Gravestone (24 page)

52. And So

And so I stay.

Like I’m going anywhere.

Some ghost of an adult beautiful fantasy Jocelyn is telling me to stay, so yeah, I’m going to stay.

I just hope she doesn’t tell me to fall asleep on the train tracks tomorrow, because chances are high that I might.

I stay and I endure.

Take a breath and hold it.

Keep holding it.

Keep.

Holding.

It.

53. The Hurting

The boy sits with his arms on his knees and his hands over his eyes.

Is it an horrific dream?

Yet somehow he does what everybody wants him to do.

“Listen to me, okay? You have to lie low. For a while.”

So he listens to his newfound friend and relative Jared and lies low.

He ticks off the time, the class periods, the homework, the bus rides, the silence.

Say what you want.

“You go about your business, and you leave your stories and your troubles to your imagination. I’m not saying that it’s easy being a newcomer, but you gotta go with the flow.”

So he listens to his sheriff, who isn’t being very sheriff-y, and decides to go with the flow.

No fighting back at the bullies.

No speaking out to others.

No investigating with Newt.

No investigating in the woods.

How can I be sure?

“Your mother needs you.”

So he listens to the shadow of Jocelyn and stays around to try and help his mother.

Memories fade.

Avoiding the dreams.

Avoiding the memories.

Avoiding the pain.

The scars still linger.

“When I tell somebody something, I mean it. You do not want to mess with me.”

So he doesn’t mess with the man named Staunch.

Waiting but not relating.

And he walks the familiar halls and sees the familiar faces and feels the familiar fears and finds the familiar shadows. A host of secrets and lies and deception.

It’s a very, very mad world.

The school doesn’t know him and the teachers look through him and everything makes him sad.

“Don’t lose your sanity like the rest of us.”

So he tries to follow the card’s advice from the unknown friend or mocker.

You can change.

So he tries to stay sane and tries to change and tries to fit in.

He tries to listen. He tries to change and not do anything.

“Mind your own business and stay away from trouble.”

So he minds his own business and stays away from trouble and lets February become March.

I’ll make no noise.

And he doesn’t.

I’ll hide my pain.

And he does.

I’ll close my eyes.

And he does, every day.

He finally does everything he’s told to do and he does it in silence and fear and anger and numbness.

There’s nowhere to run or go.

He stays away from anything bright or hopeful. 

He closes the door and locks it and memorizes the albums that detail his hurting.

54. Groundhog Day

I almost forgot about Aunt Alice. I’m just about maxed out with creepiness until the moment Mom says, “We need to visit your aunt,” and I suddenly remember that
oh yeah I have an aunt named Alice.

Who likes mannequins.

And whose place smells like death.

And who looks like she’s one séance away from joining the realm of the dead.

“Thanks, but I have to go grave digging tonight.”

“That’s not funny. It’s been a while since I visited her, and it’d be good for her to see you, too. Last time, she asked about you.”

“As in the size of my body? So she knows how much stuffing she can fill me with?”

Mom laughs, but the joke of Aunt Alice doesn’t seem as funny to her as it did the first time we left her creepy cabin.

Soon we arrive at her place. It’s a soggy Sunday afternoon with the rain stopped just enough so we’re able to see the road that leads to my aunt’s cabin. Right before we reach it, my mom drives over something.

“What was that?”

“I don’t want to know,” I say.

She stops the car, and we both get out.

Wedged underneath the car is something big and hairy. Mom freaks out and gets back in the car. I notice that the thing is not moving

hello nice little doggie hello nice little black smoke doggie from hell

and I also notice the smell.

That thing isn’t going to move for a long time.

It looks gray but also seems to have glitter over it.

For some reason I think of Bill Murray. I have no idea why.

“Get in the car!”

“It’s dead,” I say through the window.

She rolls it down. “What’s dead?”

“Whatever is under our car. Move up.”

I wish I hadn’t asked Mom to do that.

On the road is the body of a dead groundhog.

I say body because there’s no head to the thing.

And I say dead because—well, there’s no head to the thing.

If that thing jumps up and starts running at me, I don’t care what happens, I’m going to be as far away as possible from the woods and Solitary and North Carolina and Bill Murray movies for the rest of my life.

Mom parks the car and then gets out. I walk her way.

“Just a dead animal.”

“What?”

“A groundhog.”

“You sure it’s—”

“Yeah,” I tell her as I block her from going any further.

Last thing Mom needs is any more reason to have nightmares.

Aunt Alice seems happy today. And when I say happy, I mean deliriously happy. Medicated happy. Or possessed happy.

“Come on in, come on.”

Last time she wasn’t as friendly. Her short, round figure seems to roll through the living room. The place is the same as I remember it before, dark and creepy, although there seems to be a bit more light this time. Maybe she has the drapes open or something. It still stinks. The black crow is still there. But thankfully, no mannequins.

“Just sittin’ down for some lunch.”

I follow Mom and look over her shoulder, and when I see the family at the table I stop and then get in a sprinting stance, ready to dash.

Sitting around the square table in the corner of the kitchen are four …

oh man

I see that Melissa the Mannequin has gone and found herself a family. A husband with blond hair and two kids. A boy and a girl.

Oh this is beyond creepy.

They’re clothed, and their blank faces stare out like the rest of the things in this house, screaming
Help us, we’re trapped with a short devil lady
.

“Sorry, I didn’t know ya’ll were coming.”

“You’re having quite the party, huh?” Mom says. She glances back at me. “Would you like anything, Chris?”

“No. But thank you.”

She looks at me and gives me a “cut the crap” look.

Mom talks with Aunt Alice about the weather and about making jelly and about the weather while I feel claustrophobic. I look around the living room, and I see a picture of Uncle Robert in a frame, one I didn’t see last time we were here. I’m tempted to take it and show Mom. But as I glance into the kitchen, she notices me looking at it.

“I gave that to her last time I was here,” Mom says.

I nod. We don’t have any pictures up in our house, not really. But Mom gives Aunt Alice a photo of Uncle Robert.

I’m standing and watching the crow when something catches my eye. It’s the back of the girl mannequin’s head, her dark hair unmoving and her shoulders stiff as my legs feel on a day off from track practice.

Suddenly, the head starts to move.

The face turns, and the eyes are blank and hollow.

No no no.

And worms and maggots suddenly start to pop out of them.

I blink, and of course I don’t see this. This is in my mind, not a dream and not a fantasy. It’s just me imagining something crazy.

I feel hot and dizzy and want to run in the woods for about five days.

“Mom—can I—bathroom?”

“Just down the hall.”

I go down there and find a tiny room with barely space for a toilet, sink, and tub. A big plastic seat-thing sits on top of the toilet, like a basketball rim for a three-year-old. It takes me a few minutes to take it off.

As I’m washing and air drying my hands, I notice the shower curtain hiding the bath behind it.

Of course, I’m curious.

Of course, I can’t let things go.

So of course, I pull back the grimy yellow plastic curtain.

In the tub sits the rest of the groundhog. I see the whiskered face looking up at me as if it’s popping out of a goopy, bloody hole. But of course, there’s no hole. Not in this tub.

I jerk the curtain back and half of it comes down. Then I curse as I turn on the faucet again and rinse my hands with cold water, then douse my face with it.

I look again, and it’s still there.

I’m not imagining this.

I go back out to the main room, feeling woozy. “I need some air,” I tell Mom.

I should tell her to maybe wait to use the restroom until we get back home, but I don’t.

I can’t.

I feel just—just not so good.

55. Double Date

Spring comes, but it sure doesn’t bring hope.

Sometime in March, as I’m minding my business and ignoring things like emails waiting to be read and missing students and the shadows of dead girls I once loved, I get approached by Dan something-or-other who is in my grade and has never acknowledged me once that I can remember. I’m surprised the guy knows my name.

“Hey, Chris, what’s up?”

Dan says this as if we talk a lot.

“Hey,” I say back, pretty confident he doesn’t really want to know what’s up in my life. How long does he have to hear my answer?

“Hey, I got a favor to ask you.”

I’m wondering if he starts every sentence with hey.

“Yeah, okay.”

I’m at my locker and can’t help glancing around to see if this is a prank. He’s not carrying anything from the salad bar in his hands, so I guess I’m lucky there. Not that I could see someone like Dan ever doing that. Dan’s one of the midpack boys. I see him hanging around with Ray and his buddies. Or some of the jocks. Or some of the burnouts. I haven’t really ever noticed Dan, because to be honest there isn’t much to notice about him.

“You know Georgia, right? Georgia Wilson?”

I nod. Georgia is a pretty brunette I’ve seen hanging around with Kelsey. She seems a bit stuck up, but that’s just based on her looks and on the fact that she’s never looked or talked with me either.

“Hey, I got something to ask you, and man, I’ll totally owe you if you help me out.”

“Okay.”

“Look, I’ve been trying to go out with Georgia for like ever, and she just gives me the cold shoulder. You know her, you know? I mean, hey, I get it, but still. I just want her to go out once, you know? So the thing is, I was with her and her friend Kelsey. You know Kelsey, right? Well, they were talking and Georgia was teasing her because she likes you but never in a million years would ask you out, so I kept on about Georgia going out with me, and Kelsey suggested a double date.”

“Kelsey suggested that?”

“Yeah, totally. Not lying.”

“She’s asking me out?”

“No, are you crazy? Look, you can’t even tell them that I was talking to you. She’d flip—Kelsey, that is. She’d die. I couldn’t believe she even suggested something like this, but whatever. She must really like you.”

“She’s basically been ignoring me in art class.”

“Yeah, that’s girls. Georgia goes from talking to me one week to ignoring me the next. Whatever. It’s their time of the month or week thing or whatever. Can’t figure them out.”

I might have expected some things to happen to me today, like falling into a black crater or seeing a life-sized bunny rabbit following me around, but I sure didn’t expect this.

“So what do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Ask Kelsey out.”

“What?”

“Come on, man. She’s cute.”

“I thought this was a double date.”

“Yeah. Say that we want to double with them. Georgia will totally go for it, because she wants Kelsey to get together with you. She thinks you’re like some mysterious guy or something.” He laughs in a way that says
you’re not mysterious you’re just kinda a loser that I need to use for the moment.

“Well, I gotta check my calendar,” I say.

“Okay, you do that. But then let me know.”

Dan apparently doesn’t recognize sarcasm.

“So how am I supposed to do this?”

He slaps me on the back, and I feel like I’ve been permanently imprinted with his handprint. He might be middle of the pack, but the guy is strong.

“How do you ask a girl out? I mean, how’d you ever ask out Jocelyn?”

I look at him to see if he’s joking. Or worse, to see if he’s mocking.

“Man, a hundred guys wanted to go out with her. You had to be doing something right, huh?”

I nod, but carefully.

“Sucks that she moved, you know. But whatcha gonna do?”

Again I try to see if he’s mocking me, but nothing I can see says that he is.

“Just let me know, okay? Talk to Kelsey sometime today. Let’s do it this weekend if it works, okay, man?”

He takes off, and I’m left to wonder how I’m going to ask out a girl who no longer talks to me. We haven’t spoken much at all since she gave me that Valentine’s Day card. I’ve tried.

But you haven’t tried that hard, have you?

And I wonder why I said yes.

Did you have a choice, really?
And do you have any other pressing things to do, really?

I think about Kelsey. She’s cute and fine, but I know that the best thing I can do for her is stay away.

It’s one date. It’s one thing to help a guy out. You could use some more friends, right? And you could have some fun. Right?

I’m surprised Kelsey wants to have anything to do with me.

I think back to not long ago, just a lifetime ago, when Rachel figured out a way for me to ask Jocelyn out.

Maybe one day eventually I’ll grow up and learn to ask girls out on my own.

“Hey.”

The universal word for teen boys everywhere. This can mean many things. It can be a sign that we’re alive, or it can mean that yes we’ve just crashed our car into the tree, or it can mean absolutely nothing.

Kelsey no longer paints by me, but today I’ve brought my painting over by her.

“Can I—do you mind?”

Those eyes peer behind her glasses like a face hiding behind a window. She blushes.

“How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” she says.

I can’t imagine a date because I can’t imagine her talking enough to me to make it last longer than ten minutes.

“You like what I’m doing to my fruit?”

She glances at my canvas and nods.

“See, that was a test. That’s not fruit. Those are people. That’s a portrait of my family.”

Kelsey looks at me, then back at the picture. “Really?”

“No. Just kidding.”

She can’t help but laugh, and that means I see her braces.

For a while I try to make some kind of conversation, but most of the things I say sound so stupid. It’s really amazing this girl wants to go out with me. I’m still hoping that Dan wasn’t pulling a prank on me.

“So, uh, hey.”

There it is again. This time it means
Look, I’m about to go out on a limb when I’ve been hiding behind the tree for some time now, and you might laugh in my face but that’s okay because I can always follow up your rejection with another hey.

“Do you know Dan?”

I’d say his last name, but I don’t know it because we’re not quite buds.

“Yes.”

“Well, I was just wondering—we were talking today—”

“You were talking to Dan?”

Already Kelsey sounds like she doesn’t believe me.

“Yeah. And we were wondering about maybe—well, sometime maybe on Friday or Saturday—”

“He made you do this.”

“What?”

“How’d he do it?”

“Do what?”

Kelsey looks annoyed, and suddenly she doesn’t seem like such a wallflower.

“He’s been trying to go out with Georgia since forever, but I never thought he’d do something like this.”

“Something like what?”

“I didn’t know that you knew Dan.”

“Well—I mean—not really well, but—”

“So then why?”

“I was just—we were just thinking—”

“Chris, please. I’m not that stupid.”

“What?”

“Do you do everything someone asks you to do?”

“No,” I say, genuinely surprised. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Yeah, Chris, what is it?

I’m not sure how to answer this. I’m also not quite sure why Kelsey is irritated. With me.

“Look, I’m sorry, I just—”

“Is this some joke or something?”

“With who? What? I was asking the same thing.”

She nods, looks serious, then goes back to painting.

“I just thought it’d be fun.”

“Hanging out with Dan?”

I laugh. “Are you kidding? I mean, seriously … why would I want to hang out with Dan?”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“It’d be fun hanging out with
you
. And not by some stupid picture that looks like death that I’m painting while not even looking at you.”

For a second, I really have no idea if Kelsey’s going to laugh or sneer.

Thankfully, she lets out a slight giggle.

“I wasn’t trying to do anything,” I say. “I just—I thought it sounded like a fun idea.”

“Okay,” Kelsey says.

I nod. Then let the silence make me wonder exactly what she just okayed.

“By
okay
, do you mean—?”

“Saturday evening. You guys come over to Georgia’s house by seven. We’ll figure out the rest then.”

“Okay,” I say.

And yes, I guess it is okay.

Not sure how this will work out, but I’m not worried.

I’m just glad Kelsey’s talking to me again.

It would sure be awkward if we weren’t speaking on our first official date.