Sixteen

With the bullies fresh off their backs, Edgar felt like celebrating.

He shot Shay a text: Wanna go swimming tonight?

Across the classroom, Shay nodded and smiled.

That night they snuck out together and made for the other side of the world. Back on the island, they raced, laughing, down to the shore as the sun hung high and wonderful. They plunged breathlessly into the chilly water, where finally they surfaced and shrieked, convulsing with laughter.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed. “It’s way warmer than last time!”

“Yeah, you’re not lying,” Edgar nodded, who suddenly stilled. His smile fading, he cupped his hands over the surface of the water and peered through the window of his palms, squinting into the blue depths.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice suddenly worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “Let’s get those bags.”

So they swam to the shore and collected the backpacks they brought. Inside were two pairs of snorkels, two pairs of flippers, two collapsible prods, and two wadded-up burlap sacks.

“My dad showed me how to do this at the Florida Keys one time,” she explained. “It’s kind of freaky at first, but you’ll get the hang of it. Just keep your fingers away from the pincers.”

Hopping back into the surf, she led him down to the reef below, kicking deep into the clear blue water. Once down, she approached a hiding hole in some coral and began to pry a red crustacean from its bunker. As the lobster scooted backward into her burlap sack, she turned and gave Edgar a wild thumb’s up, her eyes sparkling with excitement inside her mask.

He took another quick glance around. The truth was, the night before, while fishing, he’d seen something absolutely terrible on the island’s shore: the unmistakable sight of a shark’s fin breaking the surface.

Still no sharks, he thought. Thank God.

After several trips back and forth to the surface, with two bags overflowing with ruby red pincers, Edgar and Shay finally made for shore.

“We’re rich!” she exclaimed, ripping off her mask, holding up her fat sack. Kicking in the ocean, she marveled at the catch. “I must have ten lobsters in here, easy!”

__________

That night, with the lobsters bagged and stored in the cabin freezer, they walked to her house, strolling slowly, giggling in the waning moonlight.

“What are you going to do with your profits?” he asked.

“Buy a new Bass Pro Shops lunchbox,” she giggled. “And give it to you.”

There, at the base of the sycamore tree, just below her bedroom, Shay kissed him. It was nearly dawn and their faces were as red as the lobsters they’d caught.

“Goodnight,” she whispered, kissing him again, her hands still wrapped behind his neck, drunken with fatigue. She closed her eyes and pressed a third warm and wonderful kiss onto his lips, and he drank in her lips, utterly overcome with passion.

He wished it would never end.

Afterward, she climbed up the tree and lingered for a moment, then waved to him and slipped inside.

He turned and, with a delirious smile, made for home.

__________

At five-fifteen in the morning, he arrived at his driveway. No suspicious activity seemed to be occurring, luckily. No lights were on, and nobody seemed to be up. He seemed to be safe.

With a sigh of relief, he made his way to the bedroom window, then wearily lifted the glass.

“What are you doing?”

Edgar froze. The voice had come from inside his room.

His knees nearly buckled from the shock.

He was busted.

“What?” he asked into the darkness, frozen halfway inside his window.

“I asked you, what are you doing, Edgar? Where have you been?” It was the angry, incredibly wounded voice of his mother.

“I,” he began, sitting frozen on the wooden windowsill, utterly paralyzed with fear, unable to breathe, his sweaty heart thundering in his shirt. “I was out for a bit,” he admitted.

He climbed inside and there, in the corner of his room, sat Mrs. Dewitt on his chest of drawers. How long she’d been there, he had no idea. Currently she was holding a balled-up tissue in a clenched-up fist, that was obviously used for wiping away worried tears. Immediately he knew without question: he was in big, big trouble.

“Mom,” he began. “I . . .”

“No!” she interrupted, closing her weepy eyes. “I do not want to hear any more of your lies, Edgar.” She lifted a trembling hand and massaged her forehead, then opened her eyes and glared again. “All you do is lie nowadays, over and over again.”

“What?” he croaked, his throat suddenly dry. “What do you mean, ‘lie?’”

She laughed angrily. “Edgar, come on! Your father and I—we are not stupid. You’ve been lying to us for weeks!”

“No I haven’t!”

“Speaking of your father,” she said, talking over him, “he came to say goodbye to you in the middle of the night, but unfortunately you couldn’t find it in your busy schedule to be at home in the middle of the night—so he said to tell you that you’ve really let him down, and when he gets back home, you are in serious, serious trouble.”

Edgar had a front row seat to the collapse of his entire operation. Piece by agonizing piece it was falling away, every bit as terrible as he thought it might be when he considered it all those times when falling through the Earth, wondering what might happen if his parents ever found him gone in the middle of the night.

“Dad came to say goodbye?” Edgar muttered. “Where did he go?”

She blew her nose on the ratty tissue and balled it up again. “He left for Yakima two hours ago.”

“ . . .Why?”

“To fight a fire.”

“But Dad’s not a fireman.”

“You know he volunteered. He told you last week. Or were you not listening? Anyway, stop trying to change the subject, Edgar,” she said grimly.

He ran a nervous hand through his hair and nodded.

“So now,” she continued, “you were saying? About sneaking out to God knows where?”

“I—” he began, defensively, but she held up a hand and cut him off again.

“You know, I can just feel another lie coming,” she said disgustedly, shaking her head. “I just don’t think I want to hear it.”

“OK,” he said. “OK, Mom. So we went catfishing last night.”

“Catfishing?” she chuckled. “And where exactly did this catfishing occur?”

He gulped audibly and tried to keep his cool. “Out at the Coulee Dam. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t let me go, since it was a school night.”

She glared at him, searching his face. “Coulee?” she said. “How did you get all the way out to Coulee?”

“Well, my friend Flounder has a car.”

He anguished as she thoughtfully scooped up an old picture from the top of the chest of drawers. She gently caressed Edgar’s photographed face—a photo she’d always liked from back in little league, but one he always hated since it embarrassed him how chubby he’d been as a kid, from baby fat, and how he looked like a beaver with his two huge, buck teeth.

“You know,” she said softly, smudging a speck of dust from his photographed face, probably wishing she still had him—the young Edgar—instead of the grown-up Edgar she seemed so disgusted with who stood before her. “You remember the science fair project you mentioned a few weeks back? You remember how you sat at the table and destroyed your childhood globe? Well, I know they didn’t assign you that project on the first week of school.”

Edgar dropped his head and stared at his sandaled feet.

“Even then I knew you were lying, Edgar.”

She placed the picture back on the chest of drawers and looked up at him, gazing at him. “The way I could tell, Edgar, was that I knew it in your voice. You were lying. You’ve never been a good liar, son, which is a good thing, but tonight with all this ‘catfishing’ business, I just know I’ve caught you in a bigger lie—I’ve caught you doing something worse—but you just continue to dig a hole for yourself.”

She shook her head and shrugged. “I just don’t think I even know you anymore.”

She rose from the chest of drawers and walked across the room to him, glaring down.

“Cross country tryouts?” she muttered at him. “Running into the house at five in the morning with no shoes on? What a fool you have made of me! Of us!” That stung Edgar deeply.

“Where are all your progress reports, Edgar?” she probed, lifting her palms to her hips, making his already petrified heart skip another beat. “I guess you’ll tell me they haven’t been sent home yet, huh? Or what, they don’t do progress reports in Washington? Which lie do you have ready for me this time?”

Breathlessly attempting to maintain his composure, he looked her in the eye and said, “Mom, we haven’t gotten any progress reports. Not yet.”

“Oh, is that right? Are you sure?” she asked, a bitter, angry smile emerging on her face. “Wow. You must think I’m really dumb, Edgar.”

The jig was up. She was onto him and would never let up now. Edgar was screwed. He was also suddenly so very tired, and so overwhelmed by the horrible confrontation that he just wished he could go to sleep—to lie down and sleep the sleep of a clean conscience again, to start over again. Nothing was worth this terrible moment of seeing his own mother fall apart like this. Edgar knew he had ruptured something between them, and that their relationship had been shaken to the point that he didn’t even know if it could be made whole again. She was looking at him differently now, standing in the oncoming dawn of his room, a woman who, until now, had always been just as much a friend to him as a mother. He thought about her guiding him by the neck through town, leading him to the ice cream parlor.

But now, he could tell in her eyes: their friendship was jeopardized. She was in survival mode now. He had hurt her very deeply.

None of this was worth the island or the hole through the Earth or the fishing business or the money or the freedom.

None of it was worth a dang thing to him. He just wanted his Mom to trust him again, but the way she was looking at him now, it might not ever happen again.

“Please,” she asked, “just tell me the truth, Edgar, and I promise things will get better for you. That’s how the truth works. It heals. It’s like medicine.”

Which sounded good. But for some weird, inexplicable reason, when Edgar opened his mouth to tell the truth, terribly, inconceivably, the lies continued to come.

“We went catfishing,” he said with finality, his shoulders slumping from the confrontation. “Over at the Coulee Dam, like I said.”

He couldn’t stop thinking about Shay and the times they’d had together, swimming and laughing and catching lobster and how they’d kissed freefalling through the Earth, and commiserated in the middle of the night walking home. How could he possibly give that up? He gazed at the floor in misery unable to bring himself to look at his mother. “I’m very sorry I snuck out,” he added. “I will never do it again.”

“Oh, finally,” she said. “That’s the truest statement you’ve made yet: you certainly are not going to sneak out again.” Freshly enraged at his unwillingness to come clean, Milly Dewitt leaned down to him. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” she asked threateningly.

“No!” he said, a fresh sheen of sweat breaking out upon his forehead. Something was wrong. Things were getting worse. She knew something, but what?

“This is your last chance, Edgar,” she said, her voice fraught with danger.

“I’m super positive,” he nodded, his voice rising an octave. “Just that stuff about going catfishing, that’s all. Nothing else has been going on.”

She nodded grimly, then brushed past him and walked to the corner of his room, where she bent to the floor and to the baseboards.

Then, terribly, unbearably, she began to wiggle the same exact baseboard that he used to hide all his money!

“Whoa, Mom!” he shouted, lifting his hands in surrender. “Please! What are you doing!”

“What’s the matter, Edgar?” she asked loudly, turning to glare at him. “Nothing’s ‘going on,’ remember?”

“Yeah, but, Mom!” he cried, yet she ignored him, yanking away at the baseboard.

With each pull, the awful baseboard began to loosen; and, each time it did the cry of the small nails were to him like a gang of cackling demons.

When suddenly the baseboard popped loose, there, behind the wall, sat his Bass Pro Shops lunchbox, and on top of it sat an obscene stack of progress reports and forged test scores.

He had stupidly failed to throw them away.

And beneath those, the lunchbox sat open to reveal a stash of stacked money so thick, it spewed out like a pirate’s chest. Mrs. Dewitt turned and looked fearfully at her son, then jerked a thumb to the evidence.

“I thought you said you’d outgrown your lunchbox,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Mom,” he said, his trembling voice hoarse with fear, his whole world collapsing now, “I can explain.”

She reached for a stray progress report and studied it with disgust, turning the paper to him for him to see, but he looked away. Before she stood, she reached behind the wall and snatched the progress reports and the money-dripping lunchbox and tossed it all onto the bed.

“Go ahead!” she shouted, pointing to the lunchbox. “Explain it! Explain why you have exactly one thousand dollars in a Bass Pro Shops lunchbox that you’ve hidden behind the wall!”

He opened his mouth to speak, but there was just nothing to say. He was simply plain old busted, and he knew it, and she knew it, too. As he stared at her he knew that there was no way out for him, so why make things worse?

Do what they do when they take you to jail. Say nothing.

Nothing could repair this. There was no lie he could ever use to cover this up, and so, completely boxed in, he simply stood and waited, his mouth pursed shut, his shoulders hanging. He would hunker down and weather her storm.

“So . . . nothing?” she probed. “You’re done? That’s it?”

He sat down on the bed beside the money—which made several bills poof outward and waft to the ground like green confetti. She stared down at him with moist, shimmering eyes.

“I’m asking you one last time, son. Where did all this money come from?”

To that, he said nothing.

“Where were you all night, Edgar? Out . . . making this money?”

He stared at the ground and gritted his teeth. His entire island, his fishing business, the only special things he had in his whole godforsaken life—being stuck as he was in the godforsaken town—everything was at stake now. Saying anything more to his mother might only jeopardize it further.

Besides, he didn’t have to speak. There was no law against it.

He didn’t have to give the island up to her.

“OK, then,” she said, straightening, dotting her eyes again with the obliterated Kleenex. “We’ll just get you a drug test then, when your father comes home from the fire.”

“What?” said Edgar, as she darted from the room, well before his tears could fall.

“Drugs?” he yelled at the door. “DRUGS? Yeah, well, I WISH I HAD SOME DRUGS FOR ALL THIS—” unable to find the right word, he looked around his room and bit his lip and yelled, “—SHIT! YOU’VE BROUGHT ME TO A TOWN AND TOSSED ME INTO A WORLD OF SHIT! YOU MADE ME FIGHT FOR MY LIFE EVERY DAY LIKE SOME KIND OF PRISONER! MOUNT LANIER IS LITERAL SHIT! MY LIFE SUCKS! SO YEAH, I WISH I HAD SOME DRUGS!”

He collapsed onto the bed and curled up into a ball as more money spilt over onto the floor. Disgusted, he kicked the money away in a sweeping motion, like making a green snow angel.

__________

At ten o’clock in the morning he woke up from a restless sleep—a feverish state full of nightmares and turmoil. Wiping drool from his face and coming to, at first he thought it had all been a nightmare but then, he realized his nightmare was real.

Oh man, was his life ever terrible now.

For a while he just lay in bed, trying to work up the courage to join his mother in the kitchen, to maybe figure out a way to make peace with her. She was out in the kitchen right now, making coffee. He could hear her.

When he did amass the courage to stand and turn the doorknob, he made his way out into the kitchen and faced her.

She sat at the table and did not look up, stirring her cup of coffee while reading the newspaper. Only when he sat down beside her did she look up from the paper and speak.

“Where did the money come from?” she said. “I want to know, Edgar.”

He wiped a puffy eye and shrugged. To that, she nodded grimly and returned to her newspaper.

“OK, then,” she said coldly. “Fine.”

Reaching out, he dragged the front page slowly to him.

“WILDFIRE BREAKS OUT IN YAKIMA,” the headline read. “Teams of engineers and city workers from neighboring counties have assembled to fight the blaze.”

His dad was there fighting a fire and must be worried sick about his son.

“I called your father this morning to let him know you are fine,” she said, as if reading his mind. “And boy . . .” she said, looking up with an angry smile, “is he pissed.”

Yes, Edgar imagined that this might be the case.

“Also,” she added, “we talked it over. We are taking your little pile of fun money away from you.” She eyed him for a response, but there was none. “We are giving it to charity, Edgar—every cent. What do you think about that?”

“That’s fine,” he said, because it was. Besides, there was another thousand dollars stashed away inside the back of his TV that she didn’t know was there, so it wasn’t like he was out of money.

“Oh, and one more thing. You are grounded, for like, ever.”

Yeah, he thought. No shocker there.

“So, now. If maybe you want to tell me where the money came from, we could possibly work out a reduction in your sentence. How about that? Would you like to cooperate?”

“Sure,” he said, sitting up. What the hell, he thought. “Fine, Mom. I will tell you exactly how I got the money. The way I got it was, I fell through a hole in the Earth that goes to an island in the Indian Ocean, not down to China like they always say when you’re a kid. And on that island, I went fishing. I brought back the fish to Flounder’s fish stand where we sold it for about twenty dollars a pound. I had to tell the Arteses that it came from your imaginary brother that I made up, my fake Uncle Louis. Sometimes my new girlfriend goes with me to the island to help me catch lobsters, which I also sell at Flounder’s fish stand.”

She stiffened and huffed at his explanation. “You,” she said angrily, “are so disrespectful! This is not a joke. Have it your way, Edgar. Don’t tell me how you really got the money. God knows and I will too, someday. The truth always comes out.”

He shook his head and pushed the newspaper away. It was the worst day of his life, hands down.