The Rest of Us Just Live Here

  Jared is a firm second in her affections after Bolts of Fire, though. He’s big, he’s friendly, and there’s the whole cat deal. If there’s one thing we all, every one of us, agree on, it’s that Jared is going to be a great dad.

  Not that any of us have first-hand experience of one, really, except Jared, which figures.

  “German lessons,” I tell him. “My mom didn’t think she was being challenged enough at school.”

  Jared blinks. “She’s ten.”

  “They’re still hoping they’ve got one left who isn’t screwed-up,” Mel says, flicking on a downloaded TV programme we’ve all already seen as background noise.

  Henna looks at me. “You’re not screwed-up.”

  “No one in this family is screwed-up,” says our mother, coming through the front door. “That’s the official campaign line and we’re sticking to it.”

  She drops her purse on the table by the door, already frowning at the four teenagers draped across her couches. She’s two hours early. “Hello, everyone,” she practically booms, seeming friendly enough, though Mel and I can already tell we’re going to pay for this later. “Look at all the feet up on the furniture.”

  Jared and Henna slowly put their feet on the floor.

  “Hello, State Senator,” Jared says, politely.

  “Just ‘Senator’ is the protocol, Jared,” my mom says with a tight smile, “even for a lowly state government official. As I’m sure you must know by now. Hello, Henna.”

  “Mrs Mitchell,” Henna greets, her voice three sizes smaller than a minute ago.

  “You’re early,” Mel says.

  “Yes,” my mom says. “I can see how you might think that.”

  “Where’s Dad?” I ask.

  “Still with your grandma.”

  “How is she?”

  Mom’s smile gets even tighter. “You two staying for dinner?” she asks Jared and Henna, somehow communicating clearly that they’re not actually invited.

  “No, thank you,” Jared says, getting up, downing his energy drink in one. “We were just heading out.”

  “You don’t have to leave on my account,” my mom says, meaning that yes, yes, they do.

  “Homework,” Henna says, gathering her things quickly. She leaves her energy drink on the coffee table. It’s already sweating beads of water down the side, and I can feel my heart start to race at the need to either put a coaster underneath it or wipe the water away or something.

  One glass of energy drink. One.

  Mel sees me staring at the glass, picks it up off the table, and drinks it down, even though she particularly hates Lotusexxy.

  I give her a pleading look of thanks.

  While I’ve been trapped, Jared and Henna are at the door already, waving their goodbyes. The door shuts behind them. It’s just us family now. Embrace the warmth.

  “It’s bad enough you’re friends with that boy–” my mom starts.

  I get up so fast, she stops mid-sentence. I don’t put on my jacket. I don’t take anything with me except the car keys I’ve already got in my pocket. I’m out the door before she can do anything more than give me a shocked look.

  I catch Jared and Henna out on the walk. “Ride home?” I say.

  It takes about three seconds to drop Henna off down the street, though I do get a full eye-contact thank you from her as she gets out. My mad, desperate head thinks of mad, desperate things to say to her, but of course I don’t. Then Jared and I are driving, even though his own car is still parked at my house. I turn the opposite direction from where he lives.

  He says nothing.

  We drive until the sun sets. There are more back roads into and out of these woods than anyone can count, than are probably on any map. You can drive and drive and drive and just see forest and fields, the occasional cow, the occasional elk, the even more occasional moose (the animal Patron Saint of Perpetual Embarrassment; I can relate, though not to being Catholic, which I’ve apparently decided mooses are). The Mountain glows in and out of view, turning pink, then blue, then shadow, as it watches us wander.

  I finally stop in a turn-off by a glacial lake. Huge, crystal clear, cold as death.

  “Is it Henna?” Jared finally asks.

  “It’s not Henna,” I say, into the dark. “Well, it is. But not just that. And not my parents either.”

  “Good, because I’m fine about that. The bad feeling between me and your mom is entirely mutual.”

  I stare out into the really amazingly dark night. There are more stars over my part of the world than anywhere else I’ve ever seen. “Four and a half weeks to go.”

  “Four and a half weeks,” Jared agrees. “Graduation.”

  He waits. I wait, too. After a long minute, I turn on the cabin light and hold up my hands to him. “What am I looking at?” he asks.

  I point to my fingertips. They’re wrinkled and cracked. “Eczema.”

  “And?”

  I turn off the cabin light. “I washed my hands seventeen times this morning after taking a piss before History.”

  Jared exhales a long, long time. “Dude.”

  I just swallow. It’s loud in the silence. “I think it’s starting again.”

  “It’s probably just the pressure of everything,” Jared offers. “Finals, your massively unrequited love for Henna–”

  “Don’t say unrequited.”

  “…your massively invisible love for Henna…”

  I hit him on the arm. It’s friendly. More silence.

  “What if I go crazy?” I finally whisper.

  I feel Jared shrug. “At least it’ll piss off the Senator.”

  We laugh. A little.

  “You won’t, Mikey,” he says. “And if you do, I’ll be there to pull you back.”

  Which makes me feel…

  Okay, look, Jared likes guys. We all know it, he’s told us, even though he’s never officially had a boyfriend (because who the hell is he going to meet out here who isn’t a creepy old farmer?) and he never really talks about it or what he gets up to on those weekend evenings when we know he’s not working, but still says he can’t come out with us. And fine, he and I have messed around a few times growing up together, even though I like girls, even though I like Henna, because a horny teenage boy would do it with a tree trunk if it offered at the right moment, but you’re going to have to hear this the right way when I tell you that I love exactly three people in the entire world, excluding whatever this is with Henna.

  Three people. Mel. Meredith. And the third person isn’t either of my parents.

  “You want to talk crazy?” Jared says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I know.”

  There’s so much crazy in this world, my counting and hand-washing and door-locking and checking and tapping can seem like raging mental health by comparison. Jared’s crazy is way crazier than mine, though I don’t think his makes him lie awake at night in bed, thinking it’d be easier if he was–

  You know.

  And if you don’t know, you don’t want to.

  “There’s a mountain lion out there,” Jared says, looking out his window.

  I sigh. “There’s always a mountain lion out there.”

  CHAPTER THE THIRD, in which indie kid Finn’s body is discovered; Satchel – who once dated Finn – asks Dylan and a second indie kid also called Finn to skip school and help her talk to her alcoholic uncle, who is the lead police officer investigating the death; meanwhile, the Messenger, inside a new Vessel, is already among them, preparing the way for the arrival of the Immortals.

  Our town is just like your town. Schools, family-themed restaurants, lots of cars. There’s a bunch of huge churches clustered together, trying to blend in with all the family-themed restaurants, because salvation is as easy as chicken wings, I guess. We’ve got fire stations with signs that tell you when burning season begins and ends. We’ve got sheriff’s offices with signs that tell you to Buckle Up. We’ve got a lumber yard with signs that tell you angry right-wing puns.
We’ve got RV lots, banks, a Walmart, a couple multiplexes.

  We’ve got trees. So many trees. Everything here used to be a forest, after all.

  And yeah, so fine, our part of town has more than its fair share of trees and less than its fair share of multiplexes, but don’t look down on us. It was just as bad here as it was for you when the indie kids were battling the undead in our neck of the woods (though that was just after I was born, so I only know about it from my Uncle Rick, who doesn’t get invited around very much any more). We had the same amount of heartache when a new round of indie kids exorcized the sorrow from all those soul-eating ghosts eight years later (that was the year they blew up the high school, a heretofore unknown part of the exorcism ritual, I guess). And don’t even get me started on when the indie kids fell in love with and then defeated all the vampires a few years back. Henna’s older brother Teemu got mixed up with them and pretty much vanished one day. They haven’t seen him since, though he writes the occasional email. Always at night.

  And we dream the same in my town as you probably do in a city. We yearn the same, wish the same. We’re just as screwed-up and brave and false and loyal and wrong and right as anyone else. And even if there’s no one in my family or my circle of friends who’s going to be the Chosen One or the Beacon of Peace or whatever the hell it’s going to be next time around, I reckon there are a lot more people like me than there are indie kids with unusual names and capital-D Destinies (though I’m being mean here; they’re often quite nice, the indie kids, just … they’ve got a clan and they’re sticking to it).

  Me, all I want to do is graduate. And have a last summer with my friends. And go away to college. And (more than) kiss Henna (more than) once. And then get on with finding out about the rest of my life.

  Don’t you?

  “Did you get in trouble?” Jared asks the next morning as we sit down in the back row of a Calculus class that he’s already got so much extra-credit in he could skip the final and still get an A.

  “Just the weekly lecture on how keeping a united family front is more important than usual in an election year, blah blah blah.” I glance at him. “You were mentioned.”

  He grins. “I bet.”

  The school bell goes as the classroom door opens a last time, and Nathan comes in.

  “Sorry,” he says, flashing a smile at Ms Johnson, the Calculus teacher. She’s this really smart, funny older lesbian so the smile totally shouldn’t work on her. Somehow it still does.

  I count out the four corners of my desk. Seven times.

  “Dude,” Jared whispers. “It’s just a guy. He’s not the Devil.”

  “Henna likes him.”

  “She said he was pretty. He is.”

  I stop counting.

  “Well, he is,” Jared shrugs. “Just calling the facts.”

  “Yeah, but why would you transfer into a new school five weeks before–”

  The intercom system crackles. Attention students, I guess, says our Principal. He’s French Canadian and no matter what he says, he always sounds like he’s dying of boredom. I have some troubling and sad news that some of you will have already seen on social media, no doubt. I am afraid that the body of one of our seniors, Finn Brinkman, was found this morning. There are, as yet, no leads to the cause of his death, but we urge all students to take extra care, to not travel alone, and to report anything suspicious to the authorities. Counselling is available in the office should you need it or something.

  Calculus has fallen silent. I turn to Jared. I know he’s thinking the same thing I’m thinking.

  “We should tell someone,” I say.

  “Yep,” he says. “Won’t do any good.”

  No. No, it probably won’t.

  “Well, that was a waste of a morning,” Mel says, as we gather for lunch. We’ve taken senior privilege and all piled into my car to go to the Mexican fast-food place around the hill next to the school, even though we’re lucky to have gotten a lunch break at all.

  We’d all met in the office and told the Vice Principal – who, like all Vice Principals, is genetically Nazi – what we’d seen. He eventually called one cop whose breath was as thick with booze as my father’s is in the evening. That cop proceeded to not believe a word we said about seeing Finn running through the Field, the glowing girl running after him, or the blue pillar of light that rose and then faded. He basically yelled at us for wasting his time.

  Okay, fine, so Finn’s body wasn’t found anywhere near there, but I just can’t believe the things that people won’t believe. Or the things people won’t even see. I was in the ninth grade when the vampires came. But even though people started dying, even though people disappeared and stayed gone, even though you could point at one and say, “That’s a vampire,” most people, most adults, still don’t believe it ever happened.

  What happens to you when you get older? Do you just forget everything from before you turned eighteen? Do you make yourself forget? I mean the cop was old enough to have been a teenager when the whole soul-eating ghost thing was happening, so did he just block it out of his mind? Did he talk himself into not believing it actually happened? Convince himself it was a virus, that the explosion at the old high school was a gas leak? Or is it that he thought what happened to him was so original, so life-changing and harrowing and amazing, that there’s no way he could ever imagine it happening to anyone else?

  It’s not every adult, I know, but still, we see a guy the day he dies and the half-drunk policeman in charge threatens to arrest us.

  Honestly. Adults. How do they live in the world?

  (Or maybe that is how they live in the world.)

  “I told you we shouldn’t bother,” Henna says, sitting next to me, thinking nothing of it. “When Teemu disappeared, the police did exactly nothing. Said he was old enough to make his own choices.”

  “At least you still hear from him,” Mel says, gently. “Once in a while.”

  Henna shakes her head, like that doesn’t help, which of course it doesn’t. “I think it’s why my mom and dad go on all these mission trips. Try to beat some of the darkness out of the world with their bare hands.”

  She makes this sound both impressive and a sad, sad waste of time. There’s also pity. They did lose their son. The Silvennoinens are as complicated as anyone else. More, if you count trying to say their last name out loud.

  I touch all of the pointed ends of the tortilla bowl they’ve fried to put my taco stuff in. There are twelve, just like on a clock, which is so pleasing, I only have to count it once. I glance over at Mel’s plate. She’s got some salad and some plain chicken, so that’s fine, and I heard her order a Diet Coke, also good. She hates having people watch her eat, though, so I make a point to look away, as do Henna and Jared.

  “I just hope whatever it is gets finished by graduation–” Jared says.

  “Weird about that dead kid, huh?” says a voice.

  Nathan’s standing there with a tray. And surprisingly, he looks genuinely spooked.

  “Hey,” Henna says, a little too brightly. “You want to join us?”

  Mel and Jared scoot up to make room, so now I’m sitting across from him. Hooray. “I don’t think we’ve really met,” he says to me. “Nathan.”

  “I know who you are,” I say, but I do shake his hand. I’m not that rude.

  “This guy who died, though,” he says, and his eyes are still slightly wide. “Did any of you know him?”

  “He was an indie kid,” Mel says, “so not really.”

  Nathan stares down at his enchilada for a second. Henna and Jared watch him, openly. Mel takes the opportunity to eat more of her chicken. I study Nathan, too. I can’t see what Henna likes at all. His hair’s that stupid forward swoosh-mess that looks like it’s eating his brain. His clothes are a kind of non-committal faded blue. His eyes are dark enough to be black and his earlobes, when he brushes his hair out of the way, are scarred from where he obviously once had sprocket earrings before having them sewn up again
.

  Idiot. Moron. I hate you.

  “So you’re from Tulsa?” Henna asks, and I start tucking into my lunch.

  “Yeah,” Nathan says, smiling faintly. “Before that, Portland. Before that, Fort Knox, Kentucky–”

  “Army dad?” Jared asks.

  “Army mom,” Nathan answers. “Dad stayed in Florida. Five postings ago.”

  “Must suck,” I say, trying to keep any heat out of my voice. “Moving to a new school five weeks before graduation.”

  He runs a hand through that mop of hair. “Little bit,” he says, meaning a lot. “And a kid dies my first week.” He glances around the table. “Not that that’s in any way suspicious.”

  He smiles. The others laugh. “But wow, though,” he says, more quietly. “I hope whatever it is this time isn’t too bad.”

  My phone buzzes, two seconds before Mel’s does, too. We both look.

  BOLTSOFFIREBOLTSOFFIREBOLTSOFFIRE!!!!! COMING TO FAIR!!!! I’LL DIE IF I CANT GO!!!! PLEASE CONVINCE MOM!!! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE!!!!!! Love, Meredith.

  “That can’t be right,” I say, showing the others the text. “Bolts of Fire? At our crappy little county fair?”

  “Yeah,” Henna says. “I saw it online somewhere. They’re coming for some little girl’s cancer last wish or something.”

  Nathan’s staring at us. “You guys aren’t … fans or anything?”

  “All right,” I say, later that night, putting extra slices of cheesy toast on a plate for the really, really fat family at table two. “He is pretty.”

  “And nice,” Jared says, dumping sprigs of parsley on our waiting orders. “And a little bit tragic.”

  “And new.” I heap the plates up on my tray. Jared does the same for his section. “I don’t stand a chance, do I?”

  “You’ve got the same chance you’ve always had, my friend,” he says, and disappears into his half of the restaurant. We work at Grillers, a steakhouse for cheap dates. The kind of place with all-you-can-eat shrimp, all-you-can-eat fries, and all-you-can-eat cheesy toast, which, to be fair, is really awesome cheesy toast. The restaurant’s so old it’s still split down the middle when one side was smoking and the other non. Now it’s all non, but we still divide the table service that way.