She Lies Twisted (3 page)

I still hated her for all of the attention I never got as a child.

I scowled and climbed the first set of stairs two at a time. I took the next set more slowly, savoring the textured feel of the glossy wallpaper beneath my fingers until I reached the attic that I had claimed as my bedroom.

When I'd first moved in, I'd played nice in a pink and blue floral bedroom on the first floor next to my twin's. I'd folded my clothes and put them away and brushed my pretty blonde hair until it fell straight as straw to my slender shoulders. When I realized that no matter what I did, Grandma Willa would never be the surrogate parent I so desperately wanted,
needed
, I stopped. I climbed those stairs and never went back.

My first order of business had been to take the dusty trunks, portraits, mirrors, dress forms, armories, and antique tricycles and push them into the corner. I'd unrolled an old white rug, splattered with red wax, that I'd found behind one of the support posts for the roof, across the wooden floor and made up an old white daybed with musty linens and pillows I'd swiped from the pretty bedroom. Over the last two years, I'd plastered the walls with posters of theater shows and punk bands and the covers of my favorite books who spent most of their time either in my hands or in a pile underneath the single window overlooking the backyard. My finds, my animals, like the raven that was even now decaying in my backpack, stared back at me from glassy eyes on shelves, the windowsill, the rickety yellow dresser with the peeling sunflowers. They weren't decaying anymore though. I had stopped it. I had beaten death. At least a little bit. Taxidermy. Not a normal hobby for a high school student. I could give a shit less.

Just as I was sitting my pack down on the floor, my phone rang.

“
Boyd,” I said to one of the three crows on the windowsill. They didn't respond. Forever silent. I frowned and yanked my phone out of my pocket. “Hey,” I said, throwing off my hood and tucking my hair behind my ears. “Long time, no hear.” I could almost hear him smiling.

“
Yeah, sorry. I went home and got fucked up, but I feel better now.”

“
You know what they say,” I told him as I paced around the room in a slow circle. “Beer is better with friends and Doritos.” He laughed.

“
You made that up,” he teased, his voice more maudlin than jovial.

“
Yeah, so? That doesn't mean it isn't true.”

“
Neil?” Boyd asked suddenly, not sounding at all like he had downed anything more than the chocolate milk I'd given him at lunch.

“
You want me to come over with snacks?” I asked him, ignoring his tone. I didn't like it. It scared the crap out of me. I slept in a room with dead animals. You do the math.

“
Neil, Tatum, Tate,” he said, jumbling my mixture of names together in a rush. “I just wanted to say now that I'm … I'm sorry … and I love you, girl, you know that.” I opened my mouth to make an ill timed joke when the phone went dead. I stared at the blank plastic in terror before finally collecting enough of my scattered marbles to realize I should plug it in.

I called him back immediately.

He didn't answer.

“
Hey Neil, leave a message, love Boyd.”

“
Don't do anything weird, okay?” I said, nervous laughter wetting my suddenly dry lips. The last time he'd been sad like this, he'd shaved his entire head and gotten a tattoo in the back of his cousin's best friend's van. “I'm coming over.”

I rushed to the market down the street and stocked up on overpriced chips, soda, dip, chocolate. The whole time my breath shuddered in and forced itself out.
Why am I so freaking nervous?
I asked as I chewed on the drawstrings of my sweatshirt and prayed that the new girl behind the counter would figure out the register sometime in the near future.

Boyd.

I knew I had to get over there. Something wasn't right with him.
Why am I even here?

I threw some cash down on the counter and grabbed the bag.

“
You know where to find me if I'm short,” I yelled back as a bag of Oreos tumbled over the edge of the paper sack and slammed into the polished white linoleum.

I ran like hell to Boyd's trailer park.

It was a long way, past the colonials, past the school, past the old cemetery, behind the hospital, under the bridge. I dropped the bag in the lap of a homeless guy who cursed me out and then started laughing and saying, “Merry fucking Christmas,” over and over again. There wasn't time. I suddenly felt my heart catch in my throat. Something was wrong. I knew it the way a grizzly knows when a hunter is near her cubs. It was pure, freaking instinct. Something was wrong with my Boyd.

My best friend, a grand master at chess, and the best dungeon master a girl could ever ask for.

Nothing seemed amiss when my feet finally hit the spotty lawn in front of the yellow and white single wide. The wind rushed by like a touchy-feely relative, caressing my bare skin through the holes in my jeans and pinching my cheeks with cold. I smoothed my hands down the front of my sweatshirt and forced myself to walk to his front door. I didn't knock, just walked right in like I'd done a thousand and one times before. Only this time, it was different.

I don't know what hit me first, the smell of wet pennies or the sense of hopelessness, the idea that if my phone hadn't died, if I hadn't gone to the store, if ...

“
Boyd?” My voice shook, trembled and faded into the wet, red-brown carpet. “Boyd?”

In movies, when bad things happen, people always collapse to their knees all dramatic like. That's true. My knees went so weak that the idea of holding my body up just seemed ridiculous. I collapsed, hands splashing in red. It was still lukewarm. Like if I'd been here, I might've made a difference. I reached a trembling hand out and brushed my fingers across Boyd's parted lips.

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.

“
Boyd!” This time I was screaming, I think. Or maybe I was silent. Time slowed to a crawl, ceased to matter. He had struck again, Death, and he had caught me unawares. A sob escaped my lips along with a wretch. I can't describe how badly death smells. To see your friend, your last family member, laid out like a broken doll and smelling like copper and emptied bowels … Even though I'd seen it before, I still wasn't prepared for it.

“
What the fuck?” I screeched, not caring that when I slammed my fists into the floor that blood splattered my face and neck. “You fucking idiot!”

A fly buzzed in the cracked front door, swam lazily in the air in front of my face and landed on Boyd's bloodied wrists. It takes them about a half an hour to find a body. A half a fucking hour.

“
Don't you dare touch him!” I screamed, scrambling forward, knees wet with him, with Boyd, and swiped at it angrily. “Don't you dare go near him.” I petted his orange beard back from his neck and gasped at the line across his throat. It didn't make sense. It wasn't real.

Boyd cannot be dead.

I slumped down against his side and crumpled over his belly, pressing my ear against his black T-shirt. No steady up and down, just stillness.

My eyes closed and I found myself, not asleep, but unaware. I was somewhere else, anywhere else. I was at the park with Boyd and the old men with the woolen fedoras that were so good at chess, they could almost, almost beat him. I was at the amusement park with the colored lights and the cotton candy stuck in Boyd's scruffy beard. I was in my bedroom reciting terrible poetry while Boyd nibbled his lips and nodded, eyes dark and way too serious.

Eventually, thankfully, blissfully, I feel asleep. Four thoughts permeated my mind:

Boyd is dead.

He killed himself.

Boyd died alone.

I'm all alone.

Screaming neighbors woke me up. Cops with grim faces and questions I couldn't answer grasped my shoulder and pulled me away. They stuffed me into the back of an ambulance before realizing that none of the blood was mine. Then they stuffed me, much less gently, into the back of a squad car. I could hear the coroner or the medical examiner or whatever she was telling the cops that she thought it was suicide.

“
I can't be sure yet of course,” she said to the sheriff as more cops put up shiny yellow tape and scribbled on clipboards and stared quizzically over their shoulders at me. I threw up all over my seat. I was covered in blood. The thinner patches were dry and flaky like scabs. The thicker patches were worse, sticky and runny and thick as molasses. I sobbed and collapsed onto my side.

The cops felt sorry for me and took me home, parading me up the walkway like a leper, arms stretched out as far from their bodies as they could get, hands gloved. Many of my neighbors had seen the red and blue lights and were now standing on their driveways in their blue and pink terry cloth robes, sipping martinis, and holding little, fluffy dogs.

The first cop, a dark haired man who I think was Margaret Cedar's older brother, knocked first and stepped back, coughing into his unbloodied left hand. I wanted to say, “Grandma Willa is already asleep. Once she takes her meds, she's out until dawn. Just open the fucking door and let me have some alcohol from the cupboard under the sink. Let me crawl in bed and play my music so loudly that I'll have hearing problems when I'm twenty-two. If I make it that far, that is.” I said nothing.

The cops exchanged worried glances. I reached out and opened the door. It creaked forward on old hinges and swung in the brisk night air like a heavy flag.

“
Tatum,” began the dark haired man that was definitely Margaret Cedar's older brother. “I can't just let you go in there by yourself.” I spun around quickly, tears streaking through the red spots on my face and put on my best good girl smile.

“
My … my grandma is upstairs. She just … she's old … I just … ” I couldn't help it. I collapsed again and the cops carried me to the pretty bedroom without really knowing what they were doing and left me alone on top of the pink floral covers.

If they came back, I don't know. My mind mercifully, mercifully lulled me into another state of not-sleep and left me there for hours.

Boyd.

I slept for a week solid and thought of nothing else.

I sat at the little round table in the kitchen and listened to the snap-crackle-pop of my soggy Rice Krispies and the incessant droning of the cicadas outside the screen door. Boyd had been complaining about the brisk weather we'd been having. He'd have loved to see the way the sun reflected off of the pearly white of the vintage stove and cast bright purple shadows when it hit the earrings I was wearing. He'd given me these earrings. Another one of his thrift store finds. Boyd was good at thrifting, genius even. I paused and scooped another soggy mouthful up with my spoon. Boyd and I had opened this box of cereal together less than two weeks ago. Now he was gone and it was still here glaring at me from the porcelain china that was too fine for cereal but that I used because we had nothing else.