The Cemetery Boys

  It took me a moment to realize what he was asking, but when it occurred to me, I shook my head. “What? No. I’m straight.”

  He nodded like that was pretty much what he’d expected. Then, he snapped his fingers and dug around in the bottom of the paper sack. It was a huge bag, with endless possibilities. I kept waiting for him to pull out a lamp or an umbrella or something, but instead he retrieved a bottle of what looked like pink wine. The label read Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill. Placing the bottle in my hand, Markus smiled brightly. “You, my new friend, need some time on the farm.”

  I twisted the cap off and sniffed. What was inside smelled sweet and appealing, so I took a sip, and then took a bigger swallow. Finally, something that didn’t set my head on fire or make me gag at the thought of drinking it. Markus, who was apparently the group’s personal bartender, looked pleased.

  “Stephen, right?” As I was helping myself to another swallow, I turned my head to see Thorne, staggering a bit to the right, like we were on a cruise ship or something. My guess was that Thorne had likely spent a bit of time on the farm already tonight. He grabbed my shoulder with one meaty hand to steady himself and then breathed hotly into my face. “Hey, Stephen. How can you tell which squirrel is in charge?”

  I sincerely hoped he was telling a joke and not asking me a question that he needed a serious answer to. Drunk people could be pretty obnoxious. “I . . . don’t know. How?”

  “He’s the one with the biggest nuts.” Thorne bent over with laughter. He was the only one. Markus and I just stood there, waiting. I took another drink, and Markus borrowed the bottle long enough to take one of his own.

  When Thorne straightened and looked at me, I shrugged, not wanting to offend him. Even though it had been one of the worst jokes that I had ever heard, I said, “Oh. Funny.”

  The fire was burning brightly by this point, hot coals glowing at its core. At the edges of the cemetery, fireflies glowed intermittently. The stars shone above us. So much light, and yet the darkness seemed so much bigger, so much more.

  “All right, then. What do you call a cheap circumcision?” Thorne took the wine bottle from my hand and downed a generous mouthful before handing it to me. He wiped the excess from his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “A rip-off.”

  I cringed, swallowing a bit more of that Strawberry Hill. My entire body was warm, and I was feeling pretty mellow. A cursory glance informed me that I’d already drunk half the bottle, with only a little help from Markus and Thorne. I must have been buzzed, because I actually laughed at Thorne’s stupid joke. Markus, who was clearly more sober than I was, winced and said, “Your jokes are really stupid, Thorne.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “If you could just try maybe . . . not telling any more, that’d be . . . great.” The three of us stood there for a moment in silence. Then Markus lost it, laughing, and I joined him. Thorne blinked a lot. My guess was that he was pretty wasted.

  “Wanna hear a joke about a broken pencil? Never mind, it’s pointless!” Thorne laughed loudly and wandered back to Nick, the only guy I hadn’t talked to yet. They slapped hands in a high five, but Nick looked reluctant to do so. Something told me I’d like Thorne a whole lot better when he was sober.

  I took another swig. “So. Anyway.”

  “Yeah. We can just pretend that whole thing never happened,” Markus said. “Have you met Nick yet?”

  As I shook my head, I felt a wave of pleasant dizziness overtake me. Yup. Definitely buzzed. “Not yet.”

  “He and Thorne are brothers. Nick’s the quieter one. You’d like him.” I wouldn’t have guessed that Nick and Thorne were related if Markus hadn’t said so. But once he did, I could see the resemblance. Same green eyes, same broad shoulders. Nick was certainly far leaner than his hulking brother. Still, they looked more alike than Devon and Cara, who were twins.

  Devon was perched on top of the tallest tombstone in the cemetery, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey in one hand and a clove cigarette in the other. At the base of the tombstone lay the empty bottle of schnapps, but Devon appeared completely sober and unamused. Not unhappy. Just . . . unamused. I looked up at him, towering over all of us, and bet that if we were squirrels, Devon would be the one in charge. Snorting with laughter, I spit out a mouthful of cheap wine and nearly shot it from my nose.

  So this was what it felt like to be drunk. Or getting drunk. Or something.

  Noticing that I’d finished the last of the Boone’s Farm, Devon dropped his whiskey bottle down to Markus and gestured to me with a nod. Markus handed the bottle to me, and I took it in my hand, marveling at the amber liquid as it licked at the glass like fire. Devon’s eyes were on me, locked in sudden intrigue at what I would do next. Cheap strawberry wine and sugary peach booze were the stuff of teenagers, the stuff of kids playing around with drinking, the stuff of children pretending to be adults. Whiskey . . . that was what men drank. Was I a boy, or was I a man?

  With a nod at Devon, I pressed the bottle to my lips, tilting it up. As I swallowed, I resisted the urge to cough and swear and puke my guts out. Whiskey, it turned out, was nasty shit. I wasn’t at all sure how Devon could stomach the stuff. I looked at the bottle in my hand, and wondered if what was contained inside could really define whether someone was a boy or a man. I doubted it.

  I was still doubting it when Devon tossed me a tiny, airplane-serving-sized bottle of vodka. He took a drag on his cigarette and held up a tiny bottle of his own. Then he nodded, the hint of something sinister glinting in his eyes. “You and me, Stephen. First one to finish wins.”

  “Wins what?” I was tempted to say, Your sister? but didn’t, attributing my snarky bravery to the bottle in my hand. Liquid bravery or not, I wasn’t sure if Devon was in a joking mood, and figured that a little quip like that might earn me a punch in the face. I hadn’t told Devon about making out with Cara in the rain, and I wouldn’t, either. I was smarter than that, at least.

  Devon looked at me pointedly. “Just drink.”

  Slowly, and with no way out—not without losing some serious cool points, anyway—I twisted the tiny cap off and met Devon’s gaze with a daring, raised eyebrow. Devon tossed his cap over his shoulder. It bounced, then rolled for several feet until it finally disappeared over the edge of the cliff that led to the reservoir below.

  In my head, I heard the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—the one they always play when the sheriff and the bad guy face off—and suppressed a chuckle. Then I tilted the bottle up, drinking for real this time. The vodka burned, too, but not as much as the whiskey had. It also tasted like shit.

  Just as I swallowed the last drop, Devon’s empty bottle hit me in the knee. I shook my head, defeated. “Guess that means you win.”

  Devon’s eyes lit up. The corners of his mouth curled into a smile. Devon always won. That much was written all over his face. The flickering light of the fire made him look even more sinister. “Yes, it does. Wanna see what?”

  I shrugged, my stomach gurgling in protest. “Sure.”

  Devon licked his lips, appearing to taste the remaining liquor on them, and turned to Markus. “Hey, Markus . . . if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”

  Markus grinned. “You’re damn right I would.”

  Devon seemed to be mulling something over in his mind. After a moment, he turned his attention back to Markus. The air felt heavier. Just before Devon spoke, I realized that all the boys in the group were watching me, as if waiting for my reaction to whatever was coming. In clear, crisp words that seemed to echo into the air, Devon said, “But would you jump first?”

  Markus squeezed his hands into fists, cracking the knuckles. Then he broke into a run. His feet slapped the ground in beat with my heart as he came ever closer to the cliff’s edge. I flicked my eyes from Markus to Devon, who stood tall and proud, looking down on the scene from well above the rest of us. He seemed to be watching me far more than he was watching Markus.

  I turned back to Markus, who ran until ther
e was no more room on that dirt road left to run. He dove off the edge with his arms stretched out in front of him and his toes pointed, a form that would have made Superman proud. As his feet left the ground, I bolted for the edge of the cliff and skidded to a halt, wavering as my feet hit the loose soil. My booze-soaked world shifted wildly, but I managed to catch myself before I followed Markus’s lead over the edge. Several rocks weren’t so lucky and tumbled over after him. I looked down, searching the reservoir frantically, but there was nothing below besides rock and water. Markus was nowhere to be found. He’d simply vanished. There’d been no splash, no ripples in the water. He’d dived into the reservoir, but I hadn’t heard him break the surface.

  The crunch of gravel sounded as Devon dropped down from the tombstone and came to stand beside me. Leaning slightly over the edge, I was still searching the water for Markus’s body. I must have missed the sound of him hitting the water because I’d been drinking. My perception had been drowned to nothing by whiskey, vodka, and schnapps. A theory formulated in my drunken brain that I couldn’t see him because he’d hit hard enough to sink, and then was carried off downstream. That, or he’d climbed inside an old refrigerator. My heart raged in my chest.

  Markus was dead.

  I stared in horror at Devon, who merely nodded casually, as if this was to be expected. Devon took a long, slow drag on his clove cigarette, and flicked the butt over the edge of the cliff. All I could do was stare after it, saying nothing, watching the ember do somersaults through the air. After an eternity, it was swallowed by the reservoir.

  Dead. Markus was dead.

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it. We had to get to the police. Now. Maybe there was still time to save him. I took a step back—my disbelieving eyes locked on the ledge, my heart pounding out an urgent rhythm—and I turned to run. But a soft body blocked my way. I slammed into it and hit the ground with a thump. My fingers were shaking as I brushed the gravel from them and looked up at whoever I’d run into.

  Markus grinned down at me, and Nick and Thorne burst into laughter behind him. Markus nodded once at Devon, who returned the favor.

  I stared at Markus. I looked back to the ledge. When I confirmed one more time that Markus was indeed standing right there in front of me, my heart calmed a little, but I remained confused. My head was swimming, and the liquor didn’t help. “How did . . . but you . . .”

  Nick tossed a bottle to Markus and he caught it, then took a swig, as if replenishing himself. As he wiped his mouth dry with the back of his hand, he said, “You wanna know how I did it?”

  I swallowed hard, a bitter taste coating my tongue. “Of course I do.”

  Devon plucked a Zippo lighter from his pocket and I noticed the small skull on the front of it as he lit another cigarette. His jaw tensed as he drew the smoke into his lungs, his voice gravelly. “Are you sure, Stephen? Because once you know it, you can’t unknow it.”

  Running over the details in my mind of what had just happened—Markus running, jumping, falling, then appearing once again unharmed—I nodded, still terribly confused. I had to know.

  Nick spoke up. “Show him, already. Show him so we can stop pretending.”

  Devon’s eyes flicked to the cliff’s edge. “I don’t know if you can handle it, Stephen. It’s a long way down.”

  Brushing the remaining gravel from my hands, I stood and looked over the ledge again. I wasn’t sure what the distance had to do with the trick he’d just pulled, or whether they were just trying to psych me out again. I was about to call Devon’s bluff when he slammed into me, clutching me close in a pseudowrestling move. I lost my footing and we tumbled over the edge together.

  Wind whipped by me, pulling my hair from my face, ruffling my clothes as we fell. Terrified, I clutched Devon. He was clutching me, too, but his grip seemed far less panicked, far less certain that we were going to die. My thoughts were a scramble of terror. DeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdead!

  “Stephen!” Devon’s voice sounded very far away, even though his face was right there by my left ear. “Get ready!”

  The rocks below grew larger and larger. The water reached up for us, hungry. It was going to swallow us whole.

  DeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdead!

  “Look at me, Stephen!”

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t take my eyes off the rocks, the water, our impending demise.

  DeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdeadI’mdead!!!

  “Now!”

  With enormous effort, I met Devon’s eyes. They were the last thing that I would ever see. He was the last person I would ever look at. Because I was going to die. Devon was my murderer. Devon was my friend. And it was all over. I screamed.

  And screamed.

  And screamed.

  Devon landed on the balls of his feet and stumbled back, catching me as we hit a ledge that I couldn’t see from where we had been standing overhead. He pulled me back from the edge and I whipped my head around, wondering how I could have missed the outcropping of land that we were now standing on, how I hadn’t been able to see it from up top. My screams died down pitifully as the realization hit me that I was safe. I was alive. My right ankle was throbbing from the awkward way I’d hit the ground, but I was alive.

  Still catching his breath, Devon pointed to the trail that led up the side of the cliff back to the cemetery. “You should’ve seen your face. Classic.”

  I shoved Devon hard with both hands. He wavered, but didn’t fall. His jaw clenched when my hands made contact, as if I were this close to pissing him off. I didn’t care. “What the hell, Devon! What the hell was that?”

  As I stormed up the cliff’s trail, Devon called after me through the chorus of laughter. Laughter from his friends—not my friends, not our friends, his friends. “It was just a joke, Stephen. Lighten up.”

  I didn’t want to lighten up. I didn’t want to be the butt of his joke. I just wanted to forget this night had ever happened.

  But on my walk home, all I could picture were Devon’s eyes, and how it had felt to know he’d be the last person I’d ever see. I wasn’t going to forget that any time soon.

  chapter 7

  The next morning I was up by dawn, but I didn’t move more than an inch or so from my bed. My mind was still spinning with thoughts that I couldn’t wrap my brain around, swirling like the water of the reservoir had the night before. The image played over and over again inside my mind, as if the backs of my eyelids were a movie screen and I was the unwilling audience to a film I’d rather forget. We’d been standing in the cemetery, joking around, and then suddenly I’d thought I was dying. I’d known I was dying. And it was all just a big joke.

  Not to mention the fact that I was pretty sure I was actually dying now . . . owing to all the booze I’d drunk.

  This might have been a hangover, but I really had no frame of reference. My head felt like a big, pain-filled balloon, and the room was kind of tilting on its own. Apparently, I couldn’t hold my liquor. I was okay with that. I didn’t want to hold liquor—mine or anybody else’s. I didn’t ever want to see alcohol again. I just wanted to puke my guts out and fall asleep for several millennia. But that wasn’t going to happen. Because I didn’t live with people who believed in peace and quiet. I lived with—

  “Where is that boy?”

  —my grandmother and—

  “Stephen! For crying out loud, it’s noon. Get up!”

  —my dad, who either didn’t give a crap that I was hungover, or else had no clue. I was hoping for that last one.

  I rolled carefully out of bed to a semi-standing, semi-hunched-over position, bracing myself on the footboard, then the doorjamb as I made my way out of my room and down the hall to the kitchen. The moment the light from the front bay window hit my eyes, a sharp pain slashed through my head. I didn’t just feel like I was going to die. I kind of wanted to. But first, I wanted to puke and get it over with.

  My dad was sitting in a kitchen chair, and the moment he looked at me, as I fe
ll into the chair beside him, I could tell he knew that I’d been out drinking the night before. I tried to sit up straight and pretend that I was fine, but when I did, something sick coated the back of my throat. So I slumped down in my seat and laid my head on the table. You know. Praying for death and all that.

  “Stephen, maybe you should go take a shower before joining your grandmother and me for lunch.”

  I muttered something unintelligible in response.

  “Stephen.” His tone was calm, but I could tell that he was in the mood to shout. So I dragged myself out of the chair and down the hall to the bathroom, swaying this way and that as the room tilted even more dramatically.

  To my credit, I didn’t get sick. Despite the fact that the toilet was right there and on my side completely. It’s okay, buddy, the toilet said. I’ve got your back. Toss those cookies in here and get on with your day.

  I have no idea why the toilet called me buddy. Give me a break, I was hungover.

  The shower was hot and calmed my headache a bit, and after I got out, I felt a bit less like the world was tilting on its side. I also didn’t feel the least bit hungry. But I’d heard my dad’s tone, and I figured I had better join them at the table, or else there would be hell to pay. Not that I wasn’t paying it already.

  When I returned to the kitchen, there were three plates on the table. My grandmother was at the stove, but she kept glancing at the kitchen window into the backyard. Likely she was making plans for whatever household improvement Dad and I could do next.

  I took my seat again and tried not to make eye contact. Dad nudged a glass of water toward me and quietly said, “Sip it slowly, but drink it all. And take these.”

  Then he handed me two Tylenol. Which was the precise moment I realized that my dad was being pretty cool about this whole thing. The shower, the water, the pain meds. He was trying to help me rather than punish me. I wasn’t sure why. He should have been pissed. Mom would have been pissed.

  I took the pills in my hand and said, “Thanks.”