The Rest of Us Just Live Here (15 page)

“I doubt that,” I say.

“What is this word even?” She points on the page, holding it up.

“Ossification,” Nathan says.

“What kind of sixteen-year-old writes ‘ossification’?” Mel says, her voice ticking up in slight panic. “Why do
I
not use ‘ossification’?!”

“I was seventeen, actually. I’m eighteen now.”

“Me, too,” says Henna.

“Me, too,” says Jared.

“I’m
nineteen
,” says Mel, “and I know nothing of ossification.”

I’ll be eighteen in June. Jared is only two months older than me, but I’d sort of forgotten that this was the two months where I’m at least a whole year younger than everyone else. Including, it seems, Nathan, who’s still trying to ask us something.

“I’d like to paint the bridge,” he says and everyone looks at him, shocked. “If you guys would do it with me.”

It’s a senior tradition to paint the railroad bridge near the school. Buses, students and staff all drive under it every morning to reach the school gates. Most of the things written there are boring (“Gina, Joelle, Stefanie, Friends 4Evah” (yes, seriously, 4Evah)), stupid (“Here I paint all broken-hearted” and then they didn’t leave enough room to finish the poem) or vulgar/threatening (“Andersen sucks dicks”; Andersen being our wildly unliked shop teacher and basketball coach who probably never, in fact, engages in the behaviour in question). The tags get painted over by other boring, stupid, or obscene tags in a matter of days, but it’s tradition, as if that alone is reason enough. Slavery and buying your wife were traditions, too.

It’s also technically illegal, of course, so it has to be done at night, usually deep in the darkest part. We were never going to do it anyway – we’re exactly the sort of nice kids who would consider it too stupid to bother; Jared didn’t even do it with the football team when we beat our district rival in the last game (to finish the season 2-7, woohoo, go team) – but with all the blue-eyed cops, the blue-eyed deer, and indie kids dying from probably blue-eyed causes, it was definitely out of the question.

Until Nathan suggested it.

“You’re not even from here,” I said, over that study lunch, but I was already too late. I could see the eyes of the others light up.

“Exactly,” Nathan said. “I’m not from
anywhere
. I’ve got nothing. No traditions. No friends except you guys, and you,” he said to me, “don’t even like me.”

I waited too long to protest.

“I just,” he said, shrugging, “I want something I did in high school to be … high school-y. So I can look back in fifty years and say, ‘At least I did something stupid and young as proof that I was there.’”

And that kinda cracked it. Henna agreed immediately, Mel said his story made her sad but not doing it would now make her sadder, and Jared said, “Why not?”

“Because zombie deer,” I say now, shivering even though it’s not actually all that cold, even in the middle of the night. We’re in my car again, parked a block away from the rail bridge. “And cops with murder in their eyes. And actual dead people.”

“There’s enough of us,” Jared says, squashed in the back seat with Nathan and Mel. Henna gets the passenger seat because of her still-broken arm and because she’s Henna. “We’ll be careful and we’ll be all right.”

Nathan holds up his backpack. “I got five cans. One colour for each of us. Nearly got arrested.”

“Nearly doesn’t count,” I say.

“Silver, gold, blue, red and yellow.” He looks at me in the rear-view mirror. “You get yellow.”

“Are we going to do this or not?” Mel yawns.

“I vote not,” I say.

“
Enough
, Mikey,” Henna says, scornfully enough to make my stomach hurt. She gets out of the car. The back seat follows her and I’m last, looking like I’m pouting as I accept the can of yellow paint.

The bridge isn’t actually all that big, crossing just two lanes of an old logging road. There are embankments either side leading up to it, and people sometimes paint the concrete ledges of these, too. We don’t. We don’t want to waste any time. I follow Henna up the right embankment where she’s walking with Mel. Jared and Nathan head up the other side. The idea is you stand on the bridge and lean over the top, writing whatever you want from above.

There’s a lot of shaking of paint cans, a lot of the metallic pinging sound of the ball-bearing they leave inside to stir the paint.

“We don’t have white,” I whisper, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You’re supposed to have white to paint over what went before.”

“Not if you’re creative enough,” Nathan says. He’s already reached the far end of the bridge, and with his can of gold paint, he turns a shoddily painted cardinal – our sad school mascot; I’ve never seen a live one the whole of my life I’ve lived in this state – into, I’ll admit it, a fairly nifty-looking bumblebee. I see Jared nod in appreciation, and my irritated stomach growls some more.

Mel’s got the dark blue and has made her way to the middle of the bridge, leaning over decisively and painting “A Year Too Late” in puffy blue letters over some streaked puffy pink ones that obviously got rained on.

“Do you really believe that?” I ask her.

“Oh,” she says, “I had no idea this was about what we really
believed
.” She pops the cap back on her paint can, takes out her phone, and starts texting Call Me Steve, who’s on nights.

I lean out over the bridge to see what Nathan’s finishing up. The bumblebee now flies away from a golden arm that it’s just stung. “Leave Your Sting Behind”, he writes.

“Bees die when they do that,” I say. Henna nudges me, annoyed.

“It’s a metaphor,” Nathan says.

“Metaphorical bees die, too.”

Jared’s at work with the silver paint, covering up a heart celebrating the no doubt eternal love of Oliver and Shania. He takes the gold paint from Nathan and sprays a circle and some markings against the still-wet bed of silver.

“What’s that?” Nathan asks.

“Kind of my own personal tag,” Jared says.

I don’t recognize it, but I can see a line of cats stopped just outside the streetlight down the road. I wonder if it’s a kind of standing blessing for them, as long as it lasts. They don’t come any closer, and I also wonder if they know Jared doesn’t want them to. No one’s told Nathan that anything’s different about Jared. It’s a pact we all silently keep. Who’d believe us anyway? Indie kids are dying before their eyes and no one’s even guessing at what’s probably the real reason. These Immortals that Meredith found. Or not. But it sure as hell isn’t accident or suicide.

“Why are you in such a bad mood?” Henna says to me, shaking her can of red paint.

I shrug, still pouty.

“I like Nathan,” she says.

“I know. I’ve heard all about your uncontrollable attraction.”

“And I like
you
, Mike, though not very much tonight, I have to say.”

“There’s something up with him. Where did he come from? Why does he always join us late? Why doesn’t he–?”

“Jealousy makes you ugly.”

“And assuming this is all about
you
makes
you
ugly,” I hiss.

She turns from me, furious, and leans over the bridge, can at the ready.

But she doesn’t spray anything.

“Look,” she says, stepping back.

It’s hard to see in the way the streetlight is angled at us, but there are markings along the top of the railing of the bridge. Words.

“Names,” Mel says, looking close.

“Finn,” Henna reads, “Kerouac, Joffrey, Earth.” She looks at Mel. “It’s the indie kids who died.”

“But why up here?” Jared says. “Where no one can see them?”

I look at Nathan. “Maybe it’s the killers,” I say, still annoyed. “Maybe they put the names up here as trophies. Maybe this is the most dangerous place we could have come tonight.”

“Would you
stop
it?” Henna says. She touches the names on the railing. The paint is black, simple. Just names.

“Look,” Nathan says, kneeling down. At our feet are small flowers, little more than tiny wild flowers, really, but different kinds, spread along the side of the rail tracks under the names of the dead indie kids.

Henna touches them, softly. “I’ll bet this is their way of remembering them. A kind of memorial.” She stands. “One that no one can see, but that they know is here.”

“No one’s painted over it,” Jared says.

“Or kicked away the flowers,” Mel says. “I wonder if everyone knows about this except us?”

“I don’t feel like painting anything any more,” Henna says, handing her can back to Nathan. “Feels like tagging inside a church.”

I’m still holding my can of yellow paint. “I didn’t want to come and now you’re telling me I can’t even make my own tag?”

Henna frowns. They all frown. I frown, too, what the hell. I’m having one of those days where I can’t seem to say anything right, so screw it.

“Fine,” I say, throwing the can at Nathan harder than really necessary. “Let’s just go home.”

“Oh, shit,” Henna says, looking past me. I turn, and we all look.

Down the train tracks, deep in the dark wooded area where they disappear, a whole crowd of glowing blue eyes is approaching.

Henna is already running, scrambling down the embankment, trying to keep her balance with one arm. I run after her, checking only to see that Mel and Jared are running, too. Nathan’s lagging behind, staring into the darkness at the eyes.

“What are they?” he says.

“Just run, you moron!” I shout, grabbing Henna as she stumbles and practically dragging her towards my car. I shove her in the passenger seat and open the back doors for Mel and Jared as I run around the car as fast as I can. I hop behind the wheel and start the engine. Jared and Mel get inside.

Nathan is only just coming down the embankment.

“Don’t leave him!” Henna says, alarmed, as I put the car in gear.

And for a moment there, just for a second, I almost do leave him. He’s running. He looks as frightened as any of us.

But.

“Whose idea was this?” I spit. “We would
never
have been here if it hadn’t been for him!”

“Mikey–” Jared starts.

“I’m going.” I take my foot off the brake, but Nathan runs right in front of the car. He jumps in beside Jared, who’s kept his door open.

“Go! Go! Go!” Nathan yells, and I step on the gas.

I shoot under the bridge, past the high school. There’s nothing much back here, but there’s a longer way home we can take. I speed there now, careening around a corner too fast. Everyone screams as we skid, but I correct it and we’re already sailing past the gym.

“I don’t think they’re coming after us,” Nathan says, looking out the back window.

“And how do you know that,
Nathan
?” I say.

He looks at me, confused. “What?”

“Why did you drag us all out to the bridge tonight? Were you going to feed us to them? Is that what happened to the indie kids?”

“Mike–” Henna says.

“Who are you?” I shout into the rear-view mirror, going way too fast down a darkened road. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“I told you,” Nathan said, still looking confused. “Tulsa and Portland and–”

I slam on the brakes, making everybody scream again. “Get the hell out of my car!”

“Mike!” Henna says, more strongly.

“WHAT?” I roar at her.

“It was my idea,” she says.

The car is quiet. The motor vibrating. That’s the only sound.

“What?” I say again.

“The bridge was my idea,” she says. “Nathan was feeling down and I told him about the tradition and that we should see if anyone wanted to do it.”

“She said you’d probably say no,” Nathan says, looking wounded. “So I offered to ask, because it’d be less embarrassing if you turned
me
down.”

“That’s what happened, Mikey,” Henna says. “Nathan didn’t lead us there. I even suggested we do it
tonight
, remember?” She hardens a little. “And you don’t believe
I
would have led us there, do you?”

No. No, I don’t. “Why didn’t you just say? I would have done anything for you.” I’m so mad I’m on the verge of tears. “Anything.”

“That’s exactly the reason. I wanted it to be a friends thing. Before we all go our separate ways. I didn’t want it to be a favour to me because my arm is broken or because of the car crash or because you’d ‘do anything’. It’s hard enough to be normal this month, isn’t it? For anything to just be easy?”

I look at her. I look back at Nathan, who’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Mel and Jared aren’t saying a word either.

I remember what Jared said about me at his house. In this moment, he’s never been more right.

I’m the one here who’s least wanted.

Without another word, I put the car in gear and drive off down the road.

A few miles later, Nathan breaks the silence. “Don’t I deserve an apology?”

I give him the finger and drive.