Into the Deep

by Lauryn April

  Despite my nerves, Brant and I went after him anyway and I found myself swallowing to keep down the bile that was rising in my throat. There was a thin path that twisted through the trees and we followed it down to a small opening where there was a fallen tree. Craig was sitting on the fallen trunk. His gaze landed on us as we approached, but he didn’t bother to lose the joint that he held between his fingers. Instead he took another drag and focused his bloodshot eyes on me. I watched as they raked up my body while thick smoke spilled from his lips.

  “What can I do for you, cutie?” he said to me as if Brant were nowhere in sight. God, would I like to hit that.

  “We’re here to ask you a few things,” Brant said.

  Craig took another drag of the joint and stared at Brant. “Well, what would that be then, looking to score a bit? What can I get you, a dime?” His eyes were back on me then, “An eighth?”

  “That would be a big no.” I said.

  “Don’t wanna get high, sweets?” We could have a real fun time.

  “We were wondering what you were doing in the library last Thursday,” Brant said, the tone of his voice dragging Craig’s eyes to him.

  “Last Thursday?” He took one last drag of the joint then tossed its remainder into the woods. “Who says I was in the library last Thursday?”

  “I saw you there.” I hadn’t really, but it got his attention and he stood up and took a step toward me. His empty dark eyes with their red rims stared at me and refused to blink.

  “That so, well then what is it you need to know? I’ll let you have anything you want.” He grabbed a piece of my hair and twisted it between his fingers. “What do you say, goldilocks, should you and I go for a walk?”

  Before I could answer, Brant stepped in front of me and had his hand on Craig’s chest. He pushed him back and I watched Craig stumbled for a step. When he regained his balance, he stared Brant down with those lifeless dark eyes and I heard him think then that he wanted to fight him.

  “Don’t touch her,” Brant said in a calm and cool voice. “Look, we think you’re planning something, and we know all about it.”

  Craig looked startled. “Planning something? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you wanting to kill things.”

  “Hey now, some stray cat…”

  I felt my stomach twist.

  “Not the cat.”

  “What?”

  “I’m talking about students…”

  Craig’s face flared red with rage. “I’m not gonna shoot a person with my .22.”

  “What about a .22?” I piped in.

  “That’s how I killed that cat, got in my way when I was shooting cans in the backyard. It was an accident.”

  “I thought you skinned a cat?” Brant asked and Craig’s eyes shot to him.

  “What? Hell no, that’s fucked up, man.” Craig stepped up to Brant until he was a step away from him. Brant held his ground as Craig got in his face. “Look,” he poked Brant in the chest with his pointer finger, “I don’t know what you two are out here doing or what the hell you want from me, but whatever it is you’re thinking, you’re wrong.” Craig’s eyes were narrowed on Brant.

  “Get out of my face,” Brant replied, and that was when I stepped up between them, throwing my hands up.

  “Hey, stop now, Brant, let’s go.”

  Brant wouldn’t even look at me, and as I stood there I could hear both of them in my head. They were both waiting for the other to make a move, egging the other on in their thoughts. Then I put my hand on Brant’s arm and he backed up a step with me.

  Yeah that’s right, back up, you chicken shit. Let your girl lead you away since you’re not man enough to handle it yourself.

  I cast Craig the dirtiest look I could muster and was glad that only I could hear his thoughts. Brant took another step back as I tried to pull him away from the impending fight. His frosty eyes remained pointed at Craig and his fist clenched at his side. I could feel his muscles twitch beneath my fingertips where I held his arm.

  “Brant, please,” I said and finally I felt his muscles give just a bit and he turned to walk away with me.

  As we walked back towards school, we came up to a chain link fence. Brant kicked it. The fence shook and rattled, the metal links sounding like a dull chime. It seemed to have eased some of the tension that had been coiled up in his veins, but I could tell Brant was still angry.

  Prick.

  I stood a few feet from him, wanting to give him some space. “I really didn’t like that guy.”

  “I still think it was him,” he said and we continued walking back toward school.

  “I don’t know. He’s a total creep, but he didn’t have any idea what we were talking about, and he didn’t sound right.”

  Brant sighed. “Damn, I really thought we’d figured it out.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  He stopped walking and so did I. He turned to me, sighing again. His blue eyes were calm now and he opened his mouth to say something. I watched his lips slowly part. It was then that we both heard the loud screeching of Mrs. Farrow’s whistle. I winced at the sound and turned to see her walking towards us. She was wearing a pink polo today, but she still looked rough and somewhat masculine.

  God, I don’t want to deal with this right now.

  “What do the two of you think you’re doing?” she asked as she approached us.

  “We were just…” I began.

  “Just nothing, you’re supposed to be in class right now. Do either of you have a note or a pass?” Her eyes narrowed on Brant. I know you don’t, she thought.

  He rolled his eyes then looked down at her. Brant towered over Mrs. Farrow as she was a good six inches shorter than I was. Her size made her scowl and stiff posture far less intimidating.

  “No,” I sighed. There was nothing else I could say.

  Brant didn’t even bother to say anything. Mrs. Farrow had already pulled out her pink-slip notepad and was writing us up. She ripped the slip from the pad and shoved it toward us.

  “The two of you can report directly to the principal’s office.”

  Brant snatched the slip out of her hand crumpling it in his grip, and walked off. I followed.

  We sat in the uncomfortable wooden chairs outside Principal Donohue’s office. He currently was talking to another student, and so we were left to wait to hear our punishments. It was well into second hour now. Brant sat beside me, slouched in his chair with his head leaned back against the wall. He stared at the ceiling while I crossed and uncrossed my legs, unable to get comfortable. An air vent was directly above our heads and cold air poured down around us causing goose-bumps to form on my arms and legs.

  I hate waiting, I heard Brant think, always waiting, waiting now, was waiting yesterday, been waiting around for eight years.

  I turned to him then and the look he gave me was as if he just remembered that I could hear his thoughts.

  Just stop thinking about it.

  Mr. Donohue’s office door opened. A girl with red hair and an excessive number of piercings stepped out. She ignored us as she left, swinging her black messenger bag across her shoulder. Across the room, the receptionist, a plump brunette woman with her hair pulled into a tight bun, nodded at Brant and I.

  “You two can go in now,” she said and we did.

  We were both given in-school suspensions, and for the rest of the day were required to clean the desks in the detention hall. Mr. Donohue said if we were going to skip class that it was a fitting punishment to make us stay at school. He then added that if we were caught skipping again, it’d result in a Saturday morning detention. Brant didn’t seem fazed by the threat, but the thought of spending even one Saturday at school was enough to make me never want to skip class again.

  After getting to the detention hall, I realized that it wasn’t such a bad punishment. Basically I traded a day of classes for cleaning. However, our punishment also came with a phone call home which I knew would be a lot w
orse. I tried not to think about the disappointment I’d later see on my mom’s face. She’d start to worry if I was hanging out with the wrong crowd, might even think I’d started doing drugs. She always overreacted.

  For a short while I focused on the task at hand. With a soapy rag in my grasp, I scrubbed at the profanities that had been scribbled on the desk before me in marker, pencil, and pen. Most of them would come up. Those that had been etched into the wood of the desk would not. I didn’t realize that Brant had not chosen to do the same as me to keep himself occupied. It wasn’t until I heard a soft chuckle tumble from his lips that I looked up and saw him sitting in the desk beside me. He wasn’t cleaning it, wasn’t doing anything, he was just watching me.

  “Never had an in-school before, huh?” he asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You don’t need to work so hard. They’ll only check on us once an hour in between classes. So long as you’re working then you’re fine… the rest of the time though, you can just sit there.”

  “Oh,” I set the rag down and dropped my hands to my sides. “Won’t they notice the desks aren’t clean?”

  “The desks are never clean, you won’t be able to get half that stuff up, and even if you do someone will just write on it again tomorrow.”

  “Right… so what do we do then?”

  He lifted an eyebrow at me and I saw his lip curve up just ever so slightly. It was somewhat suggestive, but he wiped the look from his face almost as quickly as it had appeared. If he’d been thinking anything then, I hadn’t been listening.

  “Not sure, usually I’m in here with Skyler or Jason, or both of them and we find something stupid to talk about.”

  “So let’s talk.”

  “’Bout what?”

  I frowned, “I don’t know, what’s your favorite color?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “My favorite color?”

  “Alright, fine, that’s kind of lame… you got anything better?”

  He laughed then swiveled in his seat so that he was facing me. “How about… what kind of things do you like to do? And my favorite color is green.”

  I smiled. We talked for some time after that about your regular ‘get to know you’ kind of chit-chat. I told him that lately I’d been enjoying reading, particularly suspense novels, as well as watching chick-flick romances with my mom. He told me that he played guitar and enjoyed reading as well and was currently working his way through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was an easy conversation, the kind that flowed naturally; the kind where you didn’t have to think of what to say next. I found myself really enjoying talking with him.

  “So where did you go yesterday?” I asked watching as the light that he had in his eyes suddenly darkened.

  His muscles tensed up and he looked away from me. Suddenly the silence of the room was deafening. I thought about listening in on his thoughts, but decided not to. This was something he needed to be able to tell me on his own. He deserved that privacy.

  “You listening in?”

  “No… but I was earlier when you were thinking that… that you were waiting yesterday, that you’d been waiting for eight years.” He sighed. “I’m sorry, I know this is none of my business.”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” he sighed again, “I was at the Westfield Shopping Square.”

  My brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “When I was ten, I went there with my mom. She had errands to run, Dad was working, and being ten, they didn’t trust me enough to leave me home alone and not have it burn down… so I got dragged along, and naturally I was bored out of my mind. We ran into Jason and his mom when we got there and so my mom and Mrs. Davis let us go off on our own.”

  “There was a skate park within walking distance, and I had my board in the car, so Jason and I went there. I was supposed to be back at the square by two. I’d promised her I’d be back on time.” Brant’s eyes looked glossy as he spoke, as if he were focusing on some imaginary point in the distance. “But we lost track of time, we were having too much fun. At about three, Mrs. Davis pulled up to the park and picked us up. She was a little mad that we’d been so absentminded, but I think she’d gotten caught up shopping as well so she didn’t yell at us too bad.

  “She drove me back to the Square and we all made our way to the fountain in the center where we were supposed to have met the hour earlier. My mom wasn’t there. Jason’s mom tried calling her on her cell. She didn’t answer. We waited there another hour before Mrs. Davis just took me home. Mom never came home after that.”

  Brant looked at me with an expression I’d never seen him make. He looked soft, vulnerable. I stared at him, feeling a knot in my stomach twist, thinking about his pain and I noticed he had one freckle or maybe it was a birthmark just above his left eyebrow that was shaped like a tiny heart, but I only saw it for a second as he shook himself free of the memory and took a deep breath.

  “Since then I’ve gone back there on the same day every year. It’s stupid, I know. I don’t actually expect to see her, but it… it makes me feel like I’m doing something.” We were both silent for a while. “So yeah, that’s where I was yesterday.”

  I couldn’t offer him any real comfort, I knew that. “I’m sorry,” I said even though I knew it didn’t help. “I wish I knew what to say, but…”

  “It’s okay, I don’t expect you to know what to say, I don’t expect you to understand. Your parents are probably both still together and living the American dream or what have you.”

  I snorted, “Yeah right, they’ve got the perfect marriage,” I looked away. “My dad’s cheating on my mom. She doesn’t know. No one knows… except me.” I looked to him, realizing how personal of a thing I’d shared. I felt embarrassed, like I’d said too much and I wished that I could take it back. Quickly my eyes found the floor and I felt my cheeks growing red.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and we both nodded. “I didn’t mean to assume…” He seemed flustered.

  “I haven’t told anyone that,” I confessed. “I just…I heard him thinking about this other woman and it’s like…like everything I thought about him is a lie. I don’t know what to think about any of it, I don’t know what to do.”

  He was nodding and had a faraway look in his eyes again. “I know what you mean. I wonder all the time where she is. Is she alive… is she dead, did someone take her, did she leave us? It’s like I don’t know who she is any more… I’ve never told anyone that either, I mean Jason and Skyler know that she… disappeared, but I don’t really talk about it much anymore.”

  I wanted to ask more about his mom. I wanted to know if they called the police. Did they file a missing person report? Did they ever find any clues to where she might have gone? I tried to think about what I would have done had it been my mom, tried to think of reasons that would have explained her disappearance. I couldn’t. I didn’t understand any of it. But despite my eagerness to know more, I could tell that this was a tough subject for him, so I kept my questions to myself.

  I nodded. “Guess we both have our secrets.”

  14

  Irresponsible

  When I got home I found that it wasn’t Mom I should have been worried about. She was there with that look of disappointment across her face. Her arms were folded and her shoulders slumped as she sat at the edge of the oversized brown loveseat, but Dad was there as well. I walked into the living room and found both sets of eyes on me. Dad was sitting on the sofa. He had his hands folded in his lap and he and Mom looked like they’d just been talking. He looked at me. His gaze so strong that it pinned me in place and then he stood up.

  I hadn’t expected to see him. He usually wasn’t home from work until dinner time or later, but then again he usually wasn’t really at work either. I shifted my weight from one hip to the other, feeling uncomfortable under his stare.

  God, what is happening to my baby girl? I heard Mom think.

  “We need to talk,” Dad said as I walked into the living room. He was still in his wor
k clothes which made him look even more imposing and added to my anxiety.

  I didn’t sit down.

  “We got a call from your principal today.” He said.

  “Yeah, I figured you would.”

  Mom was looking at me as if I’d just shaved my head and had been brought home by the cops. She looked like she was scared for me. “Honey, what is going on with you? You can talk to us.”

  “Mom, it’s nothing, really.”

  “I don’t call skipping school nothing,” Dad said.

  “Dad, really it’s not how it sounds. I was on my way back into school…”

  “I don’t care what happened; you got an in-school suspension. That’s not okay. You were being completely irresponsible.”

  “I’ll catch up on everything I missed, it’ll be fine.”

  “No, it’s not fine. You were supposed to be somewhere and you weren’t there.”

  “Were you doing drugs?” Mom interjected.

  “What? No, Mom…”

  “Ivy,” Dad began again, “this is unacceptable behavior. From now on, you are not to go anywhere other than school for the rest of the week. After classes, I expect you to come straight home.”

  My skin burned hot and my cheeks flushed red with anger. “You wanna talk about not being somewhere you’re supposed to be,” my eyes burned holes into my father. Howard Randal Daniels returned the stare with equal intensity. “You’re never here anymore. You’re my father, you’re supposed to be here… but you’re always working, always away… we’re your family, you’re supposed to be responsible for us, so don’t talk to me about responsibility… God, you’re such a hypocrite, and you can’t keep me here.” I spun away from them and stormed toward the door.