The Cemetery Boys

by Heather Brewer

  She squeezed my hand and said, “She didn’t used to be. But seeing my dad die just totally broke her. She has been a raving lunatic ever since.”

  I hated to ask, but had to. “What happened to him?”

  “He was chief of police of this shit-hole town, y’know. But it was better back then. My mom was totally normal. A little distant, but normal—reachable, y’know?”

  I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. I was surprised to hear her dad had been the chief of police, considering how Devon and Cara both seemed to live just outside the law. But maybe that was the point. And Cara needed someone to understand. She needed someone to listen, and I wanted to hear every word she had to say.

  “I used to catch him and my mom slow dancing in the kitchen to an old song by the Smiths called ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.’ It was sweet.” A brief smile brushed her lips, but quickly faded away. As if in response, the fireflies lighting up her front yard dimmed.

  “Then one night he went investigating something at the Playground. Everything changed after that. The official report says some homeless guy killed him and then got away. Of course”—she sighed the words more than spoke them—“that’s not what my mom says.”

  “What’s Martha’s theory?” Cara’s hand fit perfectly in mine. I couldn’t help but notice how soft her fingers were. Almost fragile.

  After a moment of silence, I realized that she was looking at me, her perfect bottom lip pinched between her teeth. She looked worried. Or frightened. Maybe both. I was about to ask why when she said, “She thinks the Winged Ones got him.”

  My heart beat twice before I could speak again. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” Slowly, she slipped her hand away from mine and placed it in her lap.

  I didn’t know what to say. “This town really loves its legends, eh?”

  “You could say that.” A light breeze passed, brushing her hair into her eyes for a moment and then brushing it back. She didn’t speak again, which meant that I kind of had to. The only real problem was that I had no idea what to say.

  “So . . . basically . . . Martha saw him killed, lost her mind, and now blames his death on some monsters with wings that bring tragedy down on one single small Michigan town’s population?”

  “Pretty much.” Cara shifted in her seat, as if she was suddenly growing uncomfortable. I wondered if I’d said or done something wrong.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching out and brushing her arm with my knuckles. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No. I just . . .” She released a sigh. “You’re making fun of me.”

  Shaking my head, I captured her hand once again. This time, she didn’t immediately lace her fingers with mine. “I am not. I’m just agreeing with you that your mom might be one French fry short of a Happy Meal.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . she’s still my mom. Y’know?” She shrugged with one shoulder, and I got it. Martha, for all her crazy faults, was still the woman who’d given birth to Cara, who’d given her Devon, who probably had wiped away her tears as a kid. And no one outside of that relationship had any right to speak ill of her.

  “I get it.” She frowned doubtfully, so I took a deep breath and readied the heavy words on my tongue. “My mom lives in an asylum.”

  Her eyes popped open wider then, and I gave it a second to sink in that I wasn’t lying or trying to top her issues with her own mom. I just wanted her to see that if anyone outside of her immediate family understood her situation, it was me. But if I was going to be honest with her, I needed to be honest with myself—something I struggled with on a daily basis. “One day she started ranting about her own brand of monsters, actually, and she just never stopped. They thought she was schizophrenic, then they thought maybe she was suffering from dementia, but now the doctors aren’t sure what it is. Whatever she has, it seems to be permanent. All they can do is keep her doped up and locked away, so that she’s not ‘a danger to herself or others.’ My dad is looking for a new job, but he has to find a place with a good facility nearby so we can move Mom near us, too. Until then, we’re pretty much stuck, and so is she.”

  Cara’s eyes shimmered in the low light. In the yard, the fireflies began to glow again, a small glimmer of hope amid the darkness. She gave my hand a squeeze. Gentle. Caring. Understanding. “I’m sorry about your mom.”

  “I’m sorry about your mom, too.” I swallowed, forcing tears back down my throat. I cried hard the day my mom was admitted, and promised myself that that would be the last time I shed tears over something I couldn’t control. “I miss her. And it kills me to say it, but I kinda blame her for my life sucking—apart from this, I mean.” I gave her hand a squeeze. As if to let me know how much she understood, she squeezed back. It meant more to me than she could possibly know. “Without the hospital bills, we would have been okay. But . . . I guess it doesn’t matter. I just keep wishing the phone would ring and we’d get news that she’s all better now and coming home. How stupid is that? To wish for something that will never happen? But still . . . I miss her.”

  Cara nodded, getting it completely. Getting me—like no one ever had before. “I miss my mom, too. It wouldn’t be so bad if Devon would just help out more, y’know? But he’s totally avoided us since Dad died. Now all he does is drink at the Playground.”

  “It’s probably his way of dealing with it. Some people just can’t handle death.” I glanced at her then, and kept my voice hushed out of respect. “He told me about his friend drowning. Bobby.”

  “That kid was a putz. If you ask me, Devon’s better off without him.” Her words were so sudden, so cold in the midnight air, I half expected to see them leave her lips in a puff of fog. But then she looked at me, and all that had troubled me about what she’d just said disappeared in an instant. She was dressed in mourner’s black, and despite her tears, her thick, dark eyeliner remained. Her eyes shimmered in the aftermath of her sadness. My gaze dropped slowly to her lips, so full and lovely, begging to be kissed. I couldn’t remember ever finding anyone so attractive before.

  Without thinking about rejection, I said, “I think you might be the most beautiful person I’ve ever met, Cara. Inside and out, y’know? You’re just . . . perfect.”

  “I was thinking the same thing about you.” She smiled. My lips immediately mirrored hers. When she squeezed my hand this time, it was playful. “Thanks, by the way. For understanding about moms and craziness and whatnot.”

  “No problem.” I dropped my gaze to our hands, but on the way, I couldn’t help noticing how low the V-neck of her shirt dipped, and couldn’t ignore the curves underneath. Suddenly the air felt very warm.

  Devon’s words echoed in my memory. “Watch your step.”

  Panic filled me—mostly because I didn’t want to die at the hands of my girlfriend’s brother, who was also my friend now, I guessed. And I hadn’t really established the fact that I wanted Cara as my girlfriend in any official capacity, which meant that this could end up becoming a random hookup in action—something I definitely knew wouldn’t fly with Devon. “So . . . I know you said he’s been kind of distant, but . . . Devon seems pretty protective of you.”

  “My life is none of Devon’s business.” She stood and gave my hand a tug, nodding toward the front door of her house. “Come on. I wanna show you my room.”

  Suddenly I didn’t give two shits about Devon or his opinions. I followed her inside and up the stairs, ignoring the mounds of religious paraphernalia that decorated the living room walls. Plaques featuring the seven deadly sins, a large framed list of the Ten Commandments, and enough crosses and dead Jesuses to choke a horse. A weird horse who liked eating religious junk. Probably one from small-town Michigan.

  There was no sign of Martha, but I kept my footfalls as quiet as possible, just in case. Something told me that no parent—even a whackadoo like her—dreamed of the day a boy snuck into their daughter’s bedroom.

  The walls of Cara’s room were covered in posters—mostly bands, but a few horror flick
s—and behind the posters I could see she’d painted the walls a dark purple. Amid the posters were a few gravestone rubbings. A black, ornate vanity sat near the window, and across the room stood a matching, overstuffed bookcase. And there . . . at the center of the room . . . was a queen-sized bed to match. A bed. Cara’s bed. Where she slept. Possibly naked.

  Lying on top of her purple velvet duvet were her Tarot cards. She’d apparently been doing a reading for herself, as three cards lay faceup on the bed: the High Priestess, the Lovers, and the Magician. My eyes lingered on the card in the middle, and Cara’s words echoed in my memory: “These three cards, from left to right, represent your past, your present, and your future.” The Lovers card was sitting in the present position. I sat on the edge of the mattress and pretended to look around, disinterested. “So . . . what do you want to do?”

  Cara smirked. “Is that a line?”

  “It might be. Is it working?” I cocked an eyebrow at her, trying my damnedest to be charming.

  Cara moved closer and sat next to me on the bed. The mattress sank down slightly and every cell in my body screamed in bliss that I could now say I’d been on a bed with this girl. Even if we hadn’t done anything. Even if we never did.

  She leaned closer and whispered in my ear, her hot breath tickling my skin. “Kiss me. Like you kissed me in the rain.”

  I didn’t breathe, didn’t hesitate, didn’t give her even a microsecond to rethink her words. I pressed my lips to hers and we fell back on the bed, our mouths moving, our tongues exploring. I dared to put my hand on her waist, and she didn’t push me away, so I slid it under her shirt and up her rib cage. She moaned softly, the way she had that day, the way I wanted her to moan again. Just to be sure it hadn’t been a creation of my imagination. Just to relive the feeling that her moan had sent through me.

  The lace on her bra was softer than I’d imagined. Softer than the sensation of her fingers gliding over my back. Softer than the feeling of her skin on my skin. Softer than my palm pressing anxiously against the lace itself. The tiny gold cross that hung around her neck gleamed in the low light, like sin coming out of the shadows. I kissed her hard on the mouth, feeling her heart race under my hands. Mine was racing, too. Mostly out of want, but partially out of fear. What if she didn’t like the way I kissed? What if everything I was doing was wrong, and she never wanted me to do any of it ever again? I shut that inner critic up and placed a kiss on her chin, her neck, her collarbone. She moaned softly and tugged at my T-shirt until I sat up and removed it. I don’t know where I threw it. I didn’t care. She could take my clothes, my soul, my everything. As long as she didn’t stop kissing me, touching me the way I needed her to. Gently, I caught her left hand in mine and placed a soft peck on her inner wrist. I moved up her arm, tasting her skin slightly on my lips, hungering for more, but afraid to press the issue without express permission. When I reached her shoulder, Cara caught my eye. Placing a hand gently on my chest, she pushed me back and sat up.

  It was over now, this thing that had never really begun. Frustration and doubt and disappointment filled me, and I couldn’t help wondering what I’d done wrong.

  Then Cara slipped her shirt off over her head, dropping it to the floor. She beckoned me to her with a crook of her finger as she lay back on the bed with a smile that said that I’d had it all wrong. I was fine being wrong. I could always be wrong. So long as we kept kissing, kept touching, kept taking off our clothes, I could be more wrong than any man had ever been.

  I didn’t know if what I was feeling was love. It might have been. It might have been hormones, or even temporary insanity. I just knew that when Cara was around, I felt right. When Cara looked at me, I felt like I mattered.

  “Wait,” she whispered, and I immediately paused. When a girl says “wait,” you wait. Especially if she’s letting you touch her in a way that makes your heart rattle the way that mine was rattling inside my chest.

  For a moment, I thought that she’d changed her mind about what we were doing, but then she moved to her nightstand and opened the drawer. She placed her hand inside and when she withdrew it, my breath caught in my throat for a moment. Cara was holding a condom.

  This shit just got real.

  Cara returned to the bed and straddled my lap, facing me. She dropped the condom on the bed beside us and kissed me hard, sliding her hands down my chest, my stomach. With every inch, I thought for sure that I was going to explode. Mostly from happiness. In a bold move, I slid my hands around her back, my fingertips brushing the clasp there. Pinching the fabric, I felt one hook give way. I couldn’t believe this was really happening.

  “YOU’RE GONNA BURN!”

  Shit.

  Cara’s eyes opened wide with shock and my attention shot immediately to the now-open door. Martha stood there, filling the frame. In the low light she looked like a giant banshee, her nightclothes billowing out from her in the soft breeze from the window. Her mouth was open wide as she shouted; her spindly arm raised with one long finger pointed accusingly right at me. She smacked her lips together, as if tasting the air. Then she spoke in a low growl that sent a shudder through my core. “You, boy. You’re gonna burn.”

  I don’t know how I got out from under Cara without knocking her to the floor. Or how I made it across the room and out the window. I was sliding down the porch roof, shingles scraping against my palms, the night air raising goose bumps on my bare chest, before I realized that I was outside. Something was stuck to my skin, so I peeled it off and dropped it to the ground. As it fluttered toward the front lawn, I recognized it as a Tarot card. The Lovers. The irony didn’t escape me.

  Still scrambling, I reached the edge of the porch, planted my right hand, and swung over, dropping to the ground and breaking into a sprint. Behind me, drifting out the window, Martha’s declaration echoed. “You’re gonna buuuuuuuuurn! Yoooouuuu’rrrre gooooonnaaaaa buuuuuuurrrrrrnn!”

  As I ran for home, the wind blew my hair back from my forehead. Beads of sweat dripped from my skin. My lungs were on fire, and for a moment, I thought that Martha had been right. I was burning, burning up from the sinful deeds I’d been coaxing her daughter into.

  I didn’t know what would happen the next time I saw Martha, but I was relieved that I’d gotten out of there right away. I hoped that Martha would be directing all of her anger at the boy in her daughter’s bedroom, rather than at her daughter. I hoped Cara wasn’t dead right now, or grounded for as long as she could be contained. Maybe I wouldn’t get to see her for a few months. Maybe we were over. I didn’t know. All I knew was that my grandmother’s house had never been a more welcome sight.

  I reached the door breathless, and when I opened it, I found my father there, midnight snack in hand. My mouth dried completely, and any explanation that I could have offered him evaporated into the air between us. Just as I was about to brush past him without a word, he chuckled and said, “So . . . still seeing that Cara girl, son?”

  I grinned. Sometimes my dad was all right. “Yeah, Dad. You could say that.”

  I headed straight to my room, and every step I took filled me with guilt. I’d left Cara without even an apology. Just left her there, with her crazy mother shrieking. I hoped she’d find a way to forgive me. And that I’d find a way back to her as soon as possible.

  chapter 9

  I’m pretty sure that nice guys call a girl after they fool around. So, since I spent the next three days rearranging my bedroom and actively avoiding the outside world, I guess you could say that I wasn’t a nice guy. But in my defense, as much as I’d enjoyed being on her bed—oh god, being on her bed—the whole experience with Cara had freaked me out a little. Not that I’d ever admit to that in a court of law.

  Unfortunately, the longer I waited, the weirder it was going to be the next time I saw her. And I couldn’t stay at home forever.

  The corner store in town was probably one of the most miserable little markets known to mankind, but it was just about all Spencer had in the way of places t
o buy caffeine. The glass door had been covered with stickers over the years, and it was pretty clear that the owner never bothered to remove old advertisements before applying new ones. Right next to an Xbox sticker promoting the latest flavor of Mountain Dew was a Dr Pepper ad from who knows when saying that the girl with feathered bangs in the ad was a Pepper. Liar, I thought. You’re not a Pepper. You’re just some stupid girl advertising soda. Crappy soda, at that.

  The inside of the shop was just as run-down as the outside. There were two aisles: one for booze, the other for candy, cigarettes, and candy cigarettes. In case there was any doubt about what the good citizens of Spencer did in their leisure time.

  I grabbed a Mountain Dew (because advertising works . . . although I still wasn’t a damn Pepper) and set it on the counter by the cash register. Even though I’d drunk enough water to drown every fish in the reservoir over the past few days, my mouth felt like sandpaper. My grandmother had Dad and me cleaning out and organizing her garage now, and my dad had this strange idea that consuming mass quantities of H2O would be enough to combat the intense heat of a Michigan summer. Obviously, Dad didn’t understand much about staying cool, literally or metaphorically. Or, you know, saying no to his mother.

  The old man behind the counter reeked of tobacco and something else, too, something just as sick.

  I’d heard about how dogs can pick up on cancer in their owners, and how people train them to smell the sickness inside. Now I’m not saying this old man had cancer, although maybe he did. I just knew that something was wrong with him, and I hoped that whatever it was, it wouldn’t be wrong with me someday.

  He coughed into a handkerchief and said, “Dollah fiddy.”

  Assuming that this was some kind of monetary amount, I pulled my wallet from my back pocket. The bell above the door jingled as the door opened. Lane stepped inside, acknowledging me with something between a scowl and a “’sup” nod before heading to the candy/cigarettes/candy cigarettes aisle.