I realized, with a kind of sick delight, that maybe I’d even get sent somewhere I could die for real. Make it official. Get a medal for it, if they even bothered to mail one to the ruins of my house.
We cut through the trees, our bodies moving in loose synchrony, the way two stray dogs will walk when neither is quite leader or follower.
If I squinted, I could almost forget who I was, forget the town and its rot, the way everything here seemed pre-digested and shit out before you ever got a taste of real life.
A train screamed by, close enough to vibrate the marrow of my bones, and for a wild second I contemplated stepping in front of it. Just to see if I felt fear, or if the engine would simply flatten me into the perfect shape of my own nothingness.
I didn’t, though. I just watched the graffiti flash past, letters warped and melted together, proof that someone else had left their mark on this place before moving the fuck on.
Dante didn’t say anything, but I could feel him watching, could sense that my friend was waiting for some sign, some slip of the mask that would reveal what was really going on inside.
He would wait forever, probably. I respected that about him, the willingness to let things rot in silence.
We followed the tracks until the gravel ran out and the woodstook over, thick and green and pulsing with the exhale of spring. The runoff from the old quarry had formed a pond, its surface a patchwork of algae scum and bottle-green water.
We sat on the concrete lip of a ruined foundation and watched the wind ripples chase each other across the pond, made bets about which branch would fall next from the rotten birch tree on the far bank.
There was a peace to it, in the way a battlefield goes silent between shots.
Dante rolled a joint with the practiced hands of a priest folding a sacrament. I didn’t bother to refuse when it was passed my way. I held the smoke until my lungs spasmed and my vision narrowed to a pinhole.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend it was oxygen. When I exhaled, the world returned, painted in colors I never saw at home.
“You remember five years ago in sixth, when you beat the shit out of Bobby Sandoval?” Dante said, grinding the ash into the concrete. “You knocked a tooth out, man. He still talks about it like it was the best day of his life.”
I shrugged, but the memory came back in full.
That was the first time my father had looked at me and grunted something like approval. The only time I’d eaten a real meal that week because of how proud he was of me, instead of standing in the kitchen, staring at the tile while my father sucked down beer and watched baseball.
“He deserved it,” I said. “Fucker called me a bastard. Wasn’t even original.”
“He cried like a bitch, though,” Dante said, and laughed.
I found myself grinning, the muscles in my face surprised by the motion. It hurt, a little, in a way that felt honest.
We smoked in silence until the joint was spent, then Dante lay back, arms behind his head, eyes half-lidded to the sky.
I felt the darkness at my core, the urge to destroy, but there it ran gentle, slow, like a lazy river instead of a flash flood.
I could almost breathe.
“Wonder what Langston does when she’s not drawing?” I mused, stretching my arms, exposing the band of muscle above my hips. “She got friends.Boyfriend.”
Dante smirked, but there was a new sharpness to it. “You got some kinda death wish for her, man? You always talk about her.”
I almost swung at Dante then and there. The urge came fast and violent, but I channeled it into a sneer. “I don’t give a shit about her,” I snapped, my voice thick. “Just saying. That’s all she is. A sad sack with a pencil.”
Dante shrugged, twisted a pebble between his fingers, and flicked it into the pond. “She’s not that bad, you know. I had her in class last year. She’s nice, not like most of those fake girls. Amelia’s…” He trailed off, then shrugged, a small, private smile bunching the corners of his mouth. “Kinda cute, honestly.”
The words went off like a car bomb in my head. I sat up straighter, fists clenching, my neck prickling with a cold reptile awareness, like I’d just spotted a knife in a friend’s hand. “No she’s fucking not,” I shot back, louder than I meant, the words burning on the way out.
Dante looked at me sidelong, testing. “Calm down, man. She’s… I dunno. She’s nice. Not a drama queen like the rest.”
I wanted to grab Dante by the skull and drive his face into the concrete, see if I could knock the softness out of him.
Instead, I balled my hands hard enough to leave bruises on my own thighs.
“You ever talk to her?” Dante pressed, as if he didn’t hear the warning in my voice. “Like, really talk?”
