POLUNSKY UNIT (DEATH ROW)
LIVINGSTON, TEXAS 77351
USA
April 12
My dear Stu,
By the time you receive this letter, you will be very near the end, and I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more to save you. All I can hope is that the sun’s shining on your last days, beaming through your window as a red-tailed hawk soars in the sky. I hope it looks different, the yellow brighter and the blue deeper and the scarlet feathers more vibrant than any you’ve ever seen in your life. I wonder if you feel calm or if your heart’s acting crazy. If you had one of those hospital monitors, I wonder if it would go BOOM BOOM BOOM like a giant’s trapped inside it, or boom boom boom boom boom as if a mouse is running through the wires.
Whatever is happening to that heart of yours, I hope it feels light and free as if it’s going to drift right out of you toward the sun and float away into the universe when it finally stops beating. You deserve some happiness now, Stu. Of course you made mistakes, but you faced up to your crime and accepted your fate so at least your story ends bravely. With honesty. Mine ends differently, as you will see.
The morning of May 1 was perfect, like God had ironed a turquoise cloth across the sky and stitched a yellow circle right in the middle of it. It hurts to think how I closed my eyes to breathe in the day or how nice breakfast felt on the patio, Mum and Dad reading the newspaper and taking their time over a pot of real coffee, not talking much but not arguing over who got the business section, either. Soph was prancing on the lawn like a pony, making Dot helpless with laughter, and then they linked arms and galloped around the garden until Dot tripped. Of course, she blamed Soph, but Mum didn’t run to Dot’s side or put a Band-Aid on the graze. She just told her to be careful then went back to the paper as Dad smiled at something he was reading.
That night I was going to the Spring Fair in the park where the bonfire had been held. I couldn’t sit still at breakfast or lunch or dinner, and I fidgeted away the hours, anticipating the moment I’d see Aaron. We’d kept our word and not met up, but we’d spoken on the phone practically every night, if you want me to be honest about it, sneaking a word here and there, checking in with each other, hating and loving the situation all at the same time, if that’s even possible. The wedding had taken place in the last week of April so it was time to confess and we’d decided to do it together that evening. I put on my new blue dress, having a million practice conversations in my head, imagining Max saying Don’t worry and smiling by the Ferris wheel.
At last it was time to set off so Dad drove into the city center, toward the stalls shining in the park underneath rows of flashing lights. He pulled up by a hot dog van. Onions sizzled. Smoke swirled. Music from two different live bands clashed in the air as rides zoomed by the river. I spotted Lauren making her way toward the park entrance so I jumped out of Dad’s car and joined a large group that was growing by the second, families filing in from the left and the right. A clown was tottering about on stilts, giving out sweets, and Irish step dancers were doing something ridiculous that I can’t even describe, and a brass band appeared in the middle of the street, all these marching black feet and farting gold instruments and musicians dressed in smart uniforms with brass buttons you could see your face in.
When I reached the gate, Lauren was clutching a metal spike, taking off a shoe, and flexing her toes.
“Too small?” I asked.
“Too small, too high, too tight, but so pretty!” she replied, stroking the red stiletto. “Let’s go in!”
The sun started to set, and Stu it was spectacular, like imagine ice cream in a bowl, pink swirls and orange swirls and yellow swirls melting together to make colors that don’t even have a name.
“Bumper cars?” Lauren suggested, so we paid to go on, but my heart wasn’t really in it because I was looking looking looking for Aaron.
All of a sudden the bumper cars roared into life and everyone moved forward, but Lauren pressed the wrong pedal so we hurtled backward in a circle. Round and round and round we went, both our mouths wide open and screaming. When we finally got ourselves going in the right direction, a boy came out of nowhere and smashed into the back of the car, jolting us forward. I swore under my breath, realizing with a shock that it was Max. Guilt and anger mixed in my stomach as he reversed quickly. Putting his foot probably flat on the floor, he charged toward us once more and crashed into our side.
“Stop it!” Lauren shouted as our heads snapped forward. Jack yelled something—he was there, too, speeding around in a fluorescent yellow car—and Max threw back his head and guffawed as Lauren, furious, hit the wrong pedal again so we shot backward into a pillar.
When the ride finished, I climbed out of the bumper car on shaky legs. I wanted more than anything to disappear in the opposite direction, but Max grabbed my arm.
“That was a bit much, Max,” Lauren said, rubbing her neck. He shrugged, his eyes wild as he leaned in with no warning, his teeth clattering against my top lip. His breath tasted of vodka and onions as he sucked my face, no other way to describe it.
“Gross,” Lauren muttered, which was the exact word I was thinking as I pushed him away.
“Celebrating what?”
“Weddings!” Max yelled, raising his arms into the air. “Marriage!”
Just as Lauren twirled a finger by her temple to say that Max had clearly gone mental, the boy in the year above grabbed her around the waist and pulled her toward the bumper cars. Stumbling in high heels, Lauren climbed into a pink one, and I watched her speed around as Jack handed Max a bottle of clear liquid. He gulped down a mouthful and passed it back. Jack put the bottle on a bench, looking queasy. All the lights from the fair shone in the glass and I gazed at it, thinking it was beautiful, then turned my head to see Aaron.
My eyes lit up in recognition, my expression overfamiliar and my voice about to give us away. Aaron shook his head quickly before Max could see. I changed my face. Kept it calm. But underneath my skin, excitement bubbled in my blood. It was almost our time, Stu. Almost.
“Aaron!” Max exclaimed. “Zoe, this is my brother. The best brother in the world, and that’s not even a lie. You should have seen him at the wedding.” His words were slurring, and he patted Aaron on the back so hard he stumbled forward.
“We’ve already met,” Aaron muttered as I cringed all the way from my curling toes to the prickling roots of my hair. “Remember?”
“Noooo,” Max replied, and then he started to giggle in this false sort of way, holding his own arms and moving his shoulders up and down. “’Course I remember. New Year’s Eve. Me and Zoe were going to”—he dropped his voice to a whisper—“ you know in your car.” Max held out a fist and a finger and put one inside the other, pumping hard. Sweat crept up my back, crawling underneath my arms and breaking into hot beads on my upper lip. Aaron looked away as Max’s hands reached a climax that splattered into the air between all three of us. He winked at me. “Maybe later.” His crooked smile looked dangerously off-kilter as he put an arm around my shoulder and held me close.
That’s when Sandra emerged out of the crowd.
“Look at you two,” she said, smiling at us all indulgent as Max kissed my cheek, leaving spit on my skin. My shoulder twitched because I wanted to wipe it off, but I let it dry, this sticky ring right in the middle of my face, and I remember feeling branded. “It’s boiling, isn’t it?” Sandra said, fanning herself, her hair sticking to her forehead. “How’re you, Zoe?”
“Good, thanks,” I lied, my voice strained. Aaron’s fists were clenching because Max’s hand had found my hair, twirling a strand between his fingers.
“You soppy thing.” Sandra laughed, tapping Max’s shoulder and beaming with pride as her youngest son gazed at me with all this affection that was more vodka than anything, not that Sandra realized it.
There wasn’t much oxygen, because of the panic or the humidity, and I had to work hard to suck air into my lungs. A silver balloon bobbed above the crowd and moved toward us as Fiona appeared with the blue string tied around her hand, her camera dangling from her neck.
“Zoe!” she cried, running up to me in a flowery dress. “You haven’t been to our house for ages.”
“Every time I ask, she’s busy,” Max sulked.
“You must come over more often,” Sandra said, dabbing her forehead with a tissue as the sun sank below the horizon, turning the sky into that inky sort of blue that comes before the black. “You’re welcome anytime, sweetheart.”
Aaron sucked his cheek between his back teeth, white grinding on red.
“Take a picture of us,” Max said, prodding Fiona’s tummy with his finger.
“Ow!”
“Go on,” he said. “All three of us!” He pulled me and Aaron into a space away from the crowd, forcing me into the middle. Fiona fiddled with the settings as Aaron’s arm snaked around my back, his hand squeezing my hip as we glanced at each other with blazing eyes bursting with all the things we couldn’t say and all the feelings we weren’t supposed to have, and I ached for him—for his voice and his smell and his touch and his taste and his…
“Smile!” Fiona shouted, so I turned on a big grin that disappeared with the zap of the flash.
At the other side of the bumper cars, Lauren waved at me to say she was disappearing with the boy in the year above. Black clouds had appeared above the woods near the river, heat pressing down pressing down pressing down.
“There’s going to be a storm.” Sandra frowned, rubbing her temples, and sure enough a jagged stripe of silver cut through the dense air, tearing the sky in two. “I’m going to get off,” she said quickly. “You lot can get wet if you like, but I’m taking Fiona home.”
“No,” Fiona groaned, stamping her foot. “I haven’t been on the ghost train yet!”
“Tough,” Sandra said as—pt pt pt—the first drops of rain splattered the ground. Pulling a jacket out of her bag, Sandra told Max and Aaron that she would pick them up in a couple of hours, and Stu it hurts to remember how casually she said this, as if there was just no question that the brothers would be waiting at the hot dog van at 11:30 PM. She hurried off, distracted by the rain, without stopping to kiss her sons.
And then there were three.
Lightning flashed as if the tension between us was exploding in the sky. Max picked up the bottle of vodka Jack had left on the bench.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Aaron said, but Max’s mouth bulged and his throat contracted as he gulped down the clear liquid. He smacked his lips apart.
“I’m celebrating!” He lifted the bottle over his head then stumbled off through the crowd, calling over his shoulder, “Just celebrating the wedding!” Aaron and I exchanged a worried look, and even though it was wrong, we smiled a bit, too. “Fiona had the right idea,” Max said, suddenly spinning around. Our grins vanished just in time. “Let’s go on the ghost train!”
BANG!
Thunder!
People screamed as the rain doubled in force, pelting out of the sky. Umbrellas shot into the air. Everyone dived for cover underneath roofs dripping with water. Only Max charged through the downpour, slipping and sliding on the mud as he joined the shrinking queue at the ghost train. Shielding my eyes from the rain, I followed, struggling to keep up with Aaron.
“This is ridiculous!” I shouted at Max as he swigged the vodka again and again. “We need to find somewhere to go inside!”
“That’s inside!” he yelled, pointing at the ghost train and gulping back more drink. Aaron tried to take the bottle, but Max shoved him, harder than he intended, the heel of his hand smacking against Aaron’s shoulder.
“Easy, Max.”
“Easy, Max,” his brother mocked, knocking back another mouthful as we reached the front of the queue. Pushing the bottle down the back of his jeans, Max leaped into the carriage, disappearing through purple doors as a ghost wailed.
“We can’t tell him tonight!” I exclaimed, my hair dripping wet as rain beat down from the jet-black sky. “He’s totally out of it!”
“I know! We’ll wait. Tomorrow, though,” Aaron said, and our hands touched for the slightest moment as Max’s carriage shot out of an arch on the upper level. Our fingers broke apart as Max waved madly, hurtling through the gaping mouth of a huge ghost painted on the opposite side of the ride. It was my turn next so Aaron helped me into my carriage. Off I went, following Max with Aaron just behind, through tunnels that spun, under spiderwebs that tickled my face, past monsters that roared and coffins that opened, the wheels of the carriage clacking on the metal track.
“I feel sick,” Max moaned as I climbed out of my carriage into the rain, shivering now, my blue dress stuck to my skin. “You look amazing,” he said, his words slurring badly. Gently, he brushed my wet fringe to one side then his face drained of color. “I’m going to throw up.” He bent over, his head dangling above a puddle. I put my hand on his back. “Don’t,” he muttered.
“There’s a trash can over there,” I said, pointing, but Max stumbled toward the woods as Aaron’s carriage sped out of the ghost train.
I gestured at the trees to tell Aaron where I was heading so I could follow Max, worried about him falling as he ran away from the fair, unsteady on his legs. Squinting in the darkness, I hurried away from the crowds, going deeper and deeper into the woods, mud squelching beneath my feet. I didn’t know if Aaron was behind me, but I could see Max in front, tripping over a trunk to land on the grass.
It can’t have hurt, but Max didn’t get up. Rain dripped through branches. The noise of the fair was muffled by the gushing of a river I couldn’t see. I dropped to my knees at Max’s side.
“Go away,” he said, and I realized with dismay that he was crying. “I’m celebrating, Zo. Celebrating!” Gently, I put my fingers on his head, and it seemed to calm him. Slowly, he turned to look at me, sweat and mud and tears mingling on his cheeks. He sat up suddenly, forcing his lips on mine.
“Don’t,” I said, scrambling to my feet, unable to control my reaction.
“Why not?” Max slurred, wiping his face with his sleeve. He jumped up to kiss me again, clutching my arms. “Don’t be shy, Zo.” Straining my neck to look over Max’s shoulder, I saw nothing but trees, the lights of the fair this speck of color in the distance. I’d come farther than I’d realized.
“I don’t want to,” I said as Max slurped at my neck, his breath quivering against my skin.
“You’re my girlfriend,” he whispered, and the guilt was so strong my legs almost gave way. “Come on….” His mouth was on mine before I could stop it, his hands grabbing my bum before darting to the front to push inside my knickers.
“Stop it,” I said, struggling to get free. Max laughed, tickling my sides, then under my arms, then touching my breasts, not hard, more pathetically than anything, but my heart was pounding. “Seriously, Max. I don’t want to.”
“You’ll enjoy it,” he crooned, moving his fingers all over my body as I squirmed, biting my bottom lip, desperate not to hurt his feelings, but Stu he was scaring me, pulling at the strap of my dress as I shook my head. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, sounding annoyed now, and he grabbed both straps and tore them down. “You’re my girlfriend, aren’t you?” he yelled, and that’s when I pushed him away and took off, unable to stand it a second longer.
“Zoe!” Max called, his voice bouncing off the trees as I ran back toward the fair. “Zoe! I’m sorry. We don’t have to do anything you don’t… Come back! Zoe!”
I turned to see him sink to his knees with his head in his hands, and I pushed forward, frightened and exhausted and sick to death of pretending. Panting, I stumbled toward Aaron, who had entered the woods.
“Hey,” he said, his voice full of concern. “What’s the matter, Zo? What is it?”
“Max,” I gasped, shaking as I fell into his arms. “He’s… he’s…”
“He’s what?” Aaron asked, holding my face in his hands, kissing me with all the desperation that we both felt, giving in for a frantic second because it was dark, so dark, and we were hidden under the trees.
But then a twig snapped.
We spun around to see the back of Max’s head as he hurtled into the woods. For a moment, neither of us moved, and then we leaped apart, horrified, calling out his name, chasing after him, the sound of gushing water getting louder and louder as we pushed past branches and tore at leaves and slipped on the mossy ground. The river appeared as the trees gave way to a stony path and I skidded to a halt, looking all around, my lungs on fire. Max was stumbling along it, losing his footing again and again, his feet dangerously close to the surging water.
“Max!” Aaron yelled, his hands on either side of his mouth. “MAX!”
If Max heard, he gave no sign of it. I turned to Aaron, my face white, my eyes huge and terrified.
“He saw us! He knows! What are we going to—”
But Aaron had sped off again, struggling to run in his flip-flops as they flicked mud up the back of his jeans. “Max!” he called. “Max!”
Max stopped abruptly, his attention caught by a wooden bench. Roaring in anger, he picked up a stone, and I realized with a sickening jolt what he’d seen—our initials, Stu, scratched into the wood. Raising the stone above his head, he dived at the bench, and just as he was about to attack our names, Aaron seized his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry!”
My feet splashed through puddles as the black river swirled, and both boys turned to look at me.
“What’s going on?” Max roared, throwing the stone against the bench. “What the F is going on?”
“We… we…” I stuttered, my hands clawing at my hair.
“We’re…” Aaron started.
“You’re WHAT?” Max yelled, tears falling down his face. “What’s going on? TELL ME THE TRUTH!”
Aaron held up his hands. “Calm down,” he breathed. “Calm down! We’ll talk about this when you’ve sobered up and everyone’s—”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Max bellowed, slapping Aaron’s hand away. “You bastard!” Aaron sank onto the bench. “You’re all I’ve got!” Max said, his voice choked. He tripped over nothing, almost falling onto Aaron’s lap. “And you,” he growled, rounding on me, his movements huge and lurching as he swiped an arm through the air. “I trusted you. I liked you!”
“I liked you, too! I swear… I never meant for any of this to happen.” I tried to put my hands on his waist to comfort him, but he pushed me away and I stumbled toward the river.
Aaron shot to his feet. “Don’t call her that!”
Laughing crazily now, Max hurtled toward me. The water churned half a meter from where we stood. Grabbing my shoulder, he pulled me upright to shout in my ear.
“SLUT!”
“Stop!” Aaron yelled. “Leave her out of this!”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Max screamed again as thunder exploded in the sky. He gripped the straps of my blue dress with desperate fingers, and we wobbled closer to the river.
“Let her go!” Aaron bellowed, and when Max didn’t obey, Aaron charged at his brother. They came together with an almighty roar, gripping each other as their feet slipped on the mud.
“You’re too near the edge!” I cried, but they weren’t listening, and somehow I got in the middle, trying to break them up as they grasped each other’s clothes, shoving and pushing and screaming underneath the trees as the rain pelted down.
“You slut!” Max bellowed, spit hitting my skin as he grabbed my hair and roared the word in my face, and Stu I pushed him hard as Aaron did, too. A split-second impulse. Anything to make him stop.
His feet skidded down the wet bank. The slippery slope.
His arms propelled madly in the air.
And the water splashed as his body fell in, his mouth opening at the first shock of cold.
“Get him!” I screamed. “Aaron! Grab him!”
Paralyzed to the spot, I watched Aaron drop onto his chest and hold out his hand as the strong current grabbed Max’s legs, swirling and powerful, impossible to fight. As if in slow motion, I saw Max go under—once, twice—his body sweeping down the river as Aaron scrambled along the bank, gasping and shouting, stretching out his arm.
Max couldn’t reach it. The river was too strong. As he struggled to swim against the current, his muscles went limp and he floated passed tree roots and branches and an orange safety ring on the other side of the river that none of us could reach. He went under again, and again and again, getting weaker and weaker, his mouth sucking in water as he struggled to kick himself above the surface.
Aaron stretched out one last time, shouting his brother’s name. Max lifted a weak arm into the air as his body gave up the fight.
His head sank.
His elbow, too.
Wrist.
Hand.
The disappearing hand—pale and rigid and grasping at nothing—vanished under the black water.
The first time we lied was to the operator on the other end of the phone. Aaron called for an ambulance, and even though he was shaking and sobbing, he didn’t mention the argument or the kiss or our push.
“He slipped,” Aaron said, sitting on the bench, his body shaking violently. “He was drunk.” I gazed at him as he hung up, unable to protest because my voice wouldn’t work. Curled up in a ball on the side of the river, I started to rock, and I didn’t stop until somehow Mum and Dad appeared at my side and a police officer threw a blanket over my shoulders as Sandra screamed into the night.
The next few hours were a blur of questions in a gray station that smelled of photocopiers and coffee. In a small room on a hard chair, I just kept saying the same thing over and over again, latching on to Aaron’s words. Max slipped. He was drunk. He slipped. He was drunk. At some point the police officer must have believed me because he told me I was free to go home.
Only it wasn’t home. It was a building I didn’t recognize, with a family that was a group of strangers. My room wasn’t my room, and my bed wasn’t my bed, because I wasn’t me. I was someone else, a stranger who my parents didn’t know. A cheat. A liar. A killer. I lay under a duvet that smelled of the life I’d lost, and looked at my hands, blinking in shock.
I ended up in the bath the next morning. Mum ran it for me. She put this salt stuff in the water that was supposed to be good for trauma. I’d never had a bath at 10 AM before. It felt odd. Too light in the bathroom. Sun shone through the window and dust motes swirled above the laundry basket. Water dripped from the hot tap, and I put my toe in the hole but couldn’t feel it burn.
That afternoon, Dad came into my room.
“The boy’s mum invited you over, pet. Sandra, I think her name is.”
I started to count.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
“The rest of Max’s family is there,” Dad said, sitting on my bed. “I think it’s important that you see them.”
“Pet, are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?” I muttered.
Dad’s face clouded over and he held my hand. “Going to Max’s house? I’ll come with you if you like. It might help to be around other people.”
Nine. Ten. Eleven.
“Anyway. I’ll leave it with you,” Dad said, standing up as I stared at the ceiling, my face completely still.
I watched a neighbor mow his lawn and plant six shrubs. I watched a man paint his windows and his front door. I watched a dog go for a walk and come back carrying a stick.
Next morning, Mum came into my room and told me I had a temperature. She said my glands were swollen and told me to open my mouth, shining a flashlight down my throat as I said, “Aaaaaaaaah.” She turned off the beam and told me I could stop, but I kept on saying it louder and louder.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
“Has Zoe gone mental?” Dot signed.
My mouth snapped closed.
“No,” Mum said. “She’s just upset.”
Dot looked at me warily. “I don’t do that when I’m upset.”
“It’s a very big upset,” Mum explained. “Bigger than you’ve had before.”
“Because of the boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know she had one of those,” Dot signed.
“Me, neither, my love. Not really. But I do know he made her happy.” Mum stroked my forehead as Aaron’s name burned on my lips. The heat of it turned my cheeks scarlet, and Stu in that moment I wanted Mum to ask what was wrong, but she just moved her thumb over my eyebrow, muttering, “She was glowing when I picked her up from the library.”
“Why did he drown?” Dot asked.
Mum glanced at me before replying. “I don’t know.”
“Because if he could swim then why did he sink? And I also have another question.”
“That’s enough now.”
“Can I have the day off school as well?”
More days passed in pretty much the same blur. Mum brought food. Dad provided endless cups of tea. By the time Dot got home from school one afternoon later that week, I had six mugs lined up on my bedside table, full of different amounts of liquid. I tapped them all with a pen to make music.
“When’s the funeral going to be and do I get to go?” I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to watch her words. She peeled back my lids with her chubby fingers. “I said, when’s the funeral going to be and do I get to go and also do the important people walk behind the coffin and am I one of them or do I just have to wait in the church?”
Dad knocked softly on my door.
“Dot, dinner’s ready,” he signed.
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s waiting for you on the table.”
“I’m too upset about the boy to eat. My teacher said I’ve got grief.”
“If you’re grieving, perhaps I should tell your mum it’s time for you to go to bed.”
Dot’s eyes widened, and she sprinted out of my room at top speed. Dad sighed.
“She’s a funny one.” The mattress squeaked as he sat down. “I just got off the phone, pet. Sandra called again. She wanted me to tell you they’re burying him on Friday.”
I turned away and stared at the wall. Dad put his hand into my hair and we stayed like that for ages, and I wish he were here right now to rub my head and tell me it will be fine and to be strong because the feelings will pass. I want them to go now, Stu. I’m ready for them to disappear, and I know you’re the same, tired of the pain and the fear and the sadness and the guilt and the hundred other feelings that don’t even have a name in all of the English language.
There’s one more letter to write before we both can stop. One more about the funeral and the wake and finding out from Sandra that Aaron had set off on a last-minute trip to South America without bothering to say good-bye to me. Because it will be the last, maybe we should do something special to celebrate. Perhaps we should have a final meal, which for me would be steak and fries, and we could eat together, you on one side of the ocean and me on the other, a sparkling blue tablecloth spanning the distance between us. Candles would flicker in the sky, and once and for all I’d finish my tale. You would be satisfied and I would be content so we’d both blow out the flames. You, me, the shed, the cell, our stories, our secrets—all of it would disappear, hovering in the darkness like smoke before fading to nothing.
Love always,
Zoe xxx
1 Fiction Road
Bath, UK