Lead-Up: Practicing the beginning portion of a difficult dive before attempting the full dive.
I TAKE my morning Adderall with a glass of juice, then stuff the last piece of crispy bacon into my mouth with a grin aimed at Mrs. Langford.
“You better hurry,” she says, handing me my letterman’s jacket. “Before he—”
Chip blasts his horn and we cringe. I’ve told him a million times it sounds like a mutant duck being—
Hooonk.
“Jeezus.”
He never listens.
I slide into my jacket and head outside where Chip’s white Dodge Dart sits in the driveway shaking like it’s terrified. It should be. Chip is by far the crappiest driver I know. The guy may be my best friend, but I only ride with him when I have to, or it makes more sense to carpool.
Chip cranks the passenger window down by hand. “Let’s go, genius. This is what you get for letting Bumblebee die.”
Case in point. I left the lights on in my truck yesterday, killing the battery. After surviving an intense practice we were both too tired and hungry to stick around and jump-start the engine.
I slide into the passenger seat and buckle the narrow, vintage seat belt.
“Hey, you think roadside assistance will update Bumblebee’s voice box when they come give you a jump? Get some new tunes going in that bad boy.” Chip does the robot in his seat and I can’t help but laugh. He’ll never let me live that joke down.
When the last Transformers movie came out, he made some wisecrack about my FJ Cruiser that got a huge uproar of laughter from the team. Now it’s his standard dig. He used to call my truck Velveeta. If he’s going to riff, I’ll take Transformer over processed cheese any day. Plus, deep down, Chip knows my truck represents: Monarch orange, Bose stereo, four-wheel drive. My last gift from Dad before he died because he didn’t want me driving his car. He would have been safer in mine.
“For all the shit you give me about my truck, you didn’t seem to mind when Amy Sloan thought Bumblebee was yours. In fact, I specifically recall you leaning against the door with serious pride of ownership.”
“Didn’t matter, though. Did it, numbnuts? Amy liked my Dart’s black racing stripes and I scored anyway.”
He waggles his heavy eyebrows and jerks the Dart’s long shifter into reverse with a thunk, backing out of the driveway without looking. I hold my breath as we roll over the curb and bump the recycling bin into the street. At least he didn’t overcut his wheel and take out the mailbox. Again.
“Do me a favor,” I say, checking my watch. “Take Quarry Road to Mount Pleasant the long way.”
Chip stomps the brake pedal and I jerk forward. “Mom said I should take you to the south side of the cemetery.”
“I’ll stop by there after school on my own. Otherwise it’ll mess with my head. If you take Mount Pleasant Road to Whiptail Loop we’ll still drive past the south side and you won’t be lying if she asks. Not technically.”
“Whiptail Loop again?” He shakes his head. “How many times do we have to go over this, bro? It’s talking not stalking that’ll get you what you want with that girl.”
“I know. Just drive. I’m trying to sort something out.”
“Something cruising by Iris’s house will solve?”
“Maybe.”
“All right. It’s your funeral.”
“Theoretically, it’s my dad’s.”
Chip’s eyes widen slowly. “Shit. I didn’t mean—I wasn’t thinking.”
“I know,” I say. “Gotcha, though.”
“Dick.”
Chip hits the gas, spinning the Dart’s tires against the wet asphalt, and I shift in the seat and stare through the passenger window, watching patches of yellow and green trees zip past.
A few weeks ago, Iris caught my eye at the quarry. Not for the first time. And not the way other girls have by sprawling themselves on the large, flat rocks in bikinis, loud talking to grab everyone’s attention. Iris was standing at the edge of the second highest cliff wearing a yellow one-piece as blinding as the sun. But her quietness and one-piece swimsuit weren’t the only things that set her apart from the other girls at the quarry. At first, I thought she was just taking in the view of the nearby dam, because she turned and walked away, leaving me gaping at the empty place where she’d stood. I didn’t expect her to come rushing off the cliff’s edge a moment later, her dark hair rising above her like a raven taking flight. I felt so many things at once. Awe. Admiration. Seeing that sent me over the edge alongside her. A complete goner. I jumped into the water in two seconds flat to see the look on her face when she surfaced. Making that plunge the best decisions of my summer.
Cruising by her house isn’t about stalking, no matter what Chip says. I’m working on my lead-up. That’s what divers do. We practice portions of dives to build up to the ones we plan to attempt later. I can’t just chuck this one.
“You okay?” Chip asks. “You went stone quiet.”
“I was just thinking about the quarry.” I turn partway in my seat. “Don’t you think it’s kinda weird Malone made Iris and me partners?”
“Don’t forget Les. You know how he loves to help.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“It’s kind of good, though, right?” Chip says. “Her mom died in a car accident. Your dad died in a car accident. You two can relate to each other.”
“Death is kind of a shitty thing to have in common.”
“True. But it’s not nothing.”
That’s debatable.
If I hadn’t already been through my mom’s death a few years ago, my reaction to Dad’s probably would have been more noticeable at school. I definitely got quieter around people the second time around, but I kept doing what was expected of me. Even if that meant listening, if not exactly following, whatever crazy shit GP dictated about who and what he deemed off-limits.
When Iris got back to school after her mom died, she went from the most outspoken girl in any of my classes to this empty shell of her former self, walking the halls hugging books like a ghost.
Seeing her jump from the cliff this summer blew my mind because I knew her pain. I also know what it takes to make that jump. And believe me, it takes next-level guts.
“So according to your dumb logic, Malone set me up with the perfect take-off position. All I have to do is feel her out.”
“Now you’re talking,” Chip says. “Feel her out. Or up. Gotta start loading the bases sometime.”
“Easy for you to say. Amy’s a swimmer. Trying to date outside of our circle takes a different skill level. I’m telling you, the whole thing is weird.”
“What’s weird is watching you make goo-goo eyes at her in class with your thumb up your ass,” Chip says. “If you ask me, Malone did you a favor.”
Some favor.
Talking about my family with Iris will be hard enough, given our similar histories. But rehashing my parents’ deaths with someone on my team would be a huge step backward from the Theo I’ve worked so hard to become.
Chip cranks the radio and starts singing along with that Rolling Stones song about how you can’t always get what you want.
Subtle, Chip. Real subtle.
He semi-speeds toward the turn for Mount Pleasant Road. Since I’m used to Chip’s driving, I assume he’ll slow down. But it’s never safe to assume anything when Chip’s driving. He jerks the wheel last minute and we hydroplane onto Mount Pleasant Road, narrowly missing a utility pole as we come out of a fishtail.
“Easy, Speed Racer. You’re gonna get us killed.”
Chip stops bobbing his head to lower the volume. “Almost forgot stalker patrol.”
“You might want to check your tires.”
“You might want to check your nads,” he says. “I think you left them at home in your man-purse.”
“That’s right. I put them next to your chlamydia medication.”
Chip snorts out a laugh. “Nice. You’re King of the One-Liners today. New moniker.”
Could be worse.
We can only talk serious about girls for about five minutes before circling back to giving each other shit.
No one else is on the winding road, so I dare myself to face my fear and close my eyes. I listen to The Stones song and think about what I need for my project. Since I can’t have what I want in the form of parents who are around to tell me all about their families, I have to settle for the documents and photos I can get. Along with the balls I need to talk to Iris about it without sounding like a pathetic asswipe.
Chip smacks my arm. “Hey, isn’t that Dr. Maddox?”
He slams his brakes and I lurch forward, bracing myself against the dashboard as we come to a complete stop. My Uncle Phil is standing on the road’s narrow shoulder behind his charcoal Escalade.
“Maybe he got a flat or something on his way to work,” I tell Chip. “The backside of Green Hill runs along this road.”
“Hey, Dr. Maddox,” Chip says loudly as he rolls down his window. “Almost didn’t see you there. Rolling Stones.” He points at his ear like music is his best excuse for distracted driving. And with Uncle Phil, it might be. The guy is a total audiophile. My love of rock music definitely comes from him.
“No harm, no foul,” Uncle Phil says, flashing back Chip’s grin. “I’m always willing to extend a little ‘Mercy, Mercy.’”
Chip turns to me. “You smile the same as him. It’s kind of freaky.”
“My dad used to say the same thing.” Only it seemed to bother him.
“Nature versus nurture,” Chip says. “What can you do?”
Not a damn thing.
Mr. Malone talked about that in class. How we’re shaped not only by genetics, but the environment we’re raised in. But Mr. Malone wasn’t the first person to introduce me to that concept. That honor belongs to Uncle Phil.
“I’ll be right back.” I jump out of the car so I can talk to him without yelling through the window.
Uncle Phil takes off his trench coat and tosses it into his trunk. Before it lands I swear I see the handle of a garden shovel lying inside. My stomach twists into guilty knots. If you know anything about me at all, you know clobbering my uncle with a garden shovel is probably the last thing I’d ever do, whether I saw it in a dream or not.
“What are you two doing over this way?” Uncle Phil asks. He pulls me in for a quick hug and pat on the back. “Are you headed to the cemetery?”
“Theo’s stalking a girl who lives around here,” Chip shouts.
I shoot him a shut-up look.
“We’ve all been guilty of that at one time or another,” Uncle Phil says. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“Never been an issue for me,” Chip says. “The ladies flock to this like bees to honey. I wield an irresistible power over them.”
Uncle Phil releases a short puff of laughter through his nose. “If that were actually true, Langford, I might consider you a specimen worth studying.”
“He’s definitely one of a kind,” I tell him.
“A legend in his own mind if my idiopathic analysis is correct.”
I glance at Chip and see him air drumming to whatever song he’s listening to, completely oblivious. “You got the idio part right, Uncle Phil. Fits him to a T.”
He grins back at me and reaches into the pocket of his discarded trench. The silver Zippo lighter my dad gave him tumbles onto the ground as he pulls out his keys. We both pitch forward to retrieve it but I get there first, reading the words engraved on its case before handing it back.
My best man. My brother. My friend.
The fact that he carries this around shows how much he still cares about Dad.
Dr. Phillip Maddox isn’t really my uncle. Not in the biological sense. GP adopted him right before he aged out of the foster care system. A shitty upbringing is something he and Mom had in common, even though she didn’t like to talk about her past. Come to think of it, he doesn’t really talk about his either.
“What’s with the shovel?” I ask, tipping my head to the trunk. “Did you get a flat or something? Chip probably has a jack in the back if you need one.”
“No, it’s nothing like that. I like to patrol the grounds for leaks periodically,” he explains. “In a state-run facility with budget constraints it’s best to try and stay ahead of problems before they arise.”
“If you say so.” The guy I know is a white-collar neatnik but I take him at his word. “Are you gonna be around this weekend? I wanted to come by and talk to you about a couple of things.”
He hits me with the practiced look of a psychiatrist. “Anything in particular?”
“Information mostly. About Mom. For a family history project at school. Since GP is usually too tanked to help me with anything, I was hoping you might be able to help with Mom’s side of the family. I don’t really know anything about the Rogans.”
“Neither do I. Your mother was adamant about erasing them from her memory. But I’ll do what I can to help.”
“Great. My Adderall supply is running kind of low too, and since I’m going to need maximum focus for the next two weeks, do you think you could hook me up with a refill?”
“I thought I gave you a two-month supply?”
“You did. But there were days I needed to double up to make it through training and homework.” Truth is I’ve tripled up, especially on weekends, but keep that part to myself.
“Has doubling up helped?”
“Yes and no. I can’t really get into it or we’ll be late for school.”
“Fair enough. Come by on Saturday and I’ll see what I can dig up between now and then.”
“Not with that, I hope.” I gesture to his trunk again. “I’d be the only kid in class to show up with a relative’s skeleton. Could get me an A if it were the right relative. You know, a skeleton from the family closet.”
I thought that would get a laugh even if his normal state does bend toward stoic, but he only stares at me with the slight smile mirrored back in my direction. In his defense, today is probably the wrong day to joke about corpses. That was my bad.
“Okay, so Saturday. That’s tomorrow. Tomorrow’s great.”
“Tomorrow it is,” he says. “Just don’t expect a tableau of your deceased relatives.”
“Understood.”
I hop into Chip’s car, feeling like a jerk for the joke. And dumb for not hinting at wanting to talk to him about my weird dream since he helped me deal with something similar after the fire, which made sense at the time. But why now? Maybe I should try to figure that out before I go confessing to seeing stuff while I’m semi-awake again.
“Did he say mercy twice?” Chip asks. “That’s an old Rolling Stones song, isn’t it? ‘Mercy, Mercy.’ You think he meant it that way, like a play on the band? Probably. The guy never says anything off the cuff, am I right?”
More than right.
Chip used to call him Moriarty back when we were in our Sherlock Holmes phase. But I’m not sure whether Uncle Phil saw the humor in that either.
“I’m glad I saw him,” Chip says. “Imagine if I ran the guy down while I was fucking around with the radio? We’d be screwed. Good thing we’re near the hospital.”
“That’s a psychiatric hospital.”
“So?” Chip says. “They practice life-saving measures, don’t they?”
“They probably would for him.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. It’s just, there’s a lot of lonely, forgotten people in that place.”
Green Hill Psychiatric Hospital looms on our right like Frankenstein’s castle atop Ward Hill. A building completely out of time among the ranch houses of the surrounding neighborhood. I’ve only been inside a couple of times, when Mom took me to visit Uncle Phil at work. But that was enough to freak me out for a lifetime. I can see why he isn’t too keen on tableaus in that respect. The place is rife with them.
Chip flips around on his iPod. “‘Mercy, Mercy.’ Bam. I knew I had that song on here.” He sets it to play and hits the gas, spinning the Dart’s tires against the wet asphalt.
I slump down to listen and the seat belt pulls uncomfortably tight. The song is about loss and forgiveness, which is appropriate for today because according to my dad what happened the night of the fire was unforgivable. It was all harm, all foul. There wasn’t any room for mercy. He and Uncle Phil fell out after Mom died, like the trauma of losing her was too much to take, too heavy to keep their friendship afloat. But her death didn’t change that relationship for me. If anything, it made Uncle Phil and me closer, especially after Dad was gone, because I needed to talk to someone about what I’d done that night, and where I’d been.
“You better jump on the highway,” I tell Chip. “Abort stalker mission.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. We’re running out of time.” I chew a hangnail on my middle finger, conflicted again. “You think Uncle Phil already went to the cemetery? Maybe I should have asked him to go with me later.” I rip the hangnail out with my front teeth so hard blood seeps up the side of my finger.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the first person there,” Chip says. “He and your dad were like brothers. Just like us. Only … aww, hell, Mackey, you know I can’t never quit you.”
“That’s right, Chip. We’ll always have Monarch Night. Now fuck off and drive.”
Chip laughs again. “I knew you cared.”
He makes a right for Route 12. The farther we get from the cemetery the better I feel. Because Chip is right about one thing. Uncle Phil and my dad were like brothers.
Until I lit the match that made all of our lives go up in flames.