Fall For Anything (19 page)

Fourteen hours gives you a lot of time to rationalize.

The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Culler is not a fuck-and-run type guy. We didn’t even have sex. He just took my picture. So maybe something happened, like a family emergency. The kind that’s so bad, there’s no time to tell anyone about it. You just have to get up and go and hope that the people you ditched will forgive you after you explain to them that it was a matter of life and death. That kind of thing.

I search the motel again, for a note, just in case. I check behind the bed where I find—ugh, an old, used condom. I search under the pillows and the mattress, feeling stupider by the second. The nightstand. I find a Bible there, like those motels in the movies, or maybe that’s how motels really are. I check the chairs, behind the TV.

There’s nothing.

I bury my face in my hands and think. Just think. This is not right. There is a reason he would do this to me.

Maybe—maybe …

Maybe he was scared of what we’d find at the church. My heart jolts at this—finally, an answer that seems feasible. Maybe it all got to be too much for him. I’d understand that.

It has to be something like that.

But I wish he’d told me he felt that way, because I’d forgive him that.

If he told me that, I’d forgive him.

How I wait for Milo:

I channel surf. I take four showers. I sit on the curb for a while and pretend Milo’s just seconds away from pulling up until a gross-looking girl who might be in her early thirties comes up and asks me if I want to hang out in her room with her and her boyfriend. I go back to my room. I bury myself under the bed covers until I think of the condom I found behind the bed and then I take another shower. And then I decide it doesn’t even matter, because I’ve already slept here. I climb back into bed with all of my clothes on and the TV on and I close my eyes and I go to sleep and the next time I open my eyes, it’s late and someone’s knocking on the door.

“Eddie? It’s me.”

I crawl out of bed faster than I can wake up. My mouth is dry and my head is heavy. I pad across the room and open the door and Milo stands there, trip-tired and pale, like he didn’t even stop once, but when I glance at the clock on the TV channel guide, I know that must not be true. Before I can say a word, he wraps his arms around me and I think it’s the best thing he could do because then I can pretend I’m holding him up. Like he needs
me
right now and if I pretend this, I have to make myself forget about everything that’s wrong and just be here for him. Keep it together for him.

What ends up happening is we both keep telling each other everything’s okay.

I dig my fingers into his shirt.

When we finally manage to let each other go, the first thing Milo does is call home. He asks if I want to talk to anyone. I shake my head. I can’t imagine talking to anyone there. Not Mom. Definitely not Beth. When I think of going home, I try to think of the place; my bed and the house. Things. Not the total mess of people that is waiting for me.

People who are probably really mad at me.

He goes into the bathroom to make that call. I don’t know why. And then he takes a shower. When he comes out in a T-shirt and shorts, his hair wet and stuck to his head, his eyes drift over the lone bed in the room. He doesn’t say anything.

“Do you want something to eat?” I ask awkwardly, after a second. “We can check … maybe something’s open.…”

“I just want to sleep.”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Milo, I didn’t…”

I gesture to the bed, feebly.

“Eddie,” he says, “I didn’t ask.”

He crosses the room and digs into his coat pocket. He hands me a small envelope.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“From Beth,” he says.

“What?”

He shrugs. “Don’t ask me.”

“Not my mom?”

He pauses. “Your mom’s been in her room since she found out.”

I try to ignore the guilt that wants to take over. I open the envelope with shaking hands and find a little travel package of … Vitamin C tablets. So Beth. But the note she’s put with them is not so Beth. A folded piece of paper. Inside, her immaculate handwriting:

Just come home. We need you here. Beth

It scares me. It makes me want to cry, but I think I’ve cried enough today. Even I’m not stupid enough to overlook that
we
, because Beth chooses her words carefully. She wouldn’t just put that if she didn’t want to include herself. If she didn’t want to include herself, she’d put something like,
your mother needs you here.
But she didn’t write that. We.

We need you here.

This must be serious.

I put the note and the tablets in my bag. Milo lies on the bed, on top of the comforter. He lies on my side of the bed, not Culler’s. It would be so weird if he was where Culler was. He throws his arm over his eyes. This silence—is so bad. It’s a relief in a way, but it’s bad too.

I turn off the lights and lay next to him.

I face the wall.

“What happened with Culler?”

“I woke up and he was gone.”

It does not get easier to say.

“What happened before that?”

“Nothing.”

I wonder how much I have to tell him. If I have to say the part where, no, we didn’t have sex—don’t worry about that, Milo—but he took photographs and I wasn’t wearing any clothes. And then it feels like there’s a weight on my chest because the last thing Culler did was
take my picture when I wasn’t wearing any clothes.
No. No. No.

That is not the last time I’m going to see Culler.

I’ll find him.

“Eddie,” Milo says.

I go to the moment before that: the house. I tell Milo about the house and telling him is like being there again, seeing those words stuck in that place and saying those words out loud, they get stuck in my throat. What my father thought of this. Us.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he says when I finish.

“Sorry.”

“And you’re no one’s burden,” he adds after a while.

We fall silent. It’s amazing the way I am learning silence. My father’s death changed the way I feel it, interpret it. It’s this constantly evolving language I can’t keep up with. A language I don’t want to keep up with.

“Did you think I was going to kill myself?” I ask him.

“Eddie, don’t.”

“What would you have done if I had?” Why do I do this. Why can’t I stop doing this. “What happened after you found me?”

I face him. I hear the same sad sounds coming from outside that I heard the night before. People staying up too late and being depressed on the curb.

Milo doesn’t say anything for the longest time, but I know this time—he will.

“You were holding his hands,” Milo says, and my breath catches in my throat because there really is no preparing for something like this, even when you know it’s coming and you’ve wanted it forever. “You wouldn’t let them go. They were locked … and I had to force each of your fingers from his … each one … and I made you let him go.” He stops. “That’s it. That’s what happened.”

“That’s what you wouldn’t tell me.” I want to tell him that’s not awful, that I was expecting worse. Or maybe there was a point before all this where it might have been bad, but everything that’s happened since … it doesn’t even measure up. “You should have told me.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t understand…”

I move closer to him. He seems to tense.

“Eddie, it’s like you died that night,” he whispers.

So that’s it. I died.

I’ve been dead.

I blink back tears and pick at the mattress, but I don’t say anything. I don’t know what I could say to him. I don’t know how to convince him I’m still here when I’m not even sure of it myself anymore.

When I wake up, I check my phone. Nothing from Culler. It’s like he never existed. There is no evidence of him anywhere. But I know he exists, because I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t. I know he exists because every time I think of him, I want to break things.

Milo calls home and tells them we’re on our way. I’m sick about going back again. I’ve barely been away, but everything’s changed. Some small part of me wonders if Mom will wear this experience on her face, on top of Dad’s death, and I won’t be able to recognize her. Or if I will wear it on mine, and whether or not she’ll be able to recognize me.

We pack up my things and put them in the car. Dawn has barely broken. Milo follows me to the clerk’s office, where I return the room key. The clerk doesn’t even look surprised at the addition of Milo, a different boy from the one I came here with.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Have a good one,” Milo says.

We’re almost to the door when the clerk goes, “Oh! Hey. Wait. You’re the one that asked about the church, aren’t you?”

I turn. “Yes.”

“Well, you ran off before I could tell you where it was,” he says, and my heart stops. “You take Crispell Street and turn left onto Seals, keep going until you hit the highway. Turn right, first dirt road you see. About fifteen miles down, you’ll find your absolution.”

My stomach lurches. I turn to Milo, but he’s not looking at me. I wipe my palms on my jeans. My heart is beating fast and insistent in my chest. I taste hope. I don’t need Culler for this.
Ask him, ask him, ask him, ask him …

“Milo,” I say as we pull out of the parking lot. But I don’t know how to ask so I just end up saying his name again: “Milo—”

“I know,” he says. But that’s all he says.

*   *   *

The church is
plain
and so, so neglected.

I don’t understand why anyone would build it just to abandon it. It has echoes of a greatness it never achieved all around it. Like the person who built it wanted to evoke those cathedrals that are so fine and so incredible, they can’t help but steal your breath away whether you’re religious or not. But this church is a failure. Ramshackle and sad. It’s tall. It almost looks taller than it should be or something, like whoever built it was trying to compensate, like height equals grandeur or something, but it doesn’t. Not really.

I try to remember the photograph my father took of the church and try to forget that Culler has those photographs and now I wish I hadn’t given them to him. I want them.

I remember the photo was ominous, which makes my guts twist up because I don’t want it to be an indication of what we’re about to find. The church looked angry.

Today, it looks as tired as I feel. All the staples of an abandoned place are here; what I’m used to seeing. Boarded-up or broken windows, peeling paint. I stare at it and feel all the hours and the road and Culler’s leaving and Milo beside me, and I think no matter what I find here, this trip will have taken something important away from me.

Milo has to force the doors open with my help. The handles are all fucked up, so I have to hold one down while he shoves hard until we have access. We step inside. It’s the mustiest, dustiest, oldest place yet. I don’t know why they don’t just tear it down. No one’s using it.

No one wants it.

“Look at it,” Milo says.

We stand there for a minute, silent. There’s a choir loft above us. The door that leads to it is off the hinges and splintered apart. I keep looking up. The ceiling is ready to go. Spider-webbed stains spread out, like they’re going to consume the place and the day they do is the day it will all collapse in on itself. What if today is that day.

The altar space is at the back, but there’s nothing there anymore. Rows of short metal chairs, dusty and old, face it. I expected pews. Beside the altar is a door leading into another room. I bring my hand to the wall and run my fingers over it. It feels damp.

This doesn’t really seem like a church.

“We’ll find it and then we’ll go,” Milo says.

I point to the choir loft.

“I’m going up.”

“Be careful.”

I step through the door at the side, and climb the creaky, groaning, falling-apart steps—I have to skip over three of them—until I reach the top. It’s worse up here. I don’t understand how the place is sustaining itself. I imagine angels singing up here, praising God, and the floor collapsing beneath their feet. I run my hands over the ruined walls, half-heartedly searching for the last message. I look under things, shift garbage with my foot. It occurs to me I’m stalling. Part of me doesn’t want to find it. I don’t want to go back home and I don’t want this to end.

I don’t want it to end badly. I don’t want it to be worse than what we found in the house.

I walk over to the railing and look down. I watch Milo move along the wall, studying every inch of space on my behalf. He is intent, quiet, and I think about what he said.

It’s like you died that night.

My gaze travels from Milo at the wall to the other side of the room and I catch sight of something that …

“Milo,” I call.

He looks up. “Find it?”

“No.” I point to the side of the room opposite him. “Were you over there yet?”

“Not yet.”

He turns and looks and from his spot he notices the same thing I’m noticing. Intermittent footprints cutting a path through the dust, leading to the wall next to a window. Milo moves to it, but I say, “Wait,” and he stops.

I run back down the steps, almost falling once, sliding into the wall to keep myself upright. I close my eyes briefly and just try to prepare myself for this, whatever it is. Little things are becoming clear: Culler was here. He must have been here.

But was he here before or after he stranded me?

And what if it’s bad.

What if it is so bad, the only way to tell me is not to tell me.

The worst part of having no reason is that there could be any reason. I think of the message in the house. What if knowing is worse than not knowing.

No.

Not knowing is worse.

Milo stays where he is. I follow Culler’s footprints to the far wall, where I see it, but it’s not what it should be. The tell-tale initials of my father’s are still there, scratched hard into the wood,
S.R.,
but whatever they gave weight to is gone.

Culler scratched the message my father left behind out—unless the last thing my father wanted the world to know is as abstract as a square space, purposefully worn away. But it’s not. It can’t be. I think. I don’t know. I don’t—

“Culler was here,” I say. This is what I have decided: Culler was here. He did this. “I think he scratched the message out.”

“What?”
Milo asks. He makes his way over to me. “Why?”

Why. Why. Why.
Why.

The question my life has become.