He told her the story of the Serpent King. She clearly made a great effort to remain neutral, which Dill appreciated, but her face betrayed her horror.
And now you know who I am. Now you’ve seen the tracks that have been laid for me. Maybe the force of my destiny is so great that Travis had to die to bring it into being. Run. Run from me the way people did from my grandpa, the Serpent King.
Lydia sat confounded and speechless for several minutes after he finished. “Just because grief ruined your grandfather doesn’t mean it’ll ruin you,” she finally said. Dill detected the trace of uncertainty in her voice, much as she may have tried to mask it.
He put his face in his hands and wept. “It’s in my blood. It’s like each of my cells has this poison inside it, and the grief chemical from my brain dissolved whatever kept the poison bound up. So now it’s starting to flow free and poison me. Like it did my grandpa and dad.”
Lydia took Dill’s hand and pulled it to her. “I want you to listen to me. They surrendered to their darkness. You don’t have to, and I want you to promise me that you never will.”
“I can’t promise that.”
“Promise me that if you ever feel like surrendering, you’ll tell me.” She put her hand on his cheek, turned his face to hers, and stared him dead in the eyes. “Dill, promise me.”
“You’re leaving. You won’t be around.”
Her eyes welled with tears, and they began streaming down her face and dropping onto the concrete. She pointed and spoke with greater resolve. “Dill, I will spend my life savings and charter a private jet if I have to. I will literally tie you up with duct tape and kidnap your ass and take you home with me. Now promise me.”
Dill took a deep, shuddering breath and turned his gaze away, but he said nothing.
“Dill?” She reached over and turned his face back to hers.
“I promise,” he whispered finally. I don’t know if I can promise what I’ve just promised.
“Say the words.”
“I promise I will tell you if I feel like surrendering.”
“At least promise me that before you consider surrender, not only will you tell me, but you’ll at least try something completely unexpected with your life instead, since you’ll have nothing to lose.”
“What?”
“Anything. Go to college. Join the circus. Live naked in a tepee. Whatever. Just nothing involving snakes or poison, though.”
“I promise.”
They sat their vigil like some sacrament. Until sundown and the blood-orange winter light of the dying day cast long shadows. Dill watched Lydia out of the corner of his eye. The breeze blew her hair across her face. She wore the sunset as a flaming crown. Young and beautiful and luminous and alive, keeping the darkness at bay if only for that brief moment.
When she arrived home, her dad was sitting on the couch, looking at a photo album. He still wore his suit and tie from the funeral. She sat down beside him and laid her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head.
“Are you looking at baby pictures of me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you been doing this since the funeral?”
“With a break here and there. Are you okay, sweetie?”
“I miss him.”
“I bet. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really. My heart hurts, Daddy.” She wiped a tear from her cheek before it could reach her dad’s shoulder.
“Mine does too. We’re here for you if and when you feel like talking.” He drew Lydia closer to him and she buried her face in his chest. “We raised you here precisely so you’d never have to deal with something like seeing one of your friends get hurt. And then this happens. I’m an idiot. We should have moved right to the middle of Manhattan to raise you.”
“Dad. You didn’t know.”
“We made the wrong trade-offs. We made the wrong choices. We tried. You need to know that. We tried to raise you the best we could. I’m sorry.”
“I know that. If you hadn’t raised me here, I’d never have gotten to know Travis at all. Like you said that time.”
“I don’t know what would happen if I ever lost you. It would destroy me.”
“You won’t.”
“I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”
“I will.”
After a long while, Lydia stood to go upstairs.
She hadn’t made it more than a few feet when her dad called after her. “Lydia?”
She turned around.
“If I had bought all of Travis’s wood that day, would he still be alive?” His voice sounded hollow and far away, like he was asking the question under great duress on behalf of someone who didn’t want to know the answer.
“Are you asking me if you killed Travis?”
“Yes.”
“No. I don’t think you killed Travis. I think it was the two men who killed Travis who killed Travis. And I don’t think you should absolve them even a little bit by accepting any responsibility.”
He tried to smile, mostly without success. “Thank you,” he said softly. He went back to looking at the photo album, and Lydia went upstairs.
She was sapped. She lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Her phone buzzed.
Ugh, drama with Patrick. So over high school boys, Dahlia texted.
Lydia felt actual physical revulsion at the banality of Dahlia’s problems in the great scope of things. Not that it was Dahlia’s fault. Lydia realized she hadn’t told her. Not telling anyone about Travis was just a reflex.
Can’t talk right now. Lost a friend, she texted.
OMG, as in died?
Yes.
OMG, so sorry, love. You ok?
Don’t know.
What happened?
Well, Dahlia, not that I ever mentioned him to you (or anyone else, really), Lydia thought, but I had a friend named Travis Bohannon who sold firewood to make extra money to pay for writing classes and a new computer so he could write fantasy novels. And someone killed him for one hundred and twenty-three dollars. But he didn’t dress right, so I was embarrassed by him. And that hurts on top of all of the pain of losing him. Then Lydia felt a compulsion.
Check Dollywould in a bit, she texted Dahlia.
She went to her desk and began typing. She balked for a moment. She knew she was venturing into the belly of the beast. But that’s where she needed to go.
This is both a eulogy and a confession. But first, the eulogy.
I had a friend. His name was Travis Bohannon. A couple of days ago, while he was selling firewood, two men shot him and left him to die while stealing his money to buy drugs.
Travis was utterly comfortable in his own skin. He was who he was, and he was never afraid of what anyone would say or think. When the world wasn’t big enough for him, he expanded it with the force of his imagination. He was one of the bravest people I ever knew. One of the kindest. One of the most generous. One of the most loyal. You probably didn’t wake up this morning sensing that the world is poorer, but it is.
He deserves to be remembered. Please look at his face. Know that he lived and he was beautiful. And that I will miss him.
And now for my confession. I am a fraud. I pretend to be all of the things Travis was: comfortable in my own skin. Brave. The anonymity and disconnectedness of the Internet allows me to present that persona to you. But the reason you’re only now finding out that I had a friend named Travis Bohannon is that I was a coward. Travis wasn’t “cool” in the conventional sense. He didn’t wear stylish clothes or listen to cool music. He loved fantasy novels. He wore a cheap dragon necklace and carried around a staff. I thought it would be bad for my blog if you knew about him. I thought it would make me seem less cool if you knew that he was my friend, so I kept him a secret. But no more. I would rather live authentically and take whatever consequences may come of it than live a lie. Travis, please forgive me. You deserved better.
She clenched her fists and wept. When she finished, she went through the photos of Travis from their school-shopping trip to Nashville. She found one of him gazing into the distance, leaning on his staff.