Here So Far Away

by Hadley Dyer

  “Trust me, old sport, you won’t have to.”

  I followed him down to the kitchen. My mother was, as usual, in constant motion. Never hurrying, never stopping, like a shark. (One of those hammerheads, with the wide-set Disney eyes and upside-down smile.) She had scrambled eggs and cod-potato hash on the stove, folded laundry in the basket at her feet, a pile of pillowcases waiting on the ironing board in the corner. She must have gotten Dad up at dawn to be home before nine.

  “You’re very pale, Georgie,” she said.

  Dad looked up from his newspaper, antennae engaged.

  “Really? Because I feel great!”

  Steady.

  “What did you do last night?” Dad asked.

  “I went to Veinot to see if there were any help-wanted signs at the mall. For when my hours at the lighthouse go down.”

  “Mall closes at nine.”

  “Then I stopped off at Nat’s to loan her my jacket. And then I sat out on the porch and read. Matty was asleep by the time I got in.”

  Checkable with an acceptable level of risk. Uncheckable. Uncheckable.

  “You weren’t cold?”

  “A little.”

  “What book are you reading?”

  “1984.”

  “What chapter did you get to?”

  What was I, an amateur? Next thing he’d be verifying the bookmark location.

  “I finished it.”

  Three days ago.

  “Good for you. Now stop hovering and sit down; let your mother serve you breakfast.”

  The smell of the cod-hash had become overwhelming, and my skull felt so heavy and tight around my brain, it was like wearing an old deep-sea-diver’s helmet. “I think I’ll skip,” I said. “Go up and start the rest of my homework.”

  Ah, but he was not fooled.

  “You’ll be extra hungry for those beautiful chicken livers that we’re frying up for supper.” My stomach acid began to burble. “Is it just me or do raw chicken livers look like Jell-O made out of—”

  “Paul,” Mum said in a warning tone. She tipped her head in the direction of Matthew, who had stopped chewing and was staring at the saltshaker as though it could transport him to a better place.

  “Burnt ketchup?” Dad finished.

  Matthew swallowed. “Aren’t you going for a run, George?” he said, an angelic smile on his perfect face. “Consistency is the most important part of a training program. And, you know, oink-oink.”

  “Rest is important too,” I said, trying to stifle a yawn and hitch up my pajama bottoms to cover my muffin top at the same time. Dad’s eyes were lasering into me again. He was about one and a half seconds away from relaunching his investigation. “But of course I’m going for a run!”

  Tying my laces took more energy and brainpower than I had in my reservoir. Mum sat on the porch beside me and did the other shoe. “Iris Perry’s home from the hospital. They put in the pin.”

  “What pin?”

  “I told you yesterday. Broke her shin falling down the stairs. Bone went clean through.”

  I didn’t know who Iris Perry was. Didn’t matter. Today it was her pin, tomorrow it would be Mr. Inglis’s cat’s tumor, and the day after that it would be somebody’s cousin’s friend’s something. I’d long ago put together that my mother repeated this gossip, if you could call it that, because she didn’t have a lot of stories of her own to tell.

  “Are you sure you’re not sick?” she asked, putting her hand on my forehead. “I could pick up some Pepto for you when I get the groceries.”

  Oh blessed saint of ideas borne out of desperation.

  “Why don’t I do that?” I said. “I’ll take the car over to the track and get the groceries on the way home.”

  “Hmm. No, it’s easier to do it myself than to explain which kind to get of what.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be out in the garden? How many more good days like this are left?”

  “I suppose . . .” She squeezed my foot. “That’s my good girl.”

  I hit the grocery store first. As usual, it wasn’t as simple as pulling things off shelves, putting them into a cart, and going through the checkout.

  Yes, Mrs. Greenwood, my dad is doing well. Thanks for asking.

  Sorry, Mr. Richardson, I don’t think he can talk to your neighbor about the dog poop on the lawn.

  Actually, Donny, Dad was kind of wondering if you could dial 911 the next time your kid sets the basement on fire instead of calling our house.

  At least people had stopped showing up on our doorstep to lodge complaints, now that word was out about Dad’s surgery.

  Afterward, I did a loop around town to kill time. It wasn’t one of the prettier valley villages, with their quaint churches and gingerbready houses. Many of the older homes like ours had fallen into disrepair, or the lots had been subdivided to make room for bungalows and split-levels, and there must have been a sale on turquoise, avocado, and mustard siding when the newer places were going up. The downtown was filled with nondescript storefronts, too ugly to be charming and not ugly enough to be romantic like some sooty old Welsh mining village. The only big industrial building was the “new” sawmill, which replaced the original in 1920 after the boiler exploded.

  While stopped at our one traffic light, I opened my door and vomited onto the asphalt. I wiped my mouth with a receipt I found on the car floor—all class—sat up, and met the eyes of our principal, Mr. Humphreys, who was in the car perpendicular to mine in the intersection, his mouth an O. (There was no mistaking the red beard and red Afro. Lisa insisted that she and Keith could never stand near him at school because they’d seem like they were all part of a lost ginger tribe.) The car behind me honked loudly, and I peeled out through the newly green light, a tad too Dukes of Hazzard.

  I parked at the arena, rested my head on the window. How long could I snooze here before the milk went bad? A day or two? I was just drifting off, hazily considering the best way to get my cheeks red so it’d look like I’d been jogging, when a loud knocking on the pane jolted my stomach into my throat.

  Bill. He had a hockey bag slung over his shoulder, obviously on his way to practice. “Hey! What happened to you last night?” he said as I opened the door.

  I pushed past him to a pile of leaves, and threw up again. Midretch, I saw he had followed me and was hanging on to the end of my ponytail. “Look, I’m holding your hair. That means we’re girlfriends now, right?”

  “Why are you talking at me?”

  “Isn’t that how this works? I hold your hair while you puke and you tell me that what I’m wearing isn’t flattering and how to fix it.”

  I gave him a quick side eye. He had on his usual plaid shirt, long white T-shirt, and baggy jeans. “Where are the rest of the Kids in the Hall?”

  “That’s it. Let me bring you over here, girlfriend. Sit on the curb.”

  The remaining contents of my stomach started to rise but I managed to keep them down by throwing my head back and swallowing hard.

  Bill said, “That right there was worse than watching you actually throw up.”

  “What’s with the girl talk?”

  “I’m the only guy in the group now, so I’m trying to fit in better.”

  My eyes began to water, mostly from the effort of not vomiting. “Never mind. I am not equipped,” he said. “You need a real girl for that.”

  “I’m sorry. I just had a bad night and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay, okay . . . There, there.” He patted my shoulder so awkwardly that I laughed in spite of myself. “There, there, there. If it makes you feel any better, Tracy and I are probably going to break up again.”

  Bill had been dating Tracy on and off since the eighth grade. No one knew why they were together. Bill was fun and sloppy and sarcastic and unflappable, the guy you wanted on your team for a hot dog–eating contest. Tracy had two modes: sullen and boring. She had creepy little hands like bird claws and didn’t talk much, except to nag Bill. Every so often
they would break up—always her dumping him, never the other way around—and we’d have this surge of hope that he’d end up with someone we liked. Then they’d get back together again. Sid had vowed to bust them up permanently, but didn’t get the chance.

  “Aw, shoot,” I said.

  “At least you didn’t clap, like Nat. She told me what happened at the food court, by the way. So does this mean that Joshua’s face has melted?”

  “What do you mean, melted?”

  “Indiana Jones melted. Why are you not understanding me?”

  “Because I’m not Sid. I don’t get your inside guy references.”

  “Don’t you remember the end of Indiana Jones, when they throw acid into the Nazi’s face and it’s all like, ‘Aaaaaargh . . .’? That’s how I feel every time Tracy and I break up and I get to talk to new girls and I find a gorgeous one and garbage comes out of her mouth. When I’m crossing the room to talk to her, I’m thinking, I don’t care who she is, I don’t care what she is, I want to stick my head into that no-man’s-land between her boobs and have a nap.”

  “Oh, stop with your feminist rants.”

  “But the thing is, to gain entry into no-man’s-land, you have to have a conversation, and when it turns out she’s a moron, it’s like she’s not even physically attractive anymore. The moment she starts talking about how her cat peed on her bed because it was jealous of her old boyfriend—”

  “She melts.”

  “Like wax. Listen, I don’t have anything against the guy. Joshua. I just can’t figure what you talked about that night. You didn’t talk like this, that I know.”

  Until a few minutes ago, Bill and I didn’t really talk like this either.

  “We talked about school stuff, Saddam Hussein . . .” That was all I could remember. “What do you and Tracy talk about?”

  “Nothin’. Sometimes her food allergies.”

  “The problem,” I said, “is that Joshua thinks he fell in love with me at first sight, and everyone else thinks I’m crazy for not feeling the same. You and me, we’re probably the only ones who don’t go for that insta-love crap.”

  “I totally believe in that crap,” Bill said.

  “Who did you ever love at first sight? Tracy?”

  “Hell no. My hockey coach.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m serious. And Sid.”

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  “I’m saying we call it love at first sight when sex is thrown in, but there are lots of different people you meet and you click and you know, you know?”

  “I know you miss him, buddy.”

  “That’s the problem. Tracy asked if I’d miss her as much as I miss him.”

  “You lied, I hope.”

  “I might have thought about it a second too long.”

  “You wiener.”

  “Well, guess what? This wiener loved you at first sight too, Georgie Girl.”

  I shifted uncomfortably.

  “Not like that!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Do I have to say it back?”

  “Better if you didn’t now that you’ve made it all cringey.”

  “Good. I’ll express it in action.” I patted his knee. “There, there, there.”

  Nine

  “It’s like we’re not even going out sometimes, you know?”

  This was how most of my conversations with Lisa started. In the middle.

  “That’s so typical of Keith,” I said, dragging the phone over to my bed. It was almost noon and I still hadn’t slept. “What did he do?”

  “I was dropping off a mixtape I made for him, and then we went into the kitchen and he—he made a tomato sandwich.”

  “Oh my god!” I shouted.

  “No, seriously, a tomato sandwich. One. If it had been me, I would have been like, Keith? What? I’m making a sandwich. Oh? Would you like one too? No, thanks. Are you sure? It’s no trouble. I’m sure. Okay.” (Lisa did this a lot, acted out all of the parts, as though no one would get it if she only gave the highlights.) “Do you think this is his way of, like, asking for space?”

  Keith wasn’t that deep. He was a nice enough guy but, like all her boyfriends, about as complex as a baked potato.

  “Probably not. You want me to break his knees?”

  “Nah. I’m just calling to see if you’re okay. You know I would have told you that we were bringing Joshua to the party if Keith had warned me, right? God, this is why I keep telling Dad we need a car phone.”

  “I know. Sorry for taking off like that.”

  “What did you do last night?”

  Lisa had always been the first person I wanted to tell whenever something important or interesting or embarrassing happened. Sometimes I started rehearsing the story in my head while the thing was still happening. But sharing what happened with Francis would make it all the more real, and I didn’t want it to be real anymore. If I could go to sleep, when I woke up I could pretend it had all been a dream.

  “Listened to a bunch of cool music,” I said. “You know, sharpening my edge.”

  “Oh yeah? Which one of your three records did you listen to?”

  “The one that’s so cool you’ve never heard of it. Dude, I gotta go back to bed.”

  “Hang on. I haven’t told you about the party.”

  “Can we talk about it later? Sorry, I’m so wiped.” The line went silent. “Lise?”

  “Something’s wrong, I can tell. What is it? Were you talking to Nat?”

  “Wha? No, I— We’ll talk later, I promise. When I’m alive again.”

  “Alright. Love you.”

  “Like you immensely.”

  “Love you.”

  “What you said.”

  “Love you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Good enough.”

  I was drifting off when Matthew started shaking me. “George!” he whispered. “George!”

  “Buddy, I am going to sleep, if I have to kill us both.”

  “The guy’s here for lunch. Just tell me quick, are we supposed to go down and eat with them?”

  “Who is it?”

  “A cop. The new one, I think.”

  “What new—”

  My feet hit the floor.

  I caught my breath when I saw him closing the trunk of his car from Matthew’s bedroom window. His hair was freshly buzzed off, the beard shaved, but there was no mistaking those angles, that coiled energy in his body, or those eyes.

  I heard Matthew collapsing onto the floor behind me, but didn’t turn around, horror-struck as I was by the sight of the blood splattered all over Francis’s shirt.

  Mum was little but she could move, and Francis had to do some fancy ducking and maneuvering to avoid her as she fired herself out of the house and ran at him. “It’s not my blood!” he said, pirouetting this way and that. “Don’t—please—you’ll get it all over you!”

  “My god, did you shoot someone?”

  “No, no! It’s cow’s blood,” he said.

  Squeak of the screen door beneath Matthew’s window. “Francis McAdams, I assume,” Dad said.

  “I would come over and shake your hand, but . . .”

  “Feel free to stay where you are. You want to tell us about this cow you used to know?”

  “A call came in while I was down at the detachment this morning; a farmer said his cow was stuck in the riverbed. She was knee-deep in the muck and we had a hell of a time getting her out, which, it turns out, was because she was delivering a calf.”

  “My land,” said Mum.

  “Calf live?” My father.

  “Stillborn.”

  “Well, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but once word gets out that you responded to an animal call, on duty or off, you’ll be getting them from all over the county.”

  “That’s what they said at the detachment. Anyway, I thought I had a spare shirt in the trunk, but no luck, and by the time I get home and back . . .”

  “Don’t be silly,” my mother said
. “Come hop in the shower and Paul will lend you something.”

  “Oh, sure,” Dad said. “My tuxedo is back from the cleaners.”

  I turned and tripped over Matthew, who had come around but was still lying on the floor. Quick inspection: he’d survive.

  No fully slept, fully sane person would do what I did when I got back to my room, tearing down posters and shoving any evidence that I was what I was—stuffed animals and magazines and school trophies and photos of my friends—under the bed. I tugged the coverlet down to hide the fuzzy duck peeping out. Yeah, that would convince Francis that I was—what? Some random adult who happened to be boarding with the Warrens? Never mind my landlords. They’re old and confused and think we’re related.

  I opened my window and could hear Mum through my parents’ window rummaging in their closet. “You’re much trimmer than Paul, so I’m afraid we don’t have a lot to offer you. It might have to be this.”

  “That’s fine, Marlene. Thank you.”

  I waited until I heard my mother’s footsteps go down the stairs and the shower start running, then poked my head out and stared at the bathroom door. He won’t open it, I thought. Slip down the hall and be done with it. Do it. He’s not going to open it.

  This was all within about three-quarters of a second.

  I skated down the hall in my socks, sending up sparks from the rug.

  The door opened.

  “Oh!” Francis’s face lit up for a moment before the hamster wheel in his skull began to run overtime.

  I put my finger to my lips. “I can’t explain now,” I whispered. “Please, please pretend you didn’t see me, that you’ve never seen me. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “Wait!” he whispered after me. “I need a towel.”

  I got one from the linen closet. In the movie version of my life, I will bring it to him, lightly place my hand upon his chest, and rest it there briefly before floating away. But really, I just hurled it in his general direction and ran.

  Didn’t make it.

  “Georgie!” Mum said as my hand touched the front door handle. “Where are you going?”

  I snatched my economics textbook from the old hutch where we tossed our keys, hats, and mail. “To Lisa’s. To study.”

  “The new constable is here to pay his respects. We’re having a sit-down lunch.”