He inspected the package. “I’m pretty sure they contain ten percent worm.”
Ana snatched the gummies and tossed over her sandwich. “It’s bologna,” she said. “Twenty percent worm.”
Logan clutched his hands together, blinking cartoonishly. “How can I ever repay you?”
“By shutting up.”
“I pledge you my featly.”
“It’s fealty, you dingus.”
“All I ask in return, milady, is for the smallest token of your affection.” He laid his hand on her arm like a dog who wanted a handshake. “A barrette, mayhaps.”
Ana snorted.
“I would settle for a Kleenex.”
She picked up his hand and flung it away. “I hate to tell you this, Logan, but I don’t have a dick.”
He slumped in his beanbag. “That’s not true,” he sniffed. “You’re all dick.”
* * *
The movie came on and they settled in, bean bags squeaking like fresh snow. The supply closet was big, but it was still a closet, so Ana had to crank her head back as she waited to sink into the movie until it ran like a dream.
But today, every time she started to sink, she saw her father. On the ground under the tree, one hand grasping at the sky, legs swimming in pain. Or in the hospital bed, staring at the parking lot through the window, a blank notepad on his lap.
Every day after school she ran to the hospital, and every day she asked the same question of anyone who came through her father’s door, from orderlies on up: “Will he get better?” They tended to demur or prevaricate or offer generic hope, except for one doctor who said no.
This brought her up short. “No?”
The doctor had gray, bristly hair and seemed to vibrate with impatience. Glowering at her father’s chart, he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. “When people ask that question,” he said, scrawling hard enough to make a rough music against the clipboard, “what they really want to know is: how soon can everything be like it was before? The answer is never.” He made one final scratch on the chart, then looked at Ana. His eyes were ice caves. “The sooner you let go of your old expectations, the better. For him and for you.”
He left and it was a minute before Ana could breathe again. She checked the chart. The whole bottom was an angry spirograph. Had he just scratched out the last doctor’s notes? She ran into the hallway, but couldn’t find him. That was three days ago, and she hasn’t seen that doctor since.
Lightning on the TV. The Terminator has arrived. Ana glanced at Logan as blue light illuminated his profile, his floppy curls that were not cool at this buzz-cut school, the stipple of acne on his cheek, a dark smudge on his neck.
“Forget to shower this morning?” she said, poking the smudge. He winced, so she looked closer. It was a bruise, too dark for a hickey. “What happened?”
Crossing his arms, he settled deeper into the bag. “Can we just watch?” he said. “I mean, this is AV Club.”
She sat up. “Who did it?”
“It’s just—you wouldn’t—oh, for the love of crap, you made me miss a good part.” Logan got up and fiddled with the rewind button on the VCR, despite the fact that he had a remote in his hand. When he settled back into his bag, he pulled his collar up high on his neck.
She studied him in the flickering light. Maybe Logan hung around her for the same reasons she hung around him: she repelled other people, and didn’t ask too many questions. Maybe that’s all he wanted.
“Fine,” she muttered, turning back to the screen, where a naked time traveler was putting his fist through some guy’s torso. “Fuck you, too, pal.”
When the bell rang at the end of lunch, Ana and Logan stayed in their bags without speaking. The next bell rang, and they ignored that one, too. They hid in the dark, waiting for a knock from the librarian that never came, watching the Terminator stalk a boy in an attempt to rewrite the future.
Are we alone?
More than you think. There is no “we.”
* * *
Later that day—after AV Club, after her obligatory trip to the hospital, after the doctor surprised her with some good news—Ana ran back to the farmhouse. She didn’t feel like going inside, didn’t feel like being alone in the dark rooms that didn’t smell like home, so she climbed the oak tree and straddled a branch, watching a combine shuttle back and forth over a cornfield while the sun melted on the horizon.
The combine toppled twelve-foot stalks and left stubble in its wake. After the machine made its last pass, Ana could see clear to town. She felt exposed. For a second, she tasted her father’s paranoia. What if he was right? Not about Zeeshan, necessarily, but in his general sense of doom?
Her father would be released soon. The doctor had told her this today like it was a happy occasion, but Ana wasn’t so sure. “You’re just trying to free up his bed,” she said. “Make room for more customers.”
The doctor laughed as though she’d made a joke. “He’ll get better faster at home than he will here,” he said, backing out of the room.
That was the problem, though: he couldn’t go home. The longer they stayed in exile, the worse he got.
He could die here, she realized. Maybe not from Zeeshan or any other outside threat, but from some toxic combination of doom and dismay. A self-fulfilling prophecy, no assistance needed.
She wanted to help her father, she really did. But what could she do?
In the field, the combine shut off with a rumble. Its headlights blinked out. The sky was a violet puddle.
Nothing. There was nothing she could do.
Not by herself, anyway.
Ana jumped. When she hit the ground, a sharp pain flashed in her ankle, but she got up and started running anyway. For a few limping steps, the pain pulsed like a bright new heartbeat, but it faded by the time she reached the end of the driveway. She was almost sorry to feel it go. A part of her wanted to feel that hot new pulse all the way to town.
Are we alone?
Only if we choose to be.
From the written statement of D.W. Boxelder:
As promised, here is the fleet of banker’s boxes containing documents, artifacts, and ephemera from the Easterday case. Below is my written statement—the first installment, anyway. The other installments are enclosed in the boxes to keep them in context. Happy hunting!
Onto the Easterdays and my first confession: After Ben fell from the tree, two things became clear. First, this family required extra attention. Second, a deputy marshal who failed to notice a witness roosting in a tree might not be up to the task of paying that attention. As I may have mentioned, I had a lot at stake in this case, so I took it upon myself to provide some additional support. Bugs, taps, cams, occasionally some additional personnel around town, along with more direct oversight from me.
Illegal? Technically. Wrong? Only if it’s wrong to do everything you can for the protection of a family. Since it’s never good for the Director to be caught off guard (there are no pleasant