Thoughts & Prayers

by Bryan Bliss

  Some people laughed, but not God.

  “I guess you don’t touch cops,” he said. “No matter if they’re rented or not.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?” Claire asked.

  Before God could answer, the bell rang above them, and the entire cafeteria exploded with movement, every kid pushing away from their table to beat the rush into the hallways, which would soon be choked with bodies. God and Claire didn’t move.

  “Here’s the thing about Dark,” he said carefully. “They’re always on him for something. Always.”

  God didn’t give Claire a chance to respond. He stood up and gave her a weak smile. “Anyway, come skating with us. It will be fun, you know?”

  And just before she agreed—just before he walked away—Claire noticed the briefest flicker of worry flash across God’s face.

  Chapter Five

  CLAIRE GOT ON THE BUS WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT, ignoring the look of concern from the driver. Her mind drifted toward a moment that now seemed more like dream than reality.

  She’d accepted a social invitation.

  If Claire was being totally honest, she hadn’t planned on actually going through with it. But God and Leg had been waiting for her after school with their phones out, ready for her number and address. The whole transaction had happened so quickly that, before she could stop herself, muscle memory had taken over, and she’d fired off a text. She’d given God her address.

  And now she was kind of freaking out.

  But this wasn’t like the storm that raged unpredictably and inconveniently. This was more of a dull dread that refused to leave her stomach. Normally, she could hide in the carriage house and simply wait for the sun to fall and to come up again—one more day. But as she was getting on the bus, God wagged his phone in front of her face—Leg laughing beside him—and reminded her, “We know where you live.”

  She got off the bus and hurried back to the house.

  Inside, Derrick was watching a skating video on his phone. He mumbled a distracted “hello,” as if he too had forgotten the need for daily—if not hourly, by the minute—check-ins. So, Claire went into the kitchen, dropped a piece of bread into the toaster, and leaned against the counter, trying to figure out how she would tell him that she was not only going out, but going out with a bunch of guys she’d just met the day before.

  What could go wrong?

  Her toast hadn’t even popped up when there was a hard knock on the door. For a brief moment, she lied to herself and said it must be Mark-O or maybe a Mormon missionary—somebody else. But then she heard the laughter. The jostling of bodies. And that strange, empty panic returned to her stomach.

  When Derrick opened the door, God and Leg fell into the room, already mid-conversation, as if both she and Derrick were up to speed.

  “Yeah, but that’s not the spirit of the award, man.” Leg turned to Claire and Derrick. “Right?”

  Claire flushed and searched for something to say.

  Thankfully, Derrick sat down and said, “What award? You up for the Nobel Prize, Leg?”

  Leg lit up like a lightning strike. “Oh, hell no. Something way better. I’m trying to letter in prom.”

  This time it was Claire and Derrick’s turn to laugh.

  “Are you high?” Derrick asked, cocking his head to look into Leg’s eyes.

  “Lettering in prom, man!” If possible, Leg was even more excited now. “Like, if you go to prom all four years, they give you this sweet-ass engraved martini glass and it’s a really big deal.”

  Derrick turned to God who, almost regretfully, confirmed.

  “Big deal might be an overstatement.”

  Leg slapped at his arm playfully and said, “Don’t you dare denigrate prom.”

  “So, this is a real thing?” Claire asked. “Isn’t prom, like, months away?”

  “Hell yeah, it’s real, and we’re at threat level red, yellow, midnight—whatever’s the worst.”

  “He can’t find a date,” God said, answering Claire. “And I told him he should just go by himself. You’re still going to prom, even if you’re alone. And bro, nobody starts looking for a date in February.”

  This time God punched Leg, who ignored it and reached down to pick up Claire’s toast. He took a bite and said, “Against the spirit of the award, bro. We’re seniors! And besides, if I don’t act soon, all the good dates will be gone.”

  “By good he means, any girl that would go with him,” God once again clarified.

  “Whatever,” Leg said, finishing off the toast, “I’m not getting this close only to go down like a chump.”

  Derrick, clearly amused, realized that God and Leg had essentially just appeared in their living room, because he kind of shook his head and gave each of them a look.

  “So, I’m confused. Are you here to ask one of us to prom?”

  Leg didn’t hesitate. “Would you go?”

  “Sorry, bud.”

  “Just take your cousin like last year,” God said. “Anyway, are you ready?”

  Claire was too befuddled by the conversation to realize that God was talking to her. And that’s when Derrick got interested, too.

  “Ready? For what? What’s happening here?”

  “We’re going to the Lair,” Claire explained, unsure how Derrick would react.

  And it took him a few seconds. He gave God and Leg a deeper look, as if he were trying to discover any ulterior motives. Whether they might actually be high. Whether “lettering in prom” was some kind of euphemism. But eventually, he relaxed and he smiled.

  He gave Claire one more quick glance before he said, “Just be home before midnight.”

  The Lair was busier than she’d ever seen it, which made sense. She and Derrick intentionally went during off times, when the lines would be open and the chances of her accidentally colliding with another skater were at their absolute lowest.

  Now she could barely make it through the door to the main room, let alone find a comfortable place to drop in and ride.

  “Is Dark here?” she asked as God was tying his shoes. When he was finished, he checked his phone and then said, “Up on the couches.”

  Claire looked and saw Dark sitting next to another kid but obviously wishing he was alone. He was head down, furiously scribbling in his notebook.

  “I might go up and talk to him,” Claire said, taking another wary look around the packed room.

  “Don’t get entranced by his innate charms!” Leg said, cackling as he and God rode off into the crowd.

  It took Claire nearly five minutes to make it down the narrow hallway that was barely big enough for a couple of wiry skaters, let alone the thirty who were trying to push in different directions.

  She finally made it up to the couches just as the boy who’d been sitting there was carrying his board to the lip of the ramp. With a loud whoop, he dropped in and began zipping around the park. Dark barely looked up when the boy yelled out, so he didn’t notice Claire at first. When he did, he closed his notebook quickly and nodded at her.

  “Hey,” he said. “They said you were coming.”

  “I’m supposed to apologize,” Claire said, sitting down next to him.

  Dark smiled awkwardly and all he said was, “No.”

  And then he sat there, quietly watching the rest of the room. Claire wasn’t sure he would speak again until he said, “So what did I miss?”

  “What?”

  “At school. Did anything happen. Besides, you know, the entire place being overrun by fascist police officers looking to wield what little power they have against children.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Sorry,” Dark said, suddenly embarrassed by the outburst. “But I mean . . .”

  Dark looked as if he wanted her to agree—to give him permission to continue. But Claire wasn’t sure how to respond so she said, “Do you have Dr. Palmer? She gave everybody a different book to read. Plus, a project.”

  “I had her last year. Have you seen her YouTube channel?�
�� Dark fumbled with his phone, trying to pull it up. But the Lair was like a concrete box—no service. “Anyway. It’s about, like, weapons. Old weapons, so not the good kind. Anyway, what did she assign you?”

  A momentary panic washed over Claire. Not the good kind was the sort of comment that she might not have paid any mind before. The boys at Ford High School—hell, half the girls—were gun obsessed. And maybe it wasn’t obsession, but something different. Hunting, clay shooting, target practice—guns were sewn into the fabric of the school, the town, the entire culture.

  But not the good kind would never just pass by her now.

  “You okay?” Dark said, looking like he was worried she might stroke out again in front of him. She shook her head, clearing her mind, and then nodded.

  “Sorry. Frankenstein. That’s my book,” Claire said. Before she could say anything else, Dark cut her off.

  “You know Frankenstein is the scientist and not the monster.”

  Claire rolled her eyes. “Uh, yeah. I’m not an idiot. Jesus.”

  Dark dropped his notebook and then his phone when he tried to pick it up. When he had them both in his hands, his mouth was obviously trying to form an apology, but he was so flustered he just sat there looking like a grounded fish sucking for air.

  Claire swallowed her irritation.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I know that book. Better than most people,” she said. “And I haven’t really, you know, talked to people in . . . well, in a long time.”

  “So, what’s my excuse?” Dark asked.

  He smiled and then became embarrassed again, turning down to his notebook, which he opened and began flipping through the pages. When he found the page he wanted, he paused, looked up at Claire, and then cautiously passed her the notebook.

  The page was filled with thick, black lines that swirled together, crossing over one another in an almost manic collection. Upon first glance, Claire wasn’t sure it was anything more than a poor attempt at abstract art. But when her eyes began to focus, when she could really make out the specific choices—a scar above what looked like an eye, a gruesome mouth—she could see that it was a drawing, a furious drawing, of a face staring off the page.

  “It’s the Monster,” Dark said.

  Claire was in bed, staring at the wall above her head, the overly ornate woodwork that lined the edges of her ceiling, when she finally found the words she’d tried to say to Dark.

  After he showed her the picture of the Monster, a cold and creeping dread reached across her body. She’d never been a fan of horror movies, but they also never bothered her. Never affected her on a visceral level. She’d see a monster and say “That isn’t real,” putting it into some sort of mental box and never letting it escape. But the immediacy and power of Dark’s drawing plucked something deep inside her.

  It wasn’t fear, necessarily. But it also wasn’t not fear.

  Dark must’ve known he’d rattled her, because he spent the rest of the time in the skate park—not to mention the entire bus ride back to St. Paul—showcasing his lighter drawings. A cartoon man and woman, holding an umbrella as tiny hearts fell across the page like raindrops. A spot-on caricature of a biology teacher nobody at the school liked. Dark had lingered over that page for a second before, finally, flipping to a fairly graphic depiction of two anime characters Claire didn’t know. Whatever made him pause on the picture of the biology teacher quickly gave way to embarrassment, which got Dark so tangled that he closed the notebook and mumbled, “Well, anyway.”

  Now, as she stared at the ceiling and listened to the intermittent sounds of cars passing on the road in front of the carriage house, the words she wanted to say to him came quickly.

  Are you dangerous?

  It seemed dramatic even to her, alone in her bed. Dangerous. It was a drawing. A pretty damn good one, too. She’d tried art freshman year, and even among the advanced students, she hadn’t seen a drawing with the complexity of Dark’s.

  She hadn’t seen that sort of ferocity, either.

  Claire tried to shake herself off this path because, frankly, it was one she’d been down a thousand times in the last year.

  Seeing a problem where there wasn’t one. A weapon, aggression in the smallest degree, even malicious intent, in every and any possible movement. Nothing was sacred or safe, not anymore. She lived her life on the head of a pin, an exhausting balancing act.

  But she hadn’t been right. Not even once. Every single time she was wrong, and the threat turned out—once again—to be something broken deep inside of her. Something that she had no idea how to fix, or whether fixing it was ever going to be possible.

  She fell asleep at some point. And when she dreamed, it mimicked her reality once again. The entire night she felt like she was being chased by something she could not see.

  Chapter Six

  THE NEXT MORNING CLAIRE WAS UP EARLY, CLANKING around in the kitchen loud enough that Derrick appeared and sat down at the table with a cup of coffee. It took a long time—two cups’ worth—before he finally said, “It’s five thirty in the morning.”

  She didn’t want to tell him that she couldn’t spend another minute in bed, that she wanted to get to school as quickly as she could to give Dark a once-over. To really look at him. At that notebook. To decide.

  Basically, she knew it was nuts and she wanted to get out of the house before Derrick got a whiff of it.

  “Skating was good,” she offered up. Derrick nodded, head in his hands. “I don’t know if they’ll ask me back, though.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t have a reason, now that he’d asked. But eventually she’d freak out in front of them. Eventually she would create a reason not to go out. Maybe she already had. So, she shrugged and plucked a box of cereal from the cupboard instead of answering.

  “Those boys don’t know what to do with themselves around you,” Derrick said. Before Claire could object, he added, “They seem like good dudes. It could be worse. You could be hanging out with the wrestling team again.”

  Derrick chuckled when Claire spun around to glare at him.

  She’d never “hung out” with the wrestling team. Yes, she had threatened one particularly obnoxious guy named Chris when he’d made a comment about the “evolutionary position” of women and their need for protection. He was lucky that she hadn’t knocked him out right there, honestly. Coach O came to apologize and when he saw the fire in her eyes, he asked her if she wanted to be the first female state champ in the history of North Carolina. She could do it, he said, just needed a little training.

  After that, the wrestlers—Chris especially—gave her both a wide berth and a respect that made Claire think good old Coach O had run them into the ground. Either way, Derrick never let her hear the end of it.

  “I never once hung out with a wrestler, let alone a group of them,” Claire said, picking the marshmallows out of the box of cereal and eating them one by one. “Besides, they were all terrified of me.”

  “With good reason,” Derrick said.

  It took a few seconds and then he casually said, “I know basketball wasn’t realistic this year, but have you thought about going out for track? I’m sure some workouts or something are coming up in the next month or two. You’ve always been fast as hell.”

  Claire didn’t wait for Derrick to finish. She was already thinking about the crowds, not being able to see each person, to make sure that she was safe. Nothing but screaming and chaos and the constant sense that everything could end before anybody could stop it.

  She shook her head quickly, trying to muster up some of Derrick’s same casualness as she put the box of cereal into the cabinet.

  “I don’t know, we’ll see. Can I get a ride to school?”

  Claire charged up the front steps two at a time, expecting to see God and Leg standing at the top, just as they had been the day before. When they weren’t and instead a bunch of girls were watching her side-eyed, she felt the first flush of foolishness.

&nbs
p; The second came only a few seconds later when she saw God standing in the doorway, clearly amused, at her rushing a group of sophomores like she was on a SEAL team.

  “I think you seriously scarred them forever,” God said. The girls were still staring at Claire with what she now saw was complete and utter bewilderment. “Like, they may need to go see the school counselor.”

  “I was . . .”

  What? Her initial plan had been to come and ask God and Leg about the notebook, about the drawings—to see if they shared a look. Or reacted in any way, subtle or significant, just something. Now, standing there, she saw the flaws in her reasoning. Dark was their friend. She was overreacting. Again.

  Take a few breaths and regroup, she told herself.

  “Is Dark back?”

  God sighed. “No. They got him for two days this time. So, it’ll be Monday.”

  “Is he . . .” Claire didn’t mean for it to be a dramatic pause, but it happened all the same as she figured out what to exactly say. “What’s with that notebook?”

  God shrugged. “I mean, first things first. It’s not normal for him to show it to anybody. So, you obviously made an impression on him.”

  Claire must’ve looked upset, or at least confused, because God reached over and touched her on her shoulder. “Hey, that’s a good thing. Trust me.”

  Claire stepped closer to God as the bell rang and the girls at the top of the stairs pushed by them. God did not seem in a hurry, though. He scanned the street, as if he expected to see someone—Dark, perhaps. Claire couldn’t read the expression on his face. It could be concern. But it could very well be nothing. A teenage boy trying to muster the energy for another early morning of high school.

  “I don’t like the drawings, if I’m being completely honest.” God continued watching the street, the emotions on his face now clear as the cold winter day—he was worried. “Dark needs people like you in his life. People he can trust. People who are willing to see him for who he is now and not just some kid who did something in middle school once.”

  “What did he do in middle school?” Claire asked.