Behold the Bones Read online

  We’ve spent a good third of our summer in and around the Beale pool. Having it to ourselves is a rare occasion. But my head spins and my hand hurts and the thought of lying out in the sun leaves me nauseated.

  “Um, maybe,” I say, and she doesn’t press.

  After breakfast, Abigail heads off, leaving the promise of hours of unfettered girl time with her and Sterling on the table. I leave it there, too.

  Instead, I spend the day reading the last cheerful book on our AP English summer reading list, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It’s terrible, I decide. Not because it’s bad, but it’s as painful as the gash in my palm to read. It’s the story of a girl not much older than me who moves to New York and is constantly told that in order to be someone you must allow yourself to be reduced and defined by others.

  Too many of Esther’s words worm their way inside my mind as though I’ve thought them before. And when reading them becomes more uncomfortable than my palm, I stop and send a picture of my wound to Cousin Leo along with fix it.

  His response is immediate: ffs come over.

  It’s only a few blocks away, but I justify driving because my palm turns into a pulsing volcano when I let it hang by my side for more than thirty seconds. I wait until I’m sure they’re in their active hours and head over. I turn down the narrow path they call a driveway just as my clock reads five o’clock.

  I smell the boys before I see them. The second I open my car door, the sweet stench of rotting meat hits me. Only, it’s not rotting meat, exactly. It’s the smell of deerskin and blood and guts all heated to their evaporation point. Who but a bunch of Craven boys would have a skull boil at five p.m. on a Friday evening?

  The path around their rusted trailer is littered with all the things they think they might use and probably never will: old chairs, mismatched tires, an ancient tractor’s steering column. They’ve all been where they are for so long, I could walk through them in my sleep.

  Firelight glows at the end of the path. I find the boys exactly where I expect to—lounging with beers in hand next to a giant noxious cauldron of boiling animal parts. They keep this area clear for the sole purpose of fires, barbecues, and going rounds on the heavy bag strung up in a young oak. The surrounding woods are thick with underbrush, making the whole area feel close and isolated.

  “Hey, coz,” Leo drawls. His shirt’s already come off his tan shoulders and his eyes are glazed as doughnuts. “Beer’s in the cooler. You’ll need one.”

  He tips his own beer toward the neon orange cooler that’s been in the same spot so long it’s wedged into the earth. Five feet from their back door, beyond which lives a brand-new refrigerator, and they can’t be bothered to travel that far for a drink.

  I snatch an ice-cold can, pop the top, and take a long pull.

  Red chuckles. “Shit, C, did you get dumped or what?”

  In response, I rip the three Band-Aids from my hand. Fresh blood smears across my palm.

  Red leaps to his feet. “Who did it?” His teeth clench as tightly as his fists.

  “Christ, any excuse for a fight. I did it. To myself. It was an accident. I was sharpening my switchblade and it slipped. That’s all. Want to fight me about it?”

  He takes a deep breath, floundering now that I’ve challenged his testosterone rush. “Well. Yeah,” he says.

  Leo pushes Red aside to take my hand. His brows knit as he prods the swollen skin. “Red,” he commands, “go get the kit. It’s worse than it looked in the picture. You slipped?”

  Leo’s intelligence isn’t wide, but it’s also not shallow. He knows as much as there is to know about a few things, blades being one of them.

  I choose not to perjure myself or insult his specific wisdom. “Sorta not.”

  No questions follow my admission, only a single nod. I love my cousin.

  Red returns with a kit slung over one shoulder and a jug of water clutched to his chest. I sink into a rusting metal chair and let the boys fold me into their practiced rhythm of tending to their hunt. Leo keeps my hand held firmly but gently between his as Red opens their jug of sterile water to flush the cut. They follow that bath with a cotton ball bursting with hydrogen peroxide, and I curse to high heavens as the sting courses through my blood like a snake.

  There’s no one in the world I’d trust to stitch up my hand like Leo. He’s got nerves of steel and a heart of soft spun gold. No part of his ego relies on how many deer or boar he kills, and though he keeps a coin of antler from the first buck he shot, he doesn’t keep trophies.

  The same can’t be said for Red, who I wouldn’t trust to stitch me up as long as Leo was an option. If Leo wasn’t a voice of reason, Red would have antlers strapped to the grille of their truck.

  Leo threads the needle with ease, then looks up to meet my eyes. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” I confirm.

  I keep my eyes on the needle as Leo pushes it through my skin. It pinches, actually it stings like a bee, but I grit my teeth and bear it. If Red thinks I’m suffering, he’ll suffer and that will make this harder on everyone. Mostly me.

  Leo’s hand moves quickly. Each stitch is clean and precise. He never hesitates or pauses, and at the end of five minutes, I have a line of tiny green x’s down my palm.

  “Keep it clean,” Leo commands.

  “You want the superglue?” Red offers a small tube, but Leo shakes his head.

  “Too deep. Just put a bandage on it and change it every day. Keep it dry.” He pauses, glancing away briefly, then keeps his voice too low for Red to hear and says, “You sure you won’t say how it happened?”

  A warm feeling makes my breath momentarily tight. For whatever reason, my parents stopped with one child—a fact Nanny Craven is quick to use to guilt her daughter into doing whatever it is she wants done. I think they probably tried. There’s more than enough room in our house for a proper brood, but around the time I entered third grade, Mom and Dad took up the “we only ever wanted one child” party line. I’ve always envied Leo and Red, and Carol and Irene, their close connections. I’d be a stellar sister. Leo makes me feel like I am.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” I promise. I give my fist a testing squeeze. The skin feels tight, hot as a sunburn, but somehow better. “Thanks.”

  While Leo and Red pack the kit away I finish my shitty beer. In the cauldron, the skulls burble and roll their hollow eyes skyward. Bits of flesh still cling to one of the snouts and they wave in the rush of water. The smell is stronger than the taste of my beer, thick and savory. Later, it’ll make a nice stock for their mother.

  The sky glows blue and orange through the trees, the final rays of sunset casting the bones and bubbles in demonic orange. The fire hisses and pops. My eyes slip to the glowing embers. I watch the lights in them surge and fade like ripples on water. The heat starts in my knees and fingertips, then spreads up to my nose and cheeks.

  My body warms until I’m certain my fingers are as hot as the embers, my skin absorbing and creating heat like the thick underbelly of the swamp.

  The flames inside fill my lungs with an airless smoke. My head feels light, my feet fluid, and in my mind, a voice sings, Her skin will shiver, shiver, shiver, when she sleeps in the river, river, river.

  “Candy!”

  My shoulders shake. Red’s face appears before mine. His meaty hands on my shoulders. He’s shaking me. Saying something else.

  She’s mad, mad, mad, rings in my head.

  Breathing takes effort. Too much effort. I gasp, destroying my lungs to get them to cooperate and fill with air.

  The voice fades and I push unsteadily to my feet.

  “The shit,” Red says, ushering in reality and staring into my eyes. “The shit was that?!”

  “Nothing.” I pull out of Red’s grip, all too aware of the concern masquerading as anger on his face.

  “Nothing? Bullshit. You were singing like a creepy-ass zombie and then wheezing. What. The. Fuck.”

  “Never mind,” I say. But I have the same qu
estion and it’s spinning up into something like panic. I was singing? “It was nothing. I have to go.”

  Leo steps into my path, imposing. Sometimes, being the center of attention is the worst thing in the world.

  “I’m fine. Swear it. Thanks for the stitches.” I step around him. Mercifully, he lets me go.

  I escape to the sounds of Leo barring Red from pursuit. It’s full dark now. Outside the ring of firelight, the path is difficult to see. How long was I here? My phone says it’s nearly seven. Two hours? How did two hours pass?

  The cold sensation slithering down my spine is probably called dread. I hate it. I dismiss it and climb into my car, where I blast my most aggressively cheerful playlist reserved for breakups and bad grades—Katy Perry and One Direction and Disney music.

  It’s not until I’m on the road that I remember I had a beer. How long ago? I have no idea. The absolute last thing I need in my life is to do something butt-stupid like drive drunk, so I pull over and do a pirouette on the side of the freaking road. Katy’s voice filters through my open car door and I do another pirouette for good measure. I spin in the grit on the side of the road for no one to see, my balance perfection, like a ballerina trapped in a jewelry box. It doesn’t make me dizzy and after a few deep breaths of cool night air, my heart starts to settle. Not drunk.

  Whatever it was that happened to me just now, it wasn’t caused by my cousins’ shitty beer, which isn’t as comforting as it should be.

  5

  BETWEEN THE NEWS OF MY biological impairment and the freakish voice that took my head for a spin last night, I’m surprised I sleep. But I do and not only do I sleep, but I sleep late. I wake just in time to rush over to the Tatums’ for my standing Saturday-afternoon babysitting job.

  At least it’s diverting and helps me avoid talking to my mother for a few more hours.

  My little cousins Carol and Irene chase each other back and forth across the backyard in a game called “Hunt the Boar.” They’ve donned their camouflage overalls for the occasion and take great care when firing their finger guns. It’s a testament to Aunt Daisy that they practice gun safety on an imaginary hunt.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. Since it’s just after noon, I assume Sterling has graced the world with her presence and climbed out of bed for her dreadful coffee. I answer without looking.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you babysitting today?” Sterling asks.

  I glance up. The girls are creeping to the far end of the yard, arm-rifles held to provide accurate sight lines. One day, they’ll realize boar hunting requires less guile and more all-terrain vehicles.

  “As I do every Saturday afternoon,” I answer.

  “Have you . . . ? I mean, any changes with your vision?” she asks. I hear the hope in her voice. Even she is anxious for me to see Shine.

  Today, the weight of that inability feels at once heavier and less significant. “No, no changes,” I say.

  “Well, maybe it’ll just take time,” she offers. “We missed you yesterday.”

  For a fraction of a second I panic that Abigail said something to her and she’s fishing. But I remember that Abigail’s life is built on secrets. It wouldn’t even occur to her to share mine with Sterling.

  I should tell her. Not just about my useless ovaries, but about my weird spell last night. That’s what friends do. But as I sit here watching Carol and Irene take down their imaginary boar, I feel so heavy. To tell Sterling anything, I’d have to feel something, and right now, my emotions are comfortably distant. It’s as if I’m at the bottom of a deep, dark well; the sky above is where my heart burns, but it’s a long way up.

  “Yeah, I just wasn’t up to it.”

  “By the way,” she adds, “I heard that Hallie’s little ghost vigil turned up nothing, but she and Kelly are pretending they saw something.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m sure they’re not alone. I’d be willing to bet half the stories we hear are fabricated.”

  “It’s harmless, I guess.”

  “Stupid is rarely harmless,” I counter.

  Sterling laughs and we hang up just as the girls present me with the head of their imaginary boar. This, at least, makes me smile.

  It’s late when I finally make it home.

  “Candace?” My mother’s voice finds me like a sonar, bouncing back to a sensor in her head in the shape of me. “Candace, would you come here, please?”

  I consider pretending I didn’t hear her. After all, it’s been nearly a week since we spoke; it’s plausible I don’t recognize her voice anymore. But this is one of those situations where Mom Law rules supreme. She can ignore me for as long as she wants, but the second she’s done, I’m expected to snap to.

  I find her seated at the kitchen table behind several short stacks of paper. She straightens one of them, nervously tapping at the edges, then braids her acrylic-tipped fingers in front of her. “I know you read the letter,” she states.

  I turn to stone.

  “I wish I’d been here when you did. I’m sorry you had to read that alone, I really am.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t want to talk about this.

  “You must be so disappointed.” Sympathy, heartbreak, and anguish all pool in her eyes. “I—I’ve been doing some research about . . . your condition and I think we should discuss a few options.”

  Research? She jumped straight from my disappointment to finding ways to fix me? I don’t even know if I am disappointed, but she sure seems to be.

  “You know it wasn’t all bad news, right?” I ask. “Remember that cancer was a possible outcome? Cancer! And I don’t have it. All things considered, I’m miles away from disappointed.”

  I don’t think I realized how true that bullet was until I fired it at my mom. Saying it, I do feel relief. I’m not dying. I’m not dying.

  Mom blinks. “Oh, honey, that was such a remote possibility. You didn’t think you might actually have cancer, did you?”

  “I—” But there aren’t any words there. While I’ve been preparing for the worst, she’s been denying it existed. What a luxury.

  “Of course I’m happy, relieved, you aren’t sick,” she continues. “And I’ve been reading up on how many girls with problems like yours are able to fix them.”

  “Not interested,” I say.

  Her hands flatten against her research. “You think that now, but one day you will be interested, and the sooner we attack this the better.”

  Now she knows better than I possibly can? Her presumptions are the only thing I’d like to attack.

  “Not. Interested.”

  “Please, try to be rational about this, Candy.” Her gaze hardens for battle. I feel every bit of my body go contrary in response. “All of these doctors say there’s hope that this . . . condition isn’t permanent, but it requires treatment. Early and often.”

  And suddenly anger rockets through my limbs.

  “Oh really? If I take their snake oil, I’ll stand a chance at fulfilling my one true purpose in life as a child-bearing woman? Let me be superduper clear about this: I’m. Not. Interested.”

  “Candace, please. At least read these.” She pushes one of her stacks toward me. “You’re dealing with a lot and there’s no harm in reading.”

  Coming from the woman who still hides her romance novels beneath the bed and thinks I don’t know, this assertion is laughable.

  It would be easy to take the stack and leave. It would make her feel better, but it isn’t going to change anything. This is the reality we’ve been working toward for a solid year. The past three months have involved several secret trips to New Orleans for X-rays, CT scans, blood work, and more, all because I’m a seventeen-year-old girl who doesn’t have her period.

  I feel dangerously close to the surface of my deep well, so I take a breath and sink back down. “I just don’t think you understand that it doesn’t bother me.”

  “Well, it should.” Her voice falters and her eyes cut away. “It’s such a disappoint
ment.”

  She says “it’s,” but I hear “you’re.”

  I want to say something caustic in response. I want words so corrosive they melt the acrylic on her nails. But what I have is this pinching feeling in between my lungs.

  I spin on my heel and leave the way I came. Instead of my car, I grab my bike from the garage and hit the road. Fresh air is a cure-all for mother-daughter confrontations. I pedal faster and faster until my body has no choice but to breathe hard, until biology overrides emotion and I exist apart from my thoughts. Matter over mind. I refuse to shed a tear over my mother’s baggage. Instead, I focus on the things I can control: my breath, my pace, my path.

  Dusk is thick on the road. The song of the evening has traded crickets for cicadas. When sweat begins to run from my temples, I slow my furious pace. Wind lifts my shirt over my back, cooling my fever, and I choose a meandering course through the streets I know so well.

  In the space of a few days I’ve gone from regular old Candy to “Candy, the barren” and “Candy, the permanently Shine-less.” These might be secrets now, but it won’t be long before every story ever told about me starts with one of those two phrases. And around here, the story is all that matters. That’s the trick of living in a place like Sticks—knowing that the capital T Truth isn’t what happened, it’s what people say happened.

  Resentment flares hot in my cheeks.

  Before I know it, I’ve taken the side road past Sterling’s light blue house and turned at the old bridge. On one side, the Mississippi River glides along in ribbons of moonlight; on the other, the vast architecture of oak trees rises like a wall. I barely spot the driveway of the historic Lillard House, which sits beneath them. It was probably gorgeous in its day, but now it’s just as tired and forgotten as the rest of Sticks.

  As soon as I’ve left the main road, the night changes. Here, beneath the canopy of oak and Spanish moss, it’s hard to distinguish branches from sky. Every sound is amplified in this dark cave; the language of trees is spoken in snaps and groans and voiceless whispers. It’s like listening to the elderly, and in spite of myself goose bumps raise along my forearms.