Hitchers

CHAPTER 24

“Can you at least tell me why you’re leaving?” croaked a woman buying lottery tickets at the register. I gave her an understanding smile.

The voices of the dead seemed to be everywhere.

A trickle of cases had become a steady flow, and now a torrent. Some tipping point had been reached. On the streets people reacted to the vocal epidemic with hollow-eyed shock. You could smell the panic on people as they passed, acrid and foul. Thousands of people were fleeing the city, rushing for the exits as the horror show got really scary.

I set my coffee on the counter, feeling like the veteran soldier welcoming raw recruits to the front line. You think the voices are hard? I wanted to tell them, Wait till you see what comes next.

Back in my car I checked the news. NPR’s Lakshmi Singh was discussing the epidemic with someone from the Center for Disease Control.

“This is not a disease caused by a contagious pathogen. We’re sure of that.”

“How can you be sure?” Lakshmi asked.

“Contagion of disease follows a pattern; it spreads from a point. No one who was not in Atlanta at the time of the anthrax attack has developed this new malady, so it cannot be contagious.”

I could hear Lakshmi inhale as she formed her next question. “The CDC, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the White House are all saying this is psychological. Is there any evidence to support this?”

“The evidence is by process of elimination. It’s not a physical illness. It’s not some second secret supervirus the terrorists planted. That rumor is completely without merit. Given the symptoms, it’s clearly psychological.”

I stopped at a light. A girl whizzed by on a red Huffy bike. She reminded me of Kayleigh. Kayleigh had insisted on a red bike; she hadn’t wanted a girly color.

“There are rumors that there is an advanced form of the disorder…”

I turned the volume way up, leaned forward.

“…victims report not only losing control of their voices, but of their bodies. Do you have any information on this? Can you confirm these cases?”

“We have encountered a few of these cases. It appears to be an advanced form of the same disorder.”

“Bullshit,” I growled. The feds were probably afraid people would panic if they knew what it really was. They had to know by now.

On second thought, the feds were probably right to keep it quiet. Let people get used to the voices first.

Summer was waiting on her front steps. She hopped up when she saw my car.

“Have you seen WSB News?”

“No, what?”

“They’ve got footage of a full-on possession, and proof it’s not this post-traumatic stress thing. The woman’s hands are trembling like mad, she’s got the zombie voice, and she answers detailed questions only the dead person would know—How tall was your first wife? What was your grandmother’s first name? They checked the answers and all of them were right.” Summer shook her head. “The whole thing is about to blow. They can’t pass this off by saying we’re all crazy or traumatized any longer.”

Summer stared out the passenger window, watching pedestrians hurry by, hunched in the cold.

“My guess is they’ll insist it’s a mental illness to the bitter end,” I said. “I just can’t picture the president on national TV, saying ‘The dead have taken over half a million souls in Atlanta. We’re doing everything we can to save them.’”

“I see your point,” Summer said. She opened her window a crack, sending a burst of cool air through the car. I turned the heat down, in case she was too warm. “I was awake most of the night wondering what happens if they can’t save us. And we can’t save ourselves.”

I only nodded; I wondered that myself, and I didn’t have any answers. Grandpa’s gleeful prediction played between my ears.

A little more Thomas, a little less Finn every day.

Until, what? No more Finn?

“I’ve always been comfortable with not knowing what happens when we die,” Summer said. “Maybe there was something, maybe nothing. I was a true agnostic—I liked believing that anything was possible and I wouldn’t know the answer until I died.” Her head drooped. “Now I know the answer, and I can barely breathe I’m so scared. You actually saw what happens when we die. I can’t get past it.”

I sighed deeply. “I try not to think about it. When I do it’s like the ground has given way and I’m falling into a bottomless pit.”

“What do you think is happening over there? Have you thought any more about it?”

I grunted a laugh. “All I do is think about it. I don’t know, maybe it’s hell, and the people who rescue dogs from the pound and recycle go to a different place.”

Summer burst out laughing. “Shit, I need to adopt a pet in a hurry.”

We stopped at a light; an old man, his spine curled so deeply he had to crane his neck to see, hobbled past the Avalon’s bumper. His hands were trembling. It was not the tremor of the aged, but the blurry vibration of the possessed.

I gestured through the windshield. “That’s what it looks like.”

“What?”

“That old man. Look at his hands. He’s got a hitcher.” That’s what people were calling them; it seemed to have started on the support group website.

She watched, transfixed. “I keep trying to imagine what it would feel like, but I can’t.”

The old man stepped onto the curb; the light turned green.

“No, you really can’t.” Again, I struggled to wrap my mind around the contradiction: Summer’s tormentor was Lorena.

I spotted another, about two blocks further on, a blocky young guy in a charcoal suit. He looked all wrong in a suit. This was a flip-flop and shorts guy, a beer in a Styrofoam holder guy. I didn’t bother pointing him out to Summer, though she may have noticed him on her own.

“Can I ask you something?” Summer said.

“Sure.” As I spoke a spasm laced down my back, like a rope being pulled under my skin. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

I pulled the car toward the curb as the rippling spread, followed by tingling. I tried to warn Summer, but couldn’t get it out.

Grandpa finished pulling the car over. “This is where you get out, Missy.”

“What?” Summer asked, confused.

“You heard me.”

She looked at my hands, quavering, clinging to the steering wheel. “Here? I don’t even know where I am.”

Grandpa looked up at the street sign. “You’re on Forsythe Street. Now get out.”

Summer got out. Grandpa lifted a hand in farewell as he drove off. He glanced at my watch, though the Avalon had a clock two feet from his nose and the watch bounced as if it was on the end of a spring. “Let’s see if we get more than forty-seven minutes this time.”

He turned right at the light. “We’re gonna have a little talk, you and me. But not just yet.” He drove around the block, headed back up Forsythe. Even before we pulled up in front of the Cypress Street Pint and Plate I’d guessed where we were going.

When I was a kid Grandpa would often volunteer to drive me somewhere—to buy school supplies or whatever—then take a detour through the Pint and Plate. I didn’t mind because he always bought me a Coke, and he was unusually nice to me on those detours. “Don’t tell Grandma, now,” he’d say as he boosted a drink to his mouth, chasing each swig with a long, satisfied “Aaaaah.” He always knew the bartender, was warmer, more animated than he ever was at home. In the course of twenty minutes he’d down three whiskeys, then we’d be off. If someone asked what took us so long Grandpa would say I’d had trouble deciding, or the store had been out of what we were looking for and we had to go somewhere else. If no one was watching he’d wink at me when he said this, and after a while I’d watch for the wink. The wink was like a vitamin I was deficient in, and I drank it in.

If Grandpa knew the bald, unshaven man who was tending bar that day he didn’t let on. All he said was, “Whiskey, neat.” The bartender started at the sound of his voice, but set a cocktail napkin down, then the drink on top. He quickly retreated down the bar.

Inside I cringed as he let out that first long raspy “Aaaaaah” and set the shivering glass back on the napkin. The plan was for me to return to Deadland, to explore further and see what I could learn, but I was curious about the “little talk” Grandpa had promised. Besides, I didn’t relish going back to Deadland. It was scary.

The bartender was staring at Grandpa’s hands. Grandpa folded his arms, pinning the hands under his elbows. “Let me ask you something. Which is right: The yolk of an egg is white, or the yolk of an egg are white?”

The bartender peered at the ceiling. “Is white.”

Now I knew Grandpa didn’t know this bartender. Every bartender who’d ever tipped a bottle for Grandpa knew this one.

“You’re not so bright,” Grandpa said humorlessly. “The yolk of an egg is yellow.”

The bartender smiled nervously, nodded. “Got me.”

Grandpa set his empty glass down. “Hit me again. See if you can’t get a little more in the glass this time. You’re charging me for a whole drink, aren’t you?”

The bartender’s face grew stony. If he’d been dealing with a normal customer he looked like the sort who wouldn’t take any crap. Instead he poured noticeably more into the glass, then turned and walked to the farthest corner of the bar.

Grandpa drained the glass in three gulps, pulled out my wallet and hooked a twenty. “Keep it.” The twenty fluttered to the bar.

“You’re a big tipper,” Grandpa chuckled as he pushed open the door.

“So,” he said as he walked, “dinner’s on you, is it? Because of all the money you’re making.” A young couple heading toward us paused. They looked alarmed, whispered to each other, then hurried across the street. The bartender may not have heard yet, but word was spreading about what shaking hands meant. “There’s only one problem, buddy-boy. It’s not your money. It’s mine.”

He turned into a clothing store called Enki Mikaye. A skinny guy with a square jaw met him right at the door and asked if he could be of service.

“Yes, I want a suit. A solid three-piece, double-breasted. Classic. None of this new styles crap.” Grandpa made it sound like changing fashion in men’s suits was entirely this salesman’s fault, but I didn’t think that was why the salesman took a step back. Besides the hands, Grandpa’s voice still held an unmistakable croak.

Appearing visibly nervous, the salesman helped him choose a suit, plus an ensemble to go with it. It was an outfit I would never be caught dead in, and it cost me $1800.

When he presented the salesman with my credit card, the guy slid it through, glanced at it, then at Grandpa.

“Finn Darby. Toy Shop.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Grandpa lifted his chin, as if daring the salesman to question it.

The salesman slid the card across the counter. “It’s a wonderful strip. Wolfie is a hoot.”

Grandpa was breathing out of his nose so heavily it was almost deafening. “Go fuck yourself.” He turned and headed for the door.

“You’re an ungrateful little mutt,” he said as he slammed the car door. “I took you in when your no good father walked out on you. I fed you, I tried to show you how to get along in this world, and what thanks did I get?” He threw the Avalon into gear. “I want your comic strip,” he said in a whiny baby tone. The tires squealed. “And when you get hold of it, what do you do? You use cheap tricks—bells and whistles—because you’re not clever enough to do it the right way. You’re not a man, Finnegan. You’re still a boy, hanging on to everyone’s shirt tails. Mine, your mother’s, your spic wife’s. You expect everything to be handed to you.”

Grandpa fell silent. He had quite a take on things. He took us in and fed us? He charged his own daughter rent. Mom had to buy all of our groceries separately; there was a separate part of the fridge for Grandma and Grandpa’s food, and we were not to touch it. Bells and whistles? The strip was a hundred times more popular than it had ever been under his hand, and that was right into the teeth of a huge decline in newspaper circulation.

And the truth of it was, I had to change the strip. I’d felt boxed in by a strip frozen in time, with only two major characters and a finite stable of timeless toys (jump ropes, bicycles, teddy bears) to work with. I’d dreaded each return to that musty little toy shop, to those two earnest little twits, to my dead grandfather’s tight, Victorian humor. I’d been falling farther and farther behind my deadlines when I finally decided to defy my agent and the syndicate and update the strip, creating new characters and having a big chain buy out the little toy shop.

I stewed, and waited for my body to return to me. How long had it been? An hour and a half, at least.

Grandpa pulled out my phone, punched 911. The 911 operator asked what his emergency was.

“My emergency? I don’t have a damned emergency. I’m calling information.”

The operator told him information was 411, not 911.

“Oh, that’s right.” He hung up without apologizing, dialed 411, and asked for the number for CNN.

As he dialed, repeating the number in a whisper as he did so, my mind raced. What would Grandpa want with CNN?

Grandpa said he wanted to talk to someone about Toy Shop, specifically how Finn Darby had stolen it from him without his permission. He was transferred, told the story again, then was transferred again. This final listener, a young woman with a Long Island accent, asked how he could be the creator of Toy Shop when the creator was dead.

“I know I’m dead. You don’t have to tell me I’m dead,” Grandpa said. “I’ve come back. Now, will you run the story or not?”

“How have you managed to come back?” she asked, sounding amused.

“A lot of us have come back. The dead are everywhere, missy, or haven’t you noticed?”

Sounding less amused, she said she’d have to look into it, and took his number. I could only hope they’d check with my agent, and he would deflect them.

Our next stop was a jewelry store, where Grandpa bought two Rolexes at full retail and a set of gold cufflinks before ducking into another bar. Then we were off again.

“It’s really something, to be young again,” he said as he drove. “I tell you it’s no good getting old. When you hit seventy, that’s it,” he made a chopping gesture, “blow your brains out and be done with it. Ah, here we are.” Grandpa pulled into Maserati of Atlanta.

“I’ve always wanted an expensive car,” he said as he swaggered toward the showroom, flipping my keys in his palm. “I might as well spend it, right? I’m the one who earned it.”

The son of a bitch. When he was alive he was so cheap he rinsed out and re-used plastic baggies. Now that he had my bank card he was going to live it up. Or maybe he was intentionally trying to bankrupt me, to get revenge for Toy Shop.

A miniature poodle met us at the door, yipping and spinning in circles. Otherwise, the dealership was deserted. Evidently not many people were buying Maseratis, at least in Atlanta.

“Can I get some help here?” Grandpa shouted.

A young woman in a grey suit appeared. “Sorry, I was in the rest room. Can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m Finn Darby, I have a lot of money, and I want to buy a Maserati.”

The woman frowned. She was staring at Grandpa’s hands. “I don’t think I can help you. Please come back some other time.” The croak in his voice and tremors in his hands were definitely less severe; in another week or two he might pass for one of the living. But not yet.

Grandpa froze. “What do you mean? I want to buy a car. You sell cars, don’t you? Isn’t that what you do here?”

She took a step back. “Please go.” She was clutching her phone. My guess is she was debating whether to dial 911.

Grandpa threw his hands in the air. “For God’s sake, I won’t bite. I just want to buy a car. Here—” He pulled my bank card from my wallet, held it out. “I can pay cash. Ten minutes and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“I’m sorry. Just, please leave me alone.” She looked terrified.

Grandpa lunged at her, clutched her jacket sleeve where it was hanging under the wrist. In a low voice he said, “I want a God damned Maserati. Now get your little ass in gear and sell me a car, and we’ll get along just fine.”

It took Grandpa five minutes to pick out a wheat-colored four-door Quattroporte from their inventory. He didn’t want to look at the interior, only under the hood. When the saleswoman popped the hood and quickly stepped back, Grandpa peered at it, scowling with concentration before nodding once and saying, “That’s a beaut.”

I groaned inwardly. My grandfather knew nothing about engines. He used to take a rag and a spray bottle of Formula 409 and clean the parts of his engine he could reach from his wheelchair, because he liked the idea of working under the hood of a car. Cleaning it was all he knew how to do.

After strong-arming the terrified saleswoman into forgoing all of the usual paperwork, he headed to Grandma’s house, the Maserati growling in a low, unfamiliar rumble.

Grandpa rapped on the locked front door, then peered in the window to be sure Grandma wasn’t hiding inside; he pushed behind the overgrown bushes in front of the house and retrieved a key hidden in one of those fake rocks.

He headed straight to his studio, where his drafting table still sat, empty of pens, ink, paper. Cursing, he went to the empty shelves lining the far wall, where there had been tens of thousands of original strips, stacked floor-to-ceiling.

“You sold them all, didn’t you?” He traced the grain of the wood with his fingers. “You rotten stinkers. All you care about is money. You’re a pair of God damned profiteers, I’m telling you.”

Yes, I had sold them. Except for the really important ones, and the ones I’d kept as models for drawing new strips. I’d given the proceeds—over sixty grand—to Grandma. I felt a little guilty about it now, but when you dispose of dead people’s possessions it’s with the assumption that they’re going to stay dead, so there is no one to hurt, no one who’ll miss those things. Sure, you keep sentimental things, but not ten thousand original comic strips. Besides, he’d only kept them out of spite. He had no use for them, and certainly could have used the cash I could have raised selling them, but when I’d told him they’d bring maybe forty dollars each for the dailies, seventy-five for the Sundays, he’d scowled and asked what I got for a Peanuts original. Peanuts originals sell for twenty thousand and up. He knew that. He’d curled his lip in disgust, said if I couldn’t sell his strips for what they were worth, he’d keep them.

He sat at his drafting table and opened the bottom drawer. It was empty, except for a tattered brown photo album.

“Did you throw everything out?” Grandpa asked. “How long did you wait? A week?” He set the album on the table and flipped it open.

“Hm.” He pinched his nose. “Hello, Mother dear.” His mother was a bland woman who looked like she was sucking on a sourball. He sighed heavily, flipped to the next page, muttering softly to himself. There was a photo of two ruddy boys standing in the mud, each holding a pail. Milking time. One of them must have been Grandpa, the other probably his brother, who died in World War II. He turned the page and grunted. There he was, singing in a pub. My mom once told me Grandpa wanted to become a singer, but once he married Grandma she put an end to that foolishness.

This was a side of him I never got to see, because he’d been angry at me since the day I was born. It was strange that he’d hated me so much, yet loved my twin sister. How many times had I walked past his studio as a child and seen Kayleigh sitting in his lap while he drew? Come here, ya little monkey, ya, he’d say, intercepting Kayleigh as she passed, to comb her hair with a black fifty-cent comb he bought at the barber. That Grandpa was kind to her was one of the few things I’d hated about Kayleigh.

Grandpa rose from the desk, stretched to open the door on a cabinet built above his book shelf. He cursed when he saw it was empty, grabbed the key to the Maserati from the desk and headed for the door.

He’d had a bottle stashed in that cabinet; I remembered coming across it while helping Grandma clean out the room. He was losing his buzz. The life of a closet alcoholic must be tedious—all those trips to procure booze, afraid if you buy a case at a time it will be too obvious.

Grandpa hadn’t checked my watch in a while, but he’d been in control for a long time—it seemed much longer than the last. I was getting anxious. Maybe I wasn’t going to return this time.

My phone rang before he reached the Maserati. He fished it from his pocket and held it up to see who was calling. “It’s your new girlfriend. She’s probably still standing on the street corner where I unloaded her.”

He opened the phone, pressed it to his ear. “What can I do for you, girlie?”

“Finn?” The voice was a swamp creature with no tongue.

“Who’s this?” Grandpa snapped.

“I waited for you. On the bank. But you didn’t come.”

Inside, I wailed. I thrashed and cried.

“Jesus,” Grandpa muttered. “I know that lousy accent, even fresh from the grave.”

“Finn?”

“Welcome to the party, senorita burrito,” Grandpa said. “You’re late, as usual.”

She was here, right here on the phone, and I couldn’t speak to her.

“Grandfather-in-law,” Lorena croaked. Rough and unformed as the words were, the contempt was unmistakable.

“Ahh, I don’t have time for you.” He snapped the phone closed as inside I screamed “no.” She was back. My Lorena.

Instead of returning my phone to his pocket, he examined it in his quavering hands. Poking buttons, he found my phone book and scrolled down the names until he reached Mom.

Again, I was screaming “no,” but I couldn’t reach him as he dialed Mom and brought the phone to his ear.

“Hey,” Mom answered, expecting me.

“Hello, Jenny, me gal.”

Mom laughed tentatively. “That’s not funny.”

“It’s not Finn, Jenny. It’s your father.”

There was a long pause. “Finn, you told me you were better. You’re not, are you?”

Grandpa exhaled into the phone. “Finn doesn’t have no disease, Jenny. He’s got me. I don’t know how it happened, but it did and there’s nothing any of us can do about it.”

This was intolerable. I was torn apart by the dual horrors of what he was putting Mom through while simultaneously being kept from Lorena.

I heard computer keys ticking through the phone. “I’m coming up there right now. I’m going to take care of you, sweetie.” She was probably looking up flights. What was he doing? I’d worked so hard to save my mother the agony of witnessing this, now here he was, ruining everything.

“I’ll say it again. This is not Finn. This is your father, who used to sing you ‘Wild Irish Rose’ and ‘Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty’ when you went to bed, who took you to the top of the Empire State Building and put a quarter in the viewer and held you up so you could see.”

“I’m coming, Finn.” She was crying now. “I know you can’t help it.”

“Jenny, don’t you even know your own father? Listen, remember when I used to sing you ‘Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty’?”

“No.”

“Oh yes you do,” Grandpa said. “I know you do. Listen.”

He sang it, carrying a tune like I never could, his resonant Irish brogue coming through despite the graveyard croak, spewing convoluted lyrics I’d never heard from an obscure song that only a man who was Irish and alive seventy-five years ago could possibly know. Mom kept telling him to stop, but he pushed on until she screamed it, prompting Grandpa to pull the phone away from his ear.

“Now Jenny,” Grandpa said in a soothing voice. “Everything’s all right—”

“This isn’t happening. Where is Finn? I want to talk to Finn.”

“He’s safe.”

The connection went dead.

Grandpa cursed, snapped the phone shut. He dragged his hand across his mouth, sighed. “Jenny, Jenny. What are we going to do?”

Finally, finally, I felt tingling in the tips of my fingers, a rush of warmth. I inhaled gratefully. I dialed Lorena while I raced for the car.

She answered on the fourth ring, crying into the phone, unable to speak.

“Lorena?”

“No,” Summer managed.

“Are you all right?”

“No.” She was nearly whispering.

No, she wouldn’t be all right. “I’m on my way. Where are you?”

“At the High Museum. The French Impressionist exhibit.”

I couldn’t stifle a laugh. “You got dumped on a corner by my grandfather and hopped a bus to the High?”

“This is where I go when I feel like I’m drowning.”

I pictured her sitting on one of those incredibly solid wood benches, surrounded by Monets and Gauguins. “I’m going to remember that,” I said. “When everything seems darkest, go to the French Impressionist room at the High.”

“Don’t make fun of me, Finn. I’m hanging by a thread right now.”

“Sorry. I’m on my way.”

As soon as I hung up I called my mother. There were honks and rumbles of traffic in the background

“I’m on my way to the airport.”

“Mom, for God’s sake, don’t come here. This place is a nightmare. They’re all coming out, the voices are coming out. The whole city is going to be filled with dead people.”

I managed to scare the shit out of myself, imagining the city brimming with hitchers, their hands shaking, those horrible voices fouling the air.

“I’m not losing you,” Mom said. “He’ll listen to me. I’ll make him listen.”

She had a point. As far as I knew she was the only person alive Grandpa didn’t hate. If anyone could talk him out of me, it was Mom.

“Where is Grandma?” I asked.

“She’s staying with Aunt Julia.” That didn’t surprise me. She probably started packing the moment Grandpa and I left her house.

“It’s probably best if you stay with her, too.”

“Why is that?” Mom asked.

“Because I’m not home much. I’m spending all of my time trying to figure this out with help from some friends.”

I told her to call when she arrived, tried to assure her that I was okay.

I found Summer sitting cross-legged on a bench, her coat draped across her shoulders, gazing at Monet’s water lilies but clearly not seeing them. She was rocking slightly.

“Hey,” I said softly, putting my hand on her back.

Her eyes lost some of their thousand-yard stare and fixed on me. She made a vague sound that was mostly vowel.

I sat next to her, looked up at the Monet. It was the one with the green rainbow-shaped bridge. “My twin sister Kayleigh had a print of this in her room. She kept bugging Mom to take us to France so she could see the real bridge.”

“I’d like to see France,” Summer said listlessly. “I’ve never been anywhere. Except Disney World.” After a moment she added, “And Nashville. I saw Graceland.” Abruptly she turned and looked at me. “Can I ask you something personal? I won’t be offended if you don’t want to answer.”

“Sure, anything.” Anything to get her mind off what she’d just been through.

“What happened to Kayleigh? I asked Mick, but he said you haven’t told him, except to say she drowned.”

My eyes filled with tears. It surprised me that the question could stir up such emotions with everything else going on, but thinking about her now filled me with such a profound sense of loss and shame. “I try not to think about it. But I’ll tell you if you want me to.”

Summer turned to face me more directly, waited. I realized that, painful as it was, I wanted to tell her my story. I wanted her to know. I started in a low voice, though there was no one else in the room at the moment.

“The summer Kayleigh died had been the best of our lives. Grandma and Grandpa had invested in this rooming house on Tybee Beach, sort of a downscale B and B, with the idea that Grandma would run it (making the beds, cleaning, running clean towels up and down four flights of stairs with her bad hip) while Grandpa drew his strip. Tybee was a blue-collar place back then—t-shirt shops, beer joints, lots of chipped paint—but Kayleigh and I fell in love with it. Bare feet all day, dark tans, hunting for shells in the dunes, begging quarters from Mom to play the games on the boardwalk. We won this big stuffed tiger we were dying to have, always playing the number twelve, because we were twelve.

“The shift from magical summer to the blackest despair I’d ever known was so quick it nearly snapped me in half. One minute I was with my folks, wolfing down fried clams dipped in tartar sauce from a paper plate, on top of the world. The next, my sister was dead.

“Grandma was the one who called. I can still hear seagulls screeching in the background, fighting over French fries when Mom answered her cell, the way she stopped chewing, the way her face suddenly shifted to an expression I’d never seen before, one that made my heart start hammering. It’s an expression I became very familiar with, because Mom wore it every day for the next three or four years, and still wears it sometimes, nineteen years later.

“I can still see Mom’s phone clatter to the boardwalk. She was saying “No” over and over. “No. No. No. No.” Dad picked up the phone, and after talking for a minute he started crying. That’s when I knew something awful had happened, something that meant summer was over, that my life would never be the same.

“It just kept getting worse. First, I learned Kayleigh was at the hospital, then I learned she was dead. Then I realized it was my fault.”

A couple of elderly women entered the room and I stopped. We sat in silence as they circled the room and eventually slipped out into the next.

“Why was it your fault?” Summer prompted.

“Kayleigh jumped off the pier because I did,” I said. “It was Kayleigh’s idea to begin with. She dared me to jump, and said she would if I would. But she didn’t think I’d really do it; it was a thirty-foot drop, and you had to jump out away from the pier to clear the wooden pilings.” I shook my head. “She was just talking. Sitting on the pier pretending we were going to jump was just something to do.

“So we squatted with our toes curled around the edge of the wood planks, and the longer we stayed, the more I thought maybe I could actually do it. I thought about how impressed everyone would be, maybe even Grandpa. I was as surprised as Kayleigh when I launched myself off that pier. The fall seemed to go on and on, and when I hit the water I hit hard. The soles of my feet stung and my balls ached. But I was ecstatic. I felt strong, and brave, and I didn’t often feel that as a kid. I was a shy, anxious kid. When we were younger I used to whisper things to Kayleigh when we were around other people, and she would say them for me.

“Kayleigh admitted she couldn’t do it. I didn’t taunt her. I didn’t tuck my fists under my arms and flap them and go buck-buck-buck. We didn’t do that stuff to each other. But I did strut. I told everyone how I had jumped off that pier.”

I was getting to the hard part. I put my hand over my mouth, tried to calm my pounding heart.

“It must have eaten at her, that she agreed to jump and then backed down, and after dinner when Mom and Dad decided to go to the Shoppies—that’s what we called the outlet mall out by the interstate—Kayleigh stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa.

“I jumped off the pier on a calm sunny day, the waves just bumps with occasional slivers of white at the crest. Kayleigh jumped just after sundown, into big, black, crashing waves.”

I stared down between my feet, at the swirling grain in the polished wood.

“Mom and Dad’s marriage lasted a year to the day from Kayleigh’s fatal jump, and we moved in with Grandpa. Dad disappeared for a while after that, only to reappear long enough to convince Grandpa to invest in his insane Toy Shop Village idea. When it was clear the village was failing, he disappeared again for good.

“It was all my fault, and everyone blamed me. At least, that’s how it felt to me. That’s when I started drawing. I’d come home from school and go straight to my room and draw my comics until dinner. And when I wasn’t drawing I was reading comics; I had hundreds of compilations—Peanuts, Ziggy, Nancy, Dilbert. You name it. While most guys my age were playing baseball and sneaking peeks at Playboy, I was obsessing over Pogo.”

I looked at the Monet. How hard it must have been for Mom to take that print down from Kayleigh’s wall, to pack all of her stickers and clothes and stuffed animals in boxes.

“I’m sorry,” Summer said. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re to blame. You didn’t put her up to it. You jumped for your own reasons. You didn’t push her to follow you. It doesn’t sound like you really cared whether she jumped or not.”

“Honestly? I didn’t want her to. I wanted it to be my thing.” I studied the bridge, the calm, shallow, comforting water beneath. “Next time Grandpa called me a sissy, I could remind him of how I jumped off that pier.”

Was that really what I’d thought? I wasn’t sure. Maybe I was adding it after the fact because Grandpa was so much on my mind.

“I appreciate you telling me. Thanks,” Summer said.

“Sure.”

We sat side by side, each seeking solace in Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies.

As Summer wrestled with her demons, I fantasized about making my grandfather dead again.

Or, barring that, hurting him.

By the time I left the High I thought I knew how to do it.