by Amy Reed
“I’ve spent my life looking at brochures about all the cool stuff to do around here,” Billy says. “I figured maybe I should try some of it. Plus, hiking’s free and I don’t have any money.”
“Do you want to go kayaking next?”
“Sure.”
“I was kidding.”
Billy looks up from the map and says, very seriously, “I need a hobby.”
“Okay?”
“Do you know what I do when I’m not at school or hanging out with you?”
“What?” I say, but I’m not sure I want to know. Boys do gross things when nobody’s around.
“I watch TV with my Grandma,” he says. “Or I watch old interviews of my uncle. It’s not healthy.”
“So you think hiking’s going to be your new hobby?”
Billy looks into the dense wall of forest. “Let’s go this way,” he says.
“There’s no trail.”
“It’ll be an adventure.”
“Fine,” I say. I’m probably due for an adventure. Anything is better than Taco Hell and Larry’s bar.
We walk for a while in silence, slowly due to all the tree stumps and ferns and rotted logs and rocks in our way. “Isn’t this fun?” Billy says, inspecting a red mushroom. “We’re hanging out, getting in touch with nature. At least we’re not at the mall.”
“At least we’re not at the mall,” I repeat. The small consolation of my sad, empty life.
“Hey, look at this!” Billy says, pointing at a tangle of long shimmering white hairs snagged on a tree branch. “They’re glowing.” His eyes look like they’re going to pop out of his head. “Oh my god,” he says. “Do you think they’re from a uni—”
“No,” I say. “It’s just those glitter hair tinsel extension things girls get.”
“Feel it,” Billy says, caressing the strands. “It feels like real hair.”
“I’m not going to feel it,” I say. “And you shouldn’t either. You don’t know where that hair’s been. It could have lice or something.”
“I don’t think unicorns get lice.”
“For fuck’s sake, Billy, there’s no such thing as unicorns!” I am so close to leaving him stranded out here by himself. “I know, why don’t you get a job? You’re always broke, you don’t do any extracurriculars, and no offense, but you don’t really have any friends besides me, so you have tons of free time.”
“I have to help Grandma.”
“Help her do what?”
“Everything. I don’t know. I have to be available when she needs me. If it weren’t for me, the trash would never get taken out. Can you imagine what that house would be like if the trash didn’t get taken out?”
“I’m sure you could take the trash out between school and a part-time job.”
“But her health is bad. She needs my help with all kinds of stuff.”
I stop walking. I’m sick of everyone’s excuses for choosing to be miserable and pretending they’re not. “You want to know what I think?” I say.
“Not really.”
“I think you’re terrified of not being needed. I think you secretly want to believe your grandma is dependent on you because that makes you important. Because if she didn’t need you, who would you be? It’s like you wouldn’t even matter anymore.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to say that, but I know as soon as it comes out of my mouth that it’s true. I watch as Billy’s face goes through a series of emotions—surprise, confusion, suspicion, alarm, and then something I’ve never seen before—anger.
“Screw you,” he says, his face all red. “You’re not being a very nice friend.” He stomps away deeper into the forest.
“Maybe a real friend’s job is not to be nice all the time,” I say, following him. “Maybe a friend’s job is to tell the truth.”
“Did you read that on a tea bag?” Billy says, with an edge to his voice I’ve never heard before.
“Whoa,” I say. “Stop. Talk to me.”
He spins around. “The last interview of Caleb I watched, he was all hunched over, like he was too weak to even hold himself up. He was wearing sunglasses, and his sweatshirt was all stained, like he hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes in days, and he could barely stay awake. He’s twenty-seven years old, but he’s, like, a feeble old man. He looked like he was dying.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No one ever helped him.”
“Oh, Billy.”
“I think he’s dead.”
I reach out—to do what, I’m not sure. I’m too far away to hug him, so it’s unclear what exactly I’m expecting my arms to do. I don’t have much practice at this stuff.
Did Caleb ever hug Billy? Does his grandma? Does anyone?
Larry’s not a big hugger, but he tries sometimes and mostly I just push him away. My mom was a hugger on her good days, but on her bad days she wouldn’t let me touch her. I’d chase her, crying, and she’d lock herself behind her bedroom door while I pounded on it with my tiny fists. It’s like the little affection I got from her just made me hungrier for more.
Something twists in my chest. It’s my mother’s ghost-hand refusing to let me go.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Billy’s back, but he won’t look at me. He just keeps walking deeper into the forest. “Really, I mean it. I could have said all that stuff much nicer. I didn’t know you were so upset. I was just trying to help. You should understand that, of all people.”
He spins around to face me. “I help people by doing stuff for them. That’s different.”
“Maybe that’s not really helping them,” I say.
We look at each other for a long time. Isn’t he supposed to say something? Are we fighting? Is this our first fight?
After what seems like forever, Billy sighs and looks away. “I just want to change into dry clothes and make a box of mac and cheese and watch TV.”
“Should we go back?” I say, but then all of a sudden, a huge gust of wind almost knocks me over, and my heart jumps into my throat. Even though I’m standing, I feel like I just landed on the ground after falling, like gravity just seriously kicked my ass. Everything feels heavy, like the air itself is weighing me down, and my ears pop under the pressure. “Wait a minute,” I say, looking around the forest, which is way darker than it should be in the early afternoon. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I don’t hear any birds.” Everything alive stopped breathing and moving. The only sound is the dripping of the rain filtering down through the trees. “Let’s get out of here,” I say. I try to make my voice sound strong, but I don’t think it worked. I start to walk, but I stumble, my boots sucking up mud. The ground is trying to hold me hostage. The forest can smell my fear.
“You’re going the wrong way,” Billy says.
“No, I’m not. The road is this way.” I point in the direction of a wall of green. I could swear there used to be an opening in that direction. I could swear I saw sky.
“No, it’s this way.” Billy points in the direction of another identical wall of green.
We stand there looking at each other. “Shit,” I say.
“I’m scared,” says Billy.
He needs me to be the brave one. I have to be the brave one.
“It’s okay,” I say, pulling my phone out of my pocket. Of course it has no bars. I try to smile. “It’ll be fine. We just have to retrace our steps, and—” But then Billy spins around faster than I’ve ever seen him move, then spins back and looks at me with terror in his eyes.
“Did you see that?” Billy says. He sounds like he’s being strangled. “Lydia, did you see that?”
“No,” I whimper.
Did he see the thing that’s been following me? Did he see the thing that ran by me in the fog at his house?
“Something really big,” he says. “Something dark. Way over there. It was moving fast.”
“Was it a bear?”
“No, way bigger than that.”
“Wouldn
’t we have heard it?”
He takes a deep breath, and so do I. “You’re right,” he says. I feel a little better.
But then the drips of the forest get louder and faster, and pine needles start flying around us like tiny sharp torpedoes. We both look up at the same time and see the forest canopy swaying and thrashing. Trunks creak in protest. Gusts of wind beat us from all directions like they’re trying to knock us down. My ears pop again. A sound like a deep, sad moan rips through the forest, and I swear I can feel it in my bones.
“What the fuck?” I say.
“There wasn’t a storm on the forecast,” Billy says. “I checked three times.”
“What kind of storm makes a sound like that?”
Then I see something moving fast, in the distance, through layers and layers of leaves, white and maybe even kind of sparkly, like a car catching sunlight, but that’s impossible because we’re nowhere near a road that people actually drive on and there hasn’t been sunlight around here in weeks. It has to be the thing I heard outside Billy’s house the night the fog came. The thing with hooves.
The trees shake even harder as pine needles and wet leaves and twigs and soft bits of decaying wood fly sideways and upward. The wind is moaning even louder, like the whole forest is crying, and that stink like rotting death is everywhere.
And then the fog comes, out of nowhere. One moment, we are surrounded by thrashing green, the next moment swirling white. I didn’t even see it coming.
“Ow!” I scream as something cuts my cheek. I can feel my long hair flying around my head like some wild Medusa.
“What happened?” Billy yells, and I can barely hear his voice over the moaning. Even though he’s just steps away, I can’t see him.
I pull my hand away from my face, and there’s blood everywhere. “I think a rock hit me.”
Then the forest is full of the loudest, most bloodcurdling noise I’ve ever heard.
“The air raid siren,” Billy shouts. “It’s coming from the coast guard station.” He finds my hand in the fog. “This way!” He pulls me in the direction of the sound.
We run as fast as we can, but the forest floor pulls at our boots, like it doesn’t want to let us leave. All of our movements are in slow motion as the wind keeps beating at us, trying to push us deeper into the forest. I run into a spiderweb that wraps all around my face and neck, then fall into a mud puddle that goes up past my knees. Billy has to pull me out, but my boots don’t come with me. “Those were expensive!” I scream, but I know we’re not stopping to fish them out. We slow-motion run toward the sound of the siren, the forest whipping around us, invisible in the fog, branches like arms coming out of nowhere, grabbing at our clothes, spiderwebs all over the place, our faces and bodies getting pelted with sticks and stones and everything else without roots, like someone has made the forest their weapon, and we got caught in their war zone, and now we’re just trying to make it out alive.
Then, as soon as it appeared, the fog clears. A sickly, pale gray-green light shines through the thinning branches, and the wind calms, and the forest seems to let go of its grip. We fall to the ground where the forest canopy finally opens above the train tracks. I lie on my back and look up at a sky I do not recognize, with a color and texture I cannot name. My clothes are heavy with mud, my hair tangled with sticks and leaves. Everything stills and settles, but somehow I know everything has changed and there is no going back.
The siren rings in my ears. I can hear Billy crying softly next to me. I roll toward him and put my arm around his heaving chest until I can feel his heart stop trying to jump out of it.
“Strange weather today, huh?” the bus driver says as I limp onto the bus. I put Billy on the bus going the opposite direction.
“Don’t talk to me about the weather,” I croak back. I’ve lost my voice from having to scream over the sound of the storm. I am shoeless, caked with mud almost up to my waist, and I’m pretty sure I have a cut on the bottom of my right foot, and I’m pretty sure it’s bleeding, but it’s impossible to tell because whatever blood that’s there is mixed up with the mud. There’s not a single place on my body that is dry.
I leave a wet trail behind me as I walk to a seat in the middle of the bus. It’s completely empty except for Old Pete asleep in the back in a mildewed camo poncho. A brown puddle forms beneath my seat, and I think about the pointless fight Billy and I were having when the storm started, and for some reason I start laughing uncontrollably, and I totally don’t care because it’s just me and Old Pete and this bus driver who has most likely seen his fair share of people having meltdowns on his bus.
Pete somehow knows to wake up right when we get to the stop outside the bar, and we walk in together without speaking. As he sits down at his usual booth and I walk away, he mumbles, “They’re here,” then falls back asleep. I’m too tired to ask him what he’s talking about.
I expect my dad to see me and freak out, but his eyes are glued to the TV, along with the three other guys sitting at the bar in various states of wetness, one who looks almost as muddy as me. A banner on the bottom says BREAKING NEWS, and that reporter Ronda Rash, with her perfect blond hair that must be a wig and her signature pastel suit with the tasteful hint of cleavage, is standing on the edge of a giant hole in the ground as big across as the high school lunchroom and about two stories deep. Disheveled people are gathered around the pit, looking down into it, as police work to put up a flimsy barrier around the border.
Ronda Rash is saying something about an F2-level tornado touching down right at the border of Carthage and Rome, the first tornado ever documented in Fog Harbor County.
“A goddamned tornado,” says the muddiest guy at the bar. A glob of mud drops off his nose into his beer, but he takes a sip anyway.
The screen cuts to the meteorologist back in the studio, and he is standing in front of some graphics about a tornado, literally scratching his head. “Tornadoes just aren’t possible with our topography and weather system,” he mumbles like a guy having a conversation with the voices in his head. An offscreen voice whispers, “You’re live, Lewis,” then he snaps out of it and goes back to meteorologist voice to explain how tornadoes are made.
I notice a cup of hot tea in front of me. “Thanks,” I say to Larry, surprising myself. This day is full of surprises.
Larry hands me a beer and says, “Will you take that to Pete?”
I squish my way over to Old Pete’s booth and set the beer in front of him. “Hey,” I say. “You’re not even wet.”
“I’ve lived here a long time,” he says, eyes still closed. “Nothing surprises me anymore.” He reaches out his trembling hand to lift the beer to his face, which is cracked and dry like tree bark, and tips it into the opening behind his long, thick gray beard. I think those are the most words I’ve ever heard him speak.
I squish back to the bar, and the TV is showing the pit again, except now people are divided onto two sides of it, yelling across at each other. “It’s ours!” shout Carthageans one side. “It’s ours!” scream people on the Rome side.
“At this point,” says Ronda Rash, “it is unclear if the tornado pit falls more in Carthage or Rome city limits. Residents of both towns appear to feel very strongly that the pit belongs to them. A survey team is en route as we speak.”
I take a sip of tea and realize it’s from one of the stale tea bags Larry keeps at the bar in case anyone ever orders a hot toddy, which they don’t. I touch my hair and feel it matted with mud and sticks and leaves and spiderwebs and tree sap and who knows what else. There’s no way I’m ever going to get these tangles out.
I realize I’m trembling, but I’m pretty sure it’s not because I’m cold.
BILLY
I’M IN THE BATHTUB, TRYING not to think about what just happened in the forest with Lydia. I’ve stopped shaking, so that’s an improvement. This is an opportunity to be grateful that I can fully relax in the tub because Grandma isn’t here to yell at me from the kitchen through the hole in the
floor. After this, I’ll turn on the AA channel and Lynn A. will be there and everything will be okay.
Relax, I tell myself.
It’s not working.
I don’t want to think about how long it’s been since I cleaned the tub or what’s growing on the sides of it, so I squeeze in a bunch of dish soap to make bubbles so thick I can’t see through them, which will hopefully do double duty of cleaning me and cleaning the tub. I know dish soap is not ideal for a bubble bath, but it’s the only soap we have in the house right now.
Rich people don’t have to think about soap. They have different soaps for every kind of cleaning—for washing dishes in the sink, for washing dishes in the dishwasher, for washing windows, for washing counters, for washing floors; soap for laundry, soap for hands, soap for bodies, soap for hair, even separate soap for faces. Last week I had to decide between deodorant and a jar of peanut butter while doing our grocery shopping at BigMart. For the sake of everyone at school, I chose deodorant. But now I want a peanut butter sandwich more than I’ve ever wanted one in my life.
I hear what sounds like footsteps, but it’s probably just a new noise the house came up with for a new something that’s breaking deep inside it. Something splashes into the bathwater. I look up and a section of plaster about as big as my hand is missing from the ceiling. I fish it out of the tub and throw it into the corner of the bathroom, but it left little chunks of white chalky stuff in the bathtub that will probably get stuck all over me.
As broken as the house is, at least I’m not outside. At least I’m not in that forest, with whatever else was running around. It may not be completely safe in here, but it’s way worse out there.
I try not to look at how dirty brown the bathwater is as it drains. I towel myself off and feel pretty clean, all things considered, then dress in my room quickly. No doubt new things will disappear after Grandma’s upcoming Caleb Sloat, Lead Singer of Rainy Day Knife Fight, Childhood Tour™, which have been increasing steadily since Caleb went missing. I think maybe I should hide my most important things in the attic, but then I realize there’s nothing important enough to go through the effort of hiding, and that’s kind of a sad feeling when you think about it, to not have anything you particularly want to protect.