by Roxie Noir
And I remember the things that aren’t here: the first time we kissed, standing outside Sprucevale High, the football field in the distance. When I got my driver’s license before him and a new car from my dad, and we’d drive to empty parking lots and make out.
Holding hands in the hallway. Getting told at a school dance that we weren’t allowed to dance like that. The way it felt to see him from across the cafeteria for the first time each day, an explosion in my chest every single time.
The confusion and elation and startling pleasure of the first time we took our clothes off. The terror of buying condoms from Wal-Mart, afraid that I’d see someone I know, or that the cashier would announce it over the loudspeaker, or just the enormity of having to admit that I was probably going to have sex with someone.
When we finally did it, on the bed in my parents’ guesthouse.
All of it in this one box. It’s overwhelming. It’s exhausting. More than anything, it’s strange to realize that a decade and a half after we met, he still makes my heart leap.
Thank God for Ava and Lainey, who make it bearable. Ava attacks the ocean of objects with a curator’s methodical eye, placing things in context, deciding which decorative tape goes best with the key card from the Marriott. She doesn’t bat an eye at all the stuff from motels, nor does she even blink at the discovery of a single (still factory-sealed but very expired) condom.
I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve underestimated my youngest sister.
Finally, she climbs onto my couch and stands there, looking down at the timeline we’ve made. Lainey and I are both drinking canned wine and sitting on the floor, but Ava nods a few times, surveying what’s spread in front of us.
“I think that’s right,” she says. “I like the narrative this presents. It’ll get the job done. Though, you know, if you really wanted to impress him I know where I could get a confetti cannon —”
“No,” I interrupt her.
“Come on,” says Lainey. “Live a little.”
An hour later, they’ve both left. Ava kisses me and tells me that I’m a sparkling unicorn, and Lainey gives me a big hug and says she’s proud of me.
I walk back into the living room. I stand on the couch myself, frown down at everything we’ve put together: coordinated and well-thought-out, neatly put together. Properly in a timeline, each phase of our relationship coordinated by a different color of the rainbow.
As if it was neat. As if anything about this were orderly or planned, as if it was a smooth transition instead of starts and stops and ups and downs. I stand there, on the couch, for a long time. Thinking. Remembering. Letting myself be alone with all this for the first time in years and years.
Admitting the enormity of what I’m looking at.
Finally, I get off the couch. I get another can of wine from the fridge — Ava recommended it and she’s right, it’s totally good — and then I sit on my floor and get to work.
Chapter Fifty-One
Seth
I’m staring at the forest in my mom’s back yard when Caleb comes out of the backdoor and crosses to me, holding out a mug of coffee.
“Mom says hi,” he tells me. “She also didn’t even ask me why we were building this, just told me that anything in the shed is fair game to use.”
“I didn’t always like having three older brothers,” I say, still contemplatively looking into the trees. “But being fourth-born has its benefits.”
“You don’t even know,” Caleb says, grinning. “I think I got in trouble twice. They were way too tired.”
I hold up my coffee mug, and we clink them together, then both take sips. It’s hot, strong, and black, which is exactly what I need since the sun isn’t far over the horizon.
“Trees are nice,” Caleb says, after a moment. “I’m sure that’s why you’re staring at them. Just thinking about how nice trees are.”
“They do provide us with oxygen,” I say. “That’s nice.”
It’s true: trees are nice. But Caleb is also fully correct in his suspicion that I’m not staring into the trees because they’re nice. I’m staring because I think something I want might be in there.
Possibly. Maybe. If I’m lucky. The trick’ll be finding it, though.
“You gonna share with the class, or…?”
“Not yet,” I tell him. From the other side of the house, I can hear tires on gravel, meaning that Levi’s probably just arrived. “First things first.”
The project is done before noon. When I suggested it, I imagined it taking all day. Several days. Turns out, when you know what you’re doing, simple structures don’t take that long.
“I still think it’s a bad idea,” Levi says, looking at the finished product.
“Again,” I say, “you’ve been helping an elementary school student build medieval —”
“And yet, that feels more responsible than this,” he says.
I snort and glance past the structure, into the forest again.
It’s there, somewhere. I’ve got time.
“Excuse me,” I tell my brothers, pull out my phone, and step away.
“He was staring at trees a bunch before you got here,” Caleb says to Levi, shrugging.
“I’m sure it was because he thinks trees are nice,” Levi says, and Caleb snorts.
I find the name I’m looking for and call. It rings three times, and then he finally picks up.
“Hey,” I say. “I’ve got a strange favor to ask.”
“And you’re calling me?” Silas says, a little fuzzy on the other end of the line. My mom’s house doesn’t have the best reception.
“Let me know if it’s something you can’t do.”
Levi, who was quietly surveying my mom’s back yard, turns and gives me a look.
“How about you tell me what it is first?” Silas says.
“Is there any chance you can get me a metal detector?”
On the other end of the line, there’s a long pause.
“A metal detector?” he says, sounding stumped. “Why?”
“I need to detect metal and thought you might know someone,” I say. Another look from Levi. “Listen, if I’m asking the impossible of you —”
Silas laughs.
“Asking me to break into the Library of Congress and steal a first edition of The Federalist Papers is impossible,” he says. “Metal detectors? Nah.”
I almost ask, but decide to hold off until he’s here.
“You sure?” I say. “I could always call someone else if it’s too hard.”
Silas snorts.
“Don’t you dare,” he says. “Tell me where you are, I’ll get you a metal detector in two hours.”
When I hang up, Levi’s still giving me that look, and I start to feel slightly guilty.
“I’m not sure that was nice of you,” he says. “You know how he is.”
“Do you know a better way to get a metal detector in a couple hours?” I ask.
Levi is trying very, very hard not to smile.
“Probably not,” he admits.
“Stone cold, Seth,” says Caleb, but he’s grinning.
“I’ll apologize when he gets here,” I promise. “Should we go eat lunch while we wait?”
One hour and forty-five minutes later, Silas shows up with three metal detectors, a huge roll of bright yellow police tape, and a detailed search plan involving a grid. I’ve already spent the past half-hour reconstructing the search parameters as best as I can, so we get to work.
It’s fun at first. There’s tons of stuff on the forest floor, especially close to the back yard: bottle caps, crushed aluminum cans, the aluminum spirals from notebooks. Silas finds an entire three-ring binder buried under years and years’ worth of leaves, worksheets and homework mostly rotted away.
Still visible is a very large C- on one of the papers, so we decide it was Daniel’s.
There’s more. Nails, bike chains, old barbed wire. Old shotgun shell casings. A small, heavy sphere that might be a Civil War-era bullet. A metal ring t
hat I think is from a stove and Silas thinks is from an old-timey headlight.
News spreads, and by afternoon, we’ve got more help. Silas takes a break, and Rusty steps in, enthusiastically excavating a door hinge from the forest floor. Daniel reminds her a thousand times about tetanus and makes her wear gloves.
Caleb takes a turn. My mom takes a turn. Levi takes a turn and gets grumpy about all the trash we find in nature. June and Violet show up at various points to help out.
When the sun sets, we still haven’t found it and the grid is almost done. Everyone else heads back but I keep looking, knowing that with every sweep of the detector I’m less and less likely to find what I’m looking for. Sure, I could come back tomorrow and search a wider area, but I don’t know how useful that would be because my memory is crystal clear.
I know where I stood. I know I squeezed it in my bare palm and stared into the woods, the trees naked of leaves, the cold wind blowing. I remember thinking that this was stupid, that I should just return it, that throwing it into the woods where I’d never find it wasn’t going to accomplish a single thing.
And then I remember winding up and hurling the thing as hard as I could into the trees. It flashed once in the low, cloudy light, and then it was gone. I remember how savagely victorious I felt in that moment, how triumphant. How it felt like I’d gotten some kind of revenge and that made me freer, lighter.
It didn’t. It took me years to finally learn it, but lashing out at someone who hurt you doesn’t do shit except cinch the noose a little tighter around your own neck.
BEEP.
It startles me out of my thoughts, and I sweep the detector over the area again, slowly this time.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEEEE—
I sigh, pushing away the leaves with my foot. Swing again. Still beeping, so I crouch, put down the detector, and start brushing away the soft, dark soil of the forest floor in the fading light.
I don’t find anything, so I dig a little harder. My fingers tear through tiny, hairlike roots, unearth tiny chunks of rotted wood, and I brush them all off, hope I don’t touch anything too disgusting in my search for what’s probably an old bolt or, if I’m lucky, a quarter.
I see the sparkle before I touch it. I hold my breath. I lean in, digging around it, reminding myself that it’s probably a stainless steel ball bearing or some ancient refrigerator piece, and I pull it out.
It’s an engagement ring. It’s the engagement ring. It’s caked with dirt. One of the prongs that holds the diamond is missing, and the ring itself is slightly bent, but the gold still shines and the diamond still catches the light.
God, I was dumb. I was dumb to throw it in here and I was dumb to propose in the first place. Our relationship had been crumbling for months. I thought that this was the way to make her stay with me, and I was heartbroken and furious when it didn’t work.
When I head into the house, my mom’s in the kitchen, drinking a glass of wine and using her laptop on the kitchen table, papers scattered around her.
“Any luck?” she asks.
In response, I just hold it up. She holds out her hand, and I walk over, put the ring into it.
“It’s pretty,” she says, turning it over, then handing it back. “Though I could have sworn I taught you boys not to throw diamond rings into the woods.”
I just laugh and walk over to the kitchen sink to wash it off.
“I’m sure we’d all be better off if we’d just listened to you,” I say.
“You’re teasing me, but you’re right,” she says.
We’re both quiet for a moment, and I can feel her watching me.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Just wondering what you’re planning on using it for now,” she says, an incredible casualness in her voice.
I shut off the water, dry my hands, dry the ring. Stick it in my pocket.
“Well, it’s an engagement ring,” I tease.
My mom sighs. She stands, comes over to me, takes my face in her hands.
“Seth,” she begins. “My favorite fourth-born child.”
“You say that to all your fourth-born children.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” she says, very calmly. “And Delilah is a lovely, vibrant, delightful person who I would be proud to have as a daughter-in-law someday, but that’s only going to happen if you do right by her now.”
I put one hand on my chest, over my heart.
“Mom, I promise not to fuck this up,” I tell her.
She nods once, then pulls me in for a big hug.
“Good luck,” she tells me.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Delilah
I knock again, just to be sure.
Still nothing, the inside of the townhouse perfectly quiet. He’s not here. I knew he wasn’t here the moment I drove up — no car, no lights — but I spent the last hour doing color touchups on Tinkerbell and practicing what I was going to say when he answered.
Except he’s not answering, because he’s not here, and this scrapbook feels like dead weight in my hands. Maybe this was a dumb idea. Maybe he’s out at a bar charming the panties off someone named Riley, and any minute now they’re going to pull up and want to know what I’m doing here. Yes, it’s six o’clock on a Monday night, but I don’t know Riley’s life.
I lean my forehead against his front door, cool in the early evening of almost-spring, and take a couple of breaths. To be honest, I didn’t plan for this: I thought I’d waltz up to his door, present this scrapbook, say my piece, and he’d stop being mad at me and we could work things out. At least, that’s what I was hoping for.
There’s an alternative, of course, where I pour my heart out and show him this book I made and he stands there in the doorway, shadowed like a Caravaggio painting, and tells me it’s still over. That some wounds won’t ever heal, some pasts can’t be mended, and could I please just leave him alone.
I could stick around and wait, but the thought of sitting on his front steps and getting more anxious by the minute is wildly unappealing.
It’s fine. I’ll come back tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll even call first. What an idea.
I drive home too fast, reckless with unspent energy. I blast Neko Case and sing along as loudly as I can with the windows cracked, the scrapbook riding shotgun.
A quarter mile from my house, I pass a big green truck going in the opposite direction. At the last moment, the driver lifts his fingers from the wheel in the universal small-town sign of I see we’re on the same road, how y’all doing?
“Wait,” I say, out loud, to myself. I glance in the rear view mirror, but it’s no help.
That was Levi.
Was that Levi?
I think that was Levi.
I turn down the music, look in my rear view mirror again, and pull into my driveway.
The tail lights of Seth’s Mustang glow in my high beams. My heartbeat doubles. Every nervous, terrified thought I’ve had today comes racing back and each one brings a friend.
And then, he appears. In the fading daylight he steps around the corner of my house, coming into the driveway from the back yard, and he stands there in my headlights: the angles of his face blown out and shadowless in the blinding light, hair askew. He raises one hand, shades his eyes, head turned slightly away. Like he’s ready to brace against whatever comes next.
I take a breath. I can hear the beating of my heart, fast but steady, and I can feel it thumping through every limb.
Then I grab the scrapbook, turn off the headlights, and get out of the car.
I don’t know why he’s here. He could tell me he never wants to see me again. He could tell me he just wants to fuck it out and that’s all. He could tell me something brand new that would break my heart all over again.
I’m giving him the chance to wreck me one more time, and I know it. I’ll survive. Sooner or later I might even get over it, but I’m not letting this end without finally putting my heart on the table and showing him where his name’s carved into it.
>
“Hey,” he says, as I walk up to him.
I swallow, hard. My palms are sweaty.
“Hey,” I answer. Then: “No scones?”
“Sorry,” he says, and smiles. He pushes one hand through his hair, a gesture I know so well I see it in my sleep. “But I did try to be less terrifying this time.”
If he were a bear, I’d be considerably less nervous right now.
“Thanks,” I say. The scrapbook is sweaty in my hands, and I look down at it, blood rushing through my ears. Courage. Courage.
I clear my throat. I try to remember the words I practiced.
“Seth,” I start. Thump. Thump. “Listen, I know we’ve fought a lot—”
That’s not it.
“There’s,” I start, not sure where that sentence is going. “This has been weird and hard…”
“Bird, I’m sorry,” he says, after I trail off.
Bird. My heart swells.
“Me too,” I say, palms still sweaty against the book I’m holding. “I’m so tired of getting in fights and trying out these stupid workarounds and —"
Behind him, the floodlights in my back yard flick on. It’s probably a squirrel, but I lean around Seth just to make sure it’s not —
There’s something back there.
I pause, frowning. It’s… a box? A wooden box?
A big, colorful wooden box?
“Is that yours?” I ask, all my nerves suddenly forgotten.
Seth sighs, smiles.
“Well, it’s yours now,” he says. “And I hope you like it, because I can’t imagine how I’m going to bribe Levi to bring his truck back so we can move it again.”
Seth holds out one elbow, and I loop my hand through it, mystified. He guides me through my back yard, and it doesn’t take long for it to reveal itself.
It’s a doghouse-sized castle, complete with turrets and a ramp that looks like a drawbridge. It’s painted in bright technicolor: the walls cerulean, the towers kelly green, the door magenta, the turrets a bright violet.
Over the door, in neatly stenciled white letters, it reads VARMINT PALACE.