Chicken (30 page)

Brant laughs and grabs me by the wrists, pulling me against him, kissing me so hard his hat falls off. He backs me up against the tree I just peed on, running his hands down my chest and hooking his fingers into the loose waistband of my two-dollar yard-sale jeans. A different kind of moan escapes me now, and I don’t think about how stupid this is, I just throw my arms around his neck, arch my hips against him. 

He kisses me like Jack Dawson, like we’re on a sinking ship, like he believes this is it. Tree bark scrapes my back as his hands fumble with my belt, with my fly, and when he touches me through my stupid white briefs, it is very nearly almost too much.

“But you can’t—“ I gasp in his ear.

He grunts. “Not everything, but also not nothing.”

I close my eyes, bury my face in his neck, let myself enjoy his touch—

And then I shove him off. He crumples back with wounded eyes.

“Not like this,” I whisper, zipping myself up again before I can change my mind. “Not out here. Not in the dark. Not like it’s wrong.”

He bends over, hands on his knee, catching his breath. He nods. “Bacon.”

I laugh and lean over him, tangling my hands in his hair and kissing the back of his head and his neck. He stands up and we hug, a real hug, none of that macho bullshit. 

I take his hand. “I hate it, but we should go back.”

He bites his lip. “Not at the same time.”

“Right. Yeah. Of course.”

He jerks his head at the party. “You first.”

I take a few steps, and then I run back and kiss him. We hug again. When we break apart, I see the tears in the corner of his eyes, but I don’t say anything because I know he doesn’t want me to. I walk away.

I come to the edge of the lake. I slide down the slight incline and my boots sink in the soft mud. Frogs jump out of my way. The water lapping against the leafy shoreline is white like the waxing moon. I stop and scan the sky, searching for our stars, but I never learned their shapes. 

Metal tinkles behind me. The smell of whiskey burns my nose. I know the sounds keep going on, the water keeps moving, but it feels like everything stops. 

I turn around, but it’s tough because the mud has gotten a good hold on my boots. A shadow slips down the incline, steps into the light of the moon. 

Tyler Mathis bares his yellow teeth under my Longhorns cap. His belt—my beautiful horse belt—curls away from his open fly. 

“Not like this. Not like it’s wrong,” he mocks.

I shudder, half my instincts telling me to step back, while the other half tells me I’ll fall over if I try. Mathis moves in, sliding his hand over his bulge. He reeks of alcohol and tobacco and yes, beef jerky.

“You’re gonna suck it, and you’re gonna like it like the little fag you are.”

“You can’t blackmail me.” I swallow the shakiness in my voice, and say louder, “My folks already know.”

He slides a phone out of his pocket, dangles it just out of reach. The screen is blinding after so much darkness, but I don’t have to see clearly to know what it must contain. 

“Do Brant’s?”

I picture a world where I never get to see Brant’s face, not even across the sanctuary while he sings. I picture a world where I go to sleep at night not even know where he is or if he’s safe or what horrible things he’s being told about himself. 

“I’ll let you erase it when you’re finished.”

I swallow a gag and I nod.

He takes another step, and I can feel the heat of his rancid breath on my face, the bill of my stolen cap digging into my forehead. He thumps me on the chest. “On your knees, bitch.”

And then Tyler Mathis is face down in the lake with Brant Mitchell on his back, roaring and cursing and punching. Bubbles churn the surface. My Longhorns cap floats for a moment, and then sinks, and it’s just a stupid hat and I wouldn’t have wanted it back, but the loss pierces me through.

I splash into the lake, grab Brant around his waist, and haul him backward before Mathis can drown. 

Brant fights my hold, swiping the air with his fists and thundering, “I WILL KILL YOU!”

Mathis comes up coughing and scrambles deeper into the lake. Brant breaks away and tackles him again, flipping him onto his back so he can hammer his fists on Tyler’s face. I go after him again, wrestle his arms to his side, and throw him backward onto the bank. I straddle him, pin him to the ground with one hand on his chest. 

Mathis rushes forward, but I whirl on him, pointing with my free hand. “Wherever you’re going, you swim, or else I’m letting him go.”

Mathis hesitates. Brant bucks underneath me, gnashing his teeth. Mathis dives back into the lake and swims away. 

“I will kill him!” Brant shouts, straining to get loose. I press his wrists into the mud, but his head thrashes side to side, grimacing and screaming. He lifts his wrists and shoves, knocking me onto my butt. 

I think he’s going after Mathis, but instead he rolls over and curls up, burying his face in the mud and holding his stomach. He vomits, rolls to a new spot, and vomits again. I scream for help. He tells me to stop. He spasms at the edge of the water, fingers gouging claw marks in the muck. 

And then a girl is shrieking and Hannah is there with her hands on her face and Lauren is running toward us. She wraps her arms around Brant’s torso and squeezes as hard as she can, much harder than I ever could, yet enveloping him in softness, in comfort and warmth, and after only a moment, he goes still in her arms, his head lolled back against her breasts.

“Oh, God, he’s dead!” Hannah wails.

“No, he’s not!” Lauren shouts, lifting him like a rag doll. His feet are crumpled in the mud, but his eyes flutter and he moans.

I scoop him out of her arms, and his head lolls against my shoulder. Vomit and blood stain his lips, but still I want to kiss him.

“I’m calling 911.” Hannah pulls out her phone.

“No,” he croaks. “Don’t.”

“Are you crazy? You’re having some sort of seizure!”

“Better now,” he mumbles. “Just don’t.”

Hannah starts punching the numbers, but I shake my head. “Wait. His parents. Don’t.”

Lauren pushes past me. She’s got mud up to her breasts and spattered all over her face. She snatches Mathis’ phone off the bank, heaves it into the lake. It glows for one moment beneath the surface, and then, like my cap, it’s gone.

Inside his truck, the party is nothing but a distant thump thump thump, faint lights flickering in his rearview mirror. He made the girls go away so I could pull leeches off his butt. I thought it was an excuse, but no, he really did have a leech on his butt, and I really did have to pull it off. Tell me that’s not love.

Smoke fills the cab. He won’t let me hit the joint, but I’m still breathing it in. It’s nice. Everything that happened already feels hazy. In the dark, I hold his hand, listen to him inhale, exhale, inhale again. He didn’t have any in the truck; I made Hannah pay the guy with the classic car ten dollars for this one lousy joint.

“Were you really going to do it?” His voice is a rasp, from screaming and smoking.

I scratch at the mud cake on my jeans. “I’d do anything to keep your safe.”

The joint glows orange, fades. 

SUNDAY, JULY 29, 2012

This is how it ends:

Brant Mitchell swaggers into church like he’s never been a part of anything terrifying or strange. He wears his navy blue suit and carries his King James Bible. He got a haircut yesterday—nothing drastic, just off his neck and ears and out of his eyes, but it makes me uneasy. I don’t know if Mama and Sister Cindy compared notes this weekend, if one called the other up to ask, “Say, by any chance, did your boy come home from his date with a girl looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon?” 

We sit with the girls between us during Sunday School, holding their hands like we’re supposed to. Lauren looks confused. Hannah tries to ask Brant if he’s alright, but he shushes her and points at Brother Tucker, who is trying to explain why it’s totally fine that God accepted a bet from Satan in the book of Job. The only thing that feels right this morning is the absence of Tyler Mathis, who was hopefully swallowed whole by a giant alligator gar. 

When class is over and all I got from the story is that God doesn’t follow his own rules, Brother Tucker leads us to the sanctuary like a line of little flower-print and plaid-and-khaki ducklings. 

I bump my shoulder against Brant’s as we pass the EQ. “Bacon?”

He shirks away. “Ain’t hungry.”

Brother Tucker opens the door and ushers us through. I didn’t expect Brant to reach for me, drag me back to the EQ, and explain what happened Friday night. But neither did I expect for him to reach for Lauren, to disappear with her down the hallway, and to reappear some time later in the sanctuary with his suit slightly askew. Lauren’s lipstick is smeared, and she looks confused. She follows him to the pew where he sits with his parents, and when our eyes meet, hers flood with shame and she quickly turns away. 

Brother Mackey reminds everyone about the field trip Wednesday, but I don’t hear a word. It feels like my head has been underwater ever since I fell into the lake. I only know what’s happening through the vibration in the floor boards as everyone claps and cheers for their little holy war. The only thing I see is Brant’s arm resting snugly around Lauren’s wide shoulders.

During fellowship time, I go to the nursery where Hannah works once a month. She holds someone’s baby on her knee. I smile at him, and he smiles at me, and I hate myself for not being normal, for knowing that even without Brant, I could never marry this wonderful girl and fill her womb with my freckled, ginger spawn. 

I push through the swinging doors and find Brant leaning over my pew. His eyes touch mine, but they are blank, barely even brown. He turns his head and walks away. I find the note between the pages of my Bible on our way home. I tuck it back inside, close the book tight like whatever mere mortal words that note holds can be absorbed by the Power of the Word.

But they are still there when I walk into the woods with the note rustling in my back pocket. They are still there when I climb down into the Ditch to be alone. They are still there when I pull out the paper and drop to my knees on the hard, dry mud. They are still there when my shaking hands unfold the note. They are still there when my eyes scan them. They are still there after my hands have torn the paper to pieces. Blue-inked scratches on the surface of my heart.

And then it happens like Mathis always said it would. As loud and as clear and as real as any of the frogs and bugs and birds in these woods. There is a ghost in the Ditch, and he is screaming, screaming, screaming, and he is me, he is me, I am him.

I walk into church with my chin high, letting the wooden doors swing hard and loud to announce my presence. Brant looks over his shoulder and the worry in his eyes ignites my fury. He could throw himself at my feet, try to take it all back, tell me there were reasons, but the things he wrote, it doesn’t matter if he meant them, all that matters is I read them. I can never unread them. I burned them, but they’re branded on my eyes.

He looks away and it all goes up in flames. Every laugh, every kiss, every comfort that he gave. One by one, as the service begins, I tear the memories from the walls of my brain and toss them on the fire blazing in my chest. They shrivel and hiss, dance across the sanctuary like demonic fireflies. 

Brant goes to the platform. Tucks his fiddle under his chin and draws his bow across the strings. He tells the congregation something about God, how we can’t live without Him, something his parents have told him, something I wasn’t sure he even believed. And then he sings.

His eyes crumple shut and the veins in his neck throb.

Breathe. That’s the name of the song. Breathe.

But I can’t.

The bonfire grows. Soon, we have never rode the devil across an open field. We have never chased the Will-o’-the-wisps up a mountain. We have never danced or had a bacon fight. By the time I am done, he has never changed my story, and I have never kissed his scars. A sound bubbles up from somewhere in my throat, but I’m not sobbing, oh, no, I’m just choking on the smoke.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2012

Sister Bonnie’s rooster crows on the other side of the woods, and I wonder if he’d be so eager to wake the valley if he knew what day it was. I fumble my way into a pair of khaki church pants and a white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt. Daddy told me to look sharp, but in my mirror I just look like a grumpy waiter. I make a half-assed attempt at smoothing out my bedhead, but give up when I realize I’m just going to fall asleep against a bus window in thirty minutes.

Daddy whistles all the way to Harvest Mission, unable to contain his glee at getting this chance to stomp on the enemy. Mama stares out the window, knowing full well that the enemy is trying to stay awake in the backseat. Laramie slumps onto my shoulder, and I’m too tired and sad to shrug her off. 

The Harvest Mission church bus is parked in the vacant lot, surrounded by most of the youth group. Free food is a much bigger draw than a free two-hour re-enactment of the crucifixion. But not a big enough draw to coax Tyler Mathis out of whatever hole he lives in now.

Brant Mitchell stands close to Lauren, but she doesn’t look at him like she used to anymore, and I almost get the sense that she’s pity-dating him because she thinks he has a brain tumor or something. When he sees me, he puts his arms around her.

I turn around, face Mama’s open window. “Can’t I just ride with y’all?”

Her eyes slide past me to Brant, and she purses her lips. “Your Daddy offered up all our seats for carpool.”

I don’t really mean to stamp my foot like a kid, but it still happens. “Please, Mama.”

She shakes her head, eyeing her hair in the side mirror. “Go find your girlfriend.”

I wander over to the group, keeping to the far edges. Brother Mackey steps down from the bus and catches sight of Brant and Lauren. He puts his hands on his hips and marches over to them, prying Brant’s arms right off her neck. Lauren sees me looking, quickly averts her eyes. I have to wonder what happened when she drove him home Friday night. I am afraid to know what happened. Thank God I will never know what happened.