Myers falls apart on the forest floor.
“Myers,” I gasp and run back to him.
“Leave us alone,” he screams as he curls into a ball, but he’s not screaming at me. He’s screaming at someone or something that’s not there at all. Goosebumps pop up on my arm. “Leave us alone,” he cries again. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to. I don’t want to.”
I don’t want to either, but I have to. The wisp of a memory appears but it’s still far, far away.
‘Put this in your mouth,’ the memory whispers.
‘In your mouth . . .’
‘Your mouth . . .’
‘. . . mouth . . .’
14
MYERS CRIES FOR almost ten minutes. I want to be there for him even though I can’t stand it when he cries, but his isn’t normal crying. What he’s doing is born out of some sort of terror that’s way worse than being cornered in the back stacks of the library and getting a wedgie from some kid who will probably end up mopping floors in his daddy’s corporation for a living.
He’s crying as though a bit of his soul has been ripped away and he’s never going to get it back.
I sit next to him on the path, with my knees drawn up and my arms wrapped around them. I know I should do something but I’m caught up in my own little slice of memory hell and mine is all about big black eyes.
‘They come at night and stand at the end of your bed and they make you get up without doing anything but staring at you.’
That’s what Myers said.
They.
Them.
I know who Myers is talking about but I refuse to believe any of it. Myers owns more than a few stupid tee-shirts with that big face and scary eyes staring back at you, but those kinds of monsters are his fantasy, not mine. Little gray men only three feet tall, with bulbous heads and huge black eyes supposedly abduct people at night, wipe their memories and do experiments on them. They have slits for noses and pointy chins.
They’re terrifying.
But aliens didn’t abduct the four of us last night. Aliens didn’t steal Myers’ eye, douse Anders with blood, take Marcy’s clothes, and brand me with a triangle.
Little gray men didn’t do this, and if they did, then we might as well fall down the nearest rabbit hole right now.
Myers is my friend, but he can also be a nut job. I remember what he’s always said about what aliens do to abductees.
‘They tag you if you’ve been chosen. They tag you with weird scars so that they can find you again.’
Just like we tag sheep.
Baa. Baa. BAAAAA.
Baa. Baa. BAAAAA.
Baa. Baa. BAAAAA.
I gently rock back and forth. Not only do I now remember big, black eyes, I remember the sounds of animals, like at a petting zoo when hungry mouths are trying to devour the five-dollar box of kibble you bo
ught.
You can’t be stingy with it.
The goats get mad.
The llamas spit.
The sheep cry.
Now, everything is eyes and sheep, eyes and sheep, and all I want to do is go to sleep and wake up yesterday instead of today, when Meadowfield was a nice town in a quiet part of Massachusetts and not the nightmare it has become.
Finally, Myers slowly unfurls himself and wipes his elbow across his face. A string of snot grabs hold of his hand for a moment before letting go and dropping to the ground.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I feel sick.”
I nod my head in complete understanding, then slowly get up, hold out my hand to him, and say, “Let’s get Marcy and Anders and get out of here.”
“Okay,” he says without a smartass Myers comment to follow it up. I rearrange my backpack on my shoulder and slowly start walking down the path to where it connects with Little Loop. The sun is shining through the trees, leaving patterns of light against the forest. It occurs to me that, no matter how pretty The Maze is today, it has no right being pretty at all.
The four of us aren’t pretty either. We’re ugly, and the thing that is happening on the other side of town across the street from Sandra Berman’s house is ugly, too. Nothing has the right to be pretty in Meadowfield today.
I walk slowly, making sure that Myers is keeping up with me and not on the verge of falling apart again. If he falls apart then maybe I’ll fall apart, too. Thankfully, he doesn’t. Instead he quickens his steps until he’s right next to me.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence he says, “I remember eyes.”
“I know,” I say back.
“Big, black eyes,” he says again.
“I know.”
“Like in my books,” he continues, but I don’t want him to keep going on. I don’t want to remember eyes, or sheep, or being tagged with a triangle. I can’t fit things like that into my world.
Maybe we did fall down that rabbit hole after all, and we’re now in a nonsensical version of Meadowfield where everything is sideways.
Somehow, I can swallow that notion more easily than I can believe that we were abducted by aliens last night. The thought of that being true is too out of this world even for Myers.
Isn’t it?
15
ONCE, WHEN I WAS really young, Marcy went away to Florida with her brother, Tate, and her parents. Anders’ mom and dad were still together back then and Mr. Stephenson always seemed to be lurking just out of sight. I think he didn’t really like or trust kids. Maybe he thought we would pee in a corner if left unsupervised.
The Stephenson’s basement was partially finished, so we used to hang out down there, playing bumper pool and video games, or sometimes pretending about stuff like little kids do.
The day that Marcy came back from Florida, Anders, Myers, and I were playing Checkers and I had winners. We didn’t hear the door to the basement open at first, so Marcy was like three quarters of the way down the stairs before I even noticed that she was there.
I was so happy to see her, even though she’d only been gone for a week, that I ran up to her and gave her a big hug. I was only in third grade. It was no big deal, but Mr. Stephenson thought differently. He had been loitering in the corner of the basement tinkering on something that I didn’t even bother to notice. When he saw me hug Marcy, he grabbed me by the arm and got right in my face.
“Never do that again,” he screamed at me. I was stunned. Beryl never screamed. Beryl never did anything because she never cared enough.
Marcy was shocked. My face turned beet red and tears welled up in my eyes and started streaming down my face. Mr. Stephenson was so big and I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong. He loomed over me, smothering me in a cloud of anger with his fingers digging into my arm.
After what seemed like a lifetime, he let go of me and hissed, “Faggot,” which I didn’t understand at all, then put his hands on his hips and told us all to go home.
Later that day, when Marcy, Myers and I were all outside trading game cards that none of us are even into anymore, Anders came over and quietly sat next to me.
“My dad’s moving out,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Mom says I’ll see him on weekends.”
Marcy and Myers stared that much more intently at the cards they were holding. We were so little. How were we supposed to react? After a moment I said, “I’ve never had a dad. It’s not so bad.”
I was lying about that gaping hole in my world, but nothing would ever fill it back up so I had learned to walk around it. Still, I’ll never forget that day with Mr. Stephenson in Anders’ basement. He was so cruel, so mean, for no reason at all. I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. Was hugging a friend so wrong?
Memories like that stick with you forever. Every time Mr. Stephenson comes into town to see Anders and raises his hand to me from across the street like I’m some sort of long lost friend, all I think about is what he said and what he did.
Sometimes it still even stings, like the triangle on my arm is stinging now underneath its Neosporin salve.
I rub it again, trying not to think about how I’m ever going to explain why it’s there.
Myers asks, “Does it hurt?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, then point to the patch covering his lost eye. “Does your face hurt?”
“No,” he sputters with a weird look. “Why?”
“It’s killing me,” I say without bothering to smile. It’s a cheap shot at trying to lift the oppressive feeling that’s been hanging in the air all morning.
“Wow,” he says. “That’s bad even for me.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “I know.”
Minutes later we’re almost on top of Turner Pond. Marcy and Anders are sitting by the water with their backs to us. They’re side by side, but she doesn’t have her arm around his shoulder or his around hers. They’re together but alone, which only accentuates the fact that we’re all together but alone today.
Marcy looks up and finds my eyes. She’s been crying. Streaks of dirt have dried against her cheeks, making them look like they’re painted in some weird striped makeup. Anders doesn’t look up. He keeps staring at the water with a deep, dark scowl on his face. I’ve seen that scowl before. Mr. Stephenson wore it the day he yelled at me for hugging Marcy. Now, just like then, it’s frightening.
“Why are there sirens?” Marcy asks. “What’s happening?”
I don’t want to answer her yet. Instead, I bend down on one knee and open up my backpack.
“Your bedroom looks like a bomb went off in it,” I tell her. “I didn’t know what to bring so I brought this.” I hand her the clothing that I pulled from her floor along with the shoes that I saved from sinking into the muddled mass.
“Thanks,” she says, although part of me thinks that if I had brought back nothing, she would have been okay with that as long as Anders is okay.
I reach in my backpack again and pull out another ball of clothing. I’m scared that all my efforts might not hide the fact that Anders was mentally gone when I left him earlier in search of clean clothes.
“I covered for you,” I tell him. “Your mother was just coming in from a date or something, so she doesn’t even know you didn’t come home last night. I barely had time to grab anything from your room, but at least I got this.” I offer him his smelly laundry clothing. I’m pretty sure the stench of sweat trumps the bloody stuff he stripped off before.
I hold the clothing out to Anders, but he doesn’t take it.
“Anders?” Marcy whispers as she stands and pulls on her jeans. I try not to look at her long legs or her panties. She’s Marcy. She’s my friend. Friends don’t stare at other friends like that. Instead I focus on Anders.
“Thanks for the clothes, West,” I say for him.
I barely hide the fact that there’s a bit of venom in my voice, but I can’t help it. “It’s awesome that you walked all the way across town, covered for the four of us, got our clothes, and came all the way back.”
Marcy sniffs and says, “Anders?” again, but he’s still dark and brooding and staring at the water wearing nothing but his underwear.
I look up at Myers. He shrugs and does this classic Myers move that might be a little funny any other time but right now. He lifts his hand and corkscrews one finger up against the side of his head.
That’s universal sign language for ‘your best friend has just lost his marbles.’ I sigh and bite the inside of my cheek. None of us are equipped to handle Anders like this. We might have to tell one of our parents, or worse, the police. If we do that, all hell might break loose because nothing in the world can truly scrub all the blood away. You can never scrub away that much misery.
“I think Sandy Berman didn’t run away,” I whisper.
“What?” Myers and Marcy both say at the same time.
“Sandra Berman,” a voice that’s coming out of my mouth mutters. “Remember her?” Then, of course, I have to add something else because the truth might shock Anders out of his funk. I can be such an asshole sometimes. “I think she might have been murdered.”
16
SOMETIMES WORDS can be so heavy that they sink. That’s what happens. My words sink to the ground and lie there. I’m hoping Anders will reach over and pick them up, if only to hold them in his naked hands.
Thankfully, my wishful thinking pays off, if only a little.
“Sandy Berman ran away,” whispers Anders in a coarse voice, low and monotone. He’s still staring at the water with a face that is so much like his father’s face that I don’t have to imagine what Anders will look like twenty-five years from now.
He’ll look like Mr. Stephenson.
I want to say something snarky about how nice it is of Anders to finally decide to join the living, but a little whisper in the back of my head tells me to bite down on my tongue and not say a word.
What We Kill Page 5
