Dad said then how proud, how very proud, he was to have raised a young man now college-bound; Mom talked vaguely but sternly about the importance of avoiding distractions, of keeping your goal in sight. They went over simple stuff for far too long: punctuality, diligence, time management. They had a short bit about getting enough exercise; out of sight, underneath the table, Derrick had to dig his fingers into his thighs to keep from laughing. He’d been faithful to a daily exercise regimen of push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups ever since first seeing those corny Charles Atlas ads in comics back in junior high.
The big reveal was a savings account Dad had opened for Derrick, years ago, without ever telling him about it. He slid the passbook across the table; its cover was worn enough to suggest that Dad had visited the bank many times over the years. Derrick didn’t know whether he was supposed to open it or not. He waited.
“I opened that account when you were very small,” Dad said, clearing his throat, “and I put a little something in it every month except in December, every year, so if it’s not enough, you know—blame Santa Claus.”
Derrick remembered a December morning years ago when he’d gotten up early to find a shiny bicycle under the tree, and a lump formed in his throat, which he chased down with a mouthful of food. Then he discreetly put the savings passbook into his back pocket, nodding at his father as he did so.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. He raised a too-big final forkful of pancake to his mouth; so many recent occasions had been attended by an unfamiliar but not unwelcome gravity, and it seemed to him that the best way to meet them was to remain in the moment. Be yourself. Plenty of his friends never even got a chance to think about this kind of stuff. “Thank you, Mom. Dad. Seriously. Thanks.”
His parents smiled at each other, each grading themselves a little in their minds: points for poise, points for focus.
He saw his opening in their exchange. “Guess I can go get that shower now,” he said, rising to his feet, clearing his dishes and taking them to the kitchen, wondering as he walked at how serious adult life seemed from the outside: the outside, whose distance from the inside kept growing shorter every day, erasing itself as it went.
PLAGUE SEASON
Whisper networks among the young are subtle and sophisticated technologies, better than any state spying apparatus: they leave no paper trails, and their points of contact seldom retain any memory of their own agency. People just talk, that’s all. How Angela West heard that Alex was back in town is anybody’s guess. Alex avoided daylight, and Derrick never talked to anybody about the store.
Unless there are some names still missing from the record, which remains possible, this leaves only Seth. It’s easy to blame Seth; where there’s trouble, he always seems like a possible suspect. He was proud of the daylight fortress he and Derrick had made of Monster Adult X, and probably talked about it if the opportunity arose. But Seth had never been popular at school; the only confidant he had was Derrick, from whom he had no secrets. It’s hard to say who else Seth would have talked to if he’d wanted to tell someone about Alex.
Alex himself makes a marginally better suspect. He had a key to the back door, given to him by Derrick. He’d learned, during his time in bigger cities, how to find a handout. And he knew where Angela lived; they’d been close friends before he got sick. She’d done her best to keep up with him through his sad changes, more than most of his friends had done. She’d tried to ignore the way talking to him was like trying to have a conversation with someone inside a plastic bubble, his voice muffled and hard to hear over on the open-air side of the membrane. Angela might have appeared to him as a beacon of safety here in the boredom and floating paranoia of his present days. There was a phone at the counter; hours inside the store were dead and empty. Time, opportunity, and motive.
These are the facts: Angela left her shift at the 7-Eleven one evening and got home late. She told her parents that a high school football team had shown up all at once for Slurpees just before closing, and that she’d had to ring them all up individually before she clocked out. None of this was true. She left at eleven on the dot; from work, she drove her mother’s Toyota to Monster Adult X, where she was granted entrance by the keeper of the key. And in that place she was straightaway bade good welcome, which welcome she returned with cheer; and behold, in their hidden glade deep within the forest, far from the reach of stern authority, the noble knights did then hold conference, to honor old friendships thought lost, albeit in the absence of Sir Derrick, who yet tarried at home; Sir Seth, out late, regaled the company with tales of the quests on which Sir Derrick intended, shortly, to embark: those journeys ahead, to lands unknown. And lo, while that he spoke, a quiet spirit of despair did descend upon the house, a known familiar whose name none dared invoke, lest its presence oppress the noble knights yet further; and Dame Angela, in the stillness of her heart, did rue upon the fickleness of time, whose hand grew stronger with each passing day, for which no remedy seemed apparent.