Personal Effects (6 page)

In my head, so much of that five-day hike last spring is a dying fire and darkness and T.J.’s voice. We talked for hours every night, but we didn’t talk about any of the important stuff, nothing that really mattered.

I was so freaking focused on hiking the Appalachian Trail. That’s all I wanted to talk about, what would happen when he came home, when we could go, how much fun it would be.

The week after he left, I bought the map.

In the desk lamp’s spotlight, I can see the holes where the pushpins used to be, a ghost trail marking a trek we’re never going to make.

I push the lamp so the circle of light doesn’t land on the map.

My phone plays Shauna’s ringtone. Even without her ringtone, I’d have known it was Shauna; she’s the only person who really gives a shit if I’m OK. Yeah, things have been weird between us, but she hasn’t cut and run yet.

I barely have the phone to my ear before she launches in: “How long did you have to wait for your dad?”

“A while. We haven’t been home that long.”

“Did he go postal?”

“Naw. Not really.”

“Suspended?”

“Yeah. Until next Tuesday.”

“But just suspended? Good. Then you can still take finals.”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“Don’t suppose anyone thought to get your head checked out?”

I laugh. “Sure. Twice. And then Dad took me for ice cream. Tomorrow we’re —”

“That’s what I thought, so I looked up some stuff online, and then I called Jenna. She was working, and the ER was hectic, but she talked me through the signs of danger.”

To have called her sister, Shauna must really be worried. They drive each other crazy. But at least Jenna’s one of the sisters who actually likes me.

“So, here we go. Do you feel . . . ?”

She’s relentless. Barking questions until I answer them, rattling off warning signs of imminent coma. On the plus side, having something to do calms her down. When I can’t take her fussing another minute, I cut her off.

“Shaun! Seriously, I’ll be fine.”

“You could have a concussion,” she says, like I’m a moron, or like I’m not actually attached to my head. “What am I saying! You absolutely have a concussion. Your head bounced off, like, three different hard surfaces, not including people’s fists. How do you know your brain isn’t getting all scrambled right now?”

“How would we tell?”

“Matt.” Obviously, humor’s not gonna work. “Be serious. Jenna said that if you have a concussion, you need to be checked every couple of hours. Who’s going to do that? You need to go to the hospital. I can come and get you right now.”

Fuck. Dad
will
go postal if she comes over here. “The nurse checked me out at school. If she thought I was in any danger, they’d have taken me to the hospital,” I say, hoping she’s buying it.

When she doesn’t respond, I go for diversion. “And how the hell do you know what my head hit?”

“Michael,” she says, her voice saying so much more.

Of course.

“I could come over and keep watch. Or we could call ahead and Jenna could —”

“You can’t come over here, and the only place I’m going is to sleep. Call me tomorrow.”

I don’t hang up fast enough, and she argues some more. She finally gives up, but with a very Shauna-like catch. “OK. Leave your phone on. I’m going to call you every two hours to make sure you haven’t slipped into a coma. And if you don’t answer —”

“Shaun . . .”

“Matt,” she mimics back. “If you don’t answer, I’m coming over there. Those are your choices. Hospital now or monitoring by telephone.”

“Every two hours? I think I’ll chance the coma.”

We go four more rounds, and then she hangs up halfway through my turn. The debate’s over. She always gets the last word.

Our old house on Mulberry Street was two doors down from the house Shauna still lives in. We played in the sprinkler on her front lawn. Rode bikes up and down the block. I never knocked before running in her back door.

When things were good, Mom made us grilled-cheese sandwiches and chocolate milk with bendy straws. Shauna always left her crusts, but she would nibble down to the very outer edge trying to get all the cheese. I would bend my straw back and forth like an accordion, making fart noises, just to make Shauna laugh. The first time I did it, by accident, she spewed milk out her nose.

“That’s enough of that,” Mom said, confiscating my straw.

I didn’t care, because Shauna was still laughing, despite the chocolate milk everywhere.

Mom wiped Shauna’s hands and face, pretending to be annoyed but laughing and shaking her head and finally tapping the end of Shauna’s nose with her finger.

“Thanks, Mrs. Foster.” Mom didn’t even hear her, because Shauna talked really softly when we were little, before we started school, at least when anyone else was around.

I heard T.J.’s cleats on the back porch, and so did Shauna. She stared at the door with big eyes, nibbling at her lip, waiting for him. She didn’t have any brothers, and she was kind of in awe of T.J., at least when T.J. wasn’t being mean.

“Eh! Cleats off,” Mom yelled before T.J. could get through the door. “I swear, if you track mud through here again, you’re going to be spending the afternoon —”

“Yeah, yeah,” T.J. said. He was thirteen and almost as tall as Mom. He leaned against the door frame, kicking his cleats off onto back the porch, grinning the whole time, like it was a game.

He thought he was so cool just because he was on the traveling baseball team with the older kids.

“Time to cut that hair,” Mom said, miming with her fingers and catching some of T.J.’s hair. He swatted her hand away, then ducked past her toward the fridge.

“Go wash up first.” Mom sighed, waving him down the hall.

On his way past, T.J. slimed my ear with his spit-wet finger.

“Quit it!” I yelled.

“Teddy!” Only Mom got to call him that. Even then, he’d have beat my ass if I called him Teddy. “Act your age, please.”

“Mo-om,” I whined, rubbing my ear.

“I know, bud,” she said, like she couldn’t do anything about T.J.’s wet willies.

Shauna rolled her head to her shoulder in sympathy, or maybe to protect her own ear.

T.J. slid into his chair next to me and swiped half my sandwich before I remembered to protect my plate. He took a huge bite while I shrieked. After he put it back, he grabbed my milk and pretended to drink it. I tried to grab it back, but I couldn’t reach far enough without jumping off my chair.

“Teddy, cut it out.” Mom plucked my favorite red plastic cup from his hand and put it back next to my plate. I pushed my ruined sandwich half onto the table.

“Mom,” I whined, already feeling the heat and tears hit my eyes, but trying not to cry in front of Shauna.

“I’ll make you another half,” she said, rubbing her hand over my head, trying to calm me down.

It was no fair. He always got away with stuff.

T.J. chugged some milk, then burped really loud. Shauna giggled.

I was so mad. I didn’t want her laughing at T.J. She was
my
friend. And he was being a jerk.

He nudged my leg with his foot and did it again — chugging more milk and burping. But this time, it was like we were playing together. I gulped down some milk, tucked my chin, and forced out the smallest burp.

“Nice!” T.J. said, high-fiving me. My hand stung from the too-hard slap.

“Lovely,” Mom said, shaking her head but smiling again.

And when Shauna laughed, it was for me.

It was the last good summer, and the last year T.J. played baseball.

That summer we practically lived in the kitchen, Mom and T.J. and me. Dad worked a lot, and sometimes he would go away for a few days if he had sites to inspect too far away to drive back and forth. When he was away, we planned parties just for us, and indoor picnics, or went to the lake until dark.

But even when Dad was around, a lot of the time Mom would make us our own dinner before Dad got home. We’d have breakfast for dinner, or tacos, hot dogs, or pizzas with faces out of the toppings, things that were more fun than the boring food Dad wanted. And we talked, and made up stories, and laughed. She had a great laugh. When she laughed. When things were good. Before it all went to hell.

Before that summer ended, things were different. Mom was different. Some days she wouldn’t even get out of bed.

Mom walked me into preschool that first day, but she started freaking out when it was time to leave, and Mrs. Gruber had to calm her down.

By Halloween Mrs. Gruber was picking me up most days and taking me to her house until Dad got home. Mom rallied around Christmas, but was all weird again by Valentine’s Day. In April, I came home one day and she was gone.

A few months after Mom left, we heard she was in Philadelphia, living in the basement of a church or something. An hour away, and it might as well have been the other side of the world.

When the police came to the door to tell Dad she was dead, Dad didn’t invite them in. If there was a funeral, no one told me.

Dad moved us to the new house a couple months after Mom died, four blocks from the old one. None of the pictures of Mom or her things came with us, not even the big picture of all four of us that had hung in the hall my whole life.

After we moved, Shauna didn’t come over as much, but we still spent more time together than apart on weekends — at least for a while. Then she found soccer, and a whole bunch of new friends, girl friends. Later, the guys who hung around her girl friends. One day I looked up and she had a boyfriend, and huge tits, and everything about her made me hard. But to her, I was still just her old friend Matt.

It’s been getting harder to ignore how hard she is to ignore. Sometimes it’s so stupid — she does something with her hand or mouth or laughs at a joke or, hell, sits too close, and I’m scrambling for cover. I have to remind myself not to stare.

She has soccer, and her other friends, her “girls’ nights,” and sometimes a party. Sometimes she goes on dates, and I sit home and try not to think about what she could be doing.

I have her calls and her texts, car rides to and from school, and a night or two a week when it’s just us — not to mention all my fantasy versions of her, who fill in when she’s off having a life.

And since November, we have all this new weirdness — mostly mine, I know — getting in the way. She’d been busy all fall, fitting me in, between everything and everyone else. I was pissed at her. Sometimes even at the fantasy versions of her. But when we heard, I couldn’t call her, couldn’t say it, and I’m not sure she’s ever going to forgive me for her having to hear that T.J. was dead from someone else.

Still, after T.J. died, she was right there, whenever I thought I’d lose it. But it got so that I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t tell her what I needed — too close to saying what I wanted, and I felt like shit for wanting anything when he was dead.

She spent one too many nights trying to carry a conversation by herself, then she pushed a little too hard and I said some stuff I can never take back, about how she’ll never understand. For a few weeks, we hardly talked at all. Things got better for a while, but not back to where we were. There’s only so much of her worried looks I can take, but at least now I bail before I can say something to make her go away for good.

Dad’s recliner creaks and groans overhead. I can track his bedtime routine by the sounds. Slow steps to the kitchen. The water runs as he washes his glass. After the water, he checks the back door — open, close, lock. Lights off. Then down the hall and up the stairs, the sound of the creaky second step, and a few minutes later he flushes the toilet and water flows through the pipes. Walking down the hall, into his room, probably dropping his watch and wallet on the bureau, tossing his clothes in the hamper. Then the squeaking bedsprings. Every night — at least the nights when he makes it upstairs — it’s the same routine. Once he’s snoring away, he’s out until morning, barring something really, really loud — like a train through the living room.

I creep up the stairs and stand in the open door to the kitchen, listening for the bedsprings. Back downstairs, I slide under the covers. Shauna will be calling in less than two hours.

And yet, for ten minutes I lie there awake, thinking.

All that’s left of T.J. is in that bag.

No way Dad would just throw away the flag from T.J.’s coffin. Wherever it is, the bag has to be there, too.

I’m not giving up.

I won’t give up until I find it. Or until there’s nowhere else to look.

Yeah, I’ve already looked everywhere. Time to look harder. Time to start emptying boxes, moving furniture, banging on walls, and pulling up floorboards.

I can snoop around the downstairs and out back in the shed or garage whenever.

But I’ll take a look at Dad’s book, see where he’s scheduled to be the rest of the week. Whatever day he’s farthest away, I’ll tackle the upstairs again. Less chance he’ll stop home and catch me.

Better wait until Thursday or Friday, at least. Maybe then I’ll have healed enough I can outrun him if I get caught.

A
S THREATENED
, S
HAUNA CALLS EVERY COUPLE HOURS FOR
all of Monday night into Tuesday morning, well past the time when it’s clear I’m not gonna slip into a coma. Eventually, I threaten to turn off my phone if she keeps it up, and she finally stops.