The Rest of Us Just Live Here (9 page)

The deer smell is
much
stronger here, and the trapped heat makes it even worse. There’s a kind of tunnel across the driver’s seat past the broken steering wheel. I can’t fit to crawl all the way in, but I think I can lean in far enough to feel around.

I start to worm my way in, breathing through my mouth, trying not to inhale hot rotting deer. My ribs ache at the tight fit, but I make it far enough to reach down to the passenger’s side floor. It’s not the same shape it used to be; it’s shorter, rounder, no longer any places to put your feet.

“Hah!” I say, my fingertips finding my phone. I pull it out between two fingers and look at it there, still stretched across the seat. The glass on the front is cracked, but I manage to turn it on and get a few seconds of display out of it before the battery dies. At least it worked.

The smell of deer is getting worse, so I start to pull myself gently out of the car–

Which is when everything lights up. The sun is shining, but this is way more than that. Every shadow under the tarp disappears, bathed in blue. I can see the head of the deer pressing on the back of the passenger’s seat. I can see the metallic eyes of the flies crawling over the deer’s skin. Then the light gets even brighter, so much I actually have to squint against it.

All I can think of is the pillar of light we saw from the Field right after indie kid Finn ran past us.

Indie kid Finn who turned up dead.

I’m afraid to get out from under the tarp.

I’m afraid to
not
get out from under the tarp.

But then it stops. The light drops so fast I’m blinded for a second and have to blink to see again in the normal shadowy, tarp-covered sunlight.

I listen. It’s silent.

And then it’s not silent.

There’s a sound. Nearby. One that wasn’t there before.

Something’s breathing.

It’s the deer. It’s the freakin’
deer
. I see its head move and a wet, disgusting snuffle of breath comes out the end of its nose.

I pretty much throw myself out of the car, tumbling back into the ditch, as the deer starts butting its short antlers against the tarp. The same antlers that scarred my cheek as the deer was flying
to
its death
. It bucks and jumps, until most of the tarp slips off the back.

And there it is. Standing in Henna’s car.

Its neck is obviously broken, so are its legs, but it stands on them, seemingly without pain. It shakes the flies from its hide, and I can hear a horrible
snap
as its neck, mostly, rights itself. Then it looks down at me.

Its eyes glow blue, actually
glow
, and on my back in a soggy ditch as it stands over me, it’s pretty much all I can do not to wet myself.

Then it looks past me, into the woods from where all the deer came that night. It leaps gingerly, gracefully, out of the car, over the ditch, and onto the ground. Its legs are nightmarish, no
way
they should be able to support its weight.

But they do. And with a snort, it heads off into the trees, disappearing from sight.

“But I’ve got German to study,” Meredith says, still protesting from the back seat, holding up her German worksheets.

“Don’t you like miniature golf?” I say.

“No one likes miniature golf,” she says. “You don’t like it either. You’re just doing it ironically.”

“Well, that’s probably true. Henna can’t even hold a club and it was her idea.”

“I still don’t see why I have to come.”

She has to come because no one goes out alone any more. Ever since the zombie deer, ever since two indie kids died. Me and Jared only do shifts together at Grillers, Mel claims she needs to study for finals so gets out of all her night hours at the drugstore, and Henna’s off work from the Java Shack anyway because of her arm. My mom is down at the capital more and more for her campaign, so Mel and I take over driving Meredith to her nightly lessons. And prom night (under three weeks away now, tick, tock) with all of us going together is now definitely on, Nathan included and Dr Call Me Steve a late addition, because we don’t think it’s safe any other way. Fun, fun, fun.

Mel glances in the rear-view mirror. “Quit complaining or we won’t take you to Bolts of Fire.”

“Mom hasn’t said yes yet, remember?” I say, as Mel pulls onto our little bit of freeway. “And we can still make her say no.”

“She’ll say yes,” Meredith insists. “I’ve already got the tickets– Oh.” She says the last like she’s revealed too much. Which she has.

I turn around in my seat. “You want to say that again?”

Meredith looks panicked, and I can see her brain whirring as she tries to think of an explanation.

“Meredith,”
Mel warns.

Meredith sighs in defeat. “I already got the tickets.”

“When?” Mel asks.

“How?”
I say.

“My credit card,” Meredith says, quietly.

“Your what?” Mel asks, her voice as sharp as a paper cut. Meredith stays quiet. “Mom got you a credit card, didn’t she?”

“It’s not
mine
,” Meredith says. “It’s linked to Mom’s.”

“Does it have your name on it?” I ask.

“Well …
yes
, but–”

“I don’t believe this,” Mel says with a harsh laugh. “That woman.”

“You both have
jobs
,” Meredith complains. “I had no way of buying things for myself.”

“You’re
ten
, Merde Breath,” I say.

“Don’t call me that. She got tired of always having to input the number for my online music courses.”

“So she got you your own card,” Mel says. “Because that’s the
most logical solution
to that non-problem.”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“I wonder why.” Mel’s voice is angrily light. “God knows she treats us all equally so why would there be any problem?”

“I’m being really responsible with it.”

“Bolts of Fire tickets weren’t responsible,” I say.

Meredith looks shifty. “She won’t get the bill until after the concert.”

This actually makes both Mel and me laugh out loud.

“I only had a short time for the fan-club tickets!” Meredith rushes on. “If I didn’t get them then, I’d
never
have got them. Anyway, they came in the mail yesterday.” She smiles like the sun rising. “Three tickets.”

“Why three?” Mel asks. “You could have just got two. Cheaper. Less trouble later.”

“You said you’d both take me,” Meredith says. “It’s more fun if we’re all there together.”

The simple love in the way she says this makes my heart hurt a little bit. Yeah, my parents are crappy, but you hurt either of my sisters and I will spend my life finding ways to destroy you.

“That’s a pretty big gamble you’re taking on Mom saying yes,” Mel says, already exiting the freeway (told you it was little).

“She always says yes to me eventually,” Meredith says. “I don’t know why.”

The mini-golf place is literally right by the freeway exit, so Mel’s already pulling into the lot. She parks and says, without malice, “It’s because you’re the best of us, Meredith.”

Meredith looks at me. “I don’t think that.”

“It’s why you’re with us tonight,” I say. “We couldn’t leave you home alone.”

“Dad’s there.”

“Exactly.”

“Is this because of all the strange stuff going on?” she asks, almost as if she’s afraid we’ll answer.

Mel and I exchange a glance and decide silently in about half a second that we’re not going to lie to her. “Yeah,” I say. “All the strange stuff.”

Meredith nods, seriously. “I thought so.”

We get out of the car. I see Henna waving to us with her good hand from the little hut where you get your putters. She’s with–

“Jared’s here!” Meredith says, happily. “But who’s that?”

And I say, “That’s Nathan.”

I only make it to the first hole, where I discover that, even a week after the accident, the slight torso twist to make a putt in mini-golf is too much for a still-aching muscle in my back. Jared surreptitiously heals it while Mel and Nathan take their turns.

“Sore?” Henna asks from a bench next to Meredith, who’s practising her German conjugations.

“It’s mostly better,” I say, sitting down next to her, gingerly. “Every once in a while I get surprised by something I didn’t know was hurting.”

“Me, too,” she says, running her fingers along her cast. “Jared helped.”

Jared has rejoined Mel and Nathan at the first hole, which is decorated with little plastic dinosaurs. Mel takes her putt, then thrusts two fists in the air. “Hole in one!” she shouts. Mel is ridiculously ace at mini-golf.

“I’m surprised your parents let you come out,” I say to Henna.

“And you would be right in your surprise,” she says.

“Ich schreibe, du schreibst, er schreibt–”
Meredith whispers next to us.

“But nearly dying seems to have made a whole bunch of things clearer,” Henna says. “Don’t you think?”

“Not really, if I’m honest.”

“It has for me.”

Jared and Nathan and Mel are all laughing at Nathan’s inability to get the ball in the hole. “You’re supposed to give up at seven strokes,” we hear Jared say.

“I told my parents I was going out to see you guys,” Henna says. “They didn’t want me to, but I didn’t ask permission. Amazing the difference it makes. Being firm. Being clear.”

“Your mom and dad are right to be worried, though. Two kids are dead. They probably won’t be the last.”

Meredith pauses for a moment, then goes back to conjugating.
“Ich möchte, sie möchten–”

“That’s actually the reason I gave,” Henna says. “I could have died.
We
could have died in that car accident. But we didn’t. I could die at home just as easily as I could die out with my friends. Or, you know, in the Central African Republic.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. ‘Ah’.”

She’s looking right at me. I don’t know what her eyes mean.

“I don’t feel any clearer,” I’m surprised to hear myself saying. “I just feel like my body is in all these different pieces and even though it
looks
like I’m all put together, the pieces are really just floating there and if I fall down too hard, I’ll fly apart.”

“Like a fontanelle,” Henna says.

“A what?”

“The soft spot on top of a baby’s head.” She taps the spot on her own head. “Babies’ skulls aren’t fused together when they’re born, otherwise they’re too big to get out of the mother. They’ve got this spot called a fontanelle that’s just kind of unprotected until the hardness grows in.”

“That makes sense,” I say. “I’m just one big fontanelle.”

Henna laughs lightly. Then she takes my hand in hers and holds it. “Mikey,” she says, but not like she’s about to say anything more, just like she’s identifying me, making a place for me here that’s mine to exist in. I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I’m grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn’t say it felt this sad.

The mini-golf park is old and really narrow, so even though Jared, Mel and Nathan are already on hole number three, they’re still pretty much just right there, laughing, looking over to where we sit. Especially Nathan.

“Ich esse, wir essen.”
Meredith looks up. “I’m hungry.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Nathan calls. Henna lets go of my hand. “Anyone want any food?” Nathan asks, coming over.

“A hot dog,” Meredith says.

Nathan raises his eyebrows.

“A hot dog,
please
,” Meredith says.