by Amy Reed
“What’d you do there?” Billy says. “Did you talk about your feelings a lot like on Sexy Sober Survivor?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have feelings,” he says with a smug look on his face. He thinks he’s so clever. I hate people like that, too.
“Are you a sociopath?” I say. “Sociopaths think the world revolves around them, and they don’t have a conscience or the ability to feel empathy.”
He glares at me, and I feel a small thrill of accomplishment.
“Dude,” he says to Billy. “Just get me some fucking weed. I’ve been through hell. It’s not like I’m asking you to get me fucking heroin.”
“Do you have to say ‘fuck’ so much?” Billy says.
“Yes,” Caleb says.
“I don’t think I can get you weed,” Billy says.
“Why not?”
“First of all, I don’t know anyone who sells weed.”
“You’re a teenager in Fog Harbor. Everyone sells weed.”
“Second of all, I don’t want to contribute to your relapse.”
“Dude, let me tell you something. In the great scheme of things I’ve done, weed is barely a drug.”
“It’s a gateway drug.”
“Okay, yeah, maybe. Don’t do drugs. But for me, it’s a little different. It’s going to be my gateway to sobriety, okay? Like, I just need it to ease my transition. ¿Comprende?”
“Wait,” I say. “Are you gonna go through withdrawals and shit? Are you going to be up here puking and shitting yourself and expecting Billy to clean it up?”
“Don’t worry, princess. I already did that part.”
“Are you running from the law?” Billy says.
“Worse,” Caleb says, looking out the window like some forlorn dude-version of Emily Dickinson. “I’m running from the whole goddamned world.”
I roll my eyes quite possibly the hardest I’ve ever rolled them in my entire eye-rolling life. This guy is so full of shit.
BILLY
EVEN THOUGH GRANDMA’S SEPARATED FROM Caleb by two floors and has bad hearing and never notices anything I do and probably even forgot the attic exists, I’m still terrified of getting caught. It’s like she’s drilled a part of herself into my brain and knows every time I even think something bad, and then she punishes me immediately with guilt. I watched TV with her for a while before she went to bed last night, and my heart was pounding so hard I was sure she could hear it, and every time the house creaked I’d jump a foot off of the couch like I was getting electrocuted.
“Dammit, Billy!” she yelled. “Why the hell are you sweating so much? You smell like a pig.”
“Sorry,” I said, and then I went upstairs and sat alone in my room looking at the wall because I couldn’t sleep. As soon as I heard her stomp into her bedroom, I went back downstairs and watched AA TV for a long time. I told Lynn A. about Caleb hiding in my attic, and she just knitted her scarf and listened the whole time without saying anything, which I appreciated. I have a feeling she probably doesn’t think it’s a very good idea, but luckily she’s not the judgmental type. Grandma’s guilt-voice yelling in my head got a little quieter, and I fell asleep on the couch listening to the soothing sound of people talking about their rock bottoms.
I begged Lydia to come over again today because I’ve been assigned the task of carrying over a decade’s worth of hoarded thrift store blankets and pillows from the second-floor bedroom up to Caleb’s attic. On the walk home through the stinky mist, we saw a raccoon jump into a stroller and grab a bottle right out of a baby’s hand while the mom wasn’t looking. I swear this fog has everyone acting a little extra bonkers.
“This is bullshit,” Lydia says, carrying her seventh load up the narrow staircase. “Tell me again why I agreed to help you with this.”
“Because you’re my best friend.” I keep calling her this, but she still hasn’t confirmed one way or the other. I figure if I keep saying it, eventually it’ll stick.
“Whatever,” she says.
We’re both drenched in sweat while Caleb just sits on his broken lawn chair by the window staring at his computer. I understand he has just been through an enormous ordeal to get here and probably isn’t in prime physical form, but maybe it’d be nice if he helped a little.
“Aren’t you going to fucking help?” Lydia yells at him. Further proof that we’re best friends: she can read my mind.
“Nope,” he says. “I’m quite comfortable, thanks.”
She drops the comforter she was carrying and storms downstairs. I follow her. Why can’t they just get along? Don’t they know how much easier life is if you don’t pick fights?
“Why are you letting him treat you like this?” Lydia asks.
“He needs my help,” I say.
“But that doesn’t mean you should let yourself get used.”
“I’m not,” I say, but I know that’s not completely true. So what if he’s using me a little? Lydia doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand how things work in our family.
“What do you even owe him? Why do you want to help someone who’s so mean to you?”
“He’s my family.”
Lydia shakes her head and sighs.
I want Lydia to understand that Caleb isn’t all bad. He’s not just that asshole she’s seen on TV. He’s not even just that asshole in the attic right now. There’s something good in him, and I know it, and Lydia needs to know it too. Because Caleb and me, we come from the same place. We’re made out of the same stuff. If there’s nothing good in Caleb, what does that say about me?
“Did I ever tell you about that time we found the bird?” I say.
Lydia sighs. “No. But—”
“I think I was five or six or something. It’s one of my earliest memories. We had just left Gordon’s house where I played video games while they got stoned.”
“Yeah, you’re not really helping your case right now, Billy.”
“We had this old plastic wagon that Caleb would pull me in whenever we went anywhere. Gordon’s house. BigMart. The park.”
“He took you to the park?”
“Yeah, all the time. He pushed me on the swings and everything.” I decide to leave out the part about how most of the time, Caleb would just sit on the bench and tell me to play by myself, or that one time he said he’d be right back but he left me there so long it got dark out and a cop had to drive me home.
“This one time, we found a bird half alive on the road. Caleb was really upset. He wrapped it up in his hoodie and took it home and tried to nurse it back to health. He was really serious about it. He was so gentle with that bird.”
“Did it live?”
“No,” I say. “It died and we buried it.”
“Was he sad?”
I think about this. I remember standing over the little grave in the backyard in the rain. I remember us bowing our heads and taking a moment of silence. Then Caleb looked up with a blank face and said, “Fuck it. It’s just a fucking bird.” Then he walked into the house and turned on some loud music in his room and left me out in the rain with the dead bird, and we never talked about it again.
“I think so,” I finally say.
Lydia sighs.
“Just a few more loads,” I beg. “Caleb said he’d buy us pizza. Real delivery kind, not frozen.”
“I can buy my own pizza,” Lydia says.
“I can’t,” I say.
“Fine,” Lydia says. “Just a few more loads. But I want to make it clear that I’m doing it to help you, not your asshole uncle. Okay?”
“Okay.”
When we drop off another load in the attic, Caleb looks up from his computer and says to Lydia, “I like this butch Mexican thing you have going on.”
“First of all, I’m not Mexican,” she tells him. “Second of all, I’m not even butch. I have short hair and I’m wearing jeans and a hoodie. That’s, like, normal clothes. But I guess you think all women should dress like your girlfrien
d and drip sex diseases everywhere they go.”
“She’s not my girlfriend anymore,” Caleb says.
“I don’t care,” Lydia says. “And by the way, that’s not what she’s telling people.”
Caleb covers his face with his hands and emits a strange, loud, guttural combination whine/moan and starts rocking back and forth.
Lydia looks at me. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He told me very specifically not to mention anything about what’s happening outside,” I say. “Especially things that involve him.”
“Billy,” Lydia says. “He needs professional help. Like, seriously. We are not qualified to deal with this.” I know she’s probably right, but Caleb asked me to help him. He asked me.
“Hey!” Caleb says. “Stop talking about me when I’m right here.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Don’t apologize to him,” Lydia says.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“Hey, kids,” Caleb says. “Where’s my weed?”
Lydia gives him one of the meanest death stares I’ve ever seen, which is saying a lot, but it doesn’t even faze him.
“What’s the fucking holdup?” Caleb says. “Come on, Billy. You have the money.”
“Listen,” Lydia says. “I don’t give a shit if you’re rich and famous and his uncle. You do not get to talk to him like that.”
“I can talk to him however I want.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you.”
They stare at each other for a long time. My heart is pounding in my throat. They need to stop fighting. I need them to stop fighting. How do I make them stop?
“Guys?” I choke. “Please don’t fight.”
Then Caleb starts laughing. “Hey, Billy,” he says. “You tap that yet?” He smirks and motions toward Lydia with his chin.
I look at Lydia and she is frozen. She is supposed to have a witty comeback. Where is her witty comeback? I have never seen her speechless like this. I am supposed to defend her. I am supposed to stick up for my friend. But I’m frozen too.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” I manage to say weakly.
“It’s a legitimate question, man. She’s hot. She’s a bitch, but she’s hot.”
I look at Lydia, and now her anger is directed at me, and I open my mouth but I have no voice, only a pathetic whimper, like someone deflated me, like I’m some kind of malfunctioning whoopee cushion, and somewhere inside I know there are words to defend her, but they are too lost and I am too late and she is down the stairs before I ever have the chance to find them, and by the time I get it together to follow her she is out the door, and the house shakes so hard it throws me down the staircase, and the side of my face slams against the bottom step, and I know I totally deserve it.
LYDIA
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING to find mom’s picture in the kitchen cabinet next to a box of cereal. As I took a shower, I kept seeing something moving behind the curtain, but every time I pushed it open nothing was there. I know it’s all in my mind. It’s like how after watching a horror movie you get extra jumpy and everything feels scary for a while. The only difference is this feeling is getting stronger, not fading away.
It’s not even Halloween yet and already it’s freezing, even though it hardly ever freezes in Fog Harbor. The fog spent all night sticking to things, and when I stepped outside to wait for the school bus this morning, the whole world was sparkling and frozen, icicles hanging off of everything like glistening swords. It’d be beautiful if it weren’t so cold. My Advertising History teacher said this is proof that global warming is a hoax, which is just further validation that going to school is making me dumber.
I didn’t return Billy’s calls last night. He left a total of seventeen messages, all apologizing for not sticking up for me when his uncle was spewing his nonsense. I probably should have called him back, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Because talking about it would mean it mattered. It would mean I got hurt. And who the hell wants to talk about that?
I don’t think I’m mad at Billy. How can I expect someone who can’t even stick up for himself to stick up for me? But maybe it’d be nice if someone would. Maybe I’m tired of always having to do it myself. It’s exhausting feeling like I have to defend myself all the time. From people at school, the guys at Larry’s bar, asshole customers at work, random dudes on the street—everyone, everywhere, butting into my life uninvited, or wanting something I don’t want to give.
Really, I’m way sadder for Billy than I am for myself. He still wants attention from his uncle so badly, he’ll put up with anything to get it. He doesn’t understand that you don’t have to let people in your life who hurt you. You can just shut them out, easy peasy, even family if you have to. You just push them away and they’re gone.
“Whatever,” I say at breakfast after Billy’s fifth version of I’m sorry. “I’m over it.”
“Really?” Billy says.
“What’s up with your face?” I say. He’s got a cut on his cheek and big reddish-purple bruise.
“I fell down the stairs.”
For a moment, I forget what I was so mad about to begin with, and my chest is full of a brand-new rage that cancels out every other feeling. Nobody just falls down the stairs. That’s exactly what people say to hide who really hurt them.
“Did he do that to you?” I say. I think I am growling. I could kill Caleb Sloat.
“What?” Billy says, and he seems genuinely surprised. “No! He would never hurt me.”
But does he know that for sure?
“Was it your grandma?”
I could kill that whole goddamned family. I really could.
“No! I swear to God, I fell down the stairs.” I search his face for a lie, but I don’t see one. “I’d tell you if someone hurt me,” he says, and I know he’s telling the truth.
I take a deep breath and the rage dissolves a little, and now mostly I just feel something heavy sloshing around in its place.
“It doesn’t really hurt,” Billy says, trying to sound cheerful, and for some reason that strikes me as the saddest thing of all.
“I made a decision,” I say, trying to sound calm. “I’m never coming over there again. Not ever. We’re still friends and everything. But I never want to see your uncle again.”
“That’s fair,” he says.
“I think so.”
It’s so easy. Poof, just like that, Caleb Sloat is out of my life.
Things are tense for about a minute as we poke at the sugar-covered ball of processed white flour that passes for a breakfast pastry, but then a fight breaks out a couple tables over. Everyone watches as one guy pummels another, shouting something about icicles, and then blood starts flying and a drop lands in my syrupy fruit cocktail.
Nobody seems surprised by this violence, just entertained. It’s become so normal, we barely even see it.
BILLY
LYDIA WENT STRAIGHT TO WORK after school and I feel a little sad that she didn’t wait around to say goodbye, but I don’t blame her for punishing me. That’s how relationships work, right? Like how when I do something that really pisses Grandma off, she hides all the food in her room for a few days until she decides I’ve earned it back. The worst is when this happens on a weekend or over the summer so I don’t even get school meals. Luckily, I’ve mostly learned how not to piss her off by now, but there were a few years in elementary school when I was really hungry.
Rumors are flying about the fight in the cafeteria, and I have no one to compare notes with. Apparently an icicle fell on the foot of a Carthage student’s dad and sliced a hole straight though, boot and everything, and he’s convinced that the dad of this other guy from Rome is responsible. I’m not sure how a person could plant an icicle on someone’s house and time it perfectly right to fall at a certain time, like some kind of remote-controlled icicle. This is something Lydia would have an opinion about, but she is not here, and I am more confused than ever, because it’s hard to know wha
t to think without her opinions.
When I get home, I’m so cold I can barely feel my hands and my face is completely numb. Cult Dad is marching up and down the street with his big gun like he forgot his shift is over as a prison guard, and I’m not really sure who he’s trying to protect or who he’s trying to protect them from, but I definitely don’t feel safer. I wave at Cult Girl, whose face is poking through the curtains, and she raises her eyebrows in a Can you believe this shit? kind of look, and I feel like we’ve made some real progress in our relationship. Then she points at a black car sitting in front of her house with a guy in sunglasses in the front seat who is staring right at me, and I run inside the house and the door slams shut behind me all on its own and just barely misses smashing my hand.
I take some deep breaths and watch five minutes of AA TV to calm down. “There’s an unmarked car outside my house,” I tell Lynn A. She puts down her knitting and takes a sip of her coffee and nods. “I don’t know if I can do this.” She smiles warmly, and it makes me feel a lot better. Sometimes just telling her my fears out loud makes me feel less scared.
My favorite therapy talk show comes on in four minutes, but I have to check on Caleb. I’m getting out of all my regular routines, including sleep, but this is certainly a lot more exciting, though also a lot more stressful. Grandma finally fired me as her director of online marketing and hired some free intern from Fog Harbor Community College, and she’s hardly ever home these days until late at night, which I am definitely not complaining about. The only problem with Grandma being so busy is that there have been four Rainy Day Knife Fight tours in the last week alone, and I’m almost out of underwear since everyone has decided to take a pair as a souvenir. I’m on constant alert because I never know when the tours are happening, so I have to keep my eye on the window in case Grandma’s van drives up so I can hide the door up to the attic in time behind a very tall, very heavy dresser. It’s basically a death trap for Caleb up there if the house ever catches on fire, but I guess that’s a small price to pay for privacy.