by Rocky Callen
I laughed and lightly punched you on the shoulder. “I accept. Gotta settle down some time or another.”
You fake-glared again with your saucer eyes. “Settle? Excuse me, I am top-grade material. You should be so lucky. I think I deserve a better acceptance speech than that.”
“Okay.” I got on my knee. “My dear August Matthews, despite your sloth-like running skills that could never rescue me from a burning building, I accept your offer of holy best friendship because despite everything, you are, in fact, my best friend.”
“I do,” you proclaimed, chest puffed out.
“I do,” I said reverently.
I leaned on a beam while you wrote Till death do us part underneath our names. I smiled as you carved the wood. With the last letter, you suddenly swiveled back toward me, looking mischievous. “Now, I can kiss the bride—I mean friend.”
And you quickly leaned forward and did.
It felt funny to feel lips on mine. I hadn’t thought about it before. Lips were for smiling and talking and making faces … but for kissing?
You leaned away, redder than when you were running, and jumped to your feet. “Race you to the houses?”
I cocked my head up at you. I wanted to ask about the kiss. Also, I wanted to ask how you knew I had to go home. And why you weren’t making me feel bad about it. I didn’t. “Of course.” I started to get to my feet, but you were off.
“Cheater!” I chased after you and I loved how my heartbeat tripped over my breath as we ran away from our wonderland. We laughed with every step.
* * *
There is no smile on your face as you take another swig of beer and sit with your back against the faded barn wall. I stare at you. What are you doing, August? Graduation is soon and you are here drinking? I want to slap you.
There is a party tonight.
That’s right, a senior party.
That’s where you should be. Getting ready. Making wild memories with all the friends that think you are fifty shades of awesome, not here alone.
“Get your ass up, Matthews!” I yell at you, but you can’t hear me.
You do get up to your feet and toss your beer bottle against the barn bridge wall. It shatters.
“You have to stop breaking stuff,” I say to you, but then I am glad you can’t hear me, because I am no one to make such a request.
I break too much.
I remember when everything began to change between us. I remember when the metaphorical wood branded with our BFF promise began to splinter.
* * *
Father stopped working late on Mondays and so our afternoons playing in our little grove came to an end. Our last Monday together was a hot June afternoon. It was the day before your birthday. We were leaning against our BFF board in the barn bridge and sort of leaning on each other as if the whole wall behind us wasn’t quite enough. We each needed the other.
“Are you coming to my birthday party tomorrow?”
“You’re having a birthday party on a Tuesday?”
“Yeah, why not? School is out.”
I bit the inside of my lip. “What time?” If it was during the day, then maybe I could stop by … maybe I could have your mom pick me up?
“Seven p.m.” You beamed. “Water fight. So don’t wear a white T-shirt, ’kay, Boney?”
Usually, I laughed when you said things like that, or called me “Boney,” but I didn’t this time. Your smile faltered. “I—I was just joking. I didn’t mean…”
“Oh no, it isn’t that. I just … don’t know if I can go.”
“Why not?”
“I’m, uh, busy.”
“Bull crap,” you said matter-of-factly.
“What? I am.”
“Ellie Walker, you are never busy. You are just home.”
I stiffened. I didn’t know what to say. I could lie, but then … would you know?
“I—I don’t know if I can get a ride.”
“Oh, that’s no big deal. My mom can pick you up,” you said, picking at the leaves stuffed in your laces.
“August, I just can’t go, okay?”
Standing up, I turned back to you. “I can’t come tomorrow. But, I’ll get you something. I promise.”
“I don’t need a present, Ellie. I just wanted you to come.” You shifted, straightening your legs as if you could actually block my path. I stepped over your outstretched legs.
I couldn’t say that I wanted to go, because then you would press harder to convince me. You would get your mom to call my momma and then she would try to figure it out and I knew that while I was off somewhere pelting school kids with a water gun, Father would be home pelting her with fists. I couldn’t do that to her.
“I can’t,” I said harshly.
You stared at me—your eyes somewhere past my head staring, glaring. “Fine.”
I ran off.
Tuesday night I tossed and turned. Who would be there? What were they doing? Who won? Who sat next to you when you blew out the candles? I was jealous. I didn’t remember the last party I had gone to and I wish I could’ve gone to yours.
The next Monday, I started lacing up my shoes at 3:47 p.m. I know because I had looked at the big clock in the kitchen and I was going to be late to meet you by the creek if I didn’t run. FAST.
I stiffened when I heard it. A motor roaring down the street.
Please don’t be him.
But it was him. He was home early. Hours early.
I stood up straight, cringing as I heard his boots on the porch steps, and then the door creaked open and he filled it. He stopped when he saw me staring. I thought, This is the ogre who guards the bridge so that no one can ever leave.
I knew then that I wouldn’t see you that day.
I knew then that something was about to change.
23
Father,
That day, you looked down at me. You had been drinking. I could smell it on you. You blinked and narrowed your eyes at me.
“Hi, Father,” I said quietly.
You rubbed your jaw and gave me a curt nod.
Your eyes didn’t leave mine as you pulled off your shirt and went to sit in the living room.
I shifted my gaze away and looked at the door. The freedom just beyond it.
“Going somewhere, Ellie?” The rumble, the warning.
“No,” I said quickly, looking back at you.
You were bare-chested. You took in a deep breath and then pulled a lighter out of your pocket. I hated that lighter.
While I stood there, between you and the door, I remembered that the first time I had seen your lighter was right after Momma started working, a couple of years before.
She had worked late and dinner hadn’t been ready. You sat at the dining room table. Momma walked in, frazzled and already apologetic. There was a can of gasoline on the floor and she went quiet at the sight of it.
“I wondered if you’d come back, Regina.”
That’s when you pulled out your lighter. It was silver.
Click, open. Click, shut.
“I was thinking, well … if my woman isn’t coming back, then maybe we should just burn the whole house down. You know, purge myself of the memories.”
That’s when Momma noticed me.
“Abel.” Momma’s voice was shaky. “Let’s talk. Let Ellie go upstairs and let’s talk.”
“Oh.” Click, open. Click, shut. “I belted her in. Didn’t want her to miss it.” Momma’s eyes roamed over the leather belt and noticed how it looped around my waist and was buckled through the rungs of the wood chair’s back like a seat belt pulled tight. I was trapped in the chair and eating ice cream. I hadn’t really known to be scared when you did it. You’d said it was a game. You’d said it would be fun.
“There is no reason”—Momma approached slowly, arm outstretched as if she were trying to pet a wild animal—“to involve Ellie in this, Abel. She’s … She’s just a child.”
Click, open. Click, shut. “I don’t like looking at her face.
”
Momma blinked at you. “What—why?”
“Because she looks so much like you.”
* * *
I didn’t remember the exact moment when I knew that the lighter was a threat, because on that day when I’d first seen the lighter, I had just been so happy to have peppermint ice cream. But somewhere between that day and the day I stood near the front door and you sat in the living room bare-chested, blocking my path to August, to freedom, I knew that your clicking lighter was a promise of pain.
I wasn’t facing you when you said, “You look so much like your mother.”
I swallowed. Frozen in place. That’s what you had said that day. I knew it was a threat, and I didn’t want to burn.
“She’s taller than me,” I said quickly. I needed something, anything to cast us as different. I looked for more things to say, but you said, “Come here,” and it silenced me.
“Yeah, you look different. Your nose is mine, you’re skinny like me, your face is just a bit wider. I am mixed up in there too. But you look like your mother.”
I was waiting for a belt. For the gas can. For a slap. I clenched my fists.
But instead you sighed and said, “Your mother was beautiful.”
I was so startled that I gasped. You laughed a little. “It’s true. She was singing at this open mic spot back in New Orleans and her voice … mmmm, her voice just felt like velvet. I could feel it when I heard her. But then I looked up and I saw this gorgeous, wild-looking woman. A wild mare.”
Your eyes were far-off, recalling. “I knew then that I had to have her. After her song, I went up to her and she smiled at me and I stayed in town and before long, she was mine.” You smiled then, as if you were tasting chocolate.
I felt uncomfortable even though I liked imagining my momma as wild, as free, as someone who could hypnotize people with her voice. Like she was magic. I tried to remember a time when I had heard Momma sing, and beyond the hum of lullabies from long, long ago, I couldn’t.
“But then your momma got a little restless. She wouldn’t listen.”
Lighter. Click, open. Click, shut. “She wanted to leave.” The far-off-ness of your eyes came back and settled on mine, alert even in their whiskey haze. “And so I had to break her in and bridle her. I had to make her listen. Your woman should listen to you. And she just wouldn’t. Then one day, she was gone.”
You sat up, leaned forward, eyes dark. “She left me…” you said, pointing at yourself, “because of you.” Your finger then turned on me and even though there was distance between us, I felt like you had stabbed me.
“You have some of me in you, sure,” you said, leaning back in the seat.
Click, open. Click, shut. Jaw clenched, and unclenched. “But I see it in your eyes. That need to go, to get away, that restlessness…” He says that last word and he rolls his shoulders as if he is shrugging off revulsion. “… is from your momma.”
I felt like I was going to cry. To say I’m sorry. I felt like I was going to bolt for the door and never come back. But you had found Momma, and you would find me too.
Your voice was as soft as a lullaby as you said, “And you will never leave me like she did.”
24
August,
And I never did.
That’s what I think as I look at you in the barn bridge.
The same day that Father told me how I would never leave him, you came to my house for the first time. I was upstairs.
I didn’t go downstairs, but I did peer down through the banister. No one, NO ONE, ever came knocking at our house. The lonely house four down from the corner. But that night at 7:09, someone did.
And that someone was you.
Your second round of door taps was interrupted by Momma flinging the door open to poke her head out.
“Is Ellie home? I was supposed to meet her—” you said.
“Oh, young man, Ellie won’t be able to go out and meet you on Mondays anymore.”
There was a silence and then your voices were hushed whispers. After a moment, Momma closed the door and caught me watching.
She gave me an apologetic look.
I was slammed with anger, with shame, with one million bits of frustration.
She stayed with him. She brought him into our lives. She had been too wild and restless. She had a voice like velvet.
Her.
Her.
Her.
And that is when instead of nodding or trying for a smile, I glared at her and mouthed I HATE YOU through the banister bars. I was in prison and she’d put me there.
It didn’t matter that we were warriors in our wonderland, August. In the Real world, we were just kids stuck on the opposite sides of my house’s old oak door.
* * *
School let out for the summer shortly after that day and I barely saw you for weeks. I had felt guilty all summer long. I had felt like I had abandoned you, betrayed you. I thought it would be different when I went back to school.
But it only got worse. It wasn’t all at once—the break. It was slow. Bit by bit.
I remember you yelling “Hey, Boney!” at me at school one day in early autumn. It had recently become your nickname for me. I didn’t mind it. It was pretty accurate. I wasn’t like other girls in our grade. I didn’t have boobs or hips. I hadn’t even gotten my period yet. My bones jutted out from my shoulders and my hips, and my legs were like sticks that I shoved into my pants and shoes. It wasn’t because I didn’t eat. It was my body. I was just … that way. You knew that and you knew that it didn’t bother me when you called me “Boney.” It sounded like a term of endearment from you.
But when Britney sneered it at me in Anatomy class, it wasn’t endearing at all.
“Hey, look! This is what Ellie looks like!” she said, laughing as she pointed at the skeleton named Carl who was hung up at the front of the classroom with a top hat and bow tie. Other girls looked between the skeleton and me and started laughing. “Oh my gosh! It does!”
“Shut up, Brit,” I said under my breath.
It was seventh grade, a time when everything felt awkward and I was somehow a loser for not emerging from summer a sort of slutty Barbie doll. I still wore jeans that were ripped at the knee, a T-shirt, and hand-me-down sneakers. I had already found my white Converse shoes and had started writing on them, but they were under my bed, too big for me.
I had grown—just not in the boobs-and-hips department. I was tall. Really tall. Taller than all the girls in my class, and I was afraid that my clothes, being a size too small, would show things I didn’t want seen. So during the first couple weeks of school, I wore Momma’s shirts from the grocery store and an AREN’T MOMS GREAT? T-shirt that were both way too big on me. I missed my old band tees, but I couldn’t fit in them anymore, and even though other girls showed off the tops of their arms and their midriffs, I wouldn’t. Or couldn’t.
I felt lackluster and all I wanted to be was invisible.
August, you were so bright and vibrant and colorful. Literally. You had started painting and your jeans would have splatters of yellows, reds, and greens. You were a bright spot in my gray and I loved it. Even your ink and charcoal drawings felt alive in a way that I didn’t.
I wanted to live in your drawings. Your parents knew you loved art. They didn’t know that you wanted to go to art school one day. They didn’t know that you dreamed in color and brushstrokes. I did.
The girls kept laughing and then Britney said, “August is so right, your name should be ‘Boney.’”
I turned my head and looked at you. Obviously, you’d fix this. You’d make it better. Your saucer eyes blinked back at me and you were stammering, “No, I—I— mean…”
But your eyes shifted to Britney and you didn’t say another word.
See, even he won’t defend you anymore. You are alone. You’ll always be alone. The thoughts bit at my heels.
“Thanks,” I muttered at you. I had been so happy to see you after not seeing you most of the summer, b
ut maybe I was a joke to you.
You came to my locker after class. “Ellie, I’m sorry. I should’ve—”
“Save it, Matthews.” I wouldn’t look at you. A lot can change over a summer. In a day. In a blink. I wasn’t going to grasp at something that was slipping away. “I don’t need your help.”
I had let bitterness settle into my bones. I had thought that the August who had once been my friend wouldn’t just sit in his seat and stutter a response in the face of Britney’s gorgeousness. He would have rescued me.
You didn’t.
After, you kept going to my locker, kept trying to pass notes to me in class. You drew me pictures and I threw them away.
The world was starting to shift to gray and I didn’t have any space for your brightness. I hadn’t wanted to stay close to you as you dated and kissed pretty girls. I hadn’t wanted to be close to you just so you could leave me behind.
That’s what I thought, at least. So I pulled our tether until it snapped.
As your last, desperate act, you asked a friend of yours to talk to me on your behalf until finally I wrote a note back:
I want a divorce from our unholy best friendship.
I didn’t talk to you for the rest of junior high.
* * *
Right now, I honestly can’t remember talking to you since that moment.
Now you are at our beloved bridge and are almost drunk.
I think about how we kneeled on scraped knees and were bound in holy best friendship. I remember what your lips felt like. Another memory tickles at my mind, but I can’t place it. Lips on mine. Lips that make me feel bright and whole and new.
I sigh and lean close to you. Too close. I bring my lips to yours. Just a whisper away. Just a touch too far.
While I’m there, you let out a breath that resembles a growl and a sigh. I think how the muscles of the throat can splice together sounds and make new ones that forge their own meaning. Breaths caught between one emotion and the next.