Still Waters

by Ash Parsons

  I passed out.

  Came to moments later, my arms flopping by my sides. Heard my sister sobbing.

  Wanted to tell her I was sorry. For getting into Michael’s car that day. For taking his money. For thinking I could stay in control of any of it.

  I wanted to tell her she’d be all right without me, if only so I could believe the lie.

  Don’t watch this, Janie. Close your eyes.

  Telescoping haze constricted my vision. My chest filled with lava that burned through my heart and dripped chunks of impotent fury onto my roiling stomach.

  Black, churning waters pulled at my heels. Filled my lungs and spread into my throat.

  “You’ll kill him before he’ll tell you.” Michael’s voice, close by.

  My father’s admiration was grudging. “He’s a tough little shit.”

  “He’s what you made him.” Michael watched my face with murderous avidity.

  Watching for the moment of death.

  I reached out to him, my hand stretching, something I couldn’t control even though I knew it wouldn’t change anything.

  “You’re killing him.” Michael’s tone was conversational.

  My father merely grunted acknowledgment. I blinked, refocusing. Was there a chance he would stop in time?

  My heart skittered, stopping and starting like a stalled engine. My vision narrowed, Michael’s face, the fang-grooves over my father’s mouth.

  “Wait,” Michael said.

  My father eased off, slapped my cheeks. Over his shoulder, Michael grinned at me. A gun appeared in his hand. Michael showed it to me, feigning surprise at finding it there. He held the gun before his stomach, so the man with the tattooed hand couldn’t see it.

  My father didn’t look back at him. His fingers pressed into my throat. My fingers clawed over his arms, seeking a crack, a lever, a switch to turn off the crushing mechanism of his grip.

  “Oh my God, stop. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Michael said, and then laughed. He screwed a silencer on the gun barrel.

  My father and the man with the tattooed hand laughed with him.

  I blinked tears from my eyes, felt like my lungs were struggling to connect to the air through my skin, through my fingertips, through my tear ducts.

  My clawed hands slid on my father’s arms. A surge of adrenaline arced over my veins. My body bucked, struggling to dislodge him, bringing my hands that much closer to his eyes, fighting for the final breath.

  The constricted muscles of my neck flexed against the granite of my father’s grip.

  Vision blurring, I saw Michael step slightly back. “Oh my God, somebody do something. Stop or I’ll shoot.”

  My father kept smiling until he heard the click of the hammer being pulled back. He turned.

  The gun was so close you could barely see the suppressed muzzle flash. The bullet tore through my father’s head and plummeted out, taking blood, brain, and skull with it.

  He fell to the side, following the trajectory of his mutilated brain and the bullet, collapsing on the floor next to me.

  His hands fell off my neck. I sucked in air, couldn’t breathe for coughing.

  “Holy—” the man with the tattooed hand screamed, clutching at Janie.

  She kicked away from him, slithering onto the floor.

  Michael whirled and pointed the gun at the tattooed man.

  “Wait! I could—” The bullet drove his body against the wall. He slid down, leaving a bloody smear.

  I fought to a sitting position, gasping. Struggling to send oxygen everywhere that needed it at once: heart, lungs, brain, arms, legs.

  Cool air rushed in, flowed into me like energy, but not enough.

  “Janie.” My voice was a grating whisper. She crawled to me.

  “He was going to kill you.” Janie’s voice was tiny, like it was hiding under a table.

  My hand bumped her arm.

  “And . . .” Michael drew a hand down over his face. “Scene.” He pulled his cell phone out and dialed 911.

  My lungs heaved.

  “We need help! People are dead, shot, my girlfriend has been shot, and my friend can’t breathe. We need an ambulance!” Michael’s high-pitched voice cracked. “Yes. We’re at 233B, Lincoln Green. Please hurry. My girlfriend . . . the blood—” He hung up. Threw the phone down.

  My air wasn’t coming right. I swayed as I sat, struggling to find the oxygen, still feeling fingers around my neck, still feeling the constriction of my esophagus.

  “Most satisfying.” Michael scratched his head like a sleeper awakening. “You, sir, were excellent,” he said to me. “Going back for Beast. Just like I knew you would. You’re a predictable performer, and we love you for it.” He leaned over Janie.

  Janie shivered, shrank into herself.

  “You’ve got the scene straight, Janie? I saved your brother. That’s what happened here. I can keep all of us out of jail, even Jason, but you’ve got to back me up. I mean, no love lost, right? And I did save him. I’m the hero now.”

  Janie didn’t move, didn’t agree. Did nothing.

  Cyndra watched me try to breathe, not moving from where she was nailed to the couch. Like Michael would kill her next.

  “You, too, Cyndra,” he said. “Stick to the script.”

  Cyndra nodded, a battlefield surrender. Her horror-wide eyes showing that now she saw him. Truly saw him.

  “Hmmm.” Michael frowned at her as he stood, stretched. Cocked his head, listening for sirens. “Won’t be long, now. Do I trust you all? To sell the story?” He held up the gun, aimed it at Cyndra for a moment, then Janie.

  I blinked black spots out of my eyes.

  Michael crouched in front of me.

  “Jason. You thought I was going to let him kill you.” His smile was clean. Real. Like there was a chance I’d believe him now.

  As if he wasn’t going to kill us all before the cops came. He’d say it had been my father or the tattooed man. He’d take the gun from my father’s waistband, shoot us, then put it back in my father’s hand. Or near it.

  Rage gathered behind the lodged screams in my throat. My eyes burned, though no tears came.

  My eyes found the gun in Michael’s hand. Gauged the distance of the reach.

  He tracked my glance. The perfect smile returned. “You gonna go for it? Do it, Ice. You’ll never get there in time.”

  My shoulders and head shuddered with each crushed breath.

  Michael held the gun out, sighted down the barrel at me. “God, what a rush.” He whipped the gun to the side and mimed taking the shot. “It’s official. Nothing compares.”

  “You won. It’s over.” My voice was a wisp. I slumped against the wall. My eyes fluttered, gauged his grip on the gun.

  I sat, fish-gasping. Let my arms fall to the floor on either side of me like they were dead weights.

  Michael watched me struggle for air as sirens gathered in the distance.

  “Not quite yet. Soon, though.” He rolled his head and shoulders, like a fighter warming up. “Like I said. There are users and the used. You can’t transcend, only accept.”

  The gun floated between me and Janie.

  He was going to kill us. The knowledge was inevitable poison burning under my skin, working its way to the surface. Blood-sweat pinpricking each pore.

  Michael turned slightly away from where I slumped. The sirens grew louder.

  I lunged for the gun in his hand. My arm pushed toward it through tar-thick air. I fell against Janie’s side as my numb hand knocked against the metal, sending it clattering onto the floor.

  Maybe he was right and it was too late, after all.

  Michael spun back to me as I fell across Janie’s knees, pathetically intent on the gun. A sleepwalker trying to thread a needle.

  One move and he’d get
to it before me.

  I reached, knowing I was dead. Hating the defeat in my mouth. I reached, waiting for him to get it before me. Waiting for the silencer-muffled puncture of the final shot.

  Behind us, Cyndra shrieked.

  Michael pitched forward beside me as she tackled his legs.

  He kicked at her, stomping, leveraging off her toward the gun.

  My fingers brushed Janie’s arm as she grabbed Michael’s wrist and pulled it away from the gun. Screaming as his fingers tore at her.

  I seized the gun. Brought it down to his eyes.

  Fired.

  The bullet slammed into the bridge of his nose, drill-pulping metal and bone into his brain.

  Michael lay there, staring up at me. The muscle tension in his straining neck let go.

  The gun in my hand felt different. The pads of my fingers thickened somehow, desensitized. Like Halloween-creature fingertips had been glued on. The layer between me and the bullet in his head.

  I collapsed on the floor, feeling the gun fall out of my hand.

  Janie fumbled for it, threw it across the room toward the front door. She sobbed and pushed her fingers into my hair as I lay struggling for air.

  “Hold on.” She rocked slightly, fingers rolling over a lock of my hair. “Just hold on. Just hold on.”

  A new mantra for me.

  The sirens stopped in front of the unit.

  Cyndra knelt, wiping blood from her mouth. She crawled toward the front door.

  “Hold on.” Janie’s tears fell on my face. Her hands in my hair shook.

  “Help! Help us! We’re unarmed!” Cyndra called outside.

  Police screamed to each other.

  The air grew cold and thick, harder to take in the little sips I was getting. Cyndra lay on the floor. Screaming police told everyone to get down. Janie tented her body over mine until an officer ordered her away. They cleared the room, aiming two-handed as they checked the corners for danger. They picked up Michael’s gun, and then an officer knelt at my side.

  My lungs struggled, my throat clamping like a weak straw under too much suction. I couldn’t make myself breathe slower.

  Phased out. Came back to urgent voices and pressure on my chest.

  My fist connected with someone. Hands grabbed my arms, pushed me down. Restraints fastened around my wrists. My dislocated shoulder ground against the backboard. I tried to yell. Nothing came out.

  “It’s his larynx. We need to intubate.”

  A piece of curved metal pressed into my mouth and down my throat. The EMT pulled the metal out, leaving a tube jammed down my throat and hanging out my mouth.

  Nausea pinpricks bloomed in my cheeks, my heart shuddering like it was submerged in freezing water.

  Another EMT attached an air bag and started squeezing.

  Tears slid out my eyes and ran into my hair. The forced air filled my lungs, left, pushed in again.

  My trapped hand grasped the shirt of the EMT. He glanced down at me. His small, round-frame glasses reflected the sunlight from the window.

  “It’s okay.” His voice was calm and deep. “I’ve got you.” He squeezed the air bag again. “I’ve got you.”

  I couldn’t let go of his shirt.

  Janie crouched by my head, gnawing her fingertips. Distant eyes, transfixed by some internal collapse.

  By the door, Cyndra hugged herself, sobbing. A cop listened to her torrent of words. A second EMT was examining her arm.

  I felt it all running away, flowing out of me into the floor, into the air. Into the spaces between. Looked down on it all, the huddled people, the white-shirted paramedics working over me.

  My fist, clenched on a shirt.

  The world swam away, pulling with confident strokes that it was on to better things without me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Time is strange. It doesn’t always help. Or heal. Sometimes it just passes.

  A stay in a hospital, doctor visits, a move to a group home and lessons with homebound teachers. Meetings with a judge, a court-ordered counselor and advocate, calls and visits from your best friend where neither of you says much. Weekly visits with your little sister. They’re just things that happen. To fill the time. That mark the passing days.

  It doesn’t do any good to fight against it. Like I did in the hospital, demanding to see Janie. Worrying about her. Her eyes sucking in the darkness. Seeing inside and hating what she found there.

  Self-hatred, a coil of knotted bone. Paralyzed, cement gathering in your core.

  And when I finally did see her, that first time after. How she edged into the hospital room, arms clamped tight across herself, like she was made of air, or like if she opened up, dark-winged birds would burst from her chest, scattering what was left of her.

  How we barely talked. Just watched it in each other’s eyes.

  The muffled explosion of the gun, the heat of the barrel, and the kick. The impact of the bullet.

  His face. Empty eyes looking up at me. Bone and blood and brain spatter. Blood glossing from the hole.

  Fingers on my throat. Trapped, struggling. Powerless.

  The images strobing behind my eyes. Cool air drying the sweat on my face, my heart dog-paddling in oil-slicked waters.

  That was in the hospital, before I learned to keep my head below the surface. Before I learned to bury myself, sinking into the nowhere blackout.

  I made myself forget. Held it down, deep inside. Built a dam to keep it there. Slept to keep it away, took the pills to help me sleep. Wouldn’t let my mind drift unsupervised.

  I pushed it all down. Held myself under, cushioned by the empty water. Insulated from the noise, from the buffeting chop. Submerged beneath it all.

  Beast and the bartender had stayed in the hospital longer than me, but both made it through.

  The bouncer had died. And the tattooed man. And Michael.

  My father.

  I let it all wash over and past me.

  Same thing in the courtroom. I sometimes saw the others on the way in: LaShonda and T-Man, Dwight, Ray-Ray, and Mike-Lite. Blaze and the waitress, who both spoke up for me. The words would flow by, and what I did or said was irrelevant.

  Clay, a constant presence. Just being there. So much meaning in that action. Not telling me I’m here. Showing me instead.

  And Janie. She’s in a foster home now, a good one, get that. Her eyes are starting to look outward. And she’s seeing a counselor, just like me. Although she thinks it’s actually helping her. “Talk to them, Jason,” she says. “Talk to them.”

  Maybe they tell her to say that.

  So much of healing is belief in the cure.

  But I don’t. So I have nothing to say.

  And if I wake up sweating, his face hovering above me, fingers squeezing my throat, or if Michael stands in the corner, watching me, blood and brain oozing from his mangled face . . .

  It’s just a moment.

  It’s just a dream.

  It doesn’t mean anything.

  And nothing will change it.

  Some things get to me, though. Stab through the cushioning waters. Make it hard to breathe. Like Cyndra’s phone calls.

  They started about a week after I got to the group home. I was handed the phone. I listened and could only hear her breath. She doesn’t talk, and neither do I. She keeps calling. Sometimes I can hear her crying. I have nothing, so I always hang up. But not before listening for a little and thinking of her.

  Not thinking. Remembering. This sudden image, vivid, the feel of her body against me and how maybe she really did care for me. And how it wasn’t enough.

  Could never be enough. Because Michael was right about her. Not that she was a user, not that she wanted power. But how she wanted saving. Maybe that’s what she saw in me. How I wanted to save her. And never could.
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  Maybe she thinks she loves me. I loved her. But none of it matters anymore.

  Just like me. Useless. Empty. And with no future. No dream revenge for another day.

  And not strong enough to reject it. Or accept anything else.

  That catches my breath, because I think of Celia in eighth grade, Cyndra, and before them, Janie, and something the counselor said. How I wanted to save them—and hide from myself. How I take responsibility to feel it as power. When what I need to do is realize what I can and cannot do.

  That I can’t just get better. That I have to “work” on myself.

  Sometimes feeling moments come, thinking about Cyndra or Janie or all the mistakes that led me here—to this group home. It isn’t a juvenile detention center, but it’s only one step off. A halfway house. And that’s right, isn’t it? That’s right. Halfway there, wherever there is, struggling to keep from either sinking or surfacing.

  Halfway under.

  After a while, Clay stopped letting me pretend that everything was okay. Started calling BS on all the ways it wasn’t. Trying to draw me out, to make something better. Shining his light into all the dark places.

  Calling me a robot.

  I told him I was on his page now. A pacifist. Calm.

  “That’s not pacifism, that’s self-annihilation,” he said. “That’s not who you are.”

  I shrugged and saw the hope slowly die in his eyes. The hope that he’d found the right combination to make the locker spring open.

  I kept it shut tight. Locked down.

  So time went, and I went with it. After another month they said everything was over. After Christmas, with a sorry little tree strewn with loose-tossed tinsel and paper ornaments. And after Danny, the special-needs kid who’s only here, let’s face it, because he’s so damn special no one will have him, sang “Jingle Bells” a million times. And we all opened our cheap-wrapped presents, and Danny laughed and laughed, hugging himself and rocking when he saw the stupid robot dog he wanted.

  After the turkey dinner and dressing on plastic plates, nicer and better than any Christmas meal I’d ever had. After me and Danny got picked up by Janie and her foster mom and went to their church for the music and candle service. All of us in this row, trying to look like we knew what to do. Danny next to me, whispering about the windows, the organ, the handbell choir, the candles with their little paper collars, and When do we light the candles, Jason? When?