On the Edge of Twilight: 22 Tales to Follow You Home (6 page)

Just Beneath

The day had been hot and humid, as most late-August days in central Maryland are, and with summer almost over and the smell of chalk and musty 8th grade textbooks haunting their future, the three boys looked for something to fill the evening that would remind them of the season all but done and past.

It was Scott Cleary who thought of going to the lake at Centennial Park, and Tim Wilson who agreed it was a good idea.

“We can get popsicles and go canoeing,” said Tim. “I love canoeing. You can outrace other people and cut from one end of the lake to the other. Yeah, I’m in. Let’s do it!”

That left Ron Atkins, who suddenly found himself under the scrutinizing gaze of his friends.

“You in, Ron?” Tim asked.

“Why don’t we just go to the basketball courts?” said Ron. “There’s a whole ton of stuff to do at the park besides splash around on the lake.”

“We played basketball last night,” said Scott.

“Rollerblading?”

“Boring,” Tim said, voice flat. “And besides, my blades are busted.”

Ron sighed, sensing a losing battle. Then genius struck. “I got a pack of Camels from my brother. We can go in the woods by the dock and smoke ‘em. I just gotta run home first and sneak ‘em out.”

This did cause Scott and Tim to pause, but only for a moment. “No time,” said Scott. “The sun’s going down and they stop renting canoes at dusk. We’ll smoke ‘em tomorrow.”

And that was that. Ron glanced around Scott’s basement—at the flat-screen TV, the stack of Blu-ray discs, the paintball equipment carefully mounted on the far wall, the framed jersey worn by Cal Ripken at a game in 1992—then looked back to Scott and Tim, who were already pocketing money, iPhones, and keys for the walk.

And he suddenly realized, for the first time, that Scott’s family had money, and Tim’s didn’t, and what that meant. He wondered if Scott knew why Tim always said “yes” to everything he suggested. Hell, he’d only just figured it out himself.

“Come on, Ron,” said Scott. They were going with or without him. He could go to the lake or go home.

Bemused, he followed his old friends up the stairs.

* * *

“Why you want to keep away from the lake, anyhow?” Tim asked, flipping Ron’s baseball hat off his head and taking a bite of cherry Popsicle. They were sitting on the dock by the canoes, waiting for the attendant to bring oars.

“It’s boring, that’s all,” said Ron, replacing his hat and slugging Tim’s arm.

“I know,” said Scott. “It’s about the guy who drowned here last week. Isn’t it?”

Scott knew Ron well. That had always been a strength in their friendship, but sometime, at some point—Ron couldn’t tell exactly when, but recently—that strength had turned into something else.

“No, that’s not it,” Ron said flatly. 

But Tim picked up the torch and said, “You don’t like deep water, do you, Ron? I mean, you don’t go swimming. I never seen you in the pool, only dangling your feet. You
ever
swim?”

“He doesn’t know how,” said Scott.

“I do,” Ron retorted.

“Only the doggie-paddle.”

The attendant handed each of them an oar, watched as they latched on their lifejackets, and helped them push off from the dock. “An hour ‘till we close,” she said, then walked back to the stand.

Tim threw his Popsicle stick over his shoulder. Ron watched as it landed in the water and floated, suspended on the surface. The lake, always muddy, had been the first thing to darken in the encroaching twilight, and he wondered how many feet of that darkness now wallowed and flowed beneath them.

“You’re still thinking about the guy who drowned,” Scott repeated. “Isn’t that right? It’s making you nervous?”

The oars cut through the water, causing slight ripples with every touch. Centennial Lake, wide, flat, expansive, spread out around them, reflecting the last fire of the dying day.

“It’s sad,” Ron said, sitting in the middle of the canoe, no oar, Tim before him and Scott behind him, both paddling strongly toward the center of the lake. “He was fishing in a little boat with friends, and he fell in and got tangled up in the lake weeds. That’s what they think. As simple as that. Isn’t it sad?”

Tim snorted. “What a dumbass. If he was that stupid, he deserved it.”

Ron was silent.

“I know what you mean,” Scott said, paddling as the canoe traveled farther from shore.

Ron was surprised. He turned around and stared at Scott, who was looking straight ahead. “You do?”

Scott nodded. “It’s sad, all right. Just imagine. You’re safe in a boat, surrounded by your friends. Maybe you just went out to relax, to get away from it all. The sun’s bright and warm, and you’re feeling pretty good, and maybe you feel a tug on your line, so you lean forward… and that’s all it takes. You’re up and over and into the water, and it’s cold down there, cold and lonely, and you’re all alone with everyone else safe up above. And you think to yourself,
I’ll push up to the surface. I’ll be back with everyone in just a second
, but then you try, and nothing happens, and you realize you’re caught, and the more you pull, the tighter the vines hold on.”

As Scott spoke, nothing interrupted him but the oars cutting through the water. Tim, besides his rhythmic rowing, was silent. Listening.

“And then you get it. You get that it’s all over; that this is happening to
you
, not to someone else. That the cold and dark and loneliness is all you’re ever going to have, and that the light and warmth belongs only to other people now. And then your lungs start to hurt, and the pain gets worse and worse, and you panic more and more, and everything starts to fade…”

“Stop it,” said Ron. “Just stop.” His voice was very small, very quiet.

And Scott did stop, and Ron knew it wasn’t because he’d asked, but because Scott knew he had no need to say more. He’d said enough.

Then Tim laughed. Ron wanted to slug him, to shove him off the canoe into the dark water, but he didn’t hate Tim enough for that
. No one
deserved that.

“I want to go back to shore,” Ron said softly.

“I paid for the canoe, I’m getting my hour,” Scott replied.

“I want to go back to shore,” Ron repeated.

Tim laughed a second time—a rolling, high giggle. “Hear that, Scott? Ron wants to go back to shore. He’s scared.”

Ron once again looked back at Scott. Scott was smiling. Smirking, more like. And at that moment Ron realized Scott hated him, that the friendship had survived only as a remnant from a gone time, that it existed only as routine, that nothing deep or true remained behind it. He knew Scott and Scott knew him, and Scott, knowing him, now wanted him gone… and had all the ammunition he needed to make that desire a reality.

“There’s no reason to be scared, Ron,” Scott said, still paddling. “You’ve got a life jacket on, and the fisher guy didn’t. You couldn’t drown in this lake now if you tried. And as for the dead, they can’t hurt you. Once he stopped breathing he became just another log. He’ll turn up soon enough, I’ll bet, and then—”

“Wait,” Ron said. “Wait.”

Scott waited.

“You mean…”

Scott waited some more.

“You mean he’s…still down there?”

“Oh, c’mon, man, you knew that. They’ve been diving for the body over and over, and no luck. Probably stopped for the day just before we got here, come to think of it.”

And suddenly Ron felt a creeping horror—a stealthy, sickening panic. He closed his eyes and grabbed both sides of the canoe. He breathed in, out, in, out, fast and faster, and then his gorge rose up in a big, hot rush, and over the side it all came out…

And as he vomited, he thought,
Scott knew that, too. How I got scared after seeing Grandma dead. About how ever since, thinking about seeing dead bodies makes me sick. I told him that at a birthday sleepover when we were nine, and I cried ‘cause I was ashamed, and he cheered me up by getting me an extra piece of cake, though I didn’t feel up to eating it…

Scott turned the canoe around. Tim protested but they headed straight to shore. And the whole way, Ron kept his eyes firmly shut and his hands firmly clamped to either side of the canoe, even as Scott said, “Hey, I was only kiddin’ around, Ron. There’s no body still down there. They found him an hour later. I was only kiddin’ around…” Even as Tim told puking stories of his own to try and make Ron feel better. Even as they both said that basketball sounded fine, just fine…A night game, maybe?

“Not tonight,” said Ron, once they were back on the dock and his stomach had settled. “I’m just gonna go on home.”

“All right,” said Tim. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” added Scott. Ron couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. “I didn’t mean to freak you out so much.”

“It’s fine, I don’t care,” Ron said. But as he turned away and headed home in the muggy summer night, he felt very cold and very alone.

Come True

Jen was enjoying the Friday afternoon: the reprieve from students, the cheap merlot, the late-day autumn sunlight. Gloria’s back deck was high up in the trees, and the bright leaves rustled in the cool, light wind. It was a time for thinking about nothing with any great passion; a time for unwinding and drinking wine and eating tortilla chips with mild salsa. October was a long month—no days off, a slew of papers to grade—and such breaks were to be cherished.

Then Tara said, “It’s Jen’s birthday next Tuesday, you know. We should do something.”

Jen coughed. Gloria laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Tara asked, crunching another chip.

“How did you find out about Jen’s birthday?” Gloria asked. “She keeps that date pretty well guarded.”

“It was on the faculty page of the school’s website. They’re all on there.”

Jen smiled faintly.

“What’s the big deal?” Tara prodded. “We don’t have to celebrate how
old
you are. It’s just that it’s your special day. And besides, you can’t be more than…”

“Twenty-seven,” Jen answered softly. “I’ll be twenty-seven.”

“This is your first year,” Gloria said, shaking her head at Tara in mock consternation. “Otherwise you’d have known that birthdays make Jen nervous. She has a complex about them. Don’t ask her to explain.”

For Jen, all the color had drained from the autumn leaves, and the gentle wind, soothing up until a moment ago, now seemed tinged with menace and the sweet, pervasive scent of decay. One blink, and the afternoon was ruined. “Why not?” she said. “I can explain it very well, if I want to.”

Gloria grunted, sipping her wine. “But in four years, you never have.”

“You said you’d never bring it up.”

Gloria swirled her wine in its glass. “I didn’t,” she said simply. “Tara did.”

And then, for the first time in almost two decades, anger got the best of Jen’s common sense.
Catty
, she thought, then turned to Tara. “Do you want to know why I don’t like birthdays?”

“Um… yes. No. I mean, not if it’s going to upset you. I didn’t mean—”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything.” Jen cast a quick glance at Gloria, who met her gaze without blinking.

“It’s very simple,” Jen said.

* * *

There was a party. A
great
party, all planned and orchestrated with meticulous care by Jenny’s mother. She loved turning Jenny’s birthday parties into immense, time-consuming projects, and the end-results of her efforts always met with success.

This year, the theme was
My Little Pony
—the current fad for seven year-old girls—and the house had been decorated accordingly. Jenny, dressed in her best, looked around, thrilled at the glittered floor paths, the sparkling pony banners, the pastel-colored pony doll at each place on every table. All of the other dozen girls were thrilled (but not Davy Perkins, it must be said; his mother had made him come), screaming and shrieking from one game to the next, but none more than Jenny herself.

It was a perfect day.

It was
her
day.

Even outside, even in October, the sun shone warm, compliant with the needs of the occasion. So eventually the party moved to the back porch, and then out to the back yard, where the great apple tree grew up to cover the cool grass and fallen, gently rotting apples in shifting shade and cascading leaves.

They raced around the trunk, all the girls and even Davy, holding their ponies, pretending to
be
ponies, running, then trotting, then galloping through the grass. And Jen felt free, and happy, and special, and thought of the presents waiting on the table inside, the ice cream, the cake, and everyone singing “Happy Birthday”…

And then Debbie Wilson, who lived three doors up, tripped her.

It was on purpose. Jenny saw Debbie’s leg come out, felt Debbie’s foot turn up to catch her ankle, and then she was falling, arms pinwheeling, to sprawl in a patch of rotten apples that left her white dress streaked with pulp, dirt, and grass stains and her left knee bloodied.

She didn’t cry. Not yet. First she looked up, saw Debbie running away, saw Debbie laughing, saw Debbie glance back and continue on around the tree…

“Debbie did it,” she told her parents moments later. But Debbie said no, no, she hadn’t, she hadn’t touched Jenny at all, and that’s when Jenny started to cry—but Debbie started crying too, and she cried
louder
than Jenny, so Jenny’s parents appeased her by saying it had all been a “big accident.” 

Ten minutes later, things were calm again—Jenny changed and cleaned up, Debbie smiling and laughing, all the girls (and even Davy) happily streaming back into the house for cake and ice cream.

But Jenny was still angry—
very
angry—despite her smile. And when her mother brought out the cake, candles a great wall of cheery light, she knew what she would wish for when she blew them out.

When the children finished singing, Jenny smiled, and it was genuine this time, and she was looking right at Debbie.

Then she blew out the candles. All seven of them. In one breath pulled from deep in her lungs.

And Debbie dropped dead.

* * *

There was a pregnant silence.

It was Tara who finally laughed nervously. “You’re joking!”

“No.” Jen shook her head. “I wished that she would die, and she did. Five seconds later.”

“Coincidence,” Gloria whispered, then repeated the word louder, with more certainty. “Coincidence.”

“Sure,” agreed Tara. “Yes, of course it was.”

“They said it was an aneurysm. A ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. No one could have known, and there were no symptoms.” Jen shook her head and looked down into her wine glass.

Silence again. Then Tara cleared her throat. “Why did Debbie trip you?”

“Who can say? Children do things without thinking. They have flashes of meanness, same as adults. We’d always been good friends. For that matter, why did I wish her dead? Same reason, I guess.”

“And all these years…” Tara trailed off.

Jen took up the line. “I’ve kind of blamed myself. At first, consciously. Then, as the years passed and I came to recognize how unlikely it all was, I knew on a rational level that I wasn’t to blame, but I still felt guilty. Because deep down, I still believed I’d caused it to happen. Knowing and feeling are two different things, you see.”

Gloria exhaled audibly. “Wow. What a story! No wonder. It must have been very hard, living with that. So no more parties, no more celebrations.”

“Not since I was seven. Not a single one.” Jen’s lower lip quivered almost imperceptibly, then stilled. “But you know, I’m glad you brought it up, I really am.”

Gloria arched her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes. I think talking about it made me realize how silly it is. And it would be a good, healing experience, to have a birthday party again… to help me put it behind me once and for all. Don’t you think?”

“Oh, absolutely!” said Tara. “Sure it would!”

“Yes,” agreed Gloria more quietly. “Yes, I agree.”

“I can plan the whole thing,” said Tara. “I’ll get the cake, send out invitations. We can make it as large or small a party as you’d like! And I’ll figure out who can bring what, and we’ll throw you a ‘Welcome back to Birthday Parties’ birthday party. Oh, it’ll be great!”

“That’s so sweet of you,” Jen said. “It really will help me put all this behind me. Of course,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “it’s hard to destroy
every
doubt. I think there will probably always be some small part of me that will wonder if I really had something to do with… no, but enough of that!” She sipped her wine and swallowed, enjoying the dry taste that somehow complimented the great spray of autumn colors that surged around them.

“What should I bring?” Gloria said. She didn’t look at Jen as she spoke.

Tara opened her mouth to say something, but Jen beat her to it. “You’ve already done so much, Gloria. You made this possible by talking about it, even when you knew I didn’t want you to. But it was for the best, and I thank you for that.”

She pursed her lips, thinking.

“The
candles
,” she said at last, snapping her fingers. “Gloria, you just bring the candles. That’ll be plenty.”

“Yes! A cake has to have candles,” said Tara brightly.

Gloria fixed her gaze on Jen, who met it without blinking. “That… that will be fine,” she murmured.

“Great! And I know just what to wish for,” Jen said, taking another sip of wine before reaching out and patting Gloria’s cold, cold hand.