Chapter 6

6

The ghost of his spectacular high lingered as a throb in his temples. The structural integrity of his skin was questionable; the inside of his head swam with partial memories and rootless homesickness. He dug his thumbs against the edges of his orbital bones and nodded to his hovering roommate. When he stood, he checked his phone out of habit and saw seven unread messages. He thumbed through them while descending the front stairs with Riley. Del had sent him a few, the last of which was Are you going to pretend I’m dead too? Just let me know so I can set my expectations. He released a controlled smoker’s breath through his nose and responded, stop doing this shit Del you know I hate it.

An unsaved number had texted him as well, two messages: Sup? and You there

He frowned and tucked the phone back in his pocket to unlock the car. In the front seat, the spider plant Del had passed off on him sat dead from the heat, withered and limp. The symbolism was unpleasant. Riley hmm-ed at it and said, “Oops.”

Between the two of them, garbage bags full of clothes strung over their wrists and crates of sundries in arm, the process took less than ten minutes. Andrew dropped his last load in the foyer and watched Riley stagger up the steps, loaded to his chin with boxes of books. The muscles of his arms strained, lengthened. Veins bulged at his wrists and the peak of his biceps. His roommate was sunset-glowing and all-American, a tightly bundled set of contradictions, same as all the young men Andrew had ever known, but none of those contradictions spoke to West’s raw and obvious dislike. Charity case, he’d called him. Andrew didn’t much appreciate that, but he wasn’t comfortable with Riley either, given West’s observation about the boys he ran with. The box thumped to the floor as Riley grunted with the effort.

Abruptly, Andrew asked, “Why help me?”

Riley sighed once, like catching his breath, and angled himself to face away from Andrew, scrubbing one hand through his sweat-spangled blond undercut bristle. The path of his gaze swept past the open door to land somewhere on the street.

“Because,” Riley said finally. “He was my friend.”

“But I’m not,” Andrew said.

The response was weighed slow, one word at a time: “If he was here, we would’ve been. I don’t see a reason not to be. I owe him that much, at least.”

The statement hung in the air. Without another word, he followed Riley into the kitchen and they each got a glass of water. The tension remained, intimate and unfamiliar, while they cooled off together in the AC. For the first time, Andrew felt like he was cohabiting with Riley, as if he’d chosen his roommate and not simply inherited him.

Riley sat his empty glass on the table and said, “I’m thinking of how to ask you something, but I don’t know how to say it.”

Andrew braced his lower back on the edge of the sink, angled toward him, facing-without-facing. A few feet from them, above their heads, secrets within secrets in Eddie’s messy scrawl sat stuffed under a pile of towels. How much did Riley know about what Eddie had been doing?

Andrew said, “Then maybe don’t ask.”

“Do you blame us for what he did?”

Andrew jerked, splashing himself and almost dropping his cup. Riley’s narrow chest rose and fell with shallow breaths, his face angled to stare out the window instead of at Andrew. His jaw muscles braced tight like he expected a blow, literal or metaphorical.

“Should I,” Andrew said. He meant for it to be a question, but it sounded more like a charge.

Keep out of the fucking crowd he got into, he rephrased in his head. Riley’s crowd—Halse’s crowd. If Eddie’s lark of attending Vanderbilt and his burgeoning research posed no real threat, poisonous and horrible as it was for him to pursue without telling Andrew, then it had to be something else. Maybe something like the kind of trouble that tagged along after boys with fast cars and bad habits, who might protect themselves first and their new friend second if trouble arose.

Looking away, unable to see Andrew’s control fraying thread by thread, Riley answered: “Maybe, fuck. I might. We’re not great people, and I didn’t even notice there was something wrong with him.”

Riley thought he’d killed himself too. Andrew grunted with the impact of the words. The vertigo of his high returned with a vengeance as he moved to push past Riley, unable to scrounge up the right words. As he reached for the handle of the porch door, a hand fisted in his shirt. He whirled, furious. His better judgment shut off, leaving him standing in a kitchen that wasn’t really his, in the heart of a place he’d tried to leave behind forever, thinking is it your fault he’s dead? at a stranger who wanted to be his friend.

Andrew knocked the offending arm wide, the impact stinging his shoulder, and hauled his fist back to strike. But Riley caught the front of his shirt and shoved him against the fridge with a bone-jarring impact. The breath wheezed from his lungs. Riley immediately took three staggering steps toward the living room, hand held up for a pause. He scrubbed at his cheek with the other arm. Andrew’s brain snapped into his body as he realized Riley had silent tears running from the corners of his eyes.

“No harm, no foul,” Riley said with a wobble. “Shouldn’t have laid hands on you. I’ll go.”

Andrew crouched where he stood as Riley left the kitchen. The front door slammed. A moment later, the Mazda coughed to life and growled into the distance. The question of who to blame, himself or the world or their lifetime of ghosts or the other boys Eddie had given his time, bared endless rows of teeth. Andrew snarled fingers into his hair and yanked until his scalp sang. He had come south certain of two things: first, that Eddie would not have killed himself on purpose. Second, that it had to be someone else’s fault, though the question of how strained his credulity. His surety remained, but his questions had multiplied exponentially.

---

Maybe to punish himself, pacing the ground floor of the house while the sun set with mounting pressure outside, he checked Del’s response to his previous text. The message read: Hate being called out or hate being bothered? Because if I didn’t know better I’d say you’re cutting me out for fun.

it isn’t for fun. I’m not cutting you out. you have your own life up there to deal with and I’m sorting out his business here

A response came back almost as soon as he finished:

Okay, fine. Sorry, I didn’t think Eddie was the sole reason we talked, but I guess I was wrong.

you’re being unfair

And you’re being a complete fuck

Andrew ground his teeth. Now that they’d come home, the eight years he and Eddie had spent in Columbus felt like the dream. He was already picking up Eddie’s shit habits, acting as if here was where he belonged instead of there—or anywhere else. Home was where Eddie was; home was nowhere, now. Except the heat and the smells and the cicada-filled nights pulled him straight to his childhood, the summer before Eddie’s parents died, the summer after the cavern. The imaginary fist he kept clenched around the haunted, haunting presence in his chest loosened bit by bit the longer he stuck around Nashville, and those cracks let out something other than light. He pictured a cold darkness seeping out, dripping free of the confines where it belonged, almost as tangible as the blood pulsing in his veins. He couldn’t stand to let Eddie’s research pry that fist any further open.

The phone lit up with another message. Del had continued: Just because he was the only thing you ever gave a shit about doesn’t mean that other people don’t care about you.

As his thumb hovered over the keyboard, weighing a diplomatic response against the lit fuse of irritation that pushed him to say something he couldn’t take back, the unsaved number buzzed in twice more. Text me back and Sun’s down have some fun?

“Who the fuck,” he muttered.

He had one good guess and he didn’t care to pursue that in the middle of the endless argument with Del. To fortify himself, he stole the near-finished bottle of bourbon from the kitchen counter and mounted the stairs, tapping the CALL button before he second-guessed himself.

She answered immediately. “Yeah?”

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey yourself,” she replied, the opposite of lighthearted. Andrew sat on the edge of Eddie’s bed and took a swig from the bottle that burned his sinuses. “Did you call for a reason?”

“Yeah, because you’re upset.”

“Bullshit.”

The sound of her breath on the other end of the line filled the silence. Which of us did you love best, he almost asked, but he knew the answer: no one who’d met them both could prefer him over Eddie. Even he didn’t. Del should’ve given up on them both. So instead he murmured, “Because I’m upset.”

“Bingo,” Del said. He resented, childishly, the exhaustion he heard. “I figured you needed someone to talk to, whether or not I felt like talking to you right now. Why come back to me? That crew he found getting to you or something?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” he said.

She paused, then started in. “Or is it the fantasy where you find a culprit, someone else you can blame for all this? Do you think someone else cut his wrists, Andrew, really? Is it starting to sink in that Eddie was just selfish, that he abandoned—”

Andrew hung up on her. Do you think someone else cut his wrists, said with such utter contempt, as if by chasing that possibility he was lying to himself about the person Eddie had been. But how was it any more implausible than offing himself out of the blue? The screen accused him with another incoming call, but he ignored it.

Their other friends hadn’t tried to contact him. Del was the last straggler. He wondered if she hated him, and if he deserved it; she’d have been better off without their dead weight dragging at her heels, long after their frosty breakup as freshmen at OSU. He knew that the person he’d been with Eddie wasn’t the person he would be without him, and neither version ultimately had much to offer Del. He tipped the bottle back, bitter and burning, for two short swallows. As he leaned to set the bourbon on the nightstand, he noticed it: the notebook lay open at the mouth of the closet, papers on top of it, like his hidden stack had been pettily upended.

Teeth bared, he thumped the bottle onto the floor. One more time, he scooped the papers and the notebook up, open to a page that began mid-sentence: haunts are mediocre til you feed them & then you’ve got a fucking problem, moral of the story. Disturbingly direct. He flipped it shut one-handed. The phone buzzed behind him again. He burst out, “Fuck, leave me alone!” With Eddie’s notes in his other hand, he grabbed the phone from the bed and scrolled through his texts—a handful of apologies from Del, as he expected, but more from the unknown number.

I thought Riley said you were treating him fine

Don’t make me fuck you up

Poor you sure but you’re walking a fine line here

Riley says it’s his fault but maybe you just need to get out of that fucking house for a night

The phone creaked in his fist, plastic protesting his grip. Not so unknown, after all, Halse taking up for his cousin and getting in where he didn’t need to be. Another message flicked into the inbox, saying, I’ll ask you again: come out with us.

Andrew dropped the phone on the end table, nerves skittering. Don’t make me fuck you up was a hell of a thing to say to him, a total stranger. The sawed-through slashes on Eddie’s wrists had bisected his tattoo; even if Andrew swallowed the suggestion that he’d been abandoned, Eddie wouldn’t disrespect him so completely. Do you think someone else cut his wrists? Another man might, though, maybe someone like Sam Halse—for reasons Andrew couldn’t begin to guess. All he knew of him was his brash reputation and the contained fury in his texts.

The dregs of bourbon called for him and he inverted the bottle, gagging down the last mouthful with eyes damp from the strain. His stomach rolled once in dizzy protest. Putting his fist straight through the drywall next to the closet door might have satisfied him, but he resisted the urge as he kicked the fallen stack of towels into the corner to unearth the remaining loose pages. One problem at a time.

“Stop doing this shit,” he said.

His fingertips landed on a sheet of paper at the same second a horror-movie creak from behind electrified the hair on his arms. The bedroom door latched itself shut with a quiet click and the scalded patch on his tattoo shone in the dim light: a reminder for him, especially around these parts, that it was never just the wind. Foolish to pretend otherwise, for even a second. He braced his wrist on the doorjamb and sat on his heels, stone still with his face tucked against the crook of his elbow to hide. It isn’t him. It isn’t really him.

Floorboards creaked scant inches to his left, but he refused to lift his head and look. He wasn’t asleep; he wasn’t on the cusp of sleep; he was awake. Manifestations this physical were not supposed to happen while he was awake, gloaming light shining through the big bold windows in streaks of red-gold, but Eddie had always been an exception to the rules. Don’t, he thought, but he reacted instinctively to the first brush across the knobs of his spine with a yearning, flexing shudder.

An icy burning gripped the back of his neck in the rough outline of fingers, their shape more familiar than his face in the mirror. Against good judgment and survival instinct he leaned into the too-solid hold. It hurt, but he missed that touch so much, even this noxious remnant.

“Stop,” he whispered again.

The papers rustled along their edges. Crouching in the hidden hollow of the closet, scruffed by the revenant that dogged his heels, he felt terribly and paradoxically alive. Rank breath drifted past his ear and cheek. The punishing grip pushed until his head bowed forward, forcing him to stare unseeing at his shoes, but the haunt kept going. It pushed until his skin chafed and his vertebra cracked, until the boundaries between its false flesh and his skin gave out. The cold sank straight through the gagging constriction of his throat to the cavern of his chest, grasping at him from the inside out. Blood and dirt were all he tasted in his drooling mouth, choked on the phantom’s invasive presence. His first sleep on native soil dredged itself up behind his eyes: wrists cut to exposed muscle, a frantic retreat from the fact of death. He echoed the vision’s desperate call for survival: I am awake I am awake I am awake—

The loud rattle of his phone vibrating on the wooden table pierced the film of the waking nightmare. The revenant disappeared as if a switch had flipped. He gasped like he was breaking the surface of a swimming hole and fell back onto his ass.

“Jesus fuck, holy mother of god,” he whispered tonelessly as he flopped out of the dim closet to grab for the source of the noise. His hands shook so hard, swiping in the password took two tries.

Why’d you come here if you’re just going to be a bitch

Eddie didn’t make you SOUND like a bitch but you’re proving him wrong

I’m trying to welcome you with open arms

Andrew barked a ragged shout and kicked the metal bed frame, sending it skidding across the floor. He snatched up the loose papers, hands full of secrets, phone as maddening as the ongoing ordeal of his possessed fucking house. The phone buzzed again while he was holding Eddie’s haunted research aloft, and he almost threw the papers out the window, blinded by a curtain of terror and rage. The documents rasped, page on page, in his shaking hands. Grasping for somewhere to stuff them back out of sight and out of reach, he yanked open the drawer of the bedside table, almost pulling it from its tracks.

He and Eddie had always maintained a handful of agreements. One was to never discuss their weird shit, as Halse had so eloquently labeled it. Another was no cocaine, based on lived experience. Eddie couldn’t control his temper at the best of times, and he made terrible decisions when he had powder on his nostrils and keys in his hand; it made him a bad judge of his limitations and other people’s patience. Which, for whole empty-headed seconds, made it hard for Andrew to comprehend the snipped green Starbucks straw, spare plastic gift card, and fold-over pill bag full of coke nestled in among Eddie’s spare change and receipts. What the fuck else were you doing, he thought with flat hysteria.

He crammed the notes in the drawer, forced it shut, and dialed the unknown number. The line rang three times before a rough drawl answered: “Is it working? Am I riding your nerves hard enough yet to get you to show up?”

“Did you sell Eddie coke?”

Halse snorted and said, “Of course, when he asked for it. I’m here to help.”

Andrew throttled his urge to shout. Help was a dangerous choice of words given the context. Eddie hadn’t needed help pursuing all sorts of things he should’ve let be. He responded tightly, “Right, sure. Yeah, let’s meet, let’s—I’ll come out.”

Off the line but audible, Riley said, “Is that Andrew?”

“Yeah, he’s giving in to my charms,” Halse said.

“Tell me where,” Andrew said.

“The boys won’t be around until—”

“Now. Where,” he repeated.

“Hold your horses.” To his cousin, Sam called out, “You good to go now? Your roommate is in a hurry.” Andrew missed the response, but then: “The gas station from the other night. That’s your game tonight, I’m assuming? You wanna drive?”

Andrew said, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“We’ll be there after that.”

The line went dead.

A struck match, blazing. The blended tangle of self-control and apathy that had been smothering him caught fire in an instant, charred to ash. Fifteen minutes earlier a haunt-remnant of his best friend had fished around in his guts, and four minutes back he’d still thought Eddie had only been hiding one shitty thing from him. Impending night lurked with lush warning, creeping shadows reverberating under his stalking feet as he crossed the front lawn to the Challenger, recalling Halse’s provocation a few nights past about it being on the prowl again. Drunk enough to stop giving a shit and flayed to the bone, Andrew was as free as he’d ever been in his life. For once there was no firm hand holding his leash, ready to snap the lead choke-taut if he got too stupid on anger.

The familiar, roaring whine of the engine made him shake as he rolled the windows down, jerked a hand through his hair, and took off. Outdoor lights at the gas station buzzed halogen-blue in the gloom. He kept his hands on the wheel as he waited, counting to threes to restrain his breathing. The gunmetal gleam of Halse’s car approached from the opposite direction an indeterminate amount of time later, bumping over the entrance curb and coasting to the space next to him.

Riley leaned out the passenger window and said, “Hey,” with an eager edge.

Halse lounged in the driver’s seat, his wrist on the steering wheel and his head lolled to the side to smirk past Riley. Andrew imagined him doing who knew what all with Eddie, while Andrew sat alone in his boxed-up apartment, none the wiser. Those teeth would split his knuckles if he put his fist through them.

“What’s with that face, man?” Halse asked.

“Get fucked,” Andrew said.

“Oh, well then,” Halse responded with raised brows.

“Come on, guys,” Riley cut in, flicking his fingers to draw Andrew’s attention. “Aren’t we gonna have a good time, let off some tension?”

“I don’t think that’s what the little prince wants,” Halse said and stepped on the gas. The bark of the engine made all three men twitch. Halse laughed. “Follow the leader.”

He reversed from the lot and Andrew followed, tunnel-visioned with the remaining dizziness of the shots he’d pulled. Halse took a handful of turns that led them out of town, coasting through the red glow of suburban traffic lights to the lesser authority of stop signs. Houses dropped off beyond secluded drives with gates across them, blockaded by foliage. Sam’s blinking right turn signal pulled them onto a rural highway, two lanes twisting to mount a low hill, banked with old trees and overgrown culverts. The whole expanse was empty as far as Andrew strained to see. Halse drifted into the oncoming lane and stopped. Andrew braked alongside.

“On three-two-one-go,” Halse shouted to him. Andrew rolled up his passenger window and toggled the engine setting to sport mode. Riley braced one hand on the roof of the WRX, the other lifted with three fingers up. Andrew braced his foot on the clutch, the other easing the gas to force the revs to climb with a grudging roar. Pressure boiled beneath his heel, threatening and seductive. Halse had provoked him into this; he might as well give it his strongest effort, from the seat that Eddie occupied before and better than Andrew. His chest cavity ached in time with the vibration of the car.

Riley ticked down one finger, then another, then the last—

He flagged his hand with a shouted, “Go!”

With Riley’s cackling laugh and the Challenger roaring in his ears Andrew plowed off the line, the shrieking force smashing his body into the firm grip of the seat. The needle tapped six as the WRX nosed ahead and he shifted to second gear, tach rebounding as the Hellcat’s MPH leapt, fractions of a second between shifts. The smell of searing tire rubber and hot clutch plate flogged him into third gear the moment the needle crossed redline, driving reckless to match the aftermarket liquid lightning of the WRX, Halse pacing him measure for measure. Elastic tension lashed their cars together across space, alone on the road, nothing in his head but grief and freedom.

Four seconds, four-point-five, five. Andrew slid through his bucking gearbox as he rode Eddie’s big unruly beast toward triple-digit speed. It chewed the asphalt, heavier, louder, angrier than his own Supra. Andrew missed the bite point for fifth gear by a portion of a portion of a second and shouted an obscenity that disappeared into thin air under the raw noise of the engine, Halse’s quarterpanel edging into the corner of his vision. Andrew smashed pedal to frame, devouring ground, letting the tach climb past the glowing digital six for longer than he’d usually risk. He hit the final gear and exploded into a screaming peak of acceleration that overtook Halse again; his eyes stung from remaining peeled wide open.

The rising grade of the road dragged them alongside, nose to nose, and he downshifted once out of necessity. Burning stench and euphoric, brittle anger poured through him. Factory standards capped the max speed just above 150, and he was willing to tap that edge, unsure of Sam’s capabilities—

Oncoming headlights flashed at the crest of the hill. Instinct knocked his glance sidelong and it sparked against Halse’s. Riley’s mouth peeled wide with shock, sound swallowed in the bare yard between them. The moment hung like shivering glass about to shatter.

Halse tapped the brakes as hard as he dared without risking losing traction, leaving Andrew to maintain breakneck speed as he ducked across to the proper lane, grill terrifyingly close to kissing bumper. The offending stranger’s car passed with an extended, accusatory honk. Halse downshifted as Andrew, too, let the speedometer slip, his pulse galloping with the cold premonition of a near-fatal collision. Of the hundred potential endings he’d almost written for himself over the last ten seconds—impact at triple digits, lost traction, crunched frames and windshield glass—none had come to pass.

Relief dumped over his nerves like ice-water. Andrew pumped his brakes to signal Halse into passing him, at last dipping below double the speed limit, to guide them farther from town. He led a circuitous and soothing chase that Andrew followed without thought, whipping around the curves of the hillsides with hints of understeer. With each dying burst of adrenaline, the debilitating furor that had driven him out of the house banked to a more manageable anger. Barely visible, Riley knelt up in his seat to drape his arms around it, flashing white teeth at Andrew. He made for an iconic, hungry gleam in the settling dark beneath tree shadows and open sky, more animal than boy. It was dumb, deliciously reckless, and that compelling energy struck Andrew with the force of a punch.

Halse hadn’t flinched, either.

If he’d been a half-second slower—

But he hadn’t flinched. Riley had, his cousin hadn’t. Death clipping straight past him hadn’t broken through Halse’s steady control; what else was he capable of doing without hesitation? Andrew slammed on his brakes and spun out into a sloppy, tire-smoking U-turn. What the fuck were you doing, Eddie. The WRX drove on in his rearview until the maw of the woods swallowed it. In the course of hours he’d learned that Sam Halse had cocaine and a fast car and apparently a goddamn death wish—inviting scabs on his knuckles, plus a mouth that could peel paint off a wall. The appeal was obvious. Eddie might have been fond of Riley, talked gothic bullshit with him and got drunk on cheap beer, but now Andrew understood where the hook had sunk in because it pierced straight through the meat of his cheek, too. He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.

There were a hundred impulsive, destructive things Eddie might have chosen to do in the face of such heady provocation, without his other half riding shotgun. Andrew’s heart maintained its hectic beat until he parked in the empty space behind the house on Capitol. For a moment, he’d seen a glimpse of a path that might get him answers, in a dead-cold stare and oncoming headlights.