“I guess not. There’s no point, really.”
She pauses and turns to regard me with a thoughtfully cocked eyebrow. In my entire life, I have never noticed a person’s eyebrows so much. I am only vaguely aware of my own, the sketch of light brown arches over darker brown eyes. But Aneesa’s eyebrows already obsess me. They are shape-shifting punctuation for her speech, altering as necessary.
“No point,” she repeats. “Yeah, that’s true. It’s not like our parents are going to suddenly decide to have another kid at this point, right?”
“Right.”
“I never thought of it that way before. Why do I even worry about it, then? It’s a moot point.” She grins at me with satisfaction, with a lazy sort of joy, the kind of happiness that comes from slaying not a dragon, but rather a worrisome newt.
I grin back reflexively. Life is so much easier when you just give people what they expect.
When we started out on our trek together, I had a sort of blurry and indistinct goal in the back of my mind. Only partly out of conscious motivation, I was guiding us toward the old trailer. Some part of me conjured us watching it together from the cover of the trees. I wouldn’t tell her what waited for me there in the future; I wouldn’t tell her how my fate lurked there, patient and complacent, not needing to stalk or hunt me down, for I would come to it of my own inevitable compulsion.
I would tell her none of this, but somehow the sheer romance of the place would seep into her, and maybe I would find the strength of will to take her hand firmly, to take it like I meant it, not tentatively. And maybe I would even kiss her. A thought I’d never had before about any other girl, one that surprised and scared me and beckoned.
But in the still-bright evening sunlight, I can only hear her saying kill them and that overrides everything.
I find an excuse to turn us around and head home.
I had plans for the summer. Not the sort of plans Mom wants me to have, but plans nonetheless.
There were gaps in those plans—one big one in particular—but summer is long and I am a teenage boy with idle time. I would have worked around the gaps.
Every night for almost as long as I can remember, I go to bed and I ask the voice in my head, Is it time yet? And every time, the voice says, No. Not yet.
But then one day after spring break, Evan told me he was doing Young Leaders Camp, and a full, empty summer unfurled before me, and that night, the voice did not say No. That night, the voice said, Almost. Be ready.
And then…
And then Aneesa.
Aneesa.
Mom has the air-conditioning off to save money. At Evan’s house, the AC runs full-blast, 24/7, from mid-May to mid-September.
A breeze cooler than the still air of my bedroom threads its way through my curtains, gently elbowing them aside to waft up my bare legs as I lie in bed atop the sheets.
Tonight, I am afraid to ask the voice.
I am afraid of what it will say.
I am afraid to hear Yes and I am afraid to hear No.
I’m not afraid to die. Not even by my own hand.
There’s an old song that says, “Suicide is painless.” I’m not foolish enough to believe that’s always the case, but I do know this: Suicide ends pain.
The only question is: How badly do you want to end the pain?
How badly do you need to?
I don’t know yet. I don’t have the answer. But the question always echoes, most loudly when I’m alone. I suppose some people might find that sort of psychic hectoring difficult or onerous, but I don’t mind it. See, I’m in control. My future and my fate are in my hands, no one else’s. I can do it or I can not. I can do it now or put it off indefinitely.
That’s not scary. It’s comforting.
Sometimes, it’s the only comfort I have.
Not always, though.
The first Saturday after the end of each school year, I spend the night at Evan’s. It’s been this way since time immemorial, or at least the past five years. We term this day The Summer Kick-Off Extravaganza! and mark the auspicious occasion by staying up all night watching old movies and concocting ever-more-disgusting arrays of junk food in juxtapositions never intended by God or Frito-Lay. One year, we dipped Cheetos in vanilla ice cream, then chased it with a hearty brew of every soft drink we could find in the house, mixed together with cherry juice and iced tea. Our flatulence that night and into the next day was truly epic to behold.
For the first few years, visiting Evan’s house was like Lucy parting the furs in the wardrobe to behold the snow-filled, lamppost-lit vistas of Narnia. The sprawling manse is too small to be a mansion by any precise definition. But not by much.
Marble floors through the first level, striped with thick, densely patterned rugs. Rich mahogany handrails and accents throughout. A crystalline chandelier overhead in the foyer… and another in the dining room… and another in the great room.
(There is nothing as prosaic as a “living room” in Evan’s house. Mere living is for lesser mortals.)
The kitchen is three times the size of mine, with two ovens, a six-burner range with a built-in grill, and a range hood that has the suction power of a jet turbine. The fridge, camouflaged into the cabinetry, measures twice as wide as my own, to say nothing of the separate, subzero freezer.
Upstairs, I’ve only glimpsed the rooms other than Evan’s. His brother’s room. His father’s home office. His mother’s auxiliary closet. And I’ve never been to the very top floor, reserved for his parents, with their own sitting room and TV room and a bathroom that—according to Evan—has “two of everything.”
Evan’s room has an attached bathroom and a walk-in closet big enough for a desk and a TV.
Everything is connected, controlled by touchscreens throughout the house. Intercoms and cameras. Everything has a place and everything is in that place, not like in my house, where Mom can never decide exactly where to keep the potted spider plant or which drawer she wants to use for the big serving spoons.
Narnia. You push aside the coats and the cold air hits you and you see the soft, welcoming glow of the lamppost and you know you are far away and that at the same time you are somehow home.
That was in years past.
More recently, I’ve felt as though Evan’s house is a museum, not a fantasyland. I’ve become aware of the way his mother in particular watches me whenever I’m near her. Not as though I’m a thief about to pocket the silver, but rather as though some invisible, malodorous filth clings to me and could drop off and befoul her carpets or her spotless marble floor forever.
Sometimes I wonder: Why can’t they just see me, not the kid who killed? But then I wonder: Is it because the two are the same?
It’s bad enough to feel like an outsider. Even worse is when I wonder: Is this new behavior, or has she been like this all along and I just never noticed?
What have I been missing?