Gravestone

by Travis Thrasher

  Maybe that’s why she’s drinking so much. Guilt.

  It’s late afternoon, and the snow has died down. Jared drove me back home on his snowmobile, which should’ve been a lot more fun to ride. He didn’t say much after we left his place or after we stopped at my driveway. Whatever sun is behind those clouds is already starting to fade away.

  Like hope. Like peace.

  I’m starving and think that soup and a sandwich sounds really awesome. For an appetizer.

  I go into the kitchen. It’s really narrow. I think back to our house in Libertyville. The one with the large island in the middle of the kitchen. The new appliances and the open area that fed into the family room. Perfect for entertaining.

  This place is perfect for hibernating.

  Back in our old house, I could escape my parents by going into the basement, which had a big television with a big couch in front of it. Even though this cabin is resting on what looks like stilts on the side of a mountain, there’s no basement to escape to. There is no escape, not from here.

  The silence gets to me. I don’t remember there ever being a time when it was so dang quiet up north. The television was always on. I was always playing a video game or watching a show or listening to music or talking to my friends. Now the only echoes I hear are my own thoughts. And they’re ones I really want to shut up.

  The burner is the kind that slowly turns red instead of lighting up with gas. For a long time, I stand and stare at it. The silence feels like Styrofoam packaging surrounding me. I only wish I could be FedExed to a place far away.

  My hope comes in Midnight.

  The Shih Tzu belonged to Jocelyn, who kept her in an abandoned barn and went out once a day to check on her.

  It’s a wonderful thing, hope.

  I can’t believe she said that. And I still can’t believe she’s gone.

  I hold the puppy as I lie in my room, listening to music. Still no Internet, no cable since it went out again, no lifeline to the rest the world. But I can lie on my bed with the angle of the ceiling showing just how narrow our rooftop really is, and I can listen to songs. I can escape with them. Or at least try to play them louder than my thoughts.

  The album that’s playing is The Psychedelic Furs’ Mirror Moves. The lead singer has a heavy English accent, so heavy that it’s hard to understand half of what he’s saying. That’s okay. I’ll make up some lyrics that talk about an evil little town in the Smoky Mountains where ghosts whisper and zombies stroll about.

  “Chris?”

  Mom is standing at the door.

  She’s got a knife get out of here get out now!

  My ludicrous thoughts are surely a result of some old cheese on my sandwich along with lack of sleep and lack of sanity.

  I turn down the stereo.

  “Where’d you go today?”

  “Out.”

  She glances at me.

  Mom doesn’t look any different. Yet now all I can think about is what that guy Jared told me. It’s crazy, but I really kinda believe him.

  “Did you see Jocelyn?”

  Her question seems honest and innocent.

  I study her to see if I can detect anything.

  If she knew, why would she ask that?

  I nod.

  “I’m surprised she can get around with the roads,” Mom says.

  “She has four-wheel drive in her Jeep.”

  She had four-wheel drive. She also had another four decades to live, if not more.

  She had a life and a love and something special, and it was all taken away.

  It was slit and cut out.

  “Did you have enough for dinner?”

  The subject of Jocelyn is passed over. Just like the storm outside. Just like everything in life.

  “Yeah, I’m full.”

  “They’ll probably call off school tomorrow.”

  “We won’t know because our phone lines are down.”

  “Are they?”

  I look at Mom. She really is clueless.

  Maybe she knows something and maybe she doesn’t. But this act of hers is no act. This is the booze show, and it’s been showing up quite a bit. Slightly out of it, incredibly slow, massively disappointing. She makes some conversation that doesn’t go anywhere, then says she’ll be downstairs.

  That’s good, because I’m going to be here.

  Right here in my room.

  6. Echoes

  I dream of Jocelyn while I’m wide awake.

  The wind whines outside while I’m stuck in this tiny raft in the middle of an ocean of darkness. I don’t want to look at the clock to remind me how slowly time is passing. I can’t imagine another day of this, let alone another year.

  I remember riding next to her in her Jeep and listening to her talk over the music on the radio. I remember the day she drove me to the site where the old church once sat and where her parents were buried. I remember standing on the edge of the hill at the Grove Park Inn and looking out over the city and kissing her on the cheek and feeling like we were the only ones in the entire universe.

  Something she said pricks me like a rosebush.

  It’s done I told her.

  I thought it had been silly teen games and banter, but she was trying to tell me that it was more.

  It’s fine I said.

  But her words haunt me. They laugh like an intruder in the closet, terrifying me but leaving me with no room for escape.

  That’s what you don’t understand, she said. It’s not done. It hasn’t even started yet.

  In the most forgotten hour of day or night, I remember.

  And I realize something that’s truly paralyzing: If this is how it all starts, where will it end?

  7. Two Surprises

  The biggest surprise when I get back to school after a couple of snow days isn’t some figure in a black robe and a pitchfork guarding the entrance to Mr. Meiners’ classroom. It’s not a bloody note in my locker saying You did this. It’s not some clique of pale and glistening beautiful people that everybody and their brother should know are vampires.

  No. It’s when golden boy Ray Spencer comes up and asks me to try out for track.

  What?

  “Yeah, I heard over break that you were a pretty decent runner at your old school.”

  Of all the rumors that could have been circulating, this is what he ends up asking about.

  I’m quiet and probably seem a bit standoffish because I still don’t trust anybody, including this grinning homecoming king. Who once dated Jocelyn.

  “What is it?” Ray asks. “Am I wrong?”

  “Who told you I was on track?”

  He laughs. He’s wearing some new sweatshirt that’s surely one of the fifty presents he opened on Christmas Day. “Is it some national secret?”

  “I’m not a big fan of secrets,” I say.

  Ray chuckles and scratches his head. “Yeah, well, you moved to the wrong town. Okay—want to know the truth? I was looking you up online, and I saw some stuff on you at your old school. You ran track. Hurdles, right?”

  “What were you trying to find out?”

  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the guy look irritated. For a moment he looks like he might walk away, but then he shrugs.

  “Look, I’m on the track team, and our team needs as much help as it can get. No big deal. I would have asked you over break, but I was traveling with our family the whole time.”

  “So you weren’t around New Year’s Eve?”

  “No. Why?”

  I try to see if he’s lying. “Just curious.”

  “Haven’t seen you at church either.”

  “Maybe the church thing isn’t for me,” I say.

  “No big deal. So anyway, I was curious, so I googled you and looked up some info from your last school. Okay?”

  Everybody isn’t a criminal, Chris. Everybody’s not to blame.

  “Yeah, I ran hurdles. I’m fast but not that fast. My best event is the three-hundred-meter.”

  “
That’s awesome.”

  “Really?”

  “Totally,” Ray says. “That’s a tough race. We haven’t had anybody to run that. We’re always getting blown out. And if you haven’t noticed, we’re not exactly into track. Football’s the only sport anybody really cares about around here.”

  “I didn’t even know there was a track team,” I say.

  “See—why do you think I was looking for another runner? I need more people who appreciate track.”

  “Are you the captain or something?”

  He rolls his eyes and just then sees some of his buddies down the hall. “Just think about it, okay? Practice starts this week.”

  “Do I have to try out or anything?”

  “No. If you’ve been on a team before, you’ll be more than welcome on ours.”

  I see him walk away with the casual cool walk of someone who doesn’t know failure.

  I think I used to walk like that, back at my old school in Libertyville. It was easy to walk like that with a pack full of friends and a lawyer father who paid the bills even if he didn’t pay attention to anything else.

  I have to admit that I resent that walk. Quite a bit.

  I wonder if I’ll ever get it back.

  One of the two people I’ve been waiting to see is walking toward me.

  I wondered which one I’d see first. I was hoping to see Rachel, but instead I see her dark-souled sister.

  I want to know if she knows. I want to see if she can see the truth, the truth that this school and this town and this air seem to be poisonous. But Poe looks away, as usual. She even appears to be heading past me without a hello.

  I keep thinking that somewhere under the black eyeliner and pale skin and those fishnets and boots lies a girl who’s just like any ordinary girl.

  “Poe.”

  I stop as she keeps going.

  Naturally.

  I turn and follow her and call out her name. When she finally turns, I see tears in her eyes.

  She knows.

  “Are you happy now?” she snaps.

  The words bite. I would have been more prepared for her to slap me.

  “Happy for what?”

  “They’re gone.”

  They? As in plural? Who’s she talking about?

  “Look—we have to—maybe we shouldn’t—” I look around to see if anybody is watching us.

  And yes, the usual audience is there. It’s like this school employs a bunch of movie extras. Okay, we’ll pay you to linger and loiter around Chris and just stare and gawk and act like you have absolutely nothing else to do.

  “Get out of my face,” she says. Or spits, more like it.

  I notice a lip ring that appears to be something new.

  “Poe.”

  “This is all your fault. I hope you’re happy now.”

  I want to pull her back, but I know if I touch her I’ll probably get belted.

  So, two things I didn’t expect on this first day back. An offer for track and all its glory. And being shunned by Poe, one of the only friends I assumed I had left.

  There’s Newt. Don’t forget Newt.

  I’m going to find that guy and sit him down and make him talk.

  And then … well, then I’ll figure something out.

  Like what the heck Poe’s talking about.

  8. Empty Canvas

  There is a gift in my locker.

  No note this time. Not like the others I received, warning me, teasing me, messing with my mind.

  No gun either. That nice little gift got me kicked out before the principal and the rest of the school realized that someone planted it.

  I still don’t know who did that. But that’s only number 72 on the list of questions needing answers.

  Today the gift is a picture.

  I take it out and glance over my shoulder to see if anyone is watching me. Not that I can see.

  It’s a creased page from a magazine. A photograph of an ordinary road going into the woods. It looks like a colorful fall day. Could have been taken somewhere around here.

  At the bottom of the page is something written in black ink. In Jocelyn’s handwriting.

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  I’m pretty sure that’s a famous poem, but I don’t know who wrote it.

  This was in Jocelyn’s locker.

  So why is it suddenly in mine?

  As I close my door, I wonder what happened to the rest of her stuff.

  More than ever before, except maybe on that first day of stepping into a semester already halfway through, I feel eyes on me. Watching and waiting. Wondering when I’m finally going to give up.

  I think back to Jared’s parting words when he dropped me off.

  I’ll be in contact with you. That’s the way it has to be.

  I wonder when I’ll see him next.

  All I know is that I’m supposed to say and do nothing. Just go with the flow. And that’s what I’m doing.

  It takes half the day before I find Newt. At lunch I finally sit across from him and give him a look that I hope conveys what I’m thinking.

  A look that says If you don’t give me answers I’ll do exactly what Gus Staunch did to you that first day I saw you being smeared across the school hallway.

  “Lunch might be the worst place ever to talk about stuff,” he whispers as he smells his white-bread sandwich.

  “Do you know?”

  He looks one way, then the other. “I know enough.”

  I shake my head and motion my hands in a So what now? gesture. He takes a bite of the sandwich and then makes a face.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “Lunch is a time to eat.”

  “So when do I get the decoder that shows me how to look at the map to our secret meeting?”

  “Don’t get annoyed.”

  I laugh in disbelief. “This isn’t ‘annoyed.’”

  “I didn’t do anything.” He’s still talking in something barely above a mumble.

  “I’m way past being annoyed.”

  As Newt’s head moves up to face mine, I see his scar under the hard lighting of the cafeteria.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to be stupid,” he says.

  “Newt, man …”

  “After school, okay?”

  “After school what?”

  “After school.”

  “I can’t just swing by your house, remember? I don’t have a ride.”

  “You won’t need a ride. Just—just meet me at the lockers and we’ll go from there.”

  “Go where?”

  He shakes his head and keeps eating.

  I look around the room that’s full of conversation and laughter, and I see Poe sitting at a different table than usual. Sitting by herself.

  I sit in the art room and wonder how in the world I’m going to learn anything about art in this little town and this dead-end school. This is a new elective I’m taking. Maybe I should have taken computers or shop class. The art teacher, Mr. Chestle, sure looks artsy as he goes on about something or other.

  I glance around the room to see if there’s anybody I know. I recognize some faces from other classes, but nobody I know by more than a first name. There are more girls in the class than guys. A few look like freshmen, or more like sixth graders who decided to visit the high school for the day. There’s that loudmouthed redheaded girl I generally try to avoid because she talks all the time. The hot dark-haired girl with her friends on either side. I need to avoid any and all hot dark-haired chicks from here on out until the end of my life. Which may be sooner than I think. There’s a blond girl with glasses who easily could be a librarian. Or a witch. A librarian witch.

  The blond is staring at me. She gives me a closed smile. As if she knows something.

  I don’t smile back. I think I probably look confused, irritated, maybe even a bit offended.

  She glances away
, and I continue checking out the class.

  I look at the empty canvases all around the room just waiting to be filled.

  I totally know I’m one of them.

  It’s going to be a long semester.

  9. A Way of Making Things Happen

  I need to look on the bright side. It’s the end of the day, and I haven’t been bullied by Gus. I haven’t been suspended. Poe hasn’t yelled at me anymore (though we haven’t spoken either). The only notable thing is the absence of the other member of the threesome that came up to me on the first day of school last October: Rachel. I figure she’s just taking an extra day or so coming back from vacationing in Colorado.

  I’m waiting by my locker, a little nervous that Newt forgot what he said at lunch, when I see him coming down the hallway.

  “Ready?” he asks as he doesn’t slow down.

  I follow him outside, where it’s now brutally cold. The snow hasn’t gone anywhere. It seems to have settled in, determined and suffocating.

  “Where’re we going?” I ask.

  “Come on,” he says.

  I know that, like me, he doesn’t have a license. Only one of us is sixteen, however.

  Loser.

  Maybe there’s a car waiting for us. Maybe it’s Jared. This will be our first meeting of the secret underground something-or-other. We’ll meet at Jared’s cabin and come up with crazy theories and eat lots of really bad food and maybe play some video games.

  Instead, we walk up to a station wagon waiting for us. Or, as it turns out, waiting for Newt. The man behind the wheel looks way too old to be Newt’s father.

  “Come on, get in,” Newt says.

  When I’m in the backseat, he introduces me to the driver. “Grandpa, this is one of my buddies. Sam.”

  For a second, I wonder if his grandfather is called Sam. But then the driver calls out my name, or what he thinks is my name, with a cordial Southern accent.

  “Where are you from, Sam?”

  Newt glances back at me just to give me some bit of a heads-up.