The Big Door Prize

by M. O. Walsh

  A tweet from this morning had a picture. It was a blue duffel bag, unzipped and opened on some unknowable floor. Inside of it, clearly visible, the barrel of a shotgun.

  The tweet read: Off you go, into the wild blue yonder.

  The only reply to this was from Denny, who had posted a gif of Ash, the main character from the Pokémon cartoon, sweating and chewing his nails in his frantic anime way, with the line Did you go off yr meds, homie? beneath it.

  Jacob turned off his phone and put it on the bed. What the hell was Trina up to? If she was framing him, then for what possible reason? He thought they were in this together. And what were they even in? He’d never agreed to anything. He considered trying to reach her again but had a different idea. He looked over at Toby’s desk, where sat the green Ziploc bag the police had given them with all of Toby’s stuff from the accident, the same one he’d seen his father briefly consider before going off to his own room.

  He walked over and opened it up. It held a thin pack of gum, some pocket money, a small roll of condoms, a vape pin. Most important, though, the bag held Toby’s phone, the thing Jacob was looking for.

  Jacob pulled out the phone, the same model that he had, with only a different cover. Instead of the Poké Ball on Jacob’s, a baseball on Toby’s. Same shape, different reality. Jacob found a charger on Toby’s desk and plugged it in. The phone booted itself, the little apple on the screen like a warning, and Jacob felt, he supposed, like a parent.

  When the lock screen came up, Jacob punched in his own passcode, the month and the year, and it worked as he knew it would. He saw icons for every social media app he could think of, apps for sports teams, ESPN, and a background photo of Toby himself playing baseball. Jacob stared at this a good while. When was the last time he had seen his brother? Toby stood before him now in ­mid-­swing, the ball still visible in its violent journey out to a place, Jacob figured, it would never be caught.

  How was it possible, Jacob wondered, that this person no longer existed? Why are we made of such fragile material? The idea that Toby, who was so confident, so active in smashing his way through the world, could have been a victim of anything made no sense to Jacob.

  So, he touched the photo icon and looked for the reasons.

  Toby had more than a thousand photos on there, hundreds of videos, and Jacob opened the first one that caught his attention. It was a picture of Toby and Trina and, with this sight, an odd feeling of jealousy arose in Jacob, because, for one split second, he thought the picture was of himself. This was not as common an occurrence as one might imagine with twins. Although nearly identical, there were a number of differences between them that anyone looking at them as individuals and not some grouped pair could easily identify. Jacob was ­right-­handed and Toby was ­left-­handed. Jacob had a little mole on his neck, just above the collarbone, and Toby did not. Ever since they were allowed to make such personal choices, they had styled their hair differently, as well. Jacob’s was always neat, combed left to right, while Toby let his do what it wanted. He would shave it close every few months and apparently not think much of it again. The thick mass of it gave him the look of some budding party animal ever since he was old enough to ride a bike. The most noticeable difference between them, though, was their smile.

  Toby’s was nearly perpetual, broad and confident, while Jacob’s, whenever it appeared, gave one the impression that it took a tremendous effort to do so.

  It therefore did not take long for Jacob to recognize that it was not himself in the photo, but perhaps because Toby was wearing a baseball cap, perhaps because the lighting was not great, he had experienced that moment of confusion usually reserved for schizophrenics and drunks when they see pictures they don’t remember posing for. That odd feeling of, Well, there I am. But, if that was me, then where was I?

  As strange a sensation as this was, it was rivaled only by the other half of the picture, which showed Trina smiling. Had Jacob ever seen this? He had not. On what planet had it occurred? The both of them looked drunk and ­glassy-­eyed in the photo, and by the angle of his outstretched arm, you could tell that Toby had taken the picture. He had his arm around her neck, looking at the camera, while Trina, on the other hand, was looking only at Toby. This broke off a piece of Jacob’s heart. He felt he was now looking at a photo of two people, not just one, who no longer existed. Trina was still ­sharp-­edged and dark in this photo, sure, she was no cheerleader, but her smile surprised him. She looked not only devious but hopeful. She was plotting something in this photo, as well, Jacob could tell, just like she had been plotting something in every conversation he’d ever had with her. The difference was that whatever she felt herself close to achieving here seemed to hold the opposite promise of what she had hoped to achieve through Jacob. She had liked Toby when this picture was taken, in the simple way that girls sometimes like boys, and it was obvious. Jacob felt terrible for spending so much time wondering why they were together. Why shouldn’t she be allowed to like whoever she wanted? Who else’s business was that but hers? It was no one’s.

  This reality infected him with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The thoughts he had entertained about him and Trina, about her somehow being his now, about her tongue in his mouth, returned to him as if toxic. He felt duplicitous in his dealings with her, almost predatory, as if he had been trying to take something which was not being offered at all.

  The more he looked at the picture of Toby, though, the sicker he felt. He had his arm too tight around Trina’s neck, it seemed, as if he were holding her there instead of embracing her, as if she couldn’t have gotten out of the hug if she tried. Whether or not she wanted out, at that particular moment, was beside the point. Toby’s smile was too broad, Jacob thought, his eyes too distant, and Jacob had the strangest revelation that perhaps what everybody believed about this couple was entirely wrong, completely backward. The way Deuce Newman had warned him to stay away from Trina, for instance, the way the other kids at school scorned her. Jacob had the sense, instead, when looking at the photo, that if he were a parent, it was his brother he would have warned his daughter about.

  This feeling did not sit well with him. If that were true, and if they were nearly identical, then what did that mean Jacob himself was capable of?

  All of these feelings were compounded by the fact that Jacob knew when the picture was taken. It was dated from the night of Toby’s death but, more telling than that, Jacob also knew where it was taken. In the background of the photo stood a light pole with the sign “Swim At Your Own Risk” posted to it. This was at a place called Toup’s Landing, about fifteen miles out of town at the lowest reach of Bayou Ibis, right past the parish line, where generations of teenagers had gone to escape their realities. It was here the most raucous high school parties went down after games or school functions, where kids acted as idiotically as possible, Jacob thought, until inevitably scattered by local police, who wrote underage-drinking citations so toothless that these kids would return the very next weekend. Jacob already knew this was where Toby had been that night, as his crash had occurred along the stretch of highway between Deerfield and Toup’s Landing, where he had missed his turn completely, the police said, going above the speed limit, undoubtedly, and wrapped his car around an oak tree stronger than people.

  Jacob remembered what Trina had told him in the days that followed. You have no idea what they did, she’d said. This isn’t over.

  Jacob had been to Toup’s Landing only once and, like a fool, he now thought, going to see a girl he liked but who did not like him. Going to confirm again the simplest math. And when Jacob realized this girl had no interest in talking with him, in even standing near him, and that his ride was unwilling to leave, he walked by himself to the water by the boat launch. He stood there for hours doing little other than skipping rocks. So many of them there, he remembered, by the launch.

  Jacob pulled out the rock Trina had set on top of the envelope in
Toby’s locker and looked it over. He ran his thumb over the face of it, smooth and gray and likely as old as anything else he had ever touched. It could very well be, he knew, from this same place. Jacob closed the photo and swiped to the next image in the queue, which was a video.

  He hit the small arrow and immediately regretted it. It was hard to tell what was happening at first, as the video was dark and shaky and then illuminated, it seemed, by Toby turning on the flash. The phone wobbled back and forth until it settled on what looked like hair, a head of hair. Trina’s hair. Then, Toby saw her face, looking up at him as if interrupted.

  “What are you doing?” she said, and she was smiling. In her hand, now, Jacob saw what she held. Beneath her knees, he heard the shifting of rocks.

  “It’s just for me,” Toby told her, his voice like some unfamiliar ghost. “Don’t stop.”

  Trina did not stop with her hand. Instead, she said only, “­Promise?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Toby said. “I’ll send you a copy.”

  The twist in Jacob’s stomach as he watched her return was as severe as anything he’d previously felt. He was about to turn it off completely when he heard other voices in the background. A group of guys, he could tell, walking up and laughing. “Where’s number nine?” one of them said, and Jacob knew this was Toby’s jersey number. The camera did not move up to the boys but stayed instead on Trina, who stopped what she was doing and hid her face with her hair.

  “Now we’re fucking talking,” one of guys said, and then there was a chorus of unsettling voices as the camera lost its focus, a commotion, a joining of other drunk boys to the scene, the mad crunching of gravel underfoot, and soon Trina’s pleading voice somewhere in the background. Then Jacob heard something else.

  A knock.

  He looked up to see his father at the bedroom door.

  Jacob clicked off the video. His dad was sweating inside the house and Jacob realized that he was, too. His father wore his hat, a dusty pair of jeans, and his cowboy boots.

  “Hey, pardner,” he said. “When did you get here?”

  Jacob cleared his throat. He had no idea what to say. The scene on the video was quickly turning, he feared, into a crime, and Jacob felt as if he’d been caught.

  He wanted to show it to his father, to say that he had no part of it, to confess why he was in Toby’s room for the first time in months, and to tell him everything that had happened to nearly everyone he knew in what was an obviously awful world. But, before he could speak, it was like his father understood this desire and spoke the words so he didn’t have to.

  “Come on,” his dad said. “I want to show you something.”

  27

  Ain’t It Funny How an Old Broken Bottle Can Look Just Like a Diamond Ring

  Now, these were a pair of hands.

  Cherilyn couldn’t stop staring at them. As soon as Marian sat her down at the register and began mixing the henna dye, as soon as she felt the press of the pen against her skin, Cherilyn was transported.

  She sat in her red sari, her T-­shirt and shorts folded into a plastic bag beside her on the floor, and let herself be doted upon. The women at the register chatted and made sales as Alice floated around the shop fetching bits of costumes and clothing. A bowling shirt for Rex Patterson, a leotard for Amy Glick. Cherilyn pitched in, as well, using whatever free hand Marian was not drawing on. She counted change and made suggestions and assured at least five different people that, yes, she would be selling her crafts tomorrow, and that, yes, she would be at the bicentennial. And, thank you, and did they really think she looked beautiful? Thank you. Yes, birdhouses, actually. I’ll have plenty.

  “I told you,” Alice said. “We’d make a pretty fierce combination.”

  “Maybe we would,” Cherilyn said, and felt that this might be true. Everything, at that moment, might be true.

  When Marian finished with her right hand and stood up to stretch her back, Cherilyn held her hand up to the light. It was covered in a pattern of curved and repetitive lines, peppered by small and delicate circles that made a hypnotic but unknowable shape.

  “What is it?” Cherilyn said. “I mean, I love it, but what is it?” The ink was a coppered orange color against her skin.

  “It’s not done yet,” Marian said, and sat back down to work on her other hand. “That’s what it is.”

  Cherilyn looked at the clock on the wall and realized she was going to be late. This idea pulled her in a couple of ways. She’d told Deuce she would meet him at three o’clock, as this would give her enough time to clean up and go to Alice’s and check up on her mom before her picture. And what a picture it would be now, she realized. She delighted at the idea of showing up in this dress for Deuce. She could just imagine the look on his face.

  She also knew Douglas wouldn’t be home until after his lesson at four and so this gave her and Deuce two hours, which was plenty enough time for a picture and whatever else they needed to do, and Douglas wouldn’t have to know a thing about it. She could explain it to him tomorrow when he saw it on the mural. They could have their talk then. And why should she feel guilty? She had to remind herself that Douglas had apparently kept something from her yesterday, too. Going out for drinks with Geoffrey? Please. If he was going to tell her a lie then, surely, she could provide a little tit for his tat. And she wasn’t even lying, was she? No, she was just not saying everything. She needed to remember that.

  She’d offered to meet Deuce at his house but he’d refused. He’d said the place was a mess with all his cameras and equipment and was in an overall dubious state. So, they compromised. Cherilyn told him to meet her outside her mother’s house at three. She told him to park on the street and just give a couple taps on his horn when he got there.

  “Ain’t no way in hell I’m honking at a woman like you outside her mother’s house,” he said. “I don’t care what year it is. I’m a gentleman.”

  “Just wait for me, then,” she said. “Don’t go inside.”

  “Oh, I’ll wait for you,” he told her. “Don’t you worry.”

  But now there was no way she would be there at three and part of her was okay with this, too, as she’d not felt as good as she did now in a long time. The hours in the costume shop had her so busy, the delight she found in other people buying clothes for their new selves had her so stimulated, that she felt pain free. No tingling or burning or cramping, just the feeling of Marian’s soft hands beneath hers. The feel of the henna drying on her wrists. It was like a vacation from herself. And every time Marian would stop to take a breath and check her phone, turn to pull a beer out of the little fridge the ladies had stashed beneath the counter, Cherilyn would thank her and it felt good to thank people. Maybe that was reason enough to go into business, she thought, to have the opportunity to say thank you again and again.

  When Marian finally finished, Cherilyn stood up as the women gathered around her. They smoothed her sari at the back from where it had become wrinkled and readjusted her head scarf. Cherilyn held up her left hand and it looked very similar to her right but for her wedding ring. It disrupted the pattern, there was no doubt about it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s beautiful but, again, I still don’t know what it is. Is it a picture of something?”

  “That’s the thing,” Marian said, and gently touched her palms. “You have to put them together for it to make sense.”

  She guided Cherilyn’s hands forward and placed them next to each other and there it was: a flower. On each hand, half of the bud and flowing leaves, the light orange designs climbing like tendrils up her wrists and to her forearms.

  “It’s a lotus flower,” Marian said. “Hindu women apparently get this done on their wedding day. It’s a sign of fertility and good health and all of that stuff. A fruitful life.”

  “Hindu?” one of the women said and made the sign of the cross. “I hope you can get that off be
fore Sunday.”

  “Oh, hush,” Alice said. “It’s gorgeous. Marian, I had no idea you were so worldly. Perhaps we ought to get you a little henna booth in the shop. Get you doing more than stocking shelves.”

  “It comes off with a little lemon juice, I think,” Marian said. “I just googled it. I’m not sure how worldly that makes me.”

  Marian held out her phone so the women could see.

  Cherilyn looked to see a number of images, all of painted hands held side by side, women’s hands that looked, now, very much like hers. She felt the same pleasant rush of connection with these women that she had felt with Susan of Oman and closed her eyes as Marian gently blew on her wrist to help it dry.

  “I could do the palms, too, if you like,” she said. “As long as I’m still getting paid for doodling.”

  “Fine by me,” Alice said. “We all need a little more doodling in our lives, I’d say.”

  The woman who crossed herself said, “Well, that sounds perverse.”

  “That’s because I was thinking of you when I said it,” Alice told her.

  Cherilyn smiled and looked at the clock again. It was already ­three-­forty-­five. “Actually,” she said, “I have to get going.” She reached down and picked up her bag and thanked Marian and Alice with a hug and, when she looked back up, realized that there was a line of people at the register. They had all been watching her, waiting patiently to check out. She adjusted her sari to hold it gently above the concrete floor and inched around the counter. The line parted for her in two distinct rows and Cherilyn smiled and said thank you as she passed between them, a few women reaching out to touch the silk fabric of her dress.

  “Cherilyn,” Alice said, and Cherilyn turned back to face her. “You take it easy on that good man tonight.” She smiled. “He has no idea what’s coming for him.”

  Cherilyn felt her cheeks flush. “No,” she said. “I guess he doesn’t, does he?” But which man was she thinking about? That was a curious question.