The Dead and the Dark(81)

Tammy, Alejo, and Frank all turned their eyes on Brandon, and he wanted to fall through the floor. He took a deep breath, fixed his glasses, and extended his hand to Tammy to shake. Which was stupid, because he already knew her and this wasn’t an introduction.

Tammy turned to his parents, button nose wrinkled up in a silent laugh. “Yeah, we know Brandon. He’s so funny.”

“Hey, man,” Frank Paris said.

“I don’t think you and me ever talked,” Alejo said, shaking Brandon’s hand with an easy smile as if socializing weren’t the hardest thing in the world. As if he weren’t everything Brandon wished he could be. “I see you around all the time, though. Hard to miss anyone in a class of twelve.”

Brandon’s mother leaned across the table, nearly spilling her coffee in Brandon’s lap. “Kids, honestly, Brandon is painfully shy. I thought I’d call you over, make some introductions, see if I can get him out of the house. I know he could make some friends if he just branched out more. And you three are so nice.”

Brandon thought his heart might stop. “Mom…”

Tammy and Frank blinked at him, their expressions so full of pity it stung. But Alejo laughed, smooth and bright as running water. “Your mom is a killer wingwoman. You should take her everywhere.”

Brandon’s mother smiled, graciously accepting the compliment.

“Well, Brandon, you’re welcome to hang out with us whenever,” Tammy said. But her voice was hollow. She was already skipping ahead to when they got to sit back down and talk about how weird this was. How weird he was. She glanced over her shoulder at the half-eaten breakfasts on her table. “We better go before our food gets cold. It was so nice to catch up.”

She and Frank made their way back across the diner.

Alejo lingered a moment longer. He clapped Brandon on the back, then half turned to his table. “Seriously, let me know if you wanna hang.”

“I will,” Brandon lied.

He didn’t.

It didn’t matter. Within the year, Alejo Ortiz left Snakebite for college in Seattle. Tammy Barton took over Barton Ranch. Frank Paris got a job with the Owyhee County police. Brandon’s parents moved to Portland to get away from “small-town politics.”

And Brandon stayed in Snakebite because he didn’t know how to do anything but remain. He remained like a stone stuck to the bottom of a lake. Currents washed over him, rolling him haplessly against the muck, but never to shore. Never to the sun. It was easy this way. He imagined how simple it might be to walk into the trees and disappear. He would be a pinprick of disruption, and then he would be gone.

His loneliness was a darkness. It spread over him like shadows at dusk. He felt it under the earth, under his skin, wrapped delicately around his bones. Snakebite held him in place.

Because no matter what time unleashed on Snakebite, it would never change.

Until Alejo Ortiz came home.

2001

For the first time in years, it was raining in Snakebite.

Brandon squared his hips and kicked another log onto the industrial saw, smearing a mix of sweat and rain across his brow. While most of the other men in the yard shuffled to the shed to mingle and sort wood, Brandon kept running the saw. He preferred working, even in the rain.

He preferred working alone.

His parents had long since made good on their promise to get out of this place. They’d sold the store to a local—Gus Harrison—who’d reopened it as a pub. Brandon spent most nights tucked into a booth at the back of the Chokecherry. He pictured the old kayaks his father had nailed to the walls, now replaced by football jerseys and stuffed fish. The building had changed faces, but it was all the same.

That was Snakebite; they painted over it, but it never changed.

His parents had superficially offered to bring him along, but Brandon had decided to stay. He could only picture himself here. The dark, shadowed feeling that crept under his skin like ink blots on paper told him that this was where he needed to stay.

If he was going to be lost, he might as well be lost in Snakebite.

Barton Lumber fell quiet, pulling Brandon back to reality.

Through the dust and the rain, Brandon could just make out the person who’d shocked the others into silence. The man stood just outside the woodshed dressed in an oversize sweater, straight-legged jeans, and a deep green parka. His hair was longer than Brandon remembered, tied in a low ponytail that ended just between his shoulder blades. He wiped the rain from his face and tenderly pulled a bundle of papers from under his sweater.

The yard foreman approached Alejo cautiously and snatched the papers from his hands. Behind him, a handful of men stifled laughter. The foreman gave the papers a cursory look—not long enough to read even the first page—then shoved them back into Alejo’s chest.

Brandon didn’t need to hear to understand what’d just happened.

For a moment, Alejo stared at the group of men, all facing him like they hoped he’d retaliate. Like they hoped he’d make a scene. But he didn’t. Alejo’s shoulders slumped. He pocketed his papers and trudged out of the yard, away from the men, into the rain.

Brandon’s heart came alive with a strange fear. For a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, it was like he knew Alejo. It wasn’t as though their brief talk in the diner had made them friends, but in the blur of his memories, Alejo stuck out. Brandon was different from the rest of Snakebite, a fact he was painfully aware of. He was different in a way that went deeper than being awkward, being poor, being quiet. He was different in a way Snakebite would never allow. But something told him Alejo might understand.