Life Is Short and Then You Die

by Kelley Armstrong

  They create an opening in the circle and Natalia appears. I run to her.

  “I hope we see each other again,” I say.

  She smiles, brushes a lock of hair from her face, and plants a kiss on my cheek—my first kiss. And before I can recover, the circle closes, and they whisk her away.

  Mom’s looking at me now—one of those looks.

  “What?” I say.

  “Nothing,” she says, a gleam in her eye.

  I’m relieved she doesn’t say more.

  “Can we go now?” she asks one of the agents.

  “In just a moment. There’s someone who wants to speak with your son.” The agent directs us to a train car that’s parked on the tracks near the end of the platform.

  We see a lone silhouette stalking around inside.

  My mother and I exchange a questioning look.

  I’m directed toward the door. My mom starts to follow when the agent holds up a hand. “Just Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.”

  My mom starts to protest but I shake my head. “I’ll be fine. The trouble’s over.”

  The man in the train is tall and intimidating. He wears a dark suit.

  “They said you wanted to talk with me?” I say. “Are you with the FBI or CIA or something?”

  He chuckles to himself. “Neither, son. But that’s where my team trains before they’re promoted.” He hands me my backpack.

  “You found it!” I say.

  The man nods. “We also read the report inside.”

  I’m about to look away, ashamed at the twenty pages of problems. But I realize I’m not ashamed. Not anymore. I think about the five lines in the report that saved me today. Saved Natalia. Maybe even saved everyone. I look the man directly in the eye.

  “Yeah? So what?” It sounds edgier than I intend, particularly since I am talking to some kind of superagent.

  He smiles. “It was interesting reading. We like the way you think—and the way you handled yourself out there today. You’ve got rare talents.”

  I stand there quietly, not disagreeing.

  “So, when you’re ready, and if you’re willing,” he continues, “we just might have some work for you from time to time…”

  I like the sound of that. I like it a lot.

  FIRST PARTY BACK

  By Emmy Laybourne

  Drew is not three steps inside the door when a redheaded girl slams into him. She’s got two full keg cups in her hands. “Watch it,” she says. Then she sees it’s him and drops her eyes. “Sorry.”

  Already the music and the stench of beer and sweat is hitting him hard. Already he wishes he stayed home.

  “Come on,” Malik hollers, pulling Drew by the arm toward the back of the house. Malik is Drew’s only remaining close friend.

  Drew recognizes the house—sort of—from junior year.

  It’s a big brick house up on a hill, back a good ways off the road. The girl who lives here, Meghan, throws a couple parties every year. She brags she’s never been busted, even though the parties always get out of control. One time she let someone burn one of their lawn chairs.

  “Drew!” Big Chris shouts. He toasts Drew across the crowded room, and beer sloshes out of his cup. If Big Chris is here, Skinny Chris is here somewhere, too. They’re both on the football team with Drew and Malik.

  The whole team’s probably here, Drew thinks.

  They’ll act cool, but they’ll be watching him. They all know he hasn’t been to a party since fall. And it’s April now.

  Malik pushes through a crowd of juniors blocking the hallway into the kitchen, pulling Drew behind. They’re all too close, shouting and pushing each other. Drew doesn’t want to be jostled and doesn’t want to be hedged in. He pushes past the last few, maybe a bit too roughly, and finds himself in the kitchen.

  There’s maybe ten, fifteen kids in there. He doesn’t know any of them. Wait, does he? His breath is coming so fast it’s hard to make himself calm down and look around.

  This is a mistake, Drew thinks.

  “This party’s all right, huh?” Malik asks. Drew nods, fakes a smile. He’ll wait until Malik gets drunk, then he’ll sneak away. Call a Lyft.

  The kitchen’s fancy. Black marble countertops, gleaming white cabinets, pendant lights kids keep knocking their heads on. There’s Cheetos spilled on the island, and a big bowl of punch with a big, soft lump of orange sherbet in it. Somehow that sherbet makes Drew sad for Meghan. Like, she pretends to be cool—the Montvale, New Jersey, version of hard core—but she still bought a tub of ice cream to make her party nice.

  Malik leads Drew over to the island. “Hey, Andre! Look who I got!”

  Malik’s friend Andre turns from where he’s leaning on the back counter. He’s handsome, with dark brown skin and an ’80s-style fade. A big grin breaks over his face. “No shit!” Andre says. He brings Drew in close, claps him on the back. “Good on you, man.”

  If he notices that Drew’s sweating, he doesn’t let on.

  “Oh yeah,” Malik says. “We’re gonna have a good time tonight! Drew’s back!”

  The floor is tacky with spilled punch. Drew lifts his sneakers one at a time.

  Malik turns to two girls Drew doesn’t know standing close together at the punch bowl. Pascack Hills High is big. Over eight hundred kids. Drew doesn’t know them all, not even close. And these girls look like sophomores, anyway.

  “This spiked yet?” Malik asks the girls.

  They’re okay-looking.

  “I don’t know, but I like it,” one of them says. She juts her chin out at Malik, trying to look tough.

  She’s wearing dark lipstick and her already-white skin is powdered into extreme paleness and there’s a cross on a velvet ribbon at her throat. Her hair looks newly dyed black, and her clothes are all black, but very dark black—not faded at all. Like maybe she decided to try being a Goth the day before yesterday.

  This is reinforced by the fact that her friend is dressed regular. She’s wearing a pale blue T-shirt with lace sleeves and jeans shorts. She seems uncomfortable, like she doesn’t really know what to think about this new way her friend is dressing—this is what Drew thinks as Malik throws his arms around the two girls.

  “How many stars would you give the punch? Be honest,” Malik says. “Me and my friend do not drink second-class punch.”

  “I give it four stars for taste, and five stars for color, because I love orange,” the Goth says. She says it like she thinks this could maybe be a sexy thing to say.

  Drew sees Andre shoot Malik a raised-eyebrow look—really? That girl? But Malik ignores him. Malik has bad luck with girls, mostly because he’s not very good-looking.

  If looks matched a person’s insides, Malik would be handsome as hell, but that’s not how it goes. He’s large, like most football players, but his light brown skin is badly scarred from acne and his teeth could use some work. But Malik is kind, he’s deep-down, to-the-bone kind, so maybe the Goth sees that. Or maybe she just knows he’s a senior who’s fairly popular.

  Whatever the reason, she’s flirting with him and he’s going with it.

  “Well, I like orange, too. I’m in,” Malik says. “What are your names, anyway?”

  “I’m Kaitlyn and that’s Eve,” she says, pointing her punch cup toward the regular-dressed girl. Eve rolls her eyes, like the whole thing is too embarrassing.

  “Nice to meet you, ladies. I’m Malik and these two losers are Drew and Andre,” Malik says as he scoops out two cups of punch. There’s no ladle. He just dips the cups into the frothy punch and they come up dripping and slimy.

  “Here, Drew,” Malik says.

  “Thanks, man,” Drew says. He takes the punch and drinks it down. It tastes like a boozy Creamsicle.

  “That’s the way,” Andre says.

  Skinny Chris and this a-hole Paul from Drew’s History class come in from the patio. They’ve got cans of beer.

  “Drew!” They both shout.

  Jesus, it’s not like he never sees an
yone. He goes to school every day. Baseball practice every afternoon. Everyone’s making out like he’s some kind of recluse.

  “Drew Nathanson in the house! Party gonna get real!” Skinny Chris hollers, cupping his hands around his mouth. Drew wishes he’d shut up.

  Two senior girls on the other side of the room look over at Drew and exchange a whisper. He’s used to that.

  Skinny Chris grabs a bottle opener from the counter and pulls out the corkscrew thing.

  “Wanna shotgun a beer?” he asks Drew. “I’ll poke the hole for you.”

  “I got it, I got it,” Paul says, snatching the beer from Skinny Chris. Paul’s got a real ferrety face. Thick curly blond hair that looks like a carpet. Before Drew can say no, he doesn’t want a beer, Paul jams the corkscrew into the beer can.

  It slips and he gashes his arm.

  There’s blood, and Kaitlyn screams.

  The blood drips onto the floor. Drew feels his legs going out from under him.

  “I’m fine!” Paul says. “Just a flesh wound.”

  He holds up his arm to the sophomore girls. It’s a shallow cut. Nothing much but there’s blood on the white tile floor and it’s mixing with some spilled beer and Drew’s gonna pass out unless he gets out of the damn kitchen right now.

  He pushes past the kids near the glass doors and is out into the air.

  The April air is cool and crisp. Drew drags in big gulps of it.

  Malik grabs Drew’s arm.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “You’re all right.”

  “I think I should go,” Drew says.

  He’s sweaty, he realizes. There’s cold sweat trickling down from his armpits.

  “Look, if it’s too much, we’ll go, but I really think, if you just have a drink or two, talk to a couple girls—it’s going to be good for you.”

  “I don’t know,” Drew says. Something is rising up in his gut. Not bile, but the need to tell Malik about it—what it was like to lose control of the car. How terrifying it was—one second he was going fast on Harper Street, the windshield wipers swiping in time to the music and Drew singing along, and the next second the wheel just jerked out of his hands, the car sliding on the wet leaves … and then the impact.

  The terrible thump.

  The old man’s body reeling away from the car.

  The blood on the windshield, smearing with each swipe.

  “Come on, man,” Malik says. His face is wide open. Hopeful. Encouraging. “You with me?”

  Drew looks off, over toward the kids fooling around near the pool.

  He can’t open up about the accident. Not now, obviously, and not ever. If Drew talks about it, he might come fully apart. He might die. That’s how Drew feels. He might go insane or explode. Something like that.

  He watches the kids by the pool until his throat loosens up enough to talk. Malik waits, pretending to look down at the road below the lawn.

  If you don’t go back in there now, you’ll never go back, Drew tells himself.

  He makes himself say, “Okay.”

  Malik claps his hand onto Drew’s shoulder.

  “Just make it till midnight,” Malik says. “You can do that, right? It’s just a couple hours.”

  “Okay.”

  They walk back toward the house.

  Drew can tell Paul’s talking about him inside, because through the glass door he can see that Kaitlyn’s and Eve’s eyes are wide with horror and intrigue, and Paul’s got his arms up like he’s driving a car.

  Drew can see his reflection in the sliding glass door, too. He looks wan, and there are dark circles under his eyes. Drew’s already pretty pale. But in the harsh light coming off the deck, he looks completely bleached out.

  Paul’s got his back to the sliding door, doesn’t know Drew and Malik are coming back in. The girl Eve reaches out and touches Paul on the arm, warning him.

  “We’re back!” Malik says, before he even gets the door open.

  It’s awkward for a second, and Drew makes himself say, “So, did you a-holes leave any punch?”

  They all laugh hard, like that’s just such a super-funny thing to say.

  * * *

  Then Drew drinks four cups of punch, two beers, and one shot of vodka.

  * * *

  Amy Legrange comes in at some point when Drew is getting shitfaced. She smells just like Drew remembers her. Vanilla and soap. She says hey. Puts her arm around him. Asks if he’s doing okay.

  She does it all with a proprietary air, letting the sophomore girls know that Drew was hers once upon a time.

  Drew tells her he’s all right. He uses the fewest words possible. He pointedly does not ask how she is.

  He cannot let himself reach out to her, because if they start to talk, he might say too much. Her kindness is like a warm light, and he does not want to be melted.

  She stays for a moment, and then her friend Rachel comes and takes her away. Rachel hates Drew because blah blah blah he’s so closed off and whatever else girls say to comfort each other when they get dumped.

  The sophomore girl Eve watches all this go down with wide, stoned eyes, like it’s a documentary about seniors on TV. She’s got a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and she looks too drunk now. She should quit.

  Meanwhile, Malik is working his charms on Kaitlyn. He’s making her laugh, telling her about the time he accidentally gave a waitress a twenty-dollar tip and the waitress cried, she was so happy, so Malik couldn’t ask her for it back.

  Drew checks his phone. It’s 10:53 P.M.

  * * *

  Drew drains the dregs of the punch bowl, making his friends laugh.

  He pretends he doesn’t see Malik and Andre consulting silently about him.

  He okay? Andre says with a nod and raised hands. Malik nods back, gives a thumbs-up.

  If only.

  * * *

  Drew’s drunk enough now that his vision of the room is real slippery.

  Outside, kids started throwing each other in the pool. Now they’ve come in, wet and steaming. There’s water all over the floor, and the kids are sliding, crashing into each other.

  Uneasiness rises in Drew’s chest—the slamming and the screeching.

  “Is it midnight yet?” he turns to say to Malik, only Malik seems to be gone. So is Kaitlyn. So’s Eve.

  Three screaming kids CRASH to the floor.

  Drew jumps. His nerves are shredded. It doesn’t matter that he’s drunk. It doesn’t make it go away—the way he is now.

  He makes for the glass door.

  Screw midnight, he thinks.

  Just as he approaches, a wet body SLAMS into the glass door.

  Drew’s heart seizes up in his chest. He jumps back, and his feet go out from under him and he falls to the floor.

  Someone’s laughing at him. He looks around and locates the source of the laugh. It’s Paul. Ferret-faced Paul, watching him from across the kitchen, sitting over in the breakfast nook, laughing.

  * * *

  Then Drew is punching Paul.

  Paul’s braces cut Drew’s knuckles. They also shred the inside of Paul’s mouth. Now there’s blood on Drew’s hand.

  No other fluid feels the same on the hands as blood.

  Drew remembers how it felt on the night. The way the old man bled from the gash on his head.

  Drew tries to punch the memory away.

  Meghan screeches, pulling Drew off Paul. Paul’s crying.

  “Not in the house, you asshole!” she screams. “If you want to beat each other up, take it outside!”

  Drew looks at her.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  He looks at the blood on his fist.

  “Sorry,” he says to Paul, who hunches away from him, shielding his face.

  “Fuckin’ jerk,” Paul says. His words come out garbled.

  He’s gonna need stitches.

  Drew looks at his hand. The skin over his knuckles is abraded and slick new skin shines underneath. There’s blood welling up at the edges. He feels no
thing. It’s like in football practice. He can hit and hit, and get hit back, and he feels nothing. It’s why he likes football.

  * * *

  Drew goes to the bathroom to wash his hands. The cold water feels good in that it stings like hell. He doesn’t let himself look at his reflection. He sees that sickly, screwed-up kid in the mirror. He doesn’t want to look straight at him.

  If he did, he’d shout at him: You freaking loser. You screwed it all up.

  You killed a man.

  You’re a freaking murderer.

  Drew looks anywhere in that stupid bathroom except the mirror. The gray tile floor. The white marble sink. The high-quality paper hand towels in a pile on the counter, all half wetted through. The fancy soap in a glass pump dispenser.

  Tears are coming, and he’s starting to shake.

  He puts his hand in his back pocket and slips his finger into his wallet.

  There’s a letter in there that he keeps because it comforts him to touch it.

  It’s from Julia Townsend, the wife of Harold Townsend, the man he killed.

  She says that she forgives him. That Harold was in the Vietnam War. That he killed civilians. It haunted him. And that when he came back, he vowed to help people as much as he could.

  Julia Townsend writes that once, Harold saved a woman’s life by giving her the Heimlich maneuver in a restaurant.

  She says if he wants to, Drew can be the kind of hero Harold turned out to be.

  The paper is bent awkwardly to fit into his wallet, and he’s touched it so many times the edges are starting to disintegrate. If he opened it now, it would have holes shot through where the folds lie.

  Drew turns the handle marked COLD and splashes his face with water.

  There are pristine white bath towels stacked on a little gleaming chrome cart. He takes one and presses his face into it.

  Drew glances at himself in the mirror. He sees his eyes, bleak and desperate, ringed with red. Dark brown circles under them, like bruises. His straight, dark hair flopping in his eyes but not long enough to cover them completely. His mouth drawn tight, lips pressed into a colorless line.