“Somebody told my mom about it at the market yes-
terday. She didn’t say who. Might’ve been Libby’s mom.
Or maybe everybody in town has heard all about it by
now.”
So that explained why his mom had been acting
strangely at the door.
I almost walked around and sat in front of him. Because
it felt weird to explain a whole big thing to his back. But
he hadn’t left much room in that corner, and I knew he
probably didn’t want me to, so I didn’t.
“Look,” I said. “It went down like this. We were hav-
ing a perfectly nice picnic. And then she said that stuff
about you. And I told her we’d been best friends since
we were three. And then she said something else. I don’t
remember exactly what. And I told her I didn’t want to
talk about it anymore. I wanted to talk about something
else. At that point I wasn’t going to break up with her.
I was just going to keep being friends with you, and she
could keep her feelings about it to herself. But then later
she went off on Mrs. Dinsmore, and wow, Connor. It was
weird. It was ugly. She said the lady was a killer. That she killed two kids. And that’s when I realized she’s just not
a very nice person. Libby, I mean. I just didn’t know it
until we talked a little. She’s just kind of awful. But she
was wrong, Connor. She was wrong.”
“About Mrs. Dinsmore? Or about me?”
“Both.”
“No,” he said. His voice sounded weirdly firm. “She
was right about me. I’m just holding you back. I release
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you from this friendship, Lucas. Go have lots of friends
and girlfriends.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I want you to.”
“No,” I said. “I’m staying right here.”
“Then you’re an idiot.”
“Well.” I paused. And sighed. “You can call me any
name you want. But I’m staying right here.”
* * *
I stayed there with him for most of the day, and I have
to say it was just numbing. I don’t know any other word
for it. We barely talked. The time crawled by. But I was
afraid to leave him alone.
Then, sometime after lunch, I began to realize the
hopelessness of my mission. I couldn’t watch him every
minute. Nobody could. Even if I stayed through dinner
and spent the night, he could do something stupid while
I was sleeping. Hell, he could excuse himself to go to the
bathroom and do something stupid before I figured out
he’d been away too long.
“I guess I’m going home,” I said. “But I’m still your
friend.”
“I can’t imagine why,” he said. “But it’s obvious I’m
not going to change your mind about that.”
I walked down the stairs slowly, wondering if I was
ever going to see him again.
When I got down to the long hallway, I saw Connor’s
mother in the dim living room. The shades were all
drawn, as usual. She was sitting in the chair Connor’s
father used to sit in. The last place I’d seen him. Her head 168
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was dropped back, just the way his had been. But no ice
pack. She just had her eyes closed.
I moved to the living room doorway and leaned
there, wondering if I dared speak to her. I thought she
didn’t know I was there. So when she spoke up, it star-
tled me.
“What is it, Lucas?”
“I just wanted you to know, ma’am … Libby Weller
did say some things about Connor that were not very
nice. But I never did. I said he was my friend, had been
since we were three. And when she kept at it, I told her
to stop talking about it. And I’m not going to be seeing
her anymore anyway.”
At first, nothing. Maybe she was waiting to see if I
was done.
“I appreciate your telling me that,” she said after a time.
“I hope you’ll keep an eye on Connor.”
“Of course I will,” she said. But with not an ounce
of life in her words.
I turned to walk away, but she had one more thing
to say. She called it down the hall after me.
“I can’t watch him every minute, though.”
It was hard for me to know how she meant that last
thought. Was she resigned to the danger of the thing?
Already terrified by the guilt she would feel? Or was she
just like me: overwhelmed by how helpless we are to
change the fate of the people we want to help?
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, because I didn’t know what else
to say.
I slipped out the door and ran home.
* * *
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Once again I woke up well before the sun.
I had an idea, but it was a weird idea. It was powerful,
but it was weird. I knew it would change things. Maybe
change them in a good way. Maybe make everything
worse.
It was either the best or the worst idea I’d ever had.
Trouble was, the more I thought about it, the more I
knew there was no way to tell which way it would fall.
Not in advance. The only way to know best from worst
was to move forward and give it a try.
Now, this next little bit is going to sound like déjà
vu, and in a way I suppose it is.
I got up. Slipped out of the house without waking
anybody. Without turning on any lights. I walked over
to Connor’s house in the dark and bounced pebbles off
the window of his front bedroom.
The neighbor’s dog barked at me.
When he came to the window and put his hands on
the glass, I felt a load of anxiety drain out of me. I wasn’t too late.
I walked around to the backyard and met him coming
out the mudroom door.
“This is getting old,” he said. Quietly.
“Come somewhere with me.”
“This time I was sleeping.”
“I’m sorry. Do this for me. Please.”
“I thought we weren’t going to do this anymore. You
said you’d stop asking me to go places with you.”
“Just this once. I promise you we won’t see any of the
other guys from school where we’re going.”
He sighed, and said nothing. And I knew I had won.
“Go get dressed,” I said.
And he did. Without any questions.
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* * *
“I just like being home,” he said as we walked down the
dark sidewalk together.
He had his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. He had
his shoulders up around his ears, like that would somehow
keep the world away.
We were headed for the woods, but he didn’t know it.
“You can’t always be home,” I said.
“Why can’t I?”
“You have to go back to school in the fall.”
He clammed up then, and stopped talking. I wasn’t
quite sure what to make of that. But it sure didn’t feel
like a good sign.
It was barely ligh
t when we hit the path I liked to use
to get into the woods. The one I figured was the most
direct route to the lady’s cabin. It was the very beginning
of civil twilight. We could see the trees just well enough
that we stood a good chance of not slamming into one.
I took a few careful steps down that uneven footing.
“Why are we going in here?” he asked.
His voice sounded too far away, so I turned around
to see why. I saw why, all right. He wasn’t following me
anymore. He was still glued to the sidewalk.
“I want to take you someplace.”
“Why?”
“Because I do.”
“That’s not really a reason,” he said.
I sighed and picked my way back to where he stood.
“Look,” I said. “I’m working really hard to be a good
friend here. And I normally don’t ask you for much. But
I’m asking you to do this one thing, and if it doesn’t work
out, I won’t ask you to do anything else ever again.”
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Then we just stood there in silence for a moment,
unable to see the expressions on each other’s faces. I was
wondering why I’d given away the store for this idea,
promising him it was the last time I’d ever try to do
something to help him. Especially since it could’ve turned
out to be the worst idea I’d ever had.
“Whatever,” he said.
And he took a step on the dark and uneven path.
* * *
The sun was not yet up when we got to Zoe Dinsmore’s
cabin, but it was pretty light.
The dogs came spilling out of their doghouse to
greet us.
“Holy crap!” Connor breathed. He grabbed a handful
of my sleeve. “They’re so big!”
“They won’t hurt you,” I said. Then, to the dogs,
“Rembrandt. Vermeer. Come meet my friend.”
They wiggled over with tails swinging, and Connor
petted their heads. I could tell he was still a little bit intimidated by them. But it’s hard not to pet a dog who’s
looking up into your face and wagging.
“Is this who you wanted me to meet?” Connor asked.
He sounded hopeful. Like maybe he could be done now.
Maybe he could just go home.
“No.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s too bad.”
We walked up onto the porch and I rapped on the door.
“Mrs. Dinsmore? Are you dressed yet?”
No answer. For one horrible moment I thought I
might’ve brought Connor out here to witness the aftermath
of the suicide of the lady I was hoping could help him.
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Then the door swung open.
She looked at Connor. Then at me. She was wearing
her overalls on top of a solid-gray flannel shirt. Her feet
were bare and her hair had been freshly braided.
“And who do we have here?” she asked, indicating
Connor with a flip of her head.
“This is my friend Connor. He’s the one I was telling
you about.”
“I see.” A pause. A sigh. “Well, you two boys come in.”
But the minute we stepped inside, she grabbed me by
the shoulder and steered me back out the door.
“A private word with you outside,” she said. Then,
to Connor, “Make yourself at home, son. We’ll be back
in just a few.”
She pulled the door closed behind us, and we stood
on the porch together. The sun was just coming up over
the rise, between the trees. It burned into my eyes when
I tried to look at her.
I had the definite sense that I was in trouble.
“You mind telling me what exactly I’m supposed to
do with him?”
“Um,” I said. Not a great start. “I was hoping you
might … help him.”
“Help him how?”
“I’m not sure. But you always help me. And I don’t
know how you do that. You just do, somehow.”
I watched her eyes narrow. I had to squint to see it,
because of the way the rising sun was shining into my own.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re worried
your friend doesn’t want to live anymore. So you bring
him to talk to the one person in the world you know
for sure doesn’t want to. Is there a logic in here that I’m missing?”
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.” I dug deep. If there
was ever a time to dig deep, if there had ever been such
a time in my life, this was it. “I think … sometimes I’ll
think bad things about myself. Like I’ll think I’m stupid
or I can’t do anything right. But if Connor told me he
was stupid and couldn’t do anything right, I’d stand up
for him. Sometimes it’s easy to want something for some-
body else, even if it’s more than you want for yourself.”
“Interesting,” she said.
I hoped she would go on to say more. She didn’t.
“Do you think I’m right?”
“Kid, I have no idea.”
“It’s dicey,” I said. “I’ll grant you that. All morning I
was lying in bed thinking of that room with nothing but
mirrors inside. Remember that? It was in that traveling art
exhibit that we all went to see when it stopped in Blaine.”
“I didn’t go to see it,” she said.
“Oh.”
I should’ve known. She wouldn’t have wanted to mix
with all those locals. Also, now my point was lost. I knew
I could never put it into words.
“I know what happens, though,” she said, “when
you have a mirror on both sides of you. It reflects out to
infinity.”
“Right!” I said. “That! I was lying in bed worrying
that if you met Connor, his troubles and your troubles
would reflect out like that. Multiply. Off into infinity,
like you said.”
She screwed her face up into a cartoon of criticism.
“So then you got up and brought him here.”
“Yeah. Sounds weird, I know. But I was still hoping
for that first thing, where you want him to stay even if
you don’t want to stay yourself. I knew it was either the
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best or the worst idea I’d ever had. And I tried and tried
to figure out which it was. But I couldn’t. There was just
no way to know.”
“Big chance to take,” she said.
“Yeah. I know. But I was out of ideas.”
We stood that way for what felt like the longest time. I
figured she was thinking. I didn’t want to move or speak,
because I didn’t want to interrupt her thinking. In case
it was about to come down in my favor.
“I think you’re crazy,” she said. “And I think I’m
crazy to let you talk me into having any part of it. But
go on ahead and take your run and leave him here. I’ll
see if he wants to talk.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I really appreciate this. I owe you
one for it.”
“You don’t owe me crap,” she said. “And vice versa.”
Then, just as I was stepping down off her porch, s
he
said one more thing to me.
“Hey. Lucas. Sorry I cost you that girlfriend.”
I stopped. Turned back. The dogs were disappointed,
I could tell. But they waited.
“You didn’t,” I said. “She just turned out to be … not
who I was thinking she was.”
“Yeah,” she said. She had her arms crossed over her
chest. “Relationships are like that. You have to hang back
for a time. See what you’ve got and what you’re getting
yourself into.”
I nodded, and began my run.
What she had just said about relationships—I chalked
that up as one more thing I couldn’t possibly have known
if I hadn’t had Zoe Dinsmore to tell it to me.
* * *
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
When I picked Connor up again, it was full-on light.
Hot, almost.
I’d purposely taken a very long run.
He marched out of the cabin in perfect silence, his
eyes trained down to the porch boards. Like his mother.
I looked past him to the lady and mouthed the words
“Thank you” without making a sound.
We walked through the woods toward town together,
my best friend Connor and me. Or I guess it should be
“Connor and I.”
We walked a quarter mile or so without any words
spoken. I was beginning to think bad thoughts based on
the silence.
“What did you think of her?” I asked when I couldn’t
stand it anymore.
I wanted to ask what they’d talked about. But I knew
it wasn’t any of my business. It hurt to know that, but it
was still the damned truth.
“It was interesting,” he said.
Then he acted like he planned not to say another word.
“Good interesting?”
“Not sure.”
We walked in silence until we could see town stretched
out below. Connor stopped, as though taking in the view.
So I stopped, too.
“We don’t talk like that in my family,” Connor said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know how to say it. It’s like, at my house, the
more it matters, the more we don’t talk about it. That
lady, she’ll say anything. She’ll talk about anything. The
hardest thing in the world, she just spits it right out. It
was kind of…”
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I waited. For an uncomfortable length of time. To
find out what it “kind of ” was.
“…upsetting,” he said at last.
I started to say I was sorry. But I never got that far. He
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