Sight

by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

  She shrugs. “We’ve been fighting since that night you came over to babysit.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s crazy, that’s why,” Pilar says sharply.

  “Well, yeah, Pilar, all moms act crazy. It’s, like, their favorite hobby,” I say earnestly. “You can’t just stop talking to her.”

  “Why does this matter to you?” Pilar asks, almost hitting my sneaker with a cherry pit.

  “It doesn’t,” I say, stuffing a few cherries into my mouth to cover the waver in my voice. “I just … you didn’t tell me.”

  “I don’t have to tell you everything,” Pilar says, scowling at me.

  “Yes, you do!” I shout, spitting out a glob of cherries. Pilar’s scowl flicks up at the edges, and even this tiniest hint of a smile makes me smile too. “It’s totally in the best-friend rule book. You, Professor,” I say, pointing at her, “are breaking the rules.”

  As soon as I say it, I feel like the linoleum floor is going to open up and swallow me whole for being such a hypocrite.

  “You’re one to talk!” Pilar says. “I saw you and Gate on the bus, whispering in each other’s ears.”

  I shrug and force a laugh. “That’s just Cate. She thinks everything’s worth whispering in your ear.”

  “Maybe she likes how your ear smells,” MayBe says absently, watching as Thea and her mom hug. “They made up. Let’s go.”

  Pilar leans in, sniffs my ear, and then flicks it. “Smells like wax.”

  Thea cuts my hair while her mom stands behind her and murmurs directions. Three salon chairs are set up in a row on what we remember as Thea’s screened-in porch. Her dad enclosed it and installed all the salon stuff when we were in second grade. The best part about coming to Thea’s mom for a haircut is that you usually end up sitting at the kitchen table eating cookies with Thea while her mom and your mom drink tea and gab. That’s exactly where MayBe and Pilar are now, raiding the cookie cabinet.

  They come back into the salon and sit together on the swirly chair next to mine and take turns reaching over to feed Oreo cookies to me and Thea. It works fine until Thea laughs and spits Oreos into my hair.

  “Sweatshirt off, please,” Thea says. “I think I got some on your neck.”

  I take off my sweatshirt, forgetting the large Band-Aid taped across my chest under my T-shirt, until I’m leaning back in the chair, my head in the sink.

  “You get a tattoo?” Thea asks.

  “Who got a tattoo?”

  In a second I’m looking up through soapy eyes at Thea, MayBe, Pilar, and even Thea’s mom, all looking down at my chest.

  “No,” I say. “It was a … mole. I got it removed at the doctor.”

  “Gross,” Pilar says.

  “Did you keep it?” MayBe asks. “You could bury it in your yard or something.”

  “Um, no. The doctor kept it.”

  My hair, after the haircut and second wash, looks almost the same as when I came in, just a little shorter. It’s fine with me; I’m sort of attached to the porcupine look. I pay Thea with a stack of Oreos from the cookie cabinet.

  We all pile into the backseat of Thea’s mom’s car for the ride home. The rain pelts the car’s roof, and we all sing along to the radio. Thea and her mom have the same husky voice, one that disappears almost completely on the high notes, leaving just a tiny thread of sound that lets you know they’re hitting that note straight on.

  We’re little kids again—eight-year-olds on the way down the hill to the shopping mall in the flatlands. We’re all kneecaps and dirty earlobes and friendship pins and Kool-Aid breath.

  “Oh, man,” Pilar says when we get to her house. “Me first.”

  We wave to her until she gets inside.

  “Dylan’s house next,” Thea’s mom says, looking at us in the rearview mirror. “Then MayBe’s. Thea, are you coming home with me?”

  I don’t know what she decides. We get to my house without Thea answering, just looking out the window at the rain and singing softly to herself.

  That night I pull the extra blanket up from the foot of my bed. It’s not cold enough for the winter comforters yet, but the rain’s made it damp enough for two blankets.

  They still haven’t made the news announcement about the metal shavings, and I haven’t talked to the deputy since that day in her office. I wonder if maybe they were wrong, maybe the shavings aren’t a match. That’s what it seems like right now. It just seems unbelievable that it’s the Drifter who killed Tessa. That he’s come back. I feel so safe, so warm under the covers, the rain tapping against the window, my mom in the next room. How could he be back, if things feel so good?

  I fall asleep to the sound of the rain’s heavy thunk-thunk-thunk. I go back to the desert, and the thunk-thunk-thunk turns to tap-taptap. Sand against the barrel. He’s not back, I think in my dream, and I’m not afraid. If the deputy wants me to look again, I’ll look again. I’m not going to see anything new. I’m not afraid, I say aloud in my dream. I look at the barrel first. I crouch next to it. I don’t think about what’s inside. The adhesive from the peeled-off sticker is peppered with stuck sand. I run my fingers over it, the sand falls off, and I look closer. There is a corner of the sticker that wasn’t torn off. There is a stroke of blue, the edge of a circle maybe, or of a letter. I’m looking so closely that I don’t notice the footsteps until they stop right behind me. I don’t turn around, knowing if I try to, I’ll wake up. What is this? I ask, pointing to the barrel. There is no answer. It’s not you, though, right? I try to turn now, twisting hard to my right, and wake up twisting against my mattress.

  Seven

  Monday morning I sleep through most of Good Morning, Sunshine! and wake up only when my mom marches into my room and pulls the covers off me.

  “Third time’s the charm,” she says, standing at the foot of my bed. She’s already dressed. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  “What time is it?” I ask with a groan, rolling over to look at the time on my cell phone.

  “It’s late o’clock, that’s what time it is,” she says.

  “My head hurts,” I say, putting my hands over my face. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “I can see that’s true from the drool on your pillow.”

  “I fell asleep at five,” I say, rubbing my eyes.

  “Do you need to stay home?”

  “No, I’m getting up.”

  “Good. Cate’s already downstairs, eating all of your Chocolate O’s.”

  “Did you watch the news this morning?” I ask, sitting up and rubbing my face.

  “Yep, no snow yet. Be quick in the shower, okay?”

  My head, leaning against the wall of the shower, feels like it’s filled with cotton. My mouth does too, for that matter. It’s not entirely true that I fell asleep at five. That’s just when I fell asleep for good. After my dream, I spent the night slipping in and out of sleep, jerking myself awake every time I found myself in the desert.

  When I get downstairs, my mom and Gate are sitting on the couch watching TV.

  “I made you cereal!” Gate says, holding out a bowl toward me.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking it and sitting down. I can’t decide if this is weird or great, for her to be here at my house before school, eating cereal and watching dumb morning TV with my mom and me. Then I remember she doesn’t really have a mom, not one that’s around anyway, and I wonder if I’ll go to hell for not wanting to share mine.

  “Okay,” Gate says, when we’re at the bottom of the driveway, huddled together under one umbrella, waiting for the bus. “Are you ready for the daily question?”

  “Sure,” I say, yawning. “Go for it.”

  “How does it work?”

  “You’re going to have be more specific,” I say. God, I wish I could just go back to bed. I wonder if I’d have nightmares if I slept on the couch.

  “Okay, but it still counts as one question.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Does Deputy P
esquera—that’s her name, right?—does she call you when there’s a kid missing to see if you can help find them?”

  “Nope.”

  Cate looks at me.

  “Sorry, that was your answer. No more till tomorrow.”

  “Oh, come on!” We both wave to Dottie as she drives by.

  “I’m joking,” I say. “Um, okay. I actually call her. Like, with that little girl Angela, I was sitting in homeroom talking to Pilar and all of a sudden I felt this, like … splitting in my brain. Like a giant crack right between my eyes that hurt so bad I sort of stopped breathing. All I could hear was the sound of my own heart beating, and even though I could see Pilar in front of me, kicking Frank’s chair and putting a pile of green Sour Patch Kids on my notebook, I couldn’t hear her, and it felt like she couldn’t hear me or see me, like I’d become invisible. And then instead of Pilar, I was seeing …”

  I stop.

  “What? What did you see?”

  I don’t answer, hoping to see the bus come back into view.

  “Oh, come on!” Gate says, stamping her foot. “You never tell me what you saw. That’s no fair.”

  “No fair?” I ask, almost laughing in disbelief at the way she’s acting. “Cate, it’d be no fair if I told you really private details about the most horrible moment—”

  “No fair to who?” she asks stubbornly. “You already told the police.”

  “It’d be no fair to the kids who died,” I say, sad and exasperated that she doesn’t understand. “These aren’t my stories to tell. The details … they’re personal. Private. If I tell you, then it’s like gossiping.”

  Cate is quiet for a moment. “I guess I never really thought of it like that. Like gossiping.” She wrinkles her nose and whispers, her voice tight, “I don’t want to be a gossip.”

  “I know you don’t,” I say. “But some of the questions you ask …”

  When she looks at me, she looks almost desperate. She squeezes my arm. “Okay,” she says, “okay, please let’s act like it didn’t happen. Like I didn’t even ask. I’m so … I’m so embarrassed, Dylan.” She’s crying now. “I didn’t mean to ask those questions, I didn’t mean it. I’m not … I’m not a bad person.”

  “I know you’re not,” I say, the frustration still running through my voice. I take a deep breath. “I know you’re not.”

  She sniffs, and tucks her chin into her coat. She looks so small. “What was it like,” I ask, “at your old school?”

  “Well, first of all,” Cate says, her face brightening, “it was an all-girls school. We were, like, required by law to wear knee socks every day.”

  We get on the school bus and Cate spends the ride telling me about her old school. About their plaid skirts and practical jokes, the nuns who were nice and the ones who were “100 percent pure evil.” I realize then how impossible it is to stay in a bad mood around Cate. How I can’t not laugh with her when she tells a story, how she has this sort of brightness about her that makes me feel … good.

  Her answers to my questions always wind their way back to her school, and to stories about the nuns or her friends. By the end of the week, I’ve heard most of the stories at least once already, but I let her tell them again and again. There’s something lonely about it, the way she giggles at the same moment every time she tells a story, and waits a quick second for me to giggle too. I’m not really a giggler; it’s actually something Pilar and I have always prided ourselves on. We’re more of the hearty-laughter type.

  I think my mom likes her too, except that she had to tell Cate to stop coming over so early. One day she showed up before my mom had even gone out running yet, when she was sitting on the couch in her running pants and sports bra.

  I find myself happily floating through each day, watching as everyone, even Pilar, warms up more and more to Cate. We bring her over to Thea’s so Thea can cut her hair; we bring her to the Niner and we all get stomachaches from eating too many curly fries; we hang out in the village, eating candy and reading magazines in the bookstore.

  In the midst of all this, Ben seems to have been initiated into whatever the hell it is Frank and Cray, and even Thea, are up to. When Mr. Mueller said Ben had been called to the office with Frank and Cray, Ben practically let out a whoop. They think they’re so great because they somehow manage to not leave any evidence. This last time, they broke into some weekenders’ houses and peed in the fireplaces. Thea let us in on her secret world long enough to tell us she wasn’t there.

  I haven’t talked to Deputy Pesquera, and I don’t care. They haven’t announced anything about those metal shavings, and even though I’m racked by dreams of the desert every night, I spend my days pretending like none of it ever happened. I have this feeling, though, that I’m just biding my time. That the reason all of this is so much fun is that it’s all about to change.

  Our house is too quiet. Cate said she had to go home and do homework, and Pilar got in a fight with her mom on the phone during lunch and was in a crap mood for the rest of the day. She barely even said good-bye. So it’s just me, sitting on the couch, noticing how even with the TV on full volume, it does nothing to fill up the silence.

  I last until six o’clock in my empty house, and then leave my mom a message on her cell phone, and head out the door.

  I’ve been going over to Ben’s since I was old enough to go anywhere. My mom used to call his mom when I left our house, and they’d talk on the phone the full fifteen minutes till his mom saw me come out of the woods. Then they’d do the same thing on my way home.

  It’s been dark out for a couple hours already, and the warm yellow light from inside the Abbotts’ barn makes crooked squares on the wet dirt driveway.

  I heave open one of the sliding doors to get in the barn, and then close it against the damp and cold. Ben pokes his head out of the stall where he’s putting a blanket on Spike, smiles at me, and sneezes.

  “Hi,” I say to him, stopping to scratch Marge behind her ears. She thanks me by trying to eat my sweatshirt and marking her efforts with drool.

  “Hey, neighbor,” he says, sneezing again, and coming out of Spike’s stall and latching the door behind him. Ever since he was a kid, Ben has been allergic to hay. My fantasy of a roll in the hay will never be fulfilled, with him at least, without the help of a hefty antihistamine. “Long time no see. Marge missed you.”

  “I can see that,” I say, wiping the slobber from my sweatshirt onto the horse blanket hanging on Marge’s stall door. “How’re Tye and JJ?”

  “They’re lunatics. Can’t wait for it to snow. They come down to breakfast every morning in their snow pants and boots and throw tantrums when they see it’s raining again.”

  “They make you play any Fart Breath lately?”

  He laughs. “It sure hasn’t been by choice. You and your mom coming over for Thanksgiving?”

  “Yep.”

  “Good.”

  “You going to be there?”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “With Frank”

  “Frank’s a crap cook. I’ll be at home,”

  “You’re just always with him lately.”

  “Haven’t seen you around much either.”

  “I guess I’ve been busy,” I say.

  “Ah, the new friend,” he says, bumping me out of the way by opening Marge’s stall door. “How’s that all going?”

  “How do you mean?”

  He pulls Marge’s blanket off the stall door and throws it gently over her back.

  “I just mean, you and Pilar.”

  “Me and Pilar what?”

  “I dunno,” he says from under Marge, where he’s fastening the buckles on the blanket. “You guys don’t seem that close anymore.”

  “We’re close!” I say, surprised. “I still hang out with her all the time.” Or, almost all the time. More and more she’s been opting out of our after-school plans, saying she has to go home to babysit. And less and less, I realize, I’ve tried to stop her.

 
“Whatever you say.”

  “Whatever. Did you do water yet?”

  Ben shakes his head, finishing Marge’s blanket, and says without looking at me, “She’s not one of us, you know.”

  “Who, Pilar?” I ask sarcastically.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I know she’s not.” I rest my hands and chin on the stall door. “But what’s so great about being one of us, anyway? I mean, don’t you think it’s weird that the thing that makes us all such great friends is a murder that happened eleven years ago? I don’t even know if we all like each other anymore.”

  Ben doesn’t answer, just moves me again to open and close the stall door. Something about his stone face makes me turn and walk away, finding the hose coiled in a corner and turning it on.

  I drag the hose from stall to stall, cinching it to keep it from leaking as I move, careful not to let the water rush out all at once and spook the horses.

  “How’s Pesquera?” Ben asks. I look at him, letting the water run over in the bucket I’m filling.

  “Shit.” I jump back and cinch the hose. I wipe the spilled water from my jeans before I say, “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno. Cray says he saw you with her. And you’re always down at the station.”

  “I’m not—,” I start to say, but am interrupted by Ben loudly dropping large scoops of feed into the horses’ buckets.

  The barn fills with the sounds of the horses’ noisy eating.

  “Just remember who your friends are,” he says.

  “That’s a crap way to talk to me.” I turn off the hose and roll it back up.

  “You have to decide who you’re going to be in all this.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? In all what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Ben cuts the binding on a bale of hay and we each take half, dropping two sections into each stall.

  “What’s Frank got you doing?” I say, tossing a section of hay into Marge’s stall.

  “He doesn’t have me doing anything.”

  “Whatever. What are you doing, then?”

  He looks at me.

  “Jesus, Ben, I’m not a rat.”

  He keeps looking at me.