Boy21

by Quick, Matthew

  We take a bumpy dirt road through the woods and I get a little nervous, because if we break down out here, there’s nothing around for miles.

  But then I spot what looks like a gas station. A sign outside reads STAR WATCHER’S PARADISE! There’s actually an exclamation point, which makes this place seem extra exciting. We pull up to the gas pump. Mr. Allen fills the tank and I follow Russ inside, where there’s a worn wooden floor and a few aisles of food and camping supplies. A large red-faced man sits behind the counter.

  “Howdy,” he says, and shows us his pink palm.

  “We have a reservation,” Russ says. “It’s under Allen.”

  “Sure thing! You picked a beautiful night. No clouds at all. Your eyes are in for a feast!”

  “We’ve been checking the weather all week,” Russ says.

  “How’s viewing station number twelve sound?”

  “Fine,” Russ says.

  Mr. Allen enters the store and stands next to us.

  The man writes something down on a piece of paper and then hands us each a brochure. “These are our viewing rules. Unless it’s an emergency, do not turn your car on until first light. You must pull the blackout shades in your station if you have a light on inside. Absolutely no flashlights or lights of any kind may be used outside of your station. Once the sun goes down, library voices are mandatory, which means you need to whisper. You’ll be asked to leave if you hoot and holler. Other than that, just enjoy the show. I’ll need you each to sign the rules brochure to verify that you agree to the terms.”

  Mr. Allen gives the man a credit card. We all sign the papers, receive complimentary star charts, and then get back into the car.

  “What is this place?” I say. “What’s the show?”

  “You’ll see,” Russ answers.

  We drive down the dirt road and pass numbered wooden signs marking unpaved driveways that bend and disappear into the woods.

  When we find number twelve, Mr. Allen makes a left and we drive on a dirt road so narrow, branches whack the car. “I better not see any scratches on my Cadillac, or someone named Russ is going to be waxing and buffing all day tomorrow,” says Mr. Allen.

  The road curves off to the right and then we come upon a strange-looking structure that sort of looks like a cross between a tree house and a lighthouse. It’s an eight-sided tower that rises up and out of the woods. A huge bucket sits on top. The building reminds me of that piece in chess that looks like a castle.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Mr. Allen says, but he’s smiling.

  “Come on,” Russ says.

  We enter through a door on the ground and then climb a spiral staircase to the center of a room with four beds and two windows that have heavy curtains—the blackout shades, I assume. There’s a small bathroom too. Just a sink and a toilet—no shower.

  Russ keeps climbing and I follow until we have to push up what looks like a trapdoor in the ceiling. It opens to the sky and we climb onto a viewing deck that has a tall wooden railing, so that it seems like we’re standing in a gigantic wooden cup. The floor is covered with what feels like a wrestling mat. My feet sink an inch or so into it.

  “This is where we’ll sleep tonight,” Russ says. “The beds inside are for the old man.”

  I look around and see nothing but new green leaves of early spring trees and the tops of the dozen or so other viewing towers, which are spaced maybe one hundred yards apart and form a circle.

  “This is amazing,” I say.

  “What have I been telling you?” Russ says. “There’s more to the world than Bellmont, right?”

  We race down the steps and carry the cooler and other supplies up into the sleeping room.

  It takes Mr. Allen a long time to climb the steps, but when he reaches the top, he looks around and says, “I’ve never seen so many trees.”

  “Who knew that you could drive two hours and be somewhere like this?” I say.

  Russ smiles proudly.

  We eat the tuna fish sandwiches Mrs. Allen packed for us and drink root beer as the sunset shoots fire across the treetops.

  “I don’t want to be climbing steps in the dark, so I’m going to settle in downstairs with my book. You two have fun, and don’t get too close to the edge, you hear?” Mr. Allen says, and then he disappears into the hatch.

  It’s getting cooler up here; there’s a stiff breeze and the trees are making a lot of noise.

  “Do you hear the leaves hissing?” I say.

  “Cool, huh? Almost time for ‘library voices,’ ” Russ says, making air quotes. “I bet sound really carries up here.”

  We both lie down on our backs and my shoulder blades sink into the mat.

  “This place is truly awesome,” I say. “Thanks for bringing me.”

  He nods and then we watch the western sky glow an orange-pink.

  We lie there in silence for fifteen minutes or so, and then, out of nowhere, Russ says, “Tell me what happened to your mother and I’ll tell you what happened to my parents.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what friends do—they talk to each other and listen.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” Russ asks.

  “I do.”

  “Well, then. Just me and trees around.”

  “Is that why you brought me out here?”

  “It’s part of the reason. And I’d prefer to talk before the show begins.”

  “The stars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We look at stars on my roof all the time.”

  “This is different. You’ll see,” he says. “Let’s talk about what happened to our parents. I really think it might help. I talk to my therapist all the time. You should probably be talking to a therapist too.”

  “I’ve been talking to Mr. Gore.”

  “That’s good. Talk to me.”

  “It’s a depressing story.”

  “So’s mine.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll use library voices, so it won’t really count anyway.”

  I smile. Library voices. I want to know Russ’s story, and I don’t really care anymore about keeping Pop’s secrets, especially since Erin’s gone missing. Maybe that’s why the bad stuff happens in neighborhoods like mine, because no one talks. But even so, I’m surprised when I hear myself using the library voice—when I hear myself telling the story for the first time.

  I tell Russ about how my grandfather stole money from the thugs he worked for so he could take my grandmother back to Ireland. She had terminal cancer and wanted to die in her homeland. They were born in County Cork—we still have family there—but they were always too poor to make the trip back. I’ve never been to Ireland, but returning before she died was very important to my grandmother. So, out of desperation and grief, Pop stole the money and took her, thinking they’d be safe once they were out of America. The only problem—the rest of his family was still in Bellmont. My pop underestimated the ruthlessness of his coworkers. The thugs Pop worked for took me to get to my grandfather—to get him to come back from Ireland.

  “What do you mean they took you?” Russ says, using his library voice.

  I allow myself to remember. Remembering makes me feel like someone’s jabbing a finger into my throat. I begin to feel sweaty.

  “My grandfather was mixed up with bad men—men like Erin’s brother, Rod. Probably hard for you to imagine.”

  “So they kidnapped you?”

  I swallow. “I haven’t talked about this with anyone—not even Erin.”

  “It’s good to talk. You can trust me.”

  I search the sky above for early stars, see none, and then tell him what I remember.

  I remember men in ski masks taking me in the middle of the night, my parents screaming, and the sound of my father being beaten.

  I remember being thrown into a car trunk—my hands tied behind my
back, an awful sock in my mouth, tape around my head.

  I remember being in a dark room for a long time, peeing in my pants because I was so scared, smelling only dried urine and dust for what seemed like weeks, being hungry and thirsty, and then suddenly I was with my father again, only it was at my mother’s funeral and my pop no longer had legs.

  I remember my father’s eyes were so red—like raw-hamburger red—and his face was still bruised purple and yellow. I remember Dad telling me that my mother went to the police and tried to rescue me, but that was why she was dead, and then he told me that I could never tell anyone about what happened—ever. I was never allowed to tell a single person, or else we all might end up dead.

  “He told me not to snitch, and so I didn’t. I was just a little kid. And I was so afraid of saying the wrong thing—losing my dad and pop too.”

  “So that’s when you stopped talking?” Russ says.

  “Yeah. It’s also when I started playing basketball.”

  “Damn.”

  “I can’t remember what my mother looks like,” I say. “We have photos, but I can’t see her anymore outside of the picture frames. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m forgetting the sound of my father’s voice,” Russ says. “What my mother smelled like. So many things.”

  “What happened to them?”

  It’s like the western trees are lined with pink neon now. This is the last of today’s light.

  Russ takes a deep breath, and then says, “Carjacking. Mom and Dad went to see a friend play saxophone at a bar in a shady neighborhood. Some crackheads shot both my parents in the head and then ran off with a few hundred bucks, my mom’s jewelry, and my dad’s watch. Completely random act of violence. Completely unfair. Stupid. Enough to make you want to check out for a while and tell people you’re from outer space.”

  “What do you see,” I ask, not really sure why I’m asking, “when you try to remember your parents together? What’s your best memory?”

  He thinks for a few minutes. “This one time I went to see my father play with a throwback old-time-style big band, and halfway through the set the leader asked my mom to join him onstage to sing a song. I was surprised because I didn’t even know my mom could sing.

  “She didn’t want to get up, but the audience started to clap for her, so she took the stage and said, ‘You boys know my song.’ My father switched to trumpet, because he could play any instrument. He played the opening notes, and then my mother sang Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘I’m Beginning to See the Light.’ My father stood next to her and they sort of communicated with music.

  “Mom was singing. Dad was playing trumpet. But their eyes were locked the whole time and I could tell they were so in love. The crowd clapped for five minutes straight when they finished, which embarrassed my mom. I could tell because she kept shaking her head and wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone.

  “ ‘You sing?’ I remember asking her when she sat down next to me. And she said, ‘I used to, a long time ago.’

  “As we watched the rest of the show, I remember wondering how many other things I didn’t know about my parents. You only get to know so much.”

  When it’s clear that Russ is done talking, I say, “That’s a beautiful memory.”

  “Do you have one like that of your parents together?”

  I think hard for a minute. “No. Not like that one.”

  Russ doesn’t say anything in response, so I worry that he feels bad about sharing his good memory when I don’t have one to match his. I don’t want him to feel bad, so I say, “But someday, I might tell someone about stargazing with the NBA’s best point guard, Russ Allen, back before he was famous.”

  “Let’s not talk about basketball, okay?” Russ doesn’t say anything else, which makes me think that it was really hard for him to talk about his parents.

  The sky goes from navy to black. And then all of a sudden millions of stars blink above us, and Russ whispers, “I think the show has begun.”

  It’s almost like someone flicked a switch, because there were only a few stars here and there, and now there’s an endless supply—like a huge diamond exploded in the sky.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I say, because I’ve never seen anything like it before.

  “Whenever I think the world is ugly—that life has no meaning at all—I remind myself that this is here, always waiting for me,” Russ says. “I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don’t know why, but it always makes me feel better.”

  “And that’s enough?” I ask. “Just looking at stars?”

  “It can be,” Russ says.

  I expect Russ to begin naming all the constellations, but he doesn’t.

  We lie silently under outer space, taking in all those pinpricks of light, and I too feel dwarfed by the massive universe.

  I wonder if Erin is also looking up at stars tonight, maybe sitting on some roof somewhere, thinking about me.

  I wonder if my mom’s up there in heaven or simply up there somewhere—maybe even on some after-death spaceship or something, like Boy21 had imagined.

  “Why do you think we met?” I ask. “Do you think I was supposed to help you return to basketball? Was it fate?”

  “It’s because my parents were murdered by crackheads,” he says. “I’d be in L.A. if my parents were still alive. Other than that, I don’t know.”

  “But you’re here somehow,” I whisper.

  “And so are you,” Russ whispers back.

  We lie next to each other in silence all night, looking up at the impossible mind-blowing awesomeness of the universe, and I don’t think either of us sleeps a minute.

  39

  ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY MOTHER’S MURDER, just like every other year, Dad, Pop, and I lay flowers on her grave—Cathy McManus.

  June sun.

  Blue skies.

  No one else is in the graveyard.

  Standing there, gazing at the endless rows of headstones, it feels like we’re the only three people left in the world.

  As far as my eyes can see, white and gray grave markers line the earth, each with a tiny bit of information. Name, years lived, maybe a nice quote. But not enough to really let you know who these people were. I wonder if each marker has a story just as complicated as my mom’s.

  Like every other year, I remember the kidnapping, think about the courage it took for my mother to go to the police, and wish I’d gotten the chance to know her better.

  In his wheelchair, in front of the grave, Pop talks to my mom and says he’s sorry over and over again, cries a lot, and is a guilty mess.

  “When you get your chance to leave Bellmont,” Dad says to me, “take it.”

  His face is tense. Wrinkles shoot out from the corners of his eyes. He’s staring at Pop in this really weird way. It’s like he loves and hates the old man simultaneously.

  “You hear me?” Dad asks.

  “Yeah.”

  When I was little, I used to think that we visited my mom’s grave because she was somehow there—like we were really going to spend time with her ghost or something like that. Now I realize we go so Pop can repent.

  I wonder about my mom.

  This might sound dumb, but the only thing I really remember was that she loved green Life Savers, which she called the Irish Life Savers. She used to buy a roll almost every day and feed me as many as it took to get to the first green one, which she’d eat.

  This was our little ritual.

  We’d walk to the corner store in search of her daily green Irish Life Saver.

  It’s a stupid thing to remember, but it’s what I have.

  And the truth is, I’ve always gotten very nervous whenever I see someone eating Life Savers, or if I see a roll in the store. I worry that if I look too closely I’ll discover that green Life Savers don’t exist. I’m terrified of maybe realizing that I made up the only detail about
my mom I own, and then I’ll have absolutely nothing left.

  Maybe that’s a dumb thing to worry about, but it’s just who I am—what life has given me.

  Dad never talks about Mom anymore—ever.

  And Dad never eats Life Savers either—at least I’ve never seen him eat one.

  When we leave the cemetery, Dad spends the rest of the day with Pop. I spend it alone on the roof, hoping that Erin will crawl through my bedroom window and snuggle up to me, like she did so many times before. But Erin doesn’t show up.

  40

  THE MORNING BEFORE my high-school graduation ceremony, while we’re eating our eggs and bacon in the kitchen, Pop hands me a plain white envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it,” Dad says.

  I tear it open and pull out the contents. There’s some sort of ticket that reads AMTRAK.

  “Amtrak?” I ask.

  “It’s a train. You do know what trains are, right?” Pop asks.

  “Why are you giving me a train ticket?”

  “Graduation present,” Dad says.

  “To where?”

  “Read the ticket,” Pop says.

  “New Hampshire? Why did you buy me a ticket to New Hampshire?”

  “We didn’t buy it,” Pop says.

  “Read the letter,” Dad says.

  I unfold the paper and immediately recognize Erin’s handwriting. My heart nearly explodes and I start to sweat. Erin! I stand and walk into the living room.

  “Where you going?” Pop says, and I can hear laughter in his voice.

  Finley,

  You don’t know how much I’ve missed you. You can’t imagine how much I wanted to contact you in the past six months. It’s been torture. I hope you don’t think I didn’t want to see you back at the hospital. I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t calling the shots, which I’m sure you’ve figured out by now.

  I can’t say much in this letter. I’m not allowed.

  I’m somewhere very unlike Bellmont. It’s beautiful. People are nice to each other. You can walk the streets alone at night. Everything is so clean! You could eat off the sidewalk. So many stars! Trees everywhere! I have my own tiny apartment, if you can believe that. And I’m already enrolled at a small liberal arts college and set to begin this fall, although I won’t be playing basketball. Things have been taken care of. That’s all I can say in this letter. Oh, and I’m going by Katie Reidy now. Do you like the name? Can you get used to it?