The Pricker Boy (23 page)

“You all have to go home sometime.”

“Nope,” Ronnie says.

“Are you kidding me, Ronnie? You’re lucky that your grandparents even let you out after dark! You know that they’ll completely freak if you stay out—”

“I don’t care,” he says. It’s dark, but I can see his eyes, and it’s the same look that he gave Pete last summer.

Damn.

“What about those … noises? The women? The coyotes? The things wriggling out of the fire? If those things come back?”

“We don’t care,” Emily says, and she means it.

Three hours later, and we’re all still here. Just my luck to have friends this stubborn. The moon has moved across the sky, but other than that nothing much has changed. I’m sitting in the dirt at the base of Whale’s Jaw. Emily is right next to me. She has a handful of cheese crackers that she’s pecking at, and to my surprise she offers me one. I accept.

Ronnie is staring up into the sky, watching the stars.

Vivek is balancing himself on one of the damaged lawn chairs. He’s trying to hum a song, a Beatles song I think, but he doesn’t know the tune. He tries to sing the words to help him figure out the tune, but he doesn’t know the words either. It’s a bit annoying.

“Stop it,” I say.

“What tune would you prefer?” he asks.

“A very quiet one.”

I don’t need some song stuck in my head. My head is full enough already with the noise of the night woods.

I suppose I should be thankful. Their intentions are good. They’re putting us all in more danger, but they came here because they think that they’re saving me from something, so I guess that means that they’re good friends. All of them except Robin, of course. She’s back at the pond.

“Let’s see,” I say. “Who showed up to ‘save’ me tonight? Ronnie!” I point at Ronnie. “Vivek!” I point at Vivek. “Emily!” She’s close enough so that when I point at her, my finger is an inch from her hand. “Who isn’t here? Let me see. Hmm …”

I can see Vivek across from me in his lawn chair. He’s shaking his head. “Bud, you just don’t get it.”

“What? It’s no mystery. I can’t stand her, and she hates me. I’m sure you guys have figured this out by now.”

“Sure,” Ronnie says condescendingly.

“You guys don’t like her much either. You can admit it. You know where she was when I left the house? Where she probably is right now? Down by the pond, staring out over the water. As if her life is just too dramatic for words. She’s all wrapped up in her own little world. She’s blind to anything that doesn’t have to do with her.”

Vivek pretends to be alarmed. “She’s blind? Like Amelia Earhart?”

“You mean Helen Keller, you idiot. And no, I don’t mean literally blind. She just doesn’t care about anybody but herself. If you were to break your arm, when you got back with your cast on she’d tell you all about the hangnail she had while you were gone.”

Emily gives me another cracker, then asks, “You don’t know anything about women, do you?”

I kick my feet in the dirt. If it were daylight out, they’d all see my face getting red. “Sure I do.”

Ronnie laughs.

“Well, I know more than you do!” I shout.

Ronnie laughs again.

“You really think you know something about women?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Then why aren’t you holding my hand right now?”

Ronnie goes back to watching the stars. Vivek joins him. Everyone is dead quiet for a full thirty seconds.

“Why?” I finally ask. “Are you scared or something?”

“Oh my God,” Vivek says. “Look, Stucks, I’m not too bright, so if I have to be the one to point this out to you, then you’re in deep trouble. You see, when a boy really likes a girl, and the girl really likes him, sometimes they start out by holding hands. And you should have started out a while ago.”

Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Do I like Emily? As in
like
? And what does this have to do with Robin?

I think another thirty seconds have passed, but I can’t be sure. Vivek is trying to hum the Beatles again, and this time I recognize the tune.

“Hold my hand, Stucks.”

I hold her hand. It feels nice. Vivek is right. I should have done this a long time ago. I’ve wanted to. I’m confused.

Vivek leans back in his lawn chair as he looks up at the sky. “Holding hands is fine,” he lectures us, “but don’t be getting all hanky spanky over there.”

His hobbled lawn chair collapses under him. Serves him right.

Emily’s hand is warm. No, not warm. Something different. Light. Touching her makes my fingers feel light. Weightless.

She gently squeezes my fingers. “You hold on to information that works for you, Stucks. And the rest you just ignore. Polish the blemish away like it doesn’t matter. You erase it like it doesn’t exist.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tell him,” Ronnie says.

“Tell me what?”

Emily places her other hand over the two that we’re already holding together. “Robin was in love with Pete. They were dating all last summer. They tried to hide it from you, but I don’t know how you never saw it. We all saw it.”

I pull my hand away from her. I look at Ronnie, then at Vivek. Surely one of them is going to chime in. One of them is going to say, “That can’t be possible.” One of them is going to say, “No way, Emily.” But neither of them says anything.

“It was hiding in plain sight, bud,” Vivek says.

Of course. I’m so stupid. I saw it, but I didn’t want to believe it.

“She was so deeply in love with him,” Emily says. “And she saw how that part of him that was always so angry was taking him over, how it was getting easier and easier for
him to be cruel to people, and how he hated himself more and more inside each time that it happened.”

Why didn’t he tell me? I’m not sure whether I just said that in my head or whether I said it out loud to them.

“Come on, Stucks,” Emily says. “Do you think that you’re the only one who misses him? Do you think that you’re the only one who is hurting because he’s gone? He may have been your best friend, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other people who were crushed when he died.”

And Emily is right about my ability to hold on to information that works for me and to erase the rest away, because just like that I erase away those last few sentences.

Around us the night insects get louder.

And louder.

And louder.

And I wish I could just stick my head underwater and let the water fill my ears so that I can’t hear them anymore.

A
slobbering tongue is lapping at my cheek. I open my eyes. Boris looks down at me. He whines.

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I don’t know what time it is. I’m face to face with Emily. I turn to the other side to see Vivek’s hairy toes. Ronnie’s head is next to Emily’s feet; Vivek’s head is next to Ronnie’s feet. They’ve got me penned in on three sides, but we—all of us—could only stay awake for so long.

And then along comes Boris, my faithful friend, to rouse me.

I scratch Boris behind the ears, tell him to follow me as I head back to the house. I make one more trip to Nana’s garden, gathering up a few sprigs of lavender. Its smell seems to sink through the skin of my hands and settle on
my bones; it’s like smoke that leaves soft talcum on your arms, your chest, your face, inside your nose and mouth. According to Pete, lavender makes you smell like an old woman. To me, it smells like earth with all the grit rinsed away. It smells like the best that soil has to offer.

Robin is still down by the water. I don’t think that she’s fallen asleep. I should say something to her, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

On my way back to Whale’s Jaw I pause by the twin climbing trees and pull up some of the bloodroot that grows around the base. Boris sticks his nose in the leaves but can’t figure out what I find there that’s so interesting.

Once at Whale’s Jaw, I quietly open my knapsack and take out my heavy ceramic bowl. I pull some leaves from the lavender and place them in the bowl. I take a match and light the leaves, letting the smoke drift over my friends. Around all of them I place pieces of the bloodroot. Even in the moonlight I can see the stains the bloodroot leaves on my fingers, stains that will show up red by the light of day.

Lavender smoke to deepen their sleep even further. Bloodroot to protect them.

Boris is thumping his tail in the dirt. “You’re going to stay,” I tell him. “Stay with them.”

I turn toward the hill, but I hear him follow after me. “No. You stay here tonight. Bark if you see trouble. Wake them.”

Listen to me. It’s not like he’s Lassie. He’s faithful, all
right. But he’s not smart. Still, he lies down at the base of Whale’s Jaw, places his head on his paws, and watches me as I walk beyond the Widow’s Stone.

The spikes of the Hawthorns are pretty horrifying by moonlight, and if they really are the three old ladies of the woods, then I hope that they too are fast asleep.

I place the bottle of gasoline in the bushes. I open my pack and take out the salt. I lay down a line of salt from tree to tree, forming a large triangle with the Hawthorns at its points. I scatter the horehound leaves along the salt lines.

I pull leaves from the rosemary, place them on the offering stone, and light them. The smoke wafts over the bark of each of the three trees.

Salt to form the walls. Rosemary to cleanse the site before evil is brought forth. Horehound to help banish.

I kneel on the ground outside the lines of salt. From my pack I pull out the candle and mason jar. I light the candle, put it inside the jar, and place the jar on the offering stone next to the smoldering herbs.

The wind picks up for an instant. The branches of the Hawthorns waver back and forth. The flame in the jar flickers slightly, but it does not blow out. It should remain lit for a good long time.

“The stars will pierce the darkest night, the moon above will give me sight. Mother bless this simple ground that evil led here may be bound.”

I stand at the opening to the path that leads back into the woods. I close my eyes and concentrate as hard as I can. In my head I picture them all: the Cricket, my parents, my nana, Emily, Vivek, Ronnie, even Robin. I picture them all in my head as clearly as possible. I let my feelings for them fill me from my forehead to my feet and out to my fingertips. I imagine that they are a white light around me, protecting me from what is waiting out there. Though I go out there alone, I imagine that their light goes with me.

It’s hard to concentrate with all this noise, this summer’s never-ending cacophony. It’s hard to picture all of them together, to feel each of them, to generate a white protective shell. It’s there for a moment, but then it wafts away like vapors, and I have to draw it back together. I guess it will have to do.

I place the remaining lavender in my pocket. It brings sleep when burned, but when carried with you allows you to see spirits.

It’s time.

I’m about to turn on the path when a piercing scream stops me dead. Somewhere far off in the woods, something cries out. I can’t tell if it’s a scream of joy or pain. The voice rises to a high pitch, then falls back down again, snickering and sobbing as it descends. The wind picks up, and with it the branches of the trees and the brush begin to sway. I wonder if I can really do this.

The first step is the hardest. I take another step, then another. I pause.

The woods go silent except for the swishing of the trees in the wind. I step forward again.

I use the clippers to cut the thorns away, clearing my escape path. When the thing that made that noise finds me, I will be able to move over fairly open ground.

Somewhere out there in the woods is a screaming thing, a thing with a voice like a child, but also like a wild animal. He could be around any corner. He could be hiding in any bush. For all I know he could be circling around to close in behind me. I try not to think about it, but the more I try the more difficult it becomes. I begin to feel like someone else is running the movie projector in my brain, and I’m locked down in the theater with no way to stop the images that are rolling on the screen. I can see in front of me by the light of the moon, but my brain takes what I see and adds to it, twists it, makes it appear to be more than it is. It lashes out and grabs at the most horrible thing that it can, and try as I might, I can’t get it out of my head.

I reach out to grasp one of the thorn branches to cut it away, and I feel the cool, smooth skin of it. It feels like the leg of a giant spindly insect. In my brain, I see that I am not standing in the middle of a thorn patch in the woods. Instead, I’m in a nest of giant insects. Thousands of them, all moving slowly in the darkness around me, reaching out with long, spiked legs. They’re waiting until I am far enough away from my friends that I can’t call for help. The projector in my head runs the images in obscenely sharp focus. I hear the projector noise, but then it’s not projector
noise; it’s buzzing. The buzzing of the insects. And in my head I can listen so closely, I can hear words in their humming machine.

Every branch I reach for has segments like a hornet’s leg. It feels like they’re shifting, trying to bend and pull away from me. I grab them tightly and cut them anyway. Every time I cut one, I see it oozing black blood onto the forest floor. Behind me a hundred stumps dangle, each one dripping and wiggling. I can see them, not with my eyes—the moon only shows so much—but in the projector in my head. In my head I see them clearly.