She Lies Twisted (4 page)

I let the tears wash down my face and drip into the bowl. I didn't notice and I didn't care. All that mattered was finding out what Boyd's dad had done with him. I'd made up my mind to go back to the trailer park and see that he got a proper sending off, one way or another. He would've done the same for me.

I washed my bowl and dried it in a daze, eyes glazed over, looking at but not seeing the yellow roses swaying in the fall breeze. As much as the thought of going back to the place where I'd found Boyd dead pained me, I didn't feel that I had any other choice. When my sister had died, my life had been put on pause, like I couldn't move forward until she did. When I'd seen her coffin descend into the wet ground, I'd taken a deep breath and everything and everyone around me had begun to move again. I didn't stop hurting, I'd never stop hurting, but I was able to move on, to pretend that maybe one day I'd be okay again. I'd been able to meet and befriend Boyd. Maybe if I did the same with him, I could breathe again.

“
Marilyn?” A voice behind me asked. I dropped the bowl into the porcelain sink and spun around. My eyes were wide and wary; my hands shook. But it was just my Grandmother. “Marilyn, darling,” she said, shuffling into the kitchen in pink house shoes and teal foam curlers. “You know that china's for guests.” I sighed and ignored her, snatching my backpack from the floor. When she was like this, nothing in the world could convince her that I wasn't my mother.

“
I'm going out to find Boyd,” I snapped, pausing in the ornate doorway. The heavy trim weighed down on my spirit like a curse. “You remember Boyd, don't you?” I continued, eyes narrowing. He had always tried to talk to her. She had always remembered him though she had thought he was my mother's boyfriend rather than her granddaughter's friend.

“
You should wear dresses more often, Marilyn,” Grandma Willa said, grabbing handfuls of the broken china, blood whispering down her sun wrinkled skin and splattering against the white of the sink. She picked up a sponge and rubbed at the shards, humming some old song under her breath. “You're a woman now, you should try and act like one.” I huffed angrily and left her there to bleed.

Once I had escaped the yard and Anita's wary glances, I pulled out my music and picked the saddest, most depressing songs I could find. I arranged them into a playlist in alphabetical order and cried my way to the trailer park. I hoped that Boyd's worthless father hadn't done something stupid like leave his body to the county to deal with. He'd done that to Boyd's mother, or so he'd bragged. I twisted the fabric of my sweater in anger. Boyd's dad was the lowest of the low. Whatever he'd done, it couldn't have been good. This wasn't going to be easy. If I'd had my way, I would've bought him a coffin. A big white one with a colorful shot of the Virgin Mary across the top of it. I would've ordered red roses and stuffed them in glass vases and lit a thousand candles and had a funeral for two. He would've been buried next to my grandfather in the old cemetery across the street and down the hill from the school. As things sat, the best I could hope for was that Boyd would spend the rest of his unlife in a place of my choosing, somewhere where his spirit could be free.

When I reached the trailer park, I found my body seizing with anguish. My knees locked up and I came to a stop just inside the front gate. The toes of my boots refused to cross over the line between the cracked pavement and the trampled grass. Trampled by cops, trampled by neighbors, trampled by the wheels of the stretcher that was covered with Boyd's body bag. I swallowed and closed my eyes, letting the cool breeze cut me like a knife.
Cut me, kill me, take me away.
I opened my eyes. There were things I had to do first.

I pushed the last bit of strength that I had left into my legs and took that first painful step towards the front door.

His shirt is wet.

I bit my lip and forced myself forward.

Darker than black.

I was almost there, just a few more steps.

Drenched with his blood.

I hadn't even raised my fist to knock when the door to the trailer next door burst open and The Orangutang stepped out. He hunched on the rickety metal steps that looked as if they might pop their stripped screws at any moment and send him tumbling to the cigarette strewn dirt. We stared at each other for a moment before he spat at the ground and growled at me.

“
What the fuck do you want?” he snapped. My usual retorts died on my tongue, buried with Boyd along with my happiness. I turned towards him and removed my hood like a person might remove their hat out of respect. It wasn't for him, it was for Boyd.

“
I just wanted – ”

“
You just wanted?” he snarled, stepping down from the trailer and stalking towards me, shirtless and covered in red curls from bulbous belly to flabby chest. “This – ” He stabbed a finger at me. “Is all – ” Poked me in the chest. “Your – ” Stepped on my toes. “Fault.” I didn't want to cry in front of this person. This monster. This man who called himself Boyd's father. I couldn't help it. They came pouring out. A monsoon in India couldn't have drowned my spirit any faster than my tears.

“
Please.” I was begging, pleading. My knees began to shake. “I just want to know where he is.”

“
My son is
dead
because of you and look at this,” he said, gesturing at the trailer behind me. “This shit is fucked. How am I supposed to live here now? The damn carpet is covered in blood!” I blinked wet eyes back at him. “You wanna know where he is? Well, fuck you!” The Orangutan shoved me forward with both hands, knocking me to my back in the grass and stalked back to the trailer, pushing his girlfriend and neighbor, Prissy, out of the way. She waited for him to go inside and slam the door before walking over to me. Her brown eyes flicked back and forth in fear and she nibbled her bottom lip until it bled. She didn't try and help me up.

“
He's at the funeral home across the street from the Lutheran Church in Solma,” she said. Her eyes grew wider as Danny's screaming cut through the shredded screens on the windows and bounced around the quiet trailer park. “We're supposed to pick up his ashes tomorrow, I guess.” She shuffled her feet and stepped back so that I could stand. I didn't bother to brush the debris off of my clothes, but I did put my hood back on. I felt naked without it. Exposed.

“
I want them,” I told her quietly. Her too-pretty-for-the-park face twitched in obvious anxiety. Prissy was a nice person. Too nice for Danny. Boyd had always said he'd felt lucky to have Priscilla next door. He'd said that since his real mom hadn't wanted him, the universe had sent him someone that did. Prissy always baked him a cupcake on Fridays with white frosting and a red B. She'd always given me one, too. Tears swelled again. I fisted my hands in my sweatshirt.

“
Okay,” she said simply. “I … ” Her eyes looked at everything but me. “We're kind of short on rent this month what with having to pay for … to pay for Boyd's … ” She began to cry. Her tiny shoulders shook and little squeals escaped her thin lips. I nodded.

“
Tomorrow, same time?” I asked. Her blonde curls bounced as she nodded, face buried in her hands.

The last thing I needed to see was more sadness, so I turned away and left her there to cry.

I walked back towards the school but ended up veering down a side street and sitting under the Morona County Memorial Bridge. I had climbed through one of the holes in the chain link fencing that the city put up to keep bums away and sat with my back against a stone wall. Steel support beams loomed above me like giants and shook with the passing of cars while a murder of crows pecked at one another and flapped around, fighting for the garbage that littered the pebble strewn path.

I felt empty and full all at once. It was like there was this place in my heart where Boyd had been and when he'd died, he'd taken that piece of me with him. At the same time, all of my emotions and thoughts weighed down on my stooping shoulders, seeping into me and filling me with this unbearable sense of despair. Weighted and barren. Heavy and formless. The saddest part was, I was used to feeling like this. When Mom had died, I felt this way. Dad. Jason. Abe. Jessica.

“
I have nobody,” I said and jumped when my words echoed back at me.
Nobody, nobody, nobody.
The crows screamed back at me in protest.

“
Not nobody,” Boyd had said as he rubbed my back in little circles when I'd told him about my sister. “You've got me.” I punched the chain link fence and cursed when the snipped wires sliced open the soft skin between my knuckles. Drops of blood bloomed on the gashes and swelled before leaking down the sides of my hand and splattering across the stones. I couldn't stop myself from staring, from watching the blood drain from me the way it had drained from Boyd before.
And he's not the only one. You've seen it before. Jessica's face pale and the yellow sink red and the way she draped across the toilet with her hair wet and tinged pink from the dark water that swirled like ink.

I screamed and screamed and screamed until my voice went hoarse and the sounds of my despair played back at me from the stone walls like a curse.

I slept under the bridge that night and dreamed about Boyd and Jessica. I was back in my bedroom and they were standing over me. Jessica was smiling, but Boyd's face was wrinkled with worry. I frowned at them.

“
You should've told me about your brothers,” Boyd chastised as Jessica moved silently away from us. I hadn't told Boyd about them. Sometimes I tried to pretend they never existed. I glared at Jessica's back. “Neil,” Boyd began glancing at my chest. I startled when I realized what he was looking at and jerked my covers up around my face to hide the fact that I was wearing the sweatshirt caked with his blood. He wouldn't call me weird. Boyd never called me weird. But he would tell me that I was living in the past and that the only way to get better was to make things better and that I should put on something else.

“
Yeah?” I asked with a sneer in my voice. “Why's that? You obviously didn't care enough about me to stick around.” Boyd glanced away, ashamed, and I realized with a start that I was angry at him. I was angry at them both. I looked over at Jessica again. She was staring at my taxidermy collection in horror. We might've looked the same, but after starting high school, we'd stopped sharing the same interests.

Boyd opened his mouth to say something and then paused. When I glanced back at him, I realized that something was different. Boyd had hair. I pushed away my anger and reached up, running my hands through the short, red curls. I tried to smile at him. “Where did these come from?” I asked.

“
I'm dead, Neil,” he said sadly and when he looked up at me, his eyes were dark. “Anything is possible now.” The words were nice, but his tone was melancholy. I opened my mouth to ask what the matter was, but then decided against it. It was a stupid question to ask someone who'd just killed himself. Boyd took my hand in his and squeezed it. “You can't always trust the people you love,” he said. “And Neil … ” One of his shaggy brows rose to his hairline. “Don't do it. You're so good for this world, don't do it.”

And then I woke up.

I stayed in my crumpled clothing, ignoring the concerned stares that Prissy gave me as she handed over a heavy cardboard box. I gave her a stack of money. I didn't know how much since I hadn't bothered to count it. I'd gone home as soon as I'd woken up and stolen it straight from Grandma Willa's purse. She always left it on the nightstand in her bedroom. It hadn't taken much to steal from her. I probably could've done it in front of her face and she wouldn't have noticed.

I had decided I was going to drive to the coast today. Give Boyd a proper burial. It was the least I could do.