The Serpent King(67)
“God’s abandoned me.”
“He hasn’t. I promise.”
“Today he has.”
“Will you pray with me, Dillard?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll pray for both of us.”
“You do that.”
“Jesus knows our sorrows. He tasted them. He drank from the bitter cup.”
“Then he knows already that I’m not getting out of bed today.”
Lydia sat in her car and tried calling Dill again. It was her fifth unsuccessful attempt. She shook her head and stared at Dill’s ramshackle house, looking for movement inside. Nothing. His mother’s car was gone. But the house didn’t feel empty to her. She looked at her watch. School started in fifteen minutes.
Where are you, Dill? Somehow I doubt you decided to get up bright and early and walk to school.
She sighed, started her car, and went to put it in gear. Then she abruptly stopped.
Maybe another time. Maybe I’d just drive away. Catch up with Dill tomorrow. Maybe chew his ass out for making me come to his house for nothing. But these aren’t normal times. You were oblivious while Travis’s dad was knocking his front teeth out. You’re not going to let Dill bleed to death or choke on his own vomit in there.
Her heart beating fast, she got out and walked quickly to Dill’s front door. She knocked and listened for some sign of life. Nothing. She pounded again, louder. Still nothing. She turned and started to walk back to her car.
These aren’t normal times. These aren’t normal times.
Her heart pulsed. She steeled herself and turned back. She looked from side to side at the neighbors’ unfortunate, decaying houses. It seemed unlikely that their inhabitants would care much if someone waltzed uninvited into the Early home.
She tried the loose, rattling doorknob. It turned and the front door creaked open. A puff of air smelling of mildewed carpet and stale bread hit her nostrils.
This is what despair smells like. She had never been inside Dill’s house. He’d never invited her in. In fact, he’d always taken great pains to ensure that she never even saw inside. It was easy to understand why. It was worse than she imagined—not that she ever particularly enjoyed imagining how Dill lived.
“Dill?” she called. Her voice died, muffled in the closeness of Dill’s sagging, dusty living room. She stepped inside, picking her way along in the gray light, as though the floor might collapse beneath her feet.
“Dill?” She looked into a spartan bedroom with a neatly made bed, a cross-stitch with a Bible verse above the bed, a Bible on the nightstand, and almost nothing else.
She turned to the closed door behind her, the floor creaking. She heard a buzzing in her ears. Her insides burned with adrenaline. She felt acid fear in the back of her throat. Cold panic rising.
She reached out, hesitated, and knocked softly. “Dill? Hey, dude. School. Dill?” Silence. She tried to sound casual and brave. “Hey, Dill, if you’re in there cranking it, you better stop, because I’m coming in. And that would be very awkward for both of us.” Silence.
Please. Please. Please. Just be okay in there. Please. You cannot die in this awful place.
She turned the doorknob and pushed. The door fell on its broken hinge and caught on the carpet. “Dill?” Lydia pushed a couple of times before she figured out that she needed to lift the door by the knob while pushing.
She looked around in the gloom. A bit of light crept in around the edges of the closed blinds, illuminating the shape in the bed. Dill lay shirtless and still, his back to the door. Lydia could see every bone in his back. He looked so small. Lydia’s heart rate slowed a bit when she saw him breathe.
“Dill?” She slowly approached, catching herself as she almost tripped on one of Dill’s boots. She sat on a corner of the bed beside him, reached out, and gingerly touched his shoulder. He felt warm. That was good.
“What,” Dill said. His voice was stony and lackluster.
“I was worried about you. I am worried about you. You okay?”
Dill kept staring at the opposite wall. “Never better.”
Lydia forced a laugh. “Ask a dumb question, right?”
“Yeah.”
Lydia looked around the room as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Dill’s few clothes—the ones she had helped pick out—lay strewn on the floor and hanging from half-open dresser drawers. A layer of wadded-up balls of paper, maybe torn from one of Dill’s songwriting notebooks, covered the floor. His guitar leaned haphazardly in the corner, one of the strings broken and dangling.
Step one: get Dill to leave this room, because it’s making me want to kill myself and I’m only moderately depressed.
Lydia touched his shoulder again and shook him slightly. “Hey. Hey. Let’s go somewhere. Doesn’t have to be school. Let’s ditch and go watch trains or go to the Column or something.”
“No.”
“Let’s go on a road trip somewhere. Where do you wanna go? Nashville? Atlanta? Let’s go to Memphis and go see Graceland.”
“No.”
“Okay, you suggest something.”
“Lay here.”
“That’s kind of a bummer of a party.”
“Yeah, probably.”
This isn’t going anywhere. Lydia rested her hand on Dill’s shoulder while she considered her next move.