It’s perfectly silent around us save that of the rusty springs of the ancient couch as we hungrily—urgently—consume one another. The old couch squeaks, she giggles, and I realize how much I like her sound, not because it’s perfect, because it’s not. That slur is flawed, her voice far from cute the way her sister’s is, but I love it anyway because it is uniquely hers. She and I are so desperately into each other that the sounds of summer outside are lost, and the discomfort of our perch is forgotten. Maybe I didn’t ride all the way out here to save the relationship between her and her sister. I think maybe I came out here for me. I came here for her.
In my mind I suddenly see Kristie, and I see her eyes welling with anguish at my betrayal. All of our conversations, all of our promises—and every time she cries from this moment forward, my heart is going to break knowing I did this to her.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper, breaking away.
“What’s wrong?” Joanne asks. There’s panic in her voice. “Is it me? What did I do?”
“It’s not you. You didn’t—”
But she’s cut off mid-sentence by another voice, a menacing growl that carries throughout the room, startling us from our secret little world.
“What the fuck?”
Ritchie’s massive frame fills the doorway, his face flaming red—his fists clenched at his sides. His eyes are bloodshot with rage, his chest heaving. He must have followed me. Joanne instinctively rolls away and sits calmly with her hands in her lap, but it’s too late. He’s already seen us together, and I’ve already seen that look on his face. He’s not here to sort it out. It’s sorted. He’s here to make things right—according to him.
Standing, I take a step toward him, my hands up defensively. “It’s not what it looks like,” I say calmly. “I don’t want to fight.”
“One ain’t enough, is it? You gotta have ‘em both.”
“It’s not like that, Rich” I answer, but even I realize it is.
“No?” he storms. “What do you think Kristie would say if she saw you like this?”
“Did you follow us here?” I ask.
“Would she turn the other cheek?” Ritchie continues. “Look the other way?”
“Did you follow us here?”
“One whore ain’t enough?”
“Don’t go there,” I snap.
“You gonna make me, Triple A?” he growls, and it may be a million degrees outside, but the blood in my veins just froze.
“Ritchie,” Joanne says, standing behind me. “This was our choice, not Kristie’s.”
His eyes go from me to her—slits glinting in the light. He looks powerful, like a full grown man instead of the boy I feel like. All of that nervous tongue-tied energy he struggles with every time he’s around her has been replaced by hatred. He’s cool—calm. Too calm. “This ain’t your house, bitch,” he growls.
“Ritchie!” I shout.
He turns back. “What’s she gonna do when she finds out?” He shakes his head, tears spilling down his cheeks. “Will she get angry?” I’ve never seen him cry before, and I think that scares me more than anything else. “Or is she gonna cry?” he asks, his voice growing deeper. “What’s she gonna do?”
“Ritchie,” I say softly as I try to conceal the fact that my hands are beginning to shake.
“I wanna know.”
“It’s not—”
“I WANNA KNOW!”
“You’re freakin’ out, man. Relax. Let’s talk this through. No one needs to get hurt.”
“Oh, I guarantee you someone’s about to get hurt,” he grumbles, the blood returning to his face. “You were supposed to be with Kristie. I was supposed to be with Joanne. That’s the way things work between best friends, asshole!”
Joanne begins to whimper. Ritchie’s on the brink. For him, fighting is an outlet. It’s a game. But not today. Today he’s not playing.
“That fuckin’ whore’s mine,” Ritchie growls as he faces her.
Joanne looks paralyzed with fear. She’s standing beside the rotting couch, under a sagging roof, scared stiff. Even I’m terrified as I turn back to Ritchie. “Don’t do it.”
“Yeah?” Ritchie answers, a small smile curving his lower lip upward. “What you gonna do? You think you got what it takes, small time?”
The time for diplomacy is over. Ritchie doesn’t negotiate. Not with his enemies, and apparently not with his friends. Something in him has snapped. Snapped like a rubber band, and now that it’s broken, he doesn’t have the pressure of considering options. Whatever he and I ever were—the very best of friends—is long gone. All I am now is the last obstacle standing between him and redemption.
Ritchie smiles.
“Run,” I whisper.
“What?” Joanne asks, frantic.
“Run,” I repeat.
In circles.
Twenty-Five
Today
Kristie drags her heel through the sand, drawing a crooked line. She studies the line a moment before backing up, taking a timid step back. “It’s only sand,” she says. She slides her foot side to side, pushing sand back and forth. “Didn’t they have cement floors back then?”
“Sometimes,” I answer. “Not always. Back then, they didn’t always pour a basement floor. They were usually sand. Or dirt.”
She looks around, but eventually, her eyes settle on me. “Why did you bring me down here?”
“It’s complicated.”
“There is no it, Tony.”
Instead of answering, I return to my shovel, shifting it to the other hand and starting to dig, feeling numb. This is it. There’s no going back. No matter what, this is where it ends.
“Talk to me.”
I keep digging, feeling queasy. First I move the coal, tossing it to the side. Then I start on the sand. One shovelful of decrepit earth after another, I build a hill of dirty sand. Finally, after a few minutes, the shovel hits something solid, and I stop.
“Oh my god,” Kristie whispers. “Oh my god.”
Rain water is running in thin streams along the walls, turning to puddles pooling on the sandy floor. I shovel away the remainder of the heavy soil before crouching down and wiping the loose sand from the remnants of a rug wrapped around the form of what appears to be a body. When I look up, she’s still standing, but she looks wobbly in her stance as though she might topple.
“That’s not her,” she whispers. “That’s not her.”
I gently pull the rug from the loose sand and carefully set it down—half in and half out of the hole.
“That’s not her,” Kristie repeats. “Please, Tony, please don’t let that be her.”
I begin to unravel the rug. I’m scared. It’s been so long—I was so young. Everything was so different then than it is now. I take hold of the top corner and pull it gently downward to reveal the gray bone of a human skull and what remains of the blond hairs still clinging to it.
Kristie breaks down, her entire body wracked with sobs. For years her family believed Joanne had simply hitch-hiked her way out of town and disappeared. It was easier to believe she just wanted to start over. After ‘the letter,’ they even convinced themselves she was living happily in California, biding her time until the time was right to come home. Nobody wanted to believe she had been killed. More than that, nobody believed she might still be here.
Kristie is wailing, her voice filling the room, her pain amplified. She slides against the wall to the ground, but when she lifts her eyes to me, they’re red with hatred. She blames me, and maybe she should. After all, I’m responsible.
I cover Joanne’s skull with the rug and sit down on the floor, my back to her. “I don’t know what happened that day,” I whisper.
Kristie sneers. “What do you mean you don’t know? You knew! You knew all along!”
“You and Joanne had a fight.”
“Yes, we had a fight,” Kristie snaps. “Over you! You were leaving town, and you said you wanted to patch things up with Ritchie before you went.”
<
br /> I nod, my back still turned.
“But that’s not where you went, was it?”
“No.”
“And why not? Did you want to fuck my sister? Did you want to fuck her right before you killed her?”
This time I turn to her. “That’s not what happened.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember what happened?”
“I remember enough. I remember enough to know that I went looking for her.”
She just sits there, tear-stained cheeks.
“I wrecked my bike,” I continue. “I got hurt pretty bad trying to find her, but she found me first. That’s how we wound up here.”
Kristie smiles through her tears. “And why not? Route 89 is the only way out of town. Isn’t that what you and Ritchie always said?”
“That’s what the whole town used to say.”
“So, how’d you do it? Strangle her? Maybe hit her over the head with a shovel?”
“That’s not what happened.”
“How did you kill my sister?” she asks.
“I didn’t kill your sister.”
“How did you kill my sister!?”
I stare at the soiled floor. “I didn’t kill your sister.”
“You said you were responsible. How can you be responsible and not—”
“Ritchie showed up.”
Instantly, her sobs subside.
“He found out,” I whisper.
“Found out?” she asks, doubt drifting into the room. Things quiet down. I can hear the rain outside, and I can hear the water trickling into the house, pooling in the dirt. The sounds are peaceful. Even the smells are natural and serene, but we’re sitting in an abandoned basement with the corpse of a seventeen year-old girl. Kristie sniffs, wipes her nose on her sleeve and then wipes her eyes with her fingers before looking at me. “Found out what?”
Twenty-Six
Yesterday
Joanne leaps through the broken window, taking the last shards of broken glass with her. I turn back to Ritchie, and his eyes are on her, not me. I know him. He’ll go after her if I don’t do something. He loves her, but it’s not real love. It’s possession, and if he feels he’s lost her, he’ll hurt her. It won’t even occur to him what he’s done until it’s too late.
Ritchie takes a step forward, but I block his path. He’s twice my size, but I have to do something. I at least have to try. My face is still bleeding, my hands hamburger, but I know that look in his eyes. He’s not about to just let this go.
“She’s gone,” I say. “It’s over.”
“Nothin’s over,” he grumbles.
“Let it go, man.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” he thunders. “You don’t tell me nothin’! You don’t—”
“Goddamn it, Ritchie! NO!”
Ritchie looks like he wants to say something, but he stops suddenly. His eyes shrink to slits. His body recoils a bit, and he grinds his teeth, one of his eyes unwillingly twitching. “Why you always—”
“Fuck you!” I shout, the words like sand between my teeth. “Let me ask you something. You think you got what it takes, big guy?”
“You just tryin’ to irrigate me?”
“The word you’re looking for is ‘irritate,’ you stupid moron.”
He frowns. “I’m just…”
“Well, I’m not, and if you want her, you gotta go through me first.”
Ritchie scrunches up his face. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“I love you like a brother, Rich, but this ain’t happenin’.”
Ritchie wavers, hovering. His eyes are dark, his lips pinched so tightly it’s like they’re not even there.
“Ritchie?”
And just like that, he responds. His fist comes out of nowhere, cracking me across the jaw and knocking me flat. I hit the floor hard, dizziness consuming me along with enough pain to make me forget about my raw hands. I expect him to start kicking me next, but he’s gone, retreating through the foyer and out the front door. He’s already trotting down the steps and heading into the knee-deep grass leading toward the barn. There’s blood seeping into my mouth, and my jaw feels broken, but Joanne’s in trouble, and I’m all she has left.
Ritchie’s lost it. His mental capacity for deciphering between reality and fantasy has been deteriorating for some time, but I ignored the signs. I sensed it that day when he took on those guys in the Walmart parking lot and again that day in his bedroom with his dad. He’s been slowly slipping away, consumed with the arrogance of his own invincibility, but I figured he’d just implode—maybe mentally breakdown. I figured he’d meltdown and go catatonic. But he didn’t. He’s become this. Joanne has metamorphosed from his crush into his opponent. She’s the devil taunting him—punishing him. I doubt if he even sees her as human anymore. I’ve seen schizophrenia, but this isn’t schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or borderline personality. This is something else. When he started that brawl on the baseball field, I saw it plainly in his eyes. It’s not giddiness or glee. It’s pain.
I start crawling toward the door. There’s blood on my tongue, and I feel like crying or sleeping or pretty much anything other than chasing after him, but if I don’t do something, Joanne will die. The best I can do is crawl through the room before using a chair to hoist myself to my feet. I make it only a few steps into the kitchen before collapsing with dizziness.
“Come on,” I whisper, forcing myself to keep going, forcing myself up again. I’m wavy on my feet, but I manage to stumble from the house while bracing myself with the assistance of the handrail as I make my way down the steps into the tall grass. Suddenly without support, I go tumbling, rolling like a wrecking ball. Gasping, I pick myself up and crawl toward the screams coming from the barn. My arms feel like dead-weights. Everything is running in tear-colored streams. I fumble face first into the dirt, but I pick myself up again and continue forward. A few more feet, and I right myself into a standing position. My legs are rubbery, but they’ll hold. They have to hold.
The barn.
I stumble inside, greeted instantly with a scene my mind can’t quite wrap itself around. Ritchie has Joanne bent over a bale of hay. He’s got one of her arms pinned behind her back, and with his free hand, he’s yanking on her belt, trying to get her pants down.
“Get out!” he shouts.
She’s sobbing—screaming. Instead of getting out, I stumble his way, scooping a pitchfork from the hay. I know I can’t beat him, but I have to try.
I have to.
He lets go and steps toward me, his eyes wild. “What you got? You gonna fight me? You gonna fight Ritchie? You gonna fight Ritchie Hudson?”
Fight him? Not hardly. Using his own words, I’m gonna kill him, skin him, filet him and fuckin’ eat him. I level the pitch fork, an overwhelming feeling of hatred filling me like a heavy chill. He was supposed to be in love with her. He was supposed to protect her. But this isn’t love. This is possession.
“Come on, Triple A,” Ritchie growls as he crouches down. It’s the same stance he took when the benches cleared the other night, and that glint in his eye is the same too. “Show me what you got,” he hisses.
I swing, but he slaps the pitchfork aside, steps in and swings a sharp fist that brings searing pain and unwanted tears. I fall backward, the pitchfork flying from my grip. I hit the sand and recoil into a defensive position, but Ritchie is already on top of me, kneeing me sharply in the ribs. Again, and again and again until I can’t breathe. One more kick to the face, and I see a flash of white, the stench of dirt and dust and decay oddly visceral. I roll over to shield myself, but he’s gone, his footsteps falling away. I’m alone. He’s gone.
He’s gone after her.
The barn door squeaks on its dry hinges, a soft summer breeze drifting into the quiet barn where I’m left lying on the floor. Lifting my face from the dirt, the sun is bleeding through the cracks with sharp beams, dust particles floating listlessly in the thin shafts of light. It’s quiet in here—peaceful. Too peaceful
. It should be a lazy afternoon, but he’s still out there, and so is she.
I get to my feet and make a mad, stumbling dash for the door before tumbling face first into the dirt. I use my arms to swim for the door, spitting sand and blood and hay from my mouth. I use the swinging door to pull myself up, but I only make it a few steps before sinking to my knees, gasping for air. The farmhouse is to my right, the tall grass swaying as if dancing, the sun burning the world around me.
Squinting, I collect myself and again struggle to my feet. I stumble through the tall grass, crawling at times, muddling my way toward the house where I trip on the steps. I crawl along the wooden planks into the living room. Then I crawl to the couch, hoisting myself up, wiping my ruined face on the sleeve of my ruined shirt. It’s the same couch she and I made out on. The same couch. That was minutes ago, but it feels like another lifetime.
Joanne.
I can’t hear her. I can’t hear anything other than the sound of insects outside. I spit another wad of blood and use the couch as balance to get to my feet. Drifting along the wall, I make my way into the kitchen. The cellar door is wide open, and even though it seems quiet down there, there’s something evil drifting upward that greets me like a breath of cold air. So, I start down, wobbly on my feet as I brace myself against the loose railing.
Reaching the basement floor, I look around. The door into the coal room is open, and Ritchie’s inside, standing still, head bowed, his back to me. And he’s not alone. He’s hovering over a body. A body that isn’t moving. Joanne. She’s lying still, her head cocked sharply to the side and a stream of blood running from both her nose and mouth.
“Ritchie,” I whisper. “What happened?”
He sniffles, draws a few sharp breaths and clenches his fists. “I was her last love,” he mumbles. “Not you.” He wipes his eyes. “I loved her last.”
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