Two

Jude

Riverview Trailer Park

Saturday, March 31

8:17 a.m.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I wake up to the birds chirping. Goddamn birds. I flip onto my back and reach for my iPod. It’s an old one, three versions back. Bought it off eBay for twenty bucks. I turn on some System of a Down. “Chop Suey!” blares through my docking speakers. Oh yeah. I nod my head to the hard beat. Screaming lyrics instead of happy birds chirping. Much better.

I sink back into the cheap mattress, a particularly annoying spring digging into my back. Dad’s at the other end of the double-wide, no doubt sleeping one off from last night. Nothing will wake him up.

The memory of Mom’s voice from last summer echoes in my head. “Why do you want to go back to live with your dad again?”

“Miss my old school.”

“I thought you hated that place.” She looked away and took a slow drag on her cigarette. Her hand still shook even though she’d been clean for eighteen months.

I turned my back to her and looked out the kitchen window at the little patch of grass that made up her front lawn. It wasn’t that it was hard to lie to my mom or that I was bad at it. I just preferred not doing it to her face. “I grew up there, Mom. I want to go back for senior year.”

She sighed, a long breath that wheezed through her teeth along with a cloud of smoke. She padded over in her old house slippers and put a hand on my back. “Fine, honey. I’m just going to miss having you here. You’ve gotten so handsome,” she said with a laugh. “All the girls in town will riot now that you’re leaving.”

Handsome. I scoff at the memory and get out of bed, the springs creaking in protest as I walk to the mirror. This is the same room I spent my childhood in, back when Mom and Dad were still together. The same room of all those angsty, crap-ass junior high years alone and miserable, cursing my stupid face and skin. My dresser is one of those antique kinds, with the mirror attached. I trace my fingers over the spiderweb fractures fanning out from the spot where I’d planted my fist in eighth grade after Lauren DeSanto screwed me over, helped along by her bitch of a new best friend, Kadence Mulligan. All because of my face. No one called me handsome back then.

I had acne. And not “Oh poor kid, he’s got some zits” acne. It was the volcanic, painful kind where you have dime-sized lesions that last for a month and leave lifetime scars. Not just on my face either, but on my arms and back too. Christ, even my legs.

And Lauren, who had been my best friend until seventh grade, dropped me like the proverbial hot potato as soon as Kadence Mulligan came to town. Lauren even started calling me freak. Monster. Creep. And then later, stalker. That was the one that stuck. At the time, I couldn’t believe Lauren could treat me so badly. I thought it had to be because of Kadence. Kadence, so shiny—that was the word for her—but mean to the core. Who knew so much darkness could hide behind a pretty face?

Oh, wait, I thought, smirking. I do. I know exactly how much a handsome face can hide.

I look at the image reflected back at me in the fractured mirror. There’s a particularly powerful drug for the worst cases of acne. My dad, in a random bout of giving a shit, didn’t want me to go on it because he did when he was a teenager and it made him depressed. Wanted to kill himself. Almost did. Besides, we couldn’t afford it anyway. But then Mom got a job with health insurance. First thing I asked for was the drug. I promised I’d be extra careful about my moods and let her know if I ever felt off.

I felt off. I never told anyone. The medication started working, and for the first time since seventh grade, I could see my face again. I was being reborn.

That was when I first came up with the plan.

Lauren had never known how right she was when she called me a monster. But I was only what she and Kadence had made me. Whenever my moods went dark, I didn’t think about harming myself. No, not myself.

I get my video camera—another eBay purchase—from my dresser drawer where I keep it beneath my T-shirts and socks. I tug on some jeans, a sweatshirt, my boots, and then I’m out the door. I leave System of a Down playing on the off chance it will wake up Dad and piss him off. I’m not usually such a dick. Most of the time, I just don’t care enough. But if there’s a passive way to stick it to him…well, hell, why not?

I grab my coat and jog down the stairs of our rickety trailer. It’s sunny and in the mid-fifties. Warm for Minnesota in late March. I only feel like I can breathe once I’m out in the woods beyond the trailer park. I take the path that only I know and inhale the sharp scent of the towering evergreens. There are the subtler smells of spring too—fresh growth out of last year’s rot. It feels clean out here. It’s good to clear my head, especially on a day like today when my thoughts are so twisted.

I flip open the viewer on the video camera to watch the footage from last night. I’m suddenly nervous that I forgot to click Record or something else happened to mess up the image, but then my muscles relax as the music comes out of the crappy little speakers.

I hate hearing Kadence’s voice. She’s so tinny and pop sounding. She’s been total crap without Lauren. Everyone knows Lauren is the actual musician in the group. I might hate her too, but I’m not one to deny talent. Kadence, on the other hand, is more for “show” than anything else. Such a goddamn diva, up there playing her guitar, her burgundy hair catching the lights.

She’s grinning seductively out at the crowd, making eye contact with every guy there, and probably all the girls too. That’s her specialty after all. Making people want her. Publicity whore.

There’s a tightness in my stomach and my hands ball into fists, just like they did last night. Just like they did last year when I first saw Lauren and Kadence’s YouTube views start to skyrocket and I knew I had to come back.

The camera view suddenly swings from Kadence to Lauren, who’s watching Kadence perform from behind the counter. She’s smiling, but I can see past it. She’s miserable not being up there onstage. My gut twists, but not with rage. I click the camera shut and put it back in my coat pocket. I put my palms against my eyes. Damn it, I hate Lauren. Hate her. I’m supposed to be glad she’s suffering. That’s why I did all this. Came back here with my new face.

For revenge.

I look around. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. The line from the Robert Frost poem suddenly pops in my head. It fits perfectly with the scene around me and my mood. Even though it’s early morning, the woods are full of shadows.

I feel small standing here under so many tall, tall trees, but in a good way. Small like insignificant. Small like I’m just a tiny part of this big world full of growing things. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. Small like I could get lost out here and no one would ever notice.

These woods already hold so many memories. Secrets too. It’s lucky the thaw was early this year and the earth soft enough to dig into, I think absentmindedly. I pick at the dirt I wasn’t able to wash completely out from underneath my fingernails. It’s cold, but I don’t pull out my gloves. Instead, I perch on a fallen tree and take out the notebook I keep in a zipped pocket in my coat.

Lauren was always better at words than me, but I dabble. Poetry mostly. Sometimes it’s the only way to get the storms tearing up my head to calm the hell down. I start to write, and this morning the words are flowing:

Buried In the Wood

All the pretty, fragile things,

are buried in the wood.

Worms will nestle in your bones

beneath the earth for good.

Maybe God will be forgiving,

though for me, I never could,

and so in mimicked memory

I walk upon

what’s buried in the wood.