Stagnation

“‘All you have to do is try to shake off the idea that that’s Gregor. Our real misfortune comes from having believed it for so long. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long since have realized that it’s impossible for people to live side by side with an animal like that, and would have gone away of his own free will.’”

—Franz Kafka, “The Metamorphosis” (trans. Stanley Applebaum)

            As Ian Falking stepped off the bus from a long journey home, he found himself confronted with “Welcome Home” banners that were not for him. He was dressed in his fatigues as he had seen veterans wear in films. He dragged his footlocker behind him to an old beat-up station wagon where his grandmother, Denise, silently waited for him. As she drove the young man home, he gazed at the signs that had sprung up in yards and that were taped to signposts. “Welcome Home, Bill!” The signs read.

            What has happened here? Ian had had a nightmare once. All of the kids in Ian’s high school gathered around to make fun of him. At the center of this mob was Bill Newman. Bill and Ian grew up in Still Water—near the river that gave the town its name—and had lived on Walker Street, which was connected to Main by Valencia Drive; it was an alleyway, really, perfect for them to play basketball together. Both their fathers worked at the treatment plant, and both fathers had lost their wives after the births of their daughters. Ian and Bill stood six feet tall. They had dark hair and eyes.

            The similarities stopped there. Since elementary school, Ian and Bill began to take divergent paths. While Ian was busy failing his courses and applying medications to his terrible acne problem, Bill became more involved with his humanitarian projects, his eventual valedictorian status, and his sudden, inexplicable popularity. Ian grew to hate Bill. It wasn’t as though Bill had ever done anything to Ian. Bill had never done anything to Ian, at all—that was why Ian hated him. Why should he get all of the luck? I have it harder than him! Why don’t I get any recognition? Ian’s problems came from his unfortunate appearance and his apathy toward work, but people only noticed—according to Ian—because Bill was so perfect!

            When Denise pulled into the drive, she wordlessly shut off the engine, and walked inside without so much as looking at her grandson. There was another car parked outside of Ian’s house. The car looked expensive and was polished. The back window displayed those little stick-figure stickers of a happy family holding hands: father, son, daughter, and dog. Ian dragged his footlocker past his old bike—still propped against the side of the house—and up to the house where he was met by William Newman—Bill’s father—who hobbled around with a brace on his leg.

            “Welcome home, kiddo! Jenna told us that you were coming back today!” Mr. Newman helped Ian shove the footlocker against the wall, and led him into the dingy Falking-family kitchen. Ian’s sister Jenna was sitting, speaking excitedly with Bill’s mousy little sister Kallie. Kallie looked as though she had not eaten in weeks, and had forgotten how to take care of herself.

Jenna, in contrast, looked lively—she was all made-up as though she was expecting a date soon. She looked up when Ian came in. “Oh. I thought you were dad.” And then, as if it were an after-thought: “You kill anyone before they sent you back?” Jenna walked over and gave her brother an obligatory hug.

“We were going to meet you at the bus stop,” Mr. Newman smiled. “When we got here, though, your grandmother had already left for you.”

Denise was sitting in a rocking chair, staring blankly at the wall, crocheting the same scarf that she had been working on for five years. The kitchen was as stagnant as Ian remembered. It reeked of stale cigarettes. Ian could imagine a cockroach skittering across the floor. The sink was filled with empty beer cans, and the trash can was full. The only notable feature of the room was a frame that held an old golden necklace that had once belonged to Ian’s mother. It was going to be Jenna’s one day, but Ian put it in the frame so that he could remember his mother whenever he saw it. That necklace, and an old photo of his mother dressed in furs were the only things in the house that proved his mother had ever lived there.

 Ian pulled out a chair beside Mr. Newman and asked what he did not want to ask: “Where’s Bill?”

Jenna gasped, and Kallie looked like she might cry. “You haven’t heard?” Jenna jumped up with a look that was somewhere between disgust and infuriation. Mr. Newman gestured for Ian’s sister to sit down, and he began to tell Ian the story of how his son was coming back from the dead.

The Newmans never had a lot of money, so it was infeasible to send Bill to Harvard as the boy had hoped to do. The town tried to pull together money to send the boy to college, but he told them not to trouble themselves. The citizens of Still Water were proud of their small town hero. He was a tutor, a mentor, and one of the first kids to ever aspire to leave for something better. Instead, Bill joined the military, knowing that the military could pay his way into school. Ian knew this—he had joined for the same reason. The people were proud that he was going off to fight, to protect them.

It had been particularly hard for Mr. Newman, though. Before Bill (and Ian) had left for the Middle East, Mr. Newman had been in a drunken driving accident, which did serious damage to the man’s leg. It was Ian’s father at the wheel of the other car. Mr. Newman had not been able to work, and so relied strongly on his monthly disability check and a few debts and owed favors he called-in. Mr. Falking had to work the night shift at the plant and pull extra hours so that he could pay back Mr. Newman for the accident. The community, Mr. Newman told Ian, had really pulled together to support him while Bill was gone. Bill, as it turned out, had been working a full-time job to support the family, and to send his sister to Julliard to play violin.

“About two months ago, a couple of men in suits showed up at the house. They handed me a flag, and told me that my son had been declared ‘killed-in-action,’” Mr. Newman sipped from a mug of coffee. “We all mourned, and the whole town showed up for the funeral. Kallie dropped out of school to keep me holding on.”

“But just last week, Mr. Newman got a call,” Jenna interjected. “Bill! It was from Bill! He said that he’d been captured, but was involved in a prisoner exchange. He’s coming home tonight!” The news spread like wildfire, and Still Water—which was just about ready to accept Bill’s death—suddenly found their spirits renewed. They all cleaned up their yards, and put up welcoming posters.

And so Ian Falking’s return from war was almost completely overshadowed by Bill Newman’s return from the dead. Ian thanked the Newmans for being so kind to come to his house to welcome him home, but as he saw them to the door, he ground his teeth. Some people. Luck! Ian was suspicious, though. He knew that people weren’t declared KIA unless there was some sort of proof of their death. Otherwise, they were just listed as missing.

            Back inside, after the Newmans left, Ian tried to take his footlocker upstairs to his old room. “It’s filled with trash and furniture. Let me know when dad gets home.” Jenna shouted from her room, with the door closed.

            When Allen Falking came home that night, he had already been drinking. He walked right by Ian, sat beside Denise, still crocheting, and turned on the television. “Bring me a beer, boy!” he shouted behind him, as though Ian were actually in a different room. “When’d you get in?” Ian didn’t answer, because he already knew his father wasn’t going to listen.

Jenna ran downstairs and took Allen’s keys. “Do you want to come too? We’re all of us going to meet Bill at the bus!” She was wearing a short skirt, and a top that his father wouldn’t have normally let her leave the house in. Ian shook his head. Jenna yelled over her shoulder, “Suit yourself. Don’t shoot anyone while I’m gone!”

This was the way Ian’s life was for several weeks. Bill’s return had left Ian in total obscurity. He spent days looking around the town for a job, and afternoons he spent trying to talk with Denise. She never asked him a question. Ian told her about the technical support he ran for the army. He told her about how his group that had never seen any action was sent out to repair some vital medical equipment. Ian could swear that he saw a glimmer of concern in Denise’s eyes when he told her about how he got shot—grazed really—in the side by a wounded enemy in the hospital tent, and how they had sent him home because of it. When he thought about it, Ian felt sure that he had seen Bill at that camp. That concern that Ian saw in his grandmother’s eyes was what made Ian keep talking to her, even though the first thing she said to him since he got home was “Did you hear about that Bill Newman boy?”

Bill was received as a hero by the town. Even though Ian had not seen Bill since his return, his sister talked about him daily. Apparently the two had been dating before the accident. They had started when Jenna turned eighteen. “He looked like one of those starving Africans!” she told Ian over dinner one night. “He was so thin. He survived all alone, you know? They tried to torture secrets out of him and everything! But he wouldn’t spill. They kept him though, ‘cause he’d killed so many of theirs!” Ian was sure that Bill was lying. Somehow, somewhere, Bill had made some story up. Who could possibly prove that he was lying, after all? He tried to desert. That’s what happened, I bet. Faked his own death and laid low for a couple months.

Ian got a job around the third week after Bill’s return. Ian’s father finally showed up drunk to work one-too-many times at the treatment plant, and so he was fired. Ian took the position, and found himself riding his bike across town every day to work alongside William Newman in his leg brace. Ian was surprised the man was working there, and asked about Mr. Newman’s disability.

“Having Bill back home just gives me the energy to manage working, you know? I can hobble around and manage, still,” Mr. Newman told him. “You know, Bill was so shocked when he read his first obituary. I can only imagine how strange it would be, to see my face there, and read about my own death. Like Tom Sawyer, I’d imagine, right, Ian?”

Come lunch break, mousy Kallie brought her father a bag with a sandwich and milk. She said hello to Ian, who sat without lunch on his break. Ian nodded to Kallie before she left. “In truth,” Mr. Newman said. “We need the money, so I had to come back to work. We are still working to pay off the deposit from Kallie’s New York place, and the leftover tuition bills from when she left Julliard after the plane accident.” Ian had heard Kallie play violin once in a school concert. She was good. “And I couldn’t possibly ask Bill to get a job. He just died, after all! And he’s already done so much to keep us safe.”

That was the way Ian’s life was for several weeks. Ian would ride his bike in to work. He would come in and work tirelessly, treating the town’s wastewater. I’m keeping you safe now, with this water. Not that I get any respect. Ian took pride in his work. Nights he would come home and listen to the bitter groaning of his father, who would occasionally lash out at him. “Steal my job, you damn bastard! I’ll show you!” Some nights, the plant’s foreman would be there, too, drinking with his father and laughing about how boring Ian was at the plant.

“Just a shame we couldn’t keep you, Allen. Best damn worker we seen in fifty years! All your boy does is work work work! Ain’t any humor in that. Shame we couldn’t get that Newman boy in instead of his daddy, too, that limp-ass sunovabitch! His son told me this joke once—” Ian had tried to complain, once, to the pair. He worked hard, after all, and showed up on-time. He met his deadlines, and was efficient. He tried to complain too about being disrespected. I went to war for you people. Why does no one respect me? All his complaining managed to achieve, though, was to make the town think that Ian was disrespectful. Even fewer people spoke with him after that, and so Ian learned to be quiet.

At the plant, Kallie had started to bring a sandwich and milk for Ian, too. Each day he would smile and thank her, and each day Kallie would smile and leave.

One night Ian heard Jenna speaking with Bill. Ian had been sleeping in the upstairs hallway because there was nowhere to move the collection of debris in his old room. He had nightmares where Bill and the doctors at the camp were making fun of him while he tried to repair equipment. “So you’ve gained some weight? It’s no big deal, baby!” It sounded like she was comforting Bill over the phone. “No one is bothered! You could use a few pounds anyway…We’re just glad you’re alive….Why would you need a job? Your dad likes working at the plant again….yeah, Ian told me so.” Ian said no such thing.

On Bill’s birthday, the whole neighborhood threw a big party.  Several businesses shut down, and even Ian was sent home early from the treatment plant. By now, Ian was used to people making a big deal out of Bill. He was disturbed, though, that no one had noticed that Bill hadn’t actually done anything since he had “come back from the dead.” From what Ian understood from snippets of conversations with Mr. Newman and Jenna, Bill had gotten lazy. It was as though Bill believed the community would continue providing for him indefinitely. Bill no longer went out to clean litter from the highways. He never babysat or tutored anymore. He didn’t play the organ at the church or even go anymore, for that matter. It was as though Bill had just stopped or really died. Ian waited for the day that the people would realize that Bill was really dead. No one was so lucky that he could just continue like that forever, after all.

But that was how Bill lived for the rest of that year, and the next year around, the neighborhood threw another block party for Bill’s birthday. Ian continued working, anonymous to the citizens of Still Water. About a week after the second party, Ian was speaking with Denise. He was telling her about his suspicions about Bill’s war stories. Jenna overheard.

“What? What! How can you even say something like that? How dare you even!” Jenna was livid.  “Ian, you’re an asshole! His whole squad died in that explosion! You’re so insensitive! All of his friends and family were about to move on and forget him! Can you even imagine how that would feel?”

Ian tried to explain to her that Bill’s story didn’t make sense. He tried a different tact, and tried to explain that he had just noticed that Bill didn’t work or anything anymore. She wouldn’t listen, though. “And you—You! You sit there all high-and-mighty! You didn’t even shoot anyone, you lousy coward! You know, I tried to keep Dad from moving all that stuff into your room. I told him that you were coming back. He was ready for you to die, but I was waiting for you! But you’re not even the same person anymore!”

Jenna moved in with Bill the next day. Ian moved into her room, and slept in a real bed for the first time in over a year. He dreamt of bombs falling all around Bill. At the plant, Mr. Newman would not speak to him. Kallie did not bring Ian a sandwich, and did not smile when she left after leaving her father his. Whenever Ian would go out, people would shoot him glares. At the grocery store, he was even refused service from a cashier who had heard that Ian had assaulted his sister; the store manager had had to come out and make him leave. People would swear under their breath about the disrespectful Falking boy. People believed that Ian had done something to his sister to make her move. She would not talk about it, but—they said—if she could stand her father for so long, then her brother must be worse.

That was the way Ian’s life was for the next several weeks. Ian spoke to no one except for Denise, who still sat beside piles of un-knit yarn. Ian was moved to night-shift, and no longer worked with Mr. Newman. It was quiet. He got used to how still the water seemed at night, and how quiet the plant was with no one else on shift. It was quiet for a long time.

One morning, though, he came home to find his father passed out on the kitchen floor. The old man had thrown up on himself. There was an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in his hand. Allen did not have money for alcohol the day before and had thrown things around the kitchen. Denise, in a moment of clarity, had left the house to avoid Allen’s tantrum. She did not come back until later that day, after Allen had finally settled down.

Ian prodded his dad awake and asked how he had paid for the whiskey. “I sold it,” his father said. “Your mother’s necklace. I sold it.” The old man passed out and Ian looked up at the wall. The necklace was gone. It was one of the last objects left in the house that had been his mother’s. He remembered that after she died, he would occasionally sneak into Denise’s room just to look at the necklace. His father had complained when Ian insisted on framing it, but Allen eventually allowed it. In a fit of anger, Ian threw the nearest thing he could find at his father—a rotten apple. It was soggy in his hand and thumped! against his father’s head. Bits of apple lodged in his hair, and the old man groaned and threw up. There was blood.

The results of Allen Falking’s medical exam revealed that he had developed liver cancer. He stayed in the hospital for a couple of days to have additional blood work done. When he came home, he did not speak. He simply walked into the house, sat beside Denise, and turned on the television, without a word.

And that was the way that Allen Falking’s life was for the next few days. He watched re-runs of talk shows. Ian continued to work and the world outside continued to praise Bill Newman.

By the week after the hospital visit, Ian realized that he was tired. He was tired of the plant. He was tired of Still Water. He was tired of his father. Ian’s bike was vandalized by kids who were taught to hate Ian-the-sister-beater by their parents. Ian had no friends, and his sister would only occasionally speak to him, and only if she needed something from him. He was tired of very many things, but most of all, he was tired of Bill Newman. Bill Newman, in Ian’s eyes, was the source of everything that was wrong in that town. He was the reason people did not like Ian. Were it not for Bill, people would appreciate Ian. People would pay him the respect he deserved. Because Bill was alive, people failed to notice how hard Ian worked. If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t have any clean water to drink. I am important! I protect these people, and they treat me horribly!

It was that very thought that drove Ian to open his footlocker that was still sitting in the upstairs hall. He reached inside and grasped the cold metal before going downstairs to walk up Walker Street. Since his return, Ian had yet to actually see Bill, and he looked forward to seeing what he hoped would be terror in Bill’s eyes.

When Ian got to Bill’s, however, there were police lights flashing outside the Newman house. There was an old beat-up station wagon, crashed into a telephone pole. Mr. Newman was wrapped in a blanket and was sitting on the curb. Ian caught a glimpse of his father being shoved into a squad car before it took off. An unhurried paramedic loaded a stretcher into an ambulance. Jenna was on the steps of the Newman house, screaming and crying. Kallie held her back as she tried to run toward the medics.

Ian was reminded of when his father had hit Mr. Newman with that same station wagon. That had been the same scene as this one, but in fast-forward, with people rushing to save the Mr. Newman. Now, it was as if the world was still. Ian turned and walked back into his house, walked upstairs, and sat on the bed. Still.

The town held another funeral for Bill Newman, and in time, the town truly grieved. Ian was moved back to day shift, and was promoted. People would occasionally ask him about the war, but he would tell them it wasn’t important. Jenna moved back in and helped Ian take care of their father, who, like the town, was recovering again. Denise finished her scarf. Kallie began bringing lunch to Ian at work, and they would eat together. After work, Ian would meet Kallie, and she would play a little song on her violin while they sat by the river. Ian didn’t dream about Bill anymore, but sometimes, when he looked into the swirling water of the stream, he thought about Bill. He thought about how stagnant his own life had been. He thought about recovery and change. And that was how Ian learned to live.

The House

            I grew up playing the Game like the others. The rules were simple: break apart the house next door. But you had to do it without getting caught. Legend says that Danny caught a boy called Grubbs knocking out the glass in the front window of the tired three-story. They say Grubbs’ cries were heard from as far away as Main and the Boulevard. They say that poor Grubbs was never seen again. Of course, if you ever asked one of the long-timers, they’d tell you they never heard of Grubbs, but the front window of the house is still busted.

The House still stands there, miraculously, on the corner of fourteenth. In those early days of my life, it became a game to make the house next door to the shelter look worse (easier said than done). The sickly yellow paint peeled in strips, and most of the windows were blocked by the backs of shelves or desks or something of their nature. The porch’s awning was being held by only one of its four support beams—two of them had fallen before anyone could remember, and we had promptly taken care of the third. On the side of the house that faced the shelter, there were burn marks—remnants of a house fire, perhaps. Wooden flats covered several of the upstairs windows. The short drive was infested with St. John’s Wart. If you looked close enough, you could see the gravel path—now buried in weeds—that led to the front door. The door was nicked from thrown rocks, and the screen door that should have been in place was long ago taken as a prize. It wasn’t altogether uninviting, though. From an outside perspective, you might say it was the appearance of the house that drew us there, like pirate adventurers to Spanish galleons. We could feel that the house was strangely cursed—though you’d only feel it as a kid—and it was just begging to be taken down.

            My gang at the shelter created the Game to destroy the house next door. Before that we had started wrecking the shelter, itself. When Danny started getting on our cases about it, we took to the surrounding residences. This is the only home you got now, so why are you wrecking it? he had said, but back then, we took pride in our delinquency. None of us had family except for a few who had more to gain by pretending they didn’t. We weren’t in the System; we were just on the streets like animals. When Danny found me, I’d been taking trash out of dumpsters. Lord only knows what happened to my parents. The shelter was Danny’s project. He found some money from a private donor and gave a home to us street urchins. We never questioned it; we just sort-of gathered there, under the radar. We were forgotten—leftovers swept under a rug. The shelter, no more than an abandoned building, protected its residents from the slum-stink of vomiting summer sewers. Some who came to the shelter tried desperately to get out. There were a lot of us, though, who were practically born to stay at the shelter. For us, the shelter was home.

            It used to be that I didn’t play with the other kids. I spent most of my time with Jango and his books. Jango was one of the long-timers. Most of the long-timers were just begging to talk to you about their lives before they had landed. Some of them had lost their cash in stocks or from gambling. Some had just fallen on rough luck. Jango never talked about his past, though. He told me once that the past was a relic, and that, like most relics, it has no practical value. He said Forgive the past. Then forget it. I never really learned where he came from, but I guess it never really mattered. What mattered to Jango, though, were his books. Most he had brought into the shelter, and used to set up our own little library. Most of us couldn’t read, so it wasn’t a big deal, but to Jango, literature was worth more than cash. He taught me Poe and Lovecraft—the horror stories I loved most. We didn’t go to school so most of the shelter kids were stupid, and couldn’t read. I’m still pretty stupid, probably.

            Danny encouraged me to start playing with the other kids. He said he didn’t like me hanging out with Jango so much. You should be around other kids, he said. It was with Danny’s encouragement, that I met Rat. Rat was short, even for our age, and wide—like a rat. He had dark hair and was the first of us to find a hair on his chin. I remembered Rat from meals because all the kids had to sit together. He was the first boy to call me Worm. Ey, Bookworm! Why come ya never git your face out them books? That your name, ennit? Worm? Danny said that I would be a good influence on Rat and the other boys, but I couldn’t guess why he would think that.

            I took to the name Worm well enough. We all got our names, and it made us something of a club and a family. I was Worm, Rat was Rat. There was Hawk and Pink and Fresh and Skinny. The gang—that’s the ones I just told you about—made me the plan-guy, since I was “educated.” I figured out the best way to steal fruit from the carts past twenty-third, and when the best time would be to go by the restaurants for free stuff (You would normally think it was the end of the day, but if you could catch them around noon, they started tossing the uneaten breakfast foods). I learned the best way to avoid police, and taught the others the paths they should take if they were ever caught so they wouldn’t lead them back to the shelter.

            The Game made its come-back in the summer after I became Worm. Whenever we walked outside we would sweat. Danny was making repairs to the shelter, so we were forced to stay in the sun to play, anyway. If we went too far from the shelter, though, our shoes would begin to squish with the garbage-bag leakage that was in abundance that summer. Instead, Rat told us the story of the House.

            It’s haunted, guys, totally. Ain’t no one been in there ever! I heard a witch used to live up there in the upstairs. She was the kind that ate kids, you know? That’s why we do what we do and break the house. We have to avenge Grubbs!

            The argument compelled us, so we struck up the nerve to play. We started small: tearing out loose nails in the porch; scratching crude remarks into the side of the house. Anything we took, we would collect in a corner behind the rusty push mower in the shed behind the shelter. Sometimes we would hide things in really obvious places around the shelter, itself, just to see if Danny would ever catch onto our scheme. It was Fresh and Skinny who yanked part of the railing off the porch and slid it under the Danny’s bed. For an entire week, we would systematically sneak into his room to see if he had noticed.

            About a month or so into the Game, Danny caught Hawk throwing chunks of broken asphalt at the upper windows. The rest of us hid, and not a soul came to his aid when we heard him screaming from the beating. Because Hawk got caught, Pink dropped out—she was only in it for Hawk from the start. The two of them ran off one night, and we didn’t see them again that summer.

The next week, Fresh got caught by the police for lifting mangoes near Uptown. Skinny showed up out of breath from having run all the alleyways it took to get back to our haven. Skinny and Fresh had apparently been lifting from the same shop consistently, so the shop-keep set up a trap. Fresh’s arm was gashed, and bled through the torn shirt he’d wrapped around it.

Got fenced by that rust-trap off the Ave. I live though, he said. When his cut started changing color, though, we showed him to Danny. He chewed us out for being reckless and sent Rat and me away. The next morning, Danny and Skinny were gone. Jango told me he’d taken Skinny to the hospital. Gangrene, he’d suggested. Or Tetanus. Whatever it was, Danny came back alone. We didn’t see Skinny again that summer. We never saw Fresh, either.

Rat insisted that we continued, even though it was just the two of us. Rat and Worm, he said. We’s a team, man. We gotta stick it through. Rat decided without me that we needed to step up our game. The witch must be vanished!

“Vanquished,” I corrected. He wanted to break into the house—a task that had not been achieved by any of the shelter kids before us. I knew that there couldn’t be a witch or anything in there—they weren’t real after all—but I still thought it would be a bad idea to try to break-in. Fresh was arrested, Hawk and Pink were probably living it up somewhere, and Skinny—well Skinny could be dead for all we knew. Ever since we lost the gang, I’d been worrying about what we did here. Whether it was right.

Ten year olds shouldn’t be having existential crises, Jango told me. Despite Danny’s request, I still came to chat with him every so often. You steal because you have to. You break things because you’re a volatile ragamuffin, and that’s what you do. Don’t worry so much about it.

I ended up asking Danny, as well. I didn’t mention the house or the Game, but I did ask about the other things. What happened to Skinny was unfortunate, but I’m sure that he’s fine. I was playing around with the helmet he left on the floor by his door. Danny was once in Iraq, but he left and came here. He had always said that there were better things to be done than killing people. We knew what he did was illegal, but even the long-timers kept quiet about it. You have to remember that what we’re doing out here—our home—is technically against the law. We live a rent-free life, and make the best of our condition by scavenging things from around us. We take care of each other the best we can, but when we can’t, we have to enter the System.

“And that’s what happened to Skinny? To Fresh?” I asked. We were in his room. The chunk of the house’s porch was still nestled beneath his bed, collecting dust now.

Yes. They’ll be put into the foster system, for sure. They’ll get lost among the hundreds of other children matched with families just looking for a tax cut. But you’re safe here. Remember that. Remember that we watch out for each other. Now go do some chores.

I told Rat I was in. Danny’s reasoning didn’t sit well with me for some reason, but part of it resonated—the part about looking out for each other. If Rat was going to fight a witch, then I was going to help him. The two of us spent days running surveillance on the house, and to our mutual surprise, we learned something. Every Sunday, early in the morning (Rat and I had started skipping Danny’s morning talks), a tall, skinny man with dark shades would enter the house with a large bag. He was always wearing a suit and tie, like some sort of secret agent. He had a solitary halo of white hair on his head, and he walked with a cane.

Every Sunday he would pull up in a rich black car to the curb beside the house—he never used the driveway—the car door would open, followed by the cane. Next, the man would swing his long spider-like legs out, and push himself out of the vehicle. He used the car like a guide rail while he walked to the truck, and pulled out a fabric bag. He always struggled with the weight of the bag as he dragged it up to the house. Rat and I always watched amazed as he pulled a key—seemingly from nowhere—quickly unlocked the house, and disappeared inside. The second Sunday I grabbed a watch and timed him. He spent exactly ten minutes inside the house. Without fail, the door would open at the ten minute mark, the cane would extend—spider-legs following—and he would magic the key to his hand and lock the door. He took the empty bag to the car, got back in, and slowly drove away. The whole process was no more than fifteen minutes in all.

She’s not a witch, she’s a vampire, man, Rat noted. And that’s her servant! He’s one too, that’s why he wears the shades, and comes so early. No sun! He’s probably bringing he jars of blood he collects every week! Rat spent the next couple days fashioning pointed stakes out of broken pieces of the house—We’ll finish ‘em with their own home. Serve ‘em right! Rat had me go out to scavenge for tossed garlic loaves from an Italian restaurant. The way we figured it, we had to get into the house while the door was unlocked, kill the witch or vampire or whatever was in there, and get back out, all within ten minutes. We were daring, though. We could do it.

Our planning and espionage became a game, itself, and for a while, the House remained undamaged. We kept our findings to ourselves, and formed a plan. The very next Sunday, we would sneak-in after Spider-legs. I would keep watch, and Rat would steal the jars of blood. The witch would die that week without her blood, and we would just sneak out before we got caught. The days dragged by, but when Sunday finally came, we were ready.

We were hiding in the bushes near the porch when Spider-legs pulled up. His legs dragged him up to full height, but instead of dragging himself to the trunk of the car, he just stood there, staring expectantly toward the House. I froze. I could hear Rat trying to hold his breath beside me; it came in little gasps. Had he caught us? We held our ground until Danny approached the man. Without a word, Danny walked to Spider-legs, handed him a bundle of cash, and they split—Spider-legs by car, and Danny, toward the House.

I looked at Rat to measure his reaction. His eyes were wide, and I could tell that he was rethinking his decision to go in today. What was Danny doing? Danny walked right by our bush and climbed up the steps to the house. We waited a minute after he went in before we emerged, breathless, from our cover.

No wonder he’s always getting on our asses about the House! Danny’s been working with the witch this whole time! He’s one of them! Rat was frantic.

“Vampire, remember? Now, come on! Are we going in, or what?” I surprised myself. I knew there wasn’t a witch or vampire inside, but I was still curious about going in.

Rat nodded to me, a signal to go ahead. We went right up to the door, and I checked that our coast was clear while Rat put his ear against the door. He slid the door open slowly and we walked in. It was poorly lit. Like I had imagined, most of the windows were blocked by large shelves. Had I the time, I would’ve liked to see what was buried under all of that dust, but we were on a tight schedule. We could hear floorboards above us creaking. That must have been where Danny was.  As Rat scurried quietly toward the stairs, I was suddenly struck dumb. I didn’t know why it never occurred to me before, but it didn’t matter whether witches or vampires are real or not—there was someone upstairs! There was actually someone living in this old house!

Pssst! Rat caught my attention, flailing his arms, and I was broken from my reverie. He gestured toward the upstairs, and I followed after him. A mirror hanging on the wall of the first landing made me start. We looked older in that mirror, as though it were a fun house. Rat pulled me up the stairs after him, and we stepped out into a wider, more open room. The furnishings of the room were all covered in sheets and shoved to the walls. Heavy purple curtains hung from bronze bars above the windows. Dust clung in splotches on the ceiling, and dangled from cobwebs. There was a clear path across the floor that showed the path Danny must have taken—it lead directly to a closed door across the room.

Rat started first, dead-set on getting to the door, but he wasn’t looking where he was going. I saw the fold in the rug a second before rat tripped on it. He landed with a dull thud on carpet, spraying up dust all around. I knew what would come next, so I ducked behind the curtains. The sudden light from behind the curtain made me strain my eyes, and made me temporarily blind. I heard the door open, though.

Who’s there? Rat? Rat, what in the hell— Danny’s voice came in angry whispers. I heard him lift Rat and shove him toward the stairs.

Wait, Danny, please. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it! Rat squeaked. I waited as I heard them go downstairs. As my eyes adjusted, I could see out the window. It must have been that one that Hawk had smashed, because there was a hole straight through it. I had never been as high as a second floor before. I never noticed how bad the roof was on the shelter. I recognized for the first time how tall the buildings around us were. I looked down and saw Danny throw Rat into the yard. Danny headed back into the House, and Rat looked directly up at the window where I was hiding. He waved his arms over his head and gave me the thumbs up before he ran back to the shelter.

And then I was alone with the dusty curtains. I slid down to the floor and waited for Danny to come back upstairs. Surely he would realize that Rat wouldn’t have gone into the House alone. When Danny came back through, though, he didn’t even look for me. I wiped my brow, and looked around. There was broken glass and a small chunk of asphalt beside my foot—the one that Hawk had thrown through the window, I guessed. I started playing with the shards of glass, carving shapes and letters into the wall beneath the window. It felt like an eternity had passed before Danny left the room, and I heard him run back downstairs. I peeked out the window—wiping away dust—so I could watch him make a beeline for the shelter.

Alone again, I sat there. My nervous excitement had turned into a paranoid fear, and I held my breath as though Danny had somehow managed to deceive me and was not in the shelter, but was actually standing in that room, waiting for me to reveal myself. I plucked up the courage to crawl out from beneath the curtain. Dust clung to me in sheets, giving me the appearance of some sort of ghost. I wiped myself off the best I could, and looked around. With Danny gone, now, I knew that I was free to look around the house as much as I wanted. Until next Sunday, the House was completely empty except for me, and whoever—whatever—was behind that door.

The door itself was without dust. Its paint was cracked and peeling like the outside of the House. There was some gold flaking that swirled in patterns around the edges. The metal doorknob looked cold and heavy. I wanted to see what was on those shelves downstairs. I wanted to peek beneath the sheets in this room, or check out the other side of the House, but the doorknob pulled me to it. Without thinking or worrying, I wrapped my fingers around the knob and turned. The door stuck a little, so I had to lean my weight against it. It yielded, and I stepped into the room. The floorboards creaked as I stepped inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of citrus, lemons, I thought. Then it was the floor—spotless. The room was bright, too; the first one with any electric lighting. There were no windows, no furniture hiding beneath sheets. The room was empty of dusty bookshelves and ugly purple curtains. Instead, there was a large bed, tucked in the corner. A four-poster, I think they were called. A large white dresser sat against one wall. It had a large polished mirror above it that made the room seem twice as large as it actually was. Everything in this room was so pristine and clean—it was begging to be destroyed. The white surfaces asked to be marked or scraped; they begged for dust so that they could match the rest of the House.

There was another door that was open beside the dresser; I could hear the sounds of someone moving beyond that door. I took another step into the room, trailing dust and cobweb behind me. A few more steps brought me to the door. Inside, there was a small kitchenette. An old woman was shambling around, putting aluminum cans on shelves. A kettle shook with heat on a burner. She was humming. The melody was one I did not recognize, but it made me sad. I leaned in a bit more so that I could hear it better; as I did so, a floorboard creaked underneath me. Startled, the woman looked back at me. Her face sagged with age, but her eyes were wide with surprise. She looked at me standing there—a juvenile trespasser—and opened her mouth, as if to say something. Some sounds—words maybe, but not fully formed—came from her lips, but I was in a panic. I jumped backwards, running into the dresser, and fell. Something crashed to the floor with a twinkling shatter. A frame of some sort—its glass sliced my hand open.

I pulled myself up, using the dresser, leaving a smear of red on its wooden surface. The woman made another sound as she came around the door, but I was already gone. I bolted through the open door and back into the dirty, dusty House. I stumbled down the stairs, and busted through the front door. For a second, I thought I should turn back to lock it, but it was too late, and I was too far gone.

I ducked in the back door of the shelter and tried to catch my breath. I’d been caught. That was it. Whoever this woman was, she would tell Danny, and then I would get in trouble, and he would send me away. Yes, that’s what he was going to do. In my startled paranoia, I snuck my way back to the bunks where we slept, but bumped into Jango.

Spy games now? He was holding a book as he usually was—this one small and green. I tried to find words, but I was too shaken to think. I was dizzy and feeling nauseous as well. What happened to your hand? he asked.

I looked at my hand, blood still gushing from the wound. “I—I—I don’t—know.” I began to cry. I hadn’t cried in so long. I cried from the pain of the cut, as Jango took me to wash it up. The pain became frustration—at myself for falling, for being caught; for getting scared and running away. It became frustration at Rat for running away, at Danny for being secretive and all the other kids for leaving me here alone. I became angry at my parents, wherever they were, for leaving me lonely and disconnected.

And then the blood was gone, washed away, and my tears stopped. We wrapped up my hand in strips of a torn shirt, and Jango told me to be more careful. When Rat would come in later to ask me about what happened, I didn’t respond. He didn’t say anything about Danny chastising him. Instead, he bullied me to tell him about the room. When he pressured me, I just told him it was books, loads of dusty old books. I don’t know why I lied, but I wanted to keep the woman secret for some reason—maybe to hide my shame. I was a coward, after all. A worm.

The next week, Danny came to talk to me. I had developed a cough, and was sitting in bed, sick. I hadn’t gone out since the incident, and Rat had stopped coming to see me. I drew pictures on weathered sheets of paper and flipped through books that Jango lent me. When Danny came into the room, I knew it was because he knew.

You were with Rat last week, weren’t you?

I nodded.

You broke a picture frame.

I nodded. I was in trouble, of course.

The woman in that house is a dear friend of mine, did you know that? She gives us money to keep the shelter running.

I shook my head.

Is your hand okay?

I raised my eyebrow, confused.

She said you cut your hand. There was blood on her dresser?

“I’ll clean it up, Danny. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything.”

It’s fine. It’s cleaned up. But your hand, Danny reached out to take my hand. She asked about your hand. The hand in question had never stopped stinging. Half of the time it felt like it was on fire, other times it was numb and cold. Today, I had forgotten about it and it laid beside me limp and useless, still wrapped in that same torn shirt. Danny lifted my arm. The bandage crunched with dried blood as he unwrapped it.

I was suddenly hit with a sickly sweet smell. I looked over and saw that my hand had turned a blackish-green color. Danny had to rip the shirt away to remove it from the wound, but some of the fibers stayed attached, anyway. Some pus squirted out in spots where it hadn’t yet healed. Danny looked frightened. It felt weird to see him touching my hand, even though I couldn’t feel his fingers against mine. The cut ran deep from the space between my thumb and pointer across to where my palm met my wrist.

Shit, Danny swore. He reached his arm under my legs and lifted me out of the bed. Come on. We gotta get this cleaned up. He tried to get me to my legs, but I fell. I hadn’t realized how dizzy I was until he tried to get me to walk. My vision got really dark and blurry suddenly, and I felt like I needed to throw up.

The next few hours of my life are still foggy to me this day. I remember snatches of consciousness. I remember seeing that white room again, and hot water being poured on my hand. I remember that woman, closer this time. Her old hazel eyes looked into mine. I remember looking for a bit of life in them, and—finding it—passing out again. I remember a different white room, this time colder, more people. It was a hospital. I had never been in one before. There was a tube running into my arm which was cuffed to the bed by a strip of Velcro. Danny had put me in the hospital.

I spent about a week in recovery. During that time, several people came in to talk to me. They talked about foster care, and medicine. They asked about where I came from, and how I got here. They made me pick a real name, Alex, and told me I’d be moving in with a family when I left. The first time they let me walk, I went directly to the window. I looked out at all the people milling about. Sick, cured, visitors, family—just people being people. I looked at my bandaged hand, soon to be better, and thought that I would soon be one of them. Yes—one of them.

The Rescue Dog

            On the day of The Incident, Jubilee was sitting in her usual spot beneath the awning of the bakery. The rain had soaked the edges of her blanket. The Prince was drenched, but Jubilee held him close, regardless, savoring the retriever’s warm body. It was a good spot. The owners of the bakery were kind. They never chased her off, so long as she didn’t bother the customers as they came and went.

I had taken to calling her Jubilee—in my head, at least—because she was always wearing this large button from the Diamond Jubilee. It was a vibrant purple and stood out against her layers of brown-on-green-on-brown-again coats. She was nicer than some of the other beggars I would pass by. She responded well to a simple shake of the head, and she wouldn’t shout after you if you just didn’t say anything. She actually looked happy.

Seeing Jubilee with The Prince reminded me of my sister, back in the states. She was always a dog lover in a way that I would never be. She had a chow-pit-bull mutt named Dennis. He was a big dog. Loyal. Old. Quite old, really. He had gone blind in his right eye, and he had a limp. He was still energetic, though, and would play around with Rachael whenever she came home from school. He was always waiting for us when we would get off the bus, and he would greet me with the same energy as Rachael, but, again, I didn’t much care for dogs.

Rachael found Dennis abandoned in a dumpster. Our parents let her keep him, calling him “the rescue dog.” He never really lost the dumpster smell, and for that reason, he had to stay outside. I was a bit of a germaphobe as a kid. Maybe that’s why I preferred the company of cats to dogs. My cat, Tiara, cleaned himself regularly. He didn’t smell, and he was an indoor cat. Rachael’s the one who named the poor beast. She had originally thought he was a girl, but when she and my mother went to get the kitten spayed, they were told otherwise. The name stuck, though. Tiara had light golden fur on his feet, a thin black line of fur that looked like a crown around his head, but he was white everywhere else. He was stand-offish. Whenever he actually wanted attention, which was rare, he would use claws and teeth to get it. I liked him a lot because I didn’t have to work for him. Dennis required a lot of special care and cleaning, but Tiara mostly just looked after himself.

That was all pretty long ago, though. Tiara is much older now and mostly just sits around. He’s gotten fat and, like Dennis, has gone a bit blind. Rachael agreed to take care of him while I was studying in England. It was a six-week program. Not even a full term, really—two courses and most of it spent in an underground library. It was still exciting, though. Although my dad came from New York, he and my mother had moved into rural Virginia before they even had my sister. I’d never even seen a big city until they took me to catch my flight. So many cars and people—languages I didn’t know. And then I was suddenly in a foreign county, where the only relief I had to my anxiety was the knowledge that I spoke the native tongue.

Dad handed me a fifty dollar bill before I boarded the plan and reminded me of how I should act in a city. “Watch your back,” he had said. “Keep your wallet in your front pocket. Don’t carry a lot of cash on you. Don’t exchange this fifty for Euros; American money is worth more to you in an emergency. If you see bums, don’t look them in the eye. Don’t give them money. Don’t talk to them.” I just dutifully nodded my head, and ignored the fact that England used the pound, not the Euro. He seemed genuinely worried, anyway, so I wasn’t going to ruin that rare sentiment.

I did see some homeless people, though, and I definitely wasn’t prepared, despite my father’s warning. I felt immediately lost when I landed, and it took me the better half of a day to find my way to the city, and then the rest to find my lodgings. I got oriented in a couple days, though, but my heart seized up every time I saw one of the Oxford vagrants. They looked filthy, cold. Sad. They reminded me of everything that I had never liked about Dennis, but these were people. We didn’t have any homeless people where I was from, or if we did, I never saw any. I never even saw a one in DC before I got on the plane.

But in Oxford, you walk everywhere. Or you take a bus. If you walk, then you take sidewalks. That’s where the Vagrants live. The sidewalks. It seemed as though they found prime real-estate—chunks of sidewalk that were large enough that they wouldn’t be stepped on, but in locations where plenty of people would be walking by. “Spare a pound? I’d like a warm bed tonight.” Seeing them all, so broken and disheartened, it humbled me. It made me feel spoiled. I didn’t even come from a rich family or anything—lower-middle class, at that. My trip was paid for with scholarships and church donations. But these people had even less than I did.

To cope with the pain of seeing them, I gave them names. I tried to be funny, thinking that if I could laugh, then I could just ignore them. The one on the corner, whose nose was perpetually red from his never-ceasing cold, was Rudolph. “Chuckles” was the name I gave the toothless one who took the benches beside the bookshop. And then there was Jubilee. . .

My classes required me to walk about a mile south of St. Anne’s to the Bodleian Library for research. Every day I would pass the bakery. Every day I would pass Jubilee and The Prince. She stood out to me because she was the first pet owner I had even seen in the country. Her accent was very thick British, almost stereotypically. She smiled when she talked and her teeth were fairly white and straight. Underneath the unkempt hair and ragged clothes, she reminded me of how my sister had looked before the accident. Unlike the others, she struck me as someone who hadn’t given up hope.

I had to remember what my father had said, though. Never look them in the eyes. Never give them money. And certainly don’t talk to them. With Jubilee, more than others like Rudolph or Chuckles, I had to force myself to ignore her. Sometimes I would cross the street before I got to her place, just to make it easier. The Vagrants were usually dismissible. They were like objects on the roadside: something you notice, but don’t pay too much attention to; then, as soon as they are out of sight, you forget them. I couldn’t forget Jubilee, though. I would find myself looking out for her. If I crossed the street, I looked across, just to see if she was there. If I passed her, I slowed down, just to take in the sight. I found myself thinking about her when I went out to the pubs with my classmates. I thought about her when I went home at night. While I wrote essays. While I studied. I even talked to my sister about her on Skype.

I was thankful that Rachael didn’t take offense when I told her that a hobo reminded me of her. She just gave a snide remark about how she probably looks that way, anyway. When she was in high school, she was one of the most popular girls in school. She did cheerleading and had high academic marks. She could afford to have a different boyfriend every week if she had wanted, but she never dated. She said it would interfere with her “plans,” and besides, Dennis was the only boy she’d ever need in her life. Her goal was to get enough scholarships to get into a good school and become a veterinarian. She never outgrew that passion for animals, but her plans were definitely changed.

It happened toward the end of her Junior year. We had just come home on the bus. Rachael had a cheerleading competition in the morning, so people wished her luck as she got off. I was, as usual, ignored, as I preferred. Dennis greeted us and the bus took off. Tiara was there too, skulking. He wanted attention, and rubbed against Rachael as she rubbed Dennis behind the ears. Our driveway was a long one, and I had begun to walk, as usual, without saying anything. Rachael asked me to hold up, though, so she could grab the mail. She looked both ways and crossed to the mailbox.

The next moments haunted me for the longest time. I still sometimes wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares. I sometimes thought that there should have been something I could do. There should have been something I could have changed. Maybe I should have gotten the mail that day. It was my chore, anyway. There wasn’t anything I could do, though. We both heard the car coming around the blind turn on our road, but Rachael had plenty of time to cross. Tiara wasn’t so lucky. The cat had decided at the last minute to follow after my sister. There was a blur of the car going too fast on the road, a high pitched screech, and then my cat, lying in the middle of the road. His fur was matted red. He was alive—still howling. The car had clipped his rear, broken his leg.

Tiara would be fine, but I didn’t know that. Neither did Rachael, though. Mail in hand, she immediately bolted into the road and scooped up my cat. There wasn’t a sound when the second car hit her, or if there was, I have since blocked it from my memory. It didn’t hit her very hard, but it was enough to throw her down the hill across from our drive. I took after her, slipping and scrambling down the hillside. When I got to her, she was unconscious and bleeding.

We got her to the hospital. The driver—she was the wife of a farmer from up the road—called an ambulance, and the paramedics got her back up the hill. My mother rode with her while my father and I followed. The farmer’s wife had offered to take Tiara to the vet for us. Dennis, who wouldn’t let us leave without him, howled in the back seat the entire way to the hospital. I can’t remember exactly how I felt that evening. Dad made me stay in the car to take care of Dennis. Mom must have bathed him that day, because he wasn’t as smelly as he usually was. He whimpered, as though he understood the whole situation.

I was left in the car for maybe an hour before I decided I had to go in. I slipped the rarely used collar around Dennis’s neck (he was real good about not wandering off), clipped the leash on, and walked into the hospital. People gave me some really strange looks when I came in with the dog. Eventually a doctor stopped me.

“Excuse me, young man, but you know that this is not a veterinarian’s office, right?” I nodded. “Where are your parents? Are you lost?” The doctor was kind. He could tell that something was wrong. Tearfully, I told him about the accident. He had me sit with Dennis in a waiting room. It smelled as bad as Dennis usually did, but in the opposite way—too clean. Too antiseptic. One of the lights in the room was buzzing. An older woman who was also waiting kept asking me about Dennis, but I could only manage a few intermittent nods.

The doctor came back eventually with Mom. She told me that Rachael was okay, but that she was resting. They let me and Dennis in to see her. Dennis immediately jumped up on his hind legs and laid his head beside her. Rachael’s face was badly bruised and scraped. Both of her legs were in casts, as was her right arm, which had apparently been dislocated in the fall. She woke up when Dennis licked her. She smiled through her pain, and asked “How’s Tiara?” Mom told her not to worry about it. To rest. Everything will be fine, but you need your rest.

Tiara survived. He’s still alive today, too. Grumpy. Lazy. He’s fat, half-blind. He lost his tail in the accident, and I’m still the only guy I know who can say he has a three-legged cat. For the longest time, after Rachael was able to come home, she hated the sight of Tiara. It reminded her of her own injury and the fact that, according to the doctors, she would never be able to walk without braces again. The accident ruined her cheerleading, which bothered her, but it also wrecked her senior year. Mom stayed home and homeschooled Rachael while she went through physical therapy.

Once Rachael got past her despair, she began to see Tiara as a symbol. If this cat could overcome its disability and walk again, (and he had; you haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen a three-legged cat leap onto the top of a set of shelves!) then she could overcome her disaster. She was determined to prove the doctors wrong. She spent the whole year doing exercises with her legs. All along the way, Dennis never left her side. He was allowed inside now, as a comfort to my sister. During her first big check-up, they discovered that her legs had healed a lot faster than what was expected. They knew, then, that she would be able to walk again after all. Rachael took a couple online classes while she continued to heal, and by the end of the second year, she was ready to take her first steps without the braces.

We were all there to watch. Even Tiara. Dennis took every step with her, as he had throughout the entire process. It was four steps that first day, but that was enough to give my sister hope. By the end of the week she could manage stairs. Rachael later got accepted and started college. Dennis passed away while Rachael was sleeping one night. We had been expecting it, mostly. It was still sad. Rachael kept his dog tag, and made it into a bracelet that she still wore around, five years later.

She gave me the bracelet to wear while I was England. She told me that, since Dennis had always come back to her, then if I wore the tag, too, then I would have to return as well. I wore it every day while I was there, even though I got teased for it. Some of the other students took to calling me the Campus Dog. That was fine though. I’d never been very good at making friends, and like Tiara, I still preferred to be alone.

I spent a lot of my free time in Oxford taking walks. I’d walk in the University Parks or around the Meadow, but whenever it rained (which it did frequently in England) I walked south on Woodstock toward the shopping areas. I was on one of those rainy walks on the day of The Incident. The traffic was a little busier that day, either despite the rain, or because of it, so I wasn’t able to cross the street. I passed Jubilee on the way down, and she was there, of course. The smell of the fresh bread from the bakery hit me hard, making me hungry. Jubilee’s voice sounded a bit weaker than usual, as though she were suffering one of Rudolph’s colds.

“Spare some change?” she asked. My heart hurt, as usual, when I ignored her. As I kept walking, though, I kept thinking about her, and wondered what she had been through. What led her to the street of Oxford begging for coin?

I had dinner with a mate in town, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I kept thinking about her. It spoiled the meal for me. When I left the restaurant, though, there was a group of teenagers kicking around a football. The rain had subsided finally, so I guess they felt like celebrating. I saw Chuckles, walking away from Waterstone’s toward wherever it is The Vagrants call home at night. I walked my friend to the bus stop, but when I turned around to head back toward my lodgings, I heard some shouting.

Chuckles was on the ground, his sack spilled out beside him. Some clothes were tossed aside, and he was scrambling around picking up coins. The teens from earlier were around him, shouting insults at him. I gathered that they had hit him with their ball, and then decided to continue to abuse the poor man. They weren’t using English, as far as I could tell, but it seemed pretty apart. I shouted at them to leave him alone. For a second, I was scared. There were three of them, and one of me. If they wanted to fight me, they would certainly win. They turned away and left, though, laughing.

I walked over and tried to help Chuckles pick up his lost coin, but he shouted at me, “I’ve had enough of you damn brats! Just leave me! Leave a poor man his dignity at least!” I didn’t know how to reply, so I just walked away. Is that why people don’t help the homeless? I had always assumed that it was out of inhumanity or just carelessness, but maybe, at the end of the day, it’s better that we don’t? That’s awful, though. I know that sometimes people just need help, right? Like my sister. She needed Dennis around to keep her going.

I spotted Jubilee up ahead. It looked like she was about to start getting herself together, but I wanted to give her some money first. The Vagrants wouldn’t be asking for it if they didn’t need it or want it, right? Dignity aside, everyone needs a hand up now and again. I nodded to her as I passed, and walked into the bakery. As it turns out, they sell the bread cheaper right before they close up so they could get rid of that day’s stock, so I bought some extra rolls and got some change back, for Jubilee.

There was a sudden scream from outside that made the shop clerk cover her mouth. I looked behind me and saw Jubilee screaming at a car that was passing by. I ran out the door and saw The Prince, lying dead in a puddle on the street. Hit and run, just like Tiara. I was immobilized for a second. I couldn’t move or think. All I could see was my cat in the street, dead, and I knew what came next. I hear the car’s horn, and knew that Jubilee would not. Then, without thinking—without even knowing what was happening—I was on the ground. I had pulled Jubilee back and out of the way of a car. The driver shouted profanely from the window as he passed.

I didn’t know what to do. Jubilee managed to pull The Prince out of the street, and I helped her wrap him in her blanket. She mumbled a “thank you” as she walked away. I was still frozen. It had begun to rain again, but I hadn’t noticed. I just watched as blood washed down the street. The shop clerk came out and asked if I was okay, and offered me a seat inside. She woke me from my daze, and I just shook my head.

I didn’t give Jubilee any change. I still had the bread. I considered running after her, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate. I saw something glint in the headlights of another car, though. It was a dog collar that had been smashed by several cars at this point. I snatched it out of the road, and wiped the mud, rain, and blood off of it. It read “William." The Prince’s name was William.

Over the next two weeks, I did not see Jubilee. I went into the bakery more often and occasionally I would ask about her. I continued my work. I learned to love the city and the culture. On the day I was supposed to leave, I was walking toward the bus stop, and I saw her. She had moved onto a side-street I’d never needed until now. She was looking cleaner now. Her hair was a bit straighter, he clothes less wrinkled. It was a rare sunny day. She wasn’t smiling though. Her face, like many of the other Vagrants, was blank. Hopeless. That was how I knew what it took to get that way. Losing something. All of the Vagrants must have lost something dear to them. A friend, a family. A home. For Jubilee it was the Prince—William.

I had about ten pound left over from my bus fair, and it wouldn’t be worth much to me back home, so I went ahead and handed it to her as I passed. She looked up and said thank you. I don’t believe she recognized me. When she saw the note, though, she asked, “Are you sure?” I nodded. “God Bless!” A faint smile this time. “I like your bracelet.” I looked down at my bracelet, and it dawned on me. I reached into my back pack and pulled out William’s dog tag. I pulled Dennis’s tag off of the bracelet—Rachael would understand—and attached the new tag.

“Here. It’s not much, but I found this after you left.” I handed Jubilee the bracelet, and her eyes lit up. She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I could see that she recognized me.

“Oh, God Bless you!” She grabbed me into a hug, and I went ahead and hugged her back. As I walked away to catch my bus, I knew that she would be okay. Like my sister, Jubilee had a Rescue Dog to take care of her. I just never thought it would end up being me.

Black Hair Ribbons

            James was standing at the back of the funeral crowd thinking that it might be time again for a haircut. His bangs had started to get caught in his eyebrows. He could tell that the back of his head was getting frizzy from the day’s humidity. The sun had come out from behind the clouds somewhere toward the end of the service and the misting rain had stopped. He didn’t need an umbrella, which was good since he had left his on the floorboard of his Plymouth. He tugged at the neck of his shirt, and unfastened the top button beneath his tie—the shirt was one that he had dredged from the back of the closet at his mom’s house. James had been on one of his rare visits home when his Uncle Gary had suddenly died. He got a text from his sister around lunchtime asking James if he could stick around town for the funeral.

How could James have known he would need a funeral outfit? The shirt he borrowed was just a little bit too small for him, and it clung to his skin, absorbing sweat. James’s father—now five years divorced from James’s mother—had brought a sports jacket for James to wear; it was a size too big and made James feel like he was wearing a costume. He felt like an idiot for staying—he’d cancelled a meeting with a client, and he always hated the excuse that a loved one had died.

            It wasn’t his first funeral, so he knew what to expect. His left pocket was shoved half-full with breath mints. His right had a small pack of tissues—not for him, but to be offered to other people. James felt that it was unlikely he would cry at this funeral. The inside pocket of his jacket held his Denman-Professional hair comb. In his back pocket was the small aluminum case that held his business cards. He was proud of these cards and what they advertized because they said that James had achieved something in life and that he had managed to escape the small town of Goodview, where he had grown up. Some days, when he thought of home, he would pull out his business cards and read “JAMES EDWARD THOMPSON, ARBORTOWN INSURANCE AGENT” and he would remember that he was still going to go somewhere in the world. He carried those cards with him all the time because, as he often said, he never knew when he might need one.

            James stood at the back of the crowd. He couldn’t hear the preacher, but he could see everything. A towel had been passed around to dry off the aluminum folding chairs set out for the mourners, but by the time it had reached James, it was saturated; James stood behind his chair. He recognized a few people in the crowd, but was slightly surprised at how many he did not recognize. He was sure they were family—who else would come to his Uncle Gary’s funeral? Some faces he half-recognized from family reunions, Christmases, and Easters, but the rest were people he had just met at the open-casket viewing.

***

            The open casket service was held earlier that day at a small Baptist church at the end of Main. The parking lot was small, so many of the guests’ cars had spilled into neighboring parking lots. James had parked across the street at a small diner that his parents had taken him and his sister to on parade days. The funeral home was beside the church. Convenient, James thought. Good for business. There was a misting of rain, so most of the guests had huddled together under umbrellas on their way into the building. James had left his in the car.

            At the viewing, the church had been packed with people milling about, looking lost. Greetings were whispered, accompanied with a wish that they were meeting under different circumstances. A few people sat in pews, but most stood. James remembered lurching forward with the crowd glance at his uncle’s corpse. James’s cousin Kate was standing by the casket, being hugged. James gave Kate a hug. It had been ten years since James had last seen her. She was a tall, thin girl now. Her black dress hung loose on her arms and James smelled alcohol mixed with perfume.

James had had his first kiss with her when they were kids. “Look at what Daddy taught me.” She had pulled James beneath one of the tables draped with fabric at a reunion and parted his lips with hers. He had liked it—it was foreign, new, and he had seen his parents kiss a few times before his dad moved away. James and Kate had had a romance during that family weekend, but it didn’t survive. James never let himself think that Kate’s dad, his dead uncle Gary, had taught her to kiss, but now he couldn’t help thinking of what it had meant. It made James feel nauseous. More than anything else about the funeral, James hated that the people were here to hypocritically honor this horrible man, and everyone knew so.

As they grew up, Kate became a source of family gossip. She had run away from home once or twice, but just down to a neighbor’s or a friend’s place. She got caught in a large cheating scandal during her high school SOL tests and dropped out because of it. The gossip didn’t really get bad until she ran off and got married to a city boy from DC. In the midst of the gossip, it somehow got out that Gary had been investigated for having relations with his daughter. It was never proven, but James knew, and everyone else knew as well.

            James never liked Kate’s dad. His casket was made of cheap oak with a cushioned white interior. Gary had once attempted to hike across Blue Ridge, he told James. He’d once gone swimming with sharks, but James didn’t believe him. He used to own a business, one time. James had been unimpressed, and was still unimpressed by the dead man. Gary’s face was plastered with makeup to make him look more alive. Gary’s suit fit better than James’ did, James noticed. James smiled, amused that his uncle Gary looked better in death than he ever had before.

            James stepped away to allow his great aunt Gertrude—or maybe it was Greta?—to stare at the corpse. The line of gawkers had moved into an empty side room filled with tables of tiny sandwiches that came from the diner across the street. Quite a little operation they have here. James grabbed a cucumber sandwich and walked to the back of the room. The service was about to start, so James fixed his hair in a hall mirror before sitting in the rear pew.

            James’s sister Meghan was already there with her son, Gavin, who was playing a hand-held video game with the volume turned up just loud enough to be annoying.

            “So Mom didn’t make it then?” Meghan’s hair was pulled back with a black scrunchie, but a few strands were stubbornly jutting out to the side. James handed her his comb.

            “Not her brother. Not her problem. You know how she can be. She sends her best.” James took the comb back from his sister and pulled a few hairs from the teeth before slipping it back into his breast pocket. Their mother had estranged herself from their father’s side of the family after the divorce.

            Meghan nodded. “Gavin. I said save your game and put it away.”

            Gavin looked up from the game. “But Ma-ahm!” Meghan gave the boy a look again and held out her hand. He kept playing, and Meghan took her hand back.

            Meghan looked back at James. “I am surprised that you and dad are here, at the same time. You two can barely occupy the same space without fighting.” Meghan looked toward the front pew. Their father was in the front row, sitting next to Kate. Gary was his brother, after all. Meghan would never bring it up to James, but the reason their parents divorced was because their father had thought James was too effeminate as a boy, and so their father had mistreated James. Meghan admired her mother for kicking their father out of the house, but she didn’t want James to think it was all his fault.

Before James had come out in high school, he and his dad had been fighting. Since the divorce, James rarely saw his dad, except during an obligatory family function, and even then they would either ignore each other, or start arguing. Even at the funeral, the only exchange between the two had been when his father had passed James the sports jacket and told him to keep it. “I won’t wear it after you,” his father had said. James just shrugged the jacket on and walked away. James’s father had never come to terms with having a gay son. James pretended like he didn’t have a father.

“Are you two ever going to make up?” Meghan looked at her brother. “His brother did just die, Jamie. He’s vulnerable to compassion.”

“What am I supposed to do? Apologize? What for? He’s an asshole, and I’m through with trying.” James would’ve gone on, but the pastor had just stepped up to the front of the room. Meghan told Gavin again to turn off his game. He turned the volume down and kept playing.

The pastor welcomed everyone to the gathering and read the twenty-third Psalm. He invited everyone in for a moment of reflection, and then opened the floor to family and friends who would like to share a memory of their dearly-departed Gary. James listened as people talked about Gary’s self-made business (though they left out the part about it failing). They talked about times they went hiking with the man and the trip to the ocean he had once taken his family to see. Everyone had only good things to say about Gary. To distract himself from the lies, James kept fidgeting with his bangs. In between speakers, all anyone could hear was the sound of rain on the church roof. James was distracted by the sound of Gavin’s thumbs jabbing buttons on his game.

After several people spoke, Kate took her turn. Like the others, she spoke only kind things. The memory that she gave the congregation was of a time when she was little and she had just come home from school with an A+ on a drawing assignment. Her father, sober at the time—though she did not mention that—had taken the drawing and told Kate how much he liked it. It was a drawing of her and her dad holding hands in a field with blue grass and a yellow sky.

When Kate left the pulpit, she sat beside James’s father and a man that James did not recognize. The man was dressed better than James. The man’s hair was crisp and neat. This must be Kate’s husband, James thought. The man kept checking his watch.

James’s father did not stand to speak. When no one came forward to speak after Kate, the pastor returned to say some parting words, and gave instructions about how they would proceed to the gravesite.

“And it sounds as though God has stopped the rain, just for us.” Everyone stood and sang a hymn before they began to pile toward the doors. Gavin finally turned his game off. He sneaked away from Meghan and began speaking with one of his younger cousins, a pretty little blonde girl wearing black hair ribbons. As the two kids ran off, James clenched his fist and thought about when he and Kate had met beneath the table as kids.

“Did you meet Raymond yet? Nice guy,” Meghan broke James’s reverie as she nodded toward Kate’s husband who was jabbing at his phone’s touch-screen. James shook his head. “He’s an accountant from Washington. He wants to make it big. I bet you two would get along.”

James rolled his eyes, but as the crowd began to file through the doors, he found himself being drawn unintentionally closer to Kate and Raymond. James smiled to himself, thinking that this would be the perfect opportunity to get revenge on the hypocrisy in the room. Raymond was an attractive man, and James wasn’t above using his charm to distract people.

“That was a very nice story you told about your dad, Kate.” James ran his hand through his hair with the hope that his sweaty palm would help it stay down.

Kate smiled a smile that could have been mistaken as a frown. “Have you met Raymond?” Her breath smelled like bourbon, and James thought of the breath mints in his pocket. When Kate spoke, Raymond looked up from his phone and nodded before he went back to typing.

James extended his hand toward the man, anyway. “I’m James, Kate’s cousin. I heard you do accounting?”

Raymond looked up from his phone and smiled. “Oh, yes. Raymond Williams. I run the books for New Haven Auto Insurance.” He shoved his phone back into his pocket and shook James’s hand. James noticed that Raymond did not have a very strong grip, and his hand was soft and sweaty, like his own. Raymond had grayish blue eyes.

“New Haven?” James smiled. He reached into his back pocket for his aluminum case, flipped it open, and handed Raymond a card. “I’m an agent for Arbortown. Small world.” Raymond accepted the card and frowned.

“Nice card. I guess we’re rivals. Just kidding of course.” Raymond reached into his pocket and pulled a card to hand to James. James took the card, but continued to look Raymond in the eyes. He smiled at Raymond as the crowd forced them through the door and out into the graveyard.

It was much brighter outside than it had been. It was warm now—welcoming. The sky was bright blue and the clouds were puffy and white. It was a beautiful day. In the light, James realized that his dad was standing just on the other side of Kate, pretending not to realize that James was there. James glared at his dad before looking back at Raymond. “It’s very nice in DC. I’m up there every other weekend or so. It’s much better than this stinking hole I grew up in, anyway.” James spoke for his dad to hear. His dad broke away to sit with the funeral crowd in the fold up chairs.

“I like it here, to be honest. It’s where I met Kate, you know.” Raymond smiled at Kate and put his arm around her shoulder. “It was nice to meet you.” Raymond guided Kate toward the front of the crowd. James stayed at the back with a bad taste in his mouth. He unwrapped a breath mint and ate it.

***

After the casket was lowered into the ground, the crowd began to disperse. James was ready to leave—if he could get out of there fast, he could schedule a hair appointment and still have enough time to get on the road before dark. Meghan caught his arm as he turned to leave, though.

“Have you seen Gavin?” She did not look worried, but she did seem as though she was preoccupied. James looked around real quick, and saw Gavin walk out of the church with the little girl. Her black hair ribbons were gone, and her hair looked messy for the lack of them. James pointed in their direction. “Oh, thanks.” Meghan turned to leave, but then turned back and gave James a hug. “Talk to dad. Seriously,” she whispered in his ear. Before James had a chance to respond, she ran over to get Gavin, and left for her car.

James turned around and looked toward the grave. The marker was simple. It listed Gary’s full name, his birthday and last Tuesday’s date. James did the math; he had been forty-nine years old. Kate was still standing talking with mourners. Raymond was checking his watch while speaking with the pastor. James’s father was looking at the grave, but his back was turned to James, and he did not see James, who turned away and walked back through the church.

James passed by the little blonde girl who was brushing her hair. With a smile on her face, the girl asked her mother, “Why do we put people in boxes when they die?” James left before he heard the answer.

James got in his car and pulled out his phone to call the old barber shop. He was in luck—there was time for a trim. James shrugged his dad’s jacket off and tossed it out the window. That will give this town something to talk about. He reached into his breast pocket for his comb and found Raymond’s business card. James tossed the card into the floorboard beside his umbrella. While he drove, he thought of black hair ribbons and his uncle’s grave marker which waited for the tombstone he was sure Kate and her Raymond had ordered for his Uncle Gary.

Taryn

For a moment, I’m flying. I’m heading straight for the night sky. My target is the moon. It is smeared with storm clouds that black out the stars, but its nocturnal glow lights my way. And then I crash through the surface. The sky, the moon, the clouds—it all runs past my bare chest. My entry echoes across the sky, and there is darkness beneath. It is cold and quiet. I’m in space now, weightless. There is nothing around me, until I look back. Again, I see the moon floating above me. It pulls at me now, dragging me back. But I don’t want to go back. Not yet. I fight it, but the moon is winning. I’m running out of breath and strength. It keeps pulling me up until…

            I break the surface of the water, gasp for air, and shake the water out of my hair. I take a look at my familiar surroundings. The dock behind me creaks. I can hear the lapping sound of the small waves smacking against the dockside. It’s dark out here, too. Across the way I can see the few speckled lights of the homes belonging to the late-night dwellers, like myself, who find themselves restless until the earliest morning hours. Granny Lynn’s house is dark behind me. It had been a long day, and she had gone to bed shortly after we left the reception at Taryn’s house. There is a soft glowing light coming from one of the upstairs windows next door. Taryn’s mother wouldn’t be able to sleep well, but that’s understandable.

            The wind began to pick up, chilling the wet skin on my face. Some would say I’m crazy for swimming at night like this, but I find it soothing. Everything is so much more peaceful at night, when no one else is around. My cousin Kyle and his gang aren’t around at night to harass me about being an out-of-towner and all the other things they hate about me. There aren’t summer tourists everywhere, asking for directions or making messes. It’s just me and the lake. Just me, floating in space. And besides, there are better reasons than this to call me crazy.

            The water is real. It’s always felt more real to me than the land. In the water I’m weightless. I’m not burdened by the weights of the world around me. In the water I can fly. I can glide across the surface, and leave all my troubles behind. Under the water is a whole different world. It’s mine. It’s a place that no one can take away from me. But it’s also a place I can’t share.

            I go back underwater and I’m with Taryn. She’s sitting on the bench, clothes drenched. Taryn’s got my jacket wrapped around her, and I’m standing there shirtless. Girls walk by on the boardwalk, checking me out, but then move away when they see her—this girl, Taryn—blubbering beside me. I saw it happen from the beach.

It was my first day back that summer, and I was in town, looking out at the water. Behind me I heard a scream and saw Kyle and his gang. They were blasting Taryn with super-soakers, and she was screaming like it burned her. I ran over and told them to cut it out. They sprayed me, too, but quickly ran off.

“You okay?” I had asked her. She had collapsed into tears, right there in the middle of the path. People were standing around staring. She was wearing baggy clothes to cover herself. She was dead weight, but I managed to help her up and walk her over to the bench.

I resurface with a gasp. The storm clouds are really rolling in now. The moon is obscured, and the only light I can see is coming from the window in Taryn’s house. There is a light drizzle falling. Over the sound of my own breathing, I can hear the raindrops tap tap tap on the dock. They plunk against the canoe, and drip on the surface beside me.

Underwater again, and I’ve taken Taryn home.

 She had moved into the vacant house next door last winter. Taryn’s mother greeted me warmly and offered me a shirt to wear, since Taryn still had my jacket. I accepted her offer, and she sent me downstairs with Taryn to get a shirt. I remember the look in Taryn’s eyes when she held it out to me. There was sadness and admiration. There was also recognition. I tried to take the shirt, but she was gripping it pretty hard.

“Are you okay?” She looked down at the shirt, and quickly let go.

“I’m sorry. That was my brother’s shirt.” She was quiet and I could already see the tears forming. I asked her about her brother, and she told me about Michael. He had drowned the year before in a flood that forced Taryn’s family to move. The shirt and some of Michael’s other belongings were in the room.

“You can have it though,” she told me. “You remind me of—”

I take a deep breath when my head breaks the surface again. The rain is falling hard now. I can’t see the glow from the window in Taryn’s house. I’m as wet above the water as below it now. The rain pelts my face and stings my arms. All I can hear is the rain hitting the lake and the rapid fire of it on the bottom of the overturned canoe. It is too dark to swim now, but I’m not leaving. I go back under.

I was only at Granny Lynn’s during summers. I was away at school the rest of the year. I always looked forward to returning, though. I loved swimming, and everything about the water. I knew it was dangerous, of course, but I taught myself not to fear it.

Taryn couldn’t recover from tragedy like I could, though. Since her brother’s death, she had locked herself inside, and eaten. She threw herself into fantasy and science fiction novels; anything to escape reality. She was happiest when she didn’t have to think about the real world.

I could relate to Taryn’s sadness, and I think that’s why we became friends. The locals, like my sadistic cousin Kyle, didn’t like me because—among other reasons—I was a “seasonal,” and they always picked on Taryn because of her weight and shyness, so she was the only person I thought I could be friends with. Every day for two summers, I would go over, and we would play games, or dream up safer, happier worlds—worlds where none of our troubles existed.

Some rare nights, we would talk about her brother, and all the things he had dreamed of.  I would talk about my mother, or what I could remember of her. It took me a while to tell her about the boat accident. I told Taryn that, since I survived, I felt it was my duty to keep surviving, for her—for my mother.

It doesn’t feel like I’ve broken the surface when I have. The rain is a constant flow, so I duck under the dock. Rainwater is pouring in vertical sheets through the cracks between the dock boards, but at least I can breathe. I hope that this storm doesn’t wake Granny Lynn. Hurricanes have made her nervous, too, since the accident.

My mother—Granny’s youngest daughter—owned a boat on the lake; one they left at Granny Lynn’s. We had gone out in it one day in June, but we weren’t able to make it back to the dock before the hurricane struck. Mom plowed through the waves as best as she could, but when we finally made it back to Granny’s, a freak wave tossed the small boat against a rock. I was flung up on the bank, but my mother’s head slammed against the rock, and she fell back into the water with the broken up boat.

The lake has killed my mother. Water has taken Taryn’s brother. But I can’t let it take me. I swim to grow stronger because of my mother’s death. When the lake comes for me, I’ll be able to make the choice that my mother couldn’t. Despite the torrential downpour, I go under again, and swim away from the dock.

It was the end of last summer when Taryn told me she loved me. We were down in her basement, like usual. I thought she meant that she loved me like a brother. I was touched, and I said as much.

“No. I mean it. I really think I love you, Trey.”
            “What?” I grew hot around my ears. I mean, I loved her too, but not in the way she was talking about. She was my best friend. She was the one I could confide in, and talk to.

“I really want to be your girlfriend…I mean, I know you wouldn’t feel the same about me… I mean, look at us. I’m just a fat whale—”

“You’re not fat…” I tried to comfort her, but she was on a roll now with all of her unhappiness pouring out.

“Yes I am! And you—you’re like some sort of supermodel.” She rolled her eyes when I scoffed at her remark. “Don’t be modest, Trey. I see you out there on the lake every day. You walk around the town half naked ninety percent of the time. You’re thin and muscular. Your hair’s always perfect. You’re friendly and likeable. You’re—you’re more than just my best friend—you’re my soul mate.” She turned away from me and tried to stop crying.

“I—I had no idea you felt that way, Taryn.” I was in dangerous waters now. I didn’t know how to break it to her that I didn’t feel the same without crushing her heart and ruining our friendship. My father still paid for my private school, but it was several states away. I decided to use that as an excuse. “But you know we can’t date…right?” She sniffled and shifted around while I said what needed to be said. “I’m only here during summer…only about three months in the year. And I’m almost done at school too. I’ll be going to college, and trying to start a new life. I can’t stay around the lake forever… It just won’t work between us. I wanna stay friends, of course. I’ll call and write you when I can…But…”

“Just stop.” Taryn stood up, but kept her back toward me. “I understand. It’s getting late. You should go.”

“But Taryn—”

“Seriously. Go.” She got quiet and still, and I knew she needed to be alone. So I left. I went home and packed my bags. The next day, Granny drove me to the airport so I could go back to school.

Today was Taryn’s funeral service.

I can’t tell if I’m crying or if the rain is on my face. I can see nothing around me. I cannot feel the lake’s bottom. I can’t hear the canoe or the dock. I am freezing and in darkness.

“It had been a bad holiday for Taryn.”

“No, she was lonely because no one liked her.”

“No, she hated being fat.”

 No one understood why it had happened. They found her in the lake on New Year’s morning. It must’ve been an accident. It had to have been.

But Taryn wouldn’t have gone near the water unless she had planned something like this. I, at least, know that. She can see her brother now. But where was I now?

It was strange to see the lake in winter. It was strange to be here alone with no one around. But here I am in my own space and time. I’m under now, the universe is around me. I’m with Taryn again. My mother has her hand on my shoulder, and Taryn holds hands with her brother Michael. As I fall deeper into space, I smile and close my eyes, loving the warmth.