You'd Be Home Now (93)

MY FACE IS BURIED in Daniel Wankel’s coat and snow covers our heads, our jackets. Last summer I listened to a girl die in these woods, right across the road, as our twisted car lay half in and half out of Wolf Creek, the water burbling around us. I listened to my brother breathing raggedly. The sound of sirens filled my ears and my world was upside down and changed forever. These woods keep taking things from me.

I say that to Daniel.

His arms are around me. “We should go now,” he says. “We need to get you home.”

I tried as hard as I could to bring my brother home.

And he didn’t want to come back.



* * *



—

My dad flings the front door open as soon as we walk up onto the porch.

“My god, where have you been? We’ve been out of our minds, Emory.”

I walk straight past him, past my mother, wringing her hands next to Nana on the couch, and Maddie, still in her puffy winter coat from her flight. They’re all shouting at me, but I don’t hear them. I grab the key from the file cabinet in the mudroom off the kitchen.

In the garage, I stab the key into the cabinet lock.

    Where my mother hid everything. Everything that could hurt Joey, tempt him, break him.

But it was always outside this house, waiting for him to falter.

In the living room, Daniel is murmuring to my dad. They all get quiet when they see me, just standing there.

I hold up the bottle of Vicodin. “I’m going to take some of this now, okay? Because my knee hurts like shit. It has for months. But I’m not going to take three, or four, or twenty. Just two. Because I hurt, and I need something, and because Joey isn’t coming back. I saw him. He’s not coming back.”



* * *



—

I pop two pills and swallow them, dry, and let the bottle fall to the floor.

It is beautiful, like wings, like Joey said. On my bed in my dark room, staring at the ceiling. I feel like warm air. I feel like ocean water on the most beautiful of days, soft and drifting and perfect. Untouchable. I get it now, I do.

How glorious it is to drown.



* * *



—

When I wake up, Maddie is next to me, stroking my cheek.

“Daniel told us everything,” she says. “Listen, Mom and Dad don’t care. The jewelry, all that. The Oxy at the dance. They’re just glad you’re safe, okay?”

Her fingers feel nice on my skin.

“That little shit. Luther Leonard,” she says. “I could kill him. I might.”

I shake my head. “Maddie.”

“What?”

    “It was Joey’s idea. For me to take the jewelry. Not Luther’s. He said so.”

“What?”

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad. That would kill them, I think. Right now.”

“That was a ballsy move, sister. Robbing your own parents to get your brother back.”

I roll away from her. Joey’s shadowed face swims before my eyes, so I close them. I just want to sleep.

I don’t dream of Candy. I don’t dream of Joey. I dream of the ghosties, on the rocky river beach. The way their empty soup cans rattle against pebbles and stones. The way they stack spent cigarettes in small piles and clench together when they sleep, a human mass of sadness trying to stay warm. The way my father and I visit them with offerings, like you do with the dead. Flowers here, a candle there, a can of beans here, a pint of gin there.



* * *



—

My mother holds my forehead. “You aren’t warm.”

“I don’t feel well,” I lie. “I feel sick.”

I’m still in my clothes from Halloween night, even my jacket. I’m too hot and I’m starting to smell, but I don’t care.

“You’ve missed three days of school, Emory.”

I shrug, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head.

“Emory, please.”

Emory. Emory. Emory.

Her voice is like knives in my ears.





45




“GGET UP.” SHARP FINGERS, poking my shoulder through my duvet.

“Get up, or I will stand here and sing ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ until your ears bleed, Emory Ward.”

Simon Stanley is in my bedroom. Simon Stanley is trying to pull my duvet off me.

I peek up at him. I live in a weird world now, a world where brothers go missing and drama teachers show up in your bedroom.

“That’s better. Now, up, up. We’re going for a drive. And I’m not taking no for an answer. Also, I’m your teacher, and I will fail you. Wait, we don’t have grades. Drama Club is voluntary. Shit. Just get up, Emory Ward.”



* * *



—

He drives us to the Mill Haven Cemetery in his crappy little Honda (“courtesy of my illustrious teacher’s salary, enjoy,” he told me when I got in), spread out on the high hill. The pathways are slippery, and he holds on to my elbow as we walk. “Aging is not the most fun thing in the world,” he says. “In fact, it downright sucks.”

“I don’t understand why we’re here,” I say tiredly. “I really just want to go home.”