by Lisa McMann
Everywhere else—dining room, living room, and hallway—is piled high around the edges with Dad’s stuff. Lots of papers—recipes and hundreds of cooking magazines, mostly, and all the Chicago newspapers from the past decade. Shoe boxes, shirt boxes, and every other possible kind of box you can imagine, some filled with papers, some empty. Plastic milk crates filled with cookbooks and science books and gastronomy magazines. Bags full of greeting cards, birthday cards, sympathy cards, some written in, some brand-new, meant for good intentions that never happened. Hundreds of old videos, and a stack as high as my collarbone of old VCRs that don’t work. Stereos, 8-track players, record players, tape recorders, all broken. Records and cassette tapes and CDs and games—oh my dog, the board games. Monopoly, Life, Password, Catch Phrase. Sometimes five or six duplicates, most of them with little yellowing masking-tape stickers on them that say seventy-five cents or a buck twenty-five. Insanity. Especially when somebody puts something heavy on top of a Catch Phrase and that stupid beeper goes off somewhere far below, all muffled.
We weave through it. Thankfully, Dad is nowhere to be found, either asleep or buried alive under all his crap. It’s not like he’s violent or mean or anything. He’s just . . . unpredictable. When he’s feeling good, he’s in the restaurant. He’s visible. He’s easy to keep track of. But on the days he doesn’t come down, we never know what to expect. We climb those stairs after the end of our shift knowing he could be standing right there in the kitchen, long-faced, unshaven, having surfaced to eat something for the first time since yesterday. And rattling off the same guilt-inspired apologies, day after day after day. I just couldn’t make it down today. Not feeling up to it. I’m sorry you kids have to work so hard. What do you say to that after the tenth time, or the hundredth?
Worse, he could be sitting in the dark living room with his hands covering his face, the blue glow from the muted TV spotlighting his depressed existence so we can’t ignore it. It’s probably wrong that Trey and Rowan and I all hope he stays invisible, holed up in his bedroom on days like these, but it’s just easier when he’s out of sight. We can pretend depressed Dad doesn’t exist.
Tonight we breathe a sigh of relief. Trey heads into the cluttered bathroom, its cupboards overflowing with enough soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and toilet paper to get us through Y3K. Thank God our bedrooms are off-limits to Dad. I peek into my tidy little room and see Rowan is sleeping in her bed already, but I’m still wired from a long day. I close the door quietly and grab a glass of milk from the kitchen, then settle down in the one chair in the living room that’s not full of stuff and flip on the TV. I run through the DVR list, choosing a rerun of an old Sherlock Holmes movie that I’ve been watching a little bit at a time over the past couple of weeks, whenever I get a chance. Somebody else must be watching it too, because it’s not cued up to the last part I watched. I hit the slowest fast-forward so I can find where I left off.
Trey peeks his head in the room. “Night,” he says. He dangles the keys to the meatball truck, and when I hold out my hand, he tosses them to me.
“Thanks,” I say, not meaning it. I shouldn’t have agreed to only ten bucks a week, but I was desperate. It’s not nearly enough to pay for the humiliation of driving the giant balls. “Where’s my ten bucks?”
“Isn’t it only eight if one day is a holiday?” He gives me what he thinks is his adorable face and hands me a five and three ones.
“Sorry. Not in the contract.” I hold my hand out for more.
“Dammit.” He goes back to his room for two more dollars while Sir Henry on the TV is flitting around outside on the moors in fast mode, which looks kind of kooky.
Trey returns. “Here.”
I grab the two bucks from him and shove all ten into my pocket with my tips. “Thanks. Night.”
When he’s gone, I stop the fast-forward, knowing I went too far, and rewind to the commercial as I slip the keys into my other pocket, then press play.
Instead of the movie that I’m expecting, I see it again.
It flashes by in a few seconds, and then it’s gone. The truck, the building, the explosion. And then back to our regularly scheduled programming.
“Stop it,” I whisper. My stomach flips and a creepy shiver runs down my neck. It makes my throat tighten. I pause the recording and sit there a minute, trying to calm down. And then I hit rewind.
Ninety-nine percent of me hopes there’s nothing there but a creepy giant hound on the moor.
But there it is.
I watch it again, and I get this gnawing thing in my chest, like I’m supposed to do something about it.
“Why does this keep happening?” I mutter, and rewind it again. I hit play and it all flies by so fast, I can hardly see it. I rewind once more and this time set it to play in slow motion.
The truck is yellow. I notice it’s actually a snowplow, and the snow is falling pretty hard. It’s dark outside, but the streetlamps are lit. The truck is coming fast and it starts angling slightly, crossing to the wrong side and going off the road. It jumps the curb spastically and jounces over some snow piles in a big parking lot, and then I see the building—there’s a large window—for a split second before the truck hits it. The building explodes shortly after contact, glass and brick shrapnel flying everywhere. The scene cuts to the body bags in the snow. I count again to make sure—definitely nine. The last frame is a close-up of three of the bags, and then it’s over. I hit the pause button.
“What are you doing?”
I jump and whirl around to see Rowan standing in the doorway squinting at me, hair all disheveled. “Jeez!” I whisper, trying to calm my heartbeat. “You scared the crap out of me.” I glance back at the TV with slow-motion dread, like I’ve just been caught looking at . . . I don’t know. Porn, or something else I’m not supposed to look at. But it’s paused at a sour cream commercial. I let out a breath of relief and turn my attention back to Rowan.
She shrugs. “Sorry. I thought I heard Mom come up.”
“Not yet. Not for a while.”
She scratches her head, the sleeve of her boy jammies wagging against her cheek. “You coming to bed soon? Or do you want me to stay up with you?”
Her sweet, sleepy disposition is one of my favorites, maybe because she can be so mellow and generous when she just wakes up. I suck in my bottom lip, thinking, and look at the remote control in my hand. “Nah, I’m coming to bed now. Just gotta brush my teeth.”
She scrunches up her face and yawns. “What time is it?”
I laugh softly. “Around eleven, I guess. Eleven fifteen.”
“Okay,” she says, turning to go back down the hallway to our bedroom. “Night.”
I look at the TV once more and close my weary eyes for a moment. Then I turn it off and stand up, setting the remote on top of the set so it doesn’t get buried, and carefully pick my way to the bathroom, and on to bed. But I don’t think I’ll be sleeping anytime soon.
Five
Five minutes later and Rowan’s breathing sounds like she’s asleep again. I wish I could just drift off like that. Instead, I lie here watching the wall opposite the window, where faint pulsing light from our restaurant sign beats out a song nobody knows or hears.
The movie theater. The billboard. Now TV commercials. What could be next? Ten minutes crawl by. Fifteen. And I may as well get up and get it over with.
I slip back out to the living room and cue it all up again, staring at the TV like I’m in some kind of weird hypnotic zone, not seeing the movie at all. I rub my bleary eyes and hit slow play, and it’s there like before. A few seconds later there’s the close-up of the three body bags, and then it’s over and the commercial starts.
I rewind to see if I can pause the scene on the body bags close-up, which I hadn’t really noticed before in the regular-speed version. It’s like a hidden frame at regular speed, too fast for the human brain to comprehend.
I hit the slow-play button and then wait for it, and pause it at the exact right moment. It’s a s
lightly blurry shot, but it’s obvious what I’m looking at. I scan the picture, noting that one of the bags isn’t zipped up all the way. The plastic is folded over at the top corner, and the head of the dead body is exposed. I’m strangely drawn to it out of curiosity, rather than repulsed by it.
I squint for a better look. And then my heart bangs around in my chest and I lean forward, get down on the cluttered floor, and crawl to the TV to get a better look.
And then I suck in a scream.
The dead face belongs to Sawyer Angotti.
I scramble to my feet and stumble back to the chair, grab the remote, and hit the power button so many times I actually turn the thing off, then on, then off again before my brain can compute that I’ve gotten rid of the image from the TV.
My heart won’t stop freaking out inside my chest. “No way,” I whisper, as if that will take away the scene I just saw. “No way, no way, no way.”
I pinch my arm to make sure I’m not having a nightmare, and it hurts, so I think this is real. I pace in the narrow carpeted space that isn’t covered by hoards of junk, talking to myself, trying to calm down. But I can’t.
Why am I seeing this?
What the hell is going on?
I go back to the remote and turn the TV on, flinching and shuddering as I delete the movie. Then I delete a bunch of other stuff that Rowan will kill me for, but I can’t help it. I need to get these images away from me. I need to get this scene off my TV, off my billboard, out of my local theater, and make it go away.
When I hit the power button again, I’m enveloped in darkness, and I can’t stop thinking about dead bodies lying in wait under Dad’s piles of junk. It’s like a nightmare, only I’m not asleep, my mind playing tricks on me. I skitter to my room and get into bed where it’s safe, pulling my blankets up to my chin and hugging my pillow. My Sawyer pillow.
• • •
I toss and turn, checking the clock every few minutes. Willing my mind to go blank, willing myself to go to sleep, which makes it even more impossible. I have this ridiculous urge to call Sawyer to make sure he’s alive, but tell myself I’ll be mortified at school tomorrow if I do that. I mean, I just saw him alive this morning! There’s no way he could be dead.
After a while I hear Mom coming up the steps. She clatters in the kitchen, and then I can hear her moving things around in the living room, probably throwing junk away. A while later she makes her way to her bedroom, where she and Dad will sleep until nine thirty or ten, and then she’ll get up and do the restaurant thing all over again, with or without my dad.
Eventually, I calm down. Sometime after two I drift off, the vision following me into my dreams.
Six
Six a.m. comes fast. We three kids all stupidly get up at the same time every morning—hey, old habits are hard to break; besides, we miss each other so much after literally hours of being apart. Automatically Rowan and I kick ourselves loose from our blankets and race to the door. I whip it open, and there’s Trey emerging from his room. Expertly, and almost quietly, we jostle and shove each other in the packed hallway as we jockey for the first slot in the bathroom. Trey shoves his butt against my hip and throws me off balance, knocking me into Rowan, who almost pitches a whole stack of Christmas cookie tins over—holy shit, what a racket that would be! I swallow a snort and Trey strikes a triumphant Gaga pose in the bathroom doorway before sliding in and closing the door. It’s kind of like we live in that Silent Library game show and we’re all trying to be superquiet while competing to win at a ridiculously noisy challenge, which makes everything so much more hilarious.
But once I have a minute to remember what happened last night, the fun evaporates and I start getting this recurring wave of nausea. I can’t handle the thought of breakfast right now, so I pocket a granola bar for later. After an hour, when I’m waiting for Rowan to finish her makeup so we can go, I cautiously flip on the TV, hoping I can find the news and not a creepy encore of last night. Thankfully, there’s just some morning talk show. No mention of explosions or body bags. No weird vision taunting me.
Trey slips past me and flies down the stairs two at a time without saying good-bye. We’ll see each other at school. We’re in the same lunch and sculpting class—which we of course elected to take because why the heck not bring our pizza-crust-making skills to a new level with clay? The other day I was making a plate on the potter’s wheel and nearly threw it up into the air when I was daydreaming about Sawyer.
My stomach clenches again.
Sawyer. Body bag. Is he dead already?
In the hallway outside the bathroom, I jiggle the door handle and whisper as harshly as I can, “Hurry up, Rowan!”
Finally she comes.
• • •
We ease out of the alley in the meatball truck. Today’s trip to school is brought to you by two chicks with big balls. Har har. Rowan flips down the mirrored sun visor and puts on lip gloss, then fusses with her hair. A minute later she sighs and snaps the visor back up, slouching into the seat like she’s given up on her looks for the day. She’s been fussy about her looks a lot lately. I think she’s got a crush, but I don’t say anything. She pulls out her phone and takes a picture of herself and then studies it. I smile and focus on the road.
Traffic is busy, making every block agonizingly slow, and I’m hitting almost all the lights red. I tell myself not to look at the billboard as we pass, and almost manage it. But I steal a glance at the last second, and there’s no Cuervo . . . just the crash. At school we park in the back of the lot, which is the only place the truck fits.
I sprint through the parking lot to the school, hugging my book bag and avoiding icy spots, leaving Rowan behind. Inside I speed walk to my locker and look down the hall like I always do, to where Sawyer is usually standing, hanging out with his friends, some of whom are my former friends.
I stand on my tiptoes, straining to see through the crowd.
At first I don’t see him, but then, thank the dogs, there he is in his usual spot. How weird is it that I feel my eyes well up with tears of relief for a second? He glances my way, and I almost duck, but realize at the last moment that that would look even more stupid than me staring, so I quickly turn my head and stare into my locker, blinking hard.
And then my respiratory system checks in, reminding me to breathe before I pass out. Sweat pricks my scalp. I whip my hat off and slip out of my jacket, and then try to smooth down my flyaway hair in the little mirror I have inside my locker door.
I want to start walking to class, but my legs are still a little too weak to keep me from tripping down the hallway. The whole time I’m standing here, all I can think about is how Sawyer isn’t dead. This vision thing scared the living crap out of me for no good reason. These crazy scenes I’m seeing are meaningless. So I guess there’s maybe something wrong . . . with me.
All I know is that it can’t be a mental illness.
Not like depression. Not like hoarding.
Please . . . it just can’t be like those things at all.
Seven
I don’t look at the billboard. I don’t turn on the TV. I don’t go to any movies. For a week, I keep my head down, go to school, go to work, do homework, go to bed. Still, every morning at school I look over at Sawyer to make sure he’s alive.
He always is.
• • •
Five reasons why I love a guy who won’t talk to me:
1. In first grade he always let me be the cheetah
2. He’s kind to people, even the unpopular ones, and if I ever really needed him, I bet he’d help me
3. He isn’t gross
4. He’s soft-spoken, under the radar, but somehow everybody seems to know and like him
5. He volunteers at the Humane Society on Saturday mornings
Do I think Sawyer has something against my family? Sure, he has to. But he’s not mean to me—he just ignores me most of the time now. Still, when we were forced to pair up for a science project in ninth grade, we talked almo
st like normal, which gave me so much hope it practically killed me after the project was over and things went back to the way they were.
I don’t get it. I’m just not really into the drama of this whole family-rivalry thing. It stresses me out. I’m guessing he’s not into it either, because we never talked about it. We never discussed seventh grade and what happened. Now I sort of appreciate that about him, because it could have started a big fight, and we could have ended up having a major problem. And I know that if classmates began taking sides, he’d win epically.
Outside of forced projects, we steer clear of one another, because obviously I’m not going to follow him around. Much. It’s not like I don’t have other shit to do besides moon around after a boy. I mean, I watch him, though. Like, all the time, but I’m not a creep or anything. And I eavesdrop. That’s how I know about him volunteering at the Humane Society. I really hope one day I’ll get over him. Sometimes I think I’m past it all, but then he does that smile and reality hits.
• • •
Saturday morning, on our way into the city for the lunch rush, I make Trey drive past the Humane Society to see if Sawyer’s car is there. It is. I don’t know why I keep worrying about him when ignoring all of this is what I really want to do, but I can’t shake that image of his dead face from my mind.
“What’s going on with you?” Trey asks after a while.
“Just tired,” I say automatically. It’s the stock answer in our house whenever we don’t want to talk. Everybody understands tired—nobody questions it, nobody tries to talk you out of it.
But Trey knows me better than anybody. “Why don’t you ever do anything for fun?”
