The Dead Enders

by Erin Saldin

  “I’d like to stay.” Ana’s chin quivers. “She’s . . . I don’t want her to be alone.”

  For a second, I think the nurse is going to turn on the charm again. Give Ana a hug or something. But then she says, “She won’t be alone. She’ll have me.” Another horizontal smile. “And besides, I have to take her over to radiology anyway. Testing, testing, one, two, three.”

  “We’re going,” I say.

  “I’ll be back in the morning.” Ana’s glare is a challenge.

  But the nurse isn’t even listening to us. She’s unhooking monitors and popping up the rails on the sides of Vera’s bed. She doesn’t turn around when we leave.

  When we get outside, heat radiates off the asphalt of the parking lot. I shade my eyes with my hand. “I don’t understand why the sun needs to be so relentlessly optimistic,” I say. “Days like today, it could stand to tone it down a bit.”

  Ana shrugs—not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. “It’s fine,” she says, but I can see that she’s sweating already.

  “Need a ride?” I ask. “I drove.” Flew, more like it. And, I realize now, I didn’t even leave a note.

  Ana looks around the parking lot as though just figuring out where we are. “Yeah,” she says, “sure. Thanks.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I was at Grainey’s when Abby called. I think I ran here.” Shaking her head, she adds, “Don’t know why I forgot my bike. It’s probably still in front of Grainey’s.”

  “Bodies in motion,” I say, remembering my own reaction to Ana’s text. “You were probably halfway here before you knew you’d left the coffee shop.”

  Ana nods. “Right.” She puts her hand on my arm. “Thanks, Davis. For everything.”

  I turn, pull her in for a quick hug. I wrap my arms around her back. “No problem,” I say.

  And as I open the car door for her, I try to think of Vera, alone in her hospital room, maybe surviving, maybe not.

  I try to think about all this, but I can’t.

  I’m thinking instead about the hug, how I wanted to keep Ana there in that moment.

  How it didn’t feel anything like hugging Jane.

  How different doesn’t mean worse.

  ANA

  I don’t want him to let go. I don’t want him to, but he does. I slide into the seat. “Nice car,” I say, trying to sound normal. “It looks like chinos and family suppers.” Then I glance at his pants. Chinos. “Sorry.”

  Davis gets in and pats the dashboard. He clears his throat. “We call it ‘I’m Not Giving Up; I’m Just Giving In.’ ”

  I want to laugh, but all the worry of the past two hours has left me hollow.

  We start driving away from the hospital.

  “Want me to swing by Grainey’s?” Davis asks. “We can throw your bike in the back.”

  “No,” I say. “I’ve already texted my mom. She’ll pick it up after work tonight.”

  He nods. “Okay.” I tell him how to take the back roads toward my apartment complex. “Good thinking,” Davis says. “Friday afternoon. We don’t want to get caught in Weekender traffic.”

  “There’s not a lot of traffic out by my house,” I tell him. “There never is.”

  I still feel numb, the image of Vera in her hospital bed always a half second away from crushing me, but being here in the car with Davis is helping. There’s a heat radiating off his body that’s more comforting than the glare of the sun outside. I’m not alone. I’m not alone yet.

  Davis looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t remember when you moved here,” he says. “Isn’t that funny? It seems like we’ve known each other forever.” He coughs, embarrassed about something.

  “I was ten,” I tell him.

  “Where were you before that?”

  I look out the window. “Where weren’t we?” So many years of trying first one town and then another, the cities getting smaller in direct proportion to my mom’s dreams. Someone told her about an opening at the Grand, and we packed up and moved the next week. “I can still remember what it was like to walk around Main Street for the first time,” I tell Davis now, “and how relieved I was to be somewhere with a beach. I’d never been to the ocean—still never have.”

  “Really?” He tries to cover his surprise.

  I nod. “Yeah. The lake was just as good, though. I remember I loved the way the water lapped at my feet after boats went by. Just like the ocean—or at least, that’s what I thought.” I don’t tell him about the other thing. How I felt like I could be anyone out there on the public beach. Just another girl building castles with her mom. Maybe they live in a house. Maybe they’re visiting from out of town. Even then, I knew enough to know that this was something rare: a place to go that was free but didn’t make us feel poor.

  “Sounds nice,” he says.

  “You know,” I say, “we talk about the Weekenders like there’s a hierarchy. Toney’s, Docksides—”

  “There is,” he interrupts. We’ve pulled up to my apartment building, and he puts the car in park. Neither of us gets out.

  “Maybe,” I say, “but you want to ignore the hierarchy when they’re gone. You want to think everything is equal to the Dead Enders. And it’s not.” My mom’s voice on the phone when I called her from the hospital and she said she couldn’t get off work to meet me: worried, anxious, guilty. Her time isn’t her own—ever. I tap the cover of one of the books on the floor of Davis’s car with the toe of my shoe. “This town is like a kingdom in one of these fantasy novels. The gates open more easily for some people. For others”—I lift my chin toward the apartment complex—“the gate can be a little rusty.” I don’t say it, but I know what would happen if real estate was crazy and Davis’s dad—the neat freak in the house—was too busy and couldn’t get all the cleaning done. They’d hire someone to help. Someone like Erik’s mom.

  Davis rubs his hands over his face. “You’re right.” Then he adds, “And it never ends. I mean, you know—Erik’s dad.” He looks at me again. I nod—I’m ready to talk about it. So he goes on. “The Dead Ender who got out.”

  “Married into another tier, it looks like,” I say. “But at what cost?”

  “Exactly. And Abby and Henry. And”—he pauses—“the Den.”

  “Do you think they’re renting it?” I ask. “Or could they—”

  “Own it?” Davis shakes his head. “Is Vera’s last name Michaelson?”

  “No. It’s Whitaker.”

  “I doubt they’re squatting,” he says. “Not with that fancy grill on the deck.” And I know he’s thinking the same thing I am. From the little we know, Erik’s dad could totally be a squatter. But not Abby. Not Henry.

  Henry. I shake my head. “Wonder what Georgie thinks of this whole thing,” I say. “If Henry’d said something earlier, she’d have told us, right?”

  “Yeah,” says Davis, “I think so. With Georgie, though, you never know. She’s kind of a vault.”

  “Has to be, I guess,” I say. “But she and Erik are close.”

  “Yeah,” says Davis.

  “They’ve always had a kind of will-they-or-won’t-they vibe,” I say. I stick my arm out the window and feel the warm air on my skin.

  “What? You think?” He looks surprised. “I’ve never seen it between them.”

  “You haven’t been looking,” I say, and blush. “Georgie is the only girl Erik actually talks to. On top of everything else, finding out that her boyfriend is his dad’s stepson has got to really hurt. Although,” I add, “he doesn’t know that, does he? She hasn’t told him yet.”

  Davis shakes his head. “Not that I know of.” Then he adds, “You’re always a few steps ahead of me. I get words, but you get people.” Then he smiles. “Maybe you should help me at the paper—there’s been another fire.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Small one at the skate park. Probably nothing. But that’s the thing—if there’s something, I bet you’d get it, Ana. You’d see it immediately. That’s just how you are,” he a
dds.

  I hold the compliment for a second like a lake-polished stone.

  “I don’t know how to read Erik,” Davis continues. “A thing like this—if it were you or Georgie, I’d know what to say, you know? But Erik . . .” His voice trails off.

  “Erik doesn’t react like the rest of us,” I say. “He doesn’t react like anyone I know.”

  Davis nods. “That’s what scares me.”

  I don’t want to lose my chance. “Davis?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need your help.”

  He turns to me. “Anything.” And there’s something in his voice that I want to trust, a tone that I want to believe is saying more than he’s ever said before. But there’s no way. Not Davis. Not me.

  I take a breath. “I want to find Kathryn, Vera’s other daughter. But I can’t. Could you—is it possible to, I don’t know, use your connections at the newspaper?” I laugh a little, embarrassed.

  He does too. “What connections I have, I’ll use. Kathryn Whitaker. Got it.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and unbuckle my seat belt.

  “Is it just me,” Davis says as I open the door and climb out into the hot afternoon light, “or has this summer really taken a turn for the crazy?”

  I rest my hand on the car door and lean in. “It’s Gold Fork in the summer,” I say. “Crazy is the just the beginning.”

  • • •

  As soon as I get through the door, I take off my casual attitude and set it aside. I don’t have to pretend not to feel the thing tugging at my ears, scratching at my neck, whispering, whispering.

  Even though it isn’t quite time for dinner, I make some pasta, shaking out the last bit of sauce from a jar that I find in the back of the fridge. It’s still warm out, and the windows are open. Even this far from the lake, I can smell the water: clean and cold, with the vague, loamy scent of sediment. I’ve never liked the bottom of the lake out where it starts to slope down, never felt comfortable touching its thick underbelly with my toes. It’s either the shore or the deep for me. I’d rather be out in the middle of the water, two hundred feet above the bottom, than standing chest-deep in it with the sand and gravel and algae and who knows what else creeping toward my ankles.

  For some reason, it’s that thought—algae, sand, suffocating water—that makes it all feel real again. Vera. Just lying there with tubes and monitors and silence. Not a word from her. But. Maybe she’s suffocating in a way I can’t see—a way no one can see—and crying out for help in her head. A prisoner in a frail, capricious body.

  When I call my mom, she’s concerned, but distracted.

  “Did you see her? Is Vera okay?” A pause as I hear someone—probably sleazy Carl saying something in the background. “Sorry,” she adds. “I’m between bookings.”

  For a second, I can’t talk. I clear my throat, fighting down the sob that’s been stuck there since I walked in the door. “Oh,” I say. “Yeah. She’s okay. No. Sorry. I just—just checking in,” I finally manage.

  “That’s sweet.” Then, “Is it all right with you if you’re on your own tonight?” She doesn’t wait for my answer—that’s too risky—so she keeps talking. “It’s only, Zeke wants to take me out after work. Dinner and drinks.” I can hear her swallow. “So it’s okay?”

  There. There it is. I finally hear the little catch in her voice that says, I know it’s not but say it is. That little catch is as familiar to me as the birthmark on her knee that’s shaped like a crescent moon. Okay that I stay late? Okay that I work all weekend? Okay that I miss the recital? Now there’s something else to take up her time. Someone else.

  “Yeah,” I say, “it’s okay. I’m pretty tired anyway. I’ll probably go to bed early.” My cheeks are hot, and I can feel the tears welling, know that it’s only a matter of seconds before the sob finally releases.

  “Oh, well.” Relief. “Don’t forget to lock the door.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good night, mija.”

  When I hang up, I look around the kitchen. Everything seems pale, bleached of what little color or details my mom and I’ve added over the years: the potholders that we Jackson Pollocked with red and yellow paint; the postcards that we lined up against the back of the counter to hide the ugly linoleum backsplash; the chalkboard sign that we use to leave each other messages. An old message is still there from a couple of weeks ago. It’s not a chore if you enjoy it! Smiley face. My mom’s idea of a joke—she was making fun of other kids’ parents, other kids’ regulated lives and chore lists.

  When I see that message, I let the sob loose. It’s a wail that ricochets off the walls and fills the room to the ceiling. It’s a cry for the chore lists my mom never made, the punishments I never endured when I didn’t make my bed or clean my room because her parents were too strict and she didn’t want to risk losing me the way they lost her. It’s a cry for the only thing that’s made me normal, the only person who holds me accountable, even if she doesn’t always know it. I howl as I wash the dishes, shake and moan while I dry and put them back in the cupboard, let the tears roll down my cheeks and onto the collar of my shirt as I put away discarded socks, stack the magazines by the couch. Vera, Vera, Vera. I flip on the outside light over our apartment door. Vera. My abuela.

  Finally, finally, it’s over. I feel carved out. There’s nothing left for me to cling to but a careful reliance on these systematic, mundane tasks. Leave a note for my mom, in case she comes home. Taking the bus to the hospital. I’ll sleep in the waiting room if I have to. Everything’s fine. Shut the door behind me. Both locks. Double-check.

  I never forget, despite the fact that no one would ever break into our apartment. What could they hope to find up here? There’s clearly nothing of worth.

  JULY

  WHERE THERE ARE NO EXCUSES

  July is constant motion. It starts with the Fourth, but then it keeps going. A string of parties like the buoys that rope off the swimming area at the public beach: Not Beyond This Point. One, two, three, four, five . . . We are at the water every day, somewhere new every night. No more excuses now. All of Gold Fork is in on it. Weekenders and Dead Enders alike share the spoils of summer: perfect mornings, lazy afternoons. Frantic, unleashed nights. Every morning, we wake to a soup of remembered jokes, slight offenses, the sting of joy, the aftertaste of disappointment.

  It’s July. We think it will never end.

  GEORGIE

  I see them both at Jeff-the-Spastic’s Fourth of July party. Of course. I’ve been ignoring one of them, and the other is doing the same to me. They saw each other at the Den, but Henry didn’t see me. And Erik doesn’t know—I don’t think he knows—that Henry is Henry. As in, my Henry.

  If he is my Henry.

  Shit.

  So it makes sense that I’d have to deal with them at the same time. And on a work night, too, no less.

  Because I’ve been hustling. I’m bringing my A game. I’m working the summer party scene like a used-car salesman, all bravado and slick maneuvers. You sure this will be enough? I ask the unsuspecting Weekenders when I give them just as much as they ordered last week and no more. There’s that party at Jonesy’s coming up. . . . When they ask if I have any extra on hand, I scrunch my face into a question, let them worry. I might, I say. But hey, don’t tell anyone else. I don’t have enough to top off everyone. This does the trick. As soon as they pay me, they’re running to tell five or ten of their best friends that if they think they’re going to want more than normal this week, they’d better jump on it fast, because inventory’s low and Georgie doesn’t have enough for everyone.

  I’ve basically got a line of anxious Weekenders waiting for me at every party. Fistfuls of money. A hand on my arm at every turn, pulling me into corners, asking, Do you have extra this week?

  And Dodge in his boat, waiting.

  What I’m saying is, I’m busy. And making money keeps my mind off other things, like the look on Erik’s face when he saw his dad, or the look on Henry’s face as h
e watched Erik through the sliding glass door.

  Until I see them, that is.

  Jeff-the-Spastic. Weekly with a place on the west side of the lake. I remember him from last summer: wide grin, windmilling arms, dub sack every couple of days, Molly for the parties. He hosted on the Fourth last year, too, and all the faces look familiar, even the ones I’ve never seen before. Davis and Ana aren’t here—probably weren’t invited. But Erik is.

  He’s got his arm around a small brown-haired girl as he weaves his way toward me through the crowd in the living room. When they get closer, I can see that it’s the same one who was on the paddleboard the day we went out to the Den. She reaches up with one hand to pull his face toward hers, and I see that she’s wearing one of those wrap bracelets that all the Weekender girls have this summer. Costs something around two hundred bucks. I shake my head as she kisses him and then heads toward the kitchen.

  “Layla,” he says, watching the door to the kitchen like she might pop out at any minute.

  “She’s still around, huh?” I watch him carefully, looking for any clue that he knows about Henry. Any clue that he’s reacting at all to seeing his dad and his new family.

  But he gives me nothing. Shrugs his shoulders instead. “She’s still around.”

  “So the two of you are . . .” I raise my eyebrows, like, We can be normal! This can be normal!

  He glances away so that I can’t see his face. When he turns back to me, he’s got a smile, but it’s not his usual grin. It’s a Walmart greeter’s fake smile. “Yeah,” he says, “we are.”

  “Okay,” I say, but he looks jangled. Something’s off, like his face has broken apart and been put back together with the seams not quite matching. “Erik,” I say, and step closer. I can smell his shampoo—clean, a little minty—and I fight the impulse to reach over and touch his face. “I’ve been worried about you.”