The good thing about living in a small town in Ohio where pretty much everyone works in factories or else on farms is that most everyone is in bed by ten at night. So by the time I made it to the town square where the cannon sat beside the stone wall that listed the names of war veterans from our town who had died in their various wars, by the time I reached the band shell sitting beside the duck pond just waiting for an occasion to have the school band play something festive inside it, pretty much everyone was either getting ready for bed or was already off and dreaming. So I was able to walk unnoticed across the square to the telephone rack at the front of the Super Duper grocery store and call the Highsmith house and hope as the phone rang that Gracie would be the one to pick up.
But the voice that answered when I called, saying “Hello?” all worried, then again, “Hello? Is anyone there?” after I didn’t say anything, belonged to Gracie’s mom. I could tell it was her by the grown-up voice. There’s always something worried and overly concerned in adult voices. If you listen, you’ll hear it. There’s not much difference between kid voices and adult voices besides this tremor in the throat. In women it’s what lets the nagging mother voice exist. In men it’s what allows the grunting, outraged voice. Probably that tribe in Africa that clicks in order to speak has nagging mother clicks and grunting, outraged father clicks too. Something happens to the voice when people become adults and—bam!—suddenly you’re a worried voice person. I’m pretty sure this has to be universal.
So when I heard Gracie’s mother’s worried voice, I hung up and rolled my eyes, sighing. Jesus, lady, I thought. Why can’t you go to bed like everyone else and let your daughter answer the fucking phone already? Don’t you have work in the morning or something?
I waited a few minutes, watching the square for cars, cops in particular, then picked the phone up again, threw my change in and dialed once more. Two rings later and a voice came on, only it wasn’t talking to me, it was in mid-sentence.
“It’s my friend Melissa. You remember Melissa! She came to Stars on Ice with us two years ago? Yeah, it’s that Melissa. Okay, I’ll tell her not to hang up like that again. She’s just shy. Sorry. Okay, I won’t be on late. Okay, I love you too! Goodnight!”
“Hello?” I said when the voice stopped talking.
“Brilliant move, Melissa,” Gracie answered. “I mean, don’t just hang up on my mom like that. She won’t bite, you know.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I just got scared.”
“Well, you’re lucky they like you, Melissa.” Here Gracie’s voice fell to a whisper. “Even if you are a bitch and I haven’t been friends with you since I caught you spreading gossip about me and that guy from Lakeview’s baseball team last summer. I mean, Jesus, I don’t even like baseball! It’s got to be the most boring sport in the world.”
“Anyway,” I said.
“Anyway,” said Gracie. “Where are you?”
“I’m down at the phone rack in front of the Super Duper.”
“Town square?” said Gracie, her voice rising a little before she caught herself and lowered it again. “What the hell are you doing there? Someone will see you.”
“It’s okay, there’s no one around. The store is closed. It’s a weekday. Not that Saturdays get jumping around here either.”
“Hot time on the cold town,” Gracie said.
“Yeah,” I said. “So what’s up? Did they believe you?”
“Of course they did, Melissa. Why wouldn’t they? I mean, they’re extremely disappointed and upset but somehow they did. They forgave me.”
“Good,” I said, though it took me a moment to realize Gracie was changing my words because a parent was patrolling nearby.
“What about you? How’s school going?”
“I’m in the woods.”
“The what? Why?”
“I’m staying in an old Amish logging camp about an hour’s hike from your house. There’s a shack back there. It’s okay. It’s better than the Wilkinson farm.”
“Well, I guess that’s true,” said Gracie. Then: “What about food? Just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you should stop eating.”
“School lunch was dinner tonight,” I said, and she about flipped out on me.
“Melissa!” she said. “What the hell are you doing eating school lunch? I mean, how? Really? I mean that. How?”
“I got it out of the Dumpster. Don’t worry. It was just a burger and it was still in its wrapper. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Still, that’s just gross. You don’t know what they put in those burgers, Melissa. I mean, my mom and dad took me out of that school and the one thing I absolutely don’t miss is the burgers.”
“Got any better ideas?” I said. “Know of any upscale Dumpsters I should try?”
“In fact I do,” said Gracie.
“I was hoping you’d say that. Where can we meet?”
“Hmm,” said Gracie. “That’s really hard to say right now, Melissa. My parents are really busy.”
I imagined Mrs. Highsmith standing in the hall in her nightgown, trying to look like she was doing something, not prying, just wondering what to do with that hall light. Maybe she should change it even though it still works. Or that phone stand, maybe it needs dusting even though she’d just been getting ready to go to bed. “I understand,” I said. “How about the edge of the woods near your house tomorrow? Around noon. My bike is there.”
“Sounds great,” said Gracie. “And I’m really glad you called, Melissa. It’s been forever. Let’s try to do something together soon, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
Then Gracie hung up and I was left in front of the Super Duper holding a phone with a dead connection wishing I could still talk to her, only for real, not through all that stupid Melissa code. I stood there holding that phone to my ear like an idiot for a full minute before I realized I was looking at my own reflection in the window of the grocery store and feeling sorry for the kid in the glass.
It was depressing to see him holding that dead phone, his hair totally messy like he’d just got out of bed, his eyes bruised and baggy like he’d been in a fight or hadn’t slept in weeks. His sweatshirt and pants had holes in them, and there were weird stains on his jeans and jean jacket. Maybe he got them when he dove into the garbage Dumpster for dinner. Maybe he got them in the woods. It looked like his clothes belonged in Jamie’s wardrobe. It looked like he was the kid they found murdered in a shallow hole by the railroad tracks.
I dropped the phone and let it swing on its metal cord. I wrapped my arms around his chest to hug him because no one else was there to do it, which made me want to cry a little, seeing this kid with shaggy, fucked-up hair and bruised eyes with my arms hugging him in the reflection of the Super Duper grocery store window, next to a sign that advertised a sale on window cleanser and tomatoes. I almost believed I wasn’t alone for a moment, looking at that, but in the end I wasn’t able to convince myself.
“No,” I said, pulling my arms away. “No crying. No being stupid,” I said to my reflection. I thought about how I looked better like this anyway, in clothes that were stained and filled with holes. I looked better like this than I ever did when they were fresh and crisp and new. With these clothes, I looked like how I felt on the inside: messed up, trashed, like I belonged in the Dumpster with the food I’d taken. Now, I thought, people can look at me and really see me.
The next day I reached my bike hiding inside the tree line near the Highsmith house a little earlier than I’d told Gracie to meet me. I didn’t sleep much the night before, but I felt fine when I woke. And I didn’t feel hungry either, so I still had the Dumpster burgers and salad for later. What I really needed at the moment was to see Gracie, so when she came out her back door and looked around, searching the line of trees as she came toward it, when her eyes found mine and she smiled and came running, I felt immediately better. She came crashing over the branches lying on the ground until she reached me and I caught her as she threw her a
rms around me and we hugged like I wouldn’t let myself hug myself the night before.
“Adam,” she said, “I can’t believe this. Why is this all so fucked up?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think maybe you should go home. It can’t be that bad. Can it?”
I pulled away and didn’t answer, just turned around and picked my bike up from the ground and started looking at it like it might need to be fixed, maybe oil on its chain, maybe a new tire was necessary.
“Adam, listen,” she said. I looked up at her. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m just worried. I’ve got food in the house for you. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head.
“How can you not be hungry?”
I shrugged and looked away again. I could have explained in detail how I was not hungry and why, but it probably would have made her more worried than she already was.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to pack it for you. Then we’ll take it to your place in the woods. Okay?”
I looked at her again. “Okay,” I said.
She came back ten minutes later wearing the purple backpack she’d had on the night we planned on running away to California. “All set,” she said. “Let’s get going.” And I led her across the road, down the railroad tracks and into the woods, the same path I’d followed the other night when she’d told me to run and let her deal with the cops and her parents.
As we walked along Sugar Creek, Gracie pointed out several No Trespassing signs that the owner, Mr. Osborne, had posted on tree trunks. “Maybe this isn’t the best part of the woods to stay in,” she said, but I told her Mr. Osborne was so old that hardly anyone saw him come out of his house anymore.
So we kept on until we reached the logging camp and when Gracie saw the shack and the mounds of sawdust and the trees towering around the place, her mouth parted in surprise before she smiled and said, “It’s not what I thought. It’s great, actually.”
I took her inside and we sat on my makeshift cot and the first thing she saw was Charlotte up in her web, which freaked her out a little. “That’s Charlotte,” I said. “She won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt her. She’s some spider, you know.”
Gracie wanted to know how I knew about this place, so I told her about how I found the camp when I was little, after the Amish left it. My dad had complained because Mr. Osborne had hired them to cut out some of the bigger trees and my dad thought he should have hired people from town to do that. This meant my dad thought Mr. Osborne should have hired him, because technically the Amish were part of our town, they just stuck with each other instead of mingling with us too much. Everyone knew my dad did odd jobs when he wasn’t working, so he was upset about not being given the work. And after hearing him go on for weeks about the Amish in the woods, after hearing him go on about how they had finally left, I came back to see the place myself, following the logging ruts they left from the roadside into the woods.
I loved creeping around those first few times, feeling their presence still in the camp, seeing the empty potato chip bags and plastic cola bottles they’d left behind, finding the hammer they’d forgotten and the button from someone’s suspenders on the floor beneath the cot. Even though the Amish that had been here were alive in the world, it somehow felt like I was visiting a haunted place, like at any moment one of their ghosts would show up and scare the hell out of me or else tell me a dark secret. It didn’t occur to me until I was telling Gracie about all this and her face was growing more worried as I detailed how I spent so much time at the place that it had been me who’d been doing the haunting, that even then I’d been on my way to dying.
“Adam,” Gracie said. Just that. Then she said nothing at all for a full minute. While I waited for her to say whatever was on her mind, she tilted her head to the side and stared at my face like I was a painting in a museum that needed to be looked at hard and for a long time before you could begin to really see it. Slowly she reached out and touched my cheek with her fingertips. Her hand was so warm. I pushed against it like an animal, nuzzling. “You’re so strange,” she said.
Still staring, she leaned over, making the cot shriek, and kissed me. Then we stretched out on the planks with my extra clothes as a mattress and kept kissing and touching and, even though it was the end of November and the wind was stripping the leaves from the trees, bringing snow in its wake, I saw nothing but sunflowers growing out of the leaf-littered floor of the woods, sprouting and opening up like film on fast-forward. As they grew the sunlight faded, but their petals still glowed as the dark draped itself over the woods.
We opened up and took our clothes off too. Light came from our bodies like light from the sunflowers outside, gold and dark like honey. “I’m so cold, Adam,” Gracie said, so I pressed against her harder. I don’t think I could warm her no matter how hard I pushed against her, though. My skin was cold now, no matter what the weather.
“Do you see them too?” I whispered.
“See what?” She looked nervous all of a sudden.
“The sunflowers,” I said. “All around us.”
She grinned but didn’t say whether she did or didn’t. She only said, “You’re so strange,” again. Then she pulled me down to kiss her over and over, wherever she liked, until it was so dark I couldn’t see the sunflowers unfolding any longer, until I could only see the shadows moving around out in the moonlight as we moved around inside, making our own light to find our way by.
TRESPASSING
IT WAS LATE BY THE TIME GRACIE REALIZED SHE’D stayed too long, that her parents would be home and totally worried about where she’d gone, and as I led her out of the woods with my flashlight lighting the way, she was so angry all she did was say how she shouldn’t have come, how her parents were going to kill her, how she didn’t know why she couldn’t just let me run off on my own and do what I wanted. “Why should I care?” she said. “You’re just like him. I can’t keep doing this, Adam.”
I looked back over my shoulder as we climbed up a gravel slope to the rails and said, “If it’s too much trouble, maybe we should call it quits.”
She was making me feel like everything was my fault. Enough people had made me feel that way lately, I wasn’t about to let Gracie make me feel that way too. She had a choice. She didn’t have to come along. And if she did, I figured she should blame herself for any trouble she got into.
When I said that she stopped walking and her mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “Adam McCormick, you are such an ass.”
“I don’t need anyone making me feel worse,” I told her.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wanted to make you feel worse,” she said. “You don’t get that, do you?” I kept walking. A few minutes later Gracie said, “I’m sorry. It’s just…I don’t know what I’m going to tell them this time.”
“Tell them something crazy,” I said. “Tell them something so crazy they have to believe it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. What would make them happy? Maybe tell them you went to church to talk to the minister. No, wait! I know! Tell them you went to his grave. To say goodbye to him.”
“Adam, they would freak out if I told them something like that.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But maybe they’d think it was a good thing too. They think you’ve been acting strange because of finding him, so if you told them you were telling him goodbye, maybe that’d sound good to them.”
“It’s better than anything I can come up with, I guess,” said Gracie.
When we got close to her road, we stopped and I said, “When will I see you again?”
Gracie shook her head. “After getting home so late today, I don’t know. But I’ll come to your place now that I know where it is. I’ll come as soon as it’s safe again.”
I gave her the flashlight so she could see the rest of the way. She tried to give it back, but I said, “It’s not that hard for me to see in the dark. Really.”
She said I was
going to kill myself trying to get back, but I insisted until she took the light and ran. And then I stood there and watched the beam swing in the dark until she turned onto her road and the light winked off in the distance.
I hadn’t been lying actually. It was getting easier for me to see in the dark. That first night in the woods, finding my way to Sugar Creek had been hard, but after that I’d begun to notice the shadows moving under the moonlight, and when Gracie came back and we forgot time together, I’d seen them clear as day, wandering among the sunflowers we’d grown in the dark of the Amish logging camp. So as I turned and made my way back down the tracks and into the woods, I found my way without too much trouble. I tripped only two times and I avoided any shadows, even though one held his hand out and waved like he was calling me to come to him. I kept my head forward, my eyes ahead, until I found Sugar Creek’s surface rippled with moonlight and followed its flow to the covered bridge and back to the logging camp. Home again.
The next day I looked through the stuff Gracie had brought, but I didn’t want anything. It looked good, but I didn’t have much of an appetite and also I kept thinking about how it all came from Mr. Highsmith’s shining kitchen and that bothered me, and the more I thought about him, the less hungry I got. So I just went down to the creek when I wanted water, and whenever I did feel like eating something, I’d pull out the box of saltine crackers Gracie had packed and nibble a few of those before I felt full again. I compromised by eating the crackers, but they seemed trivial enough to compromise.
Compromising for crackers probably seems stupid, but I’ve been told before how stupid I am, so that’s nothing new. Gracie and my family thought I was clueless, and so did people like Mr. Highsmith who said it behind my back instead of to my face, so probably a lot of other people thought so too. I bet there was probably even an Adam McCormick Is Clueless group that met monthly just to talk about how clueless I was sometimes. But the truth is, I’m not so clueless. I knew the reason why I wasn’t hungry anymore and didn’t need food that much was because I was dying. My sense of smell and taste couldn’t be working properly if I was able to eat those hamburgers from the school Dumpster and think they were fine. They weren’t fine even when they were semi-fresh under the heat lamps of the cafeteria. I knew that, but a kid does what he has to do. It doesn’t make him stupid.