GUS

FACED WITH THE emptiness, Kalyn stills.

“You guys just move in?”

I don’t know how Tamara pulled it off so quickly.

The Dads that usually greet us in the entranceway have been tucked away, leaving naked walls behind. As we pass into the living room, Kalyn hanging back to stare at the high ceiling, I notice the Dads have also abandoned the mantelpiece.

“It’s kinda . . . blank in here.”

Tamara chortles, a little awkwardly. “Minimalist.”

“Mullet house,” Kalyn says. “Party on the outside, business on the inside?”

“Um, yeah,” I say.

“I like it!”

Tamara squeezes my shoulder. Dad’s been dead since before I was born, but he’s never been gone before. It’s okay, I tell him, I’m still holding you close.

I look at Kalyn, who’s testing the plumpness of our couch cushions. She’s mentioned her mom and grandma, but she never talks about her dad. Not today, but one day, we’ll have that conversation. I hope it won’t be weird for either of us.

“You didn’t tell me you had a damn mansion, Gus.”

I don’t think it’s a mansion, but maybe that’s her perspective. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Guess it wouldn’t, if you’d always lived in one.” Her tone is bleak.

“You kids want hot chocolate, get your butts in the kitchen.”

I groan. “Mom thinks I’m eternally seven.”

“Are you implying mature adults can’t enjoy hot chocolate?” Kalyn reaches the kitchen before me.

Mom’s wearing a white poncho. Her screen reflects the light of an empty page onto her glasses. It’s amazing we can see her, camouflaged in the ivory kitchen. She takes in the X on my forehead, and all at once I’m squeezed around the neck by a wooly arm. I catch Kalyn’s eye, ready to share an apologetic eye roll.

But Kalyn isn’t smirking. “Hi, Mrs. Peake?” she says after a moment.

“Call me Beth. And what should I call you?” Mom is deciding whether this girl in a dirty floral dress is hazardous to my health. She’s used to the soil Tamara drags in, but Kalyn feels more like dust and petals. There’s no telling if there’s potential for growth.

Kalyn hesitates, probably debating whether she should be Rose or Kalyn.

“Kalyn Poplawski.” She lunges forward, hand outstretched. Mom can’t refuse it.

I wander over to help Tamara with the hot chocolate.

“Thank you for helping Gus.” Kalyn’s presence is the only reason Mom’s sitting down again rather than demanding I lie in bed with a washcloth on my forehead. “Don’t your parents mind you missing school?”

“Pah.” Kalyn drops into a chair. I hope she won’t put her shoes on the table. “I don’t plan to tell my mom a damn thing about it.”

I drop the mug I’ve pulled from the drying rack; Tamara catches it. Mom’s not fond of swearing. If I so much as mutter unhappily, she assumes my arm’s fallen off. I should have warned Kalyn. Or was I expecting her to switch Rose on after all?

“I might as well join the freakin’ circus for all she’ll care.”

“Circuses are inhumane.” Mom speaks so solemnly that I wince. I know she’s twisting her locket between her fingers.

Tamara pours hot milk into the mugs. Who knows what she told Mom about hiding the Dads. I didn’t give a reason, just asked Tam to put them away. I’m glad he’s not watching this, even if it means having another painful settee conversation.

“Yeah, well. People suck. Good thing I act like an animal.” Kalyn cackles.

Mom’s face crinkles behind her mug. “I’ve never allowed pets in my house.”

“Bullshit.” Kalyn jerks her thumb at me. “You’re raising a fine dandelion.”

Mom spits graying coffee onto her laptop, and Tamara barks aloud. It’s not like that was even that funny—add “dandelion” to the list of my dehumanizations.

“Keep spitting like that and you’ll have this house painted in no time!” Kalyn adds, and now Mom’s almost crying for laughing.

I never make Mom laugh like that. She’s so busy worrying, and I’m so busy worrying about worrying her. I’m rarely her reason for happiness.

I sink into a chair. Under the table, Kalyn’s foot nudges mine.

Mom wipes the corners of her eyes. “Gus, please bring Kalyn over more often. I think she’ll help me miss my deadlines, which can only be a good thing.”

Kalyn’s smile hitches. “Are you . . . ​Do you work for the newspaper?”

Mom waves a hand. “Please. I’d die before charging for obituaries.”

“Right? Some of Mom’s patients had no way to pay for theirs. We had to do freakin’ fund-raisers!”

“Oh? Where does your mother work?”

How can it be that we’ve hung out in the dark for two weeks straight, talking about nothing at all, just clothes and Sarah and Phil and school, and never talked about these things?

Maybe falling into friendship has to do with falling away from something else.

“Mom did home health care for old folks. Now she does it for my grandma.”

“It’s just the three of you, then?”

Kalyn shows her crooked teeth. “Believe me, we’re plenty.”

Dadless. I fight the urge to find Kalyn’s hand.

“Where did you move here from, then?”

“Arkansas, land of long grass and moonshine!”

“You’ll find less moonshine in Samsboro, but we’ve got plenty of grass.”

Tamara snickers. “Not that kind of grass, kids.”

By the time we’ve finished the cocoa, Mom’s mentioned her ghostwriting, and Kalyn’s told a dozen stories about her adventures in elder care, how she wished some of those people she worked with could have met Mom before they “went tits-up.”

Language aside, I don’t know this side of Kalyn. I hardly know this side of Mom: a side that doesn’t mind phrases like “tits-up.”

I sometimes worry about what Mom looks like to outsiders. To me, Mom looks amazing in her flowing skirt, her wide hips draped in layers of white and beige fabric, a forest spirit in the middle of our farm town. Mom reminds me of Phil’s beloved warrior elf queens. Mom’s fat (“Don’t you dare call me heavyset, Gus; ‘fat’ doesn’t have to be an insult any more than disabled has to be”) and usually exhausted. I have no idea how she appears to strangers who don’t love her.

Mom catches me watching her. Just like that, she closes up.

“So, do either of you want to tell me what happened this morning?”

“Gus went timber, basically.” Kalyn hasn’t noticed the shift. Tamara busies herself by the sink.

“Was it the entranceway, Gus? Those steps. I’ve sent a dozen complaints and they haven’t gotten back to me, but the ramp is hardly convenient, either. I mean, why would you want to walk up separately from everyone else?”

“It was my fault, Mom, I was—”

“Do we need to have your AFO looked at by the specialist?”

“I don’t think—”

But she’s gaining momentum. My Band-Aid cross is a target. “Did someone push you? Who was it this time? I’ll be calling their parents.”

I can’t even glance at Kalyn. “No, that’s not—!”

“Gus, if someone’s bullying you again, you have to tell an adult.”

I’m almost as old as my dead dad ever was, but I’m not an adult here.

“I mean it. Maybe get Mr. Wheeler to sort it out. It’s his job, isn’t it?”

“Mom, um, it, ahh, it um, it wasn’t–”

“Just because you’re in high school doesn’t mean you’ve stopped existing. You’re at his house every weekend as it is, and you’ve always been so nice to Phil—”

“Whoa, there!” Kalyn stands up, overturning the remainder of her cocoa. “Beth,” she says, ignoring the chocolate dregs dribbling across the table, “people trip all the damn time. You’re asking a thousand questions, but you’re giving Gus exactly zero time to answer, and there’s no point because I was there, too. I can tell you what he’s already told you, ma’am: Gus tripped. That’s it.”

“Now, hang on,” Tamara begins, spinning around.

Nobody tries to save the cocoa. The tablecloth’s already stained, maybe even the wood underneath it is browning.

Mom stares at Kalyn’s raggedy dress. “What did you say your last name was?”

“Pop-law-ski.” Kalyn enunciates every syllable. The Rose smile has returned, but it looks like rigor mortis. “I can spell it for you.”

Mom purses her lips. “That’s your grandma’s last name?”

“It’s a family name.” Kalyn doesn’t look like any version of herself now. I’ve never seen her eyebrows this high or her eyes this wide, never seen sweat bead on her forehead. Because it’s so unexpected, I don’t recognize it right away: Kalyn looks scared.

Though my body’s throbbing and I’ll never stand as smoothly as Kalyn just did, I rise beside her. “Kalyn and I are going upstairs to reading. Um. Study. Okay?”

“We’re still talking. Has your grandma been here long, Kalyn? Decades, at least?”

“A few, I guess.”

This is a storm, but I have no idea how or why it became one. If Kalyn’s gunpowder like she says, Mom’s an old wick.

“Um, we’re going, going up to—”

“Gus, we’re having a conversation. Kalyn: Where does your grandma live?”

Tamara puts herself behind Mom. I catch her eye, and she shakes her head, like, I have no clue what this is about, either.

“Where, honey? Past Harrison Farm?”

“Calling a girl ‘honey’ is a bit dehumanizing, Beth.”

“M-Mom—”

“Don’t interrupt, Gus.” Mom is paler than her clothes. I can’t reason with whatever ghost haunts her. “Where do you live, Kalyn Poplawski?”

“I live where it’s none of your fucking business, ma’am.” Kalyn takes my hand. “Come on, Gus.”

I don’t tell her that it’s no better for me to leave if someone else pulls me away.

I hear Tamara’s voice rise, the sound of Mom suddenly breaking down into the wretched sobs I hear through my bedroom wall whenever it’s Dad’s birthday, the strange sobs that keep Mom in the tomb, because what if they should escape her in public?

People will think it’s the apocalypse. People will think all kinds of things. And people think enough things as it is. “Poor woman. Murdered husband and a crippled son, and now she’s a lesbian to boot.”

There’s nothing worse than obsessing over what people think. I was born with issues, but my heaviest inheritance is that obsession.

Kalyn can’t imagine how I feel as I follow her up my own stupid staircase. Has she ever felt like her grip wasn’t strong enough? Has she ever, for one second, not been able to say exactly what she felt? Be what she felt?

“Your room’s up here? She doesn’t make you sleep downstairs, or some shit?” Her insight terrifies me, makes me drag both feet.

“Kalyn, wait—”

But I bet she has never waited. Two weeks and we’re already collapsing. It took me years to build a friendship with Phil. I’ve never tried with anyone else. As my toe catches on the stairs, it occurs to me that I don’t know how to do it right.

We’re on the fifth stair when the single portrait that Tamara’s missed—that stupid trout picture—slips from its nail.

There’s a crunch of glass as Kalyn treads on the frame.

“Shit!”

She lets me go and lifts her foot. A spiraling firework of cracks distort the picture. Dad’s dopey smile is segmented and strange.

“Shit. Sorry.” She reaches for him.

“Just leave it.” I slump on the stairs. “I never wanted him there.” I address Dad. “I didn’t want you there.”

“Mmm.” Kalyn is panting, stray hairs pulled loose from her braided crown.

“Does she always talk to you like that? Like you’re on trial for something?”

“It’s not like that. She just . . . ​worries.” Kalyn can’t see years’ worth of hospital waiting rooms, years of bedsides that forced an agoraphobic to leave home. The abyss.

“Yeah? If she’s so worried about you, wouldn’t she want to hear what you have to say? Jesus, she’s got you all living in a goddamn test tube!”

I’m torn in half. One half wants to say, “Her worrying kills me.” The other wants to tell Kalyn she has no idea how far we’ve come, trying to make a real living among half-dead things.

“You could have just answered her. Who cares where you live?”

“Oh, Gus.” Kalyn’s voice is low and hollow. “You don’t know me at all.”

“Because you, you don’t tell me! You’re acting like Mom’s bad for talking over me, but you’re talking, you’re talking under me.”

“Never said I was honest. Nobody wrote that shit on the tin.” She lifts the picture frame and begins picking individual shards of glass from it, collecting them in her other hand. It’s so reckless. All it would take is one angry fist curl to leave her bleeding. “But I’m sure honest about how I feel. If I’m getting talked over, I do something about it, for chrissakes. I stand up.”

“And that’s easy. For you.”

“Sure, Gus.”

Two weeks ago I didn’t know her. Three hours ago we sprawled together on pavement. Half an hour ago she wiped my eyes. Minutes ago she made Mom laugh. Now she’s collecting glass on my staircase, and it’s clear she’s held sharper things before.

Maybe I was the one trying to make Kalyn into a heroine.

“Gus . . . Is this your brother?”

“No.” Enough. I take a deep breath. “That’s my super dead dad. I never met him. But, um. I’m almost his age now. Yeah.”

Kalyn stills, having pulled the last spear of glass from his face. His smile is scuffed but still cuts through clear as light.

“I didn’t want you feeling . . .” I swallow, watching her, but she’s only watching him. “You’re the only one who never seemed um. Sorry for me.”

Kalyn’s silence echoes.

“He died before I was born.”

“How did he die?” She speaks softly, like she’s only breathing.

“Oh. Dad was actually murdered. Yeah.”

This is where people wince. Kalyn pushes the frame away.

“Did . . .” The storm in my brain is leaving debris everywhere. “Did something happen to your dad, too? Do you want to talk about it?”

It’s very wrong, but I feel a morbid thrill. What if Kalyn’s dad was murdered, too, and that’s why we fell fast into friendship? What if we’re the only people in this tiny nowhere who spend Christmases googling crime reports?

Kalyn stands. She wipes her eyes on a filthy sleeve. “I need to leave.”

“Yeah, okay. Maybe we can go to your place instead?”

“Definitely not.” Kalyn smiles, but her eyes don’t. “Gus, you’re never coming to my house. Get that straight. You’ll never visit my goddamn house.”

Two friendship fatalities in one day.

“Gus. I live just past the Harrison Farm.”

I’m too tightly wound to stand. Mom’s crying in the kitchen, softer now, and it’s transferring to me. If she asks right now if I’ll move downstairs, I will. If she suggests homeschooling, I’ll consider it. I might consider hibernating for a year. I’m that tired.

Kalyn sets the picture frame facedown on the stairs. “Talk to your mom. I’ll see you in school, okay? Come say hi. If you still want to.”

There’s no fire in her words. Somehow I’ve put her out. When Kalyn gets to the front door, she doesn’t slam it behind her.

It’s only once I’m alone, listening to murmurs from the kitchen, that I clear enough debris from my pathways to realize four things:

1.I don’t know how Kalyn will get home.

2.She walked out of here with her fist full of glass.

3.Just past the Harrison Farm, you’ll find Spence Salvage, the junkyard where Mom and Dad’s Life Skills teacher, a woman named Kathy Sturluson, and her dog, a mastiff named Spook, sniffed out Dad’s decaying body during the town-wide manhunt. Kathy Sturluson told the paper that Spook’s presence was pointless; Kathy could smell Dad the moment she hit that row of beaters.

4.When Phil first met Kalyn, she didn’t know how to spell Poplawski.

I have no idea how this is happening. Maybe you can’t grow flowers from dust.