Gravestone

by Travis Thrasher

  Nothing else is said for the rest of the drive. The SUV pulls up to the stairs leading into the school, and Gus gets out without saying good-bye to his father. If it really is his father. I’m about ready to get out when I feel a strong grip on my wrist.

  “Chris, hold on for a moment.”

  I wince even though I really try not to. I don’t want to show fear or hurt or pain in front of this guy.

  “Remember this, Chris. Remember my words. And remember that when I tell somebody something, I mean it. You do not want to mess with me.”

  I nod.

  “I meant every word I said to you. You’re on very shaky ground right now.”

  He lets go, and I take a breath as the world darkens a bit. It’s hazy, and my head is dizzy.

  “Have a wonderful day at school,” he tells me with a salesman’s smile. The phony smile of someone who wants to eat your soul.

  23. Some Kind of Misery

  “Come on, Chicago! My grandmother can run faster than you, and she’s dead!”

  Good to know that the track coach is keeping with the Solitary theme of Abuse Chris at Whatever Cost.

  I’m finishing up a two-mile jog on a track that is still icy and that rests on the other side of the hill that Harrington High sleeps on. This is the first football field I’ve ever seen with a line of bleachers dug into the incline. Right now it’s loaded with crystal land mines, the kind that’ll make you slip and break your neck—not that Coach Brinks seems to care anything about that.

  That’s one reason I’m at the back of the pack today. The other is that sleep deprivation does not help when you’re running a timed two-mile for the first time in a long time. I never was good at long distances, and I told Ray that. Of course, he’s leading this group of ten students, most who I’ve never met during my brief time in Solitary.

  When I finally cross the finish line, the man standing there with a timer glares at me. He resembles a ruler, tall and thin and ready to whack you on the back of your butt.

  “Chicago, get over here,” he yells.

  It’s still cold, and I’m wondering why we’re running outside.

  “What do you run again?”

  “The hurdles.”

  “That was not the most impressive two-mile I’ve ever seen.”

  “Sorry—I haven’t been running much.”

  If you don’t include running away from ghosts and evil people.

  “Your time makes me wonder if you’ve ever run at all.”

  “I was avoiding the ice on the track.”

  Coach Brinks scoffs at my comment and looks me over. He’s got the kind of expression that doesn’t back down. It’s not wild, but rather icy calm. Just like the ice on this track that will let you fall and crack your skull and lie bleeding.

  “We’ve run in worse. Sure you’re from Chicago? Maybe I oughta start calling you Miami.”

  I smile. If this is what track is going to be, then thanks but no thanks.

  He gets the team to line up in the middle of the field for a pep talk.

  “Look, people. We stunk it up here last year, and all I ask of each and every one of you is that you don’t stink it up this year. Got it? Just give this your all. I’m not expecting any championships or any boom boom pow, but make things interesting at least. That’s why we’re here, Chicago. That’s why we’re practicing in this God-awful weather. Because we need as much help as we can get.”

  I scan the people around me. There’s a really tall, skinny kid who looks like a freshman. A muscular girl. A boy and a girl hanging on to each other in a way that suggests they’re a couple.

  Now I can understand why Ray wanted me out here. There’s nobody out here to begin with. When the coach divides us into short and long, Ray pulls me aside.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s a great guy.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He’s a bit—crazy. You never know what he’s thinking. And I’d like to say he’ll warm up, but he won’t. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a good coach.”

  “I don’t know about this.”

  “Come on,” Ray says, tapping me on the back. “Can’t wait to watch you do hurdles on this track.”

  “I’m doing them now? Today?”

  Ray runs off toward Coach Brinks as I stand there in my sweatpants with holes in them and a sweatshirt with a hood that’s a bit too small when I put it around my head.

  I glance at the stands above us. Empty seats covered with snow and capped with ice.

  I have a feeling those seats are going to be lifeless all season.

  Ray curses as he drives down the street a bit too fast for my liking.

  “You’re really good,” he says.

  “I’m really out of shape.”

  “Yeah, but you can get in shape. You can’t teach talent.”

  “I have a lot to learn.”

  Ray laughs. The beams of his Jetta cut through the gloom, the car riding smoothly on streets that could stand to be salted and plowed half a dozen more times.

  “You shoulda seen our hurdler last year. I mean, the guy jumped up, no fluid motion, no grace. It was like he’d run and then stop and jump. He couldn’t do the high hurdles, of course. But the three hundred were just as tough for him.”

  “Why’d he even do them?”

  “We needed someone. I run the four hundred. I can’t do hurdles.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not promising anything.”

  “You get in shape, and I bet you’ll be something.”

  It’s only a few minutes before we reach my cabin, and I want to bring up something that I’ve been holding back.

  Let it go. Don’t say anything, Chris, just let it be.

  “Hey—can I ask you a question?”

  Ray nods as he fumbles with his iPod, which is playing a song by Kings of Leon.

  “You ever hear from Jocelyn?”

  The question doesn’t produce any notable reaction. He doesn’t slam on the brakes and start screaming in horror. He doesn’t give me a creepy, mysterious glance or a creepy, mysterious smile. He doesn’t even shrug and look away as if he’s hiding anything. He just shakes his head and keeps doing what he’s doing and then notices me studying his every move.

  “Thought you would’ve heard from her.”

  “No.”

  I don’t say any more.

  If he’s hiding something, then he’s really good at it.

  But if he’s been used to hiding stuff, maybe he’s a pro. It’s like running—the more you do it, the more in shape you’ll be and the better you’ll perform when it comes to your race.

  Remember that Ray is not from around here. Maybe that’s the difference.

  I thank him for the ride home. He tells me no problem and then gives me the same advice that Coach Brinks gave us all: “Eat your carbs!”

  “I’ll be lucky to eat anything,” I tell him, knowing my mom hasn’t gone shopping for a while. Except to buy booze.

  I go into my cabin wondering what to expect, feeling a deep, sinking feeling suddenly coming on.

  I suddenly realize that for the past two hours, I’ve had some other kind of misery to think about. It’s been track and Coach Brinks and my aching legs and lungs.

  I’d take a few more hours of that to avoid this.

  Going up these stairs. Getting to the door and seeing if it’s unlocked.

  Opening it, afraid of what I’ll find.

  Or what I won’t find.

  24. As Imaginary as Laughter

  Coach Brinks would be happy. Lots of carbs tonight for dinner. Homemade spaghetti, garlic bread, salad with the works on it, including thick homemade croutons.

  Amazing how food can transport you back to another time and place.

  Mom used to make this all the time back in Libertyville. Back when Dad would come home late and immediately sit down and devour his food and wine while Mom tried to get nuggets of talk from him.

  Libertyville isn’t just a place I used to live in. Not anymore.


  It’s now a life I once had, a place I once belonged, a world I once understood.

  I died when I had to move.

  But food and the flavors and the aromas all remind me of that past life and past love, even though love wasn’t something that flowed much in our house.

  As I finish dinner, I grow conscious of something that’s been at the back of my mind. We’re watching television while we eat, so I didn’t really even notice Mom much until she cleared the plates.

  She looks younger, prettier.

  I think it’s makeup. And something with her hair. She must have gotten a haircut.

  I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say. But I wonder if it’s for her job or maybe for someone at that job.

  After dinner, she’s cleaning up, and nothing much is on television except some news shows about celebrities I’ve never heard of doing dumb things nobody really cares about.

  “I’m going to take Midnight out,” I say.

  It’s cold, and I bundle up. Mom still seems focused in her own little world. She’s sipping wine and busy, and that’s fine. She won’t ask me any questions or notice what I’m doing.

  I take a flashlight with me as I put Midnight on a leash. She’s so tiny, not even the size of a football, and the leash seems to weigh her down so much that she just stands there wondering why she’s attached to some chain. When I get out on the deck, I put her in one arm while I turn on the flashlight and walk down the steps to the driveway.

  Since our cabin was built on the side of a steep mountain, there’s a story and a half of concrete propping it up underneath the base. The deck has long wooden beams that help hold it up, though my mom said it doesn’t really need them since the primary support is built into the deck and attached to the house.

  I’ve never spent a lot of time underneath the deck, looking at the base of the towering concrete wall. But that’s what I’m doing now, scanning it with my flashlight to see if there’s any sort of entry. A door or a window or something, anything.

  Because I know I heard a voice. I’m positive I heard laughing the other night.

  I spend a few minutes underneath, aiming the light at different sections of the concrete. Nothing. I bundle Midnight up even though it’s not too bad out. It’s cold, but the wind isn’t too strong, so you don’t feel the cold as much.

  I do the same on each side of the house, but most of the concrete is in the earth. No door can be seen, no trapdoor in the ground nearby, no lever or handle to pull.

  Wait a minute.

  I have an idea. Somebody could have built a tunnel into this house the same way they built that tunnel or passageway under the little cabin in the forest above us.

  Christopher, come to me.

  I hear that voice in the echoes of my memory, and I shiver. The voice I heard when I was at the bottom of the hole.

  The voice you thought you heard.

  The more time that goes by, the less I think that I imagined it.

  I didn’t imagine that hole or that passageway in the ground, just like I didn’t imagine the blood on Jocelyn’s neck and wrists.

  Colored syrup, Chris, the kind any halfway decent makeup artist on a movie could whip up in two seconds.

  I didn’t imagine that hellish scene around the rocks on New Year’s Eve.

  Just like I didn’t imagine any of this, including the laughter I heard the other night.

  I feel my body beginning to tremble because of the cold and realize I’d better get back inside. There are only two possible explanations for the sound I heard coming from beneath me in my house. Either there is a passageway leading to the basement from somewhere around the house, or there is an entryway into the basement through the house itself.

  At least I can hunt around inside for the latter.

  As I walk up the steps and reach the deck, I look out to the woods around me. Somewhere far below is the creek. Somewhere down the road in the distance is the Staunch residence.

  And somewhere, maybe, just maybe, lying in the shadows of the trees or maybe even looking at me from somewhere unseen at this very instant, is Jocelyn.

  It’s a nice thought. But it’s probably as imaginary as the laughter I heard. And as the sanity I would really like to have.

  25. Girls

  I don’t get girls. I really don’t.

  Maybe Solitary isn’t the place to get girls. Either getting the girl at the end, arm in arm and heading into the sunset, or getting the girl, understanding and figuring her out. Maybe this place just isn’t designed with either of those things in mind.

  Then again, maybe boys aren’t designed to figure girls out. And that’s why the girls always win in the end. Because we can’t say or do or think enough to keep up.

  I’m heading to my locker, trying to figure out the conversation that just took place between Poe and me. Goth girl, one of the misfits or “outcasts” as she once called them, the only remaining link I have to Jocelyn. I examine the interchange to see where it all went terribly wrong.

  “Poe, hey, can we talk?”

  Maybe this was a bad way to start, going up to her with a question, offering her a way out.

  “No.”

  “Look, I just want a few minutes. I mean, are you going to keep this up all semester?”

  I guess no doesn’t mean no with me, because I keep talking. And those blue eyes rip me a new one as they dig into me with a ferocity that scares me.

  “Keep what up?”

  I guess Poe doesn’t know what I mean because she hasn’t been thinking about me at all.

  Wasn’t she the one who came up and talked to me on that first day? Where’d it go bad? Why’d it go so bad?

  “Can we just—can you just stop for a minute—please?”

  “What do you want?” she asks.

  One might glance at this girl in front of me and put her in a box. Dark girl, creepy, thinks about witches and listens to Evanescence, avoids the sun but doesn’t avoid the eyeliner. But when I look at Poe, I see a girl who’s probably just as confused and scared and bewildered as I am.

  “You have to let me talk to you.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing by blocking my way?”

  “No. I mean, really talk.” I say it in a hushed tone. “In private.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because. I’m done with you.”

  “It’s about Jocelyn.”

  “Oh, really?”

  I nod.

  “That’s great, because I just got an email from her, and she’s loving life there. Happy?”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Poe says in a way that feels like someone punching me in the gut. “She said you keep sending emails and texts and that you can’t get the point.”

  I look around us and wonder if this is real, if what she’s saying is real, if the ground I’m standing on is real.

  “Poe.”

  “Yes, Chris?”

  She says my name the way she might say fungus.

  For the first time I notice how pretty Poe is, those blue eyes standing out in the white and black picture that is her. I don’t understand why she wants to hide it. The dark dress with long sleeves and the thing around her neck—I don’t even know what that is. The strange high-heeled shoes. The spiky, multi-colored short hair.

  I don’t understand why she has to act so ugly when I just want to help.

  “Look, all I want to do—”

  But as I go to finish my sentence—each word collapsing like chunks of a concrete bridge during an earthquake—Poe nods and mocks me with a just finish it already glance.

  I stop midsentence. Probably looking red-faced, humbled, and pretty stupid.

  “Don’t,” Poe says.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t anything.”

  Then she walks away.

  The Poe-and-me-versus-the-world story line isn’t going to happen the way I might have imagined.

  I reach my locker and wond
er how I can fit my entire body into it. I open it up and see a photo slip out.

  What now?

  I pick up the picture, annoyed that someone or maybe everyone has the combination to my locker.

  It could’ve been slipped in through the holes, Chris.

  I look at the picture of a smiling guy.

  He has messy hair that seems lit up and lighter because of the sun. He’s laughing, with one hand rubbing the back of his head in a nervous sort of way.

  I study the picture because it shocks me.

  Not because the guy looks so carefree and happy.

  But because the guy is me.

  “Hi,” says the mouse on my right.

  It’s not really a mouse, but the way the blond talks, sometimes it seems like she’s auditioning to play the part. Everybody in the art room goes to the same place to paint their masterpiece. Somehow Kelsey has managed to be right next to me, always standing on my right. She always says hi first, usually about five or ten minutes into the class, as if she has to build up the courage first.

  “Hey,” I say, not really interested in talking.

  She’s a girl, and she might look harmless now, but I know. Those glasses and that round little face and the braces may make her look sweet and innocent, but I know. She’s a girl, and I’m watching myself around her.

  “I saw you talking with that girl.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know her name. But I know you’re friends with her.”

  “Poe.”

  “That’s her name?”

  I nod. “Not sure if she’d call me a friend.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe you can ask her that. Haven’t quite figured that out.”

  She keeps working. Her painting is symmetrical and logical and very bright. Mine is like an ugly face plastered in mud and smeared over the high school hall.

  “What’s that supposed to be?” I ask her, changing the subject, wanting to change the mood.

  This usually happens, where she’ll break ice that doesn’t really need breaking and then we’ll go on to chat and I’ll do 75 percent of the talking. I’ll leave the class wondering what all I was talking about and why I was talking so much. I guess art class makes me realize just how badly I need to talk to someone. Even Minnie Mouse here.