Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

  Rick said, “We can’t let it ruin our lives.”

  “Or theirs,” Brian added.

  “Why not?” Danny answered. “It ruined that kid’s life, and his parents’ lives. He has no future.”

  “Because—” Rick began, but he ran out of arguments.

  Danny said, “We have to do something. If we wait too long—”

  “We aren’t going to do anything or say anything,” Brian told him. “We’re just going to wait and see what happens.”

  Danny looked at the other boys but he didn’t speak.

  “It’s our secret,” Brian said. “We’re in this together.”

  Rick said, “Brian’s right.”

  “One of us falls apart and we’re totally fucked,” Brian told them. “Right, C.J.?”

  “It’s our secret,” C.J. said. He stopped crying.

  Danny shook his head and took a deep breath, and still he didn’t speak.

  “Okay,” Brian said to him. “Tell the police or your dad or—or someone.” The others looked at him. “No, for real. Admit that you killed that kid, then what? You’ve gotten the rest of us in trouble just because you want to tell.”

  “You want him to say he did it by himself?” Rick asked.

  “That’s not what he’s talking about,” Danny told him.

  Brian said, “We have to all be in this together. Like always. We have to hang tough together.” He stuck out his hand palm down. “We don’t talk about it at school unless no one else is around. Not on the bus, not on the phone. No e-mail,” he told Rick. “Your mom’s always walking in on you.”

  “Sure.” Rick put his hand on top of Brian’s.

  Brian turned to C.J. “We’ve always protected each other and we’ll protect each other now.”

  C.J. put his hand in.

  “It’s our secret,” Brian said. “We swear here and now not to tell a soul about what happened today.” He looked at Danny.

  Danny picked himself up and walked over to the boys. He put his hand on top of theirs.

  It started raining late that same night, a hard, drenching rain that slowed to a steady drizzle by the following morning, Saturday, when C.J. came over to see Danny.

  C.J. said he hadn’t been able to sleep. “I was afraid to turn off the light. And if my dad hadn’t started up with me, I would have left it on all night.”

  Danny didn’t say anything about how he slept. He didn’t say anything about the night before, not then and not later, when he and C.J. went over to Brian’s house and huddled in the room above the garage. Brian and Rick looked like they’d had trouble sleeping, too.

  Brian said, “I heard on the news they’re looking for him.” His eyes were red and he yawned while he talked. “I couldn’t—”

  “I heard it too,” C.J. said.

  “Do they know where he is?” Rick asked.

  Brian snapped at him, “They’re still looking for him, how can they know where he is?”

  “Fuck you,” Rick answered. “Okay?”

  “There’s still time to tell them,” Danny said.

  “No way,” Brian told him.

  “It’s kind of creepy, isn’t it?” C.J. said. “Being the only ones who know?”

  “It’s not creepy. It’s cruel,” Danny said. “Whether we tell anyone or not.”

  “Shit. It’s not like we meant to do it,” Brian said. “It wasn’t part of a plan or anything. Why did he have to come out there, anyway?”

  C.J. asked Danny, “What did you do with that little kitten?”

  “Nothing. I’ve got to take it to the vet.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Brian said. “What if someone recognizes it, you know, as being his?”

  “I can’t just let it—God, this really sucks.”

  Brian said, “Yeah.”

  Rick said, “Yeah.”

  Brian said, “But what else can we do?”

  “You know,” Danny said.

  “We can’t,” Brian told him.

  “Come on, Danny,” Rick said. “You know we can’t.” C.J. started crying. He said, “This is awful. How did we ever…”

  Then Brian remembered the glove and asked what Danny did with it.

  “What glove?” Danny asked back.

  “The kid’s baseball glove? In your backpack.”

  “There’s a glove in my backpack?”

  “Rick put it in there.”

  “When?”

  “Holy shit,” Brian said, “where is it now?”

  “It must still be in my backpack.”

  “Was your dad still home when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if he—”

  “He never goes through my stuff.”

  “There’s always a first time,” C.J. said.

  “We’ve got to get it,” Rick said.

  Danny told them, “He’ll see us if we go there now. He’ll be going to his office soon.”

  “How soon?” Brian wanted to know.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you put it there?”

  “I thought you saw me.”

  “Like I have eyes in the back of my head.”

  “We fucked up big-time,” C.J. moaned. He said he was afraid, that it was already too late. “Your dad probably found it by now.” He told them they were all a bunch of screwups. “We fucked up big-time.”

  Rick said, “Stop saying things like that.”

  Brian told them, “Calm the fuck down. Everybody.”

  No one said anything after that. Every once in a while one of them would get up and look out the window or say, “It’s not like we meant to…” Or, “Why did he have to…”

  Brian said, “If we just stick together, we’ll get through this. We’ve gotten through bad stuff before.”

  All of them looked sad and miserable. C.J. was unable to keep from crying.

  Sometime after twelve, Danny pulled on his slicker, went outside, jumped on his bike and rode away in the downpour.

  “Hey, Danny,” Brian called from the window, “where’re you going? Danny?” But Danny kept on riding.

  Brian put on his jacket and ran downstairs. Rick and C.J. followed. They rode out to Danny’s house and saw him sitting on the back porch with Mutt.

  “Is your dad around?” Brian asked.

  Danny shook his head.

  “What about the glove?” Rick asked.

  “I hid it.”

  The rain stopped early in the afternoon and it turned out to be a cool and bright day. Any other time, the boys would have headed over to Archer Field to shoot some hoops or biked out to the mall to meet up with their friends, or gone to Otter Creek. But today they sat together on Danny’s back porch, in sickening silence, unable to tolerate the company of anyone else, not quite able to tolerate each other’s. Brian’s pep talks were making Danny angry. Rick snarled and told him Brian knew what he was talking about.

  It was the same the following day, when they met in the room above Brian’s garage. It was as though they felt obliged to stay together and did not trust themselves to be alone.

  In school on Monday morning, Danny was more quiet than usual. C.J. did nothing but sulk. He could not make eye contact with anyone. Brian managed to talk to some of the other kids, standing by his locker, forcing a smile, or maybe it just looked that way to C.J., laughing uncomfortably at their jokes. Rick, close by Brian’s side, was carried along by the force of Brian’s personality. When they saw Danny, Brian and Rick stepped away from the circle and they all walked to their homeroom. C.J. was waiting for them. He pulled Danny aside and whispered, “I’m going out of my mind with this thing. Do you feel if you don’t tell someone you’ll burst?”

  Danny said, “All I know is, what we did was wrong and we should do something about it.”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too late.”

  “You mean we’re going to get caught, don’t you?”

  “No,” Danny said impatiently. “I mean it’s too late to do anyth
ing to change it.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “I don’t think so. I just feel all dark inside.”

  “I’m scared Brian’s getting pissed at me.”

  “Don’t worry about Brian. Worry about yourself. Worry about how you’re going to live with this.”

  “I’m having nightmares about it.”

  “I can’t even fall asleep long enough to have any.”

  “Yeah, nighttime’s the worst.”

  “Being alone in the dark,” Danny said. “I can see him hanging there, and the way he swung back at us and then—I can’t stop thinking what he must have thought when it happened. I mean, you think you’re scared, imagine what he—”

  “I don’t want to think about it.” C.J.’s voice was shaking.

  In the cafeteria, the four boys would sit together, doing their best to keep themselves separate from the rest of the kids.

  Rick’s eyes looked sunken, he was more restless than usual, popping out of his seat and quickly sitting back down, unable to keep his feet or hands still. “Do you think it shows?” he asked the others. “You know, do you think they can tell—”

  “I think we look okay,” Brian said, “you know, normal.”

  Rick said, “I mean, like my folks—my mom practically takes my temperature by the hour. She thinks I’m in love.”

  “What?”

  “She says I seem different. She asked me if I was in love. So I’m going along with it.”

  Brian said, “Yeah, I know. My mom and dad think I’m worried about Outward Bound and I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe just a little.’ They’re taking me to Indianapolis next Saturday to buy gear for Hurricane Island.” His voice sounded strained, and he kept glancing around the room while he spoke.

  “At least they notice,” C.J. mumbled. “My folks are totally oblivious.”

  “I just want school to be over so I can get out of here,” Brian told them.

  “What the hell are we doing?” Danny said. “How can we be sitting here talking like this?” His teeth were clenched. “We’re all crazy.” He jumped up and quickly walked out of the cafeteria.

  When Danny wasn’t on the bus Tuesday afternoon, Rick wondered if “maybe he’s gone over to tell his dad.”

  C.J. was certain that Danny would never do such a thing. “He probably went home. He just wants to be left alone.”

  “What makes you so fucking smart?” Rick asked him.

  Brian told Rick to “cut it out.”

  The boys stopped by the house but Danny wasn’t there. They went looking for him, riding around town and across campus. There weren’t any of Brian’s assurances now or brave talk, only the solemn feeling of unreality, as though they were living a life more dangerous than any of them had been prepared for.

  They found Danny’s bike at the ruins and spotted Danny walking along the road by the river.

  “What are you doing out here?” Brian asked.

  “I wanted to be alone.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Brian told him. “Being by your—”

  “I need to think.”

  “You don’t want to get too inside your head,” Rick warned him.

  “Yeah. Come on, Danny,” Brian said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “My dad told me that memory is what keeps people moral,” Danny answered.

  “What’s that mean?” Rick asked. C.J. said, “Being able to remember the bad things you do is supposed to keep you from doing them in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish I could forget it, at least for a little while,” Brian said.

  Rick nodded his head. “But still, Danny, I don’t think your dad would want us to spend the rest of our lives in jail.”

  “That’s not what—you still don’t get it yet, do you?” Danny said.

  “You know what I’m afraid of,” C.J. said. “That it’s totally a trick to catch us. I mean, like how they still haven’t found him? What if they have, and the police know he was, you know—and they have a pretty good idea who did it and everything? What if—”

  “Will you stop saying shit like that,” Brian snapped at him. “This is bad enough without you—we’re going to be all right.”

  But C.J. didn’t stop. “Only they aren’t sure. So everybody’s decided not to tell, and they’re just waiting to trap us, like a sting or something. When we least expect it, they’ll close the trap.”

  “Stop it,” Brian screamed. “Okay?”

  “Yeah,” Rick told him. “We’re all paranoid enough without you making shit up.”

  “I can’t take this,” Danny groaned, and walked up the hill.

  “Danny,” Brian called to him.

  Danny didn’t stop; and when he got on his bike and rode away, the boys got on their bikes and rode after him all the way to the house.

  “Leave me alone,” Danny shouted at them, and ran up the porch steps.

  “Come on, Danny. Don’t be like that. Come on.”

  Danny said, “Don’t you see, we’re wrong. We did something wrong.”

  “I know,” Brian answered. “You’re not the only one who can’t sleep and eat and whatever…”

  “Yeah,” Rick said.

  “But all we’re worried about is someone telling,” Danny said, “or someone finding out. Can’t you—I don’t know—it’s more than—” He was about to sit down but walked to the back porch instead. The boys followed close behind. When Brian came around the corner, Danny grabbed him by the shirt. It was a threatening gesture, but Brian took it. Maybe he was too startled, or scared, to pull away.

  “Whether we tell or not doesn’t change anything,” Danny said softly. “He’s dead and we’re alive. You were talking about our folks expecting us to do all that good stuff, well, what about this? Would they expect this? Maybe this is our potential.” Danny pushed him away. “We have to look people in the eye and pretend, and all we do—oh, fuck it and fuck us, too.” Danny sat on the top step.

  “We know, we know,” Brian said softly, and sat next to him.

  “Do you also know,” Danny didn’t look at him, but stared out at the field, “how we’re going to get through it, because I don’t. Instead of worrying about getting caught, I’m asking myself why shouldn’t we get caught? We did it, didn’t we? We’re responsible for it, aren’t we? We killed a little kid and all we care about is saving our butts.”

  “It was an accident,” Brian said.

  “A mistake,” Rick added.

  “I’m talking about right now.”

  Brian said, “It’s too late to do anything about it.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Rick asked. “Walk into the police station and turn ourselves in?”

  “There are other ways.” Danny put his face in his hands. “What’s the use?”

  “Is he crying?” Rick asked C.J.

  “I’m not crying,” Danny told him. “I’m just frustrated.”

  “It’s not like we feel anything different,” Brian said. “But…”

  “Just stop acting like everything’s going to be okay,” Danny told him. “Our lives are never going to be the same. And stop making me feel like a jerk because I can’t act like you.”

  Brian put his hand on Danny’s shoulder. “You’re not a jerk.”

  “Hell no.” Rick gripped Danny’s arm. “If this is how you feel, we’ll stand by you.”

  Danny looked up and nodded his head.

  “Are you going to be all right?” C.J. wanted to know.

  Danny said, sure, he’d be all right.

  “You want to come over to my house for supper?” Brian asked.

  “My dad’s taking me out,” Danny told him.

  “You sure you’re going to be—”

  “I’m okay.”

  When the boys walked to their bikes, Danny stayed on the back porch.

  “You’re not a jerk,” Brian called out.

  The weather turned cooler on Wednesday, and when Danny dressed for school that morning he wor
e his sweatshirt. He told C.J., “I feel creepy wearing my baseball jacket.” They were standing outside their lockers before classes started. Danny looked worn out. “I feel like I’m being pulled apart inside.”

  “I know what you mean,” C.J. whispered back, but that’s all he could say because Courtney Webster was gathering her books and looking around for something which she apparently didn’t find. She winked at C.J., told him, “That heroin look you’ve got going is way cool.” C.J. did his best to play along without encouraging Courtney to join the conversation, she winked at him a second time and when she left, Danny told C.J., “I can’t describe it, but it’s like having to choose something, and I don’t know what it is.”

  “Like having to choose between us and everyone else?” C.J.’s entire body was shaking.

  “It’s more complicated than that. Like I don’t know what the right thing is anymore. Like when I’m with my dad, I feel like I’m cheating or something. Only it’s worse than that because I know better than to do what we’re doing. I mean—” Danny shook his head. “I’m supposed to take responsibility for the things I do.” His voice was tight and throaty. “And here I am, going along with…you know, Brian and Rick…when I know it’s wrong and it will always be wrong.”

  “I know. It’s like, if Brian told his mom and dad, they’d make excuses for him, figure out a way to make it the kid’s fault, and find a way to clear him.”

  “Then pretend it never happened.”

  “And if Rick told his mom and dad, his mom would find a way to get money or something to the kid’s folks, anonymously, of course, then get a great lawyer and send Rick to a psychiatrist for the rest of his life.”

  “And if you told your mom and dad?”

  “My mom would fix herself a Prozac cocktail and my dad would work out a deal to fix it with the cops or bribe someone, then make my life a living hell for the rest of my life.”

  “If I told my dad,” Danny said, “he’d make me do the responsible thing, whatever that turned out to be.”

  “But he’d stand by you, and help you through it. I’m sure of that.”

  Danny said, yes, he was sure of that, too. “But I know he would never let me walk away from it.” He stuffed his books into his backpack. “Ever since I was a little kid and my mom left, it’s like my dad and I—it’s hard to explain. It’s like my dad and I are supposed to behave a certain way, do certain things, even if we don’t want to do them, so we’ll be proud of each other.” He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean, exactly. But it’s like there’s some agreement we have to never let the other one down.”