by Susan Vaught
You’re nothing. You’re nothing. You’re nothing at all and you’re stupid and a big baby. Babies cry, babies sigh. Babies fly. Maybe the trees really are monsters?
—Drip’s talking as we push forward but I can’t hear him. I can’t hear anything but static from the monster-trees and it makes my guts hurt and I want to scream but if I start screaming Drip will stop running and he’ll probably have to drag me back to the VFW and I’ll still be screaming and then I’ll be in the hospital and—
It’s not real Sunshine says like she always says when I get drowned by my own stupid not really real thoughts but sometimes they seem so real but she says no no Jason it’s not real and we’re here and everything’s fine and that’s why she can say to me we’re here we’re here please make it fine Jason please promise me you won’t think about him or talk about him and I won’t and we won’t and we’ll make him not exist please please we’ll make everything okay again and she presses her locket into my hand and she makes me squeeze it and
—I stumble over a biting strand of blackberry bush and smack into Drip from behind. He lurches forward with a big loud “Ow!” Then “Be careful.” Then we’re out of the scary clearing and the scary trees might be following us and he asks, “Do you think she left on purpose?”
Yes.
No.
How close are we to our place?
“I don’t know,” I say to Drip, not really sure if I’m answering my own question or his.
Our place—there’s another turn, right again, and skirting along the bottom edge of a hill tangled with thorny blackberry bushes. Where are we? It’s so dark.
It’ll always be dark without her…
On the path, that’s where, I can tell because we’ve worn it down through the rocks and sticks and underbrush, and here the thorns aren’t so bad because we’ve made a small opening in the bushes we keep clipped with a pair of rusty gardening shears we hide in the dirt beside the opening.
On the other side of the opening, that’s our quiet place, our special spot. The river moves fast alongside it, rushing across a stone bed, all clear with white foam. There’s nothing but trees on the other bank, and they aren’t scary, and the thorny bushes and hillside behind us, not scary. There’s a big huge rock that hangs out across the river. A little bit scary, but not when we sit on it together talking about rivers and waters and the world or nothing at all. If it’s raining, we sit under the rock, up against the part not in the river, and it’s like a giant granite canopy above us, almost a cave, but not quite, and not scary. Not scary like the trees that aren’t following us. Probably.
If I look back I’ll fall.
“What if somebody grabbed her?” Drip’s getting louder. “We have to find her. We have to know for sure, because if she needs help, I’m gonna help her. We’re gonna help her, right, Freak?”
“Right.” If she wants me to. Maybe she doesn’t even want to look at me.
You know she doesn’t. You’re foul. You’re filthy and awful and she knows that now. She’ll never look at you again. No one looks, no one looks, no one looks. Maybe everybody is staring at you.
Drip slows all of a sudden and I bash into him again and we stagger forward together, out of the sticky bushes through the darkness breathing the cold black breathing the cold nothing and we both stop talking because we hear it then, the way the river does its own talking in our place. If it had a voice, it might say:
She was here…
She was here, but…
She was here but she’s…
And my throat gets so tight I can hardly breathe and my chest burns and I need her to be here, I really, really need her to be here, please, please, please let her be here. I strain my eyes for any glimmer, any shadow, any movement. I pray for a whiff of honeysuckle, a whisper of skin or hair or sighs, the glitter of locket gold, just the tiniest trace. Anything. I’ll take anything at all.
Drip sweeps the flashlight back and forth, back and forth and all around, and I’m breathing hard and my ankles smart from blackberry stings. When the light passes in front of me, I see the white-steel puff of my own breath.
“Sunshine?” he calls out, his voice too high and tight, and I say her name, too, calm as I can even though I really want to yell it or scream it or fall down and cry and start begging.
“Sunshine?”
And we stop, and we listen, and Drip swings the flashlight everywhere, too fast and not fast enough, and there’s nothing but the big rock and the river and the distant trees and bushes behind us, there’s nothing here but us, but there has to be something, she has to be here, I need her to be here.
Drip aims the light right at the shallow cave under the big rock, but nothing’s there.
“Sunshine!” My voice shakes and I’ve got both fists clenched.
Drip whips the light to the left and I can’t take it anymore so I grab the flashlight away from him, and he doesn’t even fight with me, just keeps calling her, only he’s more talking the name now, then whispering it in between when I yell it, then he says, “She’s not here. I don’t think she’s here, Freak.”
I don’t want to stop. I poke the light left, then right. Then here, then there. Each time I slice the darkness I feel stupid hope, then stupider agony. “Don’t say that. We haven’t looked everywhere yet.”
“She wouldn’t still be asleep with all this yelling, and you know she’s not hiding from us.”
That’s what he thinks. She might be hiding from you. She should be hiding from you because you’re a freak and you stink. Freak stink, stink freak. Maybe everyone should hide from you.
“Right?” Drip’s asking me and when I shine the light in his face his eyes look huge and wide and I don’t know why but I just want to hit him. But really I don’t think I want to hit him, I think I want to hit something because Sunshine’s not here.
I knew better, but I wanted it to be true.
There’s no moon and no stars and the weird glowing clouds drift lower, lower, like they’re coming to crush us all. I glance at them, think about telling them to stop, then realize I’m getting the double stink-eye from Drip as he puts his hand up to shade off some of the flashlight glare. “Ease up with that.”
Every now and then I make him nervous. Now is one of those times. I can tell. It’s okay because I owe him a few of those, but it’s not okay. I don’t need to make him nervous now, because he’s sad and upset just like me. I lower the light, and I don’t say anything to the clouds.
“She’s not here,” I mumble, my lips feeling thick and achy like I ate blackberry thorns instead of stabbing them into my ankles running here. It smells like river and rain here. River and rain and black, black night—but it doesn’t smell like Sunshine. “She’s just not here.”
“We’ll come back in the daylight,” Drip says in a slow way, like he’s stinging from his own thorns. “We’ll look better.”
Hope blasts through me again, but I stuff it straight back down because I know better, I really do and I don’t want to eat any more thorns. “Why? She’s not here.”
“She could have hidden something.” Drip sounds stubborn. He’s thinking about a note, too. And I realize both of us think it’s possible she might have gone away on her own, and I wonder what Drip knows, and I realize neither of us wants to believe Sunshine would leave us with no good-bye. She wouldn’t have. I don’t think she would have. But maybe she would.
I hate it when I sound like my alphabet voices.
I hate it when I smear together like a wet photograph and get all sticky and can’t tell the crazy voices from my own voice and what I’m seeing now from what I saw before and what I want to see now and what I wanted to see before and—
I know it might be hard later but I don’t care anymore I can’t care right now Jason I just need you I just need to feel I need to feel something better than this and I need it all to be over and I need it all to be okay you’ll help me I know you will because you’ve always loved me and I’ve always
—The black clouds bite into my brain and my head snaps back and the words die and—
“Somebody’s coming.” Drip’s voice blows a giant hole in what’s left of my thoughts.
My hand tightens on the flashlight and I want to hit him all over again because did she really say those things or did I just want her to say them? Did I make it all up? Did I find excuses to do what I wanted? Did I want to do something?
At the edge of the world, those horrible clouds with the horrible pain inside them try to gather again and I know I have to stop trying to think about it but I don’t want to, I need to think about it and remember for her and for me but it’ll kill me and I’ll die before I know and how will that help anything?
“Jason?” Faraway voices. “Jason! Derrick?”
Men. Women. Probably parents. Who knows. Maybe officers and FBI agents, too. Is it illegal to come to special places and think about whacking one of your best friends with a flashlight? Why can’t they let me think? Why won’t anybody let me think?
Drip’s waiting and I get it all of a sudden. I have the flashlight. It’s up to me to get us out of here before the faraway voices—the ones outside my head—catch up to us.
This is our place. No one else can have it—but everyone will if I don’t move. Crap. Oh man. I shine the light around. Then I start running.
“Wrong way!” Drip yells, but I realize this as I splash into the river, then turn and charge back toward him, past the side of the big rock and past him, too, and then we’re both running, out of our place, back to the path, the hill, the blackberry bushes and their thorns. Have to push it. Sticks bash my ankles and the thorns stab. They cut.
You deserve it.
I have to breathe.
You deserve pain because you’re an ass and an idiot and this is all your fault. Thorns will cut you to ribbons. Thorns and knives and all the cops and agents and officers will slice you to pieces. Ribbon on the wind, wind on ribbons. Did Sunshine ever wear ribbons in her hair?
My ankles burn from the thorns. My fingers burn where I’m gripping the flashlight so tight. We’re beside rock and hill and grass. Then we’re not. The light bounces like crazy. My breath flashes out in gray puffs I barely see. This isn’t right. My heart, my chest—tight. Did I turn left or right? Drip’s not stopping me. He might not care, as long as we’re away from our place. More bushes. Then the trees. The awful, black, live-looking reaching trees. Clearing. We’re in the clearing. I stumble to a stop and Drip grabs my arms from behind to keep from running right over me. I fumble the flashlight, but he grabs it and shines it straight ahead.
“Don’t stop here,” he whispers, words ragged against my ear. “This is too close. Keep—”
“Jason?” The colonel’s voice. Some distance.
“Derrick?” That’s Drip’s mom. She’s a ways off, too.
“Boys.”
Drip and I both freeze in place.
That voice comes from right in front of us. It’s not as familiar, but I know it anyway, even if I don’t want to.
Drip says something under his breath, and I’m pretty sure he knows who it is, too.
He turns me loose and raises the flashlight.
About ten feet in front of us, Agent Mercer’s standing in the clearing, staring straight over the yellow beam into our faces. Into our eyes. Pitch-dark or not, he’s studying everything about us. I know he’s trying to stop us and keep us here. He wants to hold us and read us. He folds his arms, and he doesn’t look angry or worried or any of the emotions I hear coming from the voices of our parents.
Too far away. They might as well be in Egypt.
He should call out for them, to tell them that he’s found us.
He doesn’t.
But then, I knew he wouldn’t, didn’t I?
I can’t see the future, but sometimes it seems like I can.
My heart’s beating so fast I can’t even hear the voices in my head, but I can hear Drip muttering something about going out, getting a walk, getting air, getting away, and I want to tell him to shut up, but why? He can say whatever he wants. We haven’t done anything.
Yes, you have.
We haven’t done anything and we can go out for a walk and besides this guy’s not doing crap to find Sunshine and it’s been hours, too many hours and we’re losing seconds and minutes right now.
I suddenly wish I could hit him with the flashlight and I probably would except I’d have to snatch the light from Drip and he probably wouldn’t let me.
“What do you want?” I ask instead, my words as hard as the punch I want to throw.
Drip jumps at the sound of me talking to an FBI agent like that—talking to anybody like that.
Agent Mercer’s eyebrows lift like I managed to startle him, but his expression buttons down so fast I wonder if I imagined the flicker of surprise. He goes on staring at me like the flashlight hasn’t blinded him and in the weird half-dark but too-bright light he doesn’t look completely human and I wonder who he really is and what he really is and my heart beats even faster and—
“I want the truth, Jason.”
Jason.
Not Derrick, or Jason and Derrick. He’s talking just to me.
What does he know? How does he know anything? There’s nothing to know, but maybe there is? Don’t hit him. Can’t hit him. But I want to.
Hit him. Hit him hard. He wants to hurt you. He wants to take you to jail and beat your face in. He wants you dead. Dead rhymes with red. Dead’s a sad place to be.
“I told you the truth,” I tell Agent Mercer but it’s hard because I’m talking through my alphabet voices and my teeth at the same time.
The calling people and the dark night and even Drip’s frantic breathing poof out of my awareness and everything breaks into spooky silence. Agent Mercer’s a wraith in the harsh flashlight, he’s a ghost, a bad wizard, a dream monster, but he’s too solid and he’s not moving he’s not budging and I can tell he’s the kind of man who never budges and never will.
“I told you the truth,” I say again, but the wraith ghost wizard monster who won’t budge shakes his head. Slow. Back and forth, just once.
No.
I don’t believe you, Jason. I know you’re lying, Jason. Liar, liar, pants on fire. One day you’ll have to stop lying even if you’re a freak.
Agent Mercer’s next words fly out solid and real as his scary body, straight at me like fists and scarier than the trees reaching through the night to grab him to grab me to grab Drip and everyone and kill us before we can take another breath.
“You’re hiding something.”
EIGHT HOURS
“Are you trying to scare him?” Drip’s voice shakes but somehow he sounds strong in the flashlight-broken darkness of the clearing.
“Jason?” I hear in the distance, getting farther away. Dad. Leaving me. Come back, Dad. We’re here. We’re right over here.
“No,” Agent Mercer says. “I’m not trying to scare anybody.”
Liar. My voice? Alphabet voice? Can’t tell.
Drip gives a big snort. “Well, you are.”
“Why would you be scared of me?” Agent Mercer asks, and I hate how he does that, try to turn everything into—I don’t know, some sort of proof that we’re bad or awful or sneaky or whatever.
You are. You know you are. A filthy little sneak. Awful is as awful does and awful does, does, does. Shame on you for being sneaky.
Breathe. Gotta breathe. Can’t lose it here in the dark, here in the woods where Sunshine should have been but wasn’t. Focus.
Yeah. That’s so easy.
“Freak gets scared of a lot of stuff,” Drip’s saying. “So do I.”
Agent Mercer’s expression, yellowy and strange under the flashlight, changes for a split second, then goes back to blank. His voice sounds just as blank when he says, “I thought your problems were with attention, Derrick. Impulse control. I didn’t read anything in your school or medical files about fears or anxiety.”
Drip’s mouth come
s open just like mine. How did he get those files? Much less read them on such short notice? And if he can do all that, why wouldn’t he have a clue about why he scares us?
“My—you—” Drip shakes his head and appears to get hold of himself. He lowers the beam of the flashlight so it’s on Mercer’s chin. “You just read about me on a computer or paper or whatever?”
“Derrick?” So far away it’s like a whisper. Drip’s mom is leaving us, too, and I don’t hear the colonel or the lawyer or anybody. They’re all going the other way and this jerk, he keeps not saying anything to them and I’m not sure why I’m not yelling out for our parents and other people, except I sort of want a chance to talk to Mercer, to get him off my back, to make him see the truth and start trying—really trying—to find Sunshine.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have an alphabet,” Drip adds to Mercer, sort of angry. “You don’t understand anything about my problems, or about Freak’s. Nobody listens to us. Nobody believes us. Nobody cares about what we think about anything.”
That flicker crosses Mercer’s face again. I can tell, even though I can see mostly his mouth, not the rest of him. Is he surprised? Pissed off? Who knows.
He’s evil. He wants to arrest you. Maybe he wants to kill you. Death is peaceful. Death is quiet. You’ve read lots of poems about death.
My heart won’t stop with the racing and it’s hard to breathe and my ankles still sting from thorns. I try to focus on the pain to keep my mind sharp but the darkness, it’s growing hands and fangs and it’s hard not to stare at them everywhere the flashlight isn’t.
Mercer’s mouth shifts again at the corners—something to nothing—something to blank—as he studies us and doesn’t notice the dark hands or dark fangs or how the darkness, it’s getting meaner. For a few weird seconds, I could swear he’s about to apologize. He doesn’t say he’s sorry, though. What he says is, “You’re right, Derrick. I probably don’t understand much about what either of you goes through every day.”