The Inevitable Collision of Birdie & Bash

by Candace Ganger

  I turn over, and the buzzing stops, but there are a dozen missed calls, voice mails, and texts. From Kyle. I grunt, toss the phone down, and roll back over. It can’t be time for school because I haven’t been home long. The phone dances across the floor again; this time, I answer, thinking mostly about the minutes I’m wasting, how long until I can buy more, and if this isn’t the nursing home calling about Ma, what could be so important to wake me from this nightmare.

  It’s Kyle again, obviously. He asks why I haven’t answered, says this is urgent and we need to talk before school, it can’t wait. I tell him to come on over, and he says he’s already outside freezing his ass off in his (heated) Corvette. I laugh because he doesn’t get it on so many levels, but he’s dead serious, so I roll onto the floor and drag my sorry ass out of the comfort of my prison cell.

  A minute later, a knock on the door—more like a thunderous banging that doesn’t stop until I open the thin metal barrier between us. “What the hell, man?” I ask, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “I literally just left your drunk ass at home. Thought you’d skip school today, sleep it off.”

  He ignores me, pushes past. He’s pacing, wearing an even bigger hole in the middle of my torn-up floor. The sun is brightening now, streaming thin, choppy rays onto the floor, showing how bad the wear really is. Clearly I must’ve slept at some point, but it doesn’t feel like it.

  “What’s up?” I ask, arms crossed firm across my chest. With a yawn, I think of falling back to the mattress and skipping school myself. What’s one more day? It’s not like anyone misses me there. I’m not the star football player or the a-hole who knows the answer to every question. I’m just … there. Mostly because the state, and Ma, make me.

  His pace quickens as he runs his fingers through his freshly washed hair. The ends drip pellets onto my floor. Something has him spooked. Even for a high-strung, privileged, whiny-ass, the way he’s filling the entirety of this place with his anxiety is beyond his usual level of whacked-out.

  “Why’s it so cold in here?” he asks. “It’s like a goddamned freezer.”

  I see the balled-up disconnection notice on the floor. “Saving money on heat.”

  “It’s too cold.”

  I try to find his eyes, which are bouncing around with his pace. “Is this about the Benz?”

  He laughs manically, a questionable look of crazy spinning in his stare. “Oh, yeah. This is about the Benz. It’s definitely about the Benz. We’re in the deepest shit ever taken. Future is gone, everything we know—gone. I. Can’t. Even.”

  “I told you. I’ll help pay to get the thing fixed,” I say, wondering how exactly I’m going to do that when I can’t even keep the electricity on. “Might take me a couple weeks to get the money, but I’ll help.”

  He’s shaking his head like he’s trying to knock loose a clear thought. “I don’t want your money, dude. But we’ve got to get it taken care of today. Has to be today.”

  “Are you still high?”

  “If I were, this would suck a lot less. If the chemo didn’t kill your ma, what I have to tell you sure as hell will.”

  I place my hands firmly on his shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. “Kyle,” I say with a firm voice, “you’re not making sense, and I’m starting to get freaked out. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

  I guide him to the recliner that won’t open. He sinks into the fabric’s contoured cushion and takes a deep breath. His eyes are glued to the floor, and mine are on him. “Is your dad coming home early?”

  He nods.

  “Okay. Is that why you’re tweaking?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to have to use actual words and form sentences that make sense if you want my help.”

  “The news station called Dad. They wanted a quote about how the curve on Highway 22 might affect the value of the development … now that this new accident happened.”

  “What … new … accident?” I hold my breath, knowing what’s coming, reach into my pocket, and pinch the small piece of fabric I found between my fingers.

  “Dad called Mom a couple hours ago, and the phone woke me. When I got up to pee, I heard it on the TV.” He pulls out his phone and searches with a few keystrokes. “It wasn’t a deer or dog we hit, Bash. It was a person—a little kid.”

  He holds the phone up to my face, his tired eyes absent of any sort of arrogance or the confidence that usually preceded him. The article says there was a hit and run on 22 late last night, the boy is at Grove City PICU and Trauma Center, and they are searching for suspects with little to no information about the make and model of the car. My heart sinks into the worn floor, absorbs into the rotted wooden slabs, and deteriorates right here as the sun shines brighter through the thin sheet. Now I’m shaking my head like I can’t believe this, it has to be someone else. We didn’t do this—we couldn’t have done this.

  I drop the phone into Kyle’s lap and circle back to lean against the small kitchen counter. “I thought that house was empty,” I say, my voice shaking.

  “I guess it sold.”

  I gulp. “We have to go to the police.”

  “We do that,” he says, “we’re done. They’ll slaughter us and use our insides as Christmas decorations.”

  “No,” I say. “There’s NO other option. We have to do the right thing here—what if this kid dies? I don’t want that on my conscience. This is serious shit, Kyle.”

  He stands from the recliner, shoves his phone and his hands in his pockets. “Just stop for one second and think about how this will play out. You go to the cops, they arrest us. Your ma—who thinks you do no wrong—dies of heartache before the cancer’s even finished with her. That will be your fault. Then my dad’s agency goes under while we’re shoveling shit off the highway with criminals. That will be my fault. When it’s all said and done, we’ll have nothing left. Nothing.”

  “You mean, you’ll have nothing left—is that what you’re afraid of? To be like me?” I snap, knowing when Ma goes, however she does, there’s nothing left for me anyway.

  He walks toward me. “Yeah, Bash,” he says. “I am. I like my life. I like having things, and I like my beard. My beard tells people I’m a man. Not just any man, but Jeff Taylor’s son. I don’t want any of that to change.”

  The words, the truth, hurt, sting the backs of my eyelids. I slide down the cabinet and fall to the floor, my head buried in my hands. “You should’ve just let me drive the goddamned car in the first place.”

  His voice softens; he slides down the cabinet, too. “You’re right. But I didn’t. Now here we are.”

  There’s a long silence between us before one of Kyle’s rants crawls into my thoughts. “If I’m not mistaken, you once told me Confucius said ‘A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.’”

  He nods, with a wagging finger up in the air. “Preach, brother! Guess that’s what they call a taste of my own medicine?”

  I snicker, but the feeling is more sour than sweet. “How does it taste?”

  “Bitter as shit.”

  I angle my head toward him, hoping for some kind of agreement without a fight. “So we’ll turn ourselves in, then.”

  He pulls himself up and towers over me, his shadow casting darkness over my soul. “You don’t get it. We’re not telling anyone—ever. This ain’t no slap on the wrist like those DUIs or your little spray-painting incident freshman year, Bash. This is hard time, and being closer to legal, we’re talking about prison with killers and shit. You know what they do to people who hurt kids. I’m not cut out for that lifestyle—with this baby face? I’d be torn to shreds.”

  “Prison with killers?” I stand to face him. “If that kid dies, we’re killers, Kyle. Us. You and me.”

  Tears fill his bloodshot eyes, and I realize I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry—not really, anyway. I’ve seen the fake tears fall when he wanted to get in a girl’s pants, but not for real. Not because he actually feels. In this ca
se, Daddy might strip him of his trust fund, and on some level, knowing how he was raised, I guess I understand. He doesn’t know any other way to be—something I say about myself often. So I guess we’re at an impasse.

  He looks at me with salt-stained cheeks. The tears roll down into his scraggly beard and mustache, and I can see Kyle. Real Kyle. At least I think I do. “I don’t want Dad to be disappointed in me,” he says. “I’ve felt it with less important things, like booze or girls. But this … this would destroy any relationship he and I might ever have. If the cops, media, or any other human on this earth finds out I was involved in this, it would ruin everything, and I couldn’t live with myself. No one can find out. I would actually rather die.”

  His sobs grow louder until they’re rumbling off the walls. With his hands now grinding into my shoulders, his voice strengthens. “Do you understand? If it comes out that I had anything to do with this and it’s connected to my father, his car, and his real estate investments, I will kill myself.”

  I see the intensity in his eyes, the way they shake. A chill goes through me. I’ve heard Kyle say a lot of dumb shit before, but never this. I peel his hands off my shoulders and hug him. I don’t remember the last time anyone hugged me—like, really hugged me—so it wasn’t only a comfort to him. His tears soak through my shirt, and I realize how scared he really is. Same way I was when Joe was drunk all those times.

  I don’t know what to say. My conscience battles with itself, doing right, or doing wrong, and I pull him off to look him straight in the eyes, because until I can figure out how to get us out of this mess, it’s all I can do to make this conversation stop.

  “Okay,” I say.

  He wipes the snot from his nose. “Okay?”

  I release a long sigh, and all of the regret I know I’m going to have. “Unless the kid dies, I won’t say anything.”

  His tears cease, and a look of surprise covers his expression. “Really?”

  I nod, while a sharp pain in my chest tells me what a mistake this is.

  “I knew I could count on you!” he exclaims. He says it like it was his plan all along, to ignore anything I said until he got his way. “You really are my best friend—brother from another mother.”

  “I’m your only friend.” This is true. “And your brother because, like a lost puppy, you won’t leave me the hell alone.” This is also true. All versions of Kyle are a combined force I can’t escape because he literally has exhausted the shit out of me. That’s his thing. To wear people down until they give in. He wins, everyone else in life loses.

  His tears cease. “I swear—I’ll anonymously send money, flowers—the goddamned moon—but as long as the kid is alive, we can never tell anyone we did it.” He holds out his fist, hoping to knock knuckles in a silent form of agreement. “Deal?”

  I swallow a lump bigger than I have had since hearing the news about Ma. It’s wrong, so wrong, but at this point, there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  Except keep my mouth shut.

  birdie

  Every news station on the planet is telling our story, our tragedy, like Benny’s already gone. One anchor, whose name I won’t mention (okay, it’s the local Fox anchor who laughed when telling a story about a man exposing himself in a Walmart; apparently it was really cold in there), keeps referring to Mom as Bessie, to which Mom says, “I’m not a damn heifer—it’s Bess, just Bess. It’s not hard.” That’s usually when Dad replies, “That’s what she said,” to lighten the mood, but no one laughs because Mom keeps reminding us we shouldn’t be laughing at a time like this, and she’s right.

  Pictures of the tattered stroller and Benny’s stray shoe made the front page of the paper. Images, much like I’d take of something dead on the side of the road, have gone viral. The yard has been littered with people, strangers, for days, their feet marking the dried grass around the SOLD sign that’s splattered with mud and gunk and a little bit of our hearts.

  On this particular morning, I almost forget what life I’m living. Last night’s dreams of riding horseback with a crab fisherman named Sig Hansen have me a little dazed. I mean, I’m pretty sure the conversation we had about the whole Taylor Swift and Kanye thing was real, but with the way life has been lately, who even knows anymore.

  After a garbage-mouth yawn and a sudden realization of my actual life, I toss the covers and jump out of bed. The comforter lands on top of Chomperz, who is, without shame, bathing his embarrassingly shrunken testes that, for whatever reason, he enjoys showing off. “Have some humility, man,” I tell him. He pauses a short moment, then continues licking. Squinting, I pry open the ivory plastic blinds that I’ve just noticed have bite marks in them. “Jeez, Chomperz, we just got here,” I say. He’s sprawled out in the nucleus of my bed, surrounded by the sea of fabric, completely ignoring me—a trait I really love about him. “Furry jerk.”

  When I check my phone, I realize I forgot I’d texted Violet from the hospital but didn’t respond to her reply, so, naturally, she’s concerned to the point of completely blowing up my phone, as besties do.

  VIOLET: OMG!!! ARE YOU KIDDING? TELL ME YOU’RE KIDDING. BUT IT’S NOT FUNNY.

  VIOLET: ARE YOU THERE??? WHAT CAN I DO—DRIVE OVER?

  VIOLET: I HOPE YOU’RE OK!!!

  VIOLET: HOLY CRAP APPLE, BIRDS—IT’S ALL OVER THE NEWS. WOW …

  VIOLET: I LIT MY FRANKINCENSE AND ASKED DEITY ALLURA TO WATCH OVER YOUR FAM. ♥ YOU.

  I toss the phone and count a slew of faces outside, including one lanky anchor, a bulbous man balancing a camera on his shoulder, and an old geez with the mic and boom whose arm is shaking from the weight of it. Such a production to film these strangers laying colorful flowers and sad-looking teddy bears around the base of the wooden stake. You would never know how many people it takes to shoot a thirty-second clip of news unless you’re like me, living this horrible nightmare right now.

  I pound at my window, scream, “He’s not dead, butt clowns!” For a moment, they stop. For a moment, they see me and offer condolence smiles. You know the kind. A half smile, saggy eyes, with a three-quarter wave. Our eyes linger through this pane of thin glass, but after a few minutes, they decide to pretend I’m not here—the same thing Chomperz does as he moves to other gross areas of his body.

  “You disgust me,” I tell him. I love this cat so much it hurts.

  I shower, dress in my favorite charcoal jeans and navy math tee that reads √−1 2³ ∑ π (aka: I Ate Some Pie)—something Violet doesn’t think is funny even a little—comb through my long, wavy hair with my fingers, and hide my bloodshot eyes behind my glasses.

  “What are you doing?” Sarge asks as I make my way through the house. He tosses back a couple of his heart pills like candy.

  “School,” I say.

  “You’re not going to the hospital?”

  I shuffle my feet, sling the backpack over my shoulder, and shrug.

  Through his glasses that magnify his every blink, he lowers his face into mine, and I can see the clouds of glaucoma swimming around. “You need to be with your family, your brother.”

  I know he’s right but can’t tell him I don’t want to be in that room, listening to Mom and Dad sob over Benny’s broken parts and endless bandages. I don’t want to see Brynn’s dirty hair and bratty smirk. I don’t want to smell those hospital scents of urine, sterile needles, death, and all the things I’d rather forget. And I sure as hell don’t want to see my baby brother take his last breath because of something I did.

  I don’t deserve to be there. I deserve to be strapped to a rolling gurney in an incinerator where I would burn at 1,600° to 1,800°F until my bones fall to ash. According to my height and weight, it would take about an hour and a half; maybe less. Seems unfairly painless, considering what I’ve put Benny, and my parents, through.

  “You okay?” he asks, his palm on my forehead. “You’re clammy.”

  “I’m fine.” I push past him, grab my jacket and keys. “I’ll stop by the hospital after school.” />
  “Birds—” He starts toward me, a fierce look in his eyes.

  I pause, challenge him with a determined stare of my own. The silence builds until the phone rings. It’s Mom checking in on us. “She’s fine, I’m fine, don’t worry,” he says to her through the phone, over and over. I imagine Mom on the other end, tired and panicked she’s not here to keep the order. Like the house literally will fall apart without her, shingles and all. Sarge isn’t capable of feeding himself, and I’m going to miss my alarm, and Chomperz might starve to death, and—crap, I forgot to feed him. He’s got a few extra layers to shed, so he’ll be fine.

  With Sarge’s attention turned away, I rush to the garage. My bitterly cold car heats beneath the fluorescent light that knows all of my secrets, and the garage door opens without stalling. The crowd of people by the base move in one rhythmic line to the side of the grass, aware of my presence. I slowly back down the driveway, my neck craning like a flamingo. At the bottom of this crap hill, the lanky anchor, Julie Sturghill, approaches my window with a light-knuckled tap, and I want to avoid her, but she’s kind of unavoidable in that she’s blocking my way out.

  “Excuse me,” she says. I crack the window, let the air slap my face. Her left eye stares harder than her right, so much so that I can’t focus on what words are streaming through her lipstick-stained teeth. Something about a candid sit-down, my take on what happened. I don’t know, it’s all fuzz. This eye won’t let go of me. It’s like a fishhook is latched onto her eyelid, pulling it down over her pupil. Reminds me of those boys who wear their pants too low. Not that I’ve never seen anyone with a unique facial thing before. Nan’s nose had been broken in a car accident and never healed right. Her nostrils angled up toward each other like a teepee. They were so perfectly triangular, so sharply formed; her nose was perfectly imperfect. But that was my nan. This is a reporter who I want to get out of my way.

  “Hello? Did you hear me?” she repeats, the microphone gleaming against the morning sun. The crowd of strangers gathers around her, a dark army of curious shadows.