It's a lot of responsibility when someone puts faith in you.
Looking for Peyton’s house is like trying to find a straight guy at a Lady Gaga concert. I pretty much zigzag my way through every street in a five-block radius of where Amanda lives, hoping there’s a house with a sign that says “Crazy lives here.” It’s not like I can ask anyone, because I’m pretty sure no one knows who the hell she is. It’s like she appeared out of nowhere. In fact, if Nick hadn’t been sitting across from me today and witnessed the whole lunch episode, I would wonder if anyone else could see her.
I decide my best bet is to retrace my steps from early this morning, so I start to pedal to Amanda Carlisle’s house. Everything appears pretty normal—people out walking their dogs, mowing the lawn. No sign of Peyton. As I get within a couple of blocks of Amanda’s house, I notice the damnedest thing on the side of the road: matchsticks. Not the kind that come in a little book. I’m talking about the matches that are about two inches long, made of tan-colored wood with a red tip, and come in a box. The tips are spent though, so whoever left them lit them first. There’s one about every ten feet, like a trail of bread crumbs.
I follow the trail, and as I do, the matchsticks get closer and closer together. They appear to be leading to Amanda Carlisle’s house. Is this someone’s idea of a sick joke? The smell of burned tree still lingers in the air and grows more pronounced as I draw closer. Then, just before I reach Amanda’s house, the matchsticks form a figure-eight pattern in the middle of the road and cross the street toward a giant bush, where they end abruptly.
It’s the bush I hid behind the night of the fire. I skid my bike to a stop.
Hidden by the overgrown bush and set back from the road is a house that seems to fit the neighborhood well enough, though the yard is not tended with the same care. The patchy crabgrass is only partially mowed in an erratic zigzag pattern, like someone got bored and gave up midway. The only real greenery is weeds that have stubbornly sprung up between the rocks in the planter beds. The dusty-blue ranch-style house is still sporting Christmas lights despite it being mid-April, and the blinds are all closed. An old beater sits in the oil-stained driveway, and to the side of it, a wooden fence bows forward, looking like one good windstorm could bring it down.
Apparently, the Breedloves are those neighbors. Everything about this place needs a hug, and that’s how I know—even before I see her—that I’ve found the right house.
“Nice job, Sherlock. I told you I had faith in you,” Peyton says, stepping out from behind the bush.
“What’s with the matchsticks? You probably shouldn’t leave them lying around here. Just a hunch, but someone might think you’re responsible for what happened across the street.” I lean down and collect a few, then hold them out to her like a bouquet.
“Well, we both know that I’m not, don’t we? Though I admit that I admire your style.” She throws a nasty glance at her house and then back at me. “Besides, I was wearing gloves, so they’d have his fingerprints on them, not mine. I’m no fool.”
“Whose fingerprints?”
“My mom’s boyfriend, Pete.” She says the words like they’re poison. “Or, as I like to call him, Pete the Deadbeat. At least he’s better than Dave the Dealer or Steve the Sociopath, but only by a small margin. My mother has outstanding taste in men.” She takes the matches from me, shoving them in the back pocket of her jeans. I’m still processing that last comment, which she’s shared as casually as a preference for Coke over Pepsi, when she says, “C’mon. I want to show you something.”
I start to roll my bike, but she grabs the handlebars. “No, leave this here. It won’t get stolen. I promise.”
“You’re just saying that because it’s orange,” I joke. I let go, and she steers it into the bushes where it is perfectly concealed from view. Then she motions for me to follow her around the side of the house, putting her finger to her lips as she tiptoes past the window. I can hear the faint strains of a television inside.
“He’s glued to the couch watching some home improvement show. Trust me, he doesn’t like interruptions,” she whispers.
She leads me around to the backyard, which isn’t much more attractive than the front. On one end, there is a massive hole. She sees me looking at it and tells me, “Pete decided we needed a pool so he could skateboard in it. Dug it himself last summer, after watching how to do it on TV. Got about halfway through and gave up on the idea, which came as no surprise. My mom is pissed because this place is a rental, so it pretty much guarantees her deposit’s history. I think it’s a great place to hide his body.”
Her face is so serious that I can’t tell she’s making a joke until her mouth curls into a smile. “Kidding.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Of course. I knew that,” I say, even though I’m not entirely convinced.
We pass a semicircle of broken lounge chairs and a table piled high with boards and rusted tools—evidence of other projects gone by the wayside. She leads me to the far corner of the yard, obscured from view of the main house by another abandoned pile of plywood, to a stone fire pit, like for roasting hot dogs or marshmallows. It’s loaded with ash and debris, and when the breeze kicks up, little particles fly in the air like those white thingies from dandelions.
“I know this seems small time, but I wanted to show you my spot.” Her whole face lights up with pride. “I mean, it doesn’t compare to what you did, but it can still be pretty satisfying.” She takes a deep breath and then puffs out her cheeks as she exhales slowly. “Anyhow, I’ve never shown it to anyone. I mean, not anyone who would understand.”
I look at the pit, then at her, and I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’m not quite sure I know what you’re talking about.”
She laughs and I laugh, almost as if we’re sharing some inside joke but only one of us knows what’s funny. And it isn’t me.
Then I start to worry. Because maybe if this girl thinks I get something and it becomes clear that I don’t, she could go completely batshit crazy on me. Who would even know where I was? I’m pretty sure Pete the Deadbeat isn’t going to have my back. So I swallow hard and decide to play along.
“Yeah, that’s cool,” I say and dig my hands into my pockets, then take them out again for good measure in case I need to defend myself. “So…show me how it works.”
She grins like the Cheshire cat. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Next thing I know, she’s pulling this blue tarp off a big plastic container near the fire pit. She pries off the lid, and I honestly don’t know what to expect when I peer in. For all I know, this is where she keeps pieces of her victims or a pet python or some other weird shit. What I don’t expect to see is a bunch of naked Barbies. The container’s half filled with them. I try my hardest to look unfazed, but this shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.
She kneels down excitedly and riffles through them. “At first I started with pieces of paper. I’d write down the names of people who pissed me off and then set fire to them, but this is so much better. Who gets under your skin? Just completely goes out of their way to make your life a living hell?”
I smile. “That’s a no-brainer. Kyle Jonas.”
Kyle Jonas is this total dick in my English class who’s had it out for me ever since elementary school. In tenth grade, he put a smear of chocolate pudding on my seat, and then he and his equally dickish friends howled with laughter as I proceeded to sit in it. The chair was dark brown so I couldn’t see it. I had to walk around looking like I’d crapped in my pants for three periods before I could escape to the locker room and change into my gym shorts. Two years later, and he still thinks the “can’t hold it” jokes he makes at my expense are hi-frickin’-larious.
She smirks. “That guy’s an ass. Watch and see how much better you’re gonna feel.”
She paws through the Barbies until she extracts a male one that bears an uncanny resemblance to Kyle with perfectly combed brown hair and a chiseled chin. She holds it up victoriously, then grabs a black Sharpie from inside the bin and scrawls “Kyle” across its chest before handing it to me.
I look at the naked doll, unsure what I’m supposed to do with it, but Peyton’s already throwing balls of newspaper on the fire pit and a few pieces of old plywood. She sprays some fuel on top and sets it all on fire. The flames dance at the edges of the paper, slowly eating at the corners until the fire finds the dry lumber. The wood starts to pop and crack. I can feel the heat coming off it, and the breeze blows the smoke toward me, which makes me sneeze.
I have no idea what the hell is going on.
I stand to the side as Peyton pokes at the fire with a metal rod. It’s like she’s in a trance. She never takes her eyes off the flames. She turns to me. “Go ahead. Throw it in.”
“The Barbie?” I ask.
She locks gazes with me and says, “It’s not a Barbie. It’s Kyle Jonas.”
“Kyle Jonas,” I repeat. “Right.”
I take a step toward the fire. She grabs my hand.
“Wait! Close your eyes. As you throw it in, tell yourself that you’re taking back the power. That Kyle Jonas can never hurt you again.”
She releases my hand and nods in encouragement. I take that as my cue to chuck Ken, a.k.a. Kyle Jonas, into the pit. I gotta admit that I am a little freaked out, but at the same time, I’m slightly intrigued as Ken nose-dives into the flames.
The flames attack the doll instantly, blackening and distorting its plastic features, and causing its arms and legs to melt and mutate at weird angles. After a few more moments, it becomes unrecognizable as what it once was.
Finally I say, “Is this some weird voodoo shit? Because I gotta be honest. I’m not really down with black magic.”
She scoffs. “No, of course not. Voodoo is like people running around with bloody, headless chickens, saying incantations and speaking in tongues.”
I hesitate. “Well, I’m not sure I get it is all.”
Peyton’s brow creases, and she is clearly disappointed by my comment. She chews at her lip, then says, “It’s…it’s like they transform from being beautiful to ugly and distorted. There’s a different kind of beauty in that, I think. Everything beautiful can be ugly, and everything ugly can be beautiful. It’s all perspective. But it’s like you’re the artist with the brush, and everything else is your canvas. I don’t know—I thought you might understand that.”
She grabs a nearby bucket filled with water and douses the flames with a hiss. As the fire gives way to smoke, she shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I never should have shown you.”
I see the tears building up in the corners of her eyes as she works to clean up while I stand there awkwardly, rocking back and forth on my heels, trying to figure out the right thing to say. I settle on, “No, it’s cool. I get what you mean: the whole brush-and-canvas thing. That felt pretty good.”
She stabs at the contents of the fire pit with the poker, tamping down the ash. “You’re just saying that.”
Peyton is the one person who knows I’m responsible for what happened last night. She could blow my life up in two seconds if she wanted to. I can’t afford to piss her off. Plus, for some reason I can’t put my finger on, I feel sorry for her. So I opt to follow that old saying: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It’s not like Peyton’s an enemy, but she’s not exactly a friend. I don’t know what she is yet, so I merely nod and say, “No, seriously. I felt like I had the upper hand for once. Like I was in control and that douche bag was at my mercy for a change.”
She dabs the corners of her eyes, then sniffles. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” While this seems to calm her, I’m still a little nervous about this whole situation and I start to ramble. “In fact, if you hadn’t put that out, I probably could have come up with at least a dozen more names we could throw into the fire. And that’s without including the football team or the lacrosse team or any other team. Because you know what ‘team’ spells backward? Meat. And that’s all they are. A bunch of meatheads.”
“Actually, ‘team’ spelled backward is ‘maet.’” She exaggerates the sounds as if she’s trying to speak with some lame southern accent.
I shrug. “Yeah, well, spelling was never my strong suit.”
She smiles and says quietly, “I knew you were special, Hank Kirby.”
And then a voice rips through the yard like a needle scratching across a record. “Peyton! Where are you? I know you’re out here because I can smell the damn smoke! You better put that out, or I’m gonna tell your mother you’re starting up with that crap again.”
“Shit,” Peyton whispers, her hands balling into fists.
I’m guessing it’s Pete, lured away from his home improvement show by the acrid smell of burning Barbie. Peyton shoves me back and motions for me to squat by the Barbie bin as she throws the tarp back over it. In a low voice, she says, “Just hide here. He won’t come out this far. He never does. Wait until after we go inside, then sneak around the side of the house.”
“What’s the big deal? Why can’t I just leave with you?”
Her eyes widen and she squeezes my hand. “Please. Just do it. I don’t want him to see you. It will only cause problems. Do this for me, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Pey-ton? I’m not in the mood for hide-and-seek. Where the hell are you?” Pete’s voice has more urgency this time, and although he can’t see me, I spy him stumbling across the yard in a stained wifebeater tank. His feet are bare, and when he steps on something in the dirt, he rages and screams her name again, as if blaming her for his injury.
“Are you gonna be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The crazy look in her eyes has been replaced by fear, and my stomach lurches as she runs off. Pete greets her by grabbing her arm with enough force that her body rocks to keep upright.
As he drags her toward the house, I can hear him berating her though I can’t make out exactly what he’s saying. But even from here, I can tell her spirit is broken in this guy’s presence. She curls into herself, following his lead and never once turning back in my direction.
I wait in the corner of the yard until I’m sure they’ve gone inside and then cautiously make my way to the side of the house. I am tempted to pause by the open window and listen, just to make sure Peyton is okay, but I don’t hear anything, not even the faint drone of the television we heard on the way in.
I run and pull my bike out of the bushes, then pedal away as fast as I can, past the trail of burned matchsticks and all the people leading normal lives, completely unaware that right down the street some seriously messed-up stuff is going on. I’ve finally met someone whose life is potentially more craptastic than mine. Who knew that was even possible?
I suppose on some level I should feel relieved, but I don’t. I just feel sad. As much as I wish I could forget this entire day, I can’t stop thinking about her all the way home and wondering what her story is.