He shoved his fists deeper into his jean-jacket pockets, pulling his shoulders to his ears, hoping to disappear. Nothing, he thought, not even Sunny, is gonna make this day go easy.
He took a long breath. His eyes fell back to that field. And then, because there was nothing else he could do, he just opened his mouth and said it. “Shaun is dead.”
E
Evie buzzed like a bell struck by a hammer. She stared at Réal, but he just looked away over the fence, bomb dropped.
She turned to Alex, whose face crumpled instantly as the words all tumbled out—the bloody grass, Shaun’s belly torn open, the police dog, the kids all coming across that field at twilight, screaming. “He had no shoes on, man,” Alex said, his voice a broken mess. “Who would take his fuckin’ shoes?”
The backpack slipped from Evie’s hand. Her eyes went wide, but she saw nothing. Her ears rang—she heard nothing. “No way.”
She’d been with Shaun just days ago. Nursing fries and bad coffee at the Olympia, talking about—what? It all left her head the instant that word came out of Réal’s mouth. A blown fuse, a bulb burned out.
Pop.
Crack.
Dead?
Shaun Henry-Deacon? Fearless frickin’ Shaun Henry-Deacon?
A picture of him across the table from her, lips mid-sentence, sea-colored eyes set on hers…He couldn’t die. It wasn’t possible.
Shaun was invincible.
A picture of him leaping from the fire escape at the Grains, throwing himself, weightless, into the night—he’d done it a hundred times. Never so much as scraped his knee. It wasn’t in his nature. Every step he took was total blind confidence, on air or solid ground. That’s just who he was.
Shaun Henry-Deacon.
Evie’s chest squeezed tight. Her scalp pricked with needles and pins, and the world spun, though she stood perfectly still.
Impossible.
Alex dragged a grimy sleeve across his eyes. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m not going to school today.” He jumped up and flicked the coin into the road, where it skipped off the pavement and thwacked into the side of a parked car. “I feel like getting bombed,” he said, heading away from them down the hill.
Evie looked to Réal again and realized then that he’d been crying too. Maybe for hours. It had been hard to tell before—dark purple stained his eyes, and the bridge of his nose was swollen and scabbed from some days-old fight. Ré had four brothers, and he was tough as hell. She’d seen him beat up and black-eyed plenty of times. She had never seen him cry.
“Come on,” he muttered, pushing past her and heading down the hill.
Burned oil and sour milk. That was the smell of Réal’s old Buick. Evie stared out the dirty window in the back seat, watching telephone poles slide by, trying not to breathe. The car’s soft suspension lurched and bounced over every bump, every hill, as Ré stomped the gas.
In the front seat, Alex lit the bowl of a small pipe, and a moment later skunky, blue smoke filled the car as he exhaled. Evie gagged. She opened her window an inch, and smoke sucked past her face and away. She began to feel carsick, the rotten-upholstery-and-pot-smoke smell nagging at the back of her throat.
At Mill Road, Réal peeled off the highway too fast. Sunny shrieked as the Buick fishtailed dangerously through the dockyard. At the end of the yard, Ré stood on the brakes, locked tires sliding through gravel till the rubber butted up against the low wooden barrier at the edge of the riverbank.
Evie looked for a trace of the grin Réal usually wore when he did stupid stuff in his car, but his jaw was set hard and tucked to his chest like he’d really meant to drive them all off the bank into the black water below.
“What. The. Fuck, Ré!” Sunny screeched, kicking the back of his seat with her pointy boot. She jumped out of the car and slammed the door with a hollow clang, black skirt swirling as she stalked away.
“Jesus, man.” Alex laughed. It was a reedy, fearful sound. He punched Réal’s thigh lightly, then got out to go after Sunny.
The car’s engine ticked as it cooled. Colorless dust whirled around them. Neither Evie nor Réal spoke. She sat gripping the vinyl under her, eyes locked on a broken bit of piping on the passenger seat that barfed up yellow stuffing. She could hear Sunny’s complaints bouncing over the concrete past the car.
Suddenly Réal punched the dash hard with his fist.
She jumped like he’d hit her instead. “What the—”
“Shut it, Evie. Don’t say it.” He flexed his hand as blood began to ooze from his cut knuckles.
“I was just—”
“Don’t,” he growled. Then he softened. “Please. Just don’t talk, okay?”
Evie sighed. She slumped back against the seat and looked out at their pretty, red-brick-and-wrought-iron town. The train bridge over the Ohneganohs River cut a black slash through her view. She’d lived in Cold Water for six years, in four different, equally crappy houses. Always on this side of those tracks.
Réal ran a thumb over his bloody knuckles, smearing rust across the back of his hand. Almost too low to hear, he said, “I saw him.”
“Uh-huh.” Evie was not really listening.
“No. I mean, I saw him,” he said. “After.”
Evie turned to look at him. She said nothing, waiting.
Réal pressed a thumbnail into his torn skin and picked back the ragged edge. “He looked like hamburger.”
Evie blinked, not sure what he was trying to say. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because, man,” he said quietly, “because it’s my fucking fault.”
He began to cry. It was a sharp, painful sound, like he didn’t do it too often and didn’t really know how. He covered his eyes with his bloody hand and shriveled into his jean jacket.
“It’s not your fault, Ré,” she said.
She got out of the car and left him to cry alone.
Sunny and Alex were arguing on the far
