The cops were patrolling more frequently, but it still felt so unreal and they were looking for a black van, for hulking, greasy-haired roadies for Iron Maiden. And other teenagers, maybe even adults, had started doing it. The Kroger, which had a copier that was five cents a copy, no longer allowed people to use the machine, by request of the police. The library also had a copier, but they refused to keep their patrons from using it, although now this one librarian, Ms. Ward, who had the craziest dyed-black hair and must have been in her eighties, had to look at every document that someone wanted to copy. You could just drive thirty minutes to Manchester or some town that was big enough that you could go into a Kinko’s and do whatever the hell you wanted. There was this little group of men, a very very sad militia, who would drink beer and then patrol the streets and tear down the posters and make a dinky little fire and sit around it and feel like they were protecting the town. And they were loud as hell, and they got winded walking too much, so then they’d jump into their trucks, and the police started assigning a patrol car just to make sure that they didn’t shoot anyone, and so it was fairly easy to navigate all of this. And we mostly did it in the daytime, when no one cared, when no one saw us.
Zeke drew so much that he was already on his fifth notebook of the summer. The novel, somehow, had opened up. All I had to figure out was if my character would get away with it. I mean, of course she would get away with it, but I needed to figure out how spectacular the final crime would be. Zeke and I had only really known each other for a month and a half, but that initial little burst of physicality had burned off, and it made us more comfortable with each other. It wasn’t weird to spend hours with just our knees touching. We never did anything else, like I never put my hand in his pants. He never touched my boob, and I think I would have died if he had. It was like we got the kissing out of the way, decided that was probably as good as it got before things got gross and weird and sad, and we just talked, nonstop, and enjoyed the fact that the other person was listening.
Zeke said that his mom had been talking to a lawyer in Memphis, a divorce lawyer, and she had mailed his mom a big envelope full of papers. Zeke’s mom hadn’t opened the envelope yet, but it was on the dresser in her room.
“So she’s gonna leave him?” I asked Zeke.
He shrugged. “Maybe? I mean, if she signs the papers, I guess so.”
“I’m sorry, and I know it sucks, but I’m kind of jealous of your mom. I wish my mom had been able to do that, to shove a big stack of papers right in my dad’s face and be like hit the bricks, motherfucker. I think she’d be happier. We’d all be happier. He still would have left. He’d still have that other kid. But it would have been so sweet.”
“I really don’t want her to do it,” Zeke admitted.
“I know. I mean, I want her to do it, but I know why you wouldn’t.”
“He hasn’t called once,” he said. “Or, no, I mean, I think he’s calling, but he hasn’t asked to talk to me.”
“What an idiot. But, like, if your mom leaves him, will you guys stay here?”
“I don’t know. My mom hasn’t said anything about it. She doesn’t say anything. She just plays music and stares at the wall.”
“If you stayed, you’d be in school with me. Nothing would have to end, you know?”
“Yeah,” he replied, but I could tell that it made him sad to think about it. I mean, who would want to go to school at Coalfield High?
“I don’t really have friends,” I finally said.
“I know,” he replied. “You’ve told me. I mean, I have some friends.”
We were quiet for a minute, and then he added, “Even if I go back to Memphis, we’ll still be friends, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I hope so.”
A FEW DAYS LATER, LYLE TAWWATER DIED. HE FELL OFF THE water tower, where he had been climbing the ladder in order to put up posters at the top. Hobart told us about it, because he had been there when the police responded to a call from someone who found Lyle while they were walking their dog that morning. He said Lyle was folded up, broken, and there were about a dozen copies of the poster scattered around him. Hobart was as sad as I’d ever seen him. “That poor kid,” he finally said.
“It’s awful,” my mom said, softening to him, holding his hand.
“If I hadn’t written that stupid article,” he said, but my mom shushed him. I could feel all these strange emotions swirling around inside of me, no way of expressing them in public, and so I went to my room. In the bottom of my sock drawer, I retrieved the poster that Lyle had made, the one my brother had taken. I loved it, truly. Lyle was dead. I was sixteen, you know? Everything about me was in constant flux, nothing had settled, and I felt so strange inside my body. But I was capable of guilt. Like Hobart, I wondered if I’d killed Lyle. I mean, I felt certain that I had, if you sat down and mapped it out. And every time I thought about it, that I was responsible for someone’s death, I immediately pushed the thought away, tried to hide it under everything else that was inside of me.