The Deathday Letter

  I duck under the plywood and run inside.

  The first thing I notice is the smell. Or smells. Plural. It’s a fragrant mixture of wet raccoon, piss, and dust. And I can’t outrun it. The whole place is permeated.

  The second thing I notice about the inside of the lighthouse is that there’s junk everywhere. Scaffolding and crates and even some stuff that looks like retail shelves. It’s strange, like the inside is bigger than the outside. I know that it’s not, that it’s probably some engineering trick Shane could explain if I let him (which I won’t), but it’s still cool.

  The third thing I notice is that, oh yeah, the stairs aren’t finished. And that’s kind of a problem.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Ronnie.

  I point up. “We have to go up there.”

  “Up?” says Shane in a tiny voice.

  “Come on then, guys,” says Ronnie. “Unless Tubby has a coronary before he gets up the hill, we’re running out of time.”

  I ignore Ronnie and grab Shane by the shoulders. “Shane. No thinking. We’re going up to the top and I need to know right now if you can do it.”

  Shane contorts his face into a painful grimace. When I say painful, I mean painful for me. Seriously, the kid can do ugly when he sets his mind to it. “Ollie?”

  “If you don’t want to go, you can hide down here, but you have to make the decision right now and you have to commit. You can’t whine and you can’t back out midway.”

  “After the bridge,” tosses in Ronnie, “this will be easier than Krista McMahon.”

  Shane chuckles and nods his head. “In.”

  “Awesome.” I point to the scaffolding and say, “We have to climb that to get to the stairs.” The concrete stairs built into the wall start about fifteen feet from the floor and go the rest of the way up.

  “I’m out,” says Shane.

  Ronnie shoves him forward and says, “In is in. You can’t pull out halfway.”

  Shane and I look at each other and giggle. Seriously. Giggle. The giggles bubble up from my toes like soda bubbles and pop out of my mouth. By the time Ronnie even realizes what she’s said, Shane and I are nearly paralyzed. Then Ronnie’s face turns crazy red and she grabs us both by our ears and drags us to the scaffolding.

  “Ow!” I yell, but it’s dotted with snorts and giggles.

  Listen. No matter how old a dude gets, there are just certain things that can always make him giggle. “Doo-doo” is a given. “Duty” is another. Any word including the word “dick.” “Benediction,” “ridiculous,” “contradiction,” “dictator.” Then there are random words, like “Bangkok” and “kumquat.” And don’t even get me started on phrases. I can’t explain it. Guys are just hardwired for potty humor.

  We reach the scaffolding at a stumbling laugh, but immediately begin climbing. Even Shane. I don’t know if it’s the laughing or if he’s still floating on a cloud of freaky bridge-jumping adrenaline, but he tackles the scaffolding like he’s king of the jungle gym. Hand over hand, he climbs right up, leaving Ronnie and me to scramble after.

  I’m trying to concentrate on climbing, but Ronnie’s ahead of me and all I can do is stare up at her. It’s not like I want to be staring at her butt, but it’s not like I can really help it either. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the view.

  “Hurry up!” calls Shane. The cop still hasn’t made it inside but Shane’s all antsy.

  Ronnie looks down and it seems like she’s just now realizing that she’s given me a front row seat to her ass. She climbs the last bit more quickly than even Shane and proceeds to give me the death stare for the rest of my climb, like I’d planned it. All I need is a black hat and big ’stache to twirl.

  I try to apologize, but Ronnie edges past Shane and takes the steps two at a time.

  Shane grins. “Dude, you are in so much trouble.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “You really think that matters? Girl logic isn’t rational, man.” Shane pats my back and follows Ronnie up the steps. We’re near the top when I hear the static of the cop’s radio. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I know he’s in the building.

  I put my finger to my lips and we keep tiptoeing up the steps. They dead-end at a doorless trapdoor opening, and we scurry through it.

  “Ollie, what—,” starts Ronnie, but I cover her mouth with my hand and shake my head.

  Getting down on my belly, I scoot across the dirty, dusty wood floor until my head is leaning out and down the trapdoor hole. Everything at the bottom looks darker. Possibly because the top of the lighthouse is so much brighter, what with the 360-degree view. Still, it makes it hard to see a fat cop in a blue suit wandering around among the shadows. If only I’d planned this out better, I could’ve laid out a trail of doughnuts leading into a cage and then shut the door behind him and made him dance. Dance, monkey, dance! Except, yeah, I didn’t.

  Someone taps my back but I shoo them away and keep watching for Tubby. Finally I see him by the exit. He looks around and then says something into his radio before leaving.

  I heave a wicked sigh of relief and jump back up.

  “We could have hidden down there,” says Shane. His glasses magnify his eyes to the point that he looks like a freaky ventriloquist dummy.

  I nod and say, “We could have. But then we wouldn’t have been able to do this.” I run up to the glass and look out over Moriville. There are still cars parked at the end of the bridge trying to find out what happened to us. Nosy old people who can’t mind their own business. I can see everything from up here. My town looks so freaking small, but it’s all I’ve ever known. I’m gonna die without ever knowing what it’s like to live anywhere else.

  Resolutely, I turn my back on my town. I put it behind me, drop my drawers, and press my skinny white ass against the glass. “Screw you, Moriville!” I scream, even though I know that no one can hear me.

  Ronnie and Shane are both momentarily frozen, but I can count on my friends to join in, and they do. Even Ronnie. I don’t look at her butt this time, and we all giggle.

  “Promise me you guys will get outta here,” I say as the giggles recede.

  “Obviously,” says Shane. “I don’t plan on spending the whole day up in this musty old tower.”

  Ronnie groans and stares at Shane. “He means out of Moriville.” She turns to me. “And yes, we promise.”

  “Good.”

  Right. Now things are awkward. Shane, Ronnie, and I are standing bent over, with our pants around our knees, our pressed hams out for everyone to see. Everyone possibly being my mom. I can picture it now. She’s driving somewhere on some errand and she looks up and there’s my white ass staring her in the face, burning out her retinas.

  That doesn’t happen though. Not that I know of. Instead, we hear a loud thwack.

  “Someone’s coming up!” Shane looks like he’s gonna faint.

  “Well, hide, dummy.”

  Shane bolts toward a door at the other end of the room and ducks inside.

  “Where—?” begins Ronnie, but the huffing and puffing on the steps is enough to make us scatter. I spy a haphazard stack of boxes and grab Ronnie’s hand. We barely dive behind them before Tubby’s head pops up through the hole. How in the world he managed to climb the scaffolding, I’ll never know.

  Ronnie scoots as close to me as she can and we bury ourselves in the shadows of the boxes. It’s not a great hiding place, and if our cop friend is even remotely thorough, he’ll find us pretty easily.

  Ronnie smells like the beach in the rain. Breathe it in long enough and there isn’t a boy alive who wouldn’t feel a little light-headed.

  My anxiety rises when Ronnie squeezes my hand. Now I don’t just have to worry about Officer Doughnut finding us and carting us away in the back of his cruiser, I have to worry about sweaty palms and my jack-in-the-box poppin’ the weasel.

  It feels like forever before the cop finally starts back down the stairs. I know he does because he curses as he hits his
head going down. Ronnie grins at me and starts to get out from our hiding space. I shake my head and pull her back down.

  “We should wait,” I whisper into her ear, “until we’re sure he’s gone.”

  Ronnie nods.

  Things are awkward again. I started my day not wanting her anywhere near me, then we almost kissed, now we’re hiding behind some moldy boxes, practically horizontal. It’s enough to make me crazy.

  “Hey,” I say. “What did you mean when you said third grade wasn’t the first time we met?” I keep my voice as low as I can in case Tubby’s just pretending to be gone. “You got here over the summer and started third grade with Shane and me.”

  Ronnie shakes her head. “I started at the end of second grade. One month before the end, to be precise. Dad moved us here after Mom . . .” Her voice is so close her lips nearly touch my ear.

  “Can’t be.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Okay, well just ’cause you were in school doesn’t mean I met you.”

  Ronnie smiles a little, but it’s not a real smile. “Oh, we met all right.”

  “Bull.”

  “It was my second day. No one talked to me much since I was the new girl. I ate by myself at lunch. I saw you and Shane, and I remember how much fun you guys were having. You didn’t have any friends except each other but that didn’t seem to bother you.”

  I stifle a laugh. “So you were stalking me and Shane, then?”

  “No,” says Ronnie. She almost looks like it’s painful to remember. “I was watching you and then Shane pointed at me. You got up and I thought maybe you were going to invite me to come sit with you. I was so excited.”

  “Obviously I didn’t ask. What happened?”

  “You came to my table and asked me what flavor my pudding cup was. I told you it was chocolate. Then you took it and went back to your table.”

  “That’s a lie. I never did that.”

  “I didn’t talk to anyone the rest of the year.”

  “I’d remember that.”

  “It wasn’t really that big a deal.”

  “We should go,” I say. I stand up and pull her to her feet. “Wanna get Shane?”

  I look for the cop car. It’s gone.

  “Ollie, you should see this.”

  Ronnie’s standing in front of the door Shane ducked through. I peek over her shoulder. Shane’s sitting on the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest, dead asleep. All that’s missing is his blankie. And don’t let him lie to you, he totally has one. It’s blue and green and the thing is holier than his underwear.

  “How sweet,” says Ronnie.

  “Sweet my ass.” I crouch down next to Shane and put my mouth by his ear. “You’re under arrest!” I yell as loud as I can, and then jump back.

  Shane jumps straight up and bangs his head on the underside of the shelf directly above him. It’s so hard I hear the hollow thunk of his head. It looks painful. It’s also funny as hell.

  It takes a minute for Shane to figure out what happened and his face goes from disoriented to pissed in five seconds. “You ass!” He rubs his head and steps out of the closet.

  I wait to make sure he’s okay before I say, “Shane, when was the first time Ronnie and I met?”

  Shane glares at me and says, “Dude, you stole her pudding in the second grade. You said she smelled like lima beans. When we started third grade, you wanted to be friends. Now listen . . .”

  Ronnie tilts her head to the side and gives me a great I told you so face.

  “God! Why are you even friends with me then?”

  “Ollie, drop the pudding. It doesn’t matter. You were, like, seven.”

  “But still.”

  Ronnie grabs my shoulders and says, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  The three of us stand around. Wet, quiet, a little bored.

  “We should go,” I finally say. “Before someone tows your car.”

  “Where to next, jackass?”

  “What?”

  Shane points at Ronnie and says, “She gets an apology for something you did eight years ago, and I get nothing for getting a concussion?”

  “You don’t have a concussion,” says Ronnie.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m sorry, Shane,” I say. “Better?”

  Shane’s lip pops out and he pouts, a sure sign he’s all right. “No. But I guess we should go.”

  “We need dry clothes,” I say. “And a little more fun.”

  “Plus,” says Shane, “I could eat.”

  Ronnie starts laughing and doesn’t stop until we’re back at the car, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to the pudding than Ronnie let on. She remembered it, so she’s obviously thought about it. And if I forgot about something so important to her, then what else did I screw up that I don’t know about? Maybe everything really is all my fault.

  Now I just have to find a way to fix it.

  17:44 . . . TICKTOCK

  I refuse to die in wet clothes.” My clothes aren’t so much wet as they are sticky and salty and just a little bit ripe. My green hoodie is still wearable, but the day is now nut-roasting hot, which is pretty typical for Florida. Sitting in the Jumbo-Mart parking lot isn’t helping either.

  “We can go back to my house, man. I’ve got clothes you can wear.” Shane’s got one arm draped over Miss Piggy’s steering wheel and the other wrapped around the duct-taped headrest.

  Ronnie clears her throat. “And what about me? Do you have clothes I can wear?”

  “Is your dad home?” I ask. Ronnie nods. “Then we’re definitely not going there. In and out, guys. This’ll only take a minute.”

  “That’s what she said,” says Ronnie.

  “Oh, God. Please, not this again.”

  “That’s what she said,” say Shane and Ronnie at the same time, and then they both crack up laughing.

  “At least I know you’ll still be friends after I die.” I start to crawl over Ronnie to get out of the car but she pushes me back.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said.” Shane and Ronnie both look clueless. “You know how some groups of friends are only together because two of them are friends with the third person, and when that third person’s not around, the other two drift apart? I’m just glad that’s not going to happen to you two.”

  Shane’s face bunches up defensively. “It’s not like we hang out when you’re not around.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Shane,” says Ronnie, but Shane ignores her.

  “We’re only friends because of you, Ollie. I mean, Ronnie’s cool and we have fun, but we don’t sit around gossiping and giving each other pedicures.”

  “Smooth, Shane,” says Ronnie. She grabs her purse and gets out of the car.

  “Did I miss something?”

  “No,” says Shane. “It’s not what you’ve missed, it’s what you’re going to miss.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Shane climbs out of the car. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go get some clothes and get on with your day.”

  Things just went from confusing to bizarre. First Ronnie and I almost kiss. Then she tells me I stole her pudding, and even though she says she’s not carrying some sort of grudge, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s like a brown stain on our friendship. And now Shane and Ronnie are acting weirder than normal. On top of my own impending death, it’s almost more than I can handle. Luckily, Jumbo-Mart is like a crazy world of its own: a place where all your troubles are lost in the yellow haze of fluorescent lights and the smell of savings. And by “savings,”

  I mean “cabbage.”

  “What now?” asks Shane as we loiter around the front doors, where a cheerful woman with a chronic wave greets everyone. Most people ignore her but the greeter soldiers on. In a really small way, I’m glad that I’ll never get to fail in life. Not that being a glorified mannequin at a Jumbo-Mart is being a failure. It’s just that right
now, I’m all potential. According to my parents and teachers, there’s nothing I can’t do. Which means that, short of winning an Oscar or the Nobel Prize, everything I would have done from this point on would be betraying that potential. Even if I’d wound up being a lawyer or an astronaut, my past still would’ve been littered with the corpses of the things I didn’t do.

  “Ollie?”

  I shake my head and return to badly lit reality. “Now we shop.”

  “I don’t have any cash,” says Shane.

  “I got it covered,” I say, and pat my pocket.

  Weaving around the masses, we get to the clothes. There are

  two kinds of people who shop at the Jumbo-Mart in the middle of the day: old people (of which Florida has an abundance) and parents.

  The old people wander around like they’re doped up (which they probably are) and the parents wander around, oblivious to the fact that their children’s screams are shattering my eardrums.

  Usually it makes my stomach bunch up and my jaw clench like crazy, but today might be the last time I nearly run down an old person who abruptly stops to admire a rack filled with parachute-panties, and I wanna soak it up.

  “I have to go to the restroom,” says Ronnie as we wander around the racks.

  “Alone?” says Shane.

  “Not all girls need a support system to tinkle.” Ronnie navigates her way through the racks, and I watch her until she’s just a brown head bobbing in a sea of poly cotton.

  Shane and I have spent considerable time and energy arguing about what girls do in the bathroom that requires them to go in packs. Shane’s idea has something to do with quantum entanglement, but I think that maybe, like a guy’s hunger, girls go to the can together ’cause of some instinct left over from the days when the shitter was way out in the middle of some prehistoric monster’s hunting ground. Taking a leak wasn’t just something you did, it was a blood sport, so you peed in a group and prayed that if a saber-toothed tiger showed up for a snack, he gobbled up the girl next to you. When I told Mom my theory, she said it sounded a lot like her sorority.