Swear on This Life

  Once we boarded the bus, Jax took the seat right behind me. When Mikey got on board, Jax said to him, “Sorry, this seat’s taken. Find somewhere else to sit.”

  Ms. Williams, our fourth-grade teacher, could barely see past the first row of kids, let alone to me in the back of the classroom, so no one ever asked why I didn’t have a lunch to carry out when the bell rang. We didn’t ever have much food at home. My dad would give me a dollar here or there, and I would buy the cafeteria lunch, but most days I would just find stuff other kids threw out. That day, Jackson found me in the library as I was coming out at the end of our lunch period. He didn’t say anything, just handed me half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I said, “Thank you,” went into the bathroom, and devoured it before the bell rang.

  Later that afternoon, before we parted ways at the end of the road, Jax said, “Meet me behind the shed in an hour?”

  The shed housed a bunch of old tools that no one used anymore, and it was just beyond a small patch of trees where our property line met the Fishers’. You couldn’t see the shed from either one of our houses.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “No, you’re scaring me.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be scared. I cleaned it out. I go back there all the time.”

  My eyes widened. “I’m not scared of the shed . . .”

  “You’re scared of me?” He put his hand to his chest. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How are you helping me?”

  “I was going to bring you a plate of food. My mom leaves us casserole on the nights she has to work. I just didn’t want Brian to know.”

  Brian was Jax’s older brother by ten years. Whenever their mom had to work, Brian was in charge. He was in a band and would play his guitar in the garage at all hours of the night. My dad called him a druggie. Back then I didn’t understand what that meant.

  “Oh.”

  “Never mind, geez.”

  “No, I appreciate it, Jax. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “I won’t get in trouble. Meet me out there in an hour. If it’s dark, there’s a lantern right inside of the door on the left. Take a flashlight.”

  “Thank you.”

  He walked away toward his house, so I went inside mine. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, holding a glass of brown liquid. The beige curtains were blowing delicately over the kitchen sink.

  “It’s windy today.” I walked to the window and shut it. “It’ll get all dusty in here if we leave the windows open.”

  He didn’t respond. I walked to the refrigerator, opened the door, and scanned the contents. There was a jar of pickle relish, some expired salad dressing, and an open aluminum can of olives. I took the can and went to the trash to dump them out. My father glared at me as I crossed the kitchen. He waited until I dropped them in the trash can, and then he stood abruptly, scraping the chair legs over the dirty linoleum floor. Two long strides were all it took before he was towering over me.

  “You got money to replace those?”

  “You’re not supposed to store food in an open aluminum can.”

  “Says who?”

  “Mom said it can make you sick.”

  “Your mother’s dead. And what I say goes.” He seethed, a drop of saliva springing onto my cheek.

  I wiped it away slowly and then felt my eyes well up. “What do you mean she’s dead?”

  “She’s dead to us now.” His eyes were molten, full of anger and rage, and he was gripping the refrigerator door so hard I thought it would break apart inside of his hand.

  “Okay, Dad.” Very timidly I said, “Is it okay if I go next door for casserole?”

  “Do whatever you want.” He slammed the refrigerator and walked away.

  I went to my room and grabbed a sweatshirt and then headed out into the fading light of dusk. The shed was about a football field’s length away, and I had to walk through knee-high weeds to get there. Sticker bushes clung to my socks and pant legs, but it was worth it for a warm meal. As I walked, I thought about where my mother had gone. She was dead to my father but to me she was still alive somewhere living a better life. I didn’t hate her. I didn’t understand her, but I didn’t hate her. I just wished she would’ve taken me with her.

  When I got to the shed, the narrow wooden door swung open. “Come in, hurry!” Jax whispered.

  He wasn’t lying; he’d cleaned the shed out and made it into quite the pleasant little fort. There was a small table with two chairs and an old camping cot in the corner. Jax reached behind me and lifted a butane lamp onto the table. He turned the dial, opening the valve, and pressed a button to click the flint until the lamp was on. There was one window that looked out of the back of the shed to the tree line in the distance. The sky was getting dark fast.

  Jax sat down and pushed a tinfoil-covered plate toward me. “There’s a fork in there too.”

  I removed the tinfoil to reveal a giant mound of slop. “What . . . is this?”

  “It’s tuna and noodles and soup and stuff. There’s, like, potato chips on the top. It doesn’t look good, but it is. Go ahead, before it gets cold.”

  My mouth was already watering from the smell. He was right; it was delicious. In just the few months since my mom had left, I had already forgotten what homemade food tasted like. I had been living on cereal and the occasional McDonald’s cheeseburger. When my dad would bring one home for me, usually after he went to cash his unemployment check and see Susan, he would act like he’d had to battle dragons for it. Every first Wednesday of the month he would come home drunk, with a paper bag full of hotel soaps in one hand and a McDonald’s cheeseburger in the other. He’d throw them on the table and say, “Look what your dad brought you! Look how lucky you are.” If I didn’t indulge him with enthusiastic prostrations of gratitude, he would call me a selfish, spoiled little bitch.

  I was more grateful for the day-old casserole inside of Jax’s tiny toolshed than a cold cheeseburger and harsh soap from the whiskey monster. It was only the beginning, though. Over the next couple of years, Jax continued walking with me to the bus stop, sitting in the seat behind me, finding me at lunch, and sharing his food. Occasionally, he’d sneak out to the shed to bring me a plate of whatever had been reheated for him and his brother. I yearned to go inside of their house but didn’t for a long time. Not until Brian’s accident. That’s when things on the long dirt road changed once again.

  2. I Wasn’t Looking

  When I finally stopped reading, I realized that I had been weeping the entire time. I felt like a gutted fish. I got up and went into the living room, making my way past Cara as she sat on the couch, typing on her laptop.

  I turned toward her with red, puffy eyes. Her own eyes widened with concern, and she froze as she watched me walk into the kitchen, like she was waiting for me to crumple onto the floor and shatter into pieces.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “It’s an emotional book. I’m just getting a glass of water.” I reached for the tequila.

  She got up and followed me into the kitchen. “That’s not water.”

  “And?”

  “It’s ten a.m.”

  “And?”

  “You look like you’ve been crying for an hour straight . . . and you’re hitting the hard stuff at—and I repeat—ten a.m.”

  “Cara, you have the most amazing powers of perception.” I looked at the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other, shrugged, set the glass down, and headed back to my room with the bottle only.

  “I’m worried about you,” Cara called out as I walked away.

  “I’m fine. Just gonna sit in here, read, and have myself a little mental health day.” I turned and smiled and then locked myself in my room.

  “Mental health days don’t usually involve tequila at ten a.m.!” she yelled through the door.

  “I’m fine!”

&nb
sp; I heard her mumbling something, but I was too eager to get to the hard-core Facebooking and internet stalking I needed to do.

  I examined the book jacket and copyright page of All the Roads Between carefully. No author photo or bio, just a website and publicity contact at the publisher. I was looking for some clue to the author’s identity, but I didn’t really need any. I knew exactly who had written this book. The only mystery to me was where the author had been for the last twelve years.

  From the first line of All the Roads Between, I saw myself in J. Colby’s story. That’s because I was in his story. The long dirt road, the hour-and-a-half-long bus ride to school, the alcoholic dad, the mom who vanished, the secret lunches and meals in the shed . . . These were the details of my own life. Emerson was none other than me. And Jax? He was most definitely Jason Colbertson, the boy next door who had once been my everything . . . my first. The same person I hadn’t talked to or seen in over a decade.

  I was having a mild coronary, to say the least.

  Some girls might be flattered to be the source of inspiration for the protagonist of a bestselling novel, but I was too busy planning out Jase’s murder in detail. Through my homicidal haze, a million questions rose to the surface. Why did Jase write this book? Why is he telling it from my perspective? Was he hoping I would read this? Or was he hoping I wouldn’t—and just wanted to use my story for his own bestseller? I needed to find him to get the answers to these questions . . . or at least give him a piece of my mind.

  I searched for “J. Colby” on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter—I already knew “Jason Colbertson” wouldn’t be on any of these platforms because I’d looked before. Nothing came up; apparently both of his identities eschewed social media. Then I googled his pseudonym and clicked on “Images.”

  I’m fairly certain that my heart stopped. I took a swig from the bottle. No chaser, no lime, no salt—just tequila and my angry fingers clicking on every hyperlink.

  His picture was pretty much the same on every listed hit. He had grown even better-looking in the twelve years since I’d seen him. More distinguished, more chiseled. But still, there was something boyish and arrogant in his smirk. That fucker.

  I knew he would do it. I knew he’d write a book before me. He was brilliant at the age of ten. Why wouldn’t he be at twenty-seven?

  Another swig from the bottle, then I read a snippet about him embedded in an interview.

  After graduating from Columbia University, J. Colby switched coasts and made his home just outside of Los Angeles. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker and Ploughshares. His highly anticipated debut novel, All the Roads Between, has been criticized for being soft compared to his earlier work, but Colby himself has been quoted as saying, “It’s the grittiest and most real piece of fiction I’ll ever write.” He says his novel is a complete work of fiction but credits his childhood in rural Ohio for being his biggest inspiration.

  I started laughing and crying at the same time. I typed in his website URL from the book jacket, which brought me to a clean, spare site with a form box where I could submit a message to “J. Colby.”

  Sweet. I would get to tell him directly what a fucking prick he was.

  Dear Jason,

  You fraud. I wanted to personally email you even though I haven’t heard from you in twelve long years. Not since that day when you did what you did—remember that? Well, no sense in rehashing that right now. Let’s talk about how you stole my life story and got it published. You’re a despicable human being. Why didn’t you ever contact me? You said you would find me and you didn’t. I spent an entire year looking for you, wondering what happened, where you went, why you hadn’t come looking for me yet. Don’t you feel guilty for what happened? And now you’re benefiting from my horror, my pain? You opportunistic piece of shit. I cannot believe that I ever loved you and trusted you. I cannot believe what you did to me . . .

  Emiline

  P.S. You’re a shitty writer.

  I stopped typing, deleted everything, cried, and then took another swig and began again.

  Dear Jason,

  I don’t understand anything. What happened to us? Where have you been? What have you been doing? Are you married?

  Emiline

  P.S. You’re a terrible writer.

  I deleted and took another swig.

  Dear Jase,

  Why?

  I deleted, took another drink, and then cracked the book open again.

  From All the Roads Between

  When we were in sixth grade, the winter brought a deluge of rain, which sucked for me and Jax. He’d carry an umbrella for the both of us as we walked to and from the bus stop, but it usually wasn’t enough. The worst part about rain when you live on a dirt road is the mud—and there was mud everywhere. I’d even find it inside of my socks and between my toes and up the backs of my pant legs. There was just no stopping the mud, but we dealt with it the best way we knew how. We even played in it; we’d cake it on our faces, act like zombies, and try to scare Brian as he practiced with his band in the garage.

  My hair had grown out a bit straighter ever since the hair-cutting incident, thank you Jesus. Being twelve is awkward enough without a rat’s nest on the top of your head. Jax was starting to look a little goofier, his skin a little oilier, but I never said anything to him about it. I barely understood the changes our bodies were going through.

  We hung out a lot, and pretty soon the kids at school got used to seeing us together.

  Everyone said we were boyfriend and girlfriend, but we didn’t care. We liked each other, so if they wanted to say those things about us, then so be it.

  When we played together, we’d pretend like we were explorers on a big ship in the middle of the ocean. I’d never even seen the ocean in real life, but I saw it in my dreams. I would say to Jax, “Someday I’ll have a house on the ocean, and dolphins will swim right up to my back porch and I’ll feed them grapes.”

  “Dolphins don’t eat grapes, dummy. They eat fish, and they’re better at catching it than you are, so you don’t need to worry about feeding them.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Discovery Channel.”

  I wished we had cable, but we didn’t. My dad would always say, “That costs money. Last time I checked, you weren’t making any.”

  The urge to say, “Neither are you,” was so strong in me, I literally had to cup my hand over my mouth to stop it from slipping out.

  This was all during Jax’s Melville phase. He’d stand on the top of our wooden fence in the pouring rain and point and yell, “There she blows, a hump like a snow hill, it’s Moby Dick!” I would laugh and roll my eyes, but I’d still call him Captain Ahab when he was feeling down, and that would lift his spirits.

  We were each other’s only friends. That year Jax’s mother, Leila, was working two jobs and his brother was always busy doing whatever to pass the time. Jax had to quit baseball since no one could pick him up after practice, which pretty much ruined his chances of ever making male friends. He was alienated, isolated, just like me. We were outcasts in every sense of the word, but as time went on, I cared less and less what everyone else thought. All that mattered was us.

  We both got into books. Even at twelve, we were determined to read all of the classics. They were probably way over our heads, but we challenged ourselves anyway. Our only escape was that back toolshed among the weeds and out of earshot of my father’s drunken rages. There, we could make our own fictional world. We could be English royalty in the sixteenth century, or wizards or dragon slayers. We weren’t poor, hungry, abandoned kids at the end of a desolate road. We were superheroes and magicians and presidents of our own country.

  When spring finally came, we were ready to be outside and explore again. There was a creek about half a mile behind our houses, past the tree line. Because of all the rain that year, it had become more of a river, with the strongest currents right behind where we lived. Every adult warned us to be careful
; even my deadbeat dad would say, “You better use that big brain of yours and stay out of the creek. You want to go swimming, you can go to the pool in town.” But the community pool was a seven-mile bike ride away, and it cost three dollars to get in. There was no way I was going unless Leila gave us a ride, and even then, I would have to borrow the money to get in. Frankly, going to the town pool was a pipe dream. It became a myth to us, a fantasy, like Disneyland or Europe. Jax and I would try to imagine what it was like to go there.

  “I bet they sell Popsicles and popcorn, and they probably have clowns too,” I said as we lay spread out in the weeds on an old sleeping bag I had found in my garage, enjoying a makeshift picnic. Jax had brought a jar of applesauce, and I had brought Fun Dip that my dad had bought for me at the 7-Eleven. We mixed the Fun Dip into the jar and took turns eating spoonfuls.

  “Community pools don’t have clowns, genius.”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  “Because I just do.”

  “I bet there’s a high dive, like fifty feet in the air.”

  “Do you know how high fifty feet is? You would die hitting the water. The impact would kill you.”

  “You’re such a know-it-all, Jackson. Why can’t you let a girl dream? We’re never going to that pool because no one will ever take us. Plus, it costs money, and last time I checked you weren’t making any.”

  He lay back on the blanket, propped his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. “I’m not a know-it-all—I just have cable. And as soon as I turn sixteen, I’m getting a job. I’ll pay for us to go to the pool. You’ll see. It’s just a big hole with water in it.”

  I took the time to inspect every inch of him as he lay there, his eyes still closed. I was so curious about his body. My own body was changing, and I was terrified of it. Jax was getting taller, and I was certain he was going to be as tall as his father, but he looked more like his mother in his coloring and features. Jax’s mom was French, and they both had this creamy skin that looked sun-kissed year-round. His brown hair and brown eyes had strands of gold running throughout them. He was letting his hair grow longer because he’d been watching some show on TV that took place in California. He said everyone in California had long hair.