Mostly, he worried that she’d kissed him because of his brother. The kids at school still sometimes regarded Griff with the same pitiful distance as they had the seagull a junior had pegged with a rock last year in P.E.—they’d watched the bird grow exhausted trying to take flight with a broken, bleeding wing and then fed it pizza crusts until the coach wrapped it in a gym towel and took it away. His brother’s disappearance got him picked for teams, invited to parties, allowed to cut in the lunch line. It was awful, and it was the reason he’d started avoiding other kids, the reason they’d made it so easy for him, the reason he’d gone through a phase of picking fights he couldn’t win. But Fiona had never pitied him. “To everyone else,” she’d said, “you’re that poor boy with the missing brother. To me, you’re just a blockhead.” She was right. He couldn’t recall an interaction where he wasn’t aware of the other person’s awareness, where his brother’s absence wasn’t encroaching. In the presence of almost everyone except Fiona, he felt two disparate pressures—to convey his certainty that his brother would come home, and to intimate that, were that not to happen, his family would withstand the loss. They would survive. Really, he was sure of neither.
Since his brother had vanished, he’d watched his parents fall away from each other; he’d listened to their affection turn to arguing and then to strained silence, and he often pictured a future where they lived in separate houses, in different towns or time zones. He could imagine his parents giving in and buying a gravestone for Justin, and then all of them starting lives where no one knew everything that had happened. He could feel himself bracing for all of it, doing the dismal calculations of what the years ahead held. Sometimes he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror and said, “My parents are divorced.” Other times, he’d peer at his reflection, his brown, unkempt hair and large eyes and slack shoulders, and say, “My name is Griffin Campbell. I’m an only child.” He said it over and over until it sounded real.
Last night, his father had knocked on his door, then stepped awkwardly into the room. Rainbow’s tail thumped on the comforter. She started panting. Griff had been looking at his yearbook and now he felt caught. It wasn’t unusual for his father to come in to talk before bed. It was unusual for him to knock.
“Mom’s gone on to sleep,” his father said, as if Griff might be wondering, as if it were new. “Tomorrow’s her early shift, and then she’s volunteering with Alice.”
“Sounds right,” Griff said.
His father absently picked up a skate magazine from Griff’s desk, then put it down. He surveyed the room—Griff’s cluttered bureau and the skateboarding advertisements tacked to the walls and the two stacks of folded clothes that had been waiting to be put up since his mother brought them home from the dry cleaner’s last week. He glanced at Griff, smiled, then turned to the foiled-over window and gazed at it, as if seeing the night sky. His hands were in his pockets. Then Griff understood: His parents thought he was upset about Justin. They thought it a lot.
His father said, “What say we sneak out for Whataburgers? You didn’t eat much tonight.”
“I’m still a little queasy, I guess,” he said.
Rainbow rolled onto her side, groaned, smacked her lips. Griff liked when she did that.
“Or I can go through the drive-thru. Or if you have a taste for something else.”
“No, I’m good.”
Griff wanted to apologize for worrying him, but it wouldn’t accomplish anything. His father was always working to rally everyone, like a mascot at a football game.
“Lobster,” his father said, “if you want to talk—”
“My stomach’s just thrashed, Dad. I probably drank too much milk.”
His father turned to the wall, hands still in his pockets, and regarded the poster of a skater riding the wave of banked bricks under the Brooklyn Bridge. He asked where the photo had been taken.
“Brooklyn,” Griff said, then added, “It’s in New York.”
“Thanks, son,” his father said with a laugh. “It looks cool. Is that the best place to skate in the world?”
“I don’t know. It’s in a lot of magazines.”
“Maybe we’ll take a vacation,” his father said. “Your mother and I will see a Broadway show and you can skate in this strange, mythical land called Brooklyn.”
Griff smiled to be nice. Sometimes when his father started talking about vacations, Griff and his mother would sneak a glance at each other, a wink. They’d never gone farther than Houston or the Hill Country, and they hadn’t gone anywhere in years. Fiona’s family traveled a lot; she’d been to both coasts and to Hawaii.
His father said, “Does it smell like perfume in here?”
“I have a harem of ladies in my closet.”
“In other words, ‘Dad, time for bed.’ ”
Griff shrugged. He thought: Yes.
“You’re sure there’s nothing I can get you to eat? Nothing in the whole of South Texas sounds good?”
“I’m sure.”
His father snapped his fingers, like he’d solved a riddle. He said, “I’ll pick up shrimp tomorrow after class. If you don’t clean your plate, we’ll assume you’re staging a hunger strike.”
Later, Griff woke to the sound of his mother washing dishes. The chore was actually his, but some nights he shirked it so she’d have something mindless to do if she couldn’t sleep. Most nights, she’d look through photo albums or read about dolphins or browse missing-children websites. Some nights she rode the ferry back and forth from the island, and others she sneaked into Justin’s room to punish herself. He considered going to talk with her, maybe tell her about the New York vacation idea, but he worried she’d feel guilty about waking him. In the dark, he checked his phone and saw that Fiona had left a message. His heart surged. She told him to meet her at the Teepee tomorrow afternoon because she had something to show him. He replayed the message three times, saved it. He clutched the perfumed socks to his chest and listened to his mother working in the kitchen. Whether she was upset or just sleepless he couldn’t tell. He only knew she was trying to move quietly, trying to let her family rest.
FROM THIS DISTANCE—FOUR YEARS, TWO WEEKS, FOUR DAYS—Griff had only blurry recollections of his brother. He saw Justin the way he saw constellations; his image was hazed, made up of somewhat recognizable points of light that occasionally emerged from darkness—long eyelashes, top row of teeth a little bunched, skinny legs. Just before he disappeared, there’d been talk of Justin getting braces at Dr. McKemie’s. Griff remembered that his brother hated clipping his fingernails and the smell of canned dog food, and he always ordered his Cokes without ice and his favorite things to watch on television were Wheel of Fortune and Animal Planet. But he thought he should remember more. His parents’ minds were so full of the past that he knew they assumed his was too, but in truth his memory was emptying.
Worse, Griff’s most assured memories were of his brother behaving badly: Justin stealing candy and comic books from H-E-B, Justin copying other kids’ homework on the school bus, Justin emptying a shaker of salt into Griff’s Coke when he was out of the room, Justin kicking Griff between the legs after he threatened to tell about the salt. It had happened the day he went missing. Justin quickly turned remorseful, apologizing profusely, and invited Griff to go to skate on the seawall by the marina. Griff said no. Build a fort in the backyard? Go to the pawnshop to see if Papaw would let them strum the guitars or cast fishing rods in the parking lot? Catch a matinee, then sneak into a second movie after the credits rolled? No, no, no. When at last he suggested they head to the beach to look for shells for their rock collections, Griff told him to go to hell, the worst thing he knew how to say. He was nine, his brother was eleven. Justin laughed. Then he set off toward the beach with his skateboard and never came back. A year later someone brought his board into the pawnshop, and though none of them admitted it, Griff saw how the development had gutted the family. He saw how they had to work harder to appear hopeful.
No
one knew about the salt or Justin kicking him or how he’d tried to make amends. Griff hadn’t told his parents or Papaw or the detectives. Occasionally, he thought of telling Fiona, but he always stopped himself. At first, he’d thought Justin was staying away to punish him, to make him regret not accepting his apology, and his absence only addled Griff. Go to hell, he thought, just go straight to hell. Even after the search parties convened and Southport was papered with MISSING flyers and the orange-and-white Coast Guard boats were trawling the bay, Griff expected his brother to stroll through the door, smirking and refreshed, as though he’d only been gone for a short while. It seemed the kind of prank his brother would pull. When it became clear that Justin wasn’t coming home—although Griff still sometimes endured excruciatingly hopeful surges—their having argued felt simultaneously urgent and insignificant. But he kept the information to himself because he thought Justin would want him to. He was scared the knowledge would contradict the image his parents had of their older son, and of Griff for not having forgiven him, for not having accompanied him, and he was scared that telling would awaken some dormant guilt inside his heart, that he’d no longer be able to believe he was blameless in the ruining of their lives.
JUSTIN HAD TOLD GRIFF THAT THE KARANKAWA INDIANS HAD fashioned the Teepee Motel’s concrete teepees from real animal hides. This was two years before he disappeared, and Griff believed him. Their parents, no matter what they said, couldn’t convince Griff that his brother was snowing him, that it was just an old motel, a cheap and kitschy place for tourists to stay near the marina. Griff knew better now, but he still associated the Teepee with his brother. The place reminded him of the time in his life when his allegiances had pivoted, like a sundial, away from his parents and toward Justin.
Now, half-demolished, the property resembled a quarry. After the first of the year, the demolition had halted because the developer who’d bought the property was backing out. Seven teepees remained. Mounds of pale rubble stood where others had been; they were jagged and tall clusters, with jutting slabs of concrete and rebar. Snakes of dust fell from the mounds when a wind blew from the bay, sidewinding across the parking lot or into the drained pool. The left-handed kidney was flawless: ten feet in the deep end, three feet in the shallow end, with two concrete steps and an embedded ladder. The coping that rimmed the top of the pool was so pristine—exactly the kind that skaters with private backyard ramps coveted—that Griff always expected it to be crowbarred loose and stolen. Even on days when he didn’t skate, he tried to check the coping.
The coping was still there on Wednesday afternoon, but Fiona wasn’t. Sunlight splayed over the long slab of concrete, the ground absorbing and expelling the insistent heat. Already Griff was glazed in sweat. Every few minutes, a heavy wind blew ashore and sprayed him with dust from the rubble. It was too hot to skate, but if Fiona showed up, Griff didn’t want it to seem as if he’d been waiting pathetically, so he took the broom the skaters kept hidden under a pile of palm fronds and occupied himself by sweeping out the deep end. He inched around the pool, extending the broom up the transitioned wall, then dragging it down again like a painter. After each swipe, he stopped and listened for Fiona. He tried imagining what she had to show him: A car? A new bike? A tattoo? What if she’d tattooed his name on the small of her back? He remembered how she bit his tongue, his bottom lip, and then his nose, and how she’d skipped away. He pushed the dust and pebbles into the drain. His shoes and calves looked powdered. When lines of traffic passed on Station Street, the tires sounded like waves.
Then, a wash of memory: A year ago, his mother had come into his room while he was sleeping and sat on his bed. He didn’t know how long she’d been there before he woke up, but he suspected it had been a while. Griff could smell the night on her, the dew and the still air. His stomach tightened. He thought she’d learned news of his brother. When he asked if she was okay, she said she’d read something before bed that had gotten her curious, so when she couldn’t sleep, she’d decided to conduct an experiment. She walked to the marina and listened to the waves with her eyes closed, seeing if the noise would console her. According to one of her library books, the reason babies were comforted by the ssshhhhh sound was because early humans had lived close to the ocean and the sound reminded infants of waves; it returned the listener to some vestal state, soothed anxieties in a primitive, essential way. When Griff asked if it worked, she said, “No. No, Lobster, it most certainly did not.”
Now, after sweeping the pool for almost an hour, he felt dejected and gullible. He thought he might stink a little, too, and wondered if he’d been in such a rush that he forgot to use deodorant. Sweat ran into his eyes, burned. He sailed the broom like a javelin onto the pool’s deck.
“Missed me,” she said.
“Fiona?” He jogged up into the shallow end. He said, “I didn’t know you were up there.”
“I’m a ninja. Hence my all-black wardrobe.”
He climbed from the pool and started to ask how long she’d been there, but when he saw her, he stopped, stunned. He said, “Your hair.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said.
She’d dyed it. Bright green, almost fluorescent. She looked like a different person, older and more severe. He hated it. He said, “I love it!”
Her face opened up, brightened. She’d been kneeling by the edge of the pool, but now she picked up the broom and began sweeping her way toward one of the teepees. The sun was laying long cones of shadow on the concrete. Griff followed her. The back of her neck was white as porcelain. Blood jumped in his veins. He hoped he hadn’t done anything weird while she was watching him.
They sat in the shade, Griff on his skateboard, Fiona leaning against the teepee with the broom across her lap like an oar.
“I lied,” he said. “I knew you were here, especially if I did anything weird.”
“You’re a very thorough sweeper. When George and Louise fire our current maid, I’ll slip them your name.”
George and Louise were Fiona’s parents. That she called them by their first names, even when they were in the same room, had always saddened Griff. A stream of cars came off the ferry and passed on Station Street. Griff didn’t know what to say; he wished he’d planned things to talk about, phrases and jokes to deploy. He wanted to make her laugh and to kiss her again and to ask why she’d disappeared these last few days and if she’d kissed him because of Justin. He didn’t want to betray how overjoyed he was to see her, how relieved and nervous. He thought to tell her about the ssshhhhh sound, but instead he asked if she remembered the seagull with the broken wing.
“The one that idiot Blake Boggs hit with a rock? I brought it scraps from the kitchen.”
“I wonder what happened to it.”
“Coach Cantu wrung its neck behind the gym, that’s what happened to it.”
“I thought maybe he took it to one of those people in the phone book who rehabilitate hurt birds and then release them.”
“Blake was trying to impress Rhonda Smirnoff, who is, by the way, a rampant slutbag.”
Griff had seen them making out by the lockers. Rhonda always smelled like cigarettes. He said, “Isn’t she his girlfriend?”
“She wasn’t before he hit the bird,” Fiona said. “Why are you thinking about such an uplifting story?”
“Where’s your bike?” he asked.
Fiona regarded him, squinting and smirking, as if deciding how to answer.
“Well,” she said, “after our dumpster date, I went home and was too heated up to sleep. So I did what any normal girl would do and turned myself into a radioactive brussels sprout. When I came down for breakfast on Sunday, Louise spit out her grapefruit juice.”
“Then she took away your bike.”
“You’re a boy on whom nothing is lost.”
There were clouds in the sky, thin and tattered. He stole glances at her hair; it was growing on him. He could hardly picture how she’d worn it before.
She said, “
Are you having a seizure?”
“What?”
“Your foot.”
It was tapping again, though Griff hadn’t noticed. He looked toward the marina. A gull was twisting over the water.
“Griffin Campbell,” she said, her voice full of dark surprise. She grabbed the edge of his skateboard and wheeled him toward her. “Griffin Michael Campbell, are you afraid of me?”
“No way,” he said.
She pulled him closer, scooted around so that she was in front of him. She leaned in, pressed her forehead against his. His eyes had closed, but he thought she was smiling. She said, “No way?”
“A little, maybe.”
“A little?” she whispered. “Only a little?”
“I’m sorry about your bike,” he said.
“I don’t care about my bike.”
“I don’t either,” he said. Her hands rested on his thighs. He could hear her breathing, feel the heat of her skin. To anyone seeing them, he thought, they would look cold. He said, “I care about you.”
“And you like my hair.”
“I do,” he said. “I love it.”
“And you want to kiss me again.”
“I do,” he said.
“How much?”
“A lot.”
“You want it so bad you can—”
A hard, sharp whistle cut her off, and they sat bolt upright. Griff’s heart kicked. He couldn’t tell where the whistle had come from. The cadet she’d dumped? A cop? Someone from the construction crew?
Fiona said, “It’s your grandfather.”
Papaw was sitting in his truck, idling just outside the Teepee’s chained-up driveway. His window was down, his elbow hanging out like a fin. Even from across the parking lot, Griff could see Rainbow panting—her tongue pink as candy—in the passenger seat. It was all disorienting, defeating.
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