Everything Breaks (8 page)

I couldn't think about any of this. It was all I could do to block the pain of my legs enough to slowly climb the stairs to my room, leaning hard on the banister. I dropped my jacket and tie on the floor and fell face forward across my bed, where I lay the rest of the afternoon listening to the tiny chattering of Trey's rock there on the windowsill. I remember it starting to get dark. Then I guess I fell asleep.

• • •

I woke up the next morning still in my funeral clothes, though my shoes were off and a blanket had been thrown over me. I felt a small pain where Bud's keys were grinding into my leg near my right hip bone. I rolled onto my back and pulled out that key fob.

I held it up and stared at it. Bud was expecting me to drive him to the license office this afternoon, but I just
couldn't
any more than I could sprout wings and fly. I couldn't drive anyone anywhere ever again, that was just a fact of life.

I dug a wadded candy bar wrapper from under my bed and wrote a single word on it, then added another word.
Can't. Sorry.

I went quietly down the stairs with my boots tucked under my arm, feeling every inch like the coward I was. I dropped Bud's key fob and my two-word note on the table by his La-Z-Boy as I left, trying not to think how he would feel when he saw them.

The damp wind pushed my hair across my face as I slunk along. My hair had that nothing smell of the funeral home. The rest of me smelled like sweaty, slept-in clothes and jeans that were going rank with dry and not-so-dry blood from the backs of my legs.

I got to the school at least an hour early, maybe two hours, but the night custodians were there and one of the side doors was propped open with a cleaning bucket. I slipped inside and wandered around.

Without people the school had a metallic, spaceship feel. It also hummed, and I noticed there was a slight, mysterious vibration coming up from under the floors. It could have been the heating system, but then again, it could have been anything.

I eventually found myself standing in front of Zero and Steve's side-by-side lockers. They both had shiny new combination locks on them that hadn't been there before. Steve's old lock had been busted, and Zero had recently been using his to chain his skateboard to the school bike rack. What were these new locks supposed to be for?

Possibly to protect their stuff till somebody could take it home. But more likely the police were planning on dragging Clyde the drug dog out here in hopes of sniffing out something illegal that had caused the wreck to happen. It seemed like the police would assume that druggies with stuff hidden inside their lockers would be careful to have locks, but what did I know about it? Nothing. I knew nothing about that or much of anything else.

Too much thinking was making my head hurt, so I walked on to Trey's locker, which is next to my own. It also had a new combination lock on it. I couldn't even remember Trey's last lock since for so long he'd preferred the risk of having stuff stolen to the work of remembering his combination. I sat on the floor with my back against the cold green metal and imagined how Trey's brown leather jacket was probably still under the multiple layers of mess in the bottom of this locker, the arms shaped like Trey's arms from the great age of the thing and its general grungy stiffness.

Hey down there, Tucker Graysten, you innocent wonder, you . . .

I felt sick each time I remembered the way Trey had sounded when he'd dropped that quick sentence into my hoop house dream, his sarcastic tone of voice. I bumped my head back hard against his locker, then again, this time harder.

And then I heard the squeak of distant tennis shoes on floor tile and turned my head to
see
Trey rounding the corner by the principal's office and coming in my direction. I wasn't even all that surprised. He was coming to get me, picking me up so we could go together to wherever it was he
had
to go. I'd be going along for the ride, I got that. I deserved to be where they were, so I stood, resisting the urge to run as he came closer and closer through the glaring path the fluorescent lights cut down the center of the windowless, shadow-shrouded gloom of the locker hall. Calm down,
breathe
!

“Trey, I'd give my life in a second, I
would,
if I could just try again to . . .”

Trey's brother shrugged off his backpack and called, “Try again to what, dude?” He laughed a sharp laugh. “Hey, Tucker, get ahold of yourself!”

He shoved his long red hair behind his ears and jogged toward me the last twenty or so feet. “I'm
Aidan,
dude! See? Not Trey. Aidan!”

I nodded and then couldn't remember how to stop nodding.

Aidan grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back against Trey's locker, pinning me there until I could get myself together enough for my legs to hold me.

“I'm fine,” I whispered, staring at the floor.

“Yeah,
that's
clear.” Aidan snickered and let me go. “That was clear at the funeral yesterday and it's clear by how you're acting right now. In my opinion you're pretty messed up, dude. Maybe you need more sleep or a girlfriend or something.”

He said all this lightly, in the same slightly condescending way he'd always talked to Trey's friends, then he motioned with a waggle of his fingers for me to step aside so he could explore Trey's new lock. “Who put this thing on here, anyhow?”

I rubbed my neck. “I'm thinking maybe the police.”

Aidan let go of the lock and stood up from his crouch, frowning. “Listen, where's my ID? I figure it might be in this locker of Trey's, huh? I can't get into the library or a bunch of other places on campus without it.”

I murmured, “I think Trey . . . had it with him. Yeah, I know he did.”

“Had it with him?” It took Aidan a few seconds to figure that out, then he gave a nod, followed by a grimace. “It's gonna suck, trying to get another one. They got all kinds of security stuff you have to go through.”

I stared at him and didn't say anything. He looked so much like Trey it was incredible. But there was also something the opposite of Trey about Aidan.

It was in the eyes, maybe. Aidan's eyes had not met mine this whole time. Even when he'd had me backed against the locker his eyes had been roaming around, scoping things out.

“Did you . . .” I stopped and swallowed. “Aidan, did you give Trey your ID?”

Aidan was looking up and down the hallway. “This place is exactly the same as three years ago.” He snorted and shook his head. “When? Give him my ID when, last weekend? Wow, even those same old posters outside the music room. I kinda liked the one with a dagger through a phone. Turn your phone off in the theater performances, get it?”

It
was
in the eyes. Trey's eyes settled on you and stayed there. Aidan's were always sliding across things and never seemed to stick anywhere. Never penetrated anything.

“Not
just
last weekend,” I pushed out. “I know he used it nearly every weekend that you didn't have to have it yourself, but I just wondered, did you always
give
it to him, or was he sneaking it out of your wallet without your permission?”

Aidan looked insulted. “Hey, you think I'm so stupid he could sneak it out of my wallet? Sure I gave it to him when I didn't need it. Why not?”

We were both startled by the clatter of the first bell, followed immediately by the usual raucous morning stampede of the junior horde on its way to our locker hallway.

Aidan grabbed me in a headlock, then released me and hustled away. “You get your act together before you hurt yourself!” he called back over his shoulder.

I stood swaying, dizzy. Trey had talked about his little sister, but hardly ever about Aidan. Last year, Aidan stole Trey's prized comic book collection and sold it back to him for a nickel a copy, tearing up a few of Trey's favorite copies first to show him what would happen if he didn't pay up.

“Why would he
do
that?” Steve had exploded in outrage. Aidan's selfishness had completely offended his hard-wired Southern sense of honor. “He took a thing that you really cared about, and he couldn't even have made much ransom money from it!”

Trey just shrugged and said, “He's Aidan. That's how he rolls.”

Now, I understood what Trey had meant by that. And for a second or two there in the hall, I even longed to be
like
Aidan. If he ever got soul tattoos they evidently washed off right away, like the cheap temporary tats they sometimes put on your wrist when you pay admission to a game.

VIII

I GOT MY STUFF
from my own lock
er then and followed my throbbing legs to my classes. Or maybe I just kept wandering around the school like before. Or maybe I chatted with the aliens in the basement, the crew of the secret spaceship the school actually was. Maybe I spent the day in the library. Or in the gym, running laps. No, not that, not with my legs burning up a storm like they were.

I can't honestly remember much about that day except that I had a vague impression of people avoiding me. This would be partly because of what happened at the funeral and mostly because of Aimee's subsequent interpretation of those events, which was probably everybody's interpretation by now.

Also maybe my hygiene, my unwashed hair, those rank jeans. Anyhow, it's all hazy, except for last period, which was Mrs. Beetlebaum's class, Ancient History.

Mrs. Beetlebaum's room is a world unto itself. It smells like very old papery dust. There are probably more books in her history room than in the school library, floor-to-ceiling books, all of them belonging to Mrs. Beetlebaum herself.

Mrs. Beetlebaum is probably nearly as old as Bud, much older than the other teachers. She wears black old-lady shoes and she stands in front of her classes each day with her heels together and her toes pointed out. She always folds her blue-veined hands on her stomach when she gets ready to tell a story, and telling stories from the ancient past is a thing she does a lot. She would be easy to mock, but nobody much does. The stories are exciting and she tells them very well.

We were studying ancient Greece. She'd been telling us stories from the Trojan War complete with lots of gory details, whose lifeless bodies were drug by horses around the Trojan city walls, what wild predictions this out-of-control girl named Cassandra kept making, that kind of thing.

But that day, Mrs. Beetlebaum took her place at the front of the room wearing the black shawl she usually has hanging over the back of her desk chair. She had released her long gray hair from its usual tight bun at the nape of her neck, a thing we'd never seen her do before. And everybody instantly quieted down as she slowly raised the shawl from her shoulders, shook back her hair, then covered it completely with that shawl, an ancient sign of mourning we'd studied in this very class.

She was obviously about to begin some sad story or poem in tribute to Trey and Steve and Zero. A couple of girls sniffled ostentatiously, probably wishing
they'd
thought of something as dramatic as that when the funeral-look plans were being made.

And then Mrs. Beetlebaum began reading us this long Greek poem about death and stuff. In it, this supernatural guy, some sort of god or something, was steering a boatload of dead guys across the river Acheron to the realm of Hades, god of the underworld. That was this guy's job, to ferry people from the land of the living to the land of the dead. This particular trip, the one in the poem, this ferryman guy was taking these young dead war heroes to the best of places, kind of the country club of the underworld, a place called the Elysian fields, where they'd always be young and cool and strong, et cetera.

I could have listened to that poem forever, it was that soothing. Not because Steve and Zero and Trey were heroes. But because it was so natural to think of them in a boat like that. The four of us used to borrow Zero's uncle's speedboat sometimes or rent Jet Skis for the afternoon to use on the lake. The poem said the boat was black, which seemed like a huge coincidence since Zero's uncle's boat had also been black.

When she'd finished reading, Mrs. Beetlebaum propped the open book against the bulletin board and took a strange coin from the pocket of her skirt.

“An obolus,” she told us, displaying it between her thumb and index finger. “A coin placed in the mouth of the newly dead. It was the price of passage from the land of the living to the land of the dead, payment for the ferryman across the river Acheron.”

I couldn't get that boat out of my mind. The book she'd been reading from was illustrated, and by leaning far forward I could make out some details of the pictures. The ferryman from the poem was black-bearded and very ugly, but his boat was pretty cool and looked in some additional ways like Zero's uncle's speedboat. Both were simple but sleek and shiny. You could see a slight resemblance to Steve in the hero in the far back of the boat, something about the moony longing in his eyes, like he felt homesick. You could also see a little of the shore where the boat would soon dock, and . . .

My blood suddenly felt all sharp and icy in my veins.

When the bell rang, everybody stampeded, but I stayed where I was until Mrs. Beetlebaum and I were alone in the room. She watched me, slowly shaking her head.

“You look absolutely dreadful,” she told me solemnly. “But then I suppose you should. Those three boys were your great friends, am I right?”

I pushed myself up from my desk and walked stiffly to her book. “Mrs. Beetlebaum? Is . . . is that a dog in the picture there?”

She turned to the bulletin board. “Cerberus,” she told me, picking up the book and holding it open between us. “Guardian of Hades, charged with letting no spirit escape the underworld.”

I stared at that large black dog. “But it . . . has three heads.”

“Yes, Cerberus is usually depicted with three heads.” She shut the book and put it down on her desk, then opened a drawer and took out a small framed photograph. She sighed, then handed it to me. “My husband, taken the summer before he died.”

The picture was old, black and white. The man in it was pretty young, probably in his thirties or early forties. About Janet's age, I would guess. He was in his swimming trunks, standing on a sandy beach, the kind they have in Florida or California, with palm trees in the background. Something about the way he was grinning made me think Mrs. Beetlebaum as her much younger self must have taken the picture.

I handed it back to her. Since I had no idea what to say, I said nothing.

“It was a mere five weeks from the diagnosis of cancer to his death. I wanted to follow him. I thought if I was stalwart enough to follow him, I could take his hand and bring him back up to the light with me. Others, overwhelmed by death's finality, have tried in one way or another to do the same thing. There are stories of Greek heroes who braved the underworld, seeking a lost father or wife or friend. But not a single one of them, not Aeneas or Orpheus or even Odysseus, was able to clutch a hand long enough to lead a loved one back to the world of the living. It's just a . . . a dream, really.”

She put the photo back into the drawer, then she lifted my hand and put the strange coin she'd showed the class onto my palm. She closed my fingers over it.

“Take it. Keep it in your pocket.” She looked me in the eye with the most amazing sorrow on her face. “Tucker, do you understand me? I have stood where you stand now. I won't try to explain, not right now, but there may soon come a time when you'll want with all your heart to give it up. The coin, that is. But don't. Remember what I'm telling you right here, right now, and . . .
don't.
”

Take it. Don't give it up. Take, give, give, take.

My ears were ringing. I concentrated on the red pain in my legs.

“Okay, thanks, Mrs. Beetlebaum.” I let my legs move me toward the door.

“Tucker, that coin is still in your hand! Put it in your pocket and
keep
it there!”

“Right. Sorry.” I put the coin into my pocket, where I felt it bump against Trey's cheap green lighter. I moved it to my back pocket, gave it a space of its own.

I turned once more to Mrs. Beetlebaum and she gave me a grim nod.

My legs led me down the hall. When I got to Trey's locker, I sagged forward and pushed my forehead hard against the three sharp air vents at the top. I closed my eyes.

Take, give. I took a beer, took another beer, Zero gave me a third, but I was the one to take it.
Yeah, man, take the wheel so I can do this thing . . . take, take, take the wheel. . . .

I pushed back, then bounced my forehead once, hard, against Trey's vents, so hard that bright pain bloomed across my bones up there and I felt something begin a slow slide down both sides of my nose. I put my hand to my face and my fingers came away smeared red. I wiped my forehead and found a bigger smear of red on my palm.

I stood there with my bloody hand held out like an artist's tool, staring at the green slate of the locker. What could I say, what message to Trey?
Later, man,
I finally wrote. Most of the letters were already dripping out of recognition as I followed my legs out of the building, along the sidewalk, et cetera, et cetera, until I reached our neighborhood.

• • •

Our house looked strange when I got close. At first I couldn't figure out why, and then I realized that the garage door was open for the first time I could remember. It made a dark square, like a missing tooth, and Bud's old car was gone from inside it.

I quit walking and stood there squinting, trying to focus, trying to figure out what that empty garage meant. A feeling of dread had started in my stomach and was working its way through me, but still, I didn't understand what was going on, why the car was gone.

“Tucker! Over here, Tuck! We need to talk to you!”

I wheeled and saw Mrs. Brandywine giving me wide-armed waves from across the street and down the block a few houses. Mr. Brandywine was with her, squatting to look closely at something on the ground in their yard.

When I reached them, Mrs. Brandywine put her hands to her face and whispered, “Oh, Tuck, have you been in a fight at school? Or an accident? Oh, you poor thing!”

My face, the blood. “It's nothing. Just fell in some gravel at track today.” I didn't meet her eyes, just kept my own eyes on the muddy furrow Mr. Brandywine was inspecting. A strip of orange flowers had been pulverized by a gigantic tire. Bright bits of flower decorated the deep and muddy tire track like rhinestones.

“Tucker, I was gardening and your grandfather, well, he drove over some of our nasturtiums,” Mrs. Brandywine explained. “Is he supposed to be, well . . . driving?”

There was a black mark on their curb near the driveway and another mark on the curb maybe twenty feet along where Bud had finally bounced the big Olds out of their yard and back to the street.

“At the corner he turned right onto Maple,” Mr. Brandywine said, still glaring at the mess that had been their flowers. He stood up and shook his head, muttering, “There're kids playing in their yards this time of day.” He looked at me over the tops of his glasses as seriously as anybody has ever looked at me, so seriously that it cut through most of the sludge clogging my brain. “You better find the old guy before he kills somebody.”

I took off at a run. By the time I reached Maple and turned right, the throbbing in my legs had become synchronized to my pace. It made sense that Bud would turn right onto Maple because it was the way to the driver's license office, the place he'd wanted me to take him so he could retake his eye test. And it turned out he'd left a sort of trail I could follow. In the first block I saw that two aluminum trash cans were off their concrete pads and rolling around in the culvert. A mailbox on the next block had been given a passing blow and was bent forward with its door hanging down like a tongue.

And then I came to this yellow-shingled house that's sort of a landmark in town because it has three life-sized plastic deer grazing in the yard. There were tire tracks up over the curb and through the grass, like at the Brandywines', and all three of those deer were on their backs with their plastic legs sticking straight up into the air.

“Oh man, Bud, those deer were a good six feet off the road!” I whispered.

I guess that's when Mr. Brandywine's horrifying comment became completely real to me. If Bud could take out three fake deer, couldn't he just as easily run into a
person
? Especially a
small
person or group of people too flaky to pay attention to traffic?

In a couple more blocks there was a place in the road where these wild little kids always have an afternoon game of street soccer going. I pushed my run to an all-out sprint, hoping against hope those kids had been called inside, like because one of them was having an inside birthday party or like because there had been some satellite malfunction that canceled the soap operas Janet said their parents watched all afternoon and the kids had therefore been let into their houses earlier than usual and forced to clean their rooms or something.

But all that hoping didn't work, and just as I reached that block, a pack of those soccer kids came scrambling right toward me, huge-eyed and scared-looking.

“What
happened
?” I called to them, panic cracking my voice.

“We need a grown-up!” one of them yelled as they surrounded me, grabbing my hands and my belt loops and pulling me back the way they'd come. “A car is in a yard!”

“Don't tell my mom!” one of them added, I guess to be on the safe side.

“Was anybody hurt, any of you kids?” I asked as I ran with them.

“We
never
get hurt!” one of them called up to me while a couple of his friends slugged the air belligerently to demonstrate.

I felt a surge of relief so powerful I nearly tripped over my own feet.

Then one of the others added, “The guy inside the car looks probably dead, though.”

The huge boat of an Oldsmobile turned out to be parked in the middle of someone's weirdly landscaped rock garden. The car's front fender had actually come to rest on the pointed heads of a dozen or so concrete trolls. For a few crazy seconds I thought Snow White's dwarfs were trying to steal Bud's tires.

“We got a grown-up!” one of the kids with me yelled, and the other soccer kids popped up from where they'd been sitting clumped under a basketball hoop hung over a garage door across the street.