“Where were you last night?” I ask. At midnight, he sneaked out of the house. He got up off the couch where we fell asleep watching B movies, put on his sneakers, rubbed water through his hair, and left. I could smell deodorant on him—pine scented. He climbed out the basement window. It wasn’t the first time he’d done it, but it was the first time I’d stayed awake long enough to actually watch him go. I followed his movements with my eyes, daring him to look and notice that I was awake. He never looked at me. Not even a glance over his shoulder as he climbed out the basement window.
“We weren’t scared,” he says, shrugging off my question without even the decency to look surprised. “And you weren’t going to jump because you wanted to die. And it wasn’t our dumb pact. You were going to fly until you found ground and then walk the path.”
“Now I know this is Sunday school, and since when was our pact dumb?”
“You’re not listening.”
Ray’s face shifts. His usual sadness creeps in. I should feel victorious. This was what I wanted, right?
“Where were you last night?” I ask again.
“Out.”
“We tell each other everything, don’t we?”
“Always and forever. Gobs loves Emma and Emma loves Gobs.” He holds out his pinkie finger to do our ironic pinkie promise, the one we’ve been doing since way before we decided to make it ironic.
“I don’t trust him,” I say, experimenting. I didn’t follow Ray, but I have a guess as to where he went. I want to give him a chance to tell me what has changed with him.
“Him who?”
“What does he want from you?”
“Nothing.”
“You always tell me.”
“I always tell you what?”
“What’s going on. We tell each other everything.”
“I just tried to tell you something. You didn’t listen.”
“You mean the dream you had in which I jump to my death?”
“Emma!” He slams his fist into the breakfast table and his cereal bowl jumps. Milk and softened flakes splash out.
“I’m sorry,” I say, but I am not sorry. I’m angry and lately I can’t get away from the anger. When it crops up, I dive into it. Let it hold on to me. I go deeper.
“It was about us figuring out how to be happy. We were there. In the Badlands. We walked out into the beginning and the end of the world. The sky was huge above us. Starless but I knew they were coming, the stars. Like we just had to put them up there. One at a time.”
“Ray?”
“What?”
“Why do you keep sneaking out?”
“I can’t sleep. I go over to play poker. Everybody goes. It’s not a big deal.”
“Since when do you go where everybody goes?”
“Not today, Emma. Please. Just let it be for today.”
“Are you getting high with him?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. “Fine,” I say. I give him a peck on the cheek when I stand up from the table, and he reaches around to grab me. He shifts in his chair and presses his face to my belly. I let my hands hang loose, refusing to hug him back, but then I fold and put my arms awkwardly around his head. I look down at his dark hair; its purposeful disarray is charming. The pale skin of his part almost blue.
“I love you,” he says.
“I know you’re lying to me. I don’t understand why.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, just don’t lie to me. It scares me.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
“I can’t today, Emma. J-just,” he stutters, “just know that things change. It’s normal.”
I walk away angry. Break free of him and lock myself in my bedroom.
I press my back to the door and look around. The pink walls are not my fault (the last owners had a much girlier little girl), but the white desk and the Guns N’ Roses poster are mine. There is a plethora of Hello Kitty junk on my dresser. The lamp is a wagon wheel—one of the only items I kept from the last house I lived in, when my father was still alive. The room is a collection of odd past interests that no longer equal me. It is lonely, this stale room. I want out immediately, but I am too stubborn to leave and admit that change is normal.
I sink to the floor. Wait for the moment to pass.
* * *
I wake up in the night and Ray is already gone. The basement that we’ve dubbed ours is empty. We ate too many Oreos and watched MTV and read aloud to each other. We do this on Sundays. Hole up together and refuse to surface.
He’s restarted the VCR so that the movie we were watching together when I fell asleep is playing from the beginning again.
I slip on my jeans, my shoes. I climb the stairs. They creak under me but my stepfather’s snores are louder.
It’s raining outside. Nothing heavy but enough that the walk will soak me. Ray’s Schwinn is gone from its usual tilt against the garage. He’s taken to it lately, riding it with his black jeans tucked into his Converses. His long-sleeve shirts flash with safety pins while his wallet chain clanks against the red crossbar. He used to refuse to ride it. Frank bought it for him a year ago when he took away Ray’s driver’s license. He rode it exactly once, because his father insisted he try it out, a humiliating experience. Ray rode it up and down the driveway as if he were a six-year-old trying out his big-boy bike. After that he parked it, not touching it until a month ago, when the midnight rides started.
My ’69 Mustang coupe is parked at the end of the drive. I bought it for $650 off an old man who was the original owner. My father would have been proud of me. The engine needs to be replaced, it’s underpowered, but I haven’t had time to figure out how to get a new one for free yet so the old one stays.
I put the car in neutral and roll it down the road a bit before turning the key in the ignition.
We live in the more expensive part of town now, and have for the past four years. Frank is a comptroller, whatever that is. It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one place. Dad moved us from apartment to apartment. Each one shittier than the last. I miss being nomadic. I don’t trust our big house in our white suburb with its vigilant police force. They are good at paying attention to anyone who doesn’t fit. If I’m caught out here tonight, driving around, they will bring me straight home, make me ring my own doorbell to wake my parents. I don’t care. It’s worth the risk, because if this happens, Ray’s absence will be discovered and we’ll both be housebound.
I drive past community green space and the row of frat houses that signal the university has begun. The city of Dayton looms ahead. The sidewalks lose their brick and the street signs turn basic, more informational than ornate.
We all call him Coach Matt even though he is more a science teacher than a coach. He is barely twenty-two and got hired straight out of college to fill in for Mrs. Weir the Science Queer, who had a nervous breakdown midyear. Coach Matt is somehow related to the superintendent, which surely got him the job. He coaches girls’ soccer and dabbles in chemistry. He is quite the opposite of Mrs. WQ. He is young and energetic. The girls love him. He’s cute enough in a suntanned, athletic kind of way. It’s rumored he falls asleep in faculty meetings and doesn’t believe in underwear. He hosts late-night poker games in his house downtown and students sometimes attend.
I don’t like Coach Matt. I’m the only one who doesn’t. Ray and I watched for a while, as we are prone to do. We watched the girls giggle and fall all over each other when he walked by. We watched relationships split as Coach Matt supposedly showed favor to one silly high school girl over another. We wagered he’d sleep with Emily first—a blonde with perky tits and most likely to never tell—and then work his way through the rest of the senior class, hitting all the eighteen-year-olds before he had to consider anyone underage. The year would be over before it became illegal.
I park outside Coach Matt’s house. I feel anxious. More anxious than I should.
Ray joined the poker game about a month ago, right around the time he stopped wanti
ng to gossip about who was who and whether or not Coach Matt was a pedophile or just a lucky dude.
He’d asked Ray to stay after class one day. I waited outside that room for fifteen minutes for Ray that day—late to my next class without an excuse—and all Ray would say when he came out was: “He’s cool.”
Ray learned to play poker. Tried to teach me but I told him it was stupid. Then he started disappearing at night and one of the football players at school was saying hey to him in the hallway.
Coach Matt’s house is in South Park. An area folks say is up-and-coming. We almost lived here once. My dad wanted to rent an old Victorian, but it fell through when he couldn’t make the security deposit.
Coach Matt’s house is an old bungalow with Brazilian flags out front. The front porch is littered with running shoes and soccer cleats, hiking boots and discarded Gatorade bottles. It wasn’t hard to figure out which was his.
My car door creaks open and I shut it gently behind me before I climb the porch stairs. Music is playing inside. Something too loud and mainstream. Ray would never listen to it.
I creep in. Shut the front door behind me.
I expect to hear laughter. The smell of cigars. I am an intruder, but Coach Matt’s house is infamous. Everyone coming and going with ease. I’ve not been here before, but it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything wrong, not until I round the corner. I see them both at the same time.
Ray’s shirt is off. His hands on the small of Coach Matt’s back. Their faces pressed together. No space between their bodies.
They are one thing.
I stand there too long. Not because I want to watch—I don’t—but because I can’t understand what I’m seeing. Their bodies seem so urgent. No one else here. No poker game, and they look like they’ve done this before. They know each other. It is not how Ray has ever touched me and I see how much of our life together I’ve made up in my head.
“Emma?” Ray asks. Truly shocked. “What the fuck?”
“Is that your sister?”
“Get out!” Ray has never been this angry with me before.
“Don’t yell at her, man,” Coach Matt says.
“Fuck you!” I turn and run out onto the porch.
I pause under this man’s roof. Heart pounding. I count to ten, slowly. If Ray loves me, he will come out the front door.
He doesn’t come.
I hop in my car and drive through the city. I drive to the river where Ray and I like to go. It’s a dirty river, low in most seasons, but it runs through the city and once flooded so high that it left its mark on the buildings downtown. Our spot is at a bend in the river where an old concrete bench sits sadly crumbling. There are also a few trees here that throw shade when the sun is at its highest. For now it is dark and I settle myself out in the open so I can stare up at the sky.
I shut my eyes. I wish I were the type to cry.
* * *
When I wake, the sky is clear. Ray is next to me.
“He’s your teacher,” I say.
“I know.”
“It’s not right.”
“I know.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means I’m in love.”
“It can’t mean that.”
“Why can’t it?” he asks, but he’s not really looking for me to answer. “You know when I first met you, Emma, you laughed a lot. You weren’t afraid. At fourteen you knew how to take apart a car and then put it back together! What girl knows how to do that?” he says, then pauses as if this is when he expects an answer. “You had a brightness in you, Emma, that made me feel like there were no rules. But lately…”
“Lately what?” I challenge and it comes out angry, a little spit sparking from my lips.
Ray sighs. “You’re mean. The old Emma cared if I was happy. It made her happy to see me happy.”
“She wasn’t real.”
We rest together quietly, long enough for me to wish that I could stop being angry just for a minute. Who would I be if I could just let things go?
“Look at the sky, Emma.”
I look up. The clouds are thick.
“Now shut your eyes.”
I do as he says.
My back is wet. My body cold. The night is slipping into morning. The world is still quiet.
“Open,” he says, and I do. Above us the sky shines. Stars twinkle down. The clouds are all but gone. “I threw them up there for you. I made it brand-new. Do you like it?” he asks.
“I do,” I say, but it’s the game I like and the fact that he still wants to play it with me.
“I love you, Gobby Gobs.”
“I love you, Emma My Emma.”
“No, I mean I really love you.”
“I know.”
We watch the sky together.
“Don’t leave me,” I say.
“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” he says back, and in this simple statement, I hear that he could leave me, and will if I don’t stop him.
ELEVEN
My heart is pounding against my rib cage. Earl has stopped moving. Good boy, I think. Stay quiet. Be still.
“It’s me, George. I’m coming in.” George hisses through the cracks in the barn. “Coming in, in, in.”
There is a slam of skull to wood, and then a harsh series of finger pecks, as if he is trying to hammer through with one fingernail. His shadow blocks the light as he fumbles in the snow, moving back and forth, looking for a chink in the splintered skin of the barn.
I want to run. Move. Hit. Scream. But I don’t. I stand still and breathe through my nose. Short animal breaths. Terror. That’s what this is. We’re prey. My life has not been precious for a long time but my head is tilting up, and I’m thinking, Hurt him and I’ll kill you.
“Bitches!” He screams the one word into the sky. The sound of it going up, up, up. It will come back down and land with an explosion.
A few straws of hay drift down from the loft above, evidence of Earl’s noiseless shifting.
“I can see the smoke from the stove, you idiots. I know you’re in there.”
I move onto my toes, spin around in my position, and inch to the right so I can see through a crack. George is out there, red-faced and underdressed. His hair sticks up in clots as he considers the three trees from a distance and then walks over to them. He moves like Frankenstein’s monster, his feet too heavy for the snow, and his left arm dark with blood that drips into the snow. Bright and red.
“Leave us alone!” I shout.
He stops. Stands perfectly still.
“I need my kid.” He does not turn to my voice when he speaks.
I move away from the barn door and begin to fill a backpack that Earl’s left out. I put in a couple cans of food, a sweater. I leave the bag at the foot of the ladder and go back for two gas cans. They are heavy, full enough to get Veronica to safety, and I set them next to the backpack.
When I find a new view of him, I see that he has moved in order to put both hands to the barn door. He is trying to locate me.
“It’s cold out here,” he says, pressing his forehead to the barn. “Let me in so I can warm up.”
Earl is above me, shaking. His body pressed to the floor. I want to reach up and reassure him, but he is too far away for touch.
“You need to leave me alone. You and your weird kid can go to hell.”
“The kid is in there with you,” George says. “I can smell the little shit.”
“I don’t have your fucking kid.”
George moves sideways, closer to my voice, testing cracks in the door to see if he’s found me yet. His body lands darkly on the crack I am using. He pushes his lips up against the wood and speaks.
“I can’t feel my feet.”
“You know where to get shelter. This isn’t the only space.”
“You let me in and we’ll see if we can get along.”
“I couldn’t let you in if I wanted to,” I say. It’s a mistake. I’ve given his frozen brain what it needs to start
puzzling through how I got in. He moves his face off the wood of the barn, the shadow of him staying still for the moment. He shifts his gaze to his right to reexamine the three trees.
Earl sneezes, a distinct sound, childlike and clear.
I move then, fast as I can, to the ladder. I climb the rungs and am at Earl’s side, helping him to his feet.
“Shhhh,” I say, and hold him to me. “Go to ground level,” I say into his ear. “Uncover the truck. We may need to drive it out of here stat.”
Earl does as I’ve told him, shaking so badly I’m afraid he won’t find the first rung of the ladder, but he does and soon he is on the ground. I walk to the ledge and look down. The trees we climbed to get into the loft are within arm’s reach. George is trying to climb them, so I reach out and rest my palm on the bark of one of them, give it a push. Its trunk is strong, but George notices the shift and looks up. He can’t climb them. Not in his current state. His legs move as if they are made of lead and his left arm is not of much use. Drops of red hit the snow at his feet.
“Looks like climbing isn’t gonna work for you today,” I say.
“Well, hello there,” he says, and shades his eyes with his right hand, trying to make his left look more normal by tucking it in his jeans pocket, though he winces as he does this. “You don’t know what you’re doing out here, do you, pretty girl?”
For a moment, his words cut through me. The familiar nausea of not knowing what I’m doing returns. If I trace back the origins of what brought me to this moment, standing high above a monster of a man, I will find only my own evil heart. I wasn’t born with it. It came later, my desire to direct and control. Ray was like one of Earl’s tinfoil creations.
“I’m going to leave this place and I’m taking Earl with me. I know that much. I also know there is no way you are going to be able to climb those trees.”
“Earl,” he scoffs. “Earl isn’t real and neither am I and neither are you. This place made us all up and it’ll take us all down.”
“Don’t put your crazy on me, mister.”
He stares up at me blankly for a time and then a smile spreads across his face.
Tinfoil Butterfly Page 11