Expelled(4)

Suddenly I can’t go any farther.

Not up, not down. My arms and legs quiver and throb.

I close my eyes tight. Will myself to keep breathing. It’s only a few more feet, Theo, I tell myself, which is a lie because it’s ten yards at least.

But somehow I manage to start to climb again. And in another few moments, I’m on the deck of the water tower, breathless and awed. I’m all alone on top of the world—that’s what it feels like.

There’s a metal walkway all around the water tank itself and a railing to keep me from falling to my death. I sit down, my back against the tank. My feet dangle over the edge, and my heels touch thin air.

Behind me are spray-painted messages from those who climbed before me: Fuck school, Jason loves Lindsay, Billy is a Boner Sniffer. Down below, everything is different shades of darkness: the bluish black of the streets, the charcoal black of the trees, the glittering black of car hoods. Above me, it’s nothing but stars.

When I was ten, a senior from Arlington took a swan dive off this tower. I shudder at the memory, but I can’t help wondering how he did it. How he coaxed himself to the edge and then leapt into the air.

How, in this case, is an easier question than why.

But that’s what I’d ask my dad if I could: Why’d you do it?

I know the how, after all, because I was the one who found him—and the gun.





4


I stay up there on the water tower for a long time. At first I’m tripping on the silence and beauty—the swooping bats, the faraway stars—but pretty soon I’m just working up the courage to leave.

Don’t look down, don’t look down—I told myself that while climbing up. The problem with descent, though, is that you have to look down.

By the time I make it back to earth in one piece, my head’s spinning, my legs are shaking, and I’ve lost all feeling in my fingers. I reek of fear sweat. I rip my shirt in the blackberry bushes.

In other words, it’s time to call it a night.

So I really can’t explain why I don’t go home. Why I start walking in the opposite direction instead, past the Shell station at the corner of Pine and Osage, which is the dividing line between the nice side of town and the less nice side. The Shell’s also where you can shoulder-tap for beer if your fake ID sucks. Mine—a gift from Jude—looks like a first grader made it with Scotch tape and crayons, and it should go without saying that I’ve never been dumb enough to try to use it.

On the nice side of town, big elm trees line the streets and the houses are Tudors instead of ranches. Automated sprinklers mist the lawns and gardens, and I swear the air feels cleaner. Cooler.

This is Sasha’s side of town.

A left, then a right, and this is Sasha’s street.

And now I’ve obviously gone crazy, because I’m walking up the pathway to her front door.

And knocking on it.

On a list of things I thought I’d one day do, this would be pretty near the absolute bottom—like, become Batman might be the only thing below it.

The door swings open, and there’s a tall, dark-haired man looking at me coldly. “Good evening,” he says. “Can I help you?”

“Oh! Uh,” I say, taking a big step backward in surprise. What were you expecting, Theo—Sasha in a skimpy nightgown, asking you to tuck her in?

“You don’t look like the Domino’s guy, so I’m going to guess you’re here to see Sasha,” the man says. “Would you like to come in?” The way he asks it makes it seem like he wants me to say no.

“Uh,” I say, because I’m a miracle of eloquence. “Please?”

He sighs and reluctantly opens the door a few inches wider. “Sasha’s in the kitchen.”

And just like that, I’m in Sasha Ellis’s house. And there she is, almost within arm’s reach: she’s sitting on a bench in a little breakfast nook, and she’s knitting.

Knitting.

I don’t know why, but this strikes me as highly bizarre. I thought knitting was for little old ladies and people who need to fake productivity when they’re binge-watching Game of Thrones, not for brilliant seventeen-year-olds who barely ever take their noses out of works of great literature.

The other weird thing is that Sasha looks different. Smaller somehow, and maybe even younger. She’s wearing sweats and a pair of fluffy white slippers. When she glances up at me, her expression is wary. “Hi,” she says. She slides her needles and yarn into a basket under the table and crosses her arms across her chest.

“We were just talking about the poetry of Theodore Roethke.” Sasha’s dad pours expensive-looking whiskey into a heavy crystal tumbler. “Cheers,” he says. He lifts the glass at me and takes a sip.

“He was talking about the poetry of Theodore Roethke,” Sasha corrects.

“‘The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy,’” he quotes. Then he turns to me, smiling icily, and suddenly he doesn’t look like a small-town dad; he looks like a really handsome actor impersonating a small-town dad. It’s unsettling. He’s also possibly drunk.

“Matthew’s a lit professor,” Sasha explains. “It’s important not to encourage him, because otherwise he’ll go on quoting poetry all night.”