Originally published in MungBeing.

Go to part 2 | part 3…

Last night I dreamt about wax and failure. I was trying to read a story to Emma, and the candle I was using kept guttering out. I had to relight it over and over, until the sun came out from behind a cloud of flies. Emma squinted her eyes shut and told me to read louder. The candle went out. The sun had switched polarities and, instead of blanketing light and warmth on us, it sucked both away. I held my last match to the candle. The wick exploded like the fuse on a firecracker and wax got all over the pages of the book.

I’m not convinced the dream meant anything, but it came at a good time. I woke up in flames.

My aunt Riley says that God knows you better than you know yourself. Everyone seems to know me better than I know myself. So, this isn’t a story about me. It’s a story about my grampa Gyro, who kept his wife locked in their car until she died; it’s about my aunt Riley, who would take so long to bless the food that we all were starving by Amen; it’s about Emma, whose parents abandoned her in a park on Easter; it’s about my friend Harald, who used to believe in God, but now believes in the weatherman; and mostly it’s about Edgar, who tried to change his name to Steve, who taught me how to play an arpeggio, who never said a word to a stranger, who killed two people when he only meant to kill one.

#

He was driving home on the highway, listening to his windshield wipers squeak over the safety glass. A cloud rested on the ground, a thick fog that carried the headlights of oncoming traffic like magic beacons in a bayou.

The radio was on, but the only thing it picked up was static. With the volume turned low, it sounded like more rain. Edgar had been in the dead, dry, Eastern half of the state, visiting a potential college, and had missed the gray and green.

The college seemed like a good pick. He had impressed the director of the music program with his dexterity on the guitar, and there was talk of a scholarship, which was good because Edgar’s family wanted him to pay his own way through his education. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it; the Telcos were just weird like that. As far as I knew, it didn’t bother Edgar, but sometimes I couldn’t tell very far with him. His parents once gave him a watch with a video game built in. He gave it to me at school and played deaf when I said, Thanks.

Cars were forming in the mist every few seconds. One cycled its lights at Edgar. He turned down his radio, but didn’t turn on his own lights. He wondered what he must look like to the other drivers, coalescing out of the fog like a bad dream, like a bad metaphor for living fast. Back earlier in high school — hell, it’s still going on — he would play this game called Going to Britain on deserted roads. The way you went to Britain was by drifting into the oncoming lane, playing chicken with phantoms while friends in the backseat quote Monty Python in their worst accents. Edgar was always the one to drive, always the one who let the phantoms win, because he didn’t trust anyone else. He said as much. One time, when I offered to chauffeur the gang to Old Blighty, he told me, “I heard you were four points from failing your test,” and I really couldn’t argue with him.

It had been a long weekend of near-adulthood, of smiling to the right people and sussing out dry wit from dull opinion with the deans and assistant registrars. They were all playing games, all with their money and knowledge and the unnatural flow between the two. I guess it was like the time he tried to teach me how to play Axis and Allies, and did everything for me but roll the dice.

He drifted over to England. Someone was watching him. His scalp was prickling. Accidents happen when other people are watching. Arriving at the site of a crash, a parent can hear the oddly comforting words, “It wasn’t his fault,” straight from the mouth of a person who saw and should know; but when nobody’s watching, doubt inhabits the scene like a witness for sale. Doubt whispers the first things that come to its mind, things like, “He had been at a party,” and, “Sometimes he doesn’t tell me where he’s going.” Then I think doubt takes its payment out of something precious and disappears. 

Turned out nobody was watching. I guess he had just been hoping so hard he fooled himself right into believing it. He wouldn’t tell me. When I asked, he said he didn’t believe that God could see through all that fog, thank the weatherman, and we both kind of laughed. 

My second cousin, Martha — she hated being called anything but Martha — was driving out to the mountains to squeeze in one last ski trip before the season closed. Her mother was dozing in the back seat, stretched across the whole bench with her feet tucked up under her legs. That’s how she’d ride during family trips, at least. Martha’s mother didn’t like driving. She didn’t like family trips that much, either, or when I called her auntie Joan. She was going with Martha to keep her daughter company. They had one of those mother/daughter dynamics I never understood. Talking to Martha, I just wanted to ask her how she could be such pals with someone whose vagina she had passed through like an irritant. I never convinced her of anything, partly because auntie Joan didn’t like me very much. She suspected me of harboring a secret vain wish to be royalty, with all the associated marriage rights. 

Martha was pretty. She had limp blonde hair that followed whatever path she took her brush in the mornings. She was a grade below me in school and two districts over, but we got to see each other at track meets and tended to like the same movies. She had my grandmother’s given name, and a surname that had been bred out of my side of the family. She was a good driver, and kind of a narc, and had her lights on.

Edgar saw her before she saw him, and auntie Joan didn’t see anything. Edgar thought about seat belts, about their seat belts, in that slow second when perspective suddenly allows a rush of size, when the head lights grew and the body of Martha’s car coalesced and lengthened. He reached down to tug his own off, but couldn’t get his thumb on the button fast enough.

#

Mom usually made us sit in the second row center, but it was reserved for immediate family during the service. Second cousins and aunts didn’t count over the half-siblings and first cousins from the Catholic set, and the pews were small, anyway. Mom and I sat in the fourth row, off to the right. There was a pillar blocking my view of the altar and, for once, I could actually read the hymn slate. The church looked weird from that angle, like a friend with a broken nose — familiar but wrong.

I spent most of the service looking at other people. A lot of the regular parishioners were there. Some of them caught me staring and made this weird little half nod, like I was supposed to know what it meant. My mum’s sister, aunt Riley, was as close as she could get to the front. She had her head bowed the whole time, and I thought about how I sometimes fall asleep when I pray. Emma was sitting two rows behind me, by herself. The one time I twisted in my seat to find her, she was already staring at me. I smiled and she didn’t blink. Mum tapped my leg to get me to face forward, and from that point on I could feel Emma’s eyes on me, stealing my soul like a camera. 

The service was too long and the eulogist didn’t get it right at all, but his words wouldn’t change our memories, so it didn’t matter. Emma and I and a couple of the other youth had been volunteered to run the refreshments table in the fellowship hall, so we ducked out early to pour the coffee and juice. 

Aunt Riley was the first to arrive at the tables when the service was over; she even beat out the younger kids who had only come willingly with their parents because of the promise of cookies. Emma gave aunt Riley a cup of coffee and poured two packets of sugar and one of cream into it.

“You remembered. How thoughtful,” said aunt Riley. She turned to me in one rude sweep of her neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emma grin. “How are you holding up?” aunt Riley asked me. I told her I missed auntie Joan and Martha. “You’ll have plenty of time to miss them,” said aunt Riley. I don’t think she meant it as a consolation. Mum once told me that, when they were girls, aunt Riley had tried to get attention somehow — I never learned how — and had ended up getting all she could handle. Still gets it, mum says. “Oh, before I forget,” said aunt Riley. “The pump in my well is out. Do you think you could come over and give it an eyeball?”

“Sure,” I said. “But why don’t you get a handyman to do it?”

“You know I can’t afford that, honey. What do you say I bake you brownies, to say, Thanks.”

“You bet,” I said. Mum says aunt Riley thrives on tension, and the only way to get her to go away is to be on her side. She smiled at me again. My friend Harald held out a cookie for her. She took it and wandered off without giving Emma a second glance.

“She doesn’t like me,” said Emma.

“You cut your hair,” said Harald. “She hates that on girls.”

“She doesn’t like you, either,” said Emma. She was right; as soon as she got to a table, aunt Riley set the cookie down and seemed to forget about it.

“He hasn’t had a haircut in months,” I said. 

Harald grinned at me. “I also am a heathen,” he said. 

Emma, who knew the things that made me laugh, nudged me and pointed to a dark corner of the narthex. Two distant relatives, both closer to Martha than to me, were standing toe-to-toe. Each had a notebook open in his palm, and both were scribbling madly, as if whole novels had arrived in their minds fully formed but ephemeral. Emma was right. It made me chuckle. The men were barely speaking, but nodded at each other’s pen strokes as though in affirmation. 

“What are they doing?” asked Emma.

“I have no idea,” I replied. “Do you know them?” I asked Harald. 

He shook his head and said, “God bless you,” to an elderly woman who accepted with shaking hands a glass of orange juice from him. I waited for the woman to make her way to a seat before I called him a blasphemer. 

“They look angry,” said Emma. Her brows were creased, I guessed with the effort of reading the men’s lips. She got that look during tests at school, too. 

“Give me a couple glasses,” I said to Harald.

“Yes, my son,” said Harald. He handed me two empty ones. 

“With juice in them,” I clarified. I took them over to the narthex, slowing my approach by halves, until I was barely inching nearer to the two men. I was close enough to overhear, but most of what I heard was the scratching of pens.

“That’s criminal, again,” said one. Scratch, scratch, scratch. 

“Jonas versus Palomino,” said the other, who looked as if he were my age with a haircut as old as uncle Gyro. 

“No, that was overturned two years ago,” said the first. “Keep up.”

I sidled closer. “What’s up?” I asked. The older one glanced at me like a lazy herbivore, just long enough to ensure I wasn’t a threat, and returned to his notepad. The younger one gave me a wan smile which seemed to come half from youthful camaraderie, half from apology for his partner.

“You were Martha’s cousin, right?” he asked.

“She was mine, yeah,” I said.

“The boy who caused the accident, the Telco kid,” said the younger guy.

“Yeah, I knew him,” I said.

“The particulars of the situation make it possible for us to declare that mister Telco is legally dead,” said the guy. He didn’t do so hot sounding like a lawyer. His companion snorted and drew a thick line across something on his pad. “Basically,” the guy added. 

“He’s on life support, isn’t he?” I asked. 

“Correct,” said the older man over his shoulder. “However, were he to be found legally dead, the healthcare services of this town would find themselves without compensation for any treatment he undergoes. His parents would be forced to shoulder the entirety of the financial burden.”

“They’re rich,” I said, with a bit of run-of-the-mill envy. 

The younger guy shrugged. The older guy flipped his notepad shut and gave me a bored glare. I handed him a glass of juice. “This is not the proper place for this discussion,” he said. He gestured first toward his apprentice then at door with his juice, and handed the glass back to me. “We need to do some research, Lucas,” he said. He paused to gaze in at the assembled mourners, cleared his nose, and walked with perfectly equal steps to the door.

Lucas shrugged at me and said, “The Telcos screwed him over a couple of times before. You know, like, Fool me once, fool me twice.”

“Edgar’s an okay guy,” I said.

“Martha was almost my sister,” said Lucas. He followed his mentor outside. I took the glasses of juice back to the buffet line and handed them to Emma and Harald. Harald downed his in one go, said, “I wish this were alcoholic,” and smiled brightly at a great-aunt waiting for her coffee. Emma said, “It’s warm,” and didn’t drink hers.

“Young man,” said great-aunt. “I know you were joking, but you shouldn’t joke about abusing alcohol.”

“Who said anything about abusing?” asked Harald.

“All use is abuse,” said the great-aunt. “When I was about your age, I nearly got pregnant because of alcohol; I nearly was run off the road by my alcoholic friends; and I nearly lost my faith because of the way the alcohol sat in my mind, all everywhere like Satan’s fingers.”

Harald hooded his eyes. “Nearly,” he said. “Thanks, but I can’t get pregnant, I don’t have friends, and my faith is longer dead than the slabs in there.”

The great-aunt let her lids droop as low as Harald’s. She muttered something under her breath; I think it was a prayer. She left without taking her coffee, and a wave of whispers started around her.

“I think we should go,” I said. There was a red flush creeping up Harald’s neck, and I wanted him out of the church before it hit his eyes. Last time I saw that, he had punched an infant and turned in his faith, one after the other. 

“Why?” asked Emma.

“Fine with me,” said Harald. He downed a cup of coffee and stalked toward the door before I see if it had burned him.

“Because nobody wants Harald to be the thing they remember about Martha,” I said. “And because I suspect a friend of the family or two could legally kill him.”

“What about the cleanup?” asked Emma.

I had to put a hand on the small of her back to get her moving. “Let the relatives handle it. I bet there’s someone just aching to help, today.”

We ended up at my house, sitting on the stoop. Harald had stamped out all his immediate anger, but he kept his fists balled up in his pockets. We talked about things that none of us thought were that important. Harald and Emma had never really felt comfortable around each other, because Harald had a massive crush on Emma. I didn’t hold it against him. Emma was gorgeous in the right light, terrifying in the wrong. She was always asking questions, always making you think she had a slight retardation, and then, in the dark, she told you secrets and stories and giggled when you didn’t understand. She wasn’t human, with her deep green eyes and wide shadowed lids. She was something God made to shake things up. 

She was never comfortable around Harald because he never spoke what was right on his mind. He always made riddles with his cynical tongue, and sometimes Emma just couldn’t puzzle out what he meant. 

It was her that started things up. She asked our favorite colors. I said green; Harald said nude, and then went on to explain that the word was what did it for him, that “nude” meant vulnerable and soft and trusting and when it was on a girl’s lips he felt like crowing his own worth to king and country. I kept waiting for the joke, but that was it. Emma said that her favorite color was gray, and at that moment her skin went ashen as the light failed.

I was ready to be quiet, but Harald kept on talking. He said, “Everything I know in life, I learned from Edgar. I think there is a divergence, now. What a dumbass.” He said it like a eulogy.

“I liked his music,” I said. 

“He used to ask people not to congratulate him after a show,” said Harald.

“I did, anyway,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Harald. 

“I remember it,” said Emma. She cocked her head and pursed her lips, face like a pixie deep in concentration. “The guitar and the pedals and sometimes the sad harmonica. Yeah. It would have been good for funerals.”

#

My uncle Gyro was almost twenty years older than my mom. That means he started breaking down around the time he was as old as my mom is now, and he’s had twenty years to do it in. Colon cancer (in remission), cataracts (one treated, one untreated), infected gall bladder (removed), gum cancer (from chew), all the leftovers from his heroin addiction (successfully defeated), and the most recent of the bunch: Alzheimer’s, or so the docs suspect, because an autopsy’s the only way to tell for sure. When they told him, he cussed and said he’s been through so many surgeries they might as well just cut him open and satisfy their curiosity.

As a result, I’ve never known him healthy, but I have known him strong. When I was a kid, mom would send me over to his house if I was being a pest. I’d ring the door bell, and aunt Edith would let me in. Uncle Gyro would meet me in the hallway and size me up, and then say, “Got some wood needs choppin’,” or, “Got some gravel needs smoothin’,” or, once in a while, “Got some cake needs eatin’.” 

I always had fun with him, but it was like playing a videogame I knew I wasn’t very good at, because behind the fun and work, there was always the chance that he and aunt Edith would start hollering at each other. Uncle Gyro was a lover, not a fighter, but aunt Edith came from a cattle farm and had six older brothers. It didn’t help that she had mild Tourette’s symptoms, or that uncle Gyro thought the shakes and mutters were funny. I always thought they got along fine when I wasn’t there, like some set of uncertain particles. 

One time, when I was outside dragging wet leaves off the driveway, a cast iron frying pan came crashing out one of the side windows of their house. Uncle Gyro emerged, through a door, a couple of moments later. He wandered over to his shed, grabbed a rake, and came to help me. We scraped at the leaves for a few minutes before he muttered, “When you get yourself a wife, get her pregnant, get her distracted.” Then, after the driveway was clear and we were headed back to the house, he said, “Nah. Don’t listen to me, kiddo.”

At a family reunion a couple of years ago, mom whispered to me that he was bipolar back before they could diagnose it, so I guess he’s never been healthy.

Two weeks after the car crash, uncle Gyro woke up and nudged aunt Edith to get up and start making the coffee. When aunt Edith ignored him, he nudged a little harder. Her top half slid out of bed; her head struck the end table and bounced off without the aid of reflex. Uncle Gyro slid out of bed and knelt on the floor beside her. She was breathing, but he couldn’t get her eyes open. His fingers slipped on her dry skin.

I’m not sure why he didn’t call for the ambulance. Maybe his memory skipped like a record and he thought he was back in horse-and-buggy time, when you had to forge all your own paths. Whatever his brain was doing, it didn’t tell him to pick up the phone. He hauled aunt Edith outside and propped her up in the passenger seat of their eighties-era Oldsmobile. He took the care to buckle her in before starting the ignition.

He made it to the end of the block before he forgot what he was doing. It went with the Alzheimer’s. His symptoms were such that he rarely flashed back to days gone by (though he once called me “Dottie”); instead, he just up and forgot what his feet were doing in the middle of a step, or lost the thread of a conversation while his mouth hung open on a vowel. 

The hospital was three miles from their house, through a mazelike series of suburb turns. Uncle Gyro glanced over at the passenger seat to ask aunt Edith where he was going. Her forehead was leaning into the window; uncle Gyro could see the reflection of her closed eyes in the glass. He decided not to bother her and kept driving, thinking that he’d remember his destination if he just loosened up his driving muscles. 

I didn’t find out if the coroner ever determined when exactly aunt Edith stopped breathing, but I like to think it was after I passed their car on my way to work. Uncle Gyro was waiting at a stop sign; aunt Edith was slumped in her seat. I thought about stopping, rolling down my window, and saying hi, but I was already fifteen minutes late for my job at a coffee shop. I waved through my windshield and didn’t bother waiting to see if they waved back. 

When asked how long he had been driving around that morning, uncle Gyro reckoned it was something close to an hour. That was at noon, when he finally stopped and asked a police officer for directions, and still wasn’t sure where he wanted to go. That evening, mom and I went over to his house to cook him dinner and sit with him for a while. When we got there, the alarm clock in their bedroom was beeping its high desperate notice. He always set the alarm for six in the morning so he could watch infomercials on TV before regular programming started. 

Mom and I sat with him most of the night, and for most of the night his memory was just fine. He cried; it was a manly sort of sadness. He just sat as straight as he could, both arms gripping his chair, his eyes wide. He barely blinked. Tears rolled off the shelf of his lid and dropped straight to his lap. 

I thought, for once in my life I know how he feels. With his brain rebelling, he passed through his own life the same way I did, with infrequent visits growing further apart and memories of shared experience falling dimmer as their importance waned. 

Around midnight, he stopped crying and fell asleep, after muttering, “I didn’t mean to,” twice. Mom tried to get me to help change his pants, because his tears had all fallen into his crotch. She said he’d be embarrassed in the morning; I said he’d be embarrassed to wake up with his sister taking off his pants.

It was simple humor, but I think it was the worst thing I could have said. Mom glared at me for a long moment, then told me to go wait in the car. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said. As I left the room, I heard her undoing his pants. 

I didn’t wait in the car. I sat on the porch, staring out at the light haze of street lights reflecting on fog, and, shivering, I thought about warmth, about blood-full hands touching me, balancing my temperature, summoning my own blood. 

Mom startled me when she opened the door. My hands went to my pockets to try and suffer down my erection. I walked hunched, as if I were surly; mom probably thought I was, but all I wanted to do was to apologize. It wasn’t the right time. My body was rebelling, my mind was wandering. It seemed that everywhere I went, I was somewhere else.

When we got home, mom said, “Would you at least take out the garbage?”

#

I’m not sure when Emma’s birthday is. She never would tell me. She wouldn’t even not tell me; she’d just giggle off the question and get me started on something else. 
Around the Fourth of July of that year, while Edgar was still recovering in the hospital, I decided to buy her a present. I hadn’t told her how I felt about her, yet, so I figured that a gift would be a good prelude to that, or, more likely, a substitution. I spent a week looking for just the right thing. She kept me focused that whole week. Summer was heating up, and her shirts were getting thinner and riding higher on her tummy, and she kept letting her skin brush mine. Sometimes she felt as if she were coated in a thin layer of acid, the way her lingering touches burned long after she had left.

She had told me, back when she first moved to the city, that she was often lonely at night. When I told her I could help her out, she laughed, but I ended up taking it more seriously than I thought I would. I couldn’t be there for her in the night, but I could buy her something equally as annoying. 

I went to three pet stores before I found the perfect kitten. It was all black except for the bottoms of its feet, which were pink. The contrast between its fur and the skin made it look as if lights were flashing around his paws. He was an alien cat, inquisitive and silent. A perfect match, I thought. I asked the owner of the shop to set it aside for me, and I would be back to pick it up the next day.

The following morning, I surprised Emma at the house she shared with a couple of old folks. I never found out if they were aunt and uncle, grandmother and grandfather, or whatever. They said hello to me and then Emma and I were off. Mom let me borrow the car for the whole day, once I told her my whole plan. She smiled when she passed me the keys, but I could see her planning in the darks of her eyes the chores I’d exchange.

It was worth it. Emma smelled like the warm Earth ought to, and she laughed like wet leaves rubbing together. The first thing she did when she got into the car was put on her seatbelt. Then, when I didn’t move fast enough, she reached across and fastened mine for me.

“I learned,” she said. 

I took her for a walk in an arboretum, and then out to lunch at a Denny’s, by her request. She liked their coffee and their cocoa and their milkshakes, so she got one of each and set them up around her seat like ramparts. I fired balls of napkins from my hands and tried to penetrate her defenses, but she deflected every single one.

After lunch, I put her in the car and told her to close her eyes. She closed them and covered them up with her hands splayed just enough so that she could peek out. I drove the few blocks to the pet store and stopped outside. I told her to wait in the car, and that I’d be right back.

I paid for the kitten, and asked if there was a ribbon or something I could use. The owner gave me a roll of green-wired stuff that was edged in gold. I was never much of a boy scout — I dropped out early — so I just wrapped the ribbon around the kitten’s neck and made a square not at the nape, tying it as I would my shoelaces. 

The owner gave me a cardboard carrying case. The kitten fought with me, flailing its limbs, its paws looking like the lights on an ambulance, but I managed to get it in and the case sealed. 

I brought it out to Emma and opened her door. “Okay,” I said. “You can look, now.” 

She accepted the box onto her lap and cracked it open while I grinned like an idiot. “Oh,” she said. It wasn’t the squeal of delight I had been hoping for. She reached her arms into the box and pulled out the kitten’s body. It wasn’t moving. Its paws hung limply around Emma wrist. With her free hand, she undid the ribbon I had tied too tightly. Then she set the kitten on her stomach and tapped its nose twice, as though admonishing it for being a bad kitty. “Thank you,” she said. She returned the cat to its box and folded the ribbon neatly beside it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I took the box out of her lap. Emma didn’t have an answer and it was a few moments before I got up the courage to look her in the eye. There was a thin wetness reflecting on her irises. 

I took the box around the corner and laid it gently in a dumpster. I kicked at the concrete and kept my head down as I returned to the car. I was behind the wheel with the ignition started before I opened my mouth again. “What do you want to do now?” I asked.

Again, Emma reached over me and did my seat belt. “Did you have another plan?” she asked. Her voice was low and caught on phlegm; that’s what I hear when I think of the word husky.

“No,” I said. Then, “Is it the thought that counts?”

Emma was silent. She wiped her eyes with her fingers. “You should take me home then,” she said finally.

I drove up to her curb and bumped it with the tires. I hadn’t been driving long. I left the engine running, my hands on the wheel. I thought about apologizing again. I heard Emma sniff, and then she was near me, and she still smelled like warmth ought to, and she was undoing my seat belt. “Come inside with me,” she said. She pulled me out the passenger door.

She led me into the house, past her aunt and uncle or whoever they were, up the stairs, and into her room. Dried leaves were on every surface, taped to the windows, stapled to the walls. When she moved to her bed, the floor rustled with their preserved bodies.

“Lie down,” she instructed me. I stepped gingerly over to her bed, which was barely wide enough for her. I perched myself on the edge, with my back to her. “Lie down,” she repeated, tugging on my arm. I did as I was told, balancing on my side, my arms dangling over the mattress corner, my feet resting on the floor. She curled her body around mine and for the briefest moment my skin felt as if it were flaming off. I smelled burnt cotton and started to move, but Emma held me back. She rested her cheek on mine and said, “I like the sad stories. They’re so much easier to remember.”

I breathed out my nose. There was a strange war inside me of comfort versus discomfort. The give of her flesh and her clothes above that molded to my shape and held me cupped as though in gentle hands, but at the same time the mattress was shot through with springs like bold ribs and I felt at any moment that I might slip to the floor. 

After a while, Emma seemed to fall asleep, so I tried to do the same. The taste of lunch was in my mouth, but old and rotten, reminding me I needed to brush my teeth. I ran my tongue along the inside of my mouth, feeling the plaque and imagining I could taste the fumes of a decomposing sandwich.

When Emma gave a little snore and I heard her lick her lips, I realized that I was trying hard not to cry. “What’s with all the leaves?” I asked. Emma made a small sound, something like a kitten’s, and I felt her roll away from me just a little. 

“I used to hurt people,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, but I caused a lot of problems for a young boy, once, and it all started in a park, in the trees. I told him things he wasn’t ready to hear, because I wanted to see what his reactions would be like. Kids don’t have enough practice in selling their lies, you know. I would make a terrible mother.”

“You would make a terrible mother,” I agreed.

“For some reason, leaves remind me of what happened to that little boy. They were all green, then, in the spring. But you can’t keep leaves green forever. You can keep leaves forever, but you can’t keep them green. So I keep all these brown and red and yellow.”

“The sad stories,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, and sighed.

“Do you still hurt people?” I asked. 

“Those experiments are over,” she said, settling the curve of her face into the curve of my neck. “But I still like to play with little boys.” She nipped my skin. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I let my muscles figure it out. I lifted one my arms from where it hung and flopped it over against her side in an awkward half-hug. She took my momentum and carried it through, rolling me on top of her. She draped her arms around my neck and smiled up at me. “Your thoughts are unimportant,” she said. “I like the way you make mistakes. So come on. Make another one.”

We did it twice. The first time, I lost my virginity. The second time, we were just having fun. I burned up all my newfound confidence in playing games with her, playing “let’s pretend”. I snarled evil and wordless and she squirmed under me, crying, “Abandon ship!” and “Take evasive actions!” and never made it out of bed. 

Long after dark, she asked me how I felt. 

“I can’t tell,” I said. 

“I may have hurt you,” she said, trailing her fingers up my bare arm. 

When I finally made my way downstairs, Emma’s uncle-guy tossed me my own keys. “You left it running,” he said. I apologized. The guy shrugged and said, “Battery’s probably dead. Need a jump?” 

He pulled his truck out of the driveway and nosed it up to mom’s car. As we set the jumper cables, I looked back at the house and saw Emma leaning out of her window, picking dead leaves off the tree that grew past the roof.

Continue on to part 2…