by Phoebe North
Um, is my answer, um.
I hate you, he says, I hate you.
which my dad takes as a Yes. he gets down on his knees and closes his eyes and is murmuring to himself and i’m watching and my eyes look like an Emoji of Shock because last I heard dad was what he called an Easter Atheist but there he is, hands clenched and praying, and i can’t help but wonder what else i’ve missed if this has happened and my dad has become a quote unquote Man of Faith because he always kind of laughed at mom and her jewstuff you don’t even believe in that, shira and she’d say whatever marc I’m culturally Jewish
I don’t fight back. Even if I could, I wouldn’t. I have seen time stretch out like a ribbon, how every turn and tangle could lead me only here.
now dad is on his knees Swaying and Whispering and i remember the time i went to Neal’s church and the time i read a book on Buddhism and i asked Vidya to take me to her grandparents’ temple but she told me that would be weird because she’d never even gone before and i remember wondering what i believed in and all the prayers i said when i was waiting for Him to come home from work in that locked apartment in the first days weeks months year before He said i could be trusted with a Key and i remember how i just stopped thinking about All of That about Anything because it hurt too much to think
He’ll exhaust himself soon. I’m sure of it. I know, because I’ve been him, too.
the doctor comes in, interrupting dad’s prayer, and he stands and Dusts off his Knees and shakes her hand and then she looks at me, mouth pressed together like she feels sorry for me and then they start the exam and i don’t want to talk about What Happens After That
The weight of his boots grows heavier. He collapses, his thin, clothed body over my emaciated, naked body. He’s still holding the knife between his hands. I see then that he hasn’t used it yet. I reach out my tired hand and touch my hand to his. I feel the knife.
we wait and dad is telling me about his lawyer who is a Really Great Guy and the doctor comes and goes and comes again and we wait some more and then the curtain parts and there is mom a Rush of Sandalwood in the Air and her hair has gray at the roots now and i don’t remember so many crow’s-feet but it doesn’t matter You’re fucking here, she says, and she clutches me to her, crying all over the place, and i’m only wearing a Thin Paper Robe and even as she holds me i hold the paper closed over my body like it Hides Something only Everyone Knows even my mother but she doesn’t care because she holds me and holds me, Here you fucking are
Fucking do it already, he says, but my hand isn’t moving and his hand isn’t moving because I realize now that this is the Veil, the black place inside you that forms a hard line. It is the thing you never could do, that you never were going to do, anyway.
almost as soon as she pulls away from me the Fighting Begins
I called Don Muselmaan
What? I don’t want him talking to that leech
The police want to question him tomorrow. Don said—
I don’t care what Don said. He’s my son, too!
like there was ever any question but i’d forgotten about this, the Charge in the Air when they’re together and fighting, like they were Dead the rest of the time and this was their way of Loving One Another and i’m almost glad to hear it but it also makes my breath catch at the base of my throat because i’d forgotten i’d forgotten i’d forgotten everything about how awful this feels and my hands are shaking, i pull on my jeans, the boxers still tied up inside them
I haven’t killed him. He hasn’t killed me. He falls back against the leaves, crying like a baby, and I’m crying, too, but quieter, the tears streaming down my face. Soon I will wake in the ocean. Soon I will wake in the mermaids’ lagoon. Soon I will wake in a pirate’s lair, the ropes splintering my wrists. Soon I will wake in a tower alone and find mine hare beside me, dead. There is no magic here. Only two stupid boys on the same pointless quest.
i need to get some air, i tell them, and they stare at me in shock maybe it’s because i didn’t stop to ask for permission because I’m not fourteen anymore because i have spent two years now coming and going and never asking because i didn’t have to ask because He knew i would always circle back to him again, a Dog on a Rusted Chain
I’ve made a fool of myself. Or he’s made a fool of me. Maybe we’ve been fools, both, all along.
But I just got here, mom says but dad shakes his head Let him, he tells her at the same time i say i’ll be right back
neither of them says anything as i walk out into the aisle of identical curtained rooms my paper gown tucked inside my pants like a shirt and my feet bare it’s november but i think here the air conditioner is always running and it smells like Death i know because I have lived in a place that smelled like Death for two years but still i’m wondering, can i really go home to this? to them? fighting about me like i’m not even there and then slamming their bedroom door to make up to one another like we kids don’t even know what’s going on we’ll just turn the volume up on the TV and ignore it
I know from the way that he sobs that he’s still disgusted by me. And in truth? My hand on my knife, still, I’m disgusted by him, too.
maybe i can go live with gram and poppy if they’re not dead yet, I go past the nurses’ station, nodding to the people who have seen the Inside of my Body like it’s No Big Deal, anything can be normal if you act like it is even if the breath is still shallow in my chest and my hands cold and shaking shaking
There’s nothing to do. No one to kill. Nowhere to go. No Veil to pierce. And I think I’ll never be gone from this place, looking up into the empty steel sky.
i walk out into a hall and i don’t know what i’m looking for, Fresh Air, or maybe Light, and at the end of the hall is a vending machine and i realize it’s been like twelve hours since i last ate aside from that Bad Tea, some pop-tarts before i puked them all up and my stomach is snarling at me and i walk toward it, fishing through my pocket for some change, counting it out, a rubber-banded roll of clean bills and some quarters, nineteen dollars, seventy-five cents and i can get some cheetos and a vitaminwater and maybe some nuts or something and i’m glad i have His money and don’t have to ask dad for the money because he’d probably tell me to get Something Reasonable like some crackers and a water but i want to Eat, i could Eat the Whole World right now only there is a redheaded woman standing at the machine in front of me, not facing me, and she’s taking her fucking time, like she’s trying to crack the rosetta stone of it, finally tapping out the numbers with her fingers and she’s getting cheetos and a vitaminwater and i guess she’s more of a girl, really, in some jeans and an old leather jacket, her hair kind of scraggly and Bright Red and when she turns around, her food clutched to her chest it doesn’t even take me a minute to realize those are my eyes she’s looking at me through, that white line of teeth, unapologetic and unapologetically hers
But then but then but then the sky is pierced by a blade, scalloped edges glinting in the sunlight, and the trees fall away in ribbons and the world seems to wilt and there is darkness behind it, like someone has torn a hole out of reality itself and the tears are gone and the boy trembling beside me in the earth is gone and the knife is gone and from the dark gaping maw climbs a half-grown woman, flame-haired, slouching beneath a leather jacket, and she holds a knife in her hand, not my knife—her knife—and every cell in my body cries sister and she dusts the mud off her jeans, an apology in her eyes as she reaches out a hand for me.
Jamie? she says, and i stand there, not moving, not moving out of her way, shaking and shaking and shaking
Jamie? she says, and I stand there, not moving, not moving a single slender inch, shaking and shaking and shaking,
Annie, I say.
Annie, I say.
IV
29
THE VILLAGE BELOW WAS BLANKETED in a crust of early winter snow. Every chimney breathed mouthfuls of smoke into a firmament of endless gray. The boy on the mountain, whose name was James, imagined the lives in the hou
ses, warm and sweet and easy. There would be bakers and coopers and candlestick makers, greengrocers donning their aprons for their long days of work. He had never looked at them with the dread or contempt his sister had, and now whatever quaint fascination he’d once felt had only intensified. It was as if there were a magnet inside him, drawing him closer. If only he could be one of them. If only he could be ordinary.
And then, crouching naked in the snow, James thought: Why not?
If there was to be a blood tithe, if there was to be a sacrifice, he had already paid it a thousandfold. He had spilled his blood and had it spilled for him, in a ship and in a roundhouse and in a castle, in a pickup truck and in a clean basement apartment, in his mother’s bathroom and in a hospital room, too. He had seen himself ritualistically arranged, laid bare for all to see. He had given himself. And what had he gotten in return?
A fantasy. And only that.
James, who was now nearly a man, started down the cliffside, his feet burning in the snow. He had been called once, and maybe in another lifetime, in another world, he would have answered it, rising against black magic again and again and again. But for now he turned his back on Gumlea, on magic, on all of it. He went to the bottom of the mountain. He closed his book.
Jamie was back. It should have been magical. I’d been the faithful one, keeping home and hearth warm and waiting for him. I’d been Penelope at her loom, unraveling my day’s work over and over again. I’d believed, even when no one else had, even when the whole world had told me, Let him go. He’s dead. Our reunion should have been a revelation, proof of a higher power—that a million forces coalesced upon the two of us in something resembling what ordinary people called “fate.”
Instead, my brother returned, and in doing so he destroyed all magic in his wake.
Jamie had never been to Gumlea. It was just like my therapist had said: the kingdom was nothing more than an escapist creation meant to comfort myself in a time of turmoil, a story I would have certainly outgrown naturally had my brother never disappeared. There was no Annit. No Ijah. There were no pirates. No kings. There were no mermaids or dragon towers or phoenixes rising from the ashes, their bright plumage covered in flames. Now the fantasy had been poufed in favor of a new, ugly reality.
Kidnapped. My brother had been kidnapped. And kept in a first-story apartment, a place without curtains in the windows and, after the first year, a place where the door was rarely kept locked.
After he returned, I tried to ask what had happened to him only once. His first weekend home, we found ourselves standing in the kitchen together late at night. I couldn’t sleep, and apparently, neither could he. As he riffled through the refrigerator, I gathered my courage. Maybe it would be a kindness, to let him know he could trust me. To remind him that I was there.
“Um, Jamie,” I said, and then amended my sentence: “James.”
He stood up, holding a carton of strawberries in hand.
“Yeah?” he said, a little harder than I thought he might. “What?”
I flinched. “Well,” I told him. “I just want to say, if you ever want to talk, I’m h—”
My brother sighed. He looked down at the strawberries like they were very important, and very interesting.
“I know you’re here, Annie,” he said. “But I don’t think you want to hear about it. Okay?”
I nodded a little, nervously.
“Okay,” I told him, and watched as he opened the carton of strawberries.
“These are gross,” he said. “Doesn’t Mom ever clean out the fridge? I guess some things never change.”
He chucked them into the garbage and walked off, without another word.
The thing is, Jamie was right. I didn’t want to hear his story. Not in his own words. Not in his own voice. It was too horrible. It hurt too much. It was bad enough that I’d buried him once, that I’d lost him the way I had. But now, in the wake of his return, I’d lost Gumlea, too. I felt foolish, in the aftermath, that I’d ever believed that he’d gone to the Island of Feral Children. I’d been childish and naive, like a kid who believes in Santa Claus well into middle school. I told myself that it made sense at the time. For some reason. I tried, as my therapist encouraged me, to be kind to myself. But hearing Jamie tell me—in his own words—what had happened to him would mean admitting exactly how wrong I’d been. So I never asked about it again, and the silence between us became a widening chasm.
The funny thing is that I didn’t have to ask, because the human mind is remarkably good at assembling a whole story from a few scattered pieces. I learned this lesson from my brother, and it’s something I’ve carried with me since. You don’t ever have to give someone your entire life story. A few words will suffice, and your audience will fill in the rest.
My brother would never return to school—his therapist said that the setting was too triggering for him. The school district would send tutors, retired teachers who left stacks of worksheets on the coffee table with the expectation that most would go undone. But even though Jamie got respite from high school, I didn’t. I saw the soft, concerned looks on the teachers’ faces, heard the whispers that continued to rush around me, unabated, everywhere I went.
Pedo. Captive. Stockholm syndrome. Creeper. Fag.
I put together the story myself from the things that were said and also from the things that weren’t. I knew how bad it was from the way that Gram and Poppy looked at Jamie, like he might crumble to dust at any moment, from the way that even the supermarket cashiers regarded him, as if to say, I remember you from the news. I began to tuck away names, turns of phrase, images I saw on the internet that I’d never wanted to see. I didn’t need to read a long-form article about my brother to learn the ugly truth, and I definitely didn’t ask Jamie where had had been for two G-d damned years. I didn’t have to.
I knew.
His name was Kevin Rapp-Palmer. He was thirty-two when he first met my brother in Neal Harriman’s basement. He was a friend of a friend. A friend of Neal’s older brother’s drug dealer, actually, kind of quiet and well dressed for a guy who worked in the appliance section of Best Buy, and innocuous, though he’d never dated anyone and everyone thought it was weird and nobody held back in telling him so. He was from western Pennsylvania and moving back that way soon, and when they all got stoned that first night, Kevin talked about Nietzsche and my brother sat on the sofa next to him, thirteen and quietly impressed. He had never met a grown-up who cared about philosophy before, not really. Our mother said she did but didn’t really have the mind for it, not like my brother. Before he left, Kevin gave Jamie his phone number. I can imagine how Calvin Harriman would have made a joke that maybe Kevin was going to take my brother out on a date, and can imagine that Neal would have slugged Calvin in the arm for that. I see these things sharply, as though they happened, though I never asked Jamie if what I imagined was true.
I think they must have texted one another over the months that followed, through eighth grade and Kevin’s work transfer. I think Jamie must have told him about Vidya, about falling in love, about Dad and the drum kit Dad hadn’t let him buy and the band he desperately wanted to start with his new girlfriend and his best friend. I think Kevin must have made him promises. Late at night, my brother’s phone buzzing on the nightstand. I think Kevin must have told him he knew some guy who could sell him some drums, and he’d help my brother. I think Jamie must have been grateful.
I can almost imagine the way admiration and gratitude shone in my brother’s eyes the day he skipped class and climbed into Kevin’s truck, his backpack slung over one shoulder, not suspecting a thing as they drove onto the thruway. After an hour or so, Kevin offered him a soda. My brother drank. My brother started to feel woozy. The kids at school whispered about how he’d been tied up and I knew that Kevin must have pulled over on a side street while my brother slept and bound him with climbing rope and then, a few miles later, abandoned my brother’s backpack in a rest stop after plunging his phone into a toilet.
Six months of terror. That’s what I heard it called on the news before I could rush to change the channel. And it must have begun with this: waking up in the bed of a pickup truck, unable to move and half unable to breathe, the wind rushing over his body as Kevin drove and drove and drove.
My brother was hardly allowed to sleep in the early days. Kevin would wake him up in the middle of the night, after one hour or two hours or twenty minutes or ten minutes of sleep. He touched him. Took pictures of him. Told him he loved him and that if he ever tried to escape, our dad would see those photographs and know what kind of boy my brother truly was. There was manipulation and fear, and Jamie at the center of it. He was a boy at first, but then he got taller, strong. Still, he was scared. He didn’t want my dad to know, or Elijah, or Mom. And even though he suspected he couldn’t hide a thing from me, he didn’t want me to know, either.
I knew that my brother could have left. Not at first, but later. He could roam the neighborhood most days, once Kevin was convinced that Jamie was good and obedient and would not call the police. And Jamie didn’t run, to the police or anyone else. My brother stayed. They told people they were a father and son, or cousins, or friends. And if anyone they met suspected the truth, those people must have pushed it out of their minds. Kevin Rapp-Palmer was a good guy. He was fastidious, and he talked about books and film and video games and had a kind face even if he looked at you too intently when you spoke. He was a little creepy, maybe.
But harmless.