As the last bell of the day rang, I walked through the hallways toward the double doors leading outside. Opening them, I anticipated drizzle, but was instead bathed in sunlight. Its glow felt like a kind of kiss. Something warm, something familiar. For a moment, the light blinded me. Then I got used to it and I was reminded of who I was. Standing alone as other students filtered out, I watched as my brother Theo strode past like a human peacock.
He was a senior and I could never get out from under his shadow. He had an entire year ahead of me, so that by the time I arrived anywhere—swim lessons, grade school, the ice cream shop—I wasn’t Ruthie. Stripped of my identity, I was “Theo’s sister,” as though it was tattooed on my forehead.
It didn’t used to be that way. There were times growing up I remembered us as friends. Even then, babysitters would pay him more attention. Didn’t matter if they were teenagers or little old ladies. They’d squeeze his cheeks, amused with his innate adorableness while I watched, politely ignored. As he grew older, the attention only increased, as he became a gravitational pull all his own. His girlfriend now was Sasha Fitzgerald, she of raven hair, mocha skin, green eyes and only recently grown out of her awkwardness into a stunning creature. She was also my ex-best friend.
Theo and Sasha split off toward the parking lot, hand-in-hand, soon-to-be Prom King and Queen, while Max and I walked toward the three buses waiting in the circular drive.
I pictured saying, “Hey, Theo, wait for me,” and we would walk to his car together, the brother and sister everyone was jealous of, the brother and sister they all wished they had, the family they wished they belonged to.
It never happened.
Theo got into his car—not just any car—a rebuilt powder blue 1953 Buick Roadmaster with shimmering chrome accents. Sasha slid in the passenger side, and even though there was a backseat—room enough for both Max and me and an entire village, Theo shut the door, revved the engine and peeled out. They didn’t give me the finger, but it sure felt like it.
I watched that scene play out every day that year.
Every day and not one invitation for a ride.
Every day feeling invisible.
I didn’t dislike my brother because I was jealous. I didn’t dislike him because he stole my best friend. I disliked him because he didn’t care. I disliked him because since puberty, he’d messed around or dated every female friend I ever had. It’s like he thought: if girls like my sister, then they’ll like me, too.
That’s why Max was now my best friend.
I couldn’t understand Theo’s near magic ability to attract people, but of course I was biased and I remembered the days when he had a booger wall next to his bed because he was too lazy to get up and blow his nose. None of his admirers knew he spent more time primping in the bathroom than I did. Or that he sometimes forgot to flush the toilet.
I stepped onto the bus and slumped down next to a window. Max sat on the aisle. Looking outside, I gazed across Main Street. Not many businesses lined it, certainly not a movie theatre, bowling alley, or anything fun. Just a gas station, grocery store, and a tiny post office. I couldn’t imagine this place before the Internet. What did people do?
A variety of kids moved past us—including elementary and junior high students who shared the same bus route. Though lots of us were old enough to drive, most didn’t. There weren’t many jobs, and with no afterschool or summer jobs, well, no money for a car. Most of the roads out here weren’t paved, anyway; they were more matted-down paths of rock and grass. A few guys drove rust-covered beaters that ran on vegetable oil (and smelled like French fries), but otherwise, everyone took the bus.
A kid in our class, Dirk Kincade, walked past Max and stopped. With Max’s face right near Dirk’s jeans, Dirk farted, long and loud. Dirk crinkled his nose, waving away the odor. “Stinks over here.” He turned to Max. “Must be you.”
Dirk’s friend, Renzo, laughed, an odd trilling squeal.
I never understood Dirk’s need to pick on people and what sick kick he got from it. Dirk’s father was an artist (a freaky one, but still) and I thought some of that sensitivity would’ve leaked into his son. Apparently not.
Max did his best to ignore it. Me, not so much.
I took out my cell and aimed the camera at Dirk and snapped a shot.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked. He had a face like an anvil, smooshed flat with a near Cro-Magnon brow.
“Want to see it?” I turned the camera so he could see the photo. “Picture of a dickhead.”
Renzo smirked, reminding me of a kind of marionette without its strings, showing off a set of crooked teeth, and Dirk jabbed him with his elbow. Dirk said to Max, “How’s it feel to know Ruthie’s got bigger balls than you?”
Max kept quiet and stared straight ahead. I wanted to intervene, but worried it might make things worse. Dirk and Renzo were like acne that way. The more you messed with it, the worse it got.
Of all the available spots, Dirk and Renzo just had to take the one behind ours. I felt their kicks against our seat, followed by their idiotic laughter. The route home would take less than 15 minutes. I could handle that.
When kicking failed to get a response, Dirk began flicking the back of Max’s head. I could hear them snap against his skull. Flick. Flick. Flick.
Max shut his eyes.
“Hey, Renzo,” Dirk said, loud enough for us to hear. “Maybe we should ask Max to hang out sometime.”
More flicks.
Max’s body clenched and his body seemed to radiate heat, a nuclear reactor heading toward meltdown.
“Yeah,” Renzo parroted. “We should. He can show us around.”
“I was thinking something like swimming. You know…cliff diving.”
That was a line too far.
In a blur, Max grabbed Dirk’s fingers and quickly stood up. I’d never seen him move so fast. Max never fought back. Never said anything at all. He twisted the fingers, using them as leverage, and bent them toward Dirk’s wrists. In one second, Dirk was sitting in his seat, and the next, he was at Max’s mercy. Incomprehension filled Dirk’s face.
“Stop, stop, stop,” Dirk whined.
Max’s voice was a dark monotone. “Today was the wrong day, Dirk.” There was a look in Max’s eyes I’d never seen before. Coldness. I admit I liked it. Not the harshness. Justice.
The murmuring of conversation on the bus stopped. Everyone was focused on the spectacle.
“You’re so meat, Max.”
“I’m what?” Max bent the fingers even deeper. All it would take was a simple snap, and the fingers would break. Dirk’s face grew a deep crimson. He squirmed in his seat, falling on the floor, trying to lessen the pressure. If the bus driver saw, she made no effort to intervene. In a hippie town, this was karma in action.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry….”
Renzo started to stand up and I said, “Don’t.” This was between Dirk and Max, and I intended to keep it that way.
Max leaned in next to Dirk’s ear and whispered something I couldn’t hear. But Dirk’s eyes went wide. Dirk nearly squealed. “You’re crazy.”
Max applied more pressure, Dirk’s fingers arcing grotesquely backward. He said, louder this time, “Say you understand.”
Gulping air, Dirk said, “I understand.”
Max released Dirk’s fingers and sat down, not meeting my eyes.
Dirk nursed his hand, on the verge of crying. He noticed everyone staring. “What are you looking at?”
I heard Renzo ask, “What’d he say?”
Dirk shouldered him and said, “Just shut the hell up.”
They didn’t bother us anymore.
I tried to catch Max’s eyes, but he wouldn’t meet mine. I gave up and turned to the window.
Outside, the bus passed my neighbors. Hidden by forests and skies of gray, they were offbeat artists, hardcore DIY-ers, and a scattering of anti-government types who wanted to be left alone. Suffice it to say, Halloween was not a big holiday out here. Nor was caroling at Christmastime.
“See anybody?” Max asked me.
It was a joke. We never saw anyone.
After a few more minutes on the bus, we heard sirens. The sheriff’s cruiser roared up behind the bus, its lights ablaze, blue and red circles flashing, and I stupidly wondered if he was here to arrest Max for assault.
The bus pulled over to the side of the road and the sheriff passed, picking up speed. He was quickly followed by the one ambulance in town, staffed by two volunteer EMTs. Basically, our gym and science teachers. We all stared. All talk stopped. Then all at once, excited chatter filled the bus. I overheard Dirk say, “He never puts on the siren. Ever.”
Max’s stop was next. The driver pulled over and opened the door. Max stood up and I tugged at his shirt. “Aren’t you curious?”
“You’re gonna stay?”
I nodded. The island had only one major road and we were on it. We were bound to see what was going on. “Stay with.”
The driver waited for Max. He shouted to her, “Never mind,” and sat back down.
My stop was next. I, too, waited in my seat.
From there, it was a trend. Stop by stop, the driver, a whippet-thin vegan who resembled the Crypt Keeper, opened the door and no one stepped out.
She asked, “Is anyone gonna get off anywhere? Or should I just drive to the end of the line?”
The end of the line was where the electricity, telephone and roads stopped, a very real demarcation between those “on the grid” and those off. That’s probably where the sheriff had gone in such a rush. The elementary kids yelled, “End of the line!”
Ten minutes later, we were there. The driver stopped, opened the door and we all filed out. Dirk and Renzo kept their distance. Once everyone was off, she said, “Last chance to get back in. Otherwise, I’m heading home.”
No one took her up on it.
“Okay, then. Don’t get lost.” She closed the door and the bus rolled off, disappearing behind the curve of the road.
Up ahead, the sheriff’s cruiser was parked askew, as if he’d suddenly stopped and ran off. The ambulance was next to it, the back doors thrown open, the stretcher gone. With all the activity, there was an eerie silence, made even more so by the dead trees that littered the area.
Out here, there were unfortunately still remnants of the oil spill that hit our shores over a year ago. Little splotches of dead zones where nothing grew. Even though the oil company cleaned the spill using a new type of dispersant, nothing ever got cleaned perfectly. My mother worked as a marine biologist gathering samples. “Some things never go back to normal,” she’d told me, and I wondered if she was talking about our lives, or the spill.
Hesitancy infected us, and we waited, seemingly for permission to do something. No one took the lead until I stepped into the woods, and everyone trickled after.
The forest surrounded me and I crossed into another world. It was cooler by 10 degrees, the branches cast a wide net above, and the only sounds were the cracking twigs beneath my feet. I followed a path with fresh shoe imprints. Behind me, we seemed like a tribe of forgotten kids emerging through the forest’s haze, which made everything slightly soft, slightly out-of-focus.
I knew whose house we were approaching. It belonged to a family that was off-off grid. Mr. Solomon hunted, fished, and grew his own food, home-schooled his kids and had no solar or electric of any kind. On an island where nearly everything had to be shipped in from cereal to TVs, he made do without. He rose with the sun and slept at night, living the simplest life possible. His house was a handmade structure built from mud and hay. Legend had it he had no legal identity: no driver’s license or passport, barely an address, nothing of value, no bank accounts, credit cards, or money.
The last part, as far as I knew, was true. In the summer, I sometimes babysat for his two kids while Mr. Solomon went foraging. His kids were surprisingly well behaved. Noah and Rachel. I’d always been certain I would never have children, but after babysitting, the thought of being a mother didn’t seem so far-fetched. Anyway, I was never paid in cash. Instead, Mr. Solomon gave me fresh fish he’d spearfished that very day. I didn’t mind; it was delicious.
I was anxious as to what got the sheriff and an ambulance all the way out here. Had Mr. Solomon been bitten by something? Hopefully, all it would take was a trip to the local medical center, and nothing worthy of an airlift.
Max stepped over a fallen, decayed tree. “Ever get sick of who you are, Ruthie?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes?” Honestly, I didn’t want to change. I just wanted a different life.
“I made a change today.”
Before I could ask, we were outside the house, where the sheriff stood, his face in his hands. Whatever had made him rush here had stopped him in his tracks. When he heard us, he looked up. “You kids,” he said and trailed off. His face was pale and there was something else—fear. I knew him because he was Sasha’s father, a harsh man, she told me once, who drank too much. But he’d always been nice to me on my visits to his home. Still, with his football player’s size, he wasn’t one to scare easily. “You kids shouldn’t be out here.” He made no move to scatter us off.
The two teachers walked out with the stretcher. The stretcher was empty.
Max asked the science teacher, “Hey, Mr. Beasley. What happened?”
The teacher didn’t answer. It’s almost as if he didn’t hear. In a daze, they walked past us.
From where I was standing outside, I could look past the open door to see inside. Something within me told me not to look. To go home and never look back. But I ignored that voice.
There was something on the floor. It took a moment to process what I was seeing.
It was a hand, a man’s hand.
Someone had chopped off his hand.
It looked so fake no one even screamed. I don’t know why or what compelled me, but I craned my neck to see what else lay inside. My legs grew weak and Max grabbed me as I spilled onto the ground.
“You okay,” he asked.
It took me a moment to find air. “Did you see it?”
“What was it?”
Max hadn’t recognized it for what it was.
“The family. The whole family.” It had been a while, but the memories were still fresh: Little Noah and Rachel. Little Noah who had begged me to read Harry Potter to him. Little Noah who had fallen asleep next to me, his head lolling on my shoulder, his mouth open in an O. Rachel, nearly a teenager, embarrassed at being looked after, who wanted to know what a Big Mac tasted like. I was going to be sick. I fought back waves of nausea as other people came to watch. It felt like the whole town.
There was my principal, Mr. Johnson; the post lady, Sally Jenkins; and a neighbor I’d only seen once before. She was crying and I wondered if she’d been the one to find the bodies. Everything seemed unreal, as if I was watching a play performed in the woods, rather than real life.
And then I thought: the trees they used to climb.
Their smiles when they played in the mud.
The song Rachel made up and made me sing with her.
The sheriff moved in slow-motion taking photographs of the crime scene. He lifted his walkie-talkie, his voice cracking. “Mel, this is Sheriff Fitzgerald. Over.”
“This is Mel.” Mel was the ferryboat operator.
“I’m ordering a ban on anyone coming or leaving the island.”
“Say again?” came a voice from the tiny speaker.
“No one comes or goes.”
“That’s, um, pretty unorthodox, Sheriff.”
“I know. Just do it, Mel.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes.” Frustrated, the sheriff snapped off the walkie-talkie. We watched as he took fingerprint samples from the windows and doorframes, things I’d only ever seen on TV shows. Once he was inside, he and the teachers shut the door. With the cabin closed up and wind in the trees, it was as if nothing was wrong, which only made everything stranger.
We said nothing. We barely moved.
When they finally opened the door, the teachers solemnly removed the bodies in black bags. Whatever was inside didn’t lie flat, but bulged in odd shapes. I watched them remove the dead. I was watching the end of life in something as routine as a black garbage bag. I never felt so removed, so useless, so much a witness.
The sheriff unspooled a roll of yellow crime scene tape, walking around the entire hut. He took his time and I pictured him placing a protective blessing, warding off evil.
The sun began to set and the townspeople filtered home, and we knew that place in the woods would become the stuff of campfire tales and childhood dares.
The family who lived here hadn’t been violent; they were pacifists, quiet and self-sufficient. I should’ve recognized that this was the beginning. The beginning of what, I didn’t know. Instead, I thought living alone in the woods was enough to make anyone go crazy.
It was worse. Much worse.