The break room looks exactly like it did seventeen years ago. Russ imagines Lee sitting across from him at the folding card table, holding a hand of aces and smiling, fake innocent. Lee would put down his cards—they’d both burst into booming laughter. Come on, Lee would say. Rematch. I know you can do better than that. Russ would shake his head, joking angry. In his chest, a flight of springtime geese moving back north for the summer. Flapping home.
Tonight, the memory feels less like a stab wound and more like a memory. Distant and unchangeable. A sighing reprieve. Russ stands at the gurgling coffee machine and thanks the years between then and now, a road the length of the country that separates Russ and that young fool self.
Jade
Everything happens for a reason, Mrs. Arnaud used to say. Zap told her this was stupid. That phrase gets you nowhere, he would say. It’s a logical fallacy. It’s like believing in the tooth fairy, simply to make you feel secure in your own existence. Sayings like these are safety blankets, he used to say. They’re pretexts.
I partially disagree. I don’t think everything happens for a reason. Some things do, of course. There’s a reason Lucinda died. I don’t know it, and neither does Cameron. This is an impossible consolation.
While we wait for Cameron’s mom at the police station, the receptionist gives him a clean pair of scrub pants. He comes out of the bathroom, too dazed to be embarrassed, and sits next to me on a chilly bench in the police department’s waiting room.
Cameron’s sadness is a palpable thing, radiating from his curved spine, from the shadows beneath his baggy hood.
I take his hand, lacing my fingers between his. Cold sweat. We don’t speak. When Cameron’s mom comes bursting in, harried and tear-streaked, Cameron’s hand unclasps from mine, and it feels like waking from a long night of satisfying sleep. A parting that I recognize—for the first time since Lucinda died—as a sort of grief.
Ma picks me up at the station.
I’m waiting outside with my bike. She doesn’t say anything, just loads the bike into the trunk of the car, exerting more physical effort than I’ve seen from her in years. She slams the back door. Claps the slushy grime off her hands. Cars rush past the station and we stand in their tail wind, irreconcilable figures trying to ignore the nightfall breeze. Ma doesn’t have a jacket.
“Officer Fletcher called,” she said. “You were with the Whitley boy, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You should have talked to me first. I would have driven you here.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
I’m about to tell her to fuck off when she steps forward, and then we’re hugging. I can’t remember the last time Ma and I touched like this. She smells like old cigarette smoke and orange Tic Tacs. I wrap my arms around her—plastic bra straps dig into her back, creating rolls I could grab in my fists.
It’s over quickly. I walk to the side of the car, where Amy sits in the back; she’s saved me the passenger’s seat. When I slide in, Amy rolls her eyes and taps her long nails on the door’s inner handle. She tries to crane her neck to see into the police station without looking too interested.
“I’ll tell you later,” I say to Amy. Tonight, we will curl up beneath my comforter and I will recount the story. I will tell her about Zap, the ritual, the gun, and the sunset sky. Amy will listen, twirling that red hair around her fingers. When I’m finished, she’ll press her chest against my back and we will lie there, our separate heartaches shaped different but wearing matching clothes.
After I called Ma to pick me up, Officer Fletcher pulled me aside and said: You should know—you’re the hero of this story.
Once Ma goes to bed, I sneak out the back door.
Terry has assumed his usual position on the couch. They’ve been playing the same things on the news, over and over again. One of the victim’s neighbors, not yet identified, is now in custody as a prime suspect. Sources say the victim was engaged in an illicit relationship with an older neighbor. They zoom the camera in on Lieutenant Gonzalez, who coughs into his uniform sleeve and says things like: We’re doing everything in our power to bring justice to the Hayes family. Police cars have crowded the street in front of the Thorntons’ house. The neighbors across from us have gathered in their driveway, pajama-clad and curious, gossiping by the mailbox as lights flash red and blue across their faces.
I sneak out of the neighborhood in the opposite direction. First, I go to see Howie.
His stench dissipates in the winter. In the summer, pools of urine soak in the heat, and fermented clothes stick to his unwashed skin. But February—it’s not so bad. Howie is slumped against his usual wall, atop a mangy blanket. His face is badly sunburned, turned a glossy, cracked red. His right hand is splayed out, palm facing up: even in sleep, Howie knows how to ask for help.
“Howie?” I say, not loud enough to wake him. “It’s me. It’s Celly.”
I crouch down, wrapping my army parka close to keep out the wind.
“I gotta tell you something,” I say, though it’s useless. He can’t hear me.
“My name is Jade Dixon-Burns.”
A line of ants crawls across the concrete, marching organized, one by one, somehow alive in the cold. I smash an ant with the thumb of my knitted glove, then regret it, rubbing its guts off with a crumpled sheet of newspaper.
“I’m seventeen years old. I’m not moving to Paris. Also, I’m not in love. You should know that—I’m really not in love.”
Howie doesn’t answer. Just lies there, unconscious, stuck in the stupor of last night’s whiskey.
I thought maybe I’d feel lighter, or like a better person. In reality, I am only myself.
I walk slow all the way home, taking the long way through the field behind my house, which has become a wall of night. I’m wearing fleece sweat pants and an old pair of insulated snow boots. Mittens with holes in both thumbs. It’s bitter out.
When I get to the middle of the field, I feel very old.
This place used to feel so much bigger. Endless, really. When Zap and I came here to watch the sky, it was like gazing at the edge of the world. Now, you can see the twinkling of the houses on the other side of the field, boring people living their boring lives. Although I’m not sure what to make of this darkness, it certainly is not infinite.
Cameron
After Cameron was home and showered, wearing clean sweat pants, he thought of sitting in front of Dad’s friends. The only relief had come when Russ Fletcher asked: Cameron, you watched her every night. How did you miss the signs of this? How did you miss an entire illicit relationship?
The only explanation: Lucinda had hidden it until she couldn’t anymore. She’d known Cameron was there, counting his own exhales on the lawn. In that notion, he found just an ounce of comfort. U terrify me. She had written of windows, of glass—and not necessarily of Cameron.
Cameron thought of last August. Of Lucinda standing in Mom’s bathroom, dabbing Mom’s gardenia perfume onto her wrists, Mr. Thornton’s animal laugh echoing from the driveway.
Russ
When Russ gets home from the longest day, he does not expect to find Ines. She is knitting in bed, eyes puffed and pink.
At first, he is angry. Then, only tired. Russ sits next to her and the mattress sinks.
Are you okay? Ines asks.