by Bryan Bliss
“You didn’t come home last night,” she yelled. “Is that what I signed up for when your parents left? Answer me.”
Dark stammered a few words, but they were unintelligible. God and Leg had frozen, their eyes planted on the ground in front of them. Claire didn’t know what else to do but watch.
“So, you’re out with your friends all night? That it?”
“I was—”
“He was at my house, Ms. Klatchky,” God said. Claire didn’t know if it was true or not, but it sounded convincing.
“Does your house have a phone?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Because even a shithole like this has a phone—isn’t that right, Peter?”
“It’s not a shithole, Grandma,” Dark said. His face was blank, free of a single emotion.
His grandma laughed and walked away for a moment. Claire heard the refrigerator open and then the unmistakable sound of a can being opened. Dark didn’t hesitate. As soon as she was out of sight, he turned around and pushed Claire and the others out of the apartment.
They were barely through the door when his grandmother started screaming again. Dark didn’t stop. He was leading the group now, his chin up—as if he was willing himself not to be affected by any of this. They could still hear her yelling in the stairwell, rumbling down the steps until they were finally outside.
Claire expected Dark to start walking, but he didn’t. He stood outside, as if he needed to catch his breath. God and Leg didn’t speak, but God put his hand on Dark’s shoulder and kept it there until a window above them flew open and about twenty of Dark’s notebooks landed on the ground.
Dark didn’t even look up as he quickly began gathering them. But the more he picked up, the more came falling from the window—his grandmother screaming the whole time.
“You don’t want to live here? Fine! Take all of this shit with you!”
Dark’s arms were full and even with God and Leg helping, there were still at least fifty notebooks on the ground. She looked at the boys, who were busy finding places to stash the notebooks—pockets, on top of Leg’s skateboard. Anywhere they would fit. So Claire did the same, tucking them anywhere she could think, until her arms were full.
Either Dark’s grandmother ran out of journals or got tired of throwing them, because suddenly they weren’t falling any longer. Dark was busy trying to scoop up the last few when God told him they should go.
“To my house, man. You can spend the night.”
Dark nodded quickly. He didn’t look embarrassed or even angry—just resigned.
Claire kept dropping journals on the way to God’s house, bending down to pick them up and then—realizing she needed to catch up—walking faster, only to drop some more and fall even farther behind.
Every time the journals fell, she’d catch a glimpse of different pages—mostly the Monster, staring up at her from a different perspective. Those same arms, the eyes, trying to see through her. But every so often, there would be a different drawing. Sometimes just a random word—never anything with discernible context—written with the same furious pen strokes.
When they got to God’s house, Claire did a double take. The entire block was tree-lined and put together. And while the houses didn’t rival the literal mansions on Summit Ave., they weren’t small. The sort of houses occupied by the happy families in lighthearted television shows. She stood there on the big porch, probably looking as wide-eyed as she felt.
“What?” God said. Usually there was an innate amusement in his voice, but the words came out thin.
“Nothing. You have a nice house.”
God nodded and carefully put the notebooks down so he could unlock the door. As soon as he did, Dark came over and collected them—checking the spines and arranging them in some kind of order, oblivious to everything else.
“Dark, it’s cold out here,” God said. “Why don’t you bring them inside?”
Dark didn’t acknowledge him, so God shrugged and then opened the door for Claire and Leg. Before she could move, Dark mumbled something to her.
“What?”
“The journals,” he said, and Claire handed them over.
Once inside, Leg fell onto a large leather couch and closed his eyes with what was either a groan or a sigh. Claire sat across from him, in a nice armchair that looked more comfortable than it actually was. When she sat down, the journals she’d stuck in the waistband of her jeans poked her in the back. She almost pulled them out and rushed them to Dark, but God came back into the room with four cups, a pitcher of steaming water, and some hot chocolate packets.
Leg didn’t open his eyes. “Thanks, Betty Crocker.”
“Go fuck yourself,” God returned. “And you’re welcome.”
God made a cup of cocoa and handed it to Claire. Then he kicked Leg and told him to take off his shoes or his mother would skin both of them. Leg, eyes still closed, obeyed—giving God an enthusiastic, if not condescending, thumbs-up.
Claire drank her hot chocolate, watching the shadow of Dark through the curtains.
“This hasn’t happened before,” God finally said. “Like, his grandma is always kind of either over-the-top sweet or . . . like that. But the whole throwing his shit out the window is new.”
Leg sighed or groaned again. “And I know he didn’t sleep here last night.”
God shook his head. “So, that’s a problem.”
“Where was he?” Claire asked, unsure if they wanted her to join the conversation. Leg finally opened his eyes and looked at God, who took a drink of his own hot chocolate without answering.
“Maybe he snuck into the Lair. Or maybe he spent the night just walking around. The thing about Dark is—”
He stopped talking as the door opened and Dark, his face and hands blue from the cold, came into the room and stood there, still blank. But when he spoke, his words were full of something different, something Claire heard for the first time—actual anger.
“What’s the thing?”
At first God was confused. And then Dark said, “You were just about to tell Claire ‘the thing’ about me. So what is it?”
“Man, c’mon—you’re upset. I get that. But there’s no reason to take that out on me.”
“No, you c’mon. What were you going to explain? How I’ve always been fucked up? Oh, wait—how about how my grandmother is a drunk and probably bipolar, but that’s the best option I’ve got as far as family goes. Or maybe you were going to tell her about middle school?”
“You know I wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t? Wouldn’t? You’re the one who fucking sold me out!”
God stood up and got in Dark’s face. For a moment Claire was sure they were going to fight right there in the living room. Leg must’ve sensed the same thing, because he jumped off the couch and pushed God away two times before God knocked his empty mug off the table and disappeared up the stairs.
“Fuck this. Fuck him.” Dark started walking outside and Leg followed him, down the porch and halfway up the block before stopping and yelling his name one last time.
Leg came back into the room and gave Claire a quick smile, before going upstairs to find God. As soon as he was out of sight, she pulled the notebooks out from behind her with the intention of putting them on the pile with the others.
The two notebooks were meticulously labeled on the spine in neat silver ink. One said XXVI-11.12, the other, XXVI-2.12, only a week ago. She looked at the stairs and without a second thought, opened the first notebook.
It was filled with, as she expected, different drawings of the Monster. And once again, the same chaotic word clouds. Every few pages there would be something blacked out in thick ink, whatever had been there, now obliterated. She fanned through the last few pages, turning them into an unplanned animation—the Monster jumping and lurching from the page.
She opened the more recent notebook, thinking she’d find more of the same. Instead, the first page was a picture of the Monster holding the decapitated head
of a man with glasses. The next page the Monster towering over a cowering woman, a look of menace on his face that hadn’t been in any other drawing. And then, more pictures of the Monster, once again reaching out in his almost helpless way.
She flipped through the book, wondering if she would find more pictures like the first, but she didn’t. When she heard movement upstairs, she paused momentarily and then stuck both notebooks back into the waistband of her jeans as God and Leg came down the stairs, both pink in the face. Claire didn’t know if it was anger, concern, or just the cold.
“We need to tell you about Dark,” God said.
God and Leg and Dark knew one another before they’d earned their nicknames. And as they grew up, Dark was always getting in trouble. The one whose reputation got sent up the chain to every new teacher in every new grade—not even getting spared in the transition from elementary school to middle school.
Dark was a troublemaker. A trouble starter. A trouble finisher.
“But fuck all of those teachers and their fathers,” Leg said. “Because they didn’t know him. All they saw was the dirty kid wearing the same clothes with the grandma who—”
He looked at God and they both seemed to have a mental conversation right in front of Claire.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Claire said.
“I mean, you already saw it,” God said in one breath, exhaling at the end. “Except, sometimes it’s in the parking lot after our fifth-grade graduation.”
“And other times it’s the cafeteria in front of everybody,” Leg said.
Hearing all this felt voyeuristic and sensational—a feeling she knew all too well from the aftermath of the shooting. Every person wanted something from every kid in her school. A quote. A picture. A video of them crying about their lost friends. And while Claire had missed the brunt of it—they were gone within weeks—she still saw it in the faces of people who knew why she’d moved to Minnesota. She saw it on the right-wing websites that were still obsessed with Eleanor and her FUCK GUNS T-shirt. She saw it every time another shooting happened at another school, the whole circus starting up in the exact same way.
Still, she wanted to know about Dark. She wanted to know why he drew the Monster, why he seemed so disconnected despite having two friends who would do anything to protect him. And maybe she wanted to make sure that he wasn’t disconnected in the same way as the kid who’d come into her school with what might as well been an automatic rifle.
The panic hit her right in the chest.
“So, seventh grade,” God said. “I was so worried about him. He started getting into fights—”
“Or, more specifically, getting his ass kicked because Dark isn’t a fighter,” Leg said.
“Yeah, well. He was intentionally doing shit to get himself in trouble—and it worried both of us.”
“So you . . . told on him?” Claire asked.
She expected Leg to jump in, give God shit for ratting out his friend. But Leg was staring at the ground, intentionally not looking at either her or God.
“Tell her about the bathroom,” Leg said, still looking at the floor.
Claire’s heart jumped into her throat and maybe God noticed, because he gave her a smile before he started the story.
“Like I said, it was rough. He was disappearing for days at a time. And when he’d come back, he just didn’t look good. Too skinny. Too pale. Probably living outside.”
“And then one day we come to school and he’s got a knife,” Leg interrupted. “Just a pocketknife, but he had it in his hand in the bathroom of the school and, like, he was just sitting there. Like he was waiting for something.”
Claire froze. In the aftermath of every shooting, the same bullshit talking points were trotted out—no matter how many kids had died. How many more would. It’s a mental health tragedy, they said. You can’t stop criminals from buying guns, they cried. Hey, look—a psycho with a knife could do just as much damage.
She’d always thought they were bullshit, a way to let overgrown boys keep their killer toys. And yet, her reaction to the mental image of Dark sitting in his school bathroom with a knife in his hand made her entire body go rigid.
“So I took the knife and brought him to the office,” God said. “We were kids. Telling the adults is what you were supposed to do, right?”
“We thought they’d help him,” Leg said. “But instead, they just—”
It was the first time Claire had ever seen Leg anything other than lighthearted. He was so angry he punched the leather couch.
“Well, they didn’t do shit,” Leg said.
“That’s when we decided it was our job to protect him,” God said. “Pretty soon after that, he started drawing the monster pictures and they helped him. So, here we are.”
Claire nodded.
(Breathing, breathing.)
Yes, the Monster might be therapeutic. A way to express something that couldn’t otherwise be expressed. Hadn’t she felt the same way? And what would it mean for her to have some release valve, a way to export all of the shit that clogged her mind and pushed the storm water higher and higher in her body until she could barely function?
But the Monster could also be something else entirely. Something that’s been inside Dark since that moment, clawing its way out with every drawing.
God and Leg didn’t seem to think he was dangerous. They’d rationalized him into a friend who needed help and maybe protection. But how many other times had people not said something—had they waited until it was too late (breathing, breathing) and another kid walked into a school wearing body armor and carrying a cannon.
She stood up and ran outside—but stopped, unsure where to go. So she laid down in the snow and let the cold and the wet take over her body, numb everything until she couldn’t feel the pain, the fear. The voice that was telling her nothing can stop the inevitable, nothing can stop the inevitable, nothing can stop the inevitable.
Chapter Eleven
CLAIRE STAYED IN BED ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DAY, responding to Derrick in single words, refusing everything he offered except solitude. The next morning, minutes before the bus would lurch to a stop on the corner, Claire was still in bed and staring at her ceiling, hoping for a sudden cough or maybe a slight fever—some new symptom that might help her explain why she still felt so sideways.
Of course, this was no different than any other time she’d spent the weekend hidden under her covers. The image of Dark in the school bathroom, even though it was years before, made her stomach clench with the fact that, this one time, she’d been right. This one time, she’d sussed out danger—been so close it had become her friend—and now she could still barely move. Could barely stand to think about any of it.
When Derrick saw her at God’s house, the shock was visible on his face. This was different—and not good. She was wet and shivering, still lying in the snow. But even though he wrapped her in a blanket, it wasn’t the cold that paralyzed her. No, it was that she couldn’t stop the panic from racing through her mind like a razor blade. Making ribbons of the minimal progress she’d made in the past year.
Normally Derrick would take her home, feed her whatever she wanted, and let her melt into her bed—becoming a fully formed person on her own time. It might take a day, or even two, but there was always the expectation that she was getting better, no matter how incremental. That she would stand up and try again.
But this time, she didn’t feel even a stitch better. This time, she wanted to ignore the litany of texts God and Leg had sent, and stay in bed, forgetting about Dark and all his pain. The Monster, the notebooks, which were stuffed deep in her backpack, all of it. She wanted to stay in bed, to spend the rest of her life right here, listening to the quiet snow fall outside her window.
When Derrick knocked on her door—five minutes before she would need to leave and still make it to school, a timeline they’d pretty much mastered at this point—she didn’t answer at first. He cracked the door open and said her name softly.
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br /> “You up?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Claire answered.
Derrick took a step inside the room and leaned against the doorframe.
“We probably need to get going if you want to be on time. Or if you want a chai or something, we can be late. I just . . .”
He trailed off, running his hands through his hair.
“I just want you to be okay,” he finally said. “Whatever that takes.”
“Getting up now.”
Derrick smiled and then pushed himself off the doorframe and walked out of her room. She heard him open and close the front door, followed by the sound of the car starting in the driveway. In a burst of energy, she stood up, threw on a sweatshirt and some track pants, grabbing her bag as she rushed out the door to meet Derrick in the car.
Claire sat in Dr. Palmer’s class with her hood up, hoping she could avoid attention, or at least look as if she was focused on her project. However, every time she looked at Frankenstein on her desk, or the mostly bare piece of paper that was supposed to be her project, it brought back visions of Dark and the Monster. It made her want to pull the notebooks out and flip through the pages, hoping to find some clue—a gotcha! moment that would put her mind at ease.
When Dr. Palmer walked up to her desk, Claire nearly fell out of her chair. Dr. Palmer looked equally surprised and gave her a quick once-over, like she was checking for wounds, before she spoke.
“I just wanted to check in with you and the boys after, well, you know. Everything this weekend.”
The inside of Claire’s body jumped this time, every single part of her skipping a beat until she remembered the trebuchet. The police. Another before.
“We got on the bus and went home, that’s it.”
Dr. Palmer seemed relieved. “Well, the trebuchet is now officially in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department, which I guess is for the best.” She smiled and leaned closer to Claire. “But did you see how far it launched that watermelon?”
When Claire gave her a weak smile, Dr. Palmer stopped smiling and sat down in the empty desk next to her. She hadn’t even noticed that the normally sleeping kid was absent.