Henry Franks A Novel

sixteen





On Sunday morning, Henry stood in the shower, bitter cold water running over him. He shivered, once, and then stuck his head under the flow. When his teeth started chattering, he stepped back and let the water beat against his legs. Each scar on his thighs trapped the sting, easing the itch, until the skin was numb enough not to hurt. Better that than the phantom itching and spreading death that inhabited so much of the rest of him.

Toweled dry, he felt clean only until rubbing the new ointment his father had left for him into his skin. A fingernail caught a corner of a scar but he couldn’t feel the pain. He pulled his jeans on, the sensation of the lotion gluing itself to the denim in the heat even less pleasant than usual. A pair of scissors rested on his desk and he picked them up, judging where the best place would be to cut in order to turn the pants into shorts. He put the scissors down unused, pressing his palms into his legs in a futile struggle to dull the itch.

He ate cereal alone, sat in his room alone, then, hours later, ate lunch alone. He knocked once on his father’s door but there was no response, and when he turned the knob it was locked. Outside, he heard kids playing in the street. A car drove past a few times and a dog barked in the distance. Somewhere else on the island, a church bell pealed.

Henry stared out his window, watching Justine’s brother playing with his friends. From the shade of her porch, Justine turned toward his house as though she sensed his presence and he ducked to the side. When he looked back out she was gone. A knock at the door called him away from the window.

Barefoot, she stood on his porch, wearing blue shorts with a big daisy on one leg and a white tank top with a matching flower. She smiled when he opened the door.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

Henry nodded his head and opened the door wider.

“Still too dark in here, you know?” She flipped a switch on the wall but nothing happened. “Well, that was helpful.”

“You turned on the outside light.”

She flipped it off and tried the next one. There was a yellow flash as the bulb blew out on the wall above them. “Even more helpful.” She smiled. “I give up.”

“And you wonder why I wear black?”

“You are what you eat, not where you live.”

“I ate cereal for breakfast and lunch. What does that make me?”

She looked at him as they walked up the stairs. “Wheat?”

“I was thinking corn.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I thought you wanted to see the scrapbook.” Henry stopped in the short hallway and looked at her. Hot summer sunlight leaked out from the open doors on both sides of them. One room was empty save for a fine coating of dust, and the other was his bedroom. The bathroom door at the end of the hall was closed.

They stood toe to toe with little space to move apart.

“This your room?” she asked as she pointed into the empty one.

“I suppose I could sleep in the closet over there on a hanger.”

“That would explain the wardrobe.”

“Now see, that was kinda funny.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re learning.”

He opened the door to his room but she stayed in the hall.

“Henry,” she said with an indrawn breath, her hand coming to rest on his arm as she stopped short in the doorway.

“What?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

“You live here?” She didn’t move, only studied the room.

Sunlight cut it in half, leaving shadows dancing along the walls where the branches of the trees outside shifted in the weak breeze. A twin bed took up most of the room. His desk, with the corners of the laminate peeling up, sat near the window with his laptop docked beneath it. Pushpins poked out of the bare white walls but didn’t hold up any pictures.

“The only boy’s room I’ve been in is my brother’s, and even he has stuff on his walls. Where are the posters? Sports teams? I’d even be okay with swimsuit models.” She took a single step into his room and leaned against the wall. “Well, maybe not ‘okay,’ but, really, anything would have to be better than this, right?”

He shrugged but didn’t look at her as he sat on the edge of his bed.

“Any bands you like?” she asked.

He rubbed his palms up and down his thighs, then froze as a blush crept up his cheeks. The scar on his wrist itched despite the numbness spreading over his arms and he tensed his fingers out against the mattress to keep from scratching.

“You don’t remember,” she said as she sat on the only chair in the room and wheeled it closer to him. She picked up his right hand, rubbing her thumb over the skin. “It’s all right, Henry.” She stroked his palm until he relaxed and their fingers intertwined.

“It’s over there,” he said after a number of deep breaths.

“What?”

“The scrapbook.”

She pulled him with her as she scooted back to the desk and kept his hand in hers as she flipped open the album.

The first picture showed Henry as a young boy, portrait-posed with his hair combed down and hair-sprayed. A fake smile creased his face and he’d tilted his head as though listening to someone telling him how to sit properly.

“School pic?” she asked.

He nodded, and she turned the page.

A series of portraits, one a year, scrolled across the double page as he aged to early teens.

“Nothing more recent?”

“No,” he said. “This last one here was a few years ago, I think.”

She turned another page, one after the other. Standing beside her, Henry kept silent.

On its very own page, the picture he’d brought to Dr. Saville’s office once upon a time: his parents’ smiles as they held him between them.

“Your mom?” she asked, looking from the picture to Henry, then back again.

“Her name’s Christine,” he said. “I don’t remember her, though. Only what my Dad says.”

“And?”

Henry was silent for a long time, his eyes restless, moving back and forth between his mother and Justine. He shook his head, then closed his eyes to block both views. “I think he’s lying to me,” he said.

“About?”

“I don’t know.” He opened his eyes. She was watching him and the sensation was unlike anything he’d ever known. “It’s just a feeling, when I think about her name, and my dad’s.”

“What kind of feeling?”

“That the names are wrong.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to describe it. When I say her name, it feels right.”

“And his doesn’t?”

He sighed. “Only her first name feels right.”

“And her last name?”

“He’s lying,” he said and then fell silent. “It’s my last name too.”

“Does your name feel right?” she asked.

“Henry does.”

“And the rest?”

“Is wrong somehow.”

“Your mom?”

“He doesn’t talk about her much. Just that she died in the accident that took my memory. He’s sad a lot, I think.”

“Are you?” Justine asked.

“Sad?” He looked at her, the curls of hair escaping down her neck, the steady gaze from honey eyes, and shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. Isn’t everyone?”

She looked away, back to the scrapbook, and turned another page—to the picture of his birthday party with the strangers who should be friends watching him blow out candles in a park he should have recognized.

“Henry,” she said, her fingers resting on the picture. “When’s your birthday?”

“November 19th. Why?”

Justine looked up at him, squeezing his fingers. “It’s not fall.”

“So?”

“In this picture. It’s doesn’t look like autumn. Those trees should have shed their leaves by November, even here in the South. They should at least be a different color.”

He stared at the photograph. In the background, behind the picnic table they were gathered around, trees filled with green leaves shaded the park. One of his friends, standing to the side, was in shorts, and all of them were tan.

He’d never noticed anything else before, beyond the faces he couldn’t remember.

“Henry?”

With a sigh, he touched the picture, resting his finger on his own face.

“Who am I?” he asked, the words barely more than a breath of air.

His fingers fell limp in her hand and slipped away as he backed up to his bed. He sat, hunched over and rocking back and forth.

“Breathe,” he said.

She was on her feet in front of him, her fingers on his arm.

“Henry?” She took his hand and squeezed it between both of hers.

He shuddered at the touch, then looked up at her from behind his hair. A thin trail of blood leaked from his nose, staining his lips a violent shade of red. He smiled at her touch.

“The medicine,” he said, barely a whisper, reaching a hand to his nose.

“It’s all right, Henry.” She wiped his face off with the bed sheet, pressing her palm against his cheek as her fingers ran over his skin. She sank to the floor in front of him and reached out to him. His head rested against her shoulder as she hugged him.

He rocked in her embrace, whispering “Breathe” over and over into her neck.

When he opened his eyes, he watched the pulse in her throat beat in time with his. Sweat glistened on her skin, so very close, and with each deep breath he inhaled her, sweet and feminine and intoxicating. Her fingers ran up and down his back, warm and comforting, and her head rested lightly on his. For a moment, he couldn’t even remember his name and didn’t care.

He shifted his head a little to the side in order to close the short distance between his lips and her neck and, before he could change his mind, kissed her.

Her hands froze and her breathing stopped. Fingertips flexed against his back, catching his shirt up in her fist as she stretched against him.

He kissed her throat again, right where the blood pulsed beneath her skin.

“Henry,” she said, the words spoken into his hair, her lips moving against his scalp.

Outside his window, the sun dipped far enough beneath the tree line to darken the room.

“Walk me home?”

He turned his neck enough to look up at her. “You live next door, you know?”

She smiled, then pushed herself up until she was standing in front of him. He grabbed her hand and stood, then spread his arms and she melted into him.

He tilted his head and looked down at her.

She tilted her head and looked up at him, her honey eyes barely open.

“Justine—” he said.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t asked anything yet.”

“Sorry,” she said, and the heat of her breath brushed against his lips. “You talk too much.”

Just as they were about to touch, she smiled.

He closed his eyes and kissed her smile.

Justine held his hand as he walked her home. Crickets and frogs, loud in the marshes surrounding the street, accompanied them. The moon had yet to rise and the scattered streetlights fought to penetrate the trees, leaving dappled shadows on the ground. The sun had taken most of the heat with it when it had fallen beneath the horizon.

Justine’s mother poked her head out the door and looked down to where her daughter held Henry’s hand.

“Almost feels as though we’re being watched,” Justine said, releasing his hand.

“You must be Henry,” her mother said.

“Hello, Mrs. Edwards.” He reached out a hand but she didn’t move. After too long a time, she shook his offered hand.

“Just friends?” she asked her daughter, then sighed. “Nice to meet you, Henry.”

“Good night,” Justine said before closing the door, flashing him a quick grin before she disappeared from view with her mother.

Henry stood there, staring at her door after she went inside. He turned around with a smile across his face. The memory of their kiss was still fresh and her lip-gloss was a faint sweetness when he licked his lips. In the distance, heat lightning flashed, casting shadows up and down the street. Thunder rolled and left silence in its wake, the crickets and frogs deathly quiet. The slight breeze that had carried the scent of the Atlantic across the island calmed, leaving the air empty and still. The porch stairs of her house creaked with each step.

A cat screeched down the street and a dog barked in reply. Ozone tickled his nose as another flash of lightning stabbed into the ground somewhere nearby. Thunder hit bass notes deep in the pit of his stomach and he picked up his pace.

A dry branch broke in the shadows as the moon forced its way through the clouds. The back of his neck tingled and he whipped around, thinking Justine had run after him, but there was no one there. Hissing, too close for comfort, floated on the still air and he ran the rest of the way home. He tripped on the porch steps, scrabbling on his hands and knees up the rough wood, scraping his palms, though he didn’t feel anything.

Lightning ripped across the sky, the thunder chasing right behind. Still, it felt as though he was being watched. The storm seemed to follow him up the stairs to the door. His heart heaved against his ribs with each pulse, his breathing labored as he slammed the door shut behind him.

He flipped the switch but the dead bulb gave no light in the hallway. Moonlit shadows through the high windows did nothing to dispel the gloom.

The wind picked up with the rain, slamming the branches against the roof. His breathing began to calm as the thunder rattled harmlessly outside.

“Henry?” his father asked from behind him.

He jumped almost high enough to reach the ceiling and his heart took flight again, pounding with the shock. His hand rested on his rib cage, feeling the beating heart racing within.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

“It’s just a storm,” his father said with a half-hearted laugh. “You’re a little too old to be afraid of thunder, don’t you think?” He turned and went back down the hall to his room.

Henry took the steps upstairs two at a time. How old am I? But like most of the other questions, it remained unasked.