Bone Gap (14 page)

“I won't even open that yearbook,” Petey said.

“Yes, you will!” sang her mother.

“No, I won't!” Petey sang back. “And I'm walking Finn out now!”

“Don't get lost,” said Mel.

Petey slammed the kitchen door shut and stalked into the
backyard. She waited until they were around the side of the house before she said, “Okay, seriously?
I hope you never change
?”

Finn flushed to his hairline. “I was going to write something about my dishonorable intentions toward you, but I didn't think your mom would approve.”

“Oh, yes, she would. She likes to think that she's hip about all that stuff. Which she is, I guess, but it's sort of weird to listen to a thirty-six-year-old woman reminiscing about all the boys she made out with under the bleachers when she was in high school. Who wants to hear about that? Even if it's not illegal to say out loud, it's got to be illegal-
ish
.”

“We never made out under any bleachers.”

“Who needs bleachers?” Petey threaded her fingers through his and pulled him into a patch of wildflowers, more weeds than flowers, a patch that came up almost to their elbows. “So, about these intentions of yours. How dishonorable are we talking?”

He was going to make a joke—
Write about the moment of your most dishonorable intentions in the form of a fortune cookie
—but her flashing eyes, the curve of her shoulders in the tight T-shirt, the secret wink of her collarbones under her skin, the sweet smell of strawberries thick in the air, sent his thoughts scattering like fish at the splash of a rock. He dropped the shopping bag, not caring what broke. Twining his hands in her hair, he kissed her as if possessed, and they tumbled into the flowers, their bodies hidden in the tall grass. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips and they moved together, losing themselves
in each other. And though there were layers of clothes between them, he could imagine himself inside her.

He didn't have a coherent thought for a long, long while.

Finn took the same route back home, passing the Dog That Sleeps in the Lane, who didn't even lift his head to yawn when Finn said, “Later, Dog.” As day drifted into night, the sky shucked its oranges and purples for black and blue. A sickle moon threaded itself into the silk. Finn walked in the ditch on the side of the road so that the passing cars wouldn't mow him down. Or so he wouldn't stagger into oncoming traffic, he wasn't sure which.

He trudged along, the night air filled with the song of crickets and the calls of frogs and the
Who? Who?
of the occasional owl. The sour-milk-and-manure smell of the cows came and went with the breeze. Pollen tickled his nose. The grass crunched beneath his feet. The plants could use some rain. The frogs, too. The whole town. He'd like to be outside with Petey in the rain, one of those warm summer rains that was just hard enough to drench you, but not hard enough to chase you indoors.

Behind him, the rumble of an engine, the whir of tires, a voice yelling, “MOOOOOOOONFAAAAAAAAACE!” He ducked just in time to avoid a rotten green tomato to the head as the Rudes drove by in their old pickup, their cackles wafting behind.

Then the Rudes were gone, and their cackling with them, and Finn had the road to himself. He was so busy listening to
the crickets and the frogs and the crunch of his own boots and imagining Petey in a rain shower, skin slick and sparkling with raindrops, he didn't notice the footsteps behind him until they were
right
behind him. He spun around, fists up. But the road was dark and empty. No one was there.

He shook his head and kept walking. Again, the crickets and frogs lulled him and his mind drifted into another storm and burst of Petey, and again, only the sound of strange footsteps kicked him out of his dreams. He stopped, head cocked. Even the frogs and the owls held their breath.

Nothing.

The houses were set far back from the road, cars dark and silent in the lanes. The fields stretched for miles in either direction. He couldn't see anything moving on the road or in the fields, but still, the skin on the back of his neck prickled.

Miguel's voice boomed in his head.
Any minute now, a cat will jump out in front of you and you're going to feel like a dumbass. And just when you relax, the ax murderer will chop off your head. Surprise cat, then head chop. Always in that order.

“Shut up,” Finn said.

He picked up the pace. He wished Miguel hadn't seen so many horror movies. He wished Miguel didn't
talk
about the movies so much. He wished—

A white ball of feathers exploded from the weeds and hit him right in the stomach. He lurched sideways, almost crushing the dazed chicken flapping at his feet.

Dumbass. On cue.

He scooped up the chicken with his free arm. Runaround Sue coming full circle, he guessed. Charlie would be happy to see her, anyway.

He started walking again, the paper bag in one arm and the chicken in the other. He thought the chicken would calm as he carried her—Charlie carried all his chickens around—but her frantic clucks added to the chorus of crickets and the crescendo of the owls:
Who? Who? WHO?

He slowed when he finally got to Charlie Valentine's house, but the lights were out; maybe Charlie was off on yet another “date.” He circled around to the back of the house. If the door was unlocked, he could tuck the chicken inside. But the chicken flapped her wings, erupted from Finn's grasp, and half ran, half flew across the yard.

“Great,” said Finn. “That's just great.”

A voice like the echo in a sewer said, “I see that you found a chick of your own.”

Finn's skin went cold and pebbled all over.

Slowly, he turned. A tall man stood in front of him, taller than Finn, taller than Sean, a total stranger yet so familiar at the same time.

Finn asked the owl's question. “Who are you?”

The man held up both palms and tipped his stone head. And then Finn knew. He knew.

Finn could hardly breathe, could hardly believe he would
get this chance, but he once again dropped the bag he was carrying, forced the words out:
“Where's Roza?”

“How is
your
young lady?”

“What?” Finn said, as he tried to match that icy stare, memorize features as bland as a scarecrow's. “You've been following me.”

“I was . . . curious. She's quite striking, though I imagine not everyone agrees.”

“How do you know who I visit? If you go near her, I'll—”

“Please,” said the man, cutting him off. “I'm interested in only one woman. Unlike some people.” He pointed at Charlie Valentine's house.

So the freak had been following Charlie, too. Finn planted his feet more firmly. “Where's Roza?”

“Think of Priscilla now. Think of what everyone else will think.”

All the wrong questions exploded from him. “Think about what? What do you mean?”

“Strange boy, ugly girl, maybe he's taking advantage of her, maybe she'll do anything to—”

“Shut up!”

“He's so strange, that boy. Too strange. Maybe he had something to do with what happened to that other girl . . . you never know. Even your own brother believes this.”

“Where's Roza, you creepy piece of shit!”

“She'll love me yet,” the man said. He twitched like a
cornstalk in the wind and slipped right through Finn's furious, outstretched hands, as if he'd never been there at all. Finn heard a car engine and raced to catch the plate, but the black SUV was halfway down the road before he got to the end of Charlie's lane.

Like a brainless terrier, Finn chased the car down the road until it vanished in the darkness. He bent under the disappointed moon, hands braced on his knees, panting into the warm summery air, wanting to give himself a beating for letting the man get away. But he took off again, this time in the other direction, not stopping until he reached Jonas Apple's house more than a mile away. He pounded on the door, begging for Jonas to open it, until Jonas did, his hair standing on end like the comb of a rooster. Jonas listened to Finn's story, nodding and sighing.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, what did Charlie have to say about it?”

Finn stopped talking. “I don't think he was home.”

“You didn't check?”

Finn closed his eyes. “No, I ran right here.”

Jonas smoothed his hair, which promptly sprang up again. “Listen, son, have you been sniffing something?”

“No!”

“Don't be afraid to admit you have a problem. Sean would help you. I would help you. All of Bone Gap would help you.”

“I'm not sniffing anything!”

“Jeez Louise, it's not meth, is it? That stuff will eat holes in your brains.”

“I don't have holes in my brains!” But he sounded as if he did,
and Jonas was eyeing him as if he did, even as he pulled on some shoes to go with Finn back to Charlie's. It didn't help that Charlie was home, that apparently, he'd been there the whole evening.

“Nope,” said Charlie, “didn't hear anything. Wasn't expecting any guests either. Especially no one who twitched like a wheat stalk.”

“A cornstalk,” said Finn.

“Listen, kid, you're obsessed. You have to let it go,” said Charlie.

“I can't! He was here! He was spying on you, too! He was spying on me! He knows me. He knows Sean. He . . . he knows things he can't know.”

Both Jonas and Charlie stared at Finn as if he weren't just high, he was completely barking mad, and any minute he'd take to sleeping in the middle of the lane, and Finn thought maybe that was an excellent idea, because then a car might hit him, and the people of Bone Gap could tell one another that they'd always known he'd come to such an end. Poor Sidetrack, poor Spaceman, poor motherless boy.

“I'm sorry,” Finn mumbled, a global apology for everything he was, and everything he was not, and all the ways he couldn't let it go. Instead, they let
him
go, watching as he gathered up his paper bag full of honey and stumbled like a drunk toward home, to the brother he hoped might believe him.

SEAN SAT IN THE DIM LIGHT OF THE KITCHEN, A SKETCH
smoothed out on the surface of the table. He was five when he learned he could draw.
Really
draw. His horses looked like horses, his cows like cows, his cats like cats. But people were his best subjects, looking like people and not stick figures or scarecrows. When he brought a drawing home from preschool, the paper decorated with gold stars and happy faces, his mother, Didi, would take the drawing and exclaim, “A star! Good for you!” She would gather him up and squeeze him tight, enveloping him in a cloud of perfume and cigarette smoke, and tell him what a wonderful boy he was, and how he'd be a great artist one
day, and how she was so proud. Sean was her big boy, and he would grow up to be a great man.

The drawings papered the front of the refrigerator, waiting for the next time his father would come home. Hugh O'Sullivan drove a truck and had only a few weekends a month to spend with his wife and his son. But the first thing he did when he limped into the house—the army had left him with a bum leg, trucking had given him a bad back—was stand in front of that refrigerator, examining all the drawings Sean had made since the last time his father was home. Hugh would put one large hand on the top of Sean's head and cup his own chin with the other, scratching at the growth of dark beard. After a good five minutes had passed, he would choose his favorite. It was almost always a picture of Sean's mother. Sean drew his mother a lot because, well, she was his mother, because she was prettier than anyone in Bone Gap, and because his father loved those drawings best and would fold them up and put them in his wallet, already fat with pictures.

Sean's father would then pour a glass of water from the tap, drink the whole thing down, and do it twice more. He would set the glass next to the sink and call for his wife. Didi would come running the way she always did, leaping into his arms like a child. Hugh would catch her—no matter how sore his leg, no matter how sore his back—and he would call her his Dark Horse, his lovely Dark Horse, and wouldn't ask her what she'd been doing while he was away.

Sean was six when Finn was born. If Sean was his mother's big boy, Finn was his mother's beautiful boy. Both had inherited their father's thick black hair and espresso eyes, but Finn also inherited his mother's delicate features, her dreamy distractibility. You couldn't leave Finn alone in the yard lest he follow a parade of ants right into the road. He would disappear into the cornfields for hours, because he claimed the corn was whispering to him. He had whole conversations with birds and fireflies, goats and horses. When people spoke to him, however, Finn focused on their mouths, or their hair, or their eyebrows, or their shoes, and forgot to focus on their words. “What?” Finn asked, over and over and over. “What?”

Which was exactly what he said when Didi told her boys that their father had died in a trucking accident on I-80 in Ohio. The ambulance had taken him to the hospital but hadn't gotten there fast enough. Twelve-year-old Sean had held his mother while she sobbed, and Finn had said, “What? What?”

Didi was young, and so pretty that the people of Bone Gap assumed that, after a time, a new man would step in, and that it would be good for everyone. Didi was the kind of woman who needed a man, they said, and all young boys need a dad. But Hugh O'Sullivan had been the only man who had ever held Didi's attention for longer than a few months, and even he had never held it completely; none of the new ones were up to the task. Didi grew dreamier and more distracted, and found other things to smoke besides cigarettes. Sean bought the groceries
and made sure his brother had clean clothes and notebooks for school. Finn talked to squirrels and mooned out the window.