I grab the back of Savannah’s tank top, haul her away from the window, over toward the rusted stove, the warped cabinets, the sink clogged with dead bluebottles.
“Dammit, Van,” I say. “Why are they here? What are you doing?”
We’d agreed, when we first started coming to Myron’s house, never to bring anyone else here. Especially guys. Savannah had promised. We both had.
She shrugs. She must have put on more mascara while I was sleeping, because her lashes are all sticking together now. “You said this was the last time you’d cut class with me. Figured I better make the most of it.”
I want to haul back and slap her across the face. My hand practically itches for it. But last time I did that she didn’t talk to me for weeks (she’d had a fight with her mother and said without thinking, I wish she was dead), so I settle for giving her a playful punch in the arm, but a little too hard.
“Come on,” she says. “You were over there snoring anyway. You’re no fun lately. All you do is sleep.”
“I get tired.”
“Well, I get lonely.”
“Fine,” I say.
“You ought to thank me,” Savannah says, “Henry’s here too.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Savannah’s grinning now. She loves to tease me about Henry, always saying I should make a move. Sometimes it seems like she wants me and him to get together more than I do. Maybe she thinks if I start kissing boys I’ll turn into her. A perfect partner in crime.
I go back over to the window. Tanner and Henry are leaning against the side of the house, passing a cigarette back and forth.
“Hey, let me help you,” says Tanner when he sees me, but I jump down on my own.
When Savannah climbs out after me she does it clumsy on purpose so that Tanner will put his hands on her hips to steady her. She plonks down to the ground and his hands slide up to her waist, her tank top bunching far enough that we can see the tiny tattoo on her hip that she got from her uncle Tad before he died. It’s supposed to be a bumblebee but the stripes kind of blurred together, so it looks more like a fly.
“Is school over already?” I ask. Henry won’t meet my eyes, like maybe he, too, feels how different it is to see each other outside of school.
Or maybe he’s embarrassed of me? Doesn’t want Tanner to know we’re sort of friends? He mostly hangs out with an older crowd these days. His brother’s friends. And Tanner, I guess, who is a grade above us.
“We skipped last period,” says Tanner. “This is a cool house. Never even knew it was here.”
“It’s full of wasps,” I tell him. “They’re used to us, but if you try to go in they’ll sting you in the face until you die.”
Tanner laughs. Savannah is scowling at me. I’m not acting how I’m supposed to, not flirting, not helping her out.
“What do we do now?” she asks, eyeing Myron’s house ruefully. Palace of lost make-out opportunities.
Henry pipes up for the first time. “Got some beers round my place.”
* * *
—
Henry’s mom is working a double shift at a restaurant in Needle, and his dad is out, probably drinking or something. Their house is at the edge of town, up an old brick road.
In Lester, everything gets shittier-looking the farther you go from Main Street. Out here, the stop signs are faded nearly to white, the letters outlined faintly in rust. The trees lean over the roads, over the houses, threatening to take back what is theirs. Vines strangle the mailboxes. Weeds and wildflowers burst through every crack in the pavement. Given half a chance, I’m sure, the forest would swallow Lester whole.
We wait on the porch while Henry goes inside. When he comes back out he has a six-pack (minus one can) of Schlitz and his guitar. He sits next to me on the beat-up floral couch.
I’ve seen him play guitar a few times before, back in the middle school talent shows, and even I have to admit that he’s terrible. But I like watching his hands go up and down the strings. I like the way his knuckles are always kind of swollen, pink and wrinkled as roses.
We drink the beers, which are warm and flat. I’m used to that, since most of the beer I’ve had so far is the dregs left at the bottom of other’s people bottles, which I drink when no one’s looking. A whole can to myself, flat or not, is a luxury. Tanner tries to chug his beer to show off and nearly chokes. Henry plays a few bars of “Smells like Teen Spirit.” Savannah tells us about her sister’s friend’s baby’s problem, which is that it was born addicted to painkillers.
“Baby’s more hardcore than any of us,” she says.
“Babies are weird,” says Tanner.
I should go home soon. It’s Friday, one of the busiest nights at the bar, and Aggie will want me to help. She started helping Grandpa Joe around the bar from basically the moment she could walk, to hear her tell it. I don’t mind helping. I even enjoy it sometimes and Aggie says if I do a good job she’ll hire me for real someday, but I know the pastor will be there. Just thinking about what he said in the car makes my skin crawl. He thinks he knows me. Thinks he’s got power over me now. I’ve got to show him he doesn’t.
And what better chance than this? It’s the first time I’ve been to Henry’s house since sixth grade, when he made every kid in the neighborhood come see the half-decayed deer at the end of the road. It was mostly bones, with a few scraps of rotting fur still clinging to it. I wanted to show that I wasn’t afraid, so I walked right up and stuck my hand inside the rib cage, where the heart would have been. Afterward Henry and Savannah and Maisie and me and one or two other kids hung out in Henry’s backyard and played at hunter (we took turns being the deer) until his dad came home.
Now, I announce that I’ve got to go to the bathroom and I grab Savannah’s arm and drag her with me.
“Girls are weird,” I hear Tanner say as the screen door bangs shut behind us.
When we get to the bathroom, I make Savannah call the bar and ask Aggie if I can stay over for dinner. Aggie says fine, as long I’m home by nine. I offer to call Savannah’s mom, but Savannah says her mom won’t even notice she’s gone. Savannah’s one of seven kids, so she’s probably right.
When we get back to the porch, Tanner’s gone. Henry says he got a text and ran off. Savannah shoots me a dirty look, as if it’s my fault somehow. Henry offers her the last beer as a consolation.
Henry is about halfway through the slowest version of “Wonderwall” in the history of the world, when his brother Jack comes out of the house. He’s got no shirt on, just jeans. I can see his hip bones, the waistband of his underwear, the trail of hair that disappears beneath it. Henry is sixteen, a year older than Savannah and me (he got held back when he was a kid on account of his heart problems). Jack is eighteen, a senior.