In the other direction, red roofs were speckled white with dandruff snow. That was Broomsville: a set of Monopoly pieces placed carefully in clusters around the sprawling plains. And beyond that: more plains. And beyond that: the horizon. And beyond that: he didn’t know. The ocean, somewhere. More people. He thought of Dad, but not for long.
Cameron staggered, panting, to the edge of the cliff. The drop was only twenty feet—below that, landing after landing that led down to the water. Cameron sat on a small rock, near where the land turned into air, and pulled the porcelain ballerina from his pocket. She had survived the climb. Pristine. He balanced the ballerina in his palm, which was covered in red soil, and he thought about how somewhere out there, beyond this festering town, other people had killed. He wondered what they killed for. Compulsion, maybe. Or like in the movies: people killed for sex, or for money.
Cameron was relieved to think that if, indeed, he had killed—it had been for a monstrous love.
Two days before she died, Lucinda loved him in the yard.
He’d been a Statue only twenty minutes when she slid open her bedroom window and popped out the screen.
Cameron had always believed you could sense when things were over. Inside you. In the air around you. Now, the streetlights were humming, and Cameron had the distinct notion that after this moment, he would exist in a different era.
Lucinda lifted her right hand and held it there, a solemn wave. Her lips curled up, into a smile meant only for him.
Cameron had never felt so full. They were connected, they were undeniable.
She was a bird, perched and curious. He stretched his arm out. He waited.
Pine Ridge Point was like the middle of your favorite song—between the bridge and the chorus, where you held your breath and waited for the inevitable boom of music to take you away. Wind rustled through
the branches of the pine trees, soft hands on sharp needles. Everything converged in a rattle, a combination of consonant melodies, a series of songs for Lucinda.
Cameron could hear all the words she would not say. The shoulders she would not touch. The strawberries she would not eat. The number of times a day she would not blink. The glasses of lemonade she would not drink, the white nail polish she would not spread across her fingernails, the millions of shades of reds and oranges and pinks she would not see, tucking themselves quietly into bed behind the mountains.
Things Cameron Asked Himself:
How do you explain the badness inside you?
White flame sun in his pupils, Cameron pulled the .22 from his waistband. He swore if he lived through this day, he would not say another word to another human for the rest of his life, not even if that word was “sorry.”
Jade
Kids at school refer to the cliff in passing. It’s a revered make-out spot—the cliffs are tall, but not dangerously so. It overlooks the reservoir, and at night the moon hangs over the water like a single burning bulb. Last year, I came up here with Jimmy Kessler. His mouth was a suction cup, and he tasted like sour milk. When I got home, I took a long shower—the water ran cold as Ma pounded on the door.
It’s the golden hour now. The sun looks like melted sugar. Irises grow more layers. Purple mountain majesties.
When I get to the base of the cliff, I lean my bike against an aspen. My legs burn as I take the first few steps up the steep, dry path. Powdery red dirt covers my heavy boots.
By the time I reach the top, sun is coming down in rays so thick you could grab them by the fistful. They filter through naked branches, scattering shadows across the plateaus.
Cameron sits on the edge, feet dangling into the abyss. He does not look any particular way. His back is stiff, unnaturally so, and he stares into the unknown space below, the hood of his winter jacket folded over his forehead. It drowns him.
I imagine, just for a second, how it would feel to be with him.
Cameron would do it differently. It would still hurt. But he wouldn’t say, Hey, you should probably go; my parents will be back soon. He’d be shaky. Nervous. And afterwards, he’d wrap his arms around you and kiss your forehead and you would lie there until you weren’t out of breath anymore. Cameron knows how to watch. Because of this, I imagine he’s much different than Jason from Ohio, or Jimmy Kessler, or even Zap. Cameron would look at you like a painting he doesn’t want to understand: He would study each brushstroke. He would see something embarrassed, something raw and cracked and fragile, and he would trace these things with artist’s hands.
Cameron will never watch me this way. I don’t want that. But it’s funny, to suddenly be able to picture this, knowing someone so minimally. It’s tangible.
“Hey,” I say.
Cameron is barely visible behind the curtain of his hood. One hand is clenched inside a pocket.
I ease down next to him, swinging my feet in time with his. My boots hit the underside of the cliff, and a few pebbles chase one another over the edge.
“Hey,” he answers.
“I saw you that night,” I say. “Before and after. I saw you come back without her.”
“Please go,” he says.
“You followed her to the park. You staggered back. You looked drunk. You threw up in the bushes in front of the Hansens’ house. Remember?”
He’s crying now. Tears fall fast, but he doesn’t move otherwise, not a muscle.
“Want to know something?” I say.
“Sure.”
“I wanted her dead.”
“That’s a pretty terrible thing to say.”
“I know. So I didn’t tell anyone what I saw.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Cameron says.
“Not you,” I say. “Her. I came here for her. Anyway, we’re not all that different, you and me. Wanna know something else?”
“Sure.”
“You can only see fifty-nine percent of the moon from the earth’s surface. No matter where you go, in the entire world, you’ll only ever see the same face. That fifty-nine percent.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m just saying. We know this fact, but it doesn’t stop us from staring.”
The night I got home from that grisly scene at Zap’s house—I don’t want to—I stood in front of my own bathroom mirror. Studied myself, in my ripped-up concert T-shirt, with jeans that cut too tight across my bulging hips and skin that puffed out like the head of a cupcake. It was a searing hatred. A whole and incapacitating contempt for the very cells that made me up, for the way those cells replicated without my permission, how bones grew without my knowledge and skin acquiesced, folding over them in this intolerable manner.
I took a safety pin from Ma’s sewing kit in the linen closet. I lifted my shirt and poked my ribs 815 times, not hard enough to draw blood but enough to leave a connect-the-dots across each flabby rib, a poem in braille I would never learn how to read.
This can’t be it, I thought. This can’t be love.
This rotten love was stuck to my skin, humid, dewy. That night in the bathroom, I could not fathom the possibility of peeling it off, allowing new, pink skin to breathe. So for years I wore it like a cloak, this decaying love. An excuse.
Now, on the cliff, I find there are no excuses to be made.