HOLLOW
BY
RHONDA PARRISH
Dedicated to everyone who survived high school.
And everyone who didn’t.
Chapter One
RUNNING HELPS.
It’s a soothing, strenuous sort of relaxation that clears my mind until all that’s left is sound. My feet hitting the pavement, my breathing loud in my ears, and an occasional bird. The sound of traffic is a dull hum in the background but I haven’t seen a moving vehicle the whole time I’ve been running laps. It’s getting late. The sky is bruising and the streetlights are coming on, but their light is dim.
I can smell autumn’s bite in the air but I’m too warmed up from my workout to feel it. My hoodie is tied around my waist, its hem slapping against the back of my knees as I run.
Left-right, left-right, one-two, one-two. I focus on those numbers like I never do in math class, letting each one grow to fill my mind and push everything else out.
As I round the northwest corner of the decrepit hospital grounds, a voice slips through the barrier I’ve erected around my thoughts. A very specific voice.
Keith’s voice.
“Shit.” I glance one way and then the other. Sound is weird around my neighbourhood; the old hospital and its outbuildings grab noises and toss them around like finger bones in a witchdoctor’s spell so I can’t tell where his voice is coming from.
Then I catch sight of him, him and his friends. They’ve turned the corner across the street and are walking toward me.
If you’ve gotta go down, go down fighting. That’s what Mom used to say.
Willing myself to ignore them, I fasten my eyes on a distant light pole and keep running. My jaw is clenched so tight each step jars my teeth, and the block, which is doubly long on this side of the hospital, has never felt so huge before. I just want to go home.
The chant begins in my brain, replacing the counting, the left-right of my feet. I want to go home. Go home. Go home.
The boys’ conversation stops and, after a brief pause, is replaced by whistles and cat calls. Keith, Darian, and Simon are hooting and whistling like a crew of construction workers. Assholes.
“Lookin’ good, Morgan,” one of them—Darian—hollers.
I feel the heat of embarrassment flood my face and force myself not to look down. Not to let them see how much they are getting to me.
“Run, run, run,” Keith shouts. And though the words are benign, it is him saying them, and the tone he uses colours them and turns them into something dirty. Something shameful.
I should have run that day. But I didn’t. Maybe this is my penance.
One foot in front of the other.
I want to get home.
Away from Keith.
Away from the whistles and hooting.
Away from Simon shouting, “Look at her titties jiggle!”
I resist the urge to clutch my arms to my chest, which would only slow me down, and keep running. Pretend I can’t hear them. Pretend the whole neighbourhood can’t hear them.
They sound closer than a moment ago. Surely they aren’t—I sneak a glance out of the corner of my eye, refusing to turn my head, to give them that satisfaction. They are still on the other side of the street, but Keith’s body language screams that he’s about to cross. No, no, no. I just want to get home.
I see their shadows, long in the pale evening light, stretch across the road. Coming toward me. Their limbs, long and distorted, reaching . . .
My heart slams in my chest. What will happen if they catch me? The thought of them touching me turns my heart into a drum, my belly into a mass of worms, tangled and squirming.
I need to get home. Without letting them see their effect on me—if they know, that will only make things worse. Like blood in the water driving sharks into a frenzy.
Left-right. Left-right.
But they are coming at an angle. Gaining on me. Keith’s shadow has almost reached my feet when a flurry of soft sound and rapid motion beside me, on the hospital’s side of the chain-link fence, startles me. Breaks my rhythm.
“What the hell is that? Look at that bird!” Darian says, and for a breath I feel their focus leave me.
It flutters on the edge of my vision, a bird like I’ve never seen before. It’s the size and shape of a magpie but off-colour.
“Really? A bird? What do I care about a bird?” Keith laughs, as jarring as the quork of a raven. “What are you, a fag? Look at Morgan jiggle!”
I run. Hard.
My home is on the other side of the hospital, but Sevren’s is within sight, across the street, on the same side as the boys. Sevren’s or home? Sevren’s or home? My feet pound out the question on the pavement. As I run, I hear three sets of footsteps behind me, drawing closer, and make up my mind.
I bolt across the street, keeping the distance between the boys and myself as great as possible. I tear across Sevren’s front lawn and pull the gate open, thankful the latch hasn’t worked since grade seven. Sevren’s dog, Boris, barrels around the corner of the house toward me, his sleek black body gleaming in the sunlight and deep barks reverberating through the neighbourhood. The sight and sound of him pulls me out of my fear-soaked state.
Boris recognises me and skids to a stop on the well-trod lawn. He doesn’t have a tail—it was docked when he was a puppy—so he wags his whole back end at me instead. The boys’ mocking laughter from the other side of the fence quickly recedes as they move on. Presumably to easier prey.
“Hey buddy,” I say and rub Boris behind his floppy ears. “Did you scare those douchebags away? Did ya? Did ya?” I don’t know if his barking affected them at all, but Boris is loving the attention and it’s giving me a chance to catch my breath from my sprint. I’m made for distance, not speed. Petting Boris lowers my heart rate some and steadies my hands. My breath still comes in pants and gulps, but it, too, is slowing, and I can feel the sweat cooling on my brow.
“Morgan?” Sevren comes around the corner, much slower than Boris had. “You all right?”
I am very much not all right, but I lie. “Yeah,” I say, faking a laugh which sounds fake even to my own ears, especially since though I’m no longer straight-up panting, I am still breathing hard. “I’m all right. I just heard Boris so I figured I’d come say hi.”
Sevren nods but I can see worry in his eyes, and disbelief. He knows I’m lying. The question is, will he let me get away with it?
“Really,” I say. As if that will convince him.
Sevren tosses his hair out of his face with a flip of his head. This week it’s white-blonde with blue tips. When it comes to hair colour, Sevren gets bored quickly. “So what douchebags were you talking about then?”
Damn it.
I’m filled with an odd mixture of thankfulness and resentment. I’m glad Sevren cares enough to, well, care, but I don’t want to talk about this, and his big brown eyes are making me feel guilty for that. As if I don’t have enough to feel guilty about already. “Keith and company,” I say. “Just being their usual charming selves.”
“I can’t believe you used to date him.”
Stab.
Right to my gut.
“That guy’s—”
“Yeah, well,” I interrupt before he can make it worse, give Boris one last scritch, and stand. “I should go,” I say more sharply than I’d intended.
“Did I say somethi—”
“Nope. I’ve just got to get home.” I cut him off again. And lie. Again.
“Okay.” His voice is flat, unconvinced. We’ve been best friends since preschool. I’d have to work harder than that to make him believe my lies. “Text me.”
“Will do,” I say, pushing open the gate. “You know, if Boris ever figures out all he has to do is jump on this . . .”
&nb
sp; “You’ll be the first person I call to help me track him down,” Sevren says. “Unless you’re offering to fix it.”
“Nope, I’m good,” I say, let the gate shut itself behind me, and run toward home. As I near my house, my pace slows. Though I hadn’t wanted to have that conversation with Sevren, I’m not sure what’s waiting for me at home is any better.
Chapter Two
COMING IN THROUGH the back door I’m immediately struck by how dark the house is, dark and quiet. The click of the deadbolt as I slide it into place is unnaturally loud in my ears. I turn to face the kitchen and jump, my hand going to my mouth like some helpless heroine in one of those movies Sevren likes so much. Amy is there, standing in the middle of the kitchen, and though I’m positive the room was empty when I came in a moment ago, she looks like she’s been there an age. Just standing. Standing and waiting.
She looks at me through her stringy blonde hair—man, she needs a bath—her hazel eyes sunken and huge in the wan grey light. She’s perfectly still, perfectly still but for the way her right hand is moving in her pocket, worrying the button she always keeps on her. It’s a habit she’s developed since the accident, something she does whenever she’s scared or worried.
“Morgan,” she says, in a mouse-like voice. “You’re late. You said you’d be home seventeen minutes ago.”
That’s another thing she’s started doing since the accident—obsessing about time and freaking out whenever one of us is late coming home. She’s been waiting here, in the dark and the near-silence, worrying about me for seventeen minutes. Suddenly the ticking of the kitchen clock sounds very loud, each second it counts driving a sliver of guilt deeper into me. As if she hasn’t been through enough already . . .
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it. “But I had my phone with me. Next time, why don’t you call?”
“Next time why don’t you call?” Amy snaps, and I sigh. I can’t deal with seven-year-old mood swings right now. I can’t.
“Go play Minecraft,” I say, not even trying to keep the weariness from my voice. “I’ll call you when it’s time to set the table.”
The shower washes the sweat off my body, but it doesn’t make me feel any cleaner, and I go out of my way to avoid my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Amy is sitting at the computer in the living room. She hasn’t turned on any lights so the monitor illuminates her face with its cold blue glow, making her look otherworldly. I don’t like it, but the photographer who lives in the back of my brain recognizes that it would make a powerful photograph.
I put a hand on her shoulder and lean across her to snap on the desk light. Water from my hair drips on her bare arm but she doesn’t seem to notice. “I’ll start dinner,” I say. She looks up at me but doesn’t say anything before returning her attention to the block world on the computer.
On my way into the kitchen I pause outside our parent’s door. A sliver of warm light spills out beneath it, but I don’t hear any movement from within, as usual. I rap on the door. “Mom, I’m going to start dinner.”
“How long?” She sounds half-asleep.
I’d spotted a foil-wrapped casserole sitting on top of the stove on my way in. “Twenty or thirty minutes,” I say. “Dad left a casserole.”
“All right.”
It’s too warm in the house. Too warm, too quiet, and too dark. I feel like I’m being smothered by a big invisible pillow, like the whole house is.
In the kitchen, I flick on the light switch, and the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling fixture snap and blink their way on. Compared to the cave-like gloom of the rest of the house, the blue-tinted light is harsh, antiseptic, like the light in a hospital. The ultra-reflective floors, squeaking shoes . . .
Suddenly I’m very angry. I’m angry at the muffled atmosphere, angry at Keith and his bonehead friends, angry at myself, at Amy and my parents and even at Aric.
I turn the oven on and, without waiting for it to pre-heat, throw the casserole in and slam the door.
It isn’t enough.
I slap the cutting board down on the counter, bang the cupboard door, yank out a salad bowl and smack it on the counter. The silverware slides and crashes as I jerk the drawer open to pull out a knife. It clatters even louder when I shove it closed again.
Still the sounds feel stifled, like they’re coming from underwater. I pull the salad makings from the fridge and close the door so abruptly the bottles of oil and boxes of food stored on top of it rattle against one another, and a box of rice crashes to the floor, spilling some of its contents across the linoleum.
“Morgan,” Amy says from behind me. “Morgan, what’s wrong?”
I don’t know, I don’t know— “Nothing,” I say, keeping my back to her so she can’t see the tears in my eyes. “Nothing. I. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be—nothing.”
I clean up the rice and continue to make the salad in relative quiet, keenly aware of Amy watching me from the doorway the whole time. Eventually, to try and break the terrible tension, I ask her about her day. While she sets the table and rambles on about grade two stuff, my attention wanders. I nod and smile in all the right places, but my thoughts are on Keith the whole time—and not because I want them there. I try to steer them away, to happier topics, but like iron filings to a magnet they keep being pulled back to him. How had I ever found him attractive?
Finally the oven timer does what my willpower had been unable to, and jerks my attention back to the present. “Amy,” I interrupt while I pull on a pair of oven mitts. “Would you get Mom, please?”
Amy pushes Mom in as I’m peeling the tin foil off dinner. Amy doesn’t need to push her wheelchair—Mom is more than able to move herself around the house—but she likes to do it so Mom lets her. Maybe Mom feels guilty too, I think, and glance through the door toward the darkened shrine in the corner of the living room. I look away immediately and force a smile for Mom as Amy settles her into her place at the table.
Mom looks tired. She always looks tired. She rarely leaves her room except to eat and shower, spends most of her day sleeping, and still she always looks exhausted. She isn’t even forty, but great swaths of her naturally brown hair has turned grey and the lines around her mouth and eyes look deeper every day. The accident did more than take her son and put her in a chair. It made her old as well.
Dinner is painful. Amy tries to keep up the conversation but I don’t feel like helping her. Every clunk of silverware against a plate, or thunk of a cup against the table is amplified in my ears, and I can’t drag my attention from inside myself to engage with the world. And I’m trying. My mind is not a friendly place to be, and I want very much to stop getting wrapped up in the sticky guilt and shame-soaked tendrils that make it up.
I want dinner to end so I can retreat to my room where every little thing Mom does won’t make me feel worse. Even watching her eat compounds my feelings, giving them life and room to grow.
Mom, while technically quadriplegic, has some control over her arms and hands. Nothing fine, but she can feed herself, more or less. When I’d visited her in rehab I saw lots of people with similar diagnoses who were able to eat as capably as any able-bodied person, but that required more practice than Mom has had. She often uses both hands to steady her fork but even so, by the time it reaches her mouth more of the food has fallen back on her plate than has made it past her teeth. Drinking, too, is a difficulty she overcomes only by using coffee mugs with handles large enough for her to slip her whole right hand through and using her left to steady it. Each spilled drink and shaky forkful is a tiny dart to my heart.
Finally, when the ordeal of dinner is over, I stow our dishes in the dishwasher, mumble something about homework, and rush into the living room on my way to my bedroom. But Mom’s voice catches me before I manage to escape.
“Morgan.” Her voice is like a gong in my ears. “Don’t forget—”
“To light a candle for Aric,” I finish for her. “As if I ever could.”
I approach the shelf
slowly, warily. As though it contains a snake rather than a collection of photographs, toys, and candles. I know it’s silly, but I can’t help it.
Averting my eyes from Aric’s photographs peering out at me from the shelf’s shadowy recesses, I reach to the top of the shelf for a match. A flare of light later, the stink of sulphur assails me. I light the nearest candle, shake the match out, and toss it into the Niagara Falls ashtray beside the largest picture frame, careful to avoid Aric’s eyes. The match bounces off the ashtray’s side, its head plinking against the glass, and I can feel Aric staring at me from inside his frame. I don’t want to look at him, but I don’t want to ignore him either, so I stare at the ashtray instead as another lump bobs in my throat.
I don’t need to see the pictures to know how they look—I took them. Aric was my favourite model. Once.
Behind me, Mom and Amy are talking in the kitchen. Their voices are low, like the kind you use in the library or church. Not that I know much about church. The only time I’ve ever been was for Aunt Lor’s wedding and Aric’s funeral.
I can’t do this right now. I can’t even look at my brother.
I spin on my heel so fast the candle’s flame dips and sways, sending creepy elongated versions of myself dancing on the far wall. I stomp away into my bedroom and slam the door behind me. I can’t stand this much longer. Something has got to change.
Chapter Three
“WHAT HAPPENED TO you last night?” Sevren asks, tossing the hair out of his face and looking at me intently. “I sent you about a million texts and you didn’t answer any of them.”
“I was dealing with some stuff.”
“Isn’t that what friends are for?” he asks. “To help you deal with stuff?”
Not this stuff.
“I wanted to be alone.”
Sevren shrugs and pushes his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t actually need glasses, but every so often he wears a pair with heavy plastic frames, just because. “Okay, but if you need me—”
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