by S. F. Henson
“That’s awesome,” I say. His enthusiasm is like a virus, spreading to me whether I like it or not.
“Isn’t it? I turned sixteen months ago. Think of all that sweet freedom.” He looks at the card, still beaming. “We have to celebrate. Let’s go cruisin’ this afternoon.”
“Cruisin’?”
“Driving around because we can. How about it?”
I want to say no. I’m afraid of how glad I am to see him. I should end this right now, but Brandon’s excitement is contagious. I don’t know which would be worse: being the loner everyone is afraid of, or letting someone know the real me. Well, the version of me I’m pretending to be.
“Sure,” I hear myself say. “We’ll go cruisin’.”
“Awesome,” he says.
“So, uh, who all is going?” I ask, suddenly terrified of what I just agreed to do.
He claps me on the back. “Not sure yet. You’re the first person I’ve asked. It’ll be fun, though.” He beams. The bell rings and he turns toward his homeroom, waving his license like a flag. “Hey, Fletch, check it out, man. I can drive! Rainey! Look! Freeeedom!”
Why does he want to hang out with me again? He has all these other friends. The whole school seems to love him. He weaves through the crowd, handing out high fives the way the Skynbyrds distributed flyers.
I’m not ready for this. I barely got through an afternoon with just us. No way in hell am I going to make it in a car full of guys. I’m not a cannonball kind of person. Back on the run with Mom, I always eased into the motel pools, letting my body adjust a little at a time. This feels too much like jumping in.
I watch Brandon before heading to my own class. His joy infects the whole school. Everyone who passes him ends up with a smile on their face.
I want that.
I want to be able to cannonball, like Brandon.
It smacks me like a leather belt. I don’t want people to fear me. I want them to smile when they see me. But I don’t know how to get there. It’s like everyone else is standing on some tall-ass platform and I’m at the bottom with no way up.
Especially not with his shadow holding me down. It trails behind me, a dark stain of hatred and fear and paranoia that I can’t shake loose.
Everyone disappears into their classrooms, leaving me in the cold hallway. Just me and my shadow.
Brandon is at the lockers when I get there after the last bell.
He grins and jangles his keys.
Traitor’s giant key ring flashes across my mind. If I could convince him to let me get my license and drive, then I could get my hands on those keys and at least look through them. That’s about as likely as the sky turning green and raining candy, though.
“So, who else is coming?” I ask, impressed that my voice doesn’t betray my nerves. That’s probably the meds.
“Just us. Fletcher has to run some errands for his mom, and Rainey is going down to Florence for new basketball shoes.”
Relief washes over me. This is easier. The river was me putting a foot in. Today, I’m moving a step deeper.
We head through a door I’ve never used and angle toward the student parking lot, matching strides.
I wonder what he would do if he saw me right now?
What would I do?
The thought throws me out of step with Brandon. Would I react on instinct if he told me to hurt Brandon once we’re alone on some back road? Or could I fight it? I’d like to think I could. I hope so. I haven’t thought about hurting Brandon since I met him. I feel like I’m in control for the first time, but the beast has a way of taking over sometimes. In my head, I repeat Ms. Erica’s words to me before I left the Psych Center. I’m in control. As long as I take my meds. And I’ve taken them every day since the last flashback. I think of those signs at construction sites: NO RACISM RELATED ACCIDENTS IN 611 DAYS.
I can ignore his shadow.
I can do this.
I follow Brandon through the student lot. It’s mostly full of white people. Do they only integrate during school hours? Is hanging out with a black guy after school weird? Is this not okay? Several folks lean against their cars talking. Water Fountain Girl sits on a tailgate between the legs of the big dude she whispered to on my second day. She shoots me a glare that could make stone explode.
Because of our run-in or because I’m with Brandon?
Brandon unlocks the doors to an old green Camry and throws his bag on the backseat.
“How dare you?” someone shrieks.
Guilty heat blasts my cheeks, reminding me of the first time I got caught stealing from Home Grown Books back in Farmer. I feel like all my evil thoughts are tattooed on my forehead. My head jerks toward the yell. Nose Girl stands by a beat-up Camaro a row over. A guy grabs her wrist. Nose Girl shoves the guy.
I slump against Brandon’s Camry. It’s not about me. No one seems to care who I’m with.
They would if they were in my head. I’m certain of it.
“Let go of me!” Nose Girl screams.
“Baby, I—” the guy pleads.
“Seriously? Did you seriously call me that?” She gets in his face and jabs her finger in his chest. “Go use your pet names somewhere else.”
The guy dips his head. “Ba—Maddie, I’m sorry. Alyssa was a mistake. It meant nothing.”
“That’s what you said the first time,” she yells.
Brandon shoots me a look over the roof of his car. “This is about to get good.” He nods to the sidewalk behind us. A girl I recognize from my history class grins wickedly.
Pretty much everyone in the parking lot is staring at Nose Girl and the guy. My muscles tense instinctively, like a dog getting ready for a fight. Last time I saw this many people silently focused on an argument …
I shiver and turn back to the girl from history. She’s smearing some kind of shiny, pink gunk on her lips.
“I slipped up,” the guy says. “It won’t happen again.”
Nose Girl flaps her hand like a mouth. “Blah, blah, blah. I’m so over this. I can’t even look at you. I’m changing my schedule tomorrow. And this time, I’m going through with it!”
The douchebag must’ve cheated on her before and she got stuck taking all her classes with him. That’s why she was so upset that first day. I just made things worse.
History Chick drops her books on the car trunk beside me and strolls across the parking lot. The guy opens his mouth to say something else to Nose Girl, but History Chick reaches him before a word comes out. She slips an arm around his waist.
“Finally,” she says loud enough for everyone to hear. “I don’t have to share you anymore.”
“Arrrrgh!” Nose Girl lunges forward and swings at the guy. He scrambles away and she falls into History Chick, who pushes Nose Girl back against the car. That sets her off.
The girls are a mass of tangled arms and flying hair. I’ve never seen such a thing in my life. At The Fort, girls fought no different from guys. We all learned how to throw a solid punch before most kids could string sentences together.
Everyone gapes at the screaming, scratching girls. Water Fountain tears herself out from between big dude’s thighs and rushes to Nose Girl. A couple other people do the same. They try to pull the girls apart, but it’s like separating two pit bulls.
The guy all but vanishes. He’s exactly the kind of asshole The Fort recruits.
Brandon starts for the girls, but big dude and another couple mini-giants reach the fight first. Brandon shrugs and comes back to the car. “Whew,” he says. “I wanted to get in the middle of that like I want to run suicides after practice.”
They manage to separate the girls and take them to opposite ends of the parking lot.
“Looks like the show’s over,” Brandon says. “I hope Maddie’s okay. Her nose was just starting to heal. She’ll be pissed if Alyssa messed it up again.”
Guilty heat flames up my cheeks. “I thought everyone got along here.”
He laughs. “Oh, there’s drama. You just hav
e to wait for it to bubble to the surface.”
We slide into the car and back out of the lot. Seems I was wrong about this place. They don’t all like each other. They’ve just been good about hiding their problems until now.
“That was … What was that?”
Brandon throws an elbow out the open window and settles into his seat. “Everyone knows Alyssa and Chris have been bumping uglies since last spring. Everyone but Maddie. They had a big fight at Fletcher’s field party right before school started and called things off for the millionth time, but Maddie always goes back. Maybe she’ll finally move on to someone who deserves her now.”
I raise an eyebrow. Seems to me like she and the douchebag were made for each other.
Brandon glances over and catches my look. “You’ve only seen her bad side. She’s really thoughtful and sweet when you get to know her. Like last year, she made study packs for everyone in her chem class before finals because she knew they all were stressed out. Chris kind of smothers that side of her, though.”
“Holy crap. You like her.”
He shrugs, not taking his eyes off the road.
I try to imagine her without the grimace, talking rather than yelling, but all I see is her twisted, angry face.
Is that what people see when they look at me? Maybe everyone has a hidden dark side waiting for the right person to bring it out. He brought out mine. Douchebag brings out Maddie’s. I never thought to look for any brightness in her.
I realize with a start that The Fort didn’t just teach me to make snap judgments of minorities, but of everyone. Although, I guess the folks in Lewiston aren’t much better. Like Skunky, they all made up their minds about me before I even got to homeroom. Is this just what people do? Judge others because of how we see them, without even trying to get to know them?
Maybe there are others like Brandon, too. People with x-ray eyes that see below the surface, to the real person beneath the layers of darkness.
A smile tugs at Brandon’s lips. Of all the chicks in this school, she’s the last one I imagined someone like him would have a crush on. There’s still so much I don’t know about him. So much I don’t know about all these people.
Apparently, everyone has secrets. And secrets have a way of coming out.
What’s going to happen if someone finds out my secrets?
“What about you?” he asks. “Any girls on your radar?”
Only one, but she’s a million miles away. I shake my head, but I wait a beat too long and Brandon catches it. “Yeah, there is! Who?”
My instinct is to clam up, but something tugs at me. This could be my chance. Get out some snippets of truth and see how it goes. “There’s a girl. Back home. There was, anyway.”
Brandon nods knowingly. “Ah, had to leave her behind.”
My blood runs cold. That’s exactly what I did. I left her. An image of Kelsey’s swelling eye and bloodied nose pops into my head so suddenly tears spring to my eyes. I blink them away before Brandon notices. “Something like that,” I say.
“Wish I could say you’ll find someone here to help you move on, but the pool is pretty small.”
I shrug. “I’m not looking anyway.”
Brandon turns onto a road that’s more gravel than asphalt. The tiny rocks rattle in the wheel wells. “Sounds like this chick was serious. What’s she like?”
I close my eyes and see Kelsey’s long hair pooling under her head on the forest floor, her deep brown eyes drinking in every word of our stolen history books. Beautiful is the first word that comes to me. “Strong,” I say instead. “She had more strength than anyone I’ve ever met.”
Even though Kelsey gave up our secret, even with her mistakes, the fact that she held on for as long as she did—it took them hours to break her—shows that she had serious guts.
“Like this one time. She found a kitten, but the thing was covered in mange. Her parents told her to get rid of it.” I don’t tell Brandon that they wanted Kelsey to kill it. The first innocent blood they wanted her to spill. “Of course, she didn’t. She hid it in the crawl space under her house—which she was terrified of because we were like ten and there were spiders down there—but every day before and after school she’d army crawl under there to feed and pet it.”
It was a pitiful thing, with these scabby spots where fur should be. Kelsey didn’t care. She used to bring it to the woods with her, bundled in her coat, its tiny gray head poking through a gap in the buttons. She’d loved that damn cat. Right up until the day her mom found it.
Kelsey cried for a month after. But only in front of me. At home, she’d raise her chin and defiantly looked her parents dead in the eyes as they whipped her for disobeying them.
“And she loved pictures of horses.”
Brandon raises an eyebrow. “Pictures?”
“Yeah. She thought they were gorgeous creatures, but she hated to see them in real life, trapped behind fences. She always said they were meant to run free, so that’s how she liked to see them. In pictures with the wind in their manes, being wild.”
“What’s her name?”
I pause. Her name might jar a memory of my trial loose. But not telling him would be weird. “Kelsey.”
The name feels funny in my mouth. It’s been so long since I’ve said it out loud.
“Sorry you had to move, man,” Brandon says. “She sounds pretty awesome.”
“She was my best friend. I miss her more than I miss my mother.”
It’s a tiny fraction of fact, but it’s the most honest thing I could ever tell him.
We turn onto an abandoned county road and Brandon opens the sunroof. The wind is hot, but not uncomfortable. Kind of refreshing. Freeing.
Or maybe it’s telling a truth that’s freeing.
“You know, I think I have a place like your river,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The woods at night. That’s my place.”
Brandon glances at me. “See? I told you Lewiston isn’t all bad.” We hit a straightaway. “Now, how fast do you think this old bag will go?” He rams down on the accelerator.
I let my arm hang out the window and watch the pavement. We’re moving so fast the asphalt is a blur. I can’t make out any distinct shapes.
Not even a shadow.
613
I almost fell asleep in my own bed last night. I closed my eyes, starting to drift, and then the shadows came alive and choked me awake. After the third try, I finally welcomed the shadows and took to the woods.
The sun barely tints the sky when I wake up and head back inside. Traitor is at the kitchen counter sipping coffee. He’s never been up this early on a Saturday. I freeze in the doorway.
His eyes narrow over the top of his cup. “Where the hell have you been?”
Shit, shit, shit. I keep calm, but brace myself, just in case. “Walking. I got up early and couldn’t fall back to sleep.”
He watches me carefully.
“What do you think I did, rob a bank? Kill some old lady in her sleep? Geez, can’t I even walk around without you thinking I’ve committed a crime?”
He takes a final gulp and plonks his mug down on the counter. “Since you’re already up and apparently so restless, you’re comin’ to work with me.”
He waits for a reaction, but I don’t even know what the hell he does all day. “Okay. What do I need to wear?”
“Something grubby.”
“So, my regular clothes, then.”
He glares. “Cut the sass.”
“I’m just saying, last time I checked all my clothes were worn-out hand-me-downs, but if that’s too fancy for where we’re going, I’m seriously intrigued.”
Traitor takes a deep breath, then turns his back on me and rinses his coffee cup. My teeth feel like they grew moss while I was outside, so I climb the stairs to brush my teeth before we leave for this mystery job.
“You’ll need boots, too.”
My heart thumps against my sternum, sounding so much like goose
step in my ears that I want to rip it out and silence it forever.
“What size are you?” Traitor asks.
I swallow hard and keep the shake out of my voice. “Twelve, I think.”
“I’m an eleven.” He pushes past me on the stairs. “Try a pair of mine.”
I follow him to his closet. My eyes immediately fall on the space at the back where I know the chest sits, full as a tick and waiting to burst with secrets. A single silver bracket gleams, rocketing my pulse again. My fingers itch to reach for it. To throw back the blanket and demand to know what’s inside. I jam my hands in my pockets and make myself look away. A direct approach won’t work on Traitor. I’ll be better off relieving him of a few keys. He slides some coveralls aside and removes a pair of brown leather ranch boots. I sit on the edge of his bed and tug them on. They’re a little snug, but manageable. Not any worse than my tennis shoes, honestly.
“That work?” Traitor asks.
“They’ll do.”
“Good. Ass in the truck in fifteen.”
Wearing boots again feels weird, but not horrible. Nothing like combat boots. The leather is softer, the soles are squishier and quieter, and, of course, there are no laces. I’m not trading in my tennis shoes, but the experience isn’t as bad as I’d worried it would be.
Traitor already has the truck cranked by the time I get downstairs. We turn onto the main road and drive through downtown. What’s left of it anyway. Half the buildings are boarded up—a diner, a furniture store, a movie rental place. Main Street curves around a statue of some guy in the center, then turns to the stores that are actually open.
Two blocks from Main Street, Traitor pulls into a broken concrete driveway beside a small house with dark green vinyl siding. The porch sags in the middle. Paint peels off the white shutters like dried-out frosting. Four white posts hold up the rotting porch roof. Each one sits off center of its stone base. The wind could topple them without even taking a deep breath. The front door is the only decent thing on the place. It’s bright white with a wreath of fall flowers hanging around the peephole. That wreath is the only sign that someone actually lives here.
