The Last September: A Novel

I tried to laugh. He had to be joking. We sat there, silent, me waiting politely—as if I weren’t allowed to say Charlie’s name out loud even though Eli had used it to lure me up here. I swear that ten minutes passed, the two of us, just sitting. When my eyes had adjusted to the semidarkness, I tried but failed to decipher the garbled scrawl across his pants. The noise of the party pulsed through the roof, vibrating slightly. Arriving voices and slamming car doors traveled up to us from the parking lot.

“Eli.” I finally spoke. “You said you were going to tell me something about Charlie.”

He pitched forward, placing his forehead between his knees, and pressed his hands over his ears.

“Eli?” I said.

“Shh,” he said. “Shut up. Don’t say that name.”

“Which name? Yours or his?”

He lifted his head and snatched off his sunglasses. I heard my own intake of breath; he looked so upset, so wired. His eyes were disturbingly beautiful even in this partially lit night; it made a kind of sense that he’d wanted to hide them.

“Eli,” I said, my voice a whisper. “Are you all right?”

Another minute passed, maybe two. We stared into each other’s faces. I thought how lackluster my own dark-eyed face must look in comparison to his. Then he turned in a jerky, agitated movement and slapped me across the forehead with the back of his hand. I couldn’t tell if he’d done it on purpose or if it happened because he wasn’t in control of his movement. Either way, the blow stunned me into a weird sort of calm—as if he’d smacked me right out of my body and now I could stand to the side, just watching whatever happened next.

“Shut up,” he whispered fiercely.

I hadn’t said a word. Eli stood, his eyes filling with water. I brought my hand to my forehead, which stung sharply. I pictured a quick, hand-shaped welt that would indeed take shape by the time I had a chance to look in a mirror. Eli drew his hand back to his own forehead and smacked it twice, harder even than he’d smacked me. The Ray-Bans flew out of his hand, skittered across the roof, and fell down to the parking lot.

“Eli,” I said, regaining my voice, sharply aware of the distance between us and the ground. The trust required for me to come up here—in my own footing, in my companion—evaporated into the thin air. “Stop it,” I said. “Stop it.”

I could hear voices three stories below, halting. “Who’s up there,” a male voice yelled. I imagined him kneeling to pick up the expensive sunglasses that had clattered to his feet. Eli covered his face with his hands.

“Goddamn it,” Eli said. “Don’t you see what he’s turned you into? Don’t you see what he’s making me do?”

“Who?” I said, though I knew exactly. I slid back a little, the tar shingles rough beneath my blue-jeaned thighs. I tried to calculate the distance and slope to that open window below. Eli moved his hands frantically across his head, as if discovering the lack of hair for the first time. He balled his hands into fists, and I thought he would start pummeling himself again. But instead he threw his arms out wide, like bird wings. The sky around us darkened in an elegant bow. Eli did a strangely graceful little hop, then ran down to the eaves with his arms outstretched and catapulted into the air. I swear that for a moment he hovered. It happened just after his feet grazed the gutters—his body hung flat, arms outstretched like a raptor about to swoop down on prey. But then that silhouette evaporated, and in less time than he’d been still, he crashed through the air to the pavement.

I heard male and female screams below, but I stayed silent. My arms hugged my knees close to my chest. A warm Chinook wind blew my hair off my sharply stinging forehead. I crawled down to where he’d lifted off, and peered over. Down below, three people—two girls and a guy—stood over Eli’s body. He lay on his stomach, his arms splayed out, still like wings, though they would tell me later he’d managed to land on his feet before crumpling to the ground.

He’s dead, I thought. Eli’s dead. Then I remembered the kitten he’d rescued, how sure I’d been she couldn’t possibly survive.

One of the girls looked up at me. “Are you all right?” she yelled, as if I were a victim instead of an accomplice.

“Is he alive?” I said, my voice such a froggy croak I didn’t expect she would hear it.