1
Shane
January 1999
“Are you going togo with him?”
Melody Henson’s long nails click against her wine glass as she sits next to me on the sofa.
I’ve peeled off the label on my beer into shreds that lie like a paper massacre on the coffee table. One shred flutters to the floor as Melody crosses her legs and her sunflower-print skirt brushes against it.
“I don’t know.” I take a long sip of my beer and watch Matt and Jess spin around in a chair while Matt points a camcorder toward them, laughing.
“I think it’s really sweet what he’s doing,” Melody says softly. “It’s a long drive to do by yourself, though. Port Leyden, all the way to…Where’s he going again?”
I press my knuckles into my thighs and watch Jess fall off Matt’s lap, and the camcorder clatters onto the floor. There are drunken exclamations and an attempt to check the thing to see if it’s still taping or broken. I wish I’d thought to bring my camera.I would’ve gotten some interesting pictures tonight. But I hardly think about cameras or taking photos anymore.
“I dunno,” I lie, drinking more beer.
From somewhere, a bong gets passed to us. Melody takes a hit off it, but I pass. She exhales and nearly coughs her lungs out. Then she looks solemn. She puts a hand on my arm. “And I’m sorry about Everett.”
I’m surprised by the sharp sting in my eyes and the swell in my throat. I don’t know the proper or average mourning period for your high school buddy. Everett Sawyer’s funeral was two weeks ago, and I was late that day. Gina and I had to find someone to watch Mikayla. We showed up at the graveside service and stood in the back. There was quite a crowd. Pretty much everyone from high school showed up, since Everett had been popular. I caught a glimpse of Everett’s family. I couldn’t see all of them from where Gina and I stood, but I knew through that sea of black clothing that Ethan was there. For a few brief seconds, I wanted to go speak to him, to give him my condolences. Give him my sympathies for losing his big brother and maybe offer him a shoulder to cry on.
I thought maybe—maybe—in all this sadness and mourning, Ethan Sawyer might accept my offerings.
But I was fooling myself. He hates me and he should. I one hundred percent deserve it.
“You should go.” Melody’s voice cuts into my thoughts, her tone implying she’s suddenly wise beyond her years. “I think Ev would want you to.”
I look over at her. Her eyes are getting red from the weed, and her mascara is smudged. I don’t know if she knows that Ev and I, as close as we were in high school, so much that our names were practically said as one word—ShaneandEvorEvandShane—I don’t know if she knows or even noticed that Everett Sawyer and I haven’t been close at all since then. The last time I saw himwas months ago at the Arby’s in Lowville when he came up from Utica to visit his folks. I don’t think he saw me, and if he did, he ignored me.
And I can’t blame him at all.
I look down at my scuffed-up work boots with paint stains and fraying laces. I set down my beer next to the shredded label, my stomach starting to ache.
“Think I’m gonna get going.” I stand and gather up the paper massacre on the coffee table.
“If you see Ethan tomorrow,” Melody says, looking up at me with her mascara-smudged eyes. “Will you tell him I’m thinking about him?”
“Yeah, sure.” I reply.
I make my way through a knot of people into the kitchen to throw away my trash. I put on my coat and gloves and stamp through three feet of packed snow to my truck. It’s a clear night and there are clumps of snow in the tall trees surrounding the house. It’s beautiful. It’s lonely. It’s scenes like these that make me miss taking pictures. I used to capture moments to always remember. Now they all seem to just slip on by unnoticed.
On my way home, I tell myself I’ll be different. I’ll pay more attention to things, like the sky tonight. I gaze intently up at the stars through the windshield as I drive along the snow-packed road. I’ll stop wishing for my camera and actually have it with me, if I can remember where I put it.
And I’ll stop being such a fucking coward.
I impulsively change direction at a stop sign and go left instead of right. I pull up at the apartment building off Quarry Street. There’s yellow lamplight glowing through the venetian blinds in the bottom left apartment. I glance at the radio clock and see it’s just after ten.
It’s my weekend with Mikayla. I’m pretty sure. They sort of got knocked off schedule a couple weeks ago when Gina had togo out of town for work, and I had Mikayla for two weekends in a row, plus a few weekday evenings so Gina could pick up some shifts. I go through it all in my head, figuring out the dates then shaming myself for not being more organized about this as I knock on the apartment door. A handful of minutes pass before the door opens, the chain catching, and Gina’s tired brown eyes and curly bangs appear. Her initial expression is annoyance, then it morphs into confusion.
“Hey,” she says softly. “I just put her to bed.”
I lean against the frame. “Thought you were coming to Matt’s?”
She shrugs. “My mom had bingo, and I didn’t feel like it anyway.”
“Could’ve paged me.”
