“Oh, God,” he groaned, looking up at the starry sky. “You know, like a blow job, okay? That you suck cock.”
She stepped away as if he’d slapped her, and he felt like he had, he was so ashamed in that moment. She was a nice girl. She
“I want my stuff out of the trunk,” she said. Her voice was faint.
“Why?” he asked. “You can’t walk from here. Your house is miles away, and it’s dark.”
He’d driven them out of The Hollows and down past the dairy farm to a state park that closed at dusk but where no one ever bothered to pull the gate shut. They were three miles from town, surrounded by nearly five hundred acres of yellow poplar, hemlock, American beech, iron-wood, dogwood, red and white oak. Kids from school came here a lot, sometimes to play, sometimes at night to drink or make out. He came here often to walk or run the five miles of trails; sometimes he did his homework on one of the picnic tables or down by the rushing Black River just to be away from his mother, from everyone.
“Look,” he said, raising his palms. “I’m sorry. Let’s just wait for those guys and then we’ll all go.”
She shot him an annoyed glance and then walked to the head of the rocky path that led into the park. “Melody!” she yelled. “Let’s go. I have homework.”
Her voice bounced off the rock walls of the glacial ravine, came back sounding haunted and strained. But she stayed there, looking into the park even though no one called back to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, coming up behind her. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m a jerk.”
He could see that she was shivering, so he shrugged off his varsity jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She seemed to consider refusing, then offered a weak smile, pulled it tight around her. He noticed then the sweet turn of her nose, the wide, full shape to her lips. Her eyes were heavily lidded, almost sleepy, but their color-hazel with flecks of green and gold-shone in the amber light.
“Who says that?” she asked him, after a moment. “Why would they say that about me? I don’t-I haven’t.”
Jones kicked at a stone by his foot; it skipped off into the brush.
“Forget it,” she said.
Jones shrugged. “You know what? Probably no one said that. It was probably just Travis being a tool. He’s, you know… troubled.” He made a looping motion with his finger and pulled a funny face. They both laughed then, and he felt the awkwardness between them pass. But the next second, Travis and Melody emerged from the path.
“What’s so funny?” Travis snapped at them. Melody wore a deep frown, looked as if she were fighting back tears.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, brushing past them, headed for the car. “I want to go home.”
“What happened?” asked Jones.
“Melody’s a little prick tease. That’s what happened,” said Travis, staring at her hard. He was clenching and unclenching his fist.
Melody spun around. “Shut up, Travis,” she shrieked, and the sound of it echoed around the park.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Sarah. She strode over so that she was standing right in front of Travis.
The exact sequence of events, who said what, was always nebulous here. Jones remembered a chaotic rise of voices, like gulls on a beach fighting over food. He remembered himself as apart, watching, even considering going to the car until they got it all worked out. He remembered Melody saying that she wasn’t a slut, or something like that. And Sarah asking why he’d spread rumors about her, she didn’t even know him.
But more than anything he recalled the electricity of rising anger, their pulled, pale faces.
“You’re a loser, Travis Crosby. A born loser.”
She couldn’t have known the charge of that word, what it would mean to him. She couldn’t have known that he’d heard it a thousand times, in a hundred ugly ways, from a father who’d never had a kind word for his son. It was just the word a girl who wasn’t accustomed to calling people names would choose. She said it dismissively and turned to walk away.
“What did you call me?” His voice was white-hot.
Jones saw her turn back to look at him, to say it again. Travis’s back was to Jones, so he didn’t know what she saw on Travis’s face that made her own expression go slack with fear, her eyes widen.
“Okay,” said Jones, “that’s enough.”
But then Sarah was running, casting Jones’s varsity jacket to the ground. Did she start to run and he gave chase? Or did he move toward her, causing her to bolt? Jones couldn’t tell. But Travis was after her. She disappeared into the dark of the path, her footfalls loud and echoing, with Travis on her heels. Melody and Jones exchanged a look, and then they followed.
“Leave her alone, Travis,” Melody yelled.
When they caught up with Travis and Sarah, the two were in a standoff. Sarah had picked up a heavy branch and stood with her back to a long pathway that led into the river valley below.
“Stay away from me,” she said, crying, lifting the branch like a baseball bat. “Get away.”
Behind her yawned the steep and twisting path down, the individual steps just stones lined in the earth, jagged gray teeth in mossy gums.
Jones grabbed Travis by the shoulder. “Let’s go. This is finished.”
But Travis turned and swung on Jones, catching him hard in the jaw. Jones fell back with the shock and pain of it, a warm gush of blood traveling from his nose over his lips onto his shirt. He didn’t see what happened next; Melody and Travis always said different things. Travis said that Sarah came after him with the branch and he fended her off. Melody said Travis turned from the swing on Jones to go after Sarah. Whatever happened, the end result was that Sarah fell. And her head hit a sharp stone jutting from the ground. That was the next sound Jones remembered hearing. And then there was absolute silence. Everything in the forest around them-the wind in the leaves, the singing of spring frogs and crickets-seemed to stop. Jones got to his feet and saw her lying there between Melody and Travis. Melody dropped to her knees beside Sarah, who was so still.
“Sarah,” she whispered, as though trying to rouse her from sleep. “Sarah?”
Then she looked up at them, her face a mask of sorrow and fear. Her words were just an exhaled breath. “She’s-she’s not breathing.”
“No,” said Jones. “That’s not-No.”
He went to kneel beside Sarah as well and saw the unnatural angle of her neck, the strange stillness, the odd cast to her skin.
“Oh, my God.” He felt the first grip of true fear he had ever known.
“I never touched her.”
They both turned to look at Travis, who started to back away, his lips parted, head shaking. Then Travis took off in a sprint, disappeared up the path to the main road.
It was that night that Jones realized your body was a thing that could be broken on impact through careless action, broken like a branch left in the road. She was wrecked before him, ruined, ended. There was just one moment between her life and death, just one breath drawn and not released. He thought about the sound it made… that final, soft noise of flesh on stone, the crackle of breaking bone. It was so quiet.
Then, years later, there was a dawning, a slow and terrible dawning that he, too, would die. Even he would one day draw a breath and not release it, or release a breath and not draw another. He would cease to exist, cease to draw the world in through his senses, though it would go on without him. A grim dread, accompanied by a petulant rage, settled on him. It was all so damn fragile. It shouldn’t be. Something so important should be stronger. How were we all supposed to bear it? he wondered. How could anyone really live, knowing that they were going to die? What was the point?
That night, and every awful thing that followed, was there between them in the Explorer as they drove to find Marshall. It was always there, wasn’t it? But the years had buried it all deep, covered it with the fallen debris of ordinary days. Jones wanted to say,
Travis lit another cigarette without asking, rolled down the window, letting the cold air sweep in. Jones drove from The Acres and took the main road through the center of town, passed the coffee shop and the independent bookstore, Pop’s Pizza and the Om Yoga Studio. A sharp right after the last light put them on Old Farmers Road,
