by Gregory Ashe
“Kaden’s alive?”
“He’s alive. He’s in pain.” Mr. Spencer’s voice went dry. “He’ll tell you how horribly he’s hurt, I’m sure, but I burned off the vines before they could do more than give him some bad abrasions.”
He tossed the keys, and I caught them with a jangle. Getting my shoulder under Austin, I helped him sit up, and then to his feet. He rocked against me. He’d packed on all that muscle, and it made him really easy on the eyes, but it also made him a goddamn elephant. “Watch Emmett,” I said. “Somewhere else. He’s right; Lawayne’s still here, and as soon as he thinks he’s got a shot, he’ll take it. Maybe literally.”
“Sharrika’s car is here too; I’ll let you know where we take him. Yes, Sharrika, we’re doing it this way. Tonight, at least, you’ve got to go with it.”
“He’s a kid.”
Mr. Spencer just shook his head at her. “Go on. I’ll make sure Emmett—”
“No.”
Austin’s word was so cracked that I barely understood it; with his head rocking on my shoulder, he spoke into my chest, mouthing against the flannel of my shirt.
“Aus, babe, you’re hurt bad. Really bad. You need a hospital right now, and—”
Somehow, he brought up his head and met my eyes. Blood fissured the whites of his eyes; he looked like he’d just smoked the worst pot of his life. His face was still puffy from the trapped blood that was slowly draining away, and he trembled against me, his whole body vibrating like he was plugged in and set to low.
“No.”
“No? That’s crazy. You’re going to the hospital. That’s not even a question.”
He hooked my collar with one finger. His hand shook with the effort, and the movement was sloppy, uncontrolled. His nail scraped a furrow down the hollow of my throat, the lacerated skin stinging at the touch of night air. This had happened before. This was the night in my room all over again. I thought I knew what was happening, and then the sting of Austin’s nails on my chest, and he was going to say something now, something that flipped it all on its head. It made me so angry that I forgot, for a second, that Austin had pretty much died that night. It made me so angry that I wanted to push him away, let him fall, and walk. Just walk and be done with this. Done with him, his secrets, all of it. Done with feeling so absolutely shitty every time I turned around.
“No. Let Emmett go.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about? You were in there, Aus. You saw him with that gun. You saw him . . .”
But Austin was shaking his head. He was shaking all over, trembling like a leaf in a gale, but he was shaking his head harder, denying me, refusing to give me what I was asking. He beckoned for Mr. Spencer, and when Mr. Spencer came over, he pressed his mouth to Mr. Spencer and whispered something.
Secrets.
My boyfriend was keeping secrets from me. Secrets about Emmett. And that sent thoughts cascading through me. The way Austin looked when I couldn’t sleep, when he knew I couldn’t sleep, when he wanted me to sleep with his arm over my chest and I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, and I opened my eyes and he was still awake, waiting for me to sleep, his eyes telling me how tired he was of all my bullshit. And Gage, all the running around behind my back with that boy, that piece of theater trash that Gage had hooked up with. And the way Austin’s toes had dug into the dirt, how his back arched, as I watched him die and couldn’t help him.
The blade at the back of my head spun faster. A table saw blade was a blade that could cut through anything. Just press down, lightly, and a thousand micro-serrations would meet wood or flesh or bone. It would be spinning so fast that the cuts would be perfect and clean. For an instant, at the very moment of laceration, the cuts would even be dry, and my heart started beating faster, and my mouth went cottony. Dry at first, the flesh ripped away, the bone ground to dust, and then the blood would come. It would well up, the first drops coming slowly, redly, glistening and spreading and capping the stump. I worked my tongue in my mouth, trying to keep my anger, trying to keep my rage, trying to keep my pain. Anger and rage and pain broke under my fingertips like branches on a dead tree. Anger and rage and pain couldn’t help me. They couldn’t fill that black hole in my heart.
The blade was sharper and cleaner and so, so much easier. Because the blade, with its shining steel, was control. I could cut away everything I didn’t like. I couldn’t cut away a black hole; that was laughable. Impossible. But I could cut away everything around it. I could cut away everything until I got to the place where nothing hurt anymore. Ever again.
The other side.
The thought came with such clarity and force that for a moment, I didn’t notice that Mr. Spencer was pulling Austin’s arm across his shoulder, shifting his weight away from me.
“Hold on.”
But Mr. Spencer turned his body into my path, blocking me, and he helped Austin take a step away from me.
The saw, white water, the moon so bright I couldn’t see anything else.
“Hey, hold the fuck on.”
“We’re just going to talk.” Mr. Spencer spoke like they were deciding which fly to tie on their lines, like they were trying to pick a spot up the river. Guy talk. Nothing but ordinary guy talk. But copper sparked and swirled in his hair. “Go wait with Kaden. Emmett and Austin and I are going to talk.”
I knew what they were going to say. I could write the script for their little meeting myself. Inside me, the saw was spinning faster. They were going to talk about how I’d wrecked everything. They were going to talk about how I couldn’t keep anyone safe. The moon was rising inside me now, so bright, so sharp, turning so fast. They were going to talk about how I was nothing but a worthless piece of shit, no good for anything if I couldn’t keep them safe. They were going to laugh about it. Laugh about me, about all the times they put up with me, about all the times they’d seen me cry, about the scars on my back. They’d probably count them up. Austin could help them. They’d count them, and they’d laugh, and the moon was so bright inside my head, so huge that my skull was going to crack open and spill everything out. I knew none of it was true; I knew they’d never say any of that about me. But at the same time, in some weird way, I didn’t know it, and the words were real, right on the edge of hearing, and the moon in my head was rotating so fast that it was music, it was the last sound, the sound when everything else would end—
“You’re going to talk to that fucking traitor.” I took a step forward. Then another. “You’re going to listen to him.”
“Austin—”
“Austin just about died. He needs to be in an ER. Right now. Whatever he thinks he knows, he’s out of his damn head.”
Some of the embers in Mr. Spencer’s hair cooled. His forehead creased, and he darted a quick, questioning look at Austin.
“Get Emmett somewhere else. Hold him. I’ll take care of Austin, and then I’ll meet up with you, and I’ll take care of Emmett too.”
Mr. Spencer threw another look at Austin. Austin gave a weary shake of his head.
“Just wait with Kaden, Vie. You need a few minutes to calm down.”
Shadows hid the corners of his mouth. Were they twitching? Was he laughing at me? In his voice, the tone, those words. He might as well have said, You’re a fucking lunatic. He might as well have said, You’re one hysterical son of a bitch.
“Calm down.”
“Oh boy.”
“You think I should calm down.”
“Yeah. I think that’s exactly what you need right now.”
I spun on my heel. My ankles, bruised and swollen from being lassoed by Krystal’s vines, throbbed in time with my pace. Asphalt and dry, dead weeds crunched underfoot. The sky looked very huge and very black, even with the clouds gone and the stars blinking back. Ozone still soured the air. When I climbed over the fallen fence, the bars chimed softly under my sneakers, and when I hit the asphalt on the other side, my heart moved up to my throat. But I kept walking.
At the garage, Emmett, Austin, Mr. Spencer, and Ms. Meehan clustered together. I stood and tried to ignore my heart hammering in my throat. Maybe the wind would carry their voices to me. Maybe I’d hear what I knew they were saying. I tried to slip into the other side, to project myself down there, but I was exhausted, and my inner eye wouldn’t open.
Movement in the house, a shadow swooping past a window, caught my attention. Lawayne, I decided. He was the only other one in the house, and he was still there. Watching. Waiting. And his phone call came back to me.
You promised me you could make him heel.
I want him on a leash.
Tomorrow.
I shivered. The spring chill raised goosebumps on my arms; with my adrenaline dying, with exhaustion rolling in, I wanted a heavier jacket. Or a blanket. And a bed. Instead, I had to stand here like a kid with his nose in the corner and watch while my boyfriend kept secrets from me. While they all kept secrets from me.
They were still talking when I started toward Mr. Spencer’s car. Out here, burnt rubber still laced the air, and skid marks tracked along the highway where Kaden had pushed the Camaro. The buffalo grass was long. Longer than it had been an hour ago when we arrived. The last, wavering tips were higher than my head, and they swallowed the horizon so that the sky was just a flat, empty pane above me. The buffalo grass hissed, and it made me think of Krystal, and I forced myself not to walk any faster. I didn’t need to walk any faster because Krystal would never hurt anyone again.
Mr. Spencer’s blue Chevy Impala was parked on the shoulder, a ring of burned weeds marking the perimeter. The ash stirred when I stepped through it, licking the sides of my sneakers, curling up against my jeans. Inside the car, the dome light caught Kaden in a golden bubble. When he saw me, he flinched, and the Impala vibrated like a strummed chord. Then he must have recognized me because he grinned, that 100% sunshine, bullshit grin that he always wore, and the Impala went quiet. A long abrasion marked one side of his face, and the grin tugged at it, but Kaden otherwise looked all right. He practically tumbled out of the car to get to me. On the passenger seat was my backpack.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Vie. Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Where’s Austin?”
“Back there. With Emmett.”
And why in the fuck had I said it like that?
Kaden’s eyes grew huge. “Did you see that, man? Did you see that girl? With the plants?”
“Did I see her?”
“I almost shit myself. Honest to God, I almost did. And then I thought about you guys down there, and I got mad, Vie. I did. I threw a car. I threw my car.” The last words got higher and higher, helium-pitched, with his lingering shock. “It exploded.”
“Yeah. That was awesome. Hey, Kaden, Mr. Spencer needs you down at the house.”
“The Camaro, oh Christ. I threw a motherf-ing Camaro. My car, man. My parents are going to kill me.”
“Only if they know you did it. If that’s the case, I think your parents are going to be more worried that you can psychically move metal, Kaden. The car’s probably going to be second. They need you down at the house.” An idea flashed. “Austin wants you to help with something.”
“Shit, yeah. He’s all right, yeah? I mean, it was bad. The fence. Those creepy snake vines. He wants me to go down there? Yeah, I’ll go.” But he stayed. And I noticed that half of one of the cardigan’s sleeves was gone, along with half of the bumper sticker, which now read only Free Love. And it made me think about how Austin looked at him, how Austin would look at that fucking sticker, and that made me think about how the cartilage in Kaden’s nose would crumple under my knuckles. I pictured it in slow motion. “Hey,” Kaden said. “What about you?”
I shook off the very pretty picture. “What?”
“Austin was hurt pretty bad. Why are you up here?”
Another flash. Like lightning. And this one burned like lightning, too. It hit so hard, so true, that it burned me out of my fucking socks. “He was worried about me. Lawayne’s still in the house, and Austin wanted me away from that son of a bitch.”
It must have only been an instant, but it felt like Kaden looked at me for a lot longer, like he could hear the lie, could hear the truth underneath it, and like he felt sorry for me.
“Yeah, man. Right. I’ll get down there. If that piece of shit has a gun, he’s going to wish he had plastic bullets.”
“Don’t give him any ideas.”
With a jaunty thumbs-up, Kaden jogged up the highway. I waited until I heard his steps turn onto the asphalt drive, and then I started Mr. Spencer’s car and drove away.
DRIVING THROUGH THE EMPTINESS of Wyoming, at night, with the stars muted to the color of dead cinders, wasn’t the exact same as driving through a black hole. Not exactly. But black holes were on my mind. There was one of them inside me, gobbling up every spark of happiness that came my way. And when you were fucked up like that, seriously fucked up like that, everything looked different. A guy with a hammer sees a hell of a lot of nails. I saw a lot of black holes, and I was in one right then, space and matter and time compressed around me into the white dot of headlights that traced a path ahead. Once, a tumbleweed spun through the light, its skeletal branches throwing a huge shadow across my face. And then it was gone. Just me. The hum of the tires. Darkness compacting around me, crushing me, until my chest threatened to cave in.
They were safer without me. That was a fact. Their lives were easier without me. That was a fact. They were happier without me. My eyes stung so badly that I couldn’t even see the ghost-patch of road ahead of me. I hammered on the wheel with the heel of my hand.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
I drove the rest of the way in silence, trying to hold the wheel steady.
On 97, the state highway that ran north through Vehpese, an ocean of broken asphalt reflected the blink-blink-blink of fluorescents spelling out a single word: Slippers. The strip club occupied one end of the lot, a sprawling concrete structure with blacked-out glass doors at the front. At the other end stood a row of apartments. Between, rusted out Fords and Chevys and a few foreign models—shunted off to one side, their drivers obviously ashamed to be driving them—filled the lot. A pair of guys in Wranglers and puffy down jackets stood near the turn-in, while a third man peed into a drainage ditch. I turned hard, cutting close to the men. The two in Wranglers swore at me; the third guy toppled face-first into the ditch.
At the end of the apartments, I swung Mr. Spencer’s car into a space and killed the engine. The headlights picked out the plate on the car ahead of me. Magnified by the bumper, the light was suddenly too bright, and I closed my eyes and fumbled on the side of the steering column until they were off.
I kept my eyes closed. This was it: a black hole. Not the center of it, not yet, but I was already in the funnel. I couldn’t believe I was back here. I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten away—I’d escaped by some miracle, by Sara’s intervention, by the grace of God. And now I was back. I had one thing to take care of, one final thing, and then I’d leave. I’d take Mr. Spencer’s car until I had to abandon it; he’d get it back after a few days. I’d hitch. I’d go anywhere.
Shouldering open the door, I stepped out into the April night. It was colder here than it had been near Emmett’s house; I didn’t know if that was too much imagination or if it was just the reality of micro-weather patterns. Above the asphalt the night air stirred eddies of mist, tumbling the clouds into the oversized tires on the F-150s around me, and then
the mist would dissolve until another drift of air carried more across the lot. The air smelled wet: the smell of water meeting dust, of water splashing into oil, of water tracking through rust.
When I turned toward the apartments, the wind snapped tight a line of distant barbed wire. I had stood there, at the beginning of autumn, and leaned against the wire until my weight drove the barbs into the tender flesh of my belly. I had stood there and run the wheel on a lighter and held the flame against my arm. My finger found that spot now, blindly stroking the shiny length of scar. Why had I stayed? Why had I cut myself, burned myself, walked myself all the way to the bridge over the Bighorn River and jumped? Why hadn’t I just left?
I started walking. My sneakers squeaked on the wet asphalt, and when I splashed through a puddle, the smell of motor oil came up stronger than ever. Rainbows rippled across the pooled water in the fluorescent glow. Why hadn’t I left? Because there was something fundamentally, unfixably fucked up inside me: the fact that I couldn’t be happy, hadn’t managed to be happy, even when everything was going right for me. Call it psychosis. Call it borderline personality disorder. Call it a black hole at the back of my head.
Stepping up onto the cement walk that ran in front of the apartments, I paused. I had met two little kids here. I thought they’d just needed someone to look out for them. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d just wanted to look out for me. And they were gone. Shay had asked me to find them; Shay had believed I could find them. But Austin was right: I was just a kid. I couldn’t even keep the boy I loved safe. How was I supposed to rescue two kids who had vanished?
When I reached for the doorknob on the last apartment, I froze. Lawayne’s words butterflied inside my head. On a leash. In a kennel. Tomorrow. A couple of days ago, my worst fears for tomorrow had been blowing out candles on a cake. Now, tomorrow was a cliff, and I was running right for it. Tomorrow. He wanted my dad to take care of me tomorrow.