by John Brandon
Shelby walked along the front planters. As she passed the high school boys, one of them mumbled something, too low for Shelby to make out. Shelby went up the stairs without looking at them and went inside and got into her e-mail. If Aunt Dale still hadn’t invited her to Iceland, she was going to have to come out and ask. It was a rude thing to do, but less rude, Shelby thought, than leaving someone hanging for weeks. And maybe, as strongly as Shelby had been hinting, Aunt Dale hadn’t really comprehended that Shelby wanted to visit right now, as soon as possible, that Shelby wasn’t being hypothetical.
There it was, the message in the inbox.
Shelby,
I want you to know that I would really enjoy a visit from you, but unfortunately I’m not going to be able to make it work as soon as this summer. I’ve been hoping my schedule would clear a little, but it’s only grown more impossible. I’m hoping to take real vacation time (what’s that?) this spring, a sabbatical I’m going to call it, so maybe we can work something out, maybe on your spring break. It’ll be good and snowy for you. That may be better anyway, because I’m sure your dad still needs you around down there. I’m really glad we’ve gotten back in touch like we have. I’m sure there are a lot of interesting things you can get into down in Florida, and I’d like to hear about all of them—not too interesting, I hope. Wink, wink.
Shelby signed out, but she didn’t get up from her chair. The people in line could wait. Aunt Dale was ditching her. Shelby didn’t need to read it again. She got it the first time, she was being ditched. Aunt Dale was bowing out. The only reason it had taken her so long to say anything was that she knew she was going to hurt Shelby’s feelings. And she had. Wink, wink? What was that about, Toby? Of course Shelby’s dad needed her around, but what about what Shelby needed? Next spring. Next spring felt like another eon. The world could end before next spring.
Aunt Dale, Shelby saw, was a coward. Maybe next spring, like everything was fine. She was full of shit, this lady. Nobody was that busy. And using Shelby’s dad as an excuse. Aunt Dale was afraid of helping her flesh and blood. She was scared of Shelby, like everyone else.
Shelby picked up some pieces of scrap paper and tore them into little pieces and brushed them off the counter and into a wastebasket. She was annoyed that she was still susceptible to disappointment. She still lost her balance when a rug was pulled. She didn’t want to e-mail anyone ever again. She looked around at the other people, all staring at their screens. They were researching God-knows-what. They were trying to figure out what to feed a sick sheep, trying to buy a used engagement ring, looking for a cheap fishing boat. They were all better people than Shelby’s aunt. They would do anything for their families. They knew what was important. Aunt Dale was conducting a busy, glamorous life, and Shelby was a burdensome interruption.
Shelby stalked through the library and shoved the front doors open, then sauntered down the front steps. She rounded a planter and jumped across the walkway, landing a couple short feet from the high school boys, causing the closest of them to give ground.
“The only way you guys will ever get to second base is with each other,” she said. “None of you, in your lives, will lay your hands on a girl like me.”
The boys glanced nervously toward Shelby’s father in the car. They laughed a little, believing they could turn Shelby’s words from an insult into a joke.
“That’s why you stand out here and make remarks,” she said. “You’re not even rednecks or thieves or perverts or drug dealers. You’re worthless.”
“I am too a redneck,” one of them said, the one with the closest-set eyes and tightest ball cap. “And I’m the type of redneck doesn’t allow people to insult me.”
“Nobody thinks you guys are funny and nobody’s afraid of you.”
“We’re just some boys who like fresh air and company,” one of them said, the one with the wispy, pitiful mustache. “You like to read, we like fresh air and company.”
Shelby looked at the one who said he was a redneck and he was champing at the bit. She wished he would jump at her or raise his voice. She wanted to see her father beat the hell out of one of these kids. This was what she was stuck with. Citrus County. These were her people now. No one in Iceland was hers. Her mother and her sister were not hers. Toby—who knew? The whole county was full of these kids, these punks, full of their parents.
Shelby looked toward the car and her father was indeed peering rigidly in her direction, the look on his face all business. He was trying to figure out if these boys were her friends or what. Shelby looked individually at as many of them as she could, into their hollow eyes. The boys didn’t move. There wasn’t a peep to be heard. They were of one mind, done in. They were survivors, these boys. They couldn’t afford to have fight in them like Shelby did. They knew when they were beat.
After the final bell sounded and Mr. Hibma’s last class of the day spilled out into the hall and blended with the rest of the freed students, Mr. Hibma shut off the lights in his room and sat at his desk. All the clubs had wrapped up. Most of the sports were over. This was the time of year when even the teachers bolted right after the final bell. It was the beginning of summer, a time to be happy. Mr. Hibma clacked the heel of his shoe down on the linoleum and listened to the echo, and for once it wasn’t a dispiriting sound. The clack of Mr. Hibma’s heel was not in a minor key; it was the first note of a crescendo.
He spun his chair around so that he was facing his computer, blew on the keyboard, then backed his head away as a plume of dust rose. He turned the computer on and listened to it come to life, waving dust away with his hand. He watched the green light flicker and then steady, made sure there was paper in the printer. Mr. Hibma got into the word processing program and typed the following:
The moon is more serious each night and the sun sillier each day. I could do without anything. I could do with nothing. The Publix. 1315 Cooper Road. Clermont, Florida. 5 in the afternoon. June 1.
Mr. Hibma walked to the end of the hall and looked out over the parking lot. He saw the buses pulling away, saw the grassy plot where the flag corps practiced. He saw Pete and the Spanish expert walk out together and slip into the same car. He saw Vince drifting from crowd to crowd, offering his gum. Mr. Hibma had no idea if Dale was going to show up. He knew he’d corresponded himself into a corner, and he was glad for that, but whether Dale would physically appear was of little consequence now. Mr. Hibma didn’t need Dale anymore, didn’t care to impress her. He understood that she didn’t take him seriously. She wanted to be disappointed. That was how she lived—in search of disappointment. Had she taken Mr. Hibma seriously, even a little bit, she never would’ve responded. Mr. Hibma was trying to change his life and she thought he couldn’t. Mr. Hibma was going to shock her; he was going to stick her with a heavy secret, a problem, and she was going to have to carry it.
He would go to the FedEx in Clermont this afternoon—no messing around with the post office—and tell them to deliver the letter on the morning of the 29th. He didn’t want Dale to have time to think anything over. If she did come, he wanted her rushing to get to him, wanted her to arrive bedraggled, beginning to lose her doubt in Mr. Hibma—her doubt, all she had. He wanted to see her screech into the Publix parking lot in her rental car, panicked, hoping she wasn’t late, hoping Mr. Hibma was bluffing, hoping not to have to talk him out of anything. And what would Mr. Hibma do? He couldn’t meet her there. He’d wander the parking lot and watch for her, and he’d know her when he saw her, and he’d pass close enough to smell the airplane and the foreign air on her, and he wouldn’t say a word. Afterward, if she wanted to reveal what had passed between them, wanted to turn Mr. Hibma in, so be it. That would be her business.
Mr. Hibma was bursting with a foreign feeling. Or perhaps the absence of a familiar feeling. He didn’t feel defensive. He did not feel put-upon, attacked. He was on the move. No other way to move forward had presented itself, and he wasn’t running from the way he had.
Shelby decided to f
ollow Toby on Friday afternoon. A week left in the school year. She couldn’t think of a thing to hope for, and that was good. What she was going to do was hunker down in Citrus County. If she had to be here, she was going to be here. Her passport had arrived in the mail and she had promptly carried it out to the backyard and burned it in a coffee can, the white smoke trailing with the breeze into the treetops. Shelby hadn’t had to coax the fire. The passport went up like kindling, like it knew it was meant to be burned. Shelby had also removed the photograph of Aunt Dale from the hallway. It wasn’t hers to burn, but she’d stashed it out in the utility room. She wasn’t about to pass by the lady every time she went to the bathroom. Her father would ask where the picture went, and Shelby would have to come up with something.
Shelby knew the general direction through the woods Toby started in on the way to his house, but she didn’t want to miss him somehow, didn’t want him to evade her by taking an alternate route, so she blended into a crowd at the end of the science wing and tracked Toby straight from his marine biology class. He nudged past a gaggle of short blondes, crammed his whole bag in his locker, then proceeded at a mourner’s pace out the lunchroom exit. He didn’t stop to talk to anybody. He broke from the parking lot into the woods at a spot that didn’t seem to have a trail. Shelby followed. There was a trail all right, winding and shadowy. Shelby felt exposed in the woods. She wasn’t sure how far behind to stay. Toby kept his eyes on the forest ground, never turning around to check what was behind him. He’d worn a bright red T-shirt that day, so whenever Shelby let him get a few steps too far ahead, she had only to rush forward until the shirt called out through the underbrush. Shelby fell into a rhythm. She kept at least one tree directly between her and Toby. The multitude of bugs in the woods were providing their standard crackling hum, drowning out any noise Shelby made by snapping twigs. She felt dishonest but full of purpose.
They came to an open area, what would have been a meadow if there were such a thing as a meadow in Citrus County, and Shelby let Toby get ahead. She watched him drag through the sandy clearing and into the woods on the other side. Shelby wasn’t a spy, she was a girl in love. There was something delicious about watching Toby with him not knowing she was there. She could see a lot of the tired sky, could see the spot where the sun, in a few hours, intended to set.
She came out into the brightness and hurried across, peering ahead for the red T-shirt, and in a moment there it was, bobbing in the foliage. Toby had sped up. They pushed past bunches of cross-trails, tracks in them from dirt bikes and dogs and raccoons, and they shuffled past countless rabbit holes, countless isolated bogs that hid countless snakes. They passed a shopping cart full of beer cans. They’d been walking for close to an hour. Sweat was dripping off Shelby’s nose. She could taste it. The sun was a bald eye. It was clearing away the clouds, making preparations.
The best odds were on Uncle Neal being exactly how Toby had described him, bewildered but volatile. Probably the house would look normal, and Toby would take a shower and play solitaire or something, and Uncle Neal would be down for his pre-dinner nap. Probably Shelby would find nothing damning about the household, but she had to check. She had to see where Toby lived. She was doing this partly for herself, she knew, following Toby for her own reasons. At night, when he was at his house and she at hers, she would be able to picture Toby safe in his bed. She would be able to see him drift off to sleep as she drifted off to sleep. He was her only friend, and at night she knew that more than ever.
Shelby sensed something above her and took a bad step. It was an owl. The thing was ten feet over her head. The owl didn’t like having people in its woods; that was clear from the look on its face. Shelby whispered hello to the owl and it did not blink. It was a haughty little statue. Shelby wanted to throw something at it, but she was afraid. It was like the snake on her patio. It wasn’t going to move until Shelby went away. She had to keep going. She got back on Toby’s trail, and soon saw power lines. The woods grew less wild. Toby’s red shirt bumped up onto a porch. Shelby had made it. The house was in view. Toby dug out his key, wiggled it into the lock, and went inside.
Shelby pulled her shoulders back. She took stock, drifting around the side of the property. No flowerbeds, not even grass to speak of. No sports equipment or bikes lying around. No dog, no cat. The house was the color of an old gym bag. It had a wide front porch with a rocking chair. The place appeared tidy in its spareness, except for the gnarly live oak branches hanging near the roof, some of them scraping when the breeze picked up. There were no squirrels, no vultures soaring high above. The blinds in most of the windows were open but Shelby could not see in. She was too far away and the house was dim inside.
She made her approach near a shed that looked at once dilapidated and sturdy, some kind of greenhouse. It smelled cramped, like things overgrown. In the woods, Shelby’s footfalls had been drowned out, but now she could hear the soggy ground compressing under her boots. She could hear the wind brushing the back of her neck. There was one window on this side of the house, all the way at the back, looking like a mistake. It looked like the windows they put in the walls of fortresses, to see the enemy coming. Shelby slipped across the yard and rested against the worn stucco. Her heart was beating so quickly it seemed to have stopped.
She shuffled down the wall. The blinds of the little window were open. She inched her face, seeing more and more of the room inside. She placed her forehead against the cool glass. She was looking at Toby’s bedroom. This was it. There was his dirty laundry in a basket, the shirt he’d worn to school yesterday, his track shorts. The bedroom door was closed and Shelby knew that at any moment it might fly open. There was a big closet in Toby’s bedroom, the doors not fully closed. Dog-eared cardboard boxes. A stack of folded sweatshirts he’d retired for the summer. There was no TV in the room, no radio. Toby had hung no posters, had no bookshelf. He didn’t read comics or play video games. There was a case of soda on the floor near the bed. The cords for the fan and the light hung low, so he could reach them while lying down. The carpet was a couple shades of marbled brown. Shelby locked the image of his room into her mind, the garish hue of his bedsheet, the water stain on the ceiling, the riveting stillness. She felt satisfied, like now she would be playing with house money. There were shreds of peace within her, blowing around like confetti. Shelby didn’t need Aunt Dale. She didn’t need to go to Iceland. It didn’t matter where you went. Where meant nothing. Maybe, Shelby thought, she’d always been playing with house money. Maybe everyone was, every day they were alive.
The house was a perfect rectangle. Shelby stuck to the wall. She moved down from Toby’s room, stepping over dry, stubborn bushes. If she saw Uncle Neal, then great; if not, that was okay, too. She didn’t need to see him. What would it help? She’d seen where Toby ended up every night, and that was the important thing. She came to a larger window. The blinds were dropped all the way, but a few of them were bent, as if something had been thrown against them. Shelby positioned her eye and saw a big, empty table and some metal folding chairs. The edge of a counter was visible, a big bowl of matchbooks. Everything was so still inside, same as Toby’s bedroom, like a museum exhibit. Maybe Uncle Neal wasn’t even home. Maybe he was out of town on a job. Shelby hadn’t seen any cars out front, but she hadn’t seen a proper driveway, either.
A blackbird began ranting from behind her and she got moving again, passing a lonely wooden door. There was no back patio, no steps or anything, just a door painted a shade darker than the house. The next window was small, at eye level. Shelby had a full, obscene view into the kitchen. There were puny oranges on the sill. A large portion of the counter space was given over to two-liter bottles of soda, all lined up stiffly like an army unit. There was a tray of what appeared to be surgical tools, soaking in a tinted liquid. Shelby was gazing at the tray when there was movement off to her right. She froze, couldn’t do a thing, couldn’t even unlock her knees and drop. But freezing was the correct thing to do. It was Toby, and he
hadn’t noticed her. He was looking at nothing, talking to himself. Shelby watched him shuffle into the woods on one side of the house and once again she was following him.
She tracked Toby and tracked Toby, and the whole afternoon seemed like one moment now, one sprawling moment. The shadows congealed, preparing to be phased out. There was a line of weather-beaten stakes hammered into the ground at even intervals, a lot of trees with pink ribbons on them. Shelby noticed there were no more tracks of any kind in the marled ground. She realized she was behaving like a crazy person. She was stalking someone through wild unfamiliar acreage, afternoon giving way to evening. She wondered whether, if Toby got away from her, she would be able to find her way home. The trees looked forgotten. They were real trees, like up north—maples or sycamores. They’d never lost their leaves. The back of Shelby’s shirt was damp and sticking to her. She knew she should stop now, knew she should go back. And then Toby dropped to one knee. Shelby eased closer, to see what he was doing. He tossed moss clumps and branches this way and that. He dragged a raft of brush. All his movements were void of emphasis, nothing but utility. Shelby got low, observing Toby through the fronds of a palmetto stand. Her thighs were numb, exhausted from traipsing through the sandy woods, and now from crouching. Was Toby making camp? Maybe things at his house were that bad. Did he sleep out here, in the woods?
Toby rose and leaned and pulled up some kind of door, and when he did, the acoustics of the world warped. All the sounds slowed. Shelby grasped a palmetto frond, down near the base where they were sturdy, and pulled herself farther into the stand, the blades of the frond digging into her soft palm. Shelby’s body knew something was happening; the animal part of her knew. Toby descended into the ground, pulling something onto his head. He had been standing there and now he wasn’t. Toby had some kind of underground lair. Shelby was close to the real, secret Toby. She had to stay hidden. If Toby discovered she’d followed him out to this place, this place he considered all his own, he wouldn’t ever trust her again. Shelby had to wait him out.