Once upon a July
a serial slipstream tale (with footnote explanations)
UPDATE OCT 12: Hey, today’s my birthday (age redacted), so it seems a fitting time to revisit this story with the long-awaited (by someone out there, maybe) footnotes full of all the explanation and insights you’ve been craving! As you read, click on each footnote to read more, then click again to skip back to the story!
—To skip in the serial, click on the “jump to” links below!—
A little experiment for your summer reading—experiments may lead to fantastic discoveries, or they may blow up in the experimenter’s face. That’s me. I’m the experimenter. You, the reader, have little to lose. No blowing up, I promise.
On the surface, “Once upon a July” is a straight-forward coming-of-age set in the 90s in small-town America, but underneath—that is, in the underside—Brett’s world is turning upside-down.
It all begins when his little sister opens the month with a screech and a broken mirror. Or does it begin before that? Let’s pick it up in June, right before the main events, 30 years ago…
#
NOW WITH FOOTNOTES!
Jump to:
Once upon a July
by Luke D Evans
June 26th was my birthday. I don’t remember much of the weeks leading up to it, except it rained a lot. Clouds so close to the ground you could touch them. Not fog... well, I guess it was, but sometimes, you could lie on the ground and look up at it.
I don’t remember much of my birthday either. I think we had
wax is dripping onto the icing, the rubber band for the party hat is cutting into1
a party. Some cake with a candle in the shape of a 13. Dale came over. I didn’t have many friends back then.
is dumb, not even Dale wants to be here, Dad couldn't get off work, what the
Someone gave me a Spiderman comic book, and there were socks.
Like the weather all June, I finished the month in a fog.2
July 1, 1994. Friday morning.
I remember it as the day of no fog. I awoke to bright sunshine just after 6am. Long morning shadows stretched across the lawn, harboring dewdrops on the grass until sunlight scorched them away. I hadn’t been up so early since school let out.
It would be a good day to go to the river with Dale, maybe hit the swimming hole or just toss big stones into the pools and watch the wakes. We hadn’t hung out since my birthday. I was dour, he was anti-social.
But today? Today would be different. I actually felt good.
Downstairs, things seemed brighter too. The smell of cooking drifted from the kitchen. I wasn’t the only one up early.
"Hey, Mom."
She looked over at me above sizzling links of sausage. "Morning, Brett. Would you like some toast?"
"Sure." She seemed happy, much more so than I could recall for quite some time. That made two of us.
A car revved to life outside, and I glimpsed, through a crack in the curtains, Dad’s Pontiac reverse quickly down the drive. I returned to buttering my toast.
"What do you have planned for the day?" Mom said and smiled at me from across the bar. A radiant smile, reflected in her eyes and cheeks, in her posture and even, seemingly, in hair that strayed across her eyes before she brushed it back. She hadn't looked so happy since before the diagnosis, not even the day they finally gave her a clean bill of health. That day, she had appeared relieved more than happy, a soft smile barely scratching the tired from her face. Her old self returned here, a pre-cancer mom3, a persona I assumed had been laid to rest all those dark years ago.
I smiled back and shrugged. "Nushin." Dale would be down by the river later, and I hoped to meet him there. Maybe that counted?
The paper, in disarray after Dad had his way with it, lay folded all wrong to a story about some mystery guy in a coma down at the hospital. No ID, no birthmarks, no recognizable face due to intense bruising, a broken jaw, and mangled nose. Anyone with information should contact blah blah blah.4 I searched for the comics, shedding papers like artillery shells, creating quite the racket.
I got halfway through my eggs when a scream from upstairs pierced my eardrum, a sound so shrill it jarred the egg from my fork and onto my crotch. Mom called up in answer, but a second scream drowned her out, and then a shatter of glass. This time the fork bludgeoned my upper lip.
"Sh-snip!" I shouted, extracting the fork from my mouth. I should mention that I'd been trying to curb my language, with Mom's insistence and Dale's encouragement, so I'd taken up a whole slew of euphemisms, some of which were not strictly reactionary yet.
My eyes clinched shut to block out the pain, and I crammed a hand against my cheek to feel for blood. I found none, but all the same, I was feeling churlish like Bill Murray when that dratted alarm clock began the same way every day.5
The screams had come from Cora’s room. She was a pretty cool customer, not fazed by much, even at ten. I would have thought screaming beneath her. Aside from the bed she slept in, her room appeared it’s typical spotless self. Cora sat on the thrown-back sheets, her head in Mom’s hands. Tears washed down her face.6
I gaped at her dresser, then back at her, back at her dresser. Where once had been a mirror now were shards, the culprit a perfume bottle with a similar spider web of cracks spread across it and the sprayer snapped in half. From its resting spot, stifling fumes escaped to lighten everyone’s heads.
Jessie showed up in the doorway behind me, squinting in that just-woke-up way. "What’s all the racket?" Her voice had a catch to it and she wiped her eyes, trying to chase the sleep away from both. It wasn't normal for her to be up so early any more than myself. Only the cry of the banshee—e.g. our little sister—could awaken her. Jessie, oh-so-cool-and-collected high school senior, looked more like a walking corpse at this early hour.
Then, following suit, Jessie cried out, splitting my left ear I had conveniently left in line with her mouth. She had stepped on some glass, smashing it into her bare foot. I looked down. The glass scattered from her feet to beneath the dresser, a span of about a yard. I had been too preoccupied with the top of the dresser to notice the floor around it. She picked the flat piece from where it'd stuck to her foot. To our mutual surprise, no blood gushed forth, only a shard-shaped imprint.
Mom looked up at us, an edge of concern in her voice. "Jessie, Brett: please, close the door behind you. And watch where you step." One of her patented I'm-about-to-lose-my-patience commands. Jessie seemed about to protest, fussing with her foot still, pushing it back into place and pinching the folds to double-check for cuts. I just nodded, glanced again at the dresser while tonguing the burgeoning puffy spot inside my mouth, and shut the door.
July 3. Sunday afternoon.
"I’m goin’ to the river. Wanna come?"
"Sure, why not." I stepped out onto the stoop. The sun beat heavy upon my brow. Perfect summer weather.
Dale had walked halfway down the gravel road by the time I caught up to him. I ambled after, in no hurry to reach him. Neither one of us talked much as a rule. We preferred the confines of our own rambling thoughts and someone to punch in the arm when a bug drove by.
Our families were unseen neighbors, his family’s old farmhouse on one side of a hill, our more modern Victorian home on the other. The two of us best friends, some might say only-friends, from that first simple "hey," and his response—a shrug and a lopsided grin.
The crunch of gravel resounded in my ears and lulled my brain nearly to sleep. Somewhere over the hill a mower whirred, and from behind us came the steady rumble of a combine. A bird flitted by overhead, and the growth beside the road rustled with the invisible tread of some small rodent. The sun blotched the landscape, with shadowy imprints of leaves and branches in between. Occasionally, a breezing peppered us. One of those quick summer things—a burst of wind nailing us in the chest
Despite all that, I didn't want to be outside. My sunny disposition from Friday had returned to whatever patch of sky it had fallen out of. I was tired now and longed to watch X-Men cartoons from the comforts of the couch. Instead, here I was, trudging to the same river I’d visited countless times since I was six, a glut of Cocoa Puffs rolling around in my gut like a golf ball. I considered turning around and going home when a grunt to my left startled me. It came from Dale.
"You goin’ to the fireworks?"
"What?" I said.
"You goin’—"
"Don’t think so," I said. Truth is, fireworks have always bored me. Yeah, sure, boom, flash, hoorah. Whatever. It’s cool when you’re five, but after that, there’s probably a movie I should be watching instead. Or teeth I should be flossing.
"Hmmm."
I glanced at him. His gaze roved about with his head as full of air as his pants were of rocks. But I knew better. The kid had aced every test in the seventh grade, or nearly so. And helped me ace a few in the process. So I forced the conversation forward, against every fiber of my young indifferent being.
"How ‘bout you?"
He didn’t answer. Seemed too busy staring toward the river, which now lay gurgling in our path. I followed his gaze, and my jaw dropped open. I actually felt it drop, the way I feel my pants fall when I'm standing before the john. Or bed, I guess. I don't actually remove my pants to pee. I took a deep breath and felt a shout rise and die in my throat.
A car, some Mercury or Plymouth early 80s hunk of gunk—I'm not good with cars, okay?—lay plunged over the bank of the river, water gushing over its hood. We rushed down, braving the water lapping at our feet. The cloth top was soggy and stained green. Inside, mildew and rents marred the vinyl. Except for puddles of water and a general stench of decay and water damage, the interior was empty. No unconscious people, no dead bodies. In fact, the car had the appearance of having been there for ages; water submerged the pedals, a dark mud dried on the dry-rotted, deflated back tires, and algae grew on the rear seats.
But that was impossible. We came this way all the time, and never seen it. So close to the road, there was no way...7
Something glinted on the floor in the back. Not quite empty after all. I forced open the reluctant door, reached into the steamy jungle of a back seat, and picked up the shiny object. A shard of glass with a sticker on it. The only fresh thing in the whole vehicle. I love you… and so do I, it said.
Not a big deal, right? Thing is, I had given that same sticker to Cora on her sixth birthday. That same sticker had ever since been on the corner of her now shattered dresser mirror.8 It was a joke without context, something about multiple personalities or schizo or whatever. I'd found it uproariously funny at the time I'd given it to her. I can't recall why.
My pulse and breath ceased at once and my blood went cold. I felt as though someone had slammed the brakes on my body. My whole world reeled and slid forward to crush me.
It would be a slow process.
#
Dale, Cora, and I watched as the tow truck tugged the car out of the river. Water poured from all sides. I snapped shots with my Polaroid and shook the blackish images.
A cop and ambulance had arrived, their lights swirling, the cop noting everything with absurd seriousness, while the EMTs, a boy and girl, having nothing else to do, flirted with each other, pulling at each other's clothes and delivering little pecks.9
Eventually they loaded the car onto the bed, its front bumper dented and its fenders almost rusted to nothing. Then they all drove off.
Cora popped a bubble and looked up at me with a big goofy grin. All I could think of when I looked at her was her outburst the other morning and finding the sticker in that car. By this time, I had pretty well rationalized it away—I wasn't the only one with a sticker; glass broke all the time; it was just a strange coincidence.
Even then, I didn't believe it. I forgot to smile back at her, and she hopped down to the creek and threw in a stone where the car had been.
Dale shrugged and headed for home. I took my collection of snapshots and did the same.
July 4. Monday evening.
We kept our word and ignored the fireworks even as they lit up the town above us. Dale and I rode our bikes from street to street in the dusk. July 4th was like the opposite of Halloween—nobody out and about, or even home. The barbeques had wrapped up and everybody gathered at the park for some minor flashy explosions in the sky. We rode up and down alleys and backstreets and sidewalks until we found a house lit up and loud.
With a look at each other, we parked our bikes and walked up to the open door. No one stopped us. College and high school kids, mostly drunk and laughing or whooping or chanting, greeted us. One rubbed my head and called me "little guy," another shoved a beer in my face, which Dale promptly took.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Jessie in the kitchen, talking to some guy, their bodies touching, their faces inches apart. She turned her head away from his, smiling, and looked directly toward me without actually seeing me.10
At first. Then she did spot me and shoved him away and stalked right at me.
"Fugs," I said, and made for the door, stopping just outside to peer back inside.
Dale looked after me confused until my sister grabbed the beer out of his hand and he bent his neck up at her agape.
"You tell my brother to keep his mouth shut, got it?"
Dale nodded. She looked my way but there were too many bodies between us. I could barely hear her over the ruckus, but I got the gist. She turned back to the kitchen, Dale's beer in hand. I slunk back, grabbed his arm, and dragged him out as he still looked longingly after his lost beer.
July 7. Thursday early afternoon.
Dad volunteered me to work for Mr. Harris, a farmer who lived across some fields, two days a week for several hours a day. Pitching hay, cleaning stalls, and plucking chickens, among other tasks Mr. Harris found for me. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Dad had already promised, and if there was one thing I knew not to do
I’m not going to some godforsaken camp, I’ll run away from home first, I’ll burn this whole jacknaped11
it was to oppose Dad. Normally easygoing, fun-loving, but the moment you gainsaid him would be the moment your life took a serious turn for the worse.
So I dug rocks out of his fields, the most banal of tasks, and stacked them into a wheelbarrow. This in turn I wheeled clear across a plowed field. On the other side, between his field and Mr. Turner’s pasture, he wanted a wall built. There was no way I could collect enough rocks to build a wall as long as the pasture, but that was beside the point. I think he just ran out of things for me to do and places to put the rocks.
Anyway, my attention had been hi-jacked by a particularly stubborn stone for, like, ten minutes, but it felt a lot longer. One of those stones that looked innocent enough as you scraped its surface, until you started poking around, and found out this stone had a cousin who sank the Titanic. I jabbed and scratched at it, uttering words to make my grandma blush, when someone tapped me from behind.
A rat-a-tat with two fingers. I recognized the touch or I would have leapt clean out of my skin. Instead I leaned on the end of my shovel, not looking around.
"What, Cora?"
"How’d you know it's me?"
"Cause you always tap me the same way. Grab that spade, wouldja?" I started to poke at the monolith again, but without fervor.
She stood there humming the tune to Ducktales.
Ducktales, a-doo-doo! Tales of da da da, da da da Ducktales! Now it would be stuck in my head, and I couldn't even remember all the words.12
"Look," I huffed, about to say something really nasty, but she interposed before I could get going.
"Hot out here." She took a bite of something crunchy and juicy. I looked her way. A Red Delicious.
"Really?" I said, wiping bits of juice off the back of my neck.
I started to pry on the stone, but I was no Samson. It didn’t budge.
"They still haven’t found the owner of that car."
"I know," I said. "Probably a junker some kid took for a joyride."
She sank her teeth deep into the apple, and for thirty seconds all I heard was the slap of her gums and the crunch of the fruit in her mouth.
"Yeah, maybe," she finally said between chunks of fruit. "It has no license plate or van, so they can't track it."
"You mean the VIN."
"Yeah, that number code thingy. It was like, gone. Rusted off or something."
"The license plate you mean."
She shrugged.
I thought about the mold and mildew on the back seat, how it looked like it had been there for months, if not years. Just as quickly, I shoved the thought away. It wasn't possible. It must have gotten that way wherever it had been stored before the crash, and then the driver had fled after the crash. That made more sense. But the sticker...
I love you, we both love you, I'm riding in the back seat for you, I'm hiding in a car crash, I'm13
"It's a mystery," she said.
I bit my lip but said nothing, my back to her while I vainly scraped at the boulder. I'm not sure why I didn't ask her about the sticker right there and then. Or actually, I do know why. I was confused. My head had fogged over again. There was no way she put it there, no chance. Just another of those things I tried to push out of my head and forget about. If it doesn't add up, it doesn't belong.
She bit into her apple.
"I’m leavin’ now," she said through clenched teeth, spraying the back of my neck with bits of apple and saliva.
I sighed and wiped the back of my neck and went back to tackling the rock.
July 9. Saturday morning.
"Hey, Brett, come here a second."
I closed the fridge door and went to stand before Dad.
"You good? Everything’s ok?"
I shrugged. "Sure."
He nodded. "Good, good. Listen, I know school, I know it got a little tough at the end."
Here we go.
"You can come to me if you got something you can’t figure out, you know?"
"Yeah, I know."
He chewed at his lip. "Was it something else? Was it...?" Your mother? The unspoken words that had been unspoken so long they might as well be spoken now.
"No. No, it’s not that. I dunno, I was just distracted, I guess. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine."
Cora jaunted into the kitchen with an empty cereal bowl, set it down on the counter, and raced back to the couch before commercials finished. We both waited for her to go.
"She’s okay though?" I asked. Genuine concern that I had to force myself to verbalize.
"Yeah. Yeah. She’s doing great. Don’t worry about her."
I nodded, smiled, didn’t really feel it. "Cool, so, Dale and I are hanging out...."
He pushed me away. "Go. Have fun."
As I was leaving, some execrable car pulled up—I'm telling you, if someone had wiped down the car they took out of the river, it would have been better—and a guy in an EMT outfit rolled out of it. "Hey, guy!" he said, like I was his best friend. "Like your sister’s new car?" He indicated the turd he had just vacated. Jessie must have her hooks deep into this lousy muffer if he brought her a car.
"It blows," I was about to say, but just then Dad stepped out the screen door, hand extended, and Jessie burst past him, flashed a huge smile at the guy, and ran to the car squealing. I shook my head and pushed off on my bike.14
#
Dale and I stood in a dark room, side by side, jabbing at each other under a too-blue sky. He attempted a sweep-kick, I leapt aside and flipped him, he rolled to his feet and butted me with the heel of his hand. We went back and forth until the game declared me the winner with barely a tick left in my life bar.
Afterwards, we stared at the Virtua Fighter screen, neither of us having the quarters to continue. "Let's go look at Super Nintendo games," he suggested, and I followed him out of the arcade and through the mall.
Neither of us had a Super NES, but that was hardly the point. It was cool to see what was out there, to fantasize about what could be. Dale had Nintendo, but it rarely worked anymore, no matter how much we blew into the cartridges, and besides, that was so passé. Rumors of new consoles with new, even better 3D games floated through our heads, and the idea that when one of these came out, we could pool our resources, or maybe convince our parents...
"Hey," Dale said, poking me in the ribs. "Isn't that your mom?"
I stopped and peered through the window. A woman stood halfway across the store, her back to me, a large shopping bag resting beside her. She had long brown hair, too smooth with a silky shine, completely unlike Mom's rather pedestrian shoulder-cut and dull brunette.
"Naw," I said, turning around. I was still high on thoughts of Mario running around a world as three-dimensional as this mall.
"Yeah it is," he said, pulling at my sleeve. "Look."
I looked again, annoyed, knowing it wasn't my mom. I knew what my own mom looked like. The woman had turned toward me, and her hands fiddled with something in her hair, then lifted it off completely. I started, gasping a little. It was a wig. I stared, not sure what I was seeing. It looked just like Mom now, without the wig.
"Why's your mom trying on wigs?"15
Dale stared at me, a little too sharply for comfort. Like there was something he wanted to tell me, maybe, or wanted me to tell him.
I shook my head, my throat feeling dry. "Got me," I mumbled. "Come on, let's go. This is weird."
Soon enough, visions of Donkey Kong and Sonic the Hedgehog made us forget completely about wigs and misidentified mothers.
July 10. Sunday evening.
Grandpa had gone to the hospital for hip surgery, so we all piled in to see him. He made me sit on the bed like I was five and squeezed my hand. Next came Cora’s turn. Jessie didn't show. Or rather, she was in the hospital somewhere, but had only lingered long enough to tell Grandpa she loved him and skittered off.16
Dad and Grandpa started talking about insurance and mutual funds, and Cora and Mom watched some nothingness on TV, so I wandered off too. Hospitals are gross. For being all about health and getting well, they smell of death and disease thinly disguised under artificial deadlights.
I passed an old lady with a walker, several nurses in flimsy blue scrubs, some guy pushing a cart, and a barricaded door I thought must lead to a quarantine of some deadly disease but turned out to only be the maternity ward. Somehow I wandered in and out of ER without getting trampled, and found myself in ICU, which no pun intended was all but dead.
One patient though caught my attention. In the back of a dark room with drawn blinds, all manners of tubes and bandages and IVs and a steadily beating heart monitor, lay the mystery comatose guy from the paper.17 I went and stood over him, studying his face, as if I could will some kind of recognition out of the masks of swelling and bandages and braces. He did look familiar though. I wished I had my Polaroid.
"What’s your name, fella?"
He didn’t answer.
"Wake up, scatface."
Still nothing.
"Go stick your ear in a socket."
Someone walked up the hall, so I ducked behind the bed. Afterward, I chucked him softly in the ribs and told him to buckle up next time. "And take your wallet too, you anonymous lug."
#
That night, with me downstairs getting a snack, Jessie barged into my bedroom. "Brett! Fu—." She cut herself off, jerking her head around to see if any parents had heard.
"What, I’m down here." I ran back up the steps.
"What?" I said again at the door, but she wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. I had the pictures of the mysterious car getting pulled out of the creek taped to my wall, and they seemed to entrance her. Then she snapped one of them off, ripping the drywall, and tore off with it.18
"Hey!" I shouted. What the double wizard staffs. I slammed my door after her and didn’t feel like eating anymore.
July 11. Monday night.
Calvin and Hobbes. A staple of so many nights as I lay awake beneath the sheets. Tonight Revenge of the Baby-Sat lay nestled in my hands. The whole book flipped before my eyes in the span of an hour, and I was in the latter pages, about to place it aside and call it a night. Fatigue had crept up on me the way flesh crept up the crown of Dad’s head.
Someone jostled the doorknob. I always locked it, so a tat-tat followed.
"Yeah," I called out, not really wanting to. Wanting to get up and open the door even less.
Silence for nearly a minute. I managed to read another page of comic adventure.
"I wanna come in."
Cora.
"Huhhhhhhhh…" I breathed. I slipped off the bed and twisted the lock free. She recognized her cue, and shuffled inside the room, latching the door behind her.
I resumed reading. Cora fondled my radar baseball while rifling through my CDs.
The book slid through my fingers to the comforter. "Could you not do that? What do you want, anyway?"
She continued for a moment, then turned and looked at me, still rotating the baseball around her palms.
My attention switched to Calvin rolling his parents’ car into a ditch, but her stare caused me to look up.
"Smatter?"
She shrugged and diverted her gaze, but it was clear something was on her mind. Her lips danced about as she scrutinized my bedpost.
"I saw Dale today."
"Oh?" I wasn't really interested. I'd spent half the day with Dale yesterday.
"Yeah. His mom took Mom somewhere. He was in the back seat."
"Cool."
"He looked sad."
I kept reading Calvin. Dale looking sad was hardly news.
"I mean, at first he didn't see me even though he looked right at me. Then he smiled, but it was like he didn't want to. You know? Like..."
The silence that followed hung too thick for comfort. I looked up from the book. "Like what?"
"I dunno. Like when you're sick and Mom asks if you're alright, and you smile at her even though you're not because you don't want to be sick, but you don't really mean it."
I shrugged. "Okaaay..."
"Is Dale sick?" she asked.
"He looked fine yesterday."
"Yeah."
"His mom and Mom stayed in the car, and they were hugging and crying too I think. What do you think that means?"
"They're adults, who knows. Maybe some old person died or something."
"Yeah, maybe," she said without conviction.
I love you... and so do I.
"Hey," I said, sitting up in bed and setting aside the book. "What's the deal with that nightmare you had last week? When you broke your mirror?"
She shrugged but I saw a flash of fear in her eyes before she turned away. "Nuthin," she muttered.
"Come on, wasn't nothing."
She looked me right in the eyes this time, her brows bent low and her lips bunched up. "I don't remember. I wish I could."
"Oh." Well, I found a piece of your mirror in that car, the piece with the sticker I gave you, and
"Bye," she said and swept through the open doorway, clicking the door shut.
"Night," I mumbled. For several moments all I could manage was a pointless stare through the far wall of my room. There was something else, something that tied all this together. Somehow we were missing something, both of us. If I could only—
The shard of glass—if it came from a mirror, didn't those have that silver backing? I shot up and rummaged through my stuff, procuring it. It did not have a silver backing. I slumped onto the bed. But—I held it closer to my eyes—it did have scrape marks, as if someone maybe had been picking it at. Removing the silver backing. And the sticker, did it look a little faded now? Were the edges starting to peel up?
I could have sworn it was like new just last week when I'd found it in the back of the old beater in the river.
I flicked the light off and jumped into bed. I held the glass above my head for a while, turning it this way and that in the faint light through the curtains, finally setting it on the table beside me and rolling over.19
July 14. Thursday afternoon.
"I’m not buying that."
I gave Jessie a look to curdle her nose hairs. "Mom always gets it."
She turned her back and walked away with the cart. "I’m not Mom. Forget it."
I put the oatmeal cream pies back. Storm clouds swelled in my head.
"Brett!" came another voice behind me.
I spun around. "Oh. Mr. Hark. Hey."
"How’s the reading coming?"
"I’m, um... good." I nodded like that made my lying appear less like a lie.
"You asshole!" That wasn’t Mr. Hark. It came from the other end of the aisle, and sounded an awful lot like Jessie. She shoved some guy in an EMT suit against the cereal and pinned him there. Tears streamed down her face as she shoved a Polaroid—mine, I assumed—into his face.20
Mr. Hark turned back to me and forced a smile. "Well, I should be going."
"Yeah," I said, still watching my sister.
"You kissed her? You said she was nothing, just a coworker!" She punched him in the chest, and he acted like it hurt way more than it could have.
"It’s, um... it’s a great book," I said, looking back at Mr. Hark, but he was gone and the words tailed off.
She stormed back toward me and jerked into the next aisle, slinging a pack of diapers into the cart. Okay, they weren’t exactly diapers, but, although I had a basic understanding of feminine workings, I had yet to piece together the entire puzzle. I sneaked the oatmeal cream pies back in when I thought she wasn’t looking.
"Put. Those. Back." She didn’t even look at me.
I yanked them back out of the cart and tossed a few baby food jars off the shelf and into the cart. "Here’s a snack to go with your diapers."
One of them cracked, but instead of getting mad, she started to cry. I didn’t know what to do, so I said nothing and put the oatmeal cream pies back, almost feeling bad.
I left her with her head buried in her hands across the cart’s pushbar, shoved past the cashiers, and out the automatic doors.
#
The grocery store lurked on the edge of town, which rose onto a series of hills interrupted by various creeks and small rivers. High above me and distant, the town's lone water tower jutted into the sky, surrounded by a series of houses and low buildings.
The river, my river, curled through a dell just behind the store. I made my way there and followed it upstream, toward home, watching the sunlight bounce off the ripples haphazardly. I took my time, crossing the river at natural fords just for the heck of it, clambering up the rock faces that walled it in, sitting beneath the bridge at the highway and listening to the roar of traffic overhead.
Eventually it led me home. Jessie's ragdoll of a car was in the driveway. I'd want to avoid her after having abandoned her. I snuck in the basement door, which I often unlatched in the morning just for this sort of purpose, and sneaked up the stairs. Jessie was in the kitchen, ranting about something, me most likely, or maybe that guy. I couldn't hear much of it, but the cupboards slammed more than once, and Mom's calm, tired voice interrupted in between.
The top step creaked, as I should have remembered it would, and Cora's head snapped toward me from her spot on the floor in front of the TV. I pursed my lips and gave her a head nod. She returned it with a long stare. Not a hard stare, not a glare, nothing so much as that. It seemed indifferent, as if I just happened to be in the way of her gaze, but it held me frozen for a moment all the same.
She turned back to her programming, some sitcom on rerun. I didn't care much for sitcoms, and Cora didn't seem to be laughing. I mounted the steps to the second floor as I heard Jessie walk into the dining room and back into the kitchen again. Mom was cooking dinner, and Jessie helping. I could smell something indistinct. Noodles boiling in a pot, most likely.
At the top of the steps, I turned away from my bedroom and instead pushed open the door to Jessie's old room. She had moved downstairs a few years before, and her room had been overcome by boxes, an antique sewing machine, an old dresser, and a bunch of other random storage items. I liked it for its walk-in closet with a musty smell of old clothes, a pull-chain light, and a place to sit with my knees against my chest and read comics or just think and feel sorry for myself, if I felt the urge. My own little secret getaway in the middle of it all.
I must have drifted off because when I woke it was to the sound of Dad's voice. It was hollow as it came through the drywall, my ear pressed against it and my mouth slack-jawed with a line of drool down the white paint. I snapped to, drawing my mouth shut. Even up here, I could faintly smell the odor of cooking tomato sauce. Something about that smell made me feel sick to the stomach, the way it filled every crack in the house, the way it smelled thick and pungent as blood, the way it smelled not unlike how it smelled after sitting too long in the fridge.
Dad's voice continued to filter through the wall, and then Mom's softer sound. I pressed my ear back to the wall, amplifying their voices just on the other side, where Dad presumably changed out of his white collar and tie as Mom tidied up.
"Honey, no. That's not fair to the kids." It was Mom. She sounded defeated, rundown. Not much new about that.
"Dear, I'm sorry, but we have to sooner or later."
"But what could you say? How would you tell Brett? You know he'll take it hard."
"Well, he should. But he has a right to know. They all do. We can't keep hiding it from them. Sooner or later—"
"Yeah, but honey..."
"The doctors will take care of it, don't worry. We've talked about this before. It's time, dear, we can't keep beating around the bush."
"But Brett..."
"Dear, he'll be fine. He'll survive."
"He's just not himself."
"I know. That's why this is so important. Help get things back to normal."
"They can't be normal again, you know that. This changes everything. Everything." She started to sob, breaking down and, I imagined, falling to her knees, Dad rushing up to hold her close, comfort her.
"Speaking of Brett, where is he?" Dad said.
Mom's voice cracked but she replied. "Cora said he went to his room earlier, and his door's closed... he had a long day too. I didn't want to bother him. Jessie said he blew up at her, and she was already dealing with her thing, and he ran off. Well, you know how he gets. I'll set a plate aside if he doesn't show for dinner."
I pulled away from the wall, aghast. Tears formed in my eyes, welling up and almost spilling down. Not quite. Not quite. My head fell into my arms. I leaned against my knees, convulsed slowly, silently. Finally the tears began to flow. I could still hear them in the other room, talking, no longer in words I could distinguish. All I could hear were my own muffled sobs, thundering in my head; my own thoughts, echoing my parents.
Brett? He'll take it hard. The doctors, don't worry. We can't keep beating around. He'll survive. Not himself. I know. Back to normal. You know how he gets. Changes everything. Everything.
They were going to do it. Finally they were going to do it. Send me away, get me psychiatric help, find out why I'd become a surly, boorish teen. It had been talked about before. Long talks in my bedroom, Dad sitting on the bed beside me, arm around my shoulders.
You gotta chin up, boy. Your mom can't handle all this, and I don't have the time. I've been looking at a camp, it's for boys your age, looks like a nice place. We love you, son, and we want the best for you. Anytime, I'm here. Don't hesitate, all right? You'll do that? We can find a good doctor, if it comes to it. The best. They do wonders these days. It's up to you, kid. I know you can do it.
And now it had come to this. I shouldn't have thrown that baby food in the cart. I was the childish one. So they would send me away. Find me "help." I'd sooner run off.
Mom had stopped sobbing. Dad closed the closet door opposite to the one I huddled inside. The door cut across its rails and rapped shut.
"Maybe..." Mom said, her voice ragged and weak. "Maybe we can wait? Break it to them later? Let's see what the doctor says first, you never know..."
"Fine." I could hear the sigh in Dad's voice. "We'll wait till August. That's what, two weeks? No longer. If the doctor doesn't know by then, he never will, and it's not fair, not to Brett, not to Jessie..."
I know what you're thinking. I should have realized. It's all so obvious in retrospect, all the pieces were there. But I was a 13-year-old boy. I was self-absorbed. I was in a fog. Puberty had me by the throat. Etc et al and so forth. I feel awful about it now, but honestly, I had no clue.
I pulled away from the wall and curled into a ball, trying to pull myself together, calm my jagged breaths. Soon Mom or Jessie would call for supper, and I wasn't about to go down there all puffy-eyed, even if Mom did. Let them think they'd send me away. I had two weeks to put on a show or get the heck out of Dodge.21
July 16. Saturday noon.
"Hey," I said and popped a salt and vinegar chip into my mouth. "Whatcha doin’?" I was lounging on the sofa—slumped shoulders, zombie eyes, the full couch potato effect. Thursday seemed a long time ago. Saturday morning cartoons had just concluded, and now the B-grade flicks had begun. I sat entranced, unable to break the spell.
Cora stopped and peered over my shoulder, her full brown hair mingling with mine.
"To Nina’s."
"Oh, yeah?" I said between crunches. I didn’t really care, I was just making zombie conversation.
I continued my trance, slipping crispy, salty, lip-burny chips between my mandibles. I thought I heard Cora walk away, but a sense of being watched welled over me. I tried to ignore it, but eventually I looked up, straight into Cora's vacuous gray eyes staring down at me. I upset the greasy bag across the sofa.
"Cora!" I spat. "What is wrong with you? Scared the farts out of me."
Her eyes regained their typical dull state and she smiled with her mouth if not her eyes.
"Sorry." She shrugged and walked away.
My gaze followed her to the door. I leapt up and ran after her. I slammed open the screen door, and Mom yelled something from the kitchen.
Cora had headed up the road already, long hair bouncing to the rhythm of her steps. My intention was to call out to her, but the entire sky had turned deep orange, like the western horizon at sunset, and a disquieting calm settled all around. No birds, no bugs, nothing made a sound. An eerie quiet, like a movie on mute or the world to a deaf man, hung over me. My words died in my throat.
Then she was there in the driveway, bounding toward the road. As if the VHS had become mangled, and the image had lurched or screwed up into funky lines.
I let the screen door swing shut in front of me, happy to hear it slam, and watched Cora head up the gravel road before turning back to the foyer. I wondered if I was sick and seeing things, maybe my ears were clogging up. If the sky had really turned orange, surely Cora would've noticed. I mean, it was midday. The sky doesn't just turn orange at midday for no reason, I mean, and the muteness and the lurch—
it's a hallucination, you're hallucinating, there's something wrong with you, it's not22
The telephone dangled from its cord beneath the wall-mounted cradle, the dial tone loud and obnoxious. I walked over to it and set it back in place and doing so, passed the open pantry door. Mom slumped inside, her head bent, and a sound like gentle sobbing escaped. I hesitated, thinking I'd tiptoe away, leave her to whatever was bothering her this time, when she turned around. Possibly she had heard the phone click into place, or my steps leading up to it, but she didn't look startled or angry. Just sad. Bloodshot eyes, dried tears running down too-red cheeks, strands of hair freely in her face.
I grimaced, trying to smile. "What's wrong?" I croaked.
"Oh, Brett," she said, holding her arms out to me. "I'm so sorry."
She embraced me and I felt my shoulder become damp as she pressed her face into it.
Why
"Who was it on the phone?"
"Oh." She pulled back from me, face contorted by confusion, as if trying to remember. "It was Trace. Your Aunt Tracey." She turned away, back to the pantry and the bags of flour and sugar, started rearranging boxes of cake mix and macaroni.
"Her cat died," she added. It sounded like an afterthought, an un-asked-for explanation.
"Oh," I said. "Which one?"
She shrugged and new tears came to her eyes. "Brett, I love you very much. You know that right? No matter what happens?"
"Yeah, sure. I love you too, Mom."
That was unlike me. I hadn't told anyone I'd loved them since... the closest I'd come was that sticker I'd given Cora.
"We won't always be here for you, Brett, but that doesn't mean we don't love you. All right? You understand."
"Yeah." She was scaring me. They must be really close to sending me away if she was cracking up middle of the day over it, blubbering at me instead of hiding in the bathroom.23
"Good. Do you want a sandwich? It's past lunchtime."
"No thanks, I just had chips."
That was a dumb thing to say, and I immediately regretted it, waiting for the coming lecture. Instead, she smiled wanly and turned back to the pantry, and I slipped away and upstairs to my room, collapsing on my bed.
This was
is there something wrong with the earth's gravitational pull?
heavy.24
July 20. Wednesday afternoon.
Following two days of hard rain, the river looked more like a mudslide than a channel of water. Tree limbs hurtled downstream like giant serpents, darting in and out of the currents, disappearing for a second, only to shoot out again further down. The banks barely contained the maddening rush, shooting dirty sprays onto shore anytime a rock impeded the debris’ progress.
The air felt fresh, renewed, as it often does after a good rain. Moisture hung on the breeze, a coolness rather than a humidity. The mercury had yet to return to its normal summer heights, hovering in the mid-seventies—a cool and pleasant afternoon.
Dale and I relished the second chance at spring. Dale removed his shoes and braved the muddy run-off at one of the more sedate tributaries. He poked at the water with a stick, stirring up bubbles but no life.
I chose to imagine the silt of the creek bed and the rush of cool water around my calves rather than experience it. I sat under a large hickory tree and plucked grass, stripping the blades into whistles. For all I should have been contemplating, I instead thought on grasshoppers, the art of catcalls, and the springy nature of the bologna sandwich I'd eaten for lunch.
Dale emerged from the brown Wonka-style stream and struggled up the slope to me, wiping grit from his hands onto his pants. He walked right by me without a glance. I turned and watched him walk away, then hopped up and raced after him.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Where ya goin’ all of a sudden?"
"Um... home."
"What's wrong? Did I say something?" I mimed smelling my armpits like I'd seen Dad do. No matter the two didn't make sense together.
"No, it's just—I forgot, Mom wants me to go with her to the store. She’ll blow her top if I skip." His face screwed up in apology, but I don't think he knew it. He was a bad liar.
"What? Since when? You could have said something." I waved my arm dismissively at him. He plodded away with a shrug.
As I watched him grow smaller, the air grew still, like it had done that day I watched Cora tread down the road from our side door. A wind blew out of that stillness like a ghost from a grave and enveloped me. Whispers purled in my ears, but their words were lost. A rush of coldness darted down my spine. I turned from Dale’s lessening form, back to the river. The whispers did not follow, but the stillness remained, so that the whole world seemed in slow-motion. Branches stirred lethargically, the river flowed with undue restraint, and branches bobbed out of the ripples like surfacing crocodiles, methodically rising above the water only to collapse slowly to its surface.
I jumped up and ran for home, stopping for a breather halfway. I glanced around me, watching the branches closely, even the birds and the clouds. The world was back to normal speed. I thought I must be getting sick.25
July 23. Saturday late morning.
Riding my bike down a nearby paved road, I came across an accident. A fender-bender, really, some dented egos and sharp words. Ambulance was there, and the EMTs stood around sulkily. I recognized the guy who had broken Jessie’s heart, the guy who'd given her the craptastic machine on four tires. The guy from my Polaroid.26
"Hey," I shouted out, deciding at the last second not to add jackbrain.
He looked up groggily, waved me off, then something clicked and he jogged over to me. "Dude, dude, hey, wut up man. Listen, hey, Jessie send you?"
"No, I..." I paused, staring at his face.
"Dude, you’re creeping me out a little here." He gave a nervous chuckle.
"Were you in the hospital?"
"Yeah, of course, sure, I’m a medic, you know, an EMT." He hawed like that was funny.
"No, lacknuts." I couldn’t hold back anymore. "Like, in the hospital. A patient."
"No. Dude. What's the deal? Chill, kay? I just work here."
"Got a brother? He in the hospital?"
"I gotta go. Gotta sister, okay? Say hey to Jess. Stay cool, bro."
I could’ve sworn it was him, despite all the bandages and what. I tried to follow them back into town, but they pulled into the fire station instead of the hospital. I pulled over and waited, biting my lower lip, wondering what next.27
Our Outback slowed down beside me, and Cora leaned out the window. "Breeeeetttttt!"
"Hop in for lunch?" Mom said, her arm on the downed window. There were bags under her eyes and her hair looked thinner. So did the rest of her, come to think of it. I tried to shake it out of my mind, and shook her off.
"Naw, I’m good."
"Bring you something."
I shook my head again. "I’m riding around," I said, gesturing with my hand. "Dale’s around here somewhere." That was a lie.
"Be careful!" she said as she pulled away.
The hospital. That would be my next stop. I had to see that guy again.
I thought it would be harder to slip past the ER desk without signing in, but it was a busy day. I wandered all over the place, not quite remembering the maze that led to ICU, asking an orderly, a nurse, and some random guy I thought
not like that, I can’t see anymore, the water is coming in fast, so cold, so swift, I
to be a doctor but was just some random guy in a white coat, until I finally found it.
Nurses and doctors buzzed around. I dodged my way to his room. It was empty. Lights on, blinds open, new sheets, the whole shebang. I checked
against the wall, it isn’t dark per se, it’s gray like slow death, and the groaning, oh, the groans, they waft through
a few other rooms, and then asked at the nurses’ station for the mystery guy in the coma. She looked at me like I had asked if I could pee on her shoes, please. I asked someone else, and got the same look. Eventually I gave up and left.
Back home, I fished the July 1st paper out of the stack of recyclables. I couldn’t find the article anywhere.28
July 26. Tuesday afternoon.
For three hours, I slaved over Mr. Harris’ barn with a paint brush. Thankfully, Mr. Harris let me off early, and Ms. Cathy brought out some lemonade.
He paid me for the day’s work—the hardest ten dollars of my life—and sent me on my way. The direct path for home took me across his field, the same one with my as-of-yet incomplete stone wall. I traversed it slowly, wallowing in sweat and reveling in freedom, and wondered what Dale was up to. I no sooner passed my parody of a wall than my world turned on end.
The sky became a deep, dark burnt orange. I stopped walking and held my breath, dizzy. Objects came in and out of focus, zoomed in like a telescope and out again, too far away like looking through the lens backwards. I expected to see Cora around somewhere like before, but I was alone.
The sun grew dull, a dark red orb dangling over the world like a Christmas ornament. Wraith-like clouds whisked across the sky at breakneck speed. A fierce wind blew and howled in my ears, showering purple leaves from the trees, whipping their limbs about like tassels. The tall grass, now a dark forest green, lay flat in the wind’s ferocity, then danced in its vacillation. Wind whispered in my ear and I listened, though I couldn't make out what it said.
I fell to the ground, devoid of senses. Time passed unnaturally while I lay on the soil and the long grass. Visions of a guy and a girl—the guy lunged at the girl, the girl cowed against it. The boy had his back to me, but bore a ferocity of recoil. Again he struck. The girl, a little older than Jessie I thought, but with darker hair, faced me, but I couldn't quite grasp her features. Like, every time I looked, it grew blurry, or maybe smudged. Like a fresh painting someone had ran a finger across. The boy struck again. Fluids seemed to spray and spurt, from her first, then from him as well. Blood, sweat, tears...
My heart leapt within me, but I was rooted in place. I cared for this girl somehow. Then they both melted away. Thoughts and perceptions crossed my mind like strangers on a city street. When I came to, they in turn vanished and I was left with the vision.
hallucination, you're cracking up, maybe that doc isn't such a bad idea, maybe it's time for
The world had resumed its normal form; the sky was blue, the sun bright yellow, the leaves green, the clouds floating imperceptibly, the air sedate.29
Cora leaned over me. "Are you okay?" She looked genuinely concerned.
I tried to get to my feet, but a dart shot through my head. I lay back down.
Cora leaned over. "Are you okay?"
What the what.
"I dunno," I said. "Think I hit my head."30
"Mom was looking for you. It’s almost time for dinner."
"Yeah, ok."
She started back to the house, looking back at me. I glanced back at the farm, rubbing my head, wondering what I had seen. What I thought I had seen. I turned back toward Cora. She was once again standing in front of me, walking away, now looking back, same as before. Exactly the same as before. I was going guano-laced, lip-strumming crazy.
I gathered myself as best I could and finished the walk across the field, stumbled into the house by the back door. Across the hallways, I could see Dad walking in the front door at the same time. Mom greeted him with her sad smile but no kiss. Dad offered a box to her. I watched just long enough to see her pull a hat from the box, a pretty black-rimmed thing I'd seen other women wear. She lowered her head and seemed to cry and Dad held her.31
While they were distracted, I sneaked up to my bedroom. I went straight to bed and did not awake again until midnight. Someone knocked at my door at one point, unless I dreamed it, and Mom stood over me, unless I dreamed that too, but then she closed the door behind her, and I was lost to the world. The house could have burned down around me, and still I'd have slept.
July 27. Wednesday midnight.
I awoke, fully rested and famished, the events of the evening a distant haze, bearing the unreality of a dream. Which it must have been, I tried to convince myself. I fell asleep on the grass after a long day at the farm. It was nice out, it could have happened. It wasn't so crazy. What was crazy was to assume it really happened.
I crept through the dark, still house to the kitchen downstairs. I raided the fridge until a buffet of foods sat on the table before me: cold pizza, bologna, grapes, cherry yogurt, Swiss cheese, and a Salisbury steak TV dinner which I had just pulled from the microwave. I chased my selections with iced tea with extra sugar. I could not recall the last time I had been so hungry.
I turned around, feeling I was being watched again. It was happening more and more. A shadow rested in the doorway, a dark blot on the ill-lit floor. I choked and dropped back into my seat, sucking air.
The light switch snapped on, and light flooded the living room. Cora, in her bedclothes, looking as haggard and worn as a young child can.
"Cora! Geez, you scared the colon balls out of me."
"Can’t sleep." She shuffled over and plopped down on the chair across from me, fingering the dishes absent-mindedly, sampling nothing. I continued munching.
"I already slept a full night’s worth. Not even tired anymore," I said between bites.
She stared at the table, at the food. Through them.
"Cora," I began, then swallowed a lump of mashed potatoes. "Did you have another bad dream or something?"
Her head shook, brown hair flopping back and forth across her brow and ears. "Can’t sleep. Ever get that feeling that… like we’ve done all this before? Like…"
"Déjà vu?"32
"Yeah." She almost perked up. "I think?"
I started to shake my head, and stopped. Chills swept up my spine.
"Yeah..." I drew it out, frowning. "Maybe."
It was what permeated each and every day, sliding into so many events, creating the sense of unreality that lingered in the air. I expected to feel it in that moment: the anticipation of what came next, the sense of stop-and-rewind, but I did not. This was new, fresh; this moment did not have a twin.
"It’s like, when you dream something, but forget, and then it happens...?"
"Could be. Is that what you think it was? Your dream? All of this... crap?"
Her brow wrinkled up in thought. She shrugged, looking disappointed.
It hit me like Dad's overcharged credit card. It was in her expression—the way her mouth hung open as she thought; her teeth, slightly crooked, soon to be caged behind braces; her long hair dangling unrestrained from her head, rich brown hair replete with tangles and split ends, but nonetheless lustrous and beautiful; the implicit sweetness in her face, to which I had previously taken for granted.
The girl in the vision was her. There could be no denying it. It had been her. An older Cora.
"No," she said finally, shattering my introspection. Her eyes met mine. "Not now. This feels… new. It’s a good feeling." She smiled.
I nodded, my mind racing. "Is there a boy who likes you? You know, hangs around, a friend or anything?"33
She shook her head slowly. "I dunno. During school there's boys. Not now."
My gaze dropped. No, of course not. That event was at least another eight years away, I figured. And Cora was ten. Ten. "Yeah. Of course," I mumbled. "Never mind."
She reached over and grabbed a grape. An audible pop followed.
"Wanna watch a movie?" I asked.
"Sure," she said. We moved to the sofa until Dad chased us upstairs an hour later. Neither of us slept that night, but morning slid past unnoticed. Neither of us awoke again until after midday.
July 31. Sunday late.
6:00 PM
Knock-knock.
I swung open the door to Dale, standing on our porch, hands in pockets, eyes full of boredom, hair unkempt. "I thought we could go to the river, if you got no church tonight."
I held up my finger, indicating for him to give me a minute, and let the door swing shut in his face. I ran into the kitchen. Mom slaved over the dishes. She always insisted on doing the dishes. The rest of us vacuumed, dusted, cleaned, whatever, but she did dishes. I think it helped her wind down. Her hair, pulled back from her face in a pony-tail, hung in strings across her ears. She turned a smiling, weary face to me, hands submerged in suds, wrinkles forming beneath her gentle eyes and around her thin lips.
This picture is forever branded in my memory.
"Hey, Mom, I’m going to the river with Dale."
"Just be careful, don’t go in the water. It’s been flooding." The rain had started again, off and on for days.
"No prob, Mom. Thanks. Love you." I ran back out to Dale. There was that phrase again, "love you." It just popped out of me.
When I got back to the front door, I found Cora chatting with Dale. He was shy, and it showed; but something else showed, too. His radiant face, flushed, a big smile stretched too tight. I had never seen him like that before. Heifers, I can hardly remember him smiling, let alone grinning like a madman. His awkward glances, the way he shifted his weight between feet, the way half his smile upturned when she looked at him—he liked her.34
I turned to her, but all I could see as her mouth moved sweetly in conversation was her older self, the one with the blurry face, the victim. Alarmed, I looked back at Dale, half-expecting to see the vile young man from my vision, but instead saw only the introverted, bright kid I had always known. Now a sheepish smile on his face and a glint in his eye. An evil glint? A devilish smirk? No. No. Not possible.
I followed him silently down the gravel, as I had done many times. Not Dale, I'd think, and then look up and, but, what if it was?
So I followed, both of us sauntering along at a nonchalant pace, with our hands in our pockets and the warm breeze on our faces. His head up, taking in the sounds and the smells and the sights. Mine down. I would look up at the back of his head, and glance back down to the earth, ashamed, enraged, bitter. All these emotions boiling inside me, bouncing off each other, forming bonds, creating emotional indigestion.
If Dale was the source of my disquiet, of Cora's, maybe of Mom's even. Of all our future troubles. I had to... I had to stop him. Maybe I could talk to him. Show him what he’d become.35
The river roared beside us, dense with suspended particles. Dale was talking, something about the dam where his dad worked upstream, how they were using the overflows or something.36 I dunno. Dread flowed through me.
I felt something in my pocket, and I reached in to find the shard of glass, with the sticker reading ‘I love you… and so do I’ upon it. How did it get there? I stared at it for a long moment, concluding these must be the pants I wore that day I found it. Yes, that was it. I turned it over in my palm. It looked fresh. No upturned edges. A film across the back, the reflective silver backing of a mirror.
Oh, it's more than that, bubba, it's over and over and over and37
I continued to follow him, palming a rock, then ripping it into the river. Picked up another, gripped it until its rough edges bit into my skin, flung it into the water too. Picked up another.
He knelt at the water’s edge, plucking at a stone. Something came over me. My arm drew back, the rock hovering over my own head for a moment. Something blinked, and he was standing again, without having stood up. Time blinked again, and he was on his knees, scrounging at the ground. That settled it. I couldn’t live like this, with this stutter-time, this bitter knowledge, this38
smashed the rock against his head. It made a sickening crunch, blood spurted as his skull caved in.
guilt
He pitched sideways and crumpled to the ground. I held the rock above him like some kind of trophy, then fell to my knees. I wept and I wept and I
couldn’t do it, he was Dale, my best friend, my only friend
raked his hair and wished him back to life. My fingers avoided the clammy hollow on the side of his head, the blood already slowing, coagulating, and
I would go to camp, get better. They would get me a doctor, a good one, help me through whatever was wrong with me, drive this demon out, so I
groped for a pulse on his wrist. I dragged him to the riverbank, pushed him in, flung the murder rock downriver, yanked off my blood-stained shirt and
let it slide, my arms collapsing around me, the rock on a slow descent to the ground where I let it lay. Dale continued walking and I watched him in a daze, tears in my eyes, images of what I was about to do
did do
floating through my head. I pushed into the undergrowth and tripped, splatting my face in the soft soil, surrounded by towering grasses. I rolled over. Dale had turned around and looked for me, his head falling one direction then the other before he gave up and turned into the grass for home. I breathed relief, let my head loll, felt my heart drumming in my chest.
I went down to the river and rung out my mud-stained
blood-stained
shirt and tried wiping away the tears that kept flowing from my eyes unbidden, without success.39
~7:00 PM
I went in by the basement door again, quietly up the stairs. Mom was still in the kitchen, Dad and Jessie away. On up to the second floor I went, hoping to get to my room and find a shirt before questions could be asked.
Cora's door opened and she stepped out. We looked at each other for a while.
"Where's Dale?" she said at last.
I shrugged and hid my face, feeling guilty, pretending to wipe sweat on my bare arm. "He went home."
"What did he have to say?"
"What? Nothing. He doesn't talk much."
"He told me he had something to tell me, but he wanted to talk to you first."40
"Well, he didn't."
Her face wrinkled up.
"Did you cut yourself?" She pointed to the blood spots on my jeans.
"Yeah," I said too quickly, looking down at my pants. Why was there blood on my pants?
you killed him, bludgeoned his skull, bashed in his head, cold blooded killer of
"Bloody nose, actually," I said. I had no cuts to show her, I realized.
She nodded thoughtfully. Spontaneous bloody noses were not unusual for me.
"Does he like you or something?" I asked, folding my arms over my chest, trying to look composed but only feeling naked and exposed.
"Yeah, why wouldn't he like me?" She was so innocent still. Wasn’t she? Was that a glint in her eyes?
"Never mind." She was ten. Of course she didn't notice it yet. She would, soon enough.
"He's nice."
"Yeah."
"Where's your shirt?"
I shrugged. I couldn't remember ditching it, but I'd been a mess. I'd taken it off, soaked it in the river, rung it out...
"In the river."
"Oh."
"Got some blood on it." Seemed a likely enough lie. I still wasn't sure how blood had gotten on my pants.
"The bloody nose."
I nodded. "What did he want to talk to you about? Any idea?" How much he loves you, probably. How cute you are, how he'll wait for you, all that mushy stupid nonsense.
"I dunno, I thought you'd know. He said you'd know what to do."
Me? Since when...
No, Brett! Don't hurt me, don't hit me! What are you, what are you, what are you
I heard it as loudly, as clearly as if Cora had shouted in my face. I staggered back. "Wha...?" It wasn't ten-year-old Cora before me, it was teenaged Cora, the one from the vision. She reached a hand out to me, as if to steady me. I recoiled.
"Are you all right?"
Young Cora again. Sweat stood out on my brow. I swallowed the rock in my throat. "Yeah. Yeah I'm fine." My voice choked, broken.
Oh Brett, how could you, look what you did, look what you did, we're all broken now, all pieces scattered and deformed, like the mirror, Brett, the mirror
"You don't look—"
"I'm fine. I'm just getting a chill is all. I... I gotta go."
I shut the bedroom door and slid down against it. My head swam, my heart pounded. I felt like I'd run a race. Perspiration stood out in bright beads all over my body.
It was me. I'm the boy. It was me not Dale. Oh God it was me.41
#
I wrestled with the revelation all evening, turning it over and over in my mind, trying to unbelieve it. It had seemed so obvious, so right. It had to be Dale, it's the only thing that made sense. Unless of course it was me. I'd been so convinced, so sure of what had to be done, no matter the consequence. I'd almost acted rashly, on an impulse.
It was almost, wasn't it? I had not killed Dale, I'd set the rock down, I'd walked away, down to the river. No bludgeoning, no bashed head, no bloody murder of my best friend.
Right?
I lay on the bed, wishing I could sink into it and disappear. At some point Dad knocked on the door, asked if I was feeling all right, he had brought home some food. I gathered my voice and said I wasn't hungry.
I fell asleep on the floor and woke up to a shadow under the crack of the door. It wavered, shifted, and then whoever it was walked away. Cora. Had to be. Soft footsteps, lightweight. I pictured her fist hovering over the door, wanting to knock, then dropping. I couldn't face her, not again, not with what I was going to become.
killer, murderer, heathen, witch, vampire, cannibal,
No! I'm not, I didn't do it, I
I looked at the clock. A little after ten. At eleven, I'd sneak out, go to the highway, maybe catch a ride, get out of this town, start a new life, start over again. If I didn't, Dad would send me to that camp, where doctors would psychoanalyze me, strap me to tables, prod me, ask me tough questions, give me some experimental drug and turn my brain to mush. I'd crack, break down in tears, confess the murder...
I didn't murder Dale! He's alive, I know he is, he walked back to
No. I had to go, clear my head if not my conscience. I could work on that later.
~11:00PM
I threw a few things into a backpack—portable CD player with a few discs, flashlight, sweatshirt, locking pocketknife, anything else small enough and potentially useful.
Only darkness in the hallway except a sliver of light beneath Cora's door. I could hear a tapping coming from inside her room. She was playing her keyboard, no doubt phones over her ears, listening to what only she could hear.
I tiptoed downstairs and across the dark living room. A shadow shifted across the room, emanating from Dad's study. I held my breath as my heart slapped at my chest. Dim moonlight shone through the window, silhouetting my mother's form and throwing it across the living room. She stood in front of Dad's gun closet, her back to me, staring at the combination.42
I let out a deep breath and continued to the kitchen, picking my steps carefully. For a moment I contemplated leaving a note, a sad goodbye, some kind of lame explanation. But what could I say?
Hey Mom, Dad, I'm gonna become a monster someday, I figured it out from a dream and today it sorta came true, see I almost murdered my best friend in cold blood, and someday I'll be this raging drunken custard who hits my little sister, and I don't want that to happen so I'm running away, you know, starting a new life alone, so don't look for me or anything, I'm not the son you know anymore, doctors are too late, I'm just
scared
a psychopath now.43
#
I closed the back door quietly and leaned against the hydraulic dampener on the screen door, forcing it closed. It gave unexpectedly and landed with a muted slam. I held my breath, looking up at the windows above me for lights clicking on, for Dad's face against the pane. The windows remained dark. I felt disappointment instead of relief and shunned it away.
It was right to go. It was the good and proper thing to do.
You're a murderer, an abuser, a liar
But it didn't matter now. There were tears in my eyes and that made me mad. I swatted at them but it did no good, and I found I didn't want to wipe them anyway. I took one final look up at the windows as I walked across the back yard—the windows were still dark—and then I left it all behind, pushing into the woods.
I knew the trails through these trees like I knew the halls in the house I grew up in. I had worn most of them through myself, after all. My feet went instinctually, my hands brushing aside the branches that hung like dim claws, my feet clambering over the fallen logs, my hands confident only because I could see every groove of its bark in my mind's eye. I pulled up short as something crashed through the undergrowth and was gone. A raccoon, maybe. A doe. Gone now.
There it was again. A figure. A boy? "Dale?" I whispered. I moved toward it in the dark, and it seemed to waver.
A bush.
Sweat dripped from my pits.
Dude, dude, listen, we don’t have much time, ok, we got to
Finally I came to a steep incline, overgrown with grass and littered with trash. I scampered up the zig-zag path I had cut into its sides by my frequent passing and came to the top. At the guardrail, I paused, looking up and down the highway, for what, I wasn't sure. Nothing there.
I started walking on the paved shoulder, head down, listening. Not much time passed before I heard something coming. If it was a car or pickup or van, I would hide along the road until it passed. I didn't need a local seeing me.
It crested the hill above me, its lights close to the ground. I waited, ready to hide, my muscles twinging in nervousness. It pulled to a stop a hundred yards away, the lights not on me. The back door opened. Lights flashed at me, and I looked both ways, crossed the street, and strode toward it, squinting and hands stuffed in my pockets. Every muscle alert and every brain cell misfiring.
"Get in."
I could see Jessie’s ex-boyfriend, the EMT, through the open window. I climbed in without a second thought.44
"Lie on the floor."
"What's going on?" I croaked, craning my neck to see the front seat and his profile. My pack stuck above me like some giant tick, or one of those hard-shell cases they put on car racks.
His voice wavered for the first time. "I dunno, dude. Some freaky mess, man. I'm freaking out here. Ever since you talked to me, I.... I’ve been seeing myself."
"Like... in a mirror?"
"No, dude, not a mirror. Are you for real? Come on!" He slammed his fists against the wheel. "Like, me, standing before me, but, like, y’know, dead. Or dying. Like... dude."
"Where are you going....?" I asked. He was racing up the highway, north out of town.
"Carl. I’m Carl. And far out of here. Thought you’d want to go too?" He looked back at me hopefully.
I nodded from the floor in the back.
"Crazy I found you out there."
I nodded again, even though he couldn't see me. “Brett,” I said.
“I know you, man. You’re Jessie’s bro.” He was bobbing in the front seat like he’d drank too many Surge. “Carl,” he said again, leaning back to look at me for a beat too long, before turning back to the road. “With a ‘K’.”
I corrected the spelling in my head.
We didn’t get far. The rain had resumed, and the bridge flooded. He turned around and took the first road to the left. A few miles in, that bridge flooded too. The river raged beside us. Karl turned onto our road, toward my house, to swing back around to town and try to get away from the flooding rivers. Gravel spat from his tires as he raced along, the normal dust cloud that would bloom behind us turned to a slick sludge in the rain.
We both heard it. A loud rending crack and what sounded like an explosion. He stopped the car, listened out the window. All was quiet.
"What was that?" I no longer lay on the floor.45
I was in a posh luxury model, kind with heated seats and mirrors, but not this time of year. Next to me, a clean-cut boy, Karl, maybe, same eyes, same cheeks, but
He shrugged, eyes wide. "This was a mistake, dude. We can’t get out. We can’t."
My house lay just around the bend. I could hear sirens up ahead. They were
diverting water to the overflows, didn’t sound good, can’t take much more rain
turning onto our road. I could see our house now. Cora stood outside, on the knoll above the road, looking right at me. I could see Jessie at the door,
pulling Dale’s lifeless body from the flood, his battered skull blamed on boulders and roiling water
dressed nicely. He pulled into our driveway. The house was dark. He got out, waited for me. "Come on, kid. It's all good," he said, as if
screaming and waving at the ambulance. It was Mom. I knew it now, suddenly and terribly. I cursed my own selfish blindness. She was sick, of course she was, she had always been sick, the rest just a lie, the lie of remission, of
my older self, standing enraged, fist through the wall, Cora
Cora looked at the ambulance now.
he knew things I didn't. I let myself in and Karl followed. "You can go now, it's good," I said. "What's that?" He pointed. A figure lay in the other room, sprawled on the carpet.
Karl screamed at himself. "I shoulda been there! I left them alone, I panicked! I left it all, dude! My ID, my cash, her!"
sobbing inconsolably, head in hands, Dale wrapping his arms around her, Dad feebly crying
"Oh God, it’s all my fault! Oh, fugs all you muffers! I’m coming, Jessie!"
Karl beat me to her and held her palm in his hand, then leaned to her chest. "Mom, wake up," I said. "Is she breathing?" He nodded. "Call 911."
A wave of water loomed up behind the ambulance. I saw the vehicle twist and contort, then slam onto its side, boulders ramming it, tumbling it. The wall of water and the tortured ambulance, its lights still trying to blink, its siren strangled and dying, came directly
"stop it, Brett," he said, without any meaning, Jessie's face red
toward us. The water hit the house. I saw it buckle. Jessie ran to her car and both got swept away. The water hit Cora face-on and she tumbled into our path, rolling down the hill,
without tears, as if she was all cried out, her eyes fat with them, while Mom
They loaded her into the ambulance. Cora and Jessie stared, maybe cried some, I'm not sure. Karl talked to Dad, how he found me on the road, looking lost and confused, came home, found Mom passed out, but she's gonna be okay, he said, gonna be
the waves flattening out. Carl jerked the wheel and hit the brakes, but in the water, we planed. There was a thump.
—No no no, Cora, no, not Cora, I’ve made such a mess, a sodden mess of
I tried to jump out the door but couldn’t get it open. I slammed my weight against it. The car careened, one way, then the other,
Its falling out of my pocket, past my eyes, I love you... and so do I. I love you... and so do I. I love you...—
past the ambulance, nose-first
at the table, her head bald, not so much as a hat, her once-pretty face lined and gaunt and pale, the phone hanging feebly from her too-white hands, "Yes, Dr. Trent, I understand"
fine. I walked up to Cora, hugged her stiffly, she went rigid, then hugged back with one arm. "Glad you found her," she whispered. "Yeah." Jessie had eyes for Karl, but new eyes, shy eyes, diverted eyes that still looked at Mom, at the ambulance at times, then
I floated, the world upside-down, Carl’s face smashed against the wheel, almost unrecognizable, and I went end-over-end, my pack floating as on the space shuttle, the shard of glass
"Two weeks," Dad said, "two weeks is nothing. Brett, what are you doing, don't do that, please, for rightsake. Two weeks, I can't"
I woke up on the floor, drenched in sweat. No, not sweat. I was downstairs, the cold concrete floor of the basement. A sound like something leaking. The floor wet. I stood up, shook the excess from my hair. Rapped on Jessie's door. "Hey
wavering beside it. The nose of the car turned down. The water appeared close, cold, fast. A drawn-out, echoing thud as the car met the opposite bank and slid backward into the water. Its nose sinking in the silt, muddy water pouring, swimming before my eyes as I met the windshield, losing
control, I’m on the floor, no tears coming, shocked, they are hugging her, it’s all unreal, just a dream
consciousness. There was a moment of total blackness,
Jess", but she wasn't there. The whole house was empty. It was almost light out. The garage and driveway, also empty. The phone rang.
a gunshot in an empty room
like a mineshaft or a well or outer space or dense fog or
"Brett, thank God you answered. Mom passed out last night, we're here... Brett?" "Yeah." "Here at the hospital. We couldn't find you, but it's all right, okay? Mom's fine, just a reaction to... to some meds. Look, Brett, something I haven't told you,
death comes but once, my dear
she's gonna be fine. It's not what we thought. It's not the cancer. They're doing tests, but
And then it was morning again.
July 1st, 1994. Friday morning.
I remember it as the day of no fog.
If you enjoyed “Once Upon a July,” would you like to read more about it? Are you lost at the end? There is plenty of room for discussion and theories of what’s going on, and I was considering a guide (footnotes added to this end) to help people follow the text, and come up with further thoughts. While I know what is happening in the written story, a lot is left unsaid, and a lot of ambiguity remains.
What do you think happened? Tell me in the comments (and read the footnotes)!
What else is like this? Try the following:
Here is where it begins, at least in the story. The first hint of the divide.
This one is obvious, but a sign of his mental state.
First mention of his mom’s cancer, a big but understated plot point later.
A foreshadowing for later, when he looks for this paper again.
Aaaand… here’s some foreshadowing for the full explanation.
First sign that maybe Brett isn’t alone in this situation.
Hint! Something fishy with the car!
And now the car is connected… somehow… to Cora’s mirror. Keep it in mind.
Foreshadowing…
The side story of Jessie and her boyfriend begins… or did it begin sooner? Hmmm
Both the return of the intrusive sidebar from the opener, and first mention that Brett may have gotten himself in trouble with his parents.
Thank goodness, or Disney might sue.
Hint? Maybe… The car is definitely off.
More about the (unspoken) trouble Brett got himself into, allusion to his mom’s cancer, and Jessie’s boyfriend, who’s an EMT? All relevant later. Keep going.
And now, strong hint that maybe the cancer is back, but Brett doesn’t want to even consider the possibility. So—distraction instead.
Hint? Why does Jessie want to wander around a hospital? (See 14)
Flashback to the paper from the beginning. This isn’t resolved just yet.
Connecting dots yet? EMT in the photo at the scene of the car in the river, boyfriend in EMT outfit…
Continuing the plot, but no big reveals. More hints about their mom, about Dale’s possible involvement, and conjecture of the car and mirror. Moving on. Most notably, it’s clear that Cora is on a similar journey of discovery as Brett.
Logical conclusion to the last bit when she took the Polaroid from Brett.
As Brett says, it should be obvious now that they are talking about another big family occurrence, most likely their mom’s health, but at the time, Brett feels they are talking about him, especially since he’s forefront in their minds.
Big hints. Not only is something clearly not right, but time is jumping and reality is warping.
More probably-cancer talk disguised and misconstrued.
Homage to a classic, like Groundhog Day above, but also a hint?
Second time reality distorts, and a seed of suspicion of Dale takes root.
Ties it together neatly for you in case you missed it sooner.
And now he’s recognizing the (ex)-boyfriend as the guy from the paper and hospital.
Convinced they are the same guy, or he’s going crazy. Reality not lining up. The intrusive sidebars may provide a hint, at least in light of the ending.
The biggest warp of reality yet, complete with vision, which a 12 yo boy is sure to misinterpret…
Another time skip, and with Cora again.
First a wig. Now a hat. Brett doesn’t notice.
Biggest hint yet, maybe?
Suspicion turns into germ of a new idea with potentially disastrous consequences.
And there it is. The new idea.
Do you think Dale is the problem? Or is Brett off the deep end?
Another something to store in the back of your head.
Are you getting it yet? The sticker, now fresh, turns up again.
Here is the big moment, with Brett teetering on the edge of uncertainty, and time skips again.
Okay, I’m just going to lay it out for you. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read yet or want to figure it out on your own. But maybe it’s obvious? Okay—Brett killed Dale. He also didn’t kill him. The timeline has officially split into two, and both are real, but Brett is living one currently, while the other is bleeding into the current one (pun intended?)
Gloves off with spoilers: it’s Brett’s mom. He wanted to talk about Brett’s mom and her cancer because he seemed to know more than Brett did.
And a healthy dose of extra guilt mixed with confusion. 1- How could he be the boy? 2- Did he kill Dale or didn’t he?
Some dark foreshadowing. A mom struggling with a second bout of cancer and staring at the gun closet doesn’t take a detective to figure out.
But still… I mean, can you see where he’s coming from? Kids this age are self-absorbed, so missing all the other cues is not a stretch, even if you’re screaming at him by now.
Things starting to crash together. You might wonder how the EMT ex-boyfriend knew Brett was there… My theory: It’s happened this way before, and he’s had visions or fragments of memory, much like Brett.
Another piece of the puzzle. Flooding rivers, a loud crack across the countryside (see 36), and afterwards, the timelines split further.
And I guess that’s the limit to footnotes. Basically—there are 3 timelines at play here, some at odds with each other, some bleeding into each other, and all vying for attention in Brett’s head (and some of the other players, perhaps, as well.)
The timelines:
Bold: Seems to be the “best” timeline. Karl has a nice car, only just meets Jessie, and Brett’s mom is okay, it’s not even the cancer. Still, some things are off, like Brett waking up in the basement, the wet floor, and Cora being aloof.
Italics: A bad timeline, and all jumbled up. Possibly many timelines blending together, for Dale is dead at one point, and alive at another. Ends with a gunshot after seeing Brett’s mom clearly with cancer.
Regular: The current timeline, for better or worse. Mostly worse, probably the worst timeline. An ambulance has come for Brett’s mom. Possibly shot like in the italics, possibly passed out. A wave of water from a flash flood, likely the dam burst, wipes out the ambulance then buckles the house. Jessie swept away with the car. Cora swept away into the path of Karl and Brett in the car, and run over. This explains the car, the shard of mirror with sticker, and Karl’s doppelganger in the hospital.
All: Start over, back to July 1st. Yes, it’s a time loop story, but not one that shows the loops over and over chronologically.
I hope that helps! Tell me what you think in the comments, and feel free to discuss pros and cons and other theories. Even though I’m the writer, I don’t know everything about a story. I’ve revealed most of what I know about it, and some other stuff for background noise, but a story is never 100% resolved. A writer is scratching off layers, and jots down what is revealed. Or at least, that’s how it feels!
Until next time….
This could be seen as a literal psychological study where Brett has hallucinations and then has a powerful, gut wrenching delusion of harming his sister that makes him lose touch with reality altogether. Of course Karl confirms the shattered reality concept but then in one time stream version, he says he just finds Brett on the road, looking lost and confused. So, I think it could be taken both ways either losing touch with reality or existing within a shattered one. Is that possible? Maybe the cycle of cars and the sticker a strange coincidence? Anyway, thanks for sharing.