Sadie(17)

“Where’s D-Darren?”

May Beth said I can be off-putting sometimes, the way I cut straight through the bullshit and right to the bone when I’ve got my sights set on something—that I don’t spend enough time on the lead-in to make things comfortable, I guess. I’ve decided the only thing someone can do about that is either love it or hate it because I’m not changing it. From the look on her face, I can’t tell if Marlee hates it. Her smile fades, but she keeps her eyes on Breckin.

“Kid,” she says, and I really wish people would stop calling me kid. “I don’t know the first thing about you and you think I should tell you anything I know about him?”

“M-more or less.”

She spoons more applesauce into Breckin’s mouth.

“What you want him for?”

“I w-want to k-kill him.”

The spoon freezes an inch from Breckin’s face and his confusion is immediate. He slaps his hands on his high chair tray, calling Marlee’s attention back to him. She dips the spoon into his mouth and then sets it all aside.

“It’s a j-joke,” I say.

“Right,” she says back.

I pick at the tab of the Coke can, letting it catch under my nail before pinging back into place. She says, “I want another cigarette.”

“S-so have one.”

“I don’t smoke around the baby.”

But in the end, she does. She moves herself to the corner of the kitchen and lights up again, carefully turning her face away from Breckin every time she exhales, like it will make a difference. She says, “He hasn’t been around in a couple years. Used to always be around.”

“At R—at Ray’s.”

“Sometimes.” She fidgets, bites her lip. “Where are you from, anyway?”

“D-doesn’t matter.”

She rolls her eyes. “Come on, kid. Give me something.”

“—” I set the Coke down. “I-I’m not a—I’m not a kid.”

She brings the cigarette to her mouth, chewing on her knuckle while smoke drifts lazily around her face. Breckin doesn’t seem put out over the impromptu end of snack time. He’s babbling to himself, enthralled with the sound of his own voice.

“They’re tearing this whole town down,” she says after a minute. “They got this new development coming.” She takes another drag, inhales so deeply, I fleetingly imagine her cancered future. “It’s stupid. I don’t know what they’re trying at. This isn’t like the rest of the state, you know? Fuckin’ … Whole Foods and yoga … and if they pull it off, I can’t afford to live here when it’s a shithole. I don’t know where I’d go.”

“C-Cold Creek.”

“What?”

“W-where I’m from.”

“Never heard of it.” She squints. “You know what he’s about?”

“Y-yeah,” I say. I know it better than you.

I take another sip of the Coke and it’s starting to taste too sweet. I wish the air were moving around in here. Marlee takes another drag of her smoke and Breckin waves his hands around and I feel like this has happened a hundred times before me, that I’ve seen all there is to see of their lives. I look down at myself and the fire-red parts of my chest overwhelm me with the feeling that I want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“You know his name’s not Darren?” she asks. I nod. “I mean, that’s what he went by when he was living here, but I never got used to sayin’ it.”

“W-what’s h-his real name?”

“We’ll just keep it Darren for now,” she says.

“He was K-Keith w-when I knew him.”

“Huh.” She chews her lip. “That’s not his name either.”

“H-how d-d—how do you know?”

“Because my brother used to go to school with him. I was seven years behind them both. Time I finished, they were long gone. I moved out here, got hitched, got divorced and my brother, well. He was making a whole lot more of himself.”

“H-how’d he d-do that?”

People around here hardly ever seem to do that.

“My parents had enough money for one kid and ended up with two.” Marlee shrugs. “He was the boy. He was the one they pinned all their hopes on, so he got more. He got college.”

“W-what was … he like?” I can’t seem to resist asking. “B-back then?”

She looks away. “He was poor as most of the rest of us. But he was quiet. Sort of dirty too, like he didn’t look after himself, like hygiene-wise. He was weird … he did some weird shit, and he got his ass kicked a lot for it. Bullied, I guess. And his parents—they were a mess. His dad would drink and go at him with a belt.”

“Oh,” I say.

She clears her throat. “By high school, my brother—thing you have to understand about my brother is he was a golden boy in every sense of the word—he took Darren under his wing, sort of, just started making a point of being nice to him. When I asked why, he said it was important to set that kind of example because we’re no better or worse than the people we walk amongst.” She pauses. “He was a real asshole, my brother, in case that didn’t make it obvious. Anyway, the other kids, they eased off and Darren and my brother became inseparable … it was sorta like—you’re probably too young for that cartoon about the little dog chasin’ after the big dog? Hell, I am too. But it was like that. Darren was always at my brother’s heels. We’d have him at our house for dinner all the time…” She trails off. “He gave me my first kiss. I was ten and he was seventeen. That’s what Darren was like back then.”