We Are the Ants(83)

I wondered if that’s why the sluggers always sent me back without my clothes. They had the technology to travel the universe and draw out my memories; surely, they could have returned me to Earth fully dressed.

“I tried to keep to myself, and read every book I could get my hands on, but it’s tough. Most every kid in juvie is inside because they screwed up pretty bad, but they’re all just boys hiding under layers of false bravado. They act like thugs, but most of them miss their mothers. Most still believe they can do anything.”

“Do you believe that?” Audrey asked.

Diego nodded. “If a kid looks like he doesn’t give a shit, it’s not because he doesn’t believe in himself anymore; it’s because no one else believes in him.”

I thought about Jesse. I wondered if that’s why he killed himself. If he thought no one believed in him and that his only escape was at the end of a noose. I wondered about Marcus, too. People believed in him, but the person they believed in was a lie. I don’t know when Marcus stopped being himself and started pretending to be the person others expected him to be.

Charlie was chewing on his fingers again, biting the skin around the nail, and Audrey looked like she was going to fall asleep. “Did it work?” I asked. “Juvie, I mean. Did it change you?”

Diego cocked his head and looked at me as if that wasn’t the question he’d expected me to ask. “People don’t really change; they just find something else to give their life meaning.”

“Do you regret what you did?” Audrey asked.

“Sometimes . . .”

I sensed Diego was going to say more, but Charlie stood up, drawing our attention. I followed his line of sight to the doctor walking through the double doors. She was short and stocky, and carried herself with confidence. Charlie rushed to meet her, and Diego held my hand while we watched. I knew it was bad news the moment I saw her pinched lips and tired eyes. Charlie went rigid, offering the doctor robotic nods as she explained what happened. We were too far away to hear.

“They’re going to take me to see Zooey,” Charlie said when the doctor left. “You should go home.”

“What about you?”

“Just . . .”

Audrey stood, her keys jingling in her hand. “We’ll drive your car here and leave it in the parking lot.”

Charlie nodded, but I doubted he’d heard the words.

“Mr. Denton?” A nurse stood waiting by the doors.

“I’m gonna . . .”

I slugged Charlie lightly in the arm. “She’s okay. You’re both going to be okay.”

“Yeah, Henry. Sure.” Charlie followed the nurse into the bowels of the hospital, and I watched him go. I jumped when Diego touched my shoulder.

“We should get out of here,” he said. “Clean the house before your mom gets home.”

“What do you think happened?” Audrey asked.

“I think I’m not going to be an uncle anymore.”

? ? ?

Audrey tried to make me sit in the front seat on the way home, but I refused. It was her car, after all. I stared at the streak of blood on the leather and wondered if the baby were already dead or if it had offered the world one mewling cry—a first and last protest—before succumbing to gravity.

We sat parked in my driveway for a while. I didn’t even realize we’d arrived until Audrey looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “We missed midnight.”

I didn’t know if the stain would come out or if some shadow of it would always remain. “We didn’t miss it,” I said. “It just happened without us.”

It seems silly to worry about the arbitrary moment some person long dead declared to be the end of one year and the beginning of another, as if our attempts to divide time into meaningful chunks actually mean anything. People wait for the countdown to tell them that it’s okay to believe in themselves again. They end each year with failure, but hope that when the clock strikes twelve, they can begin the new year with a clean slate. They tell themselves that this is the year things will happen, never realizing that things are always happening; they’re just happening without them.

“I should get home,” Audrey said.

“Are you okay to drive?” Diego asked.

“Yeah.”

When Audrey’s BMW disappeared into the night, Diego hugged me close. I wanted him to kiss me, to kiss away everything that had happened. To kiss me until time reversed and we were back in my bedroom. But you can’t live in the past; you can only visit. I wasn’t sure what was happening between us, but I didn’t want it to happen without me.

“Happy New Year, Henry.”

“Happy New Year, Diego.”





6 January 2016


Hardly giving us time to breathe, Ms. Faraci launched into her lecture on acids and bases and the importance of a neutral pH. I already knew most of what she was teaching, and glanced over my shoulder at Marcus out of boredom. He’d snuck into class at the last minute, looking ragged. I searched for the boy who’d given me the calling card behind the auditorium before winter break, but couldn’t find him. Marcus’s eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks hollow. His New Year’s Eve party was all anyone had talked about in the halls and before classes. Rumor was that Marcus had leapt from his roof into his pool wearing nothing but his grin; that he’d passed out pills like candy; that the party had devolved into an orgy of Dionysian proportions. But the more Marcus tries to prove that he’s the life of the party, the less I believe him.