by Katie Henry
“What are you doing out here?” she asks Hannah.
“Just showing Ellis the backyard,” Hannah says. “Are you going to be home for dinner?”
Her mom adjusts an earring. “I doubt it.”
“You shouldn’t wait on us,” Hannah’s dad says.
“Get whatever you two want for dinner,” Hannah’s mom tells her. “You’ve got the card number.”
“Okay.”
“Lock the back door before you go to bed.”
“Okay.”
“The dog’s been fed, no matter how she acts.”
“Okay,” Hannah says, as the aforementioned dog paws at her. “Laska, get down.”
Huh. Hannah’s mom is nice to her—no comments about her outfit, no poking or prodding or passive aggression. But it’s weird. She doesn’t ask Hannah about her day. She doesn’t even ask about me. Hannah’s mom doesn’t talk to her like a daughter. She talks to her like a roommate.
They’re out the door before I can even thank them for offering to feed me, an almost complete stranger. When I look over at Hannah, she’s staring at the door—past the door—eyes narrowed, shoulders slumped.
“Hey,” I say. “Are you—”
“Sorry they were so awkward,” Hannah interrupts, pulling the letter out of her jeans. “It’s not that they didn’t want to meet you, or whatever.”
“Oh.”
“They don’t like being in the house,” she says. “Which is fucked up, but I get it.”
That’s concerning. “What’s wrong with your house? I love your house.”
But she doesn’t hear me. She’s torn open the letter with no stamps, revealing crumpled, smudged notebook paper inside. I resist reading over her shoulder. For all of five seconds. I can only make out the first few words of each line.
Don’t keep asking around you don’t understand what you’re doing
Join me if you believe me but this isn’t helping you’re the one who needs
Making sure you’re safe but you’ll never be until
The first letter of each line is darker, bolder, like someone was making a point. As I try to read over her shoulder, that’s what I see, those first letters repeated down the page. D, J, M. D, J, M. I could read more, if Hannah’s hand weren’t shaking.
Just let go Hannah you need to let
Hannah folds the letter up just as it came, on each original crease.
“Are you—” I ask, but then I don’t know how to finish the sentence. Okay? In danger?
“I’m fine.”
“Hannah, what was that letter? Who sent that to you?” I ask.
“Sometimes I’m not even sure, anymore,” she says, which makes zero sense, especially as she tucks it gently, carefully, into her backpack.
I could ask her again. I should ask her, I should demand she tell me what’s going on, refuse to help her with one more thing until I’m certain I know everything. But she wouldn’t tell me, and then where would I be? Certain the world was ending, uncertain about everything else. If I have to choose, I’ll let the letter go.
Hannah zips her backpack. “Let’s go to the Park.”
When Hannah and I get to the Park, Theo and Sam are in the throes of a contentious game of Five-Word Books.
“Mice, cats, pigs, and fascism,” Sam says.
“Animal Farm?” Theo guesses.
“Um, no. Maus.”
“Animal Farm works too.”
“No, it doesn’t. There aren’t any mice. There are horses, human, and allegorical Marxist pigs, but no mice.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I’m a treasure,” Sam says.
“That must be why I want to bury you on a desert island and not come back for twenty years.”
“Can you two go one day without a death threat?” Hannah asks them as we approach.
“Never tried,” Sam says.
“Where have you guys been?” Tal asks.
“I’m going up in the tree,” Hannah says, one foot already on the trunk. I didn’t see her take it out of her bag, but the letter’s in her back pocket again. Tal frowns, then looks at me.
I shrug. He frowns harder.
“Five-Word Books, I’m in,” I say, settling down in an empty spot between Tal and Sam. “Here’s one: British children create murder society.”
“Lord of the Flies,” Theo correctly guesses, then passes a joint across me, to Tal. “Hey, can you relight it?”
Tal flicks on his Zippo, and I try not to shrink away. I fail.
“You okay?” Sam asks.
“I don’t like fire,” I explain.
“That’s a little weird,” Tal mumbles, but sticks the lighter back in his pocket. “What did fire ever do to you?”
“It burned down the Library of Alexandria,” I say.
“I don’t think that was personal, Ellis,” Tal says.
“That’s a rough thing to be afraid of,” Sam agrees. “Fire is life.”
He has no idea. Surviving practically any doomsday scenario requires the controlled, skilled use of fire. The world hasn’t even ended yet and I’ve got lighters, accelerants, and fire steel. What’s going to happen when the snow comes and I’m too scared to light a match?
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I say to Sam.
“Sea cucumbers hurl their own internal organs at predators when they feel threatened.”
Theo coughs. “What?”
Sam gestures to me. “Well, did you know that?”
“No,” I admit.
He turns to Theo. “See?”
Theo ignores him, focusing on me. “Fire’s not as destructive as you think. Sometimes it’s not even as destructive as you want it to be.”
I shake my head. “What do you mean?”
“Okay,” Theo says. “So one time, when I was, like, thirteen, my mom came into my room to ask me something. But then she stopped, and paused, and was like, ‘I can tell you have drugs, your room smells like drugs.’”
“What did it smell like before?” Sam asks. “Masturbation and Doritos?”
Theo shoves him. “I have no idea how she did it. It was this one tiny baby joint in my sock drawer. How could she possibly have smelled that?”
“Dude, she didn’t.” Tal laughs. “She probably saw it when she was putting your laundry away. She already knew it was there, she wanted to see if you’d tell her.”
“Yeah, well, I did,” Theo says. “She can be very scary.”
“So then what happened?” I ask. I can’t imagine what my mom would do if she found drugs in my room. We’d probably abandon the house entirely and start over in Antarctica.
“She took the joint into the kitchen and—” Theo grins. “I’m not sure what she was thinking. I guess she meant it, as like, some big dramatic gesture, but . . . she lit a stove burner and set it on fire.”
Tal bursts out laughing. It takes me a second to realize. “Oh no,” I say.
“The whole house,” Theo says, “smelled like the Grateful Dead tour bus.”
“And what, now your parents are okay with it?” I ask, eyes flicking down to the joint in Theo’s hand.
“Hell no,” he says. “But I don’t bring it home anymore, my grades are excellent, somehow, and they’re never had to bail me out of jail.” He leans back on one hand. “A little bit of denial goes a long way.”
Sam sticks his hand up. “I was in denial the first time I found my dad’s weed.”
I choke. “You found your dad’s?”
“Sixth grade. I needed a stapler, went looking for one in his office out back, and found, like, four film canisters in the top drawer of the desk. And at first, I just shoved them aside, but then I was like, wait, he doesn’t even own a film camera, so what the hell’s in here?” Sam looks up at the sky pensively. “A lot of things suddenly made sense. No adult is that happy at Disneyland.”
I think my mom had a borderline religious experience at Cinderella’s castle one time, but I’ll keep that to myself.
“It�
��s almost like a Gettier problem,” I say. “Drugs in a film canister.”
“A what now?” Tal asks.
“A Gettier problem, it’s a philosophy thing,” I say. I can just about see the pages in Kenny #12 where I copied the information down. In red ink. “It’s supposed to show that you can have a justified true belief of something, but that doesn’t mean you have knowledge. You know?”
“Nope,” Theo says.
“That ‘nope,’ but squared,” Sam says.
“Okay, okay.” I spread my hands out. “Sam. Let’s say you’re standing on the edge of a really big field in farm country. There are lots of hills.”
“Does it matter that it’s hilly?” Tal asks.
I point at him. “It actually does. Don’t interrupt.” I turn back to Sam. “You’re standing by this field. In the distance, you see something that looks exactly like a sheep. So your first thought is, ‘There’s a sheep in the field.’ Just like your first thought when you saw a film canister was, ‘There’s film in this film canister.’ You have a justified belief in that, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Because your dad was hiding drugs, and that sheep is actually a dog dressed up to look like a sheep.”
“Oh, this is why philosophy sucks,” Tal says.
“Whatever, I’d rather go pet a dog than a sheep,” Sam says.
“No, but then wait,” I cut in. “Let’s say there is a sheep in the field. It’s behind one of the hills. So your original thought was a justified and true belief, even though you couldn’t see the sheep. But does that count as knowledge? If not, what is it?”
Two feet thump to the ground, just inches away from my hand. I pull it back and stare up at Hannah. She doesn’t look like she’s dropped gently from the branches this time. She looks like she’s been hurtled down to Earth.
“That’s not Sam’s fault,” she says, sinking down next to me and resting her back against the tree. “That’s not fair.”
I draw back, surprised by the fierceness in her voice and the tightness in her face. “It’s not real, Hannah.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Tal explains.
“What’s a metaphor?” Sam asks.
“A place to keep your cow,” Theo says.
I throw up my hands. “It’s a sheep, not a cow, and it’s a thought experiment, not a metaphor.”
“It’s not fair,” Hannah repeats. “Someone set him up to see a sheep and then got mad when he did?”
“No one’s mad,” Sam says quietly.
“People don’t see things out of nothing,” Hannah says, even quieter. “It comes from somewhere. It always come from somewhere.”
Theo touches Hannah on the shoulder. “Hey. Let’s get snacks from E-Z Stop.” She shakes her head, but he doesn’t let up. “I was there yesterday, they got the weird Israeli peanut things you like back in stock.”
She cracks a smile. “Bamba. They’re delicious. Don’t knock it.”
Theo stands. “Come on, my treat.”
Hannah gets to her feet. Sam scrambles up, too.
“You guys want anything?” Theo asks me and Tal. We shake our heads. After the three of them walk away, Tal pulls out his lighter again and starts to singe the tip of a grass blade, holding the grass close until it blackens and shrivels.
He’s going to start a fire, and you’re going to get burned, or blamed, or both.
“Should you really be doing that?” I ask. I’m starting to get less freaked out about people doing drugs around me, but arson is a bridge too far.
He’s going to start a fire big enough to have its own weather system, which is a real thing that can happen. And it’s windy, so then it’ll become a fire tornado, which is another real thing that can happen.
“Relax, you’re perfectly safe,” he says, but does stamp on the burnt grass blade. “I’m very careful.”
“I’ve seen you light curtains on fire.”
“I was nine!” he protests. “Which makes it a little more forgivable than the time I was fourteen, bored at my mom’s house, and wanted to test out—for science—the difference between flammable and inflammable.”
“They both mean you can light it on fire.”
“Yeah, I know that now,” Tal says. “One gigantic steel wool fireball later.”
I’ve only used steel wool to clean our kitchen sink but I laugh at the image. “I don’t get it. Weren’t you scared? Aren’t you scared?”
He frowns. “Of what?”
“Getting burned. Getting . . . hurt.”
“But that’s the whole point of life,” he says. “Isn’t it?”
I stare at him. “Lighting yourself on fire?”
“Yes!” he says. “I mean, not on purpose, but everything’s got danger. Everything’s got risk. If it’s good, anyway.”
“Things can be good and safe,” I say. “It’s possible.”
He leans forward. “Humans need water, right? Water’s good. But water can drown you. I bet you like funeral potatoes right out of the oven, but that pan could burn you.”
“You’re supposed to let them sit for fifteen minutes before serving.”
“Ellis, oh my God,” he says. “My point is, everything good in the whole world could hurt you. Doesn’t mean it will.”
But it could, it always could. Anything could hurt you, everything could hurt you, he could hurt you. Don’t get comfortable. Don’t forget all the terrible things that could happen.
Could is a horrible word.
“You only want the safe parts,” he goes on. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“It can,” I say, thinking of the stockpiled supplies in my closet at home. All the facts, the knowledge scribbled down in my notebooks. I’ve worked for years to make myself safe, and now he’s saying it’s not even possible?
“It can’t!” he says. “It’s part of the deal. Sometimes you just get burned. Just, like, as a hypothetical,” he says, “What if one day, you want to tell someone you like them. They could shoot you down. That burns. It hurts.”
“But they could . . .” I clear my throat. “They could also say they like you back.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking down at the grass. “They could.”
I look over his shoulder at Sam, Theo, and Hannah returning with armfuls of snacks, and think maybe, occasionally, could isn’t such a horrible word, after all.
The second I shut the front door, Mom is already yelling down to me from the second floor.
“Ellis!”
She’s never upstairs when I come home. The computer is down here, the TV is down here, the only thing upstairs is our bedrooms.
“What?” I call back up.
“Come up here.”
I sigh and dump my backpack by the couch. When I get to the top of the stairs, I turn left, toward the master bedroom.
“No.” I whip around to see Mom standing in the doorway of my room. “In here.”
For a moment, I just stare at her. Then, feeling eerily like I’m walking toward a newly constructed gallows, I follow her into my room.
It isn’t the way I left it. The drawers on my dresser are open. Books have been moved, restacked. My closet door is ajar, and I always close it before leaving.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?” she asks.
How about get out of my room? I think. What she means is: “You’re in trouble, and I’d like you to figure out why.”
“Don’t bother lying,” Mom adds. “I know all about it.”
In another life, my mother would have made a great lawyer. Or cop. Or CIA black-site interrogator. But this is not my first cross-examination, and I know the only way to minimize the damage is to minimize my words. So I swallow hard and wait her out.
“You were seen,” Mom says, “at the drug park.”
My body goes cold all over. She stares me down.
“Do you mean the dog park?” I ask, trying to sound casual, trying to keep my bubbling panic from leaking out of my pores.
“Why would you be at a dog park? We
don’t have a dog.”
“Why would I be at a drug park? That’s not a thing.”
“Helen Olsen saw you. She was leaving the YMCA and she saw you.”
Ratted on by a woman who sells essential oils out of the trunk of her Subaru. My life is a joke.
I spread my hands. “I don’t know what Sister Olsen thinks she saw, but—”
“She saw you at the park next to your school, a known hangout for children to drink and do drugs.”
“The park, or the high school?”
She glares at me. “She saw you with boys. Several boys. She thought they were passing something around.”
I get a sudden image of Sister Olsen crouching behind a bush with binoculars and a tape recorder, like a private eye. I fight back a giggle. The giggle wins.
“Is this funny to you?” Mom says. “Are you high? Are you high right now? Let me look at your eyes.” She reaches for my face, and I bat her away.
“This is ridiculous, you’re tearing my room apart because Sister Olsen spied on me in a public park?”
“Oh, so you were there?”
I walked into that. “Yes, but—”
“And what were you doing with those boys?”
“Just hanging out. They’re my friends.”
“Do these friends share your standards?”
I resist rolling my eyes. What she means is: Your friends are not like you, and this is worse than having no friends at all. What she means is: Avoid the appearance of evil, even if that means you never do anything at all.
“They were nice to me. They like me. I like them.”
“People will judge you by the company you keep, Ellis.”
“Do what is right and let the consequence follow,” I say, just to piss her off. That hymn has been quoted for a lot of purposes, but I doubt it’s ever been used to justify befriending a group of stoners.
“Well, here it is.” She yanks open another desk drawer and starts pawing through it. “Here’s the consequence.”
“Mom—”
“Go downstairs.”
“But you can’t—”
“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” she snaps. All my bubbling panic is suddenly replaced by anger, red-hot and unstable. She’s blocking me from my room, the place that’s safe, the place that’s mine. We stare at each other, but she has to tilt her head up. That’s not new. I’ve been taller than her since I was fourteen. But for the first time, I realize that if I wanted to, I could push her out of the way. For the first time, I seriously consider it.