by Amy Reed
“I think she did it,” Drunk Ted says. “She killed him.”
“Yup,” says another guy at the end of the bar.
“And you know what?” Shannon Smear continues. “He really loved my band, Olympia’s Consent. He loved our new album, Survive This Storm, which is coming out tomorrow and will be available everywhere music is sold. He said it was our best yet.” Then she starts fake-crying.
“You guys know his mom?” Drunk Ted says. “Tammy Sloat, over in Rome?”
The other guy spits in response to the word “Rome.”
“She’s a piece of work, that one,” Drunk Ted says. “Two junkie kids, something must be wrong with the mama.”
“That’s my best friend’s grandma you’re talking about,” I say, even though I wasn’t too impressed the one brief time I met her, and the woman sounds like a tyrant no matter how much Billy tries to candy-coat his stories. But I still feel the need to defend her, because Tammy Sloat is Billy’s. And anything belonging to Billy is mine to defend.
I imagine throwing my half-eaten burrito down the bar and watching it land perfectly in Drunk Ted’s glass, splashing chicken and cheese and beer into his droopy pervert face. But Drunk Ted is probably a major reason why Larry’s bar is still even in business and why I have a roof over my head.
“Oh, that scrawny kid?” Drunk Ted says. “Isn’t he retarded?”
“No, he’s not retarded,” I say. “And by the way, it’s not okay to call people retarded.” Screw the burrito; I’m this close to grabbing a pint glass and throwing it at his head.
“Naw, he must be retarded. Heroin baby and all. And I heard his mom was still turning tricks long after she was showing.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Larry finally says. But it’s too late. I can feel the sting of something in my eyes, tiny daggers that should be tearing apart Drunk Ted’s rotted liver instead of poking around my eyeballs. Everything’s been getting so weird—the fog, the dreams about my mom, Caleb disappearing, hallucinations of small figures in the shadows and hooved creatures in the fog. And now I feel like crying? Because of something a drunk old man said that doesn’t even have anything to do with me? What is happening? What is wrong with me?
“Well, he’s a gay, I know that,” says Drunk Ted. “Why else would he be just friends with a girl as pretty as Lydia here?”
And then I do throw the glass. My arm moves all by itself, without asking me what I think about it. The glass barely misses Drunk Ted’s face as it smashes into the wall behind him.
“Lydia!” Larry shouts.
“What the hell?” Drunk Ted yells. “Larry, get a handle on your bitch daughter.”
The other guy at the bar just rolls his eyes and looks back at the TV. Old Pete burps in his booth by the door but doesn’t wake up. Why can’t all men be as easy to get along with as Old Pete?
I storm out of the bar and into the apartment. I know Larry won’t leave the bar to come talk to me. I’ll be asleep before he closes for the night, and by the morning he’ll lose his nerve. That’s how we deal with things—by walking away, by hiding until things blow over. Out of sight, out of mind.
But the apartment isn’t much better. The stinging in my eyes has turned into real tears, like a broken faucet I can’t turn off, like this isn’t even my body anymore; it’s the body of some little girl who cries and can’t help it. This isn’t me. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m too tired to dance. And it’s not the kind of feeling I can dance away, not a feeling my muscles can burn through. It’s a feeling that’s settled on me heavy and is not going anywhere.
I get ready for bed and lie down in the dark. I look at the blackness of the ceiling and push away a memory of fresh-smelling sheets, of hands in the dark tucking me in. I push away the memory of being a kid who likes getting wrapped up tight. In the darkness, I can imagine a smile on my mother’s face instead of the scowl she usually wore. In the darkness, it is easier to believe she loved me.
Stupid, I tell myself. You’re so stupid.
I think about Natalie Morris. Did Natalie come home from three hours of elite dance classes to a home-cooked meal made by her loving mother? Does her bed smell like roses? Has she ever had to train her mind the way she’s trained her body—to be strong, to push through pain, to make every move look easy? Or is dancing the hardest thing she’s ever had to do?
I can’t tell Billy the real reason I hate Natalie. I can’t tell him it’s because I’m jealous. Because then I’d have to tell him why I’m jealous, because he’d keep asking and asking until there was nowhere deeper to go, because he has this annoying habit of always knowing when there’s somewhere deeper to go. And then he’d know my dance secret, and then he’d know too much.
The thing is, there’s only so much good stuff to go around for people in Fog Harbor, and Natalie got all of it. It’s bad enough she gets to take classes and follow her dream and I don’t, but why’d she have to get so lucky in the parent lottery, too? Why not me? Why’d I get stuck with my pathetic dad who can’t afford dance lessons and doesn’t defend me against creepy alcoholic old men? And for that matter, why’d Billy get stuck with his asshole grandma? People act like living with blood relatives is automatically better, but sometimes maybe it’s better to start over from scratch and get a whole new family that actually wants you.
Maybe in some alternate universe, I could have been Natalie. Maybe I could have been the one who got adopted by rich parents and was given everything I ever wanted, my future full of possibilities. Maybe I could have been the ballerina snob everybody hates, instead of just being hated.
I hear something moving under my bed. I shut my eyes tight and hold my body completely still the way I used to when I was a kid. The monsters won’t get you if they think you’re sleeping. It’s when you wake up that things start to become a problem.
BILLY
GRANDMA THINKS THERE’S NOTHING IN real life as good as what’s on TV, but I think she’s just not looking right. Like at this very moment, she’s inside watching some courthouse TV show when she could be sitting on the front stoop with me watching a real-life drama across the street. Some guy let his dog poop in Cult Family’s front yard, and Cult Dad went ballistic. The guy was just like, “Whatever, old dude,” and kept walking. But then Cult Dad ran into the house and came out with one of those big scary guns people only use in wars and mass shootings and started chasing the guy down the street, and then another neighbor started shouting, “Dammit, Dwight. Calm down!” but then Cult Dad pointed the gun at her, and she screamed, and then more people came out of their houses, and a car stopped and the driver said he’s calling 911, and then Cult Dad pointed his gun at that guy, and now he’s standing in the middle of the street, spinning around and pointing his giant gun whenever he hears a sound, and the whole neighborhood is watching, and some people’s lips are all tight and judgy like Grandma’s get, and some people are laughing, and it is way more entertaining than any TV show I’ve seen recently.
But then Cult Girl peeks through the tiny sliver of curtain I can see through the five giant trees blocking the house’s front windows, and she’s got the saddest look on her face I’ve ever seen, and when she meets my eye I try to use all the psychic powers I possibly have to tell her I’m sorry she got stuck with this guy as her dad, and I’m sorry I thought it was entertaining, and then I wave and she actually waves back, for the first time ever, not quite a wave but more like a sad little flop of the wrist, like she’s too exhausted to do a real wave and that’s the best she can do under these circumstances, and I use all my psychic powers to tell her that it was enough and to not feel bad and no matter what hang in there, but then a hand grabs her shoulder and the curtains fall where her face used to be, and then she is gone.
Fog is rolling down the street like a slow-motion tsunami of mashed potatoes, and that smell like an old man’s breath is heavy in the air like the stench of someone dying from the inside. It’s quite a scene, this guy with a gun on top of his car about to get sq
uished by a giant fluff ball, and he has no idea what’s coming behind him. I remember Grandma saying something about the military and the Middle East and PTSD, but I don’t know if it was about him or one of the other men with guns on the block who work at the prison and sometimes drink too much and start yelling, or maybe it was about all of them. All the dads work at the prison, and all the moms work at BigMart. Except for Cult Girl’s mom, because she’s not allowed to work, because they go to some weird church in a trailer by the freeway that says women are supposed to stay in the home and kids should be kept pure and not have any contact with sinners, aka everybody else. I don’t know what the church says about terrorizing your neighborhood with a giant gun.
The thing is, every neighborhood in Fog Harbor has a guy like this who occasionally loses it and goes outside with a shotgun and shoots at the sky, only those guys are usually drunk or high on meth, and as far as I know the only thing Cult Dad’s been smoking is his trailer-church God and PTSD. Most everybody in Fog Harbor has some kind of gun, and mainly they’re just for hunting or shooting cans or for guys to show off how tough they are when they don’t have any actual muscles. It’s just the way things are. Grandma says the people in Seattle hate us for it.
A cop car rolls up like it’s in no hurry, with no lights or sirens. It parks, and the two cops get out and say hi to Cult Dad all friendly, like they’re running into each other at the grocery store. “Hey, Dwight,” one of them says. “What’s going on?” The fog inches down the street toward them. The neighbors’ houses disappear, as if swallowed. No one seems alarmed.
“The dogs,” Cult Dad says, gun still surveying the neighborhood. “They’re after me, Shawn.”
“Damn dogs,” Officer Shawn says.
“Infidels,” Cult Dad says. “Bottom-feeders.”
“Yep,” says Officer Shawn. “Hey, Dwight, what do you think about putting your gun down? You’re scaring your neighbors a little.”
“Property rights, Shawn,” says Cult Dad. “It’s in the Bible.”
“Get in here, Billy!” Grandma hollers. She’s peeking out through a crack in the front door.
“Come out here, Grandma,” I say. “It’s just getting good.” But then I remember the look on Cult Girl’s face, and I remember this is her actual life, not a TV show.
“You have no business snooping on the neighbors,” Grandma says.
“But you snoop on the neighbors all the time.”
“Come in right now or I’ll smack your chin.”
I sigh and get up. I do what Grandma says. I always do. The possum who lives in the crawl space under the house pokes out her pointy face and hisses at me as I walk inside.
Maybe my life isn’t that different from Cult Girl’s. Except I get to leave the house. I get to talk to other people, whether they like it or not. When I think about it, I could hypothetically do whatever I want. But I don’t. Because even when Grandma’s not with me, it’s like she is. And even though I could do what I want, I have no idea what I’d even want to do. Caleb did what he wanted and look where it got him.
Maybe Cult Girl is the lucky one. She doesn’t have to go to school and get picked on all the time. She doesn’t have to make any tough choices because all of her decisions are made for her. Her world is small and figured out and right now that sounds pretty nice to me. Except for the whole being-in-an-oppressive-cult thing, of course.
“Come over here,” Grandma says as she shuffles into the living room. “The King’s making an important speech.”
“Grandma, have you noticed how weird the fog is lately?” I say as I follow her.
“There’s always fog,” she says, plopping down on the couch in her usual spot, sending a cloud of dust flying. “This county is called Fog Harbor, for Pete’s sake.”
“But it’s way thicker and it smells weird.”
“Stop thinking so much, Billy,” she says. “It’s not your strong suit.”
The King’s on TV standing at a podium in what looks like a fake pressroom set up at a tropical resort. Ocean and sandy beach are visible in the corner of the screen, like the camera guy wasn’t trying very hard when he framed the shot. A slight breeze blows the fluff on top of the King’s head.
“Look, let me tell you something about nuclear—I’m practically a scientist. My brain, it’s that good, PhD material, smart genes, it runs in the family. It’s in the guts, it’s all about instincts, and I got plenty of instincts. I’m like a fox, they’re real smart and they have that fluffy orange hair, but not when they’re dirty. Have you seen a dirty fox? Not a pretty picture. See, you don’t need a fancy degree to know stuff like this. I know nuclear is powerful. That’s my whole point. I don’t think you’re listening. And look at me, I’m one of the smartest people in the world. My point is, they’re going to kill us. They’re going to kill us if we don’t kill them first.”
The King looks very pleased with himself, and Grandma nods her head earnestly and says, “Now that’s a leader.”
I’m about as nonpolitical as you can get, but on what planet does that sound like somebody who knows what he’s doing?
I wonder what would happen if I just ran away. One night, while Grandma’s sleeping, I could sneak out. Lydia would be waiting behind the bush by the trash cans, with a backpack full of her Taco Hell money, and maybe I could save up by selling plasma, whatever that is, the way Uncle Caleb says he did in interviews, and we could swoop Cult Girl off her front stoop, and then we’d hide in a gas station bathroom and cut our hair and dye it different colors like fugitives do in movies, and maybe I would wear a fake mustache and a suit as my disguise, and Lydia and Cult Girl could wear whatever they want, and then Grandma would wake up in the morning and she’d yell, “Billy, where are you?!” up the stairs, but I wouldn’t be anywhere. For the first time in her life, Grandma wouldn’t know where I was and I wouldn’t come running when she called.
I wonder how long it would take for her to realize I’m really gone. Maybe a few minutes, and then maybe she’d be so worried that she’d actually overcome her fear of heights and find the strength to walk up the stairs to the second floor, where she hasn’t set foot in ten years, and the house would groan under the extra weight, and then it’d shift a little more to the south, and the wood would start splitting, and the foundation would start cracking, and when she got to the top of the stairs and found me gone, maybe then, finally, she’d realize how much she loved me. And as the house falls apart around her, she’ll be consumed with regret for all those seventeen years of bossing me around and smacking my chin, seventeen years full of love she never figured out how to feel, and she’ll be so overwhelmed, she’ll fall to the ground, convulsing with tears of heartache from how much she misses me, and she’ll realize she didn’t treat me right, she’ll realize how much she needs me, how helpful and selfless I’ve been, how she can’t live without me, and dramatic music will play, with violins and other fancy instruments, and the house will finally collapse, but it will be her trapped by a beam, not me, and underneath all that rubble of her broken home Grandma will finally realize I’m good; she will realize I’m not like Caleb, and I’m not the one who killed my mom.
But Grandma will be too late. I will be long gone, speeding into infinity with Lydia starring as my sidekick and Cult Girl starring as the girl I save, and I will be the hero, finally.
“This just in,” the news guy says. “There has been a new development in the missing persons investigation for Caleb Sloat, lead singer of the hit band Rainy Day Knife Fight, who disappeared after an apparent breakdown onstage over two weeks ago. Investigators have just discovered that several hundred thousand dollars were withdrawn from Caleb Sloat’s bank account days after his disappearance. We have no more information at this time, but we will keep you posted with any new developments.”
I look at Grandma and she has murder in her eyes. I can practically hear her thinking, “That money should be mine.”
The smell of a dead giant’s burp fills the house, and I know it�
��s the fog and not from Grandma this time. I peek out the window and everything has been swallowed by white. The world looks like a fresh piece of paper.
I know escapes have to be really well planned. That’s the only way they work. One mistake and you’re more trapped than you ever were to begin with.
LYDIA
I NORMALLY WOULDN’T BE SO agreeable, but I’m having a hard time saying no to Billy since all this Caleb stuff started happening. I’m not sure I like this version of myself. It agrees to do things like go hiking in the rain, even though I slept like crap last night because I had another dream about my mom, and I’m feeling so irritable and pissed off that even the trees are annoying me, and we’ve barely even started this hike.
We’re wandering around an old logging road in the forest by the train tracks. Moss hangs off gnarly old Douglas firs like long green beards, like something out of Lord of the Rings. I can almost see faces in the bark, mouths built out of shelves of giant fungi, eyes dug out by woodpeckers. The trees are going to start talking any minute. The slugs and spiders and swarms of mosquitoes are all part of their sinister plan. I look up, and the canopy is so thick I can’t see any sky. Just a ceiling of different shades of dark green. I can hear rain falling hard somewhere up there, but all that hits us are thick, sporadic drips.
“Why are we doing this again?” I say. We’ve stopped so Billy can look at the map he took from his grandma’s office. I have the sudden strange feeling that we’re being watched, that the deeper we go into the forest, the more alive it gets. I keep hearing something crunching around in the undergrowth, but when I look, nothing’s there.