B003UYURTC EBOK (10 page)

           “I just don’t like that guy,” I said to Lucas about John Barling, one afternoon five weeks after Gabriel played Casper.

“Then we’ll just have to kill him,” Lucas replied confidently, with one eyebrow raised.

It took me a few seconds of staring into Lucas’s eyes to verify that he was joking. Around that time he had begun to say and do things that, as Dr. Webb says, were signs of some sort of nervous breakdown or stress-induced mania. He refused to sleep anywhere other than my bedroom floor, he started driving me to work and staying with me during my entire shift, and he began researching suspected kidnappings across the state via his laptop computer.

“This kid was missing for three years and his uncle had him the whole time!” Lucas yelled to me one morning while I was brushing my teeth.

“So?” I said back, dripping toothpaste onto the counter.

“So, do you have any crazy uncles?”

“No!” I laughed, although I knew Lucas Cader was dead serious.

When one enters his kitchen to find his mother, father, and best friend all seated in front of a stack of uneaten pancakes, he knows that something strange has happened. He instantly remembers the last time his entire family sat there together and can just faintly hear the sound of his brother impersonating their father’s laugh, which was known to be surprisingly high-pitched and awkward. He sees his father turn red, trying his best to hold in his laughter as Gabriel stands up and begins to dance as he had witnessed their mother doing while dusting a few days before. Samuel Witter then loses it, tears stream down his face. Sarah Witter follows, holding her stomach tightly as she bends over in embarrassment and hilarity. Cullen Witter sits at the end of the table, eyes watering, smile hurting, and watches his brother in awe.

As I sat down in between Lucas Cader and my father, I caught a glimpse of the headline on the front of the newspaper that hid his face from view. It read
LILY EMBRACES NATIONAL CELEBRITY
. I knew instantly that what followed was another article about everyone in town being so damn obsessed with that bird. I knew that someone had been interviewed about all the visitors in town from all over the country and that they’d said things
like “I can’t believe it!” and “Have you ever seen such a thing in your whole life?” Feeling vomit rise up in my throat, I turned to Lucas to see that he had his eyes closed and his hands clasped together. I looked across the table at my mother, who had a tear falling down her cheek, and asked her, in a whisper, what was wrong.

“That boy Russell Quitman had a car wreck in Florida and broke his neck,” she said softly. “Isn’t that terrible?”

It took a minute to get the image of the Quit Man lying bloody on the pavement out of my head.

“Is he okay?” I asked.

“He’s paralyzed,” Lucas said, his eyes still closed, “from the waist down.”

“Good God. That’s awful,” I said, surprised that I actually meant it.

“My mom called a few minutes ago and said his mother had called and told her,” Lucas added. “She said he’d be in the hospital down there for another few weeks.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say.

“Poor Janette,” my mother added, referring to Russell’s mom.

“Poor Don. He’s got to pay the doctor bills,” my dad said from behind the paper.

“Poor Ada,” I said finally. “This makes three for three.”

“No,” Lucas interrupted, “they broke up two weeks ago. I didn’t tell you?”

“Uh, no.”

“They did. She told him she wanted to be single when she went to college.” Lucas laughed, but then stopped himself quickly.

“Just think,” I said, “if they’d still been together, he’d probably be dead.”

“Probably,” Lucas agreed.

Alma Ember was beginning to become less of a welcome distraction and more of an inconvenience to me. A seventeen-year-old boy cannot be expected to adequately replace a nineteen-year-old woman’s college-educated husband. And so, with the utmost maturity and respect, I told Alma Ember, in her parents’ shag-carpeted living room, that we probably shouldn’t see each other anymore. When she started to cry, I felt very nervous and was racking my brain for some sort of reaction, some wise word, some supportive, comforting gesture. I came up with nothing. Gabriel Witter would have been able to have her laughing by the time he left the room. I saw her still crying through the window as I backed out of the driveway.

Only once before then had I made a girl cry. This was, of course, Laura Fish. After just three dates, the two of us, sixteen years old at the time, decided to get more acquainted one sunny afternoon at the previously mentioned spot on the bank of the White River. Once our clothes were back on and we were back in Laura’s car, I began to laugh. She asked why. I refused to tell her. She stopped the car and pulled over onto the side of the road. She asked why again. I refused, shaking my head, my hand clasped over my mouth. She began to cry.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Why are you laughing at me?”

“I’m not. I mean, I just got tickled, I guess. It’s nothing,” I said the way I do when I think the person I’m talking to is being irrational.

“You’re a jerk,” she said back.

“Laura, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the fact that we just went through all of that to lay beside each other naked in the mud for an hour and then go home,” I said.

“Get out,” she said calmly, unlocking the doors.

“Laura, I didn’t
do
anything!”

“I’m sorry I’m not the whore you’re looking for, Cullen. Now get out.”

“Laura,” I said, standing outside her car with the door open, “I was laughing at us, not at you. I’m not looking for a whore. I don’t even like whores. I’ve never even met a whore!”

“Well, good luck. Jerk!”

She sped off, the door slamming shut soon after as I was left coughing in the cloud of dust thrown up by her tires. Walking down the dirt road that day, I imagined myself being brave and hitchhiking the three miles to my house. I then imagined a one-toothed truck driver picking me up and asking me about my friends and hobbies. This made me queasy. And just as I began to smile thinking about Laura Fish running naked into the river, a truck came speeding up beside me and stopped. Again, I coughed in the dust. Just as I could see in front of me again, Joe Eddie Fish, Laura’s fifteen-year-old brother, who’d been driving illegally since he was thirteen, was walking toward me.

“My sister says you’re a creep,” he said loudly.

“Your sister is crazy,” I said back, not being able to stop myself.

“You wanna say that again?” he asked.

“Can we just talk for a minute?” I said, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of my situation.

“Talk is cheap,” he said back.

“Really, Joe Eddie? Are you comfortable with what you just said?”

“Shut up, Cullen. Damn. I’m trying to be intimidatin’!” he whined.

“Joe Eddie, you used to run through the sprinkler in my front yard. It’s hard to be scared of you,” I said, laughing.

“Shit, Cullen. I’m sposed to be kickin’ your ass.” He laughed too.

“Were you really gonna do it, Joe Eddie?” I asked.

“I thought I was.”

“Will you just drive me home instead?”

“Come on.”

I told Joe Eddie the entire story as he drove me home, and he laughed right along with me. He talked about how his sister overreacted to just about everything anyone said to her and about how his mother did the same thing. I told Joe Eddie that it was a shame that he and Gabriel didn’t hang out anymore, and he said that Gabriel was too smart for him. “He makes me feel stupid. But it isn’t his fault. We aren’t on the same level, ya know?” I felt like that was one of the first adult conversations Joe Eddie had ever had. I also felt like he wasn’t as dumb as everyone made him feel.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt.

“Cullen,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Just as soon as the words had left my lips, Joe Eddie’s fist met my right eye. Black. For a few seconds I saw black. Then, as the stinging intensified and I rolled myself out of the truck, my head began to throb and I hobbled toward the house. Joe Eddie Fish had, in his eyes, defended his sister’s honor. He had done this even though he believed her to be crazy. For that, I was not angry at Joe Eddie. He had principles. That’s more than I could say for most. The next day Laura Fish passed me in the hallway with a smirk. My eye was purple. Lucas laughed and nudged my arm. Gabriel whistled the theme to
Rocky
.

Now that Russell Quitman’s fate had been sealed, I was feeling very guilty for all the zombie fantasies in which I had chopped off his head. That being said, I was feeling less and less guilty for all the nonzombie fantasies I had about Ada Taylor and her wrinkly skirt. I was having one such fantasy while shelving cigarettes one Saturday morning in July. My fantasy was soon interrupted when someone entered the store.
Ding-ding.

“Hello,” I said, never taking my eyes from the wall of cigarettes.

“You should get a haircut,” a voice said from behind me. It was a girl’s voice; that’s all I knew in that moment.

“Why do I need …,” I began as I turned around to see Ada Taylor standing before me, a green wooden counter and a thick awkwardness between us.

“Because it’s gettin’ too long. You tryin’ to look like a surfer or somethin’?” she joked.

“No.” I had no idea what to say to her as she nonchalantly carried on a conversation with me.

“You’re acting weird, Cullen Witter,” she said with a grin.

“Oh, I just didn’t expect to see you, that’s all,” I said shakily.

“Well, I came in here to see you. If that’s okay.” She suddenly seemed anxious.

“It’s fine, Ada. How’ve you been?” I mustered up the courage to try and ignore the fact that a beautiful girl whom I’d never said more than hi to had come to visit me at work.

“I’m here because I heard about your brother a long time ago and I haven’t gotten the chance to see you since.” Her tone had gone from playful to serious.

“Oh. It’s fine. You didn’t have to—”

“I did,” she interrupted. “I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, since I heard, and I’ve felt so guilty for not helping y’all look for him. I’m ashamed that I didn’t do anything but think about you, instead of calling to check on you or coming to see you.”

“Ada,” I said, “we barely know each other. It’s fine.” I used my talking-to-an-irrational-person voice again.

“I know we aren’t friends and I know this is stupid, but I can’t stop thinking about this. I just got to town and this is the first place I came.”

Her eyes had more sincerity in them than I’d seen in just about anyone who had given me an “I’m so sorry” or “We’re praying for your family” in the past few weeks. This beautiful, talented, intelligent girl had really been worried about me and about my family and my brother. She had
really
cared. And in
that moment, I suddenly felt unable to stand up any longer. I backed up slowly to the metal chair behind me and eased down. I closed my eyes. My hands were shaking.

“Cullen?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

I didn’t answer her because when I tried to speak, I felt as if I’d either throw up or scream, and I didn’t want to do either in front of Ada Taylor. I lowered my head down onto my knees, and as my body began to shake uncontrollably, I felt a warm arm wrap around my shoulders. Ada Taylor knelt beside me on the floor as I cried for the first time over the thought that my favorite person in the world was probably dead.

Book Title #79:
The Business of Making Girls Cry
.

           It is said, in the Book of Enoch, that two hundred angels led by Azazel, the keeper of God’s throne, came to Earth after falling in love with the human women they had watched. And in doing so, these fallen angels began to reproduce with the daughters of Earth and bore what were then called the Nephilim, great giants who consumed all the possessions of man and, because man could not stop them, eventually began devouring him as well. And after destroying the birds, beasts, reptiles, and fish of the Earth, the Nephilim began to eat one another’s flesh and drink one another’s blood.