Bonfire: A Novel Read online

  A little boy, maybe five or six, edges carefully into the light. He is unexpectedly beautiful: big blue eyes, blond hair, perfect features. Cherubic. Half his face is still in shadow; half his face glows in the sun.

  He steps right up to the door and places a hand to the screen. Then he turns and leans his cheek against it, and the sun catches the scabrous raw sores on his cheek and jaw and neck, the desperate marks where he has scratched his way through the skin.

  “It itches,” is all he says.

  Chapter Seven

  What do I remember?

  —Kaycee Mitchell narrowing to a long dark shadow, moving down the road, whacking at the corn with a blunt stick, teasing out the rats, sending a blur of dark bodies across the road.

  —Misha Dale, smile as wide as a fishbowl, standing by the bathroom sinks when I pushed out of a stall. How I almost crawled back into the toilet. How I wanted to flush myself away. You know there’s operations for ugly now, she said, cocking her head. I bet we could even raise donations. Kaycee was putting on lipstick, drawing the lines in real thick. Unexpectedly, she turned around. They’ve got operations for being dumb, too, she said to Misha. But once they can cure bitch I’ll let you know. A warning in her eyes when she looked at me, a subtle tic: Go.

  —Kaycee leaning against a fence, smoking a cigarette, the dazzle of floodlights in the football stadium turning her to silhouette. The smoke, the way it curled, like it had questions to ask.

  —God doesn’t exist, people made him up. It flew out of Kaycee’s mouth in the middle of senior year. History. Her fingernails were filed sharp, painted with Wite-Out. When I turned around to stare, I hardly recognized her.

  —Kaycee alone in the art studio, after the final bell, working on an enormous canvas, slashing in broad strokes of red and black, painting like she was cutting, like the color was bleeding out.

  —And finally: Kaycee, bent over a toilet in the fourth-floor bathroom. The stall door swinging open. A sour smell hanging heavy in the air. Go away, she said, when I reached for her. She turned; streaks of bright red blood ringed her mouth. Then I saw it: blood on her fingers, blood in the toilet. Vomit tangling her hair. Leave me alone, you freak! But instead I just stood there. She retched again, almost missing the toilet. This time when she looked at me, her eyes were wide and desperate, like open sores. What’s happening? she whispered. Please. What’s happening to me?

  Chapter Eight

  If there are chemical contaminants in the water now—blistering Cooper Dawes’s skin, leaching bad smells from the taps—there might have been chemical contaminants in the water ten years ago, when Kaycee Mitchell first started collapsing in class. I return to the idea that maybe Kaycee Mitchell really was sick. That there was truth buried deep inside the lies.

  If so, I could use Kaycee’s testimony, especially now that the Davies and the Ioccos are backpedaling. A little thrill moves through me at the idea of finally having an excuse to reach out—but I have no idea where she is.

  And for the first time in a decade, the full force of the question returns to me: Why did she run away? Misha didn’t. None of the other girls did. Was Kaycee simply looking for an excuse to disappear?

  I’ve looked for her before. How could I not? I found hundreds of Kaycee Mitchells on Facebook but never the real one. Once, late at night, my then roommate banged through the door, drunk, and caught me combing through pictures of strange blond girls. Who’s the hottie you’re creeping? she asked. I slammed the computer shut so hard I nearly snapped her nails off. After that she never walked around in a towel in front of me again; she brought her clothes into the bathroom and changed right after leaving the shower.

  How could I explain it to her? I couldn’t even explain it to myself. All I know is that Barrens broke something inside of me. It warped the needles on my compass and turned the south to north and lies to truth and vice versa. And what happened to Kaycee senior year—what happened to all her friends as they began falling, fainting, and forgetting—is the central magnet. If I have any hope of finding my way again, I have to figure out which way the truth was pointing all along.

  Which way did you run, Kaycee Mitchell?

  —

  There are four porn stores and six strip clubs named Temptations in Indiana, three of them in Gary alone. Luckily, only one is in Barrens.

  I count the rings by primes. One. Three. Five.

  Kaycee’s mom ran off even before I became friends with her, back in first grade—that was a bad time for crank in Indiana, and her mom was a user. Her dad, a notorious drinker, owned the 99-cent store. I never liked being at Kaycee’s house when her dad was home, and I got the sense that she didn’t, either. That’s why we were so close when we were kids: we met in the woods, and we practically lived there, toeing the edge of the reservoir, pretending the water was a mirror that would slip us into a different world.

  When we were in middle school, Frank Mitchell opened a porn shop—the same one I passed on my way into town. Everybody was sure he sold weed there, too, and six-packs from a cooler concealed behind a wall of old Playboy magazines.

  I’m about to hang up when he answers.

  “Mitchell’s.” The site gives the official name of the store as Temptations, but we always called it Mitchell’s, plain and simple. I guess he’s picked up the habit.

  “Hi, yes. Mr. Mitchell.” That uneasy feeling hits me right in my chest. He’s one of those men with a face like a caution sign, always on the edge of a bad mood, like he could snap at any moment.

  His voice is harsh over the phone, like he just swallowed a handful of gravel. Still, I keep my voice sunny. “My name is Abby, and I’m an old friend of Kaycee’s.” As soon as I mention her name, his breathing hitches, then starts again. “I’m back in town for a bit and was just wondering if you knew how I could reach her? I would love to connect with her.”

  “No.” The word is a short, explosive burst. Then silence for so long I check to see if he’s hung up. “No idea where that girl is. Haven’t talked to her in almost a decade.”

  “You don’t have a number? An e-mail?”

  “She ran off because she wanted to be alone, so I left her alone,” he says—sharply, like he’s daring me to say he did wrong. “If you were such good friends with Kaycee, why don’t you know how to get ahold of her?”

  “Mr. Mitchell, wait,” I say, before he can hang up. I squint into the lowering sun. “Do you remember when Kaycee got sick, when she was in high school? Can you talk to me a little about that time?”

  Another pause, and my pulse begins to climb. Nothing from the end of the line.

  “What are you,” he said, “some kinda journalist?”

  “No,” I say. “Just a friend.”

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Abigail.” I don’t give my last name. “I’m from Barrens, like I said. I just had a few questions for Kaycee. I was hoping she’d be willing to talk to me.”

  There’s another long stretch of silence.

  “Mr. Mitchell?” I say. “Are you still there?”

  “Still here.” He clears his throat. “As far as I’m concerned, Abigail, you can talk to Kaycee in hell.”

  Chapter Nine

  The house I rented is tucked behind a beauty salon in town, not far from where I once babysat as a girl. When I was a kid, the town was basically Main Street, which was also Route 205, and the three official streets that bisected it: First, Second, and Maple. Other than that, it was all nameless county roads that everyone called by the people and businesses that lived there—the Simmons’ Farm Road, the Dump Route. Since Optimal arrived, however, the town has been spreading steadily, sweating new housing clusters and tackle stores and stop signs. The single real estate agent I could dig up told me glibly that Barrens was in the middle of a housing boom—as proof, she could find me only two places for rent, and the other was a converted shed at the back of a slaughterhouse.

  As I get out of the car, the loud sound of crickets is broken
by a kid laughing. Across the street, outside another nearly identical two-bedroom, a young girl hula-hoops in the driveway. Long-haired, pretty, giggling.

  In the hiss of the wind I think I hear a whispered voice and turn around. A blond girl is just locking up the salon and for a second, I imagine that Kaycee Mitchell has come back after all, or that she never really left. She must feel me staring because she turns and glares, hitching her bag a little closer.

  But Kaycee, I realize, has left her fingerprint on everything in Barrens; by disappearing, she ensured that she would never leave. She is a slick on the telephone poles once molting with flyers begging for information on her return. She is a shadow on the football stadium bleachers, where she once sat to watch Brent play, sucking on a Newport while Misha and Cora shimmied on the sidelines in their cheerleader costumes. She is in the reservoir and the sky, she wanders the halls at Barrens High, I bet, her face mascara streaked, holding a tissue soaked with blood.

  Of all of them, Kaycee was the only one who ever showed me pity. Sometimes, she even showed me kindness. Almost as if brief flares of the past, of our friendship, would sometimes burst again into her memory.

  But she could be cruel, too. I remember when she collapsed out of her chair at the desk next to mine, she nearly bit off my hand when I tried to help her. Not metaphorically: she actually almost snapped down on my fingers, like a dog.

  And then there was Chestnut, and the collar she’d left in my locker. One of her last gestures. Twisted, cruel, incomprehensible.

  Almost as bad as killing him in the first place.

  —

  The hula-hoop slips from the little girl’s waist, and the noise of it startles me back to the present. She hops out to recover it with her arm, spinning it back up to her elbow.

  As I lean over to get my bag out of the passenger seat, a male voice rings out: “Hannah! Time to get ready for bed.”

  I get out of the car again and almost can’t believe it: it’s Condor. He’s silhouetted in the beam of light from the streetlamp.

  “Abby?” He squints, and the girl—Hannah—turns to stare. A smile creeps over his face. “You following me?”

  “Seems like it’s the other way around.” I slam my car door, and hitch the bag a little higher on my shoulder.

  “I don’t know.” He gestures to the little girl. “Hannah and I have been living here for a long time.” He puts a hand on Hannah’s head when she tries to get behind him. “Small town.” I can’t tell if he means that as a good thing or a bad thing. “This is my daughter, Hannah. Go on,” he says, when she doesn’t greet me. Then he turns back to me. “She’s shy,” he says.

  “That’s all right,” I say. “Looks like you’ve got some moves on that hula-hoop, Hannah. I’m impressed.”

  This earns me a cautious smile. “Thanks,” she says.

  “Hannah’s in a big hula contest next week,” Condor says, and she says “Dad,” and glares at him.

  “It’s not a contest. It’s a competition,” she says with great disdain, and Condor gives me a what-can-you-do-kids-these-days kind of look. “There’s a trophy and everything,” Hannah goes on. “I could teach you, if you want.”

  “Uh-uh, no way. I’m wise to your tricks.” He grabs Hannah by the shoulders and turns her in the direction of the house. “No more stalling. This hula girl is twirling off to bed. Run upstairs and I’ll be up in a minute.”

  “Nice to meet you, Hannah.” I give her a wave and she sprints upstairs, slamming the door behind her. “Cute kid,” I say.

  Condor shrugs. “She’s a handful, but I’ll probably keep her.” He’s wearing a T-shirt that shows off his tattoos, bare feet, jeans rolled up to the ankle. He looks like he smells good, like he feels good, and I suddenly imagine his hands all over me.

  Dangerous.

  “So we’re neighbors, huh?” Condor says.

  “For a little while,” I say quickly. Before I can regret my tone of voice, I start for the door. I’m going to take my cue from Hannah. “Good night.”

  “I wouldn’t have pegged you for the early-to-bed type,” he says, before I can make it across the yard.

  I hate it when people read me. I turn around to face him. “It was a long day.”

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “You’re cocky,” I say.

  “How was the wine, by the way?” he calls out again as I reach the door. “Did you like it?”

  “No idea,” I say, and then, before I can stop myself: “Want to find out?”

  Just then, Hannah appears in an upstairs window and shouts: “Dad! I’m ready!”

  “One minute, sweetheart.” He smiles. “I’ll come by after I tuck her in. Can’t let a lady drink alone.”

  I bump into the low, plaid-upholstered couch as I enter the darkened living room, and curse at it, as though it is the idiot who just invited Condor over for a drink and not me. I’m used to tight spaces, rooms that open straight into other rooms, apartments too small to even need a hallway, but this house makes me uneasy, because it’s not my space. And the disarray of items the owner has chosen to keep around are even worse—they should add up to form a picture of the people who once lived here but there’s no story, just junk.

  Quickly, I slip on a casual T-shirt, one that hangs off my shoulder a bit and shows the straps of my bra. Brush my teeth and wash my hands. Wash them again.

  I head to the kitchen to dig up some glasses, but the cabinets are as disorganized as everything else. Mouse droppings along the back of one of them.

  Condor knocks on my front door so lightly I almost miss it. He’s carrying a box of Chik’n Biscuit crackers and a block of cheddar.

  “Hannah’s favorite,” he says, gesturing to the box of crackers. “Don’t tell her.”

  “Jars okay? Couldn’t find actual wineglasses.”

  —

  In the living room, Condor takes the sofa. I grab a rickety chair and set it across from him. He pours us each some wine and tells me there’s a way to open a bottle by using a shoe. He tells me about the store, about his favorite wines, about the garbage Hannah watches on TV, about how he likes to hunt on the weekends. Most of it is not very surprising. He brags about his great aim, then laughs.

  The first glass makes me warm and the second glass makes me feel loose and the third, when we’re nearly at the end of the bottle, brings him more strongly into focus: his jaw, the way his eyes crease when he smiles, the way he uses his hands. His lower lip, perfect for biting.

  “What is it?” he says, and I realize I’ve been staring. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’m not.” I stand up quickly, so he won’t see me blush, and pass into the kitchen. Of all the things the landlord left, one of them is a bottle of Johnnie Walker stashed beneath the sink. “I mean, I was just wondering what it’s like to live here. That’s all.”

  “Didn’t you used to live here?” Condor asks. He doesn’t blink when I set down the whiskey.

  “I meant now,” I say. I’m half-drunk and work will be a bitch tomorrow. But it’s too late anyway. It was too late when he called out to me across the yard. “What’s it like, living here now?”

  Condor leans forward and tips the last drops of wine into my glass. He spins the empty bottle between his palms. “I haven’t only lived here,” he says, in a different tone. “I took Hannah and moved to the coast of Florida when her mom and I—” He breaks off suddenly, and a shadow moves across his face and takes the rest of his smile with it.

  He uncaps the whiskey and pours us each a glass. When he looks up, his expression is unrecognizable.

  And again, dimly, I remember the rumors: some trouble in high school, something Condor did.

  “It’s all right,” he says with a shrug. “I’m still angry about it, I guess. Hannah’s the best kid in the world, and her mother wants nothing to do with her. Drugs,” he clarifies, in answer to a question I haven’t asked. “She had an accident and then got hooked on the pain pills. She’s in Indianapolis.
Or she was. Went through rehab a few years ago. Still has visitation rights.” Condor frowns into his glass.

  “Sorry. For asking.” Again, it isn’t quite the right thing to say.

  “I bet you are.” Condor’s crooked smile is back. I want to tell him that isn’t how I meant it, but I can’t—what’s the point, anyway? “It’s better now that Hannah’s old enough to understand. I’m very honest. She knows her mom’s an addict, that she’s sick, that it’s not Hannah’s fault.” He looks away. “Ah, well. Mistakes of our youth, you know? You never really outrun them.”

  “I hope that isn’t true,” I say, which makes him laugh.

  “What about you?” he asks, settling back again in the sofa. “What’s it like coming home after all this time?”

  “I’m not really coming home,” I say, as if he’s accused me of something. “I’m just here for a job.”

  “Still. Must be weird to see how things have changed…”

  “And how they haven’t,” I say, and he raises his eyebrows. I’m more than a little drunk now, and it feels great. All the doubts and uncertainties are drowning. Condor is here and we both know how this goes, and until then there’s nothing to do but keep going.

  Condor sets down his glass. In the silence, he fingers the scar over his lip.

  “What happened there?” I ask.

  Condor just shrugs again. “Another childhood mistake.”

  I lift up my glass. “To childhood mistakes, then.”

  Slowly, he smiles. “And grown-up ones,” Condor says.

  “Sure,” I say. “To grown-up ones, too.”

  He tastes like whiskey when he leans in to kiss me, and long after he leaves, my skin continues burning.

  Chapter Ten

  My sleep is restless, full of nightmares that feel more like memories, one bleeding into the other. Now I’m shivering yet drenched in sweat. All my life I’ve been like this—too hot or too cold, too conspicuous or too plain, too tall or too thin or too something. My mother used to say I was like Goldilocks, trying out Big Bear’s and Little Bear’s things. She used to call it “Middle Bear” when something was just right. I wake up and for a second the smell of my mother, her lotion, her hands, seems to float through the room.