Dead Letters(18)

I hear Wyatt rustling in the trailer for a few moments, and he reemerges with a big sweatshirt in his arms that I recognize as his, and a puzzled expression on his face.

“Where’s Zelda’s phone?” he asks. I crane my head to squint back at him.

“Cops took it.”

“Both of them?”

I look up at him sharply. “What do you mean, both of them?”

“For the past month or so she’d been dragging around a burner phone, you know, one of those cheap TracFones? She mostly texted with it, but she was all secretive whenever she took it out. Refused to answer questions, made coy little comments. I just figured she was baiting me.” Wyatt shrugs again. The boy is too laid-back for his own good: the perfect toy for Zelda. And me.

“Well, the cops said they took the phone. I don’t know which phone they meant. I didn’t ask. Too busy imagining her skin crisping up as the barn caved in on her.”

Wyatt just raises his eyebrows, scanning my face. He seems uncharacteristically watchful, as though he’s inspecting me for the first time and finds me strange. Zelda’s iPhone feels gigantic in my pocket, and it’s hard to believe that he can’t see its distinctive shape from where he’s standing behind me.

“If you find it, can you let me know?” He peers at my face. “I’d like to check her call history. She was cagey that night. Canceled plans with me. I was supposed to come over to the big house, but she called it off, and sounded all sketchy on the phone. I’m worried she might have been using again.”

“Again?” I ask, startled. Eyebrow raised, he looks at me with that same scrutiny, so un-Wyatt-like. He’s wary of me, no longer worshipful. I realize in the space of a breath that I have hurt him, that he is looking at me that way because I caused him damage. Zelda’s the destructive one, not me, I feel like protesting. But that’s not true anymore, is it? Wyatt’s face is proof of that.

“Ava, you’ve been gone a long time. Zelda was getting desperate. Things on Silenus have been, well, rough and she…” He trails off, but I can hear the blame in his voice.

“She was alone,” I finish. “I wasn’t here with her.”

“She’s had a weird few months. She needed…someone.”

“She had you.”

“I’ve helped a bit with the vineyard side of things, but she needed something else. She knew that I—” He pauses, considering his words. “She knew that I wanted you, always have and always will. And having me around sometimes made it worse for her, that you weren’t here,” he finishes simply.

I don’t know what to say.

“Anyway,” he goes on, “I’m glad I found you here. I was going to stop by your house next, make sure you were okay.”

Again, I say nothing.

“Well, Ava? Are you?”

“I’ll be fine.” I wave my hand dismissively. I can’t talk to Wyatt about how I am. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“You’ve always been tough,” he answers. “I just was thinking—well, I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. To lose her.” His throat sounds raw, and as I look at those beautiful brown eyes of his, I realize he’s been crying recently, and may resume doing so shortly. He’s grieving. I’m suddenly, savagely jealous. He has spent the day weeping over my sister, missing her, imagining a life without her. Irrationally, unforgivably, I want him to still think only and always of me.

“Will you be okay? You seem rather distraught,” I snipe.

“Jesus, of course I’m distraught! I’ve known that girl most of my life. She was there during—everything. Christ, I thought we’d maybe be family someday.” He shakes his head as though he can’t really believe me. I don’t like being judged by Wyatt. Not having him on my side.

“And of course, you were sleeping with her for a while there.”

“For fuck’s sake, Ava! How many times do I have to say it? We didn’t want each other that way. It was just…a mistake,” he finishes weakly, as though he physically can’t keep trying to convince me. He seems so heavy, so sad. I want to comfort him, but also to punish him. Once upon a time, if I had seen him in this much pain, I would have wrapped my arms around his ribs, kissed his temple, said anything to make him smile. Now I do nothing, unable to go toward him.

“You should leave that here,” I manage, pointing at the high school track sweatshirt. Wyatt ran the thousand meters at Watkins Glen High, and I know the back of the shirt will say “Darling” in white letters, and the front will have “Senecas,” the name of the team, scrawled across it. There is a racist drawing of a Native American in a headdress beneath the letters. This sweatshirt reminds me, of course, of our first time together.

—

It was a chilly day in early, early spring. We were in twelfth grade. Wyatt had pulled a muscle at track practice and was staying home from school, sprawled on the couch watching movies. I texted him during the midmorning break to see how he was, and he responded, Lonely. Come visit me? I nearly wrote back with my usual deflection, something sarcastic or insincere, but as Zelda and I milled around the hallway before the third-period bell rang, I paused.

“I’m going to go over to Wyatt’s,” I said, almost testing the idea out.

“Oh?” Zelda responded archly. “To take his temperature and tend to his wounds?”