Fall For Anything (4 page)

I don’t come here during the day, ever.

I come at night, waiting for some piece of the puzzle to click into place, waiting to understand, and I stay until the living world presses in on me and I have to go back to it, but this is the first time since my dad died that I have nowhere else to go. Not home, where Beth is, and not at Fuller’s with Milo, where Missy is. All that’s left is here.

The last place my father was.

Tarver’s Warehouse is old and abandoned. It didn’t start out in the middle of nowhere. This used to be somewhere and it used to be something, but now it’s a “notable stop” on the type of Web sites that spotlight modern-day ruins next to towns that are quickly becoming the same. It stands in the middle of an old dirt lot that has weeds growing up around it. It’s condemnable.

It’s floor after floor of broken windows that go so far up …

The warehouse looks even worse under direct sunlight. No shadows to cloak how truly run-down the place is, how dangerous. The windows seem more broken, the foundation more crumbly. Desolate. I can almost understand how someone would come here with the intention to die, but at the same time, he came here all the time before that moment, just to photograph it.

And he came back.

I set my bike on the ground and sit next to it, bringing my knees to my chest. I should think about how something inside you changes and you can decide nothing is worth living for anymore, but instead, I think about Milo and Missy. Missy is here now. For the summer. There is no good time for Missy, really, but this is the worst possible time.

Her being here feels like a bee sting.

I run my hand over the dirt and grit. Milo will call me tonight, I know it. He’ll want to talk about Missy. He’ll ask me if I hate her. (I don’t.) I’ll tell him it’s fine, even though it’s not, because what can either of us do about it?

I would never make him do anything about it.

I don’t know how long I’m sitting in the dirt, fixating on this before I feel like I’m not alone. A chill crawls up my spine and I look up. The roof is empty. I’m too afraid to go up there, even though that’s all I want to do. I want to go up there and see if there are any traces of my dad left, but just the idea makes my palms sweat and I can’t breathe. I tried to, once. I got inside and tried so hard to fumble my way up to the roof in the dark, but I just couldn’t do it.

I stand and brush off my jeans. There’s no one on the roof, but I can’t shake that feeling.

Someone’s here, somewhere.

I scan the windows because something in my gut is telling me to and that’s when I see it—a face coming through one of the pieces of glass, warped and distorted. I stumble back at the shock of it. I’m
not
alone. But then I blink and the face is gone.

I’ve seen scary movies like this before. This is that moment just before I get killed. I try to pick up my bike, but my dying hands are going out on me and it takes forever to get the thing righted, and by the time I do there’s a voice behind me.

“Hey. Wait—”

It’s not a voice I recognize. A boy’s voice. I stop moving, but I don’t turn around. His footsteps crunch across the gravel and dirt and my head is telling me to
move
but I don’t.

The footsteps stop just short of me. I keep my back to them.

“I saw you from the window,” the boy says. “I startled you … sorry.”

I’m still startled. I can’t make myself turn around. He sounds okay, but I’m afraid whoever he is—that he won’t have a nice face. The way it came through the window made it seem creepy. But this should be the last thing that worries me. There are so many other reasons to be afraid of a strange guy hanging around an abandoned warehouse outside of town, but …

I face him.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. Maybe not this. Maybe exactly this. A boy, kind of. Post-boy? He’s definitely older than seventeen, but not twenty-five, and he has a five o’clock shadow and needs to shave. There’s a camera around his neck. A Nikon. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and the T-shirt he’s wearing has a big white arrow pointing down, so for a second, I’m staring at his crotch when I should be staring at his face.

His face: he has a mop of dirty-blond hair and hazel eyes.

The whole time I’m studying him, he’s studying me.

He takes a step back, a small smile on his mouth.

His eyes travel from my feet, up my legs, lingering on my hips, my waist, past my chest, to my eyes. A voice inside my head tells me I should go because this isn’t safe because awkward moments like these can precede far more sinister things, but instead I ask, “Are you a photographer or are you just pretending?”

He brings his hands to his Nikon but he doesn’t say anything. I wonder if he’s a vulture. If he was somehow aware this was a place my father frequented or if more people come out here to take photographs than I ever knew about. After a second, he wipes his hand on his shirt and holds it out. I don’t move. That makes him laugh.

“I’m Culler Evans,” he says. “And you are Eddie Reeves.”

I move back. “How do you know my name?”

“You look just like your father. I mean, when he was younger.”

I lose myself for a minute, absorbing these extraordinary words, and then I search his face for the lie. Culler holds out his hand again.

“I’m Culler Evans,” he repeats.

I stare at it for a second and then I shake it.

“Eddie Reeves.”

“I’m…” he pauses. “I am unbelievably sorry about your dad.”

“So you knew him.”

Culler’s hand comes to his Nikon. “I was his student.”

“Oh…” I flush. “Sorry. I didn’t—” I stop. “My dad didn’t really take on students.”

“I was an exception,” Culler says. He doesn’t sound like he’s lying. “I’m not all that surprised you haven’t heard of me. I know your dad preferred to keep his work to himself, separate from home … maybe not so much the opposite.” I stare at him blankly. “I mean he loved to talk about you.”

I don’t even know what to say to that.

“It really wasn’t my intent to startle you.” Culler looks around and then points back to the building. “I know he spent a lot of time here, so I’ve been coming out, just trying to figure it all out, I guess. I mean, to understand why he’d…”

He trails off and my heart gets all excited.
Me too,
I want to tell him.
Every night. Every night, I come here.
But I don’t. Not yet. Not
yet
? And then I realize in the time we’ve been talking, he is standing much closer to me than he was before.

I stare at his face. Twenty-one, maybe?

Twenty-two?

“You’ll never figure it out,” I tell him. “I haven’t yet.”

I should be scared. I’m too comfortable around Culler Evans, who says he knows my dad, who says he was his student. Maybe he’s an obsessed fan. My dad used to get fan letters from a woman who said his work was her soul. She sent him naked pictures and she was sixty-five. For a while, my dad stuck them to the fridge. Mom loved that.

“We’ll see,” he says.

“Culler Evans,” I say, trying to figure out if he is a lie.

“I sent a sympathy card. I met your mom once. Robyn.”

Twenty-one. Maybe.

“How old are you?” I blurt out, and then I feel stupid. Culler stares at me, amused. I don’t know why it even matters. “I mean, you look a little young to be my father’s student…”

“Twenty.” He holds up his camera and I cover my face instinctively. He laughs and says, “Camera shy? That’s kind of funny.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“Fair enough, Eddie Reeves.”

He lowers the camera.

“How often do you come out here?” I ask him.

“How often do you?” he asks back.

I step back. This is insane. I need proof of Culler Evans’s existence before this goes any further. It’s not enough for him to stand in front of me and tell me things like this. I want to hear it from my dad, but I’ll never hear it from my dad.

“I should go,” I say abruptly.

“Think I’ll stick around,” he says. “The light’s pretty great right now. But it was nice to meet you, Eddie Reeves.” He studies me. “If I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

I don’t say anything. I bike toward the highway, my heart beating hard in my chest, and when I glance back, Culler is standing on the exact spot my father lay, watching me.

Mom and Beth are reminiscing over wine in the living room and Mom has been wasted for as long as she’s been talking and laughing, so that’s a couple of hours.

It’s creepy, hearing her laugh. I’m so used to her silence.

I spend most of the evening avoiding them and looking for the sympathy cards that flooded the mail the first two weeks after Dad died. I have to search the whole house. I can’t ask Mom where they are because I don’t want asking her to be the difference between her being a happy drunk and a sad one, even though I’d rather she not be drunk at all.

I eventually find the cards strewn haphazardly in the very back of the junk drawer in the kitchen. I gather them up. They’re still in the envelopes they came in because at some point, we have to send thank-you cards back, I think.
Thank you for your sympathy.
I set them in a neat pile on the table and find the envelope with Culler’s name and address near the bottom of it. His card is white watercolor paper, folded in half. It’s completely blank on the front.

I think I love it.

I think I love the idea that my dad’s death could be so far beyond any cheap sentiment you could put on the front of a sympathy card. I hope Culler meant it that way.

I open it up.

He is missed.

Culler Evans

I stare at the card for a long time, tracing over the letters with my finger. That’s how I think it should be. Everything is complicated now but this is simple and true: he is missed. I want to go into the sympathy card business. I want all the cards to be like that. Forget sappy messages about overcoming; I want ones that say
NOW YOU’LL BE A LESSER PERSON THAN YOU WERE
or
WE CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND
or
I CAN UNDERSTAND BECAUSE SOMEONE I KNOW DIED TOO
or maybe something about how grief can make your skin feel sore and bruised and electric because that’s how my skin has felt ever since, except for my hands.

Mom cackles from the living room. I hear the clink of glass against the table and then she’s slurring, “Oh no! No! Oh—God, get a paper towel, Beth!”

And then a knock on the front door.

I hastily put the cards back into the junk drawer.

“Someone’s at the door,” I call into the living room. Nobody says anything and the knocking persists. “I said someone’s at the door. Maybe one of you should get it.”

“We’re busy.” Beth. “So get it yourself please. And if it’s anyone for your mother, tell them she can’t talk right now.”

“I can talk just fine, thank you very much,” Mom insists, dissolving into giggles. “Do you want me to recite the alphabet?”

I close my eyes and count to ten.

Whoever is outside is still knocking.

Go away.

My cell chimes in my pocket. I answer it.

“Open the door already.” Milo. “I’m not moving until you do.”

I kind of thought so. I hang up and open the front door. He’s there. At first, I cross my arms like I’m mad at him, but I don’t think I am. I mean, I kind of am, but I don’t know. I step onto the porch and close the door behind me.

“What?” he asks. “I’m not allowed inside now?”

“You don’t want to go in there. Trust me.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Yeah.”

He sits on the steps and I sit beside him. Neither of us says anything for a minute and then he exhales slowly and rubs his hands together.

“Wish you’d stuck around today,” he says. “Missy didn’t stay that long.”

“I was kind of caught off guard.”

“So you’re mad because I didn’t tell you, right? That’s what this is about?”

“How long did you know? Was it really May?” I ask. He doesn’t say anything. I nudge him in the ribs. “Come on, how long did you know she was coming?”

“I knew at the end of May.”

“My dad wasn’t dead then.”

“Yeah, but you got weird with me when I was with Missy—”

“I did not—”

“Yes,” he interrupts, “you did. I never saw you. You just hightailed it every single time she was around and we barely talked, we barely saw each other for—”

“Ten months,” I finish.

“Exactly.”

“Milo, she was your girlfriend,” I say. “You
should
have been seeing her more than me. I mean, come on—you see it in movies all the time, where the girlfriend gets this hate-on for the best friend and then the guy has to choose—”

“
What?
Where did you get that fucking ridiculous idea? What makes you think Missy would’ve actually made me choose between the two of you?”

“Her name.”

He snorts. “Nice.”

“Seriously—
Missy?
”

“Melissa.”

“She
tells
people to call her Missy.”

“So? You have a boy’s name.”

“And you have a dog’s name.”

It’s humid out. Too humid. I debate telling Milo about Culler, but I don’t. Maybe I’ll just wait, like he waited to tell me about
her.

That seems fair.

“So are you two back together while she’s here or what?”

“We’re just going to hang out for the summer,” he says.

I think that means yes.

“You still could’ve told me sooner.”

Silence. I hate this silence. I can’t even stand it enough to appreciate the summer sounds all around us, and those sounds are one of my favorite things about this season. How gentle the breeze is, that soft rush. The way it moves the leaves on the trees. The crickets. The birds that haven’t called it a day, not yet.

“Missy doesn’t have a problem with you,” Milo says. “You don’t need to disappear.”

I don’t say anything. He nudges me until I look at him—three times—and when I look at him he seems so sincere and nice about it, it kind of makes me want to cry.

“Just don’t,” he says. “Okay?”

“My hands are still cold,” I say stupidly. I don’t know why. It’s all I can think of to say and it’s the one thing that never stops being true. I wish I knew how to make them warm again.

“Stop,” Milo says. He shifts away from me a little and asks, “So where did you go? I mean, after you left.”

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere,” he repeats.

He’s not buying it, but he leaves it at that. He rests his head on my shoulder. I lean into him. His hair is soft and smells like an unlikely combination of coconut and mint and I want to ask him what kind of shampoo he uses, but I know if I did, he’d just accuse me of sniffing his hair.

And then Beth totally ruins the moment by pushing through the door and gracelessly making her way down the steps to face us. Her cheeks are pink.

“Eddie,” she says. “Can I talk to you for a minute? In private?”

“No,” I say. Beth, half-smashed, wanting to talk to me privately. So many possibilities and none of them I am willing to subject myself to. “No way.”

“Please,” she says.

That should be my first real clue that something’s not right because Beth never says
please
to me and means it, but I realize this too late.

“If you have something to say, say it.”

“Fine. I need help getting your mother to bed. She’s…” She pauses for a long moment, and then forces the next word out of her mouth slowly. “Incapacitated.”

I stare. “How much wine did you
give
her?”

“Why does that matter?” she asks. “That’s unimportant. It’s moot now. I just need help getting her to bed. So will you help me or not?”

“Do it yourself.”

“I
can’t.
”

“Then why did you ask?”

Milo gets up. “I can help—”

“No!”
I don’t mean it to come out that way—that strangled, that urgent. They both look at me like I have three heads. My face burns. “… I don’t want you to.”

“Look, I’ll do it,” Milo says. “Eddie, it’s not a big deal.”

“Milo—”

He goes into the house before I can stop him. Beth fixes me with a haughty look.

“Maybe next time you’ll listen to me when I ask to talk to you privately.”

“What do you mean
next
time?”

I step inside the house. Beth follows. When I get to the living room, it’s a nightmare. Two bottles of wine have been decimated. Milo hovers over my mom and she smiles at him, out of it, trying to get her arm around his shoulder.

It takes forever.

I watch them walk unsteadily across the floor, reaching the stairs at a snail’s pace. My stomach shrivels into nothing. I don’t want to see this.

“There’s a step,” Milo tells her in his most gentle voice. I bury my face in my hands. I don’t want to hear it either. “That’s great, Robyn. Okay, there’s another step … great…”

“It didn’t have to be this bad,” Beth says after Milo and Mom finally disappear. I raise my head and glare at her. “You don’t have to turn everything into a big scene. And look on the bright side: wine has lots of health benefits.”

“Thanks so much, Beth. Really.”

“Oh,
relax.
I haven’t seen your mom that animated in forever.”

“You got her
drunk.
”

Beth shrugs. “Still. When was the last time you made her laugh?”

Ten minutes pass before Milo comes back down.

I can’t even look at him.

“Thank you,
Milo,
” Beth says pointedly. She pats him on the shoulder and fumbles past him. She smiles at the wine bottles. “That was fun. Like being back in college.”

“You’re not that young anymore,” I tell her. “Every day you’re farther from it.”

She stops dead in her tracks and faces me very slowly.

I brace myself.

“Maybe you could clean this up, Eddie, if it’s not too beyond you.”

Her voice is cool, but it’s all she says.

“It really wasn’t a big deal,” Milo assures me after she’s gone. He walks over to the table and grabs one of the wine bottles. He holds it out to me.

“Still some left.” He takes a swig and makes a face. “That is the most fucked-up wine I have ever tasted.”

I grab the bottle from him. “It’s not like you’re an expert.”

“I guess not.”

He grabs the glasses and takes them into the kitchen. After a second, the water rushes—he’s washing them—and I’m struck by how adult this all is and how tired that makes me. I should be wrecked. I should be upstairs, sleeping it off while Mom and Beth act like grown-ups down here. Instead, I just stand still, staring down the wine bottle until Milo comes back into the room and touches my shoulder. When I look at him I see that night—the one that changed everything—all over his face.

That night is the reason for this one.

“Did he seem unhappy to you?” I ask, clumsily turning the bottle over. I almost drop it. My stupid hands. “I mean … did he seem like he wanted to die?”

Milo takes the bottle from my hands. I can tell he doesn’t like touching them. He thinks about it for a second and I imagine him searching through memories on memories for some sort of clue. Something he saw—something he saw that I didn’t.

“He seemed like he always did,” he finally says.

Which is a horrible answer the more I think about it.