When you were homeless, when your life had led you to do things you needed to forget, you learned to read people, to dodge their manipulations and execute your own. Everyone had a favorite act, and Daniel’s was his repertoire of cute, self-effacing stories: “I was such a dumbshit, the first time my dad let me drive the car alone, I burned out the parking brake. Smoking and screeching and I just kept going . . .
“And then the principal said, ‘Mr. Balch, I presume there’s a reason—a respectable reason—your pants are on inside out.’”
Evangeline didn’t much care for boys who put on shows, but she supposed Daniel couldn’t help that he was popular and athletic, a ridiculously handsome boy who lived life assuming he’d be well received. He could afford to be stupid about her. If he ever needed a girl like her, there’d be no absence of contenders. Daniel Balch would always have girls and friends and opportunities. That’s what life held for him.
But Jonah, the boy lurking in Daniel’s shadow, was different. She knew him instantly: his worn work boots and bad haircut, his hypervigilance and careful smiles, the nervous jiggling of his foot and the way his eyes darted away whenever they caught hers. The only time he talked was when Evangeline said she would never, ever get tired of all the deer and rabbits on the trails.
He said his little sister, Nells, was “a crazy animal girl too.”
She and Jonah were street dogs to Daniel’s pampered pet. She wondered if Jonah had spent time in foster care as she had when she was ten. She guessed he understood that particular aloneness, its daily humiliations. If not foster care, some other variant of suffering. She and Jonah had to fight for everything decent in their lives, and even then it could so easily be taken away. When she decided to join the boys on the bench, she slid next to Jonah rather than Daniel. It was like sliding in beside herself.
An hour later, she sat between the boys in Jonah’s truck and asked to be let off at the paper mill. Daniel hopped out. Before Evangeline followed, she leaned over and kissed Jonah’s cheek. The look on both boys’ faces—one of pure stupefaction—wasn’t the reason she kissed Jonah, but it would have been reason enough.
* * *
—
EVANGELINE SHIFTED HER PACK TO HER OTHER SHOULDER, remembering her final glance back that September night, the one before she’d trotted into the woods like the wild thing she was. Jonah’s look of shock had transformed. His face was lit as if by an inner sun, the picture of a pure and startled awe.
She had felt her life turning in that moment. Only she’d never have guessed that it would take the direction it did. Now she scanned the hill above the town and headed toward the patch of darkness in its center. If she didn’t lose her way, she’d be there within the hour.
How strange it was to know two boys who had died so violently. She wondered if they lingered in her path, if it made sense to be heading toward their ghosts rather than away.
7
Day of My Death
It’s twelve fifteen in the morning. I’ll be dead in a few hours, four at the most. I’m not looking for pity. It’s just how things are.
I’m wearing lug-soled boots and canvas work pants, lying on top of my bed, a hard-sprung twin pressed against a wall. Something rattles and bangs outside. It’s nothing, just the wind knocking over a rake. My mom and little sister are asleep in their rooms. I suppose Mom could be awake with the racket, but I doubt it, not after her long day. And I’d know if Nells was. If you took out a wall, our beds would be touching. They’ll figure out later that I said good-bye to them a few hours back.
It’s been ten days since I met Red. The first time she looked at me, all I could think was, Now, that girl’s eyes can slice a guy wide open. There was this crazy relief in being seen like that, in believing that Red knew me. Later, when her lips touched my cheek, in front of Daniel no less, it burned so much that spot had to be glowing like some holy tattoo.
You couldn’t touch that girl without feeling your skin had disappeared, that you’d turned to water and flowed into a warm ocean. I’d give anything to touch Red one last time, to place a fingertip at the pulse of her throat, feel her life there, right there, hot and beating and contained. She’s alive, that girl. So much she still believes is possible.
That’s why I’m using these last few hours to figure things out. For her. She needs to know she’s not to blame. I’ve only got my thoughts now, and I’m hoping that somehow they’ll make their way to her. Not that I could begin to tell you in what world that would really happen, but it’s pretty hard not to believe in unknown realms when that’s exactly where you’re heading.
* * *
—
I’VE COME UP WITH A THEORY OR TWO. About myself, why I am the way I am. Like how I’m fine with a certain kind of evil. The pure kind. The Jokers and Doctor Dooms of the world. Been fine with it since I was ten, the year Daniel and I spent sprawled in his room reading comic books, a little in love with the villains. I saw then how the world needs vice. Good is always searching for evil to crush, right? And doesn’t that make evil at least a little bit good, the way it lets good prove itself?
I’m not saying this because I’m a killer now. But I am noticing things in new ways, like how everyone’s dying for a righteous hatred, a pious fury to unleash in the world. And what better target than evil? What better place to direct the hate that’s been in you all along?
But to be truly gratifying, the evil you decide to hate better be grade-A, unadulterated wickedness. If even a smidgen of love gets mixed in—on either end, in the judger or the judged—there’s only misery.
Here’s a basic example: Say you’re eleven years old and a drunk, doughy-looking guy （most definitely not your dad） punches a woman in the face （most definitely not your mother） in a grocery parking lot—smacks her hard right in front of you, knocks her to her knees, blood spraying from her mouth, splattering your only decent pair of sneakers. You’d feel sorry for the lady, sure, be mad about the shoes and all, but there’d be satisfaction, maybe even a thrill, in knowing evil when you see it, in being certain about that.
But let’s say the man is your father, and let’s say you love him a little. Doesn’t have to be much. All the other eyes staring at him, which naturally include an old teacher and the sister of a friend （because you can’t seem to get away from people who know you in this town）， they see pure evil. They see a comic-book villain. But you, because of that tiny bit of love in you, you don’t know what you’re seeing.
That’s what messes you up. The love. You can’t see right with that in your heart. Or maybe you’re the only one who can see anything at all.
Either way, you’re fucked. Either way, you’re never going to enjoy comic books again.
* * *
—
I’M GETTING THEORETICAL. Trying not to feel, I guess. And when it comes to Red, not feeling takes all kinds of concentration, because the girl I met in the park—the one who never had a real name or home she’d admit to—breathed some kind of glorious hell into me. That girl filled me with a miraculous pain.
You can’t find truth with all kinds of noise in your head. You can’t discover when your heart fell ill, when a hole opened up and evil wormed in. Bottom line, it’s not like God is letting you know what’s up minute by minute, not flashing neon signs: YES. NO. GOOD. BAD.