by Kim Zarins
He lets out a melodramatic sigh.
Anyhow, he’s not into me. He doesn’t tell me that I look nice, and I’m sure I don’t, but here’s the thing: He says he likes my rose. It’s not a stupid corsage like everyone else is wearing. This is homegrown—a rose that smells like white peaches, no lie. I say he has to smell it—has to—and all I want is to have his face bend down and breathe in the vicinity of my heart.
Of course he won’t get anywhere near me. Not even when I lift my lapel off my chest to put some distance between his nose and my body. He starts making excuses, gets ready to back off and find his date, so I unpin the rose to hand it to him. Only, I gouge myself pretty deep, and before I know it, he has my hand tight in his, and he’s drawn my fingers to his chest. My blood is on his thumb. We look at each other for a moment, and I’m lost in his gray eyes and whatever is breaking inside them. I wonder if it will finally, finally happen. I’m praying. . . .
Then he apologizes and rushes off. Like he didn’t mean to touch me. Like it was all an accident. But it was more than that, right?
So that’s what all the windup was about: Getting an audience to take his side. Now everyone pitches in and weighs in on a situation they know nothing about. They all agree this is love. The girls are breathless with excitement, and the guys weigh in on the gay-scale.
“So what if the guy’s hurt? I wouldn’t grab his hand like that,” Bryce says.
Rooster scrunches up his face. “Yeah, the whole scene is gay. And I never thought of it, but the word ‘lapel’ is totally gay.”
Pard never mentions that the boy admired the rose only because Pard’s mom grew roses, and she’s his favorite nonparental adult. Or was, I guess. I try not to think of her too much. I mean, I ditched her son, still fragile from the death of his sister, fragile from abandonment by his dad, just all around fragile and brave and deserving. She must hate me so, so much.
“Jeff? What do you think?” Pard asks.
I blink like Marcus. Blink like I can’t believe that this is air I’m breathing right now. Pard, in front of everyone, is asking me if my grabbing his hand a week ago meant love, not just the involuntary panic that it was.
He’s looking me in the eye, asking me if I love him. If I’ve ever wanted to kiss him. As if this embarrassing farce would inspire the supposedly closeted gay guy in me to come out. And he claims not to be a theatrical person.
My war face is a mask of indifference. “Sounds like a big deal over nothing.” My heart races, but not from love. I’m just so freaked out that he could turn the spotlight on me. Over this.
Alison nudges me with her leg. “Oh, come on, Jeff. Be a writer. The story is hot with suppressed love.”
She turns to Pard and then asks, “So . . . what happened to the guy?”
Pard tilts his head. He’s enjoying this little performance at my expense. “Oh, he threw himself at another guy at the first opportunity.”
Who is he even talking about? Cannon? There’s nothing going on romantically between Cannon and me. Friends are like that. That’s why they’re called “friends.”
But knowing I won’t identify myself as the boy who grabbed his hand in an apparently romantic fashion, Pard has me silenced in the crowd. Pard’s not looking at me, but he’s letting me get a good look at the annoying as hell, Edward-the-Vampire smirk on his face.
Love him? I want to kill him.
“And that leads me to my story about friendship and heartless betrayal. Ready?”
I am so not ready. But everyone else looks hungry for a story that will be a pack of lies.
Once upon a time there were a few Southwark boys who went to a Halloween party they weren’t really invited to. The three boys were in costume, and they went by code names: the Face, the Fist, and the Bard. They were there for business and for pleasure. The pleasure came first, and they separated to find it for themselves. The pleasure was in hanging out with cool kids who couldn’t see their awkwardness and their acne, but that pleasure had a distinct ceiling to it. The masks they wore had to stay on, or they’d be back to being social pariahs.
“Sharp teeth in the quiet lakes,” Cookie pronounces solemnly.
Kai corrects him with an amused smile. “Pariah, not piranha.”
Cookie puts his head in Kai’s lap, and Briony giggles and then settles on Kai’s shoulder. She looks a lot happier sharing Kai with Cookie than she did sharing him with Alison.
At midnight they met upstairs and went as planned into a room all set up for a game of poker. This was the business part of their evening. These three guys worked for . . . we’ll call him Pistol. Pistol was not in town, but sent them in his place.
A few people snicker at the name.
Pistol, Cannon. That was obvious. Especially since Pard used to be Cannon’s star poker player freshman year. He played for money and they got into parties that I’d only dreamed of going to. Then he quit.
The other characters were easy to fill in. Clearly I was the Bard. Mace with his frightening acne and powerful build was the Fist. And Pard with his strange yet sweet looks was the Face.
It was a toxic trio that couldn’t end well, just like it didn’t in real life.
So the three guys took their seats. The card dealer wore a hooded robe. No one could see his face as he dealt out the cards, but no one was paying attention. A couple rounds went by, and Fist impatiently threw down his cards.
“This sucks. Why are we here?”
AN INTERESTING QUESTION.
Fist looked around, like he didn’t know that the voice had come from within the dealer’s deep cowl. Then the dealer opened his robes and pulled out an hourglass, nearly out of sand.
Bard wondered who this person was. “Do I know you?”
Pinpricks of electric blue light brightened within the cowl.
YOU’D REMEMBER ME IF WE’D MET.
“You’re not—
But Face interrupted. “You’re not here on Pistol’s account, are you?”
Then something weird happened.
Everyone else—poker players, onlookers, that guy who just stepped inside with a beer—all stopped moving. Like time was frozen. Face and Fist looked around and it didn’t bother them at all. If anything, they relaxed because they could talk business without any eavesdroppers.
YES. I WAS TOLD YOU YOUNG SHORT-TIMERS WERE SEEKING OUT DEATH. THAT SO?
“Uh . . . ,” Bard managed.
Finally, Face clarified. “Not death—wealth.”
HMM.
The dealer fingered something that flickered in the dim light. Something long and so thin it seemed to slip in and out of this dimension. Bard couldn’t make it out, but he sensed on a deep level that it was very, very sharp.
“Pistol said we’d get a tip-off here that would make us rich,” Face said.
Fist added in an impatient growl, “So tell us already! You have a lead for us, right?”
The dealer scratched his chin with a skeletal finger. It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard.
OH YES. A LEAD. FOR DEATH . . . OR WAS IT WEALTH? NO MATTER.
Face and the Fist laughed eagerly, or maybe they were hiding their fear. Bard shivered when the dealer’s bony fingers clacked on the table.
“Your name . . . is it Wealth, by chance?” Bard asked hopefully.
The dealer’s cowl snapped up, which permitted enough light for the boys to see a grin.
CLOSE, BOY. BUT NO BANANA.
“I get it,” Mari says. “That’s Terry Pratchett’s Death. Pard, I’m impressed. Not just because you’ve actually memorized some of Pratchett’s classic lines, but I love the voice you’re giving Death.”
“Why, thank you.” He bows in his seat and glances my way. “I’ve had good training.”
The summer before sophomore year, I read a couple Discworld books to him while he was drawing. I had to share with Pard my semi-obsessive thing for Death as a character. Gaiman has one, Milton has one. Nasty or nice, all the Deaths are awesome, but Pratchett’s Death
might be my favorite. I know he doesn’t really have a voice, but the all-caps font made me put extra energy into how I read his lines—kind of hollow, with cold finality.
Pard was the best audience. He laughed in all the right places and frankly didn’t get much drawing done, what with his cheek pillowed on his arm as he lay on his stomach to listen, or him sidled up alongside me to read along silently while I kept reading out loud. When our elbows got sore we would sit against the bed. We spent the whole summer surrounded by paper and barely moving. It was kind of brilliant.
Just hearing him play Death fills me with a dull ache.
“Who would seek out death?” Marcus asks. “It’s too implausible.”
I roll my eyes as Marcus blinks his.
“What?” Alison asks me softly. “Would you risk meeting Death?”
Yes, I would. Maybe not lowercase death, but uppercase Death, absolutely. He knows my sister better than my five-year-old self possibly could have. He’s read our lives in his books. I’d have questions for him. Where did Bee go? Was she happy? Can I talk to her—see her? I’d give any amount of wealth to know.
The skeletal dealer gave them their instructions: They would find Death under the oak tree just outside of town. They took shovels from the shed and rode their bikes to the deserted place—remote feeling, yet an easy ride.
They fanned out, dead leaves crunching under their feet. It wasn’t long before they found where the earth was loose, freshly covering the treasure chest underneath.
“Told you we’d find wealth—that dude was just trying to scare us,” Fist said, tossing his shovel aside.
Fist couldn’t lift the chest. Even when all three boys tried together, they still couldn’t lift it. The best they could do was open it.
The entire chest was filled with bars of solid gold.
Fist hooted. “We’re set for life!”
Face laughed, and he threw his arms around Bard and danced around. Then Fist broke out into song, and Face sang along, arm in arm. Sure, Pistol would take a huge share, but the fortune was so huge, it didn’t really matter.
Fist called Pistol to give an update. Pistol said he’d be over with a car, but it would take a few hours.
While they waited, Face went to town to get some beer to celebrate.
Five minutes after he was gone, Pistol called Fist again to give new orders.
“Sure thing . . . Yeah, I understand . . . Sure, here he is.”
Fist handed the phone to Bard.
“Hi, buddy,” Pistol said. “I hear you have a heap of treasure there.”
“Yeah, it’s heavier than the chests Bilbo’s pony carried.”
“What’s that?”
Bard cringed. “Nothing. Sorry.”
“I’ll get right to the point, kid. Face has turned against us. I need you and Fist to dispose of him.”
Bard’s mouth dropped open. He must have heard wrong. Must have.
“Kid? You there? Don’t take it like that. It’s just business. Look, just do what Fist says. He’ll take on most of the job himself.”
Pistol hung up. Fist tried to get his phone back, but Bard’s hand was tight around it.
“Pull yourself together—it’s no big deal.”
“But we’re friends!” Bard pleaded.
Fist shrugged. Bard shivered and time slowed down, and sped by.
“I’m back,” Face cried cheerfully at his return. His arms were full of bottles. “Tonight’s special, so I got champagne.”
While Face uncorked the bottles, one for each of them, Fist pulled Bard toward him and whispered a quick plan. Bard was trembling. Could he go through with it?
Yes, he could. Bard wasn’t a murderer, but he could help one. All he had to do was stand there with his knees knocking.
Face came up to Bard, a bottle dangling from one hand. “You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Bard just stood there looking wretched. He was the perfect distraction. Face’s smile instantly faded. His guard was completely down, and all he wanted to do was comfort his beloved friend.
Bard had the perfect view as Fist came up behind Face and shoved a knife under Face’s rib cage. He had the perfect view of Face’s expression, turning from concerned to agonized and betrayed.
Lying on the ground, bleeding into the fresh earth, Face opened his lips to mouth Bard’s name. But only blood bubbled out.
Bard threw up.
“Idiot!” Fist shouted. “Not on the treasure chest . . . oh, disgusting.”
On hands and knees, Bard dry heaved. He felt damned. He looked up miserably at Fist, but Fist’s face was illuminated in the harsh blue light of his phone. He was texting the news to Pistol. Then, for just one moment, Bard’s eyes met Fist’s, and the light of the phone went out.
“The boss says to finish the job,” he told Bard.
Before Bard realized what that meant, Fist yanked back Bard’s hair and slit his throat.
At the same time, a sharper blade cut Bard’s soul from his body.
Bard took in the sight of his body bleeding next to Face’s corpse. He trembled at the horror. Then he saw Death looming quietly beside him. Bard bobbed nervously on the doorstep of his afterlife.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Bard asked Death.
WHAT YOU IMAGINE.
“I imagine in the afterlife I’ll just do nothing. Be nothing.”
THEN THAT.
Bard looked at the blood on Face’s mouth. He didn’t kill his friend, but he’d stood by and let it happen. He coughed a laugh. “Doing nothing. Pretty much the story of my life, huh?”
FROM WHAT I READ, YES.
Oblivious to Bard’s shade and Death’s scythe, Fist slaked his thirst on the champagne.
Now that it was time to do nothing, Bard found he couldn’t just yet. He pointed at Face. “He’s gone already, isn’t he? I won’t see him again?”
Death’s terrifying silence was answer enough.
Bard persisted. He wanted just a few words, a small message from Face, to carry into the afterlife. “Did Face, um, say anything to you? Anything about me, I mean?”
Death pinned Bard with an icy stare.
HE SAID HE WASTED GOOD CHAMPAGNE ON YOU.
“Oh. Yes, I see. I wish . . . I just wish . . .”
Fist started convulsing.
AH. HOLD ON A SEC.
Bard couldn’t look away. Fist’s pimply face darkened, his hands clawed desperately at his throat, and his bloodshot eyes rolled into his head. After a sweep of Death’s scythe, Fist’s spirit rose and saw Bard.
Bard scowled. “Thanks for murdering me.”
Fist didn’t have a trace of guilt on his transparent face, still ruined with acne so severe it looked leprous. “Hey, you should be thanking me. A slit throat is much easier than poison. That was rat poison, wasn’t it?”
SQUEAK, replied the Death of Rats, who’d apparently hitched a ride with Death.
Fist glared at the robed little rat skeleton adorably bearing a mini-scythe. “Just let me get my hands on that rat—better yet, on Face.”
Fist rushed off to murder his murderer, but before he could get very far, he shrank into a blip of light that was soon extinguished. Bard realized he’d be next to disappear, and he didn’t want to.
“Sir,” Bard said, suddenly thinking of Face’s last words, or his first post-life words, depending on how you look at the situation. “Was Face also going to poison me?”
WHAT DIFFERENCE WOULD THAT HAVE MADE?
“A huge one.” Wouldn’t it? Looking at the three dead boys at his feet, Bard wasn’t sure.
Death shrugged and went to the bottle that Face dropped when he was stabbed, the one meant for Bard. Skeletal fingers picked up the bottle, still sloshing with champagne, and lifted it just inside Death’s cowl. Death’s sniff sounded like the universe being ripped in two.
Bard felt his spirit slipping away, but all he wanted was to know. He needed to know whether it made them even, or made Bard guiltier than e
ver.
“Is it? Is it?” he asked, even as he shrank and faded away, never to know.
Death watched the third spirit’s light go out like the two others. His horse, Binky, flubbed his lips in a horsey sigh. It had been no cakewalk traveling the vast distance to reap these three souls.
Death took a swig of excellent champagne (NOT BAD.) and pulled out one last hourglass. It was Pistol’s. It had quite a bit of sand left. He’d have all the treasure for himself, just like he’d wanted.
THERE’S NO JUSTICE, he told the Death of Rats. JUST US.
The end.
Pard spares me a glance.
I stare at him like the ghost I am. Doing nothing. Feeling gutted.
“Whoa,” says Mari. “Talk about going all Hamlet on your cast.”
“Yeah,” says Alison. “And I thought you were a romantic, Pard. That was just . . . brutal.”
His smile is harsh and unhappy, his eyes small and evasive.
“I thought it was pretty good,” Lupe says cheerfully. “I like bloody endings.” And she nods his way in token of peace.
Franklin adds, “Man, what do you have against Cannon? You make him out like he’s in the Mafia.”
“And poor Jeff,” Alison adds. She pats my cheek, and I feel infantilized.
“Poor Jeff,” Pard echoes with a lot less sympathy.
Even though others chime in to put in a good word for me, I can’t defend myself. Just like the story, I stand by. I let life happen until the day comes when it will be taken from me. And taken from others, too. Pard’s right about all of it.
He called me his “beloved friend”—such an old-fashioned way of putting it—and the phrase leaves me uncertain and confused.
“What about me, the fucking leper?”
“Language!” snaps Reeve, and he’s so agitated he flings his arm up, and the clipboard flies and hits the ceiling. Mr. Bailey immediately confiscates the clipboard, and the two of them have a massive argument. Based on the way Reeve screams that it’s his property, I don’t think he can live without his clipboard.
Meanwhile, Mace leans toward Pard. “What makes me a vicious murderer?”
“My hat,” Pard answers.
Mace’s nasty smile says it all. I knew their friendship ended this year. I just didn’t know how badly it ended.