She nodded her head silently to the demons taking tea with her on the sofa. I pushed back out to the porch and slumped next to Pops in the extra wicker chair.
The night was so still we could hear the movement of breath from the living room—every intake a reminder of what I had done; every exhale a calling of my guilt.
Pops leaned forward so his elbows rested on a shelf of knees. “How are you doing?”
“Good.” A moth dive-bombed my face; I backhanded it. “Good.” I stared at the gray outline of the fence at the hem of the yard.
Pops’ sideways gaze stayed on me.
“Doing okay,” I said and picked at my fingernails, which still had lines of black ash under the edges. “Everything’s pretty good right now.”
“Hmmm. I would have thought everything would be pretty crappy right now.” He brought both lips into his mouth so that the upper and lower were like a set of bank-rolled dimes. “Cause I’m feeling pretty crappy. It’s been an awful two months, and my crappy could use some company.”
I looked up. His eyes glistened.
“Yeah. It’s pretty crappy,” I admitted.
“And being stuck in this left-for-dead town with ancient me doesn’t make for better prospects.”
I smiled slightly, then shrugged.
“If you want, maybe we can bring that friend of yours out for a visit; Trevor what’s his name.”
“We’re not really friends anymore.”
“Why not? I thought he was your best friend.”
I shrugged again. “He just got all weird.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno, you know. Just went weird after Josh. They all did. Like I had some kind of disease or something.” I picked at the tail end of a wicker thread, tried to scratch the paint off with my fingernail. “I think it was cause of Mom, not Josh. What happened at the mall and the crying and stuff.”
“Friends can sometimes disappoint.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, when I was about your age I was handed a real turd sandwich. After my father was killed, we were left struggling. But I found a place I could go that would help me forget, at least for a while.”
“Where was that?”
“Black Hill Cove, Balnibarbi, Kukuanaland.”
“What? Where are they? Was this when you were in the navy?”
“Nope.”
“Where are they, then?”
He tapped his temple.
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ll show you.” He stood and went inside. He emerged a moment later with a tattered brown book, two pirates on the cover—cutlass ready, pistols crossed.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Read it, I imagine.”
I smirked. “It’s just some old book. Don’t you have…?”
Pops put his hand up to quiet me and pushed the scuffed copy of Treasure Island across the wicker coffee table. “Give Jim Hawkins a chance. I suspect he’ll be a better friend than Trevor what’s his name.”