We'll Fly Away

by Bryan Bliss

  You should’ve seen Eddie. He had this look on his face like he’d never seen such a thing in his life. I dribbled to the top of the key and got to thinking I was going to hit a three-pointer. Before I even got the ball up in the air, Eddie was in my face talking about, “That’s a man’s shot.” And “Ain’t nobody to pass to up in here.”

  He kept dogging me, kept talking. And man, did I ever want to shut his mouth. So I threw the ball in the air, trying to make the shot with him in my face. All the dudes watching us let me hear it.

  “Supposed to put the ball in the hoop!”

  “Maybe he thinks he’s playing volleyball!”

  It was rough, T. But I wasn’t even thinking about them. All I wanted to do was beat Eddie. Hell, even score on him. He got the ball back and asked if I was ready. I didn’t answer him and he just smiled. When he went to shoot, I jumped. When I did, he dribbled underneath me and dunked.

  Even the guards lost their minds at that.

  I didn’t see the ball again. Maybe when I was wrestling, I would’ve at least been able to keep up with him. But even then, I don’t know. When Eddie had that ball in his hand, it was something else. It was like he was somewhere else. I never had that sort of effortlessness on the mat. Not the way Eddie played.

  Afterward, we were sitting in the sun—it was warm for January—and I was still sucking air. He wiped sweat off his forehead and was like, “I hope you were a good wrestler, because you sure can’t hoop.”

  Man, it reminded me of you.

  After that, they blew the whistles and we had to line up. When I got back to my cell, I had all this energy and I wanted to write to you, but I couldn’t sit still. It was like my heart had finally started beating again and now it didn’t want to stop. So I knocked out ten push-ups, then ten more. I had it in my head I was going to do a hundred. I got thirty, maybe, before everything started feeling like Jell-O.

  I was still shaking when I picked up the pen to write you.

  Luke

  9

  LUKE was still awake when the sun finally started to peek above the clouds. He woke the boys up, got them dressed and on the bus. And then he sat in the parking lot, waiting for Toby to show. Every time a car came around the corner, he stood up. But it was always some busted-up truck, a half-restored Trans Am.

  He tried to not think about last night, how he had let Jimmy pull Toby out of the apartment without so much as a word. That’s what Toby wanted, right? And hadn’t Toby said he could handle it? Luke believed that he could. Despite his size, he’d always been tough. Yet the real reason why he didn’t step to Jimmy was gnawing at him.

  He wanted to prove a point. He wanted Toby to come back this morning without the El Camino, telling Luke how his dad was a bastard. That same old story. But sitting here now, Luke could kick himself for being so damn stubborn.

  He didn’t know whether to run to the trailer, to sit here on the curb, or to go to school and find Toby first thing. So when he started jogging, it was simply out of habit. Something to focus on. He wasn’t even out of the parking lot when he heard his name. Annie waved from her front door. Luke reluctantly jogged toward her.

  “Trying to run off those breadsticks?”

  Luke was confused at first. “Oh, the Olive Garden.”

  Annie looked to the side, like there was somebody else who could validate Luke’s weirdness. He tried to rally.

  “I always run the morning of a match,” he said.

  That was the truth, and it hit him like a revelation. Toby knew Luke was still over. He always ran to school on match mornings. Relief inched into his body.

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Annie said with a smirk. “I think you went overboard at the O.G. and now it’s pudgy city.”

  She reached out and poked his stomach, making him jump. Annie seemed equally surprised by her action, because she pulled her finger back so quickly, Luke swore he’d hurt her somehow. The awkwardness of the moment took over, and Annie started walking to her car as quickly as she could.

  “Okay . . . well, I’ll see you at school.”

  “Hey, hold on.”

  Luke ran to catch up with her, opening the passenger door. Annie stared at him like he’d just stripped and run across the parking lot naked. He was just as surprised, honestly. But he forced himself to believe Toby would be waiting at school. Ready to give him shit for taking another ride from Annie, who already had her sunglasses on. Who was smiling so big, she looked like one of the twins—goofy and excited. Without a word, they took off.

  For a few moments, Luke was at ease.

  But the farther they got from the apartment, the more he started watching the roads. Hoping he’d see the El Camino tearing toward his apartment. Toby, late as hell because he’d overslept. Anything to bring back the assurance he’d felt in the parking lot only a few minutes earlier.

  Annie sighed and turned off the radio. “That’s another thing I hate about North Carolina—terrible radio stations. How many times can I hear the same twenty-year-old grunge band?”

  Luke didn’t even realize she was talking to him until she said his name and snapped a few times in his face.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I was trying to get your opinion on Nirvana, possibly the most overrated band of all time?”

  Luke was clueless.

  “Okay, well, just trust me on that one,” she said. “Um, let’s go with something different. Are you excited about your match tonight?”

  “Excited? Not really.”

  He was blowing it, but he had no idea how to tell her about Toby or begin to explain the constant fear he carried with him at all times. Even the glimmer of hope he felt when they finally pulled into the parking lot required a history he didn’t want to tell. So he said nothing as Annie parked in the farthest corner from the door, letting the car idle as they sat in silence.

  Luke scanned the small parking lot for the El Camino. It wasn’t here.

  Annie followed his gaze. The parking lot was slowly filling with other students, cars spanning from brand-new SUVs to a Dodge pickup that could’ve been in this same parking lot twenty years ago and still been the oldest thing on four wheels. Dread hit him at a sprint, seizing his entire body.

  “Is everything okay?” Annie asked.

  Luke nodded, looking again for the El Camino. He unbuckled his seat belt, as if that would help. When it didn’t, he fell back into the seat.

  “Toby,” Luke finally said.

  “Ah,” she said, biting her lip. “He looked kind of pissed at you last night. Did you guys have a fight?”

  “No.” Luke had to force himself to say the next part. “Well, kind of. It’s complicated.”

  “And you thought he’d be here,” she said.

  Luke nodded, and Annie scanned the parking lot with him. He was trying to hide the growing panic. To forget all the times Toby had gone missing before, because this could be nothing. But the way Annie was staring at him, her face looking more and more worried, he knew he wasn’t hiding anything.

  “Do we need to go find him?” she asked.

  “You’ll be late.”

  Annie gave the school a side-eye. “You vastly overestimate my commitment to academics.”

  Luke nodded absently at the joke, refusing to stop his futile search of the parking lot. Annie reached over to touch Luke on the leg. He didn’t feel a thing.

  “Hey. We can go find him. Right now. Okay?”

  They were moving before Luke even answered.

  Luke had Annie stop fifty feet before the gravel driveway. It was about a quarter mile back to Toby’s trailer, and it wouldn’t take him two minutes on foot. But more importantly, leaving Annie at the mouth of the drive protected both her and Toby from whatever Luke would find.

  “It’s right down there,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Annie gave him a suspicious look, but she nodded. He jumped out of the car and started down the driveway, trying to jog away the same feeling of anxiety he�
��d felt every time he’d come down this road.

  When they were twelve, maybe thirteen, Luke had made the same walk. He hadn’t known then what he was walking into. Toby crying, huddled behind the cracked underpinning of the trailer. Luke heard the whimpering and thought it was a stray. It wasn’t until Toby called out that he’d realized what had happened.

  This time, there were no sounds except the birds, chirping happily and flying patterns around the trees. Luke knocked on the thin door of the trailer and waited. The El Camino was behind him, parked in no particular way. Normal, he told himself. He knocked again, louder and harder. Still nothing. Of course Toby could sleep through a damn tornado.

  A shadow shifted toward the back of the single-wide. And for a second, he had hope. When Jimmy opened the door, though, the nasty black circle shadowing his right eye surprised him. Luke couldn’t remember the last time somebody had gotten a punch in on Jimmy. Or more relevantly, the last time Toby had tried.

  “Yeah?” Jimmy spit once and wiped his mouth. Luke’s eyes watered from the smell of him.

  “I’m looking for Toby.”

  Jimmy rubbed his good eye. “He’s at school.”

  When Jimmy tried to close the door, Luke blocked it with his foot. A twitch of muscles tightened in Jimmy’s face.

  Jimmy pretended to be this happy-go-lucky guy, playing around with the bartenders and waitresses. But everybody knew he was an asshole. Hell, they were scared of him. He never let the other side of himself show until it was too late to do anything about it. So people played along, hoping they didn’t stumble into Jimmy’s bad graces. Luke was just as guilty as everybody else, never saying a word whenever Jimmy started talking about wrestling. But he wasn’t playing the game now.

  “He’s not at school.”

  “Well, then maybe he’s off chasing skirt. A dog will hunt.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  Luke shot another look at the trailer, trying to decide if he should push past Jimmy. He didn’t hear anything, but the black eye worried him. Luke glanced at it, and Jimmy groaned.

  “You got something to say, or can I go back to bed?”

  Luke listened hard, just in case there was a sound or a muffled cry. Any sort of message Toby might be sending. But there was nothing, so he stepped back off the cinder blocks.

  “No. Just tell him I was looking for him,” Luke said.

  Jimmy turned around and slunk back into the trailer. “Will do, superstar.”

  Luke waited. But the only sound was Jimmy closing the bedroom door and falling on his old mattress. When it was just the birds singing once again, he walked back to the car, conflicted. Annie had let him walk down the driveway alone without a question. But would she be just as understanding when he asked her to pull off the side of the road? As he disappeared into the woods? Luke opened the door and sat down.

  “He’s not here,” he said, erasing the panic from his voice.

  Annie, to her credit, didn’t ask for details.

  “We can keep looking for him,” she said. “All day, if we need to.”

  Of course, other people knew about the plane. Every few weeks—especially when they were younger—they’d come on a Sunday morning and find empty plastic bottles of vodka, crushed cigarette butts. A condom once. But they didn’t bring friends, dates, or anyone in-between. It was an unspoken rule. And Luke had to break it.

  “I know where he is.”

  “What?” Annie’s face lit up with excitement. “Well, let’s go get him!”

  Luke hesitated, and then he told her how to get to the plane.

  They parked on the side of the road, and Luke fought the urge to go tearing off into the woods. Annie looked up and down the empty road, to the patch of trees that had somehow survived the farms that bordered it on both sides. She thought it was a joke.

  “So he’s . . . here?”

  “Yes,” was all Luke said. Annie nodded, but Luke could tell she wanted him to say more. He took a deep breath, ready to see if he could trust Annie. “This is something I need to do alone. It’s weird, I know.”

  “No, no. It’s fine.”

  But he could see that she was confused and maybe a little bit angry. His and Toby’s backstory was a web. He never had to explain the rules to anyone else.

  “I just—”

  “It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “Really. Go find him.”

  Luke intentionally went a hundred feet to the right, not taking a direct line to the plane. Maybe it was stupid to still keep it private, but he didn’t care. When he finally broke into the stand of trees, he called out Toby’s name. As kids, being covered by the branches and the leaves always made him feel invisible. Or maybe invincible. How many times had he come in here and completely lost himself?

  The plane sat as it always did, cocked slightly to the left. Ready to fall apart. Through part of the rotting body he saw a shoe, a busted Nike Toby had been wearing for years. The sense of relief returned immediately.

  “Hey, Toby.”

  Luke was still saying the words as he stepped around the plane, noticing how the leaves had blown around Toby’s body like he’d been in that spot for weeks. And when he saw blood on the collar of his shirt, Luke panicked.

  “Toby! Shit. Toby.”

  Toby groaned and turned over, revealing a deep cut drawn above his right eye. The rest of his face was swollen, blue with the cold and bruises. When Toby finally opened his eyes, he saw Luke and tried to sit up.

  “I’m fine,” Toby said, pushing himself up to one elbow.

  Luke wanted to go back to the trailer and match the damage on Toby’s face, bruise by bruise—worse, more—until Jimmy couldn’t stand. To let every second of pain and anger come out of him in one moment of glorious, almost beautiful, violence.

  “Fuck him,” Luke said. It was all he could get out.

  “Fuck him?” Toby managed. “. . . barely know him.”

  Toby laughed once, then clutched his side in pain. Luke was about to help him up when his friend’s eyes went wide. He spun around, trying to hide himself so fast Luke was sure it was Jimmy. But Annie stood there, face white. Her mouth opened, but none of them said anything until Luke stood up.

  “We need to get him home.”

  They drove silently, the only sound coming when a sheriff’s deputy pulled out of a gas station and Annie gasped, repeatedly checking the speedometer the entire mile he cruised behind them. Luke prayed those red and blue lights would start rolling. He wanted to explain why they weren’t at school. Why his friend was broken in the back seat. But when they reached Propst Crossroads, the deputy peeled off onto Highway 10 and was gone seconds later.

  At the apartment, Luke opened the car door before Annie even parked. Once his feet hit the asphalt, he stopped. Ricky and his mom were probably inside, doing god knows what. A new, deep panic swept over him. When they were kids, it was easy enough to hide Toby from any adult. Build a pillow fort or pretend they were camping in the closet—Doreen never complained they weren’t around. But now he had no idea what he should do or where he could take Toby.

  Annie came up behind him, her face mirroring everything Luke was feeling. “Let’s take him to my place.”

  “I don’t want to explain it to anybody.”

  Annie looked confused, but then waved the comment away. “My stepdad is a trucker. He won’t be back until next week.”

  Luke tried to anticipate the consequences of each action. Of each decision he needed to make. He put his hands on the hood of Annie’s car and dropped his head.

  Annie touched the small of Luke’s back.

  “Help me get him inside.”

  Annie’s apartment was bare. There wasn’t even a couch, just a folding chair and an air mattress in the living room. A small television sat on a TV tray, a game show playing silently. If Annie was embarrassed by any of this, it didn’t show. She disappeared and returned with a pillow and blanket. As soon as they lowered Toby down, he startled awake—nearly jumping off the m
attress.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re okay,” Luke said.

  “Where am I?”

  He was breathing hard, exhaling three times for every breath he took. Luke held out his hand, the way he’d approach a wild animal.

  “You’re at Annie’s apartment,” he said. “I didn’t know where else to take you.”

  “Annie?” Toby searched for Luke’s, and then Annie’s, face before swallowing. He licked his lips and then said, “I should go home.”

  “No way,” Luke said.

  “You can stay here as long as you need to,” Annie said. “Whatever you need.”

  The shame was thick on Toby’s face, and he barely looked at either of them. Annie cleared her throat before going to the kitchen. Luke heard her open a cabinet, followed by some running water.

  “Can you take me home?” Toby said softly. “Please.”

  Whenever a beating happened, they rarely talked. Instead, they watched television and ate ramen or canned soup as the hours and days slipped away like water. Toby would sleep and Luke would stare out the window, primed and ready if Jimmy showed up. Simply put: they always hid.

  Luke shook his head. Toby cussed.

  “Then take me to school,” Toby said.

  “What?” Luke bent over, like he didn’t hear him correctly. “Are you kidding me?”

  “School. Please.”

  “I’m not taking you to school,” Luke said. “But I’ll be here with you. All day.”

  Luke went over to the ancient television and turned the knob, hoping it would endear Toby to the idea of staying put. Before he could find anything, Toby pulled himself up.

  “You’ve got a match today.”

  “I’m skipping it,” Luke said.

  “Fuck that.”

  Luke pretended to not hear him as he fiddled with the knob, coming back to the same grainy game show. He couldn’t give a damn about wrestling right now, and if Toby didn’t realize that, he didn’t know Luke at all.

  “What about Herrera?” Toby said.