by R. K. Ryals
Pushing open her door, Deena leapt out. “So it’s like going on a treasure hunt.” She rubbed her hands together. “I like it! We get to find out if Eli was as much a douche when he was …” She paused and looked at him.
“Fourteen,” he supplied.
“Fourteen,” Deena repeated, “as he is now.”
“Gee, thanks, kid.”
Jonathan guffawed. “She’s got your number, brother.” Getting out, he stared out over the field. “I’m game.”
Eli stepped back, opened my door, and offered me his hand. “Come on, roof girl. It’s not much, but out here, not much is still something.”
I accepted his hand, keeping my gaze averted.
Jonathan and Deena hopped the fence and started across the field, stirring fireflies as they went. Pinpricks of light lifted into the sky.
Eli and I followed, more slowly.
“You’ve got something on your mind, don’t you?” Eli asked.
“Whirlwind romance,” I answered, distracted.
His brows rose. “Somehow, I was not expecting that answer.”
Deena’s laugh echoed ahead of us, and I glanced up to find her climbing onto Jonathan’s back. He carried her piggyback-style, and she pumped her hand at the moon. Tomorrow, she’d probably feel ridiculous looking back, but then again … maybe not. She needed to be a kid. Now. While she had the chance to.
“You hear about whirlwind romances, you know? You just never expect to get caught up in one,” I told him. “Then the hospital roof happened.” Heart pounding, I glanced at him. “It’s been maybe ten days since you walked into the animal clinic. Ten days. Have you ever fallen for anyone that fast?”
Eli gazed up at the sky, at the stirred up particles of dust and grass in the moonlit night.
When he didn’t say anything, I sighed. “I’ve fallen into sex that fast,” I whispered. “With Jeff. Because it felt good. Because I needed to get lost. I’m starting to wonder if everything I’m feeling is kind of like that. Only more vivid and wild and passionate. This whirlwind of strong emotions with someone who might just understand them, making them stronger. With someone I’ve shared too much information with. But love … people don’t fall in love that fast, Eli.”
He nodded, considering. “And so you think my feelings may be the same thing?”
“It’s been less than two weeks,” I pointed out.
He slid his hands into his pockets. “A summer fling.”
A smile played with my lips. “A really weird one.”
He glanced down at me, waving his hand, offering me the stage. “So your point is, oh immortal one?”
The teasing play on my name kept the moment light, letting me slip into the words, the moment. “That maybe that’s all this should be, huh? Us. The summer.”
Eli kicked at the dirt below us, and then stopped in his tracks. “Maybe you’re right. So what does that leave us with?”
“Sex. I want that.”
“Just sex?”
“And friendship.”
“You don’t think what we have could be the beginning of something?” he asked seriously. “I’m not saying love. I’m just saying … maybe the slide into it. All relationships begin somewhere.” Leaning forward, he grinned at me. “You’re scared shitless, roof girl.”
Yeah, I am.
“You don’t have to mock me.”
Getting in front of me, he started to walk backwards. “Oh, I’m not mocking. I’m all for a sexual summer fling. Friendship, too. I’m just saying that when you start to really examine it, maybe you should ask yourself where the attraction ends and everything else begins.”
“You two going to crawl all night or join us?” Jonathan shouted. “I see the pond and the boathouse.”
We hurried to catch up, Eli’s words ringing through my head. My body was hungry. For him. For pain. For clarity. And I was trying to stuff it all down my throat at the same time. Quickly, because deep down I agreed with Deena. It was just a matter of time before my card was pulled, and I wanted to experience it all. The verbal back and forth with Eli, the stolen heated embraces, the cutting … I was drowning in the sensations. Some of them good. Some of them bad.
My gaze found his face to discover him staring at me in the darkness.
“Ready for a treasure hunt?” he asked, somehow making it sound sexual when digging inside a boathouse had nothing to do with sex.
“Eli?”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s find out what kind of douche you were at fourteen.”
Shadows jumped at us, trees rustling. Fireflies winking. A pond glistening with moonlight. Heat, water lapping, and four people exhaling into the night.
FORTY-TWO
Eli
Tansy was scared.
I knew when she pulled away from me at the burger joint that she was beginning to question what she was doing—with me and with herself. She was the kind of person who complicated things, her emotions gridlocking together.
“You guys get to go in first,” Deena said firmly. “Because, you know, snakes.”
“Spiders,” Tansy added.
Deena scrunched her nose. “Raccoons.”
Tansy grinned. “Skunks.”
Jonathan glanced at me. “Now, I’m beginning to question this whole thing.”
Brushing past them, I held my hand out to Jonathan. “Let me see your cell phone.”
“What about yours?”
“You know I rarely carry it. That shit causes too many complications in my life.”
“Less girls and less time in trouble, and it wouldn’t.” Sulking, Jonathan slapped the phone into my hand.
Finding his flashlight app, I clicked it on, the glare running up the side of a small wooden building on the edge of the pond, the back end of it sitting in the woods, the front end of it hovering just at the edge of the water. The door hung on its hinges, the dark abyss behind it glaring at us.
Biceps straining, I pushed at the door, knowing from experience that it would stick. It had been old back when my grandmother was alive, belonging to whoever owned the property before, but now it looked ancient. Weather and time wasn’t kind to some structures.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go in,” Jonathan said suddenly.
The door moved, and I pressed harder, grunting when it gave way. “Afraid, Jon? Or worried about what we may find?”
“The latter, I think,” he replied.
Pointing the flashlight into the room, I found it the way we’d left it. No boats. Only an old table, a ring of chairs, scattered leaves, stacked boxes, and old furniture.
The stairs leading to the door had rotted, so I jumped, catching myself with my arms. Climbing the rest of the way inside, I lowered my hand, offering it to Tansy, who stood behind me.
With my height, the climb had been nothing, but I had to lift Tansy in, pulling her until she fell against me. Dust fanned out around us, poofing into the air where we landed.
She sneezed.
Tiny feet skittered across wood.
“Are those rats?” she hissed.
Jonathan lifted himself into the building, followed by Deena, her hand wrapped around his forearm.
“As long as they’re running, we’re good,” I said, chuckling. “Means they’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”
Swinging the flashlight around, I stared at the interior.
“God, the trouble we used to get into back here,” Jonathan said. “Poor Heather. As the only girl, we were always giving her hell.”
“Good times,” I mumbled, stepping toward the boxes against the wall. “Do you remember where you hid your stuff?”
Tansy joined me, glancing over my shoulder.
Jonathan went to a box next to me. Lifting the flaps, he peered into it. “Light?”
I handed him the phone, and he laughed, pulling a magazine free of the box. An old issue of Playboy.
“Eli!” they all said together.
“What? You think I hid that?” I asked innocently. �
�It couldn’t have been Jonathan? Ten is a good curious age, you know.”
Tansy laughed. “Give it up, roof boy.”
Taking the phone back from Jonathan, I held it near the ground behind the boxes. There, paint chipped and faded, a small piece of it nibbled by mice, was the boat I’d hidden.
Tugging it free, I curled my fingers around the wood.
“Pops helped you make that, didn’t he?” Jonathan asked. “For some Boy Scouts competition or something.”
“Not Boy Scouts. It was a contest they had on the coast. For kids. The boat had to be a certain size, couldn’t sink, and needed to be creative.”
Deena squinted at it. “You went with simple.”
The boat was blue with two white pinstripes, the word Max in white calligraphy.
“Max?” Tansy whispered, as if speaking the word louder would somehow destroy the moment.
I smiled. “The boy from the book Where the Wild Things are. I was going to be him. Only I wanted to live with the beasts rather than come back.”
Jonathan grunted. “A grouchy thing even then.”
Putting the boat down, I handed the phone to Jonathan. “Maybe so.”
Back and forth, we passed the light, digging in boxes, looking under furniture, and sifting through leaves.
A pile of things gathered in the middle of the room. A yo-yo with a Captain America sticker on it, a rubber spider because who wouldn’t want to find one of those in a dark building in the middle of the night, a doll with old makeup still staining her face, a half finished puzzle of a unicorn, a stack of comics, and an old photo album.
Tansy flipped through the album, stopped on a page, and laughed. Turning it toward us, she pointed at a picture of me and Jonathan sitting in the bathtub naked. I was five years old, and he was a year old.
“Bathtub pictures are one of those hall of shame things that should be burned,” I said, laughing.
“Along with old school photos,” Tansy agreed.
Deena glanced around the room. “It must have been fun, getting to spend time here.”
“It wasn’t bad,” Jonathan admitted. “It was the only time we were all together. Heather and Eli stayed with Pops all year round, but I had to go home to Dad afterwards, so I enjoyed being here when I could.”
“How old were you when Pops bought the orchard?” Tansy asked, looking at us.
“Eleven,” I answered.
Jonathan glanced at the door. “Seven.”
“We stayed here the two years Grams fought the cancer, and then we went back to Atlanta, only coming back in the summer. Eventually, we stopped altogether,” I added.
Deena went to the door and stared out over the pond.
Tansy glanced at Jonathan’s phone and straightened. “We need to get back.”
Together, we left, a much quieter group than we’d been when we parked at the edge of the field.
“We didn’t do much when we were younger,” Deena said suddenly. “The occasional trip to the mountains, but mostly …” She shrugged.
“Just couldn’t afford it?” Jonathan asked.
“No,” Tansy answered softly, “we had the money. Mom and Dad just liked spending vacations alone. The two of them.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” I pointed out.
Deena scowled. “Depends on how you look at it. It wasn’t that they took an occasional weekend away. They preferred to be alone.”
“They loved us,” Tansy said quickly, throwing her sister a look. “They just loved each other more.”
Jonathan glanced at his phone. “Okay, now you’re making me feel like shit for being mad at my dad. He’s always put me first.”
His remark brought a smile to our faces because you couldn’t hate Jonathan for his childhood. Envy him, maybe. Hate him? Not a chance.
Deena nudged him. “Daddy’s boy, huh?’
Tansy flashed him a smile.
We came up on the car, the red black in the night, the dirt road washed out behind it. Like a black and white photograph.
“Thanks for tonight,” Tansy murmured, climbing in.
Deena followed. “Keep the windows down,” she pleaded.
Despite her request, Deena didn’t scream on the way home.
Glancing in the backseat, I found the sisters being stolen by the wind, turning them into wild medusas. Looking at them, I realized they would have fit in better in Max’s world, in the forest full of wild things.
I was just the boy in the boat, sailing to the island and then home again.
FORTY-THREE
Tansy
Being with Eli and Jonathan was a funny thing. This whole other look at life. Not at what it was like to be rich, but what it was like to be a part of this vivid, really cool family.
At the same time, it was also this window into madness. I had once thought my father was mad. Maybe he was, but then death can fool people into thinking they’re mad. I think that’s what happened with my father. Death did something to our family. It immortalized my mother, and in so doing, stole my father’s life.
With Eli’s family, it wasn’t death hovering over them, it was Ivy Lockston’s flirtation with unpredictability.
That night, after our trek to the boathouse, Deena and I returned to our grandmother’s house not much different than we’d been when we left. Calmer and more accepting, but not different. We still had our fears and our pain.
The difference was in the way we acted with each other, the occasional smiles, animated descriptions of the night with Nana, and the hugs, albeit awkward ones.
Dad’s death was still too new, our immortalized mother still hanging over us, too heavy a blanket to shed overnight, but we were pulling strings loose and that was a start.
The biggest upset after the boathouse trek were the things my grandmother had lying on the kitchen bar when we came in; my scissors, bandages, antiseptics, and ointments.
“This feels good?” my grandmother asked me later, after Deena had retired for the night. Skepticism swam in her eyes.
I wanted to get angry over Hetty’s intrusion, the burning rage gathering in my chest, but I tamped it down because I’d been the one to invite her into it.
My cheeks heated. “It hurts,” I admitted. “But, weirdly, it also feels like freedom.”
She studied me, and it was like the lights suddenly switched on. “Everything is moving too fast, isn’t it?” she asked.
Leaning against the bar, I stared at the scissors. “Yeah.”
She watched me, watched the way I stared at the blades, and said, “I’m not going to be able to get you to stop, am I?” She sighed. “But I’ll find someone you can talk to. Maybe get those names from Eli.” Reaching for me, she grasped my hand. “Just promise me you’ll try.”
My gaze caught hers, the promise sitting in my stare. Something told me that Nana used to be a harder woman, overprotective, and harder to compromise with before all of the death in our family. That was another thing death changed … personality.
Words drained out of us, we retreated to our rooms.
Dad’s death, our rush into the country, an unexpected whirlwind romance that came out of nowhere, and striking realizations … it all made me dizzy, drunk on ten days of grief, need, and distraction. Drunk on death and life and pain.
Suddenly, all I wanted was sex. Right or wrong, the need was just there. Maybe it was because I knew how it felt, how good it could be. It hadn’t been terrible with Jeff, my intensity aside, because sex was kind of like death and life all rolled into one. It made me feel, good or bad, shutting all of my problems down before they roared back to life again afterward.
Desperation was a terrible thing. A beast that pushed me into a corner, and then suddenly decided to sit obediently, forcing me to look at it.
It was late, past midnight, and the house had been quiet for hours.
Quickly, before I could talk myself out of it, before I could list all of the reasons why this was a mistake, I snuck out of the house, keys in hand, climbed
into the van, and then left.
Headlights off, I pulled the vehicle into a side street, clearing the road my grandmother lived on, and even then I kept glancing into the rearview mirror expecting to find flashing blue lights knowing there was the possibility someone could have heard the engine turning over. Deena slept like the dead, but I still didn’t know my grandmother’s sleep patterns.
Honestly, I didn’t care if I got caught. I just didn’t want to get stopped.
Parking in an overgrown area off to the side of the orchard driveway, I climbed free of the vehicle. It wasn’t a good hiding place, but a person had to be looking hard to see the van.
Inhaling, I walked, my feet thudding against gravel and dirt. The moon and stars stared at me, full of judgement and understanding; dual voices arguing with each other.
Mosquitos buzzed around my head, nipping at me, and my skin itched, some of it peeling from the sunburn I’d gotten.
There was a light on the second floor of the main house still burning when I approached, and I stayed in the shadows, moving to the cottage. Nerves got the better of me while climbing the porch stairs, my stomach twisting with each step.
For a long time, I stared at the door, the wood standing between me and the man that lay on the other side.
What am I doing?
Lifting my hand, I knocked and waited.
One knock. That’s all.
I kept telling myself that if he didn’t come to the door, then that was it. I was wrong, and I could live with that.
Damn my mind and its mixed up signals.
I was backing away, my feet near the stairs when the door opened, a sleepy, shirtless Eli holding the frame.
My mouth went dry, the knots in my stomach so tight I forgot how to breathe. Nerves were vicious little demons.
Eli’s expression changed, all semblance of sleep gone, his gaze flicking to the yard beyond my shoulder. “Tansy? What the hell are you doing here?”
In the end, the only thing that came out of my mouth was, “I couldn’t sleep.”