In the Echo of this Ghost Town Read online

  After two hours of killing shit—I feel antsy.

  My phone pings. Hopeful that maybe it’s one of my boys, I pick it up and open the message. It’s Bella Noble. Now, there’s a girl who’s my type. She’s hot, and we’ve spent a lot of time dancing around one another at parties. Lots of innuendo. I think she was interested in Tanner first, but he brushed her off, which I think is crazy, but whatever. If I can capitalize on that, I will.

  I picture Max and frown.

  Bella: Hey, Griff.

  I smile, even if a text from Bella feels strange. It’s been a while. I’m not sure what to make of it, but I don’t think too hard either, craving the distraction of a party, a deep cup of alcohol and the curves of her body against my hands. I text her back: Hey.

  Bella: What r u doing?

  Me: Not much.

  Bella: Feel like a party?

  A missing bit of my confidence returns, pushing my heart into a higher speed. I text her back: When & where?

  Bella: 2Nite. Carson’s house.

  I don’t want to tell her I don’t have a way there. Mom and I haven’t gone to get the car yet. With a sigh, I text her back: Kind of tied up.

  Bella: Oh!

  The three dots pop up on my phone.

  Bella: I was hoping u could come get tied up with me. ;)

  I swallow at her innuendo and text her back: Want to pick me up?

  Bella: I didn’t drive.

  Too bad, I reply, salty and run though anyone I possibly know who could get me to Carson’s. Maybe next time, I text and toss my phone to the couch, annoyed by the circumstances with no intention of contacting my old crew. None of them have reached out, so why should I?

  Annoyed and exhausted, I power down the console and walk into the kitchen to see if I can find something to stuff my face with before I go to sleep. The refrigerator is full of stuff, but nothing that doesn’t require effort; I consider a sandwich when I hear the automatic garage door open. Mom’s home. I glance at the clock and realize it’s later than I thought.

  I open the door to the garage and step out onto the top step in case she needs help with anything.

  There’s someone in the car with her.

  The shadow emerges from the passenger side. Stands. My heart jumps into my throat and beats loudly in my ears. I blink to clear the hallucination.

  “Hey, baby bro,” Phoenix says. He gives me a smile I don’t recognize, somehow muted from the vivacious smile I remember from before.

  Tears fill my eyes, unprovoked, and I press my teeth together, refusing to allow them an opportunity to hit. I search for words and can’t find any.

  Phoenix. My brother. Standing there.

  He closes the door to Mom’s car and then waits, slinging a cheap black duffle bag onto his shoulder. I think he’s smaller, but that wouldn’t be right. I’m bigger, but I don’t feel bigger suddenly. He’s got tattoos on his arms; his golden hair is longer than I remember ever seeing it, the top of it pulled back out of his face. I look at him until I can’t, and then shift my gaze to Mom, who’s standing on the other side of the car.

  “Where have you been?” I ask but look down at my feet.

  “Around.”

  “He’s home.”

  I look up at Mom, again. She smiles. I notice the tears in her eyes, her longing even as much as she tries to hide it. “The rest doesn’t matter.” She walks around the front of the car toward me, climbs the stairs, stops, and grasps my forearm. “He’s home.” This is said like a wish, quietly chanted and just for me. Then she passes me into the house.

  I turn my back on my brother and follow her. I have so many questions.

  She drops her stuff on the counter. “Let’s talk tomorrow. It’s late, and I’m tired.” She turns to look at me—mouth thin with tension—and then looks past me.

  I turn, and Phoenix is in the doorway. I’m not unhappy to see him. I’m afraid. Not of him, but of what it means. Afraid that I might find the joy of his return and insecure of that same joy.

  “Let’s get you settled,” Mom tells him.

  Phoenix passes me, avoids eye contact, and follows Mom into the hallway where they both disappear.

  I grab my phone from the countertop where I’d put it while rifling through the fridge and pull Tanner’s name up to text him. Then I remember, we aren’t friends anymore. The thought burns the back of my throat because the one person I want to tell about Phoenix being home is Tanner. I drop the phone to my side, text unwritten and stare at the dark opening of the hall. I hear their quiet voices, the footfalls as they move through the house, and the shutting of doors.

  Sleep doesn’t come easy. I toss and turn, needing a counterweight, but sleep does find me because I wake up with my heart racing, dreaming of the ghost town again. I was stuck, but this time Phoenix didn’t turn into Dad. He kept his face and shot me.

  It’s dark outside still—early morning—but a noise catches my attention. Maybe Mom.

  I sit up and rub sleep from my eyes and tune into the sound of kitchen cupboards opening and closing. After getting dressed to run, I step into the hallway. “Mom?” I walk down the hall and freeze, unprepared for it to be Phoenix. His return felt like a dream. My heart flops like a dying fish in my chest. I take a deep breath to get my fish heart regular again. I squeeze my teeth together and feel the bones of my jaw protrude underneath my skin.

  He’s frozen too, as if it would bring me consolation that maybe he’s as impacted by the sight of me as I am by the sight of him.

  He looks different. Older, but not quite like I imagined. Now, he looks as though he’s melted into a muted version of himself, not the hero I remember.

  “You look like you could be the big bro.” He fills a mug on the counter with the coffee pot in his hand. “You’re all grown.” He raises the cup toward me. “Want a cup?”

  “Are you going to put a shot of something stronger in it?” I ask and walk into the room to lean over the counter, my hands folded in front of me.

  He tosses his head, swinging his long hair out of his face. I’ve never seen it this long. He swipes a hand through it. “Do we have any in the house?”

  Up close, his face is more angular, sharper, even if the basic gist of who he has always been is still in his features. He’s got the hazel eyes we share. The last time I saw him he was my age—eighteen. He’s twenty-two now. I shake my head, and he slides a cup of coffee toward me.

  I look up from the red mug in front of me. “What are you doing here?”

  He crosses his arms tightly over his chest and steps back so that he’s leaning against the counter again. He’s all sinew now, more like me, but I’m taller. “Not the greeting I was hoping for.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Nothing. Hoped.”

  “For?”

  “That you’d be glad to see me.”

  Am I glad? Yes. But perhaps relief is a better word. I don’t say it. I’m hurt and angry amid all the feelings tied up with his abandonment.

  “Where have you been?”

  His gaze jumps to meet mine, then slips back under water. “Around.”

  We’ve already played those cards. I want an explanation. “You just disappeared. Left. Didn’t call. Didn’t check in. Nothing.” I feel my blood pressure rise, the internal fire of my heart, building steam.

  “I sent postcards.”

  “The ones that seemed more like an identity crisis?”

  He doesn’t answer my question but says, “Mom’s the one who kicked me out.”

  “You could have pulled your weight and stayed. You chose to leave.”

  “Ah.” He nods and takes a sip of his coffee. “Baby bro understands the undercurrent now. So wise.”

  “Fuck you, Phoenix.”

  “It wasn’t about you, Griffin.” He turns his back to me.

  “Yeah. Fuck the fact you have a little brother—one who could have used a big bro.” I stand, pick up the coffee cup and throw it across the room. The ceramic shatters against the
wall and the liquid slips down to make an ugly stain. “But Griffin doesn’t need anyone, I guess.” I walk out of the room, grab my shoes, and leave the house to run.

  1

  I push the tool in my hand through the paint that’s peeling away and feel a sense of satisfaction as it flakes off the wall and flutters to the ground below. I’m standing on a ladder at Cal’s place, working on my own today because he had a fix it elsewhere. I might be partially submerged in the dirt of my feelings about everyone and everything. Working with Cal these last few weeks, though, seems to be the only thing giving me oxygen to keep breathing as all the rest of the shit buries me.

  So far, Cal and I have methodically worked around the outside of the house. From the demolition of the porches, replacing old windows with more energy efficient ones and the rotted wood of their jams, to now scraping the house’s exterior siding to locate and replace the rotted pieces of siding before we repaint. As Cal said, “We’ve got to get it ready for winter,” which is weird, because it’s August. But he wants us ready to work inside before the first snow.

  I asked him, why you don’t just trash it all and start over? He told me that it’s good to keep what’s good and to replace what isn’t. Simple, and somehow kind of wise too.

  Another thing I’ve learned is about the tools. I went to the hardware store, and it felt good to buy my own. In addition to the normal stuff like screw drivers, a hammer, and a measuring tape, I got a carpenter’s square that’s actually a triangle, and a level. In all the years I spent in school, I can’t remember ever learning so much so easily and feeling good about it.

  I like Cal, and that’s saying something since there aren’t a lot of people that I like. I think it’s because he’s quiet. He weighs his words because he knows they carry meaning and serve a purpose. There’s something to be said for that since I’m not sure I’ve lived my life that way. With meaning and purpose.

  The other thing I like is swinging a hammer around and breaking stuff. Demolition. It feels satisfying to undo something. On the other hand, I haven’t minded learning about how to put things back together, either. Like replacing the rotted molding around the windows. Repairing is kind of beautiful too. The ability to look at something that’s broken and figure out a way to make it right like a puzzle.

  The tediousness of all the measuring and methodical pulling of materials to save them in order to reuse them taxes my patience, but then sometimes it resets my brain and gets me to steady the racing of my mind. Kind of like when I run to silence the thoughts.

  By the time I get home after working, I’m too tired to engage with Phoenix. Truthfully, I don’t really want to, which I think is weird. For so much of the last four years I thought all I ever wanted was him home. Two years ago, I would have been happy that he’d returned. Four years ago, I’d asked him not to leave. Now, there’s a gap between the wants of me then and those of me now. Maybe it’s because the stories he’s telling don’t seem to be drawing real pictures. Instead, they’re like stick figures with missing parts, so I’m wary. He won’t tell me about the fucking postcards, which makes me wonder what he’s been doing and where he’s been. I wish I could talk to Tanner about it, but I won’t.

  With Phoenix home, however, Mom has a lighter step despite all her bluster. After yelling at us to do our part peppered with her colorful language, she punctuates it with, “My boys are back together” and smiles. But I play along. I don’t want to steal Mom’s joy.

  Phoenix has moved back into his room. He’s looking for a job, or so he says. Hasn’t found one yet. I think that if he was really looking, wouldn’t he be able to find one? I did, even if it was kind of lucky. I mentioned Tanner’s dad’s company, and Phoenix told me to mind my business. So I stay out of his way, and he stays out of mine. I’m out in the morning before he is, and when I get home from work, he’s usually gone. He’s doing his own thing, closed off and protected, and I think he has his own version of Angry Griff, only it’s Angry Phoenix.

  There’s an undercurrent I can sense tugging us toward the deep end of a body of water I can’t see but can feel is there. I want to be a good brother, to trust Phoenix and fall into the roles that we’ve been assigned by DNA or whatever. The thing is, I don’t know him anymore to call him a brother. We’ve missed some important years. I want to trust that my family is just trying to figure out how to be together again, so I quiet the doubts even if I’m struggling to breathe through that unseen charge in the air around us.

  “Are you awake up there?”

  I glance away from the section of house I’m scraping and see Max is standing at the bottom of the ladder. “I hope so,” I say and return to pushing the tool over the wood siding. “You shouldn’t be around this without the gear.”

  I’m dressed in thin, white coveralls over my normal clothes. I look as if I’m a doctor in one of those movies where they’re trying to contain a disease. I look weird, but Cal insisted. “It’s an old house, which means the paint is probably filled with lead and other horrible stuff they used back in the day. Better to be safe than sorry,” he’d said. Besides feeling like a clown, it’s freaking hot. I’m glad I’m on the shady side of the house right now.

  “I’ve been down here talking to you, and it’s like you’re somewhere else,” she says.

  “I’m working, Einstein. Remember when you threatened to tell your dad if I wasn’t working?”

  She has the nerve to laugh. “Yes.”

  I stop and look down on her from my vantage on the ladder. “Did you need something?”

  “I was wondering if you’d help me move something in the house.”

  “You can’t do it with all of your muscles?” I ask her.

  She blushes and looks away, which is odd. Knowing her for the last several weeks, I can’t remember seeing her get embarrassed about anything, and she has a lot of emotions on that face. This reaction makes me unbalanced.

  “Actually, I just needed help.” She isn’t smiling anymore.

  It makes me feel self-conscious. I hadn’t been trying to upset her.

  “But that’s okay.” She turns and disappears around the side of the house.

  I scramble down the ladder and pull off the facemask. “Max! Max!” I walk after her.

  She stops near the open maw of the front door that somehow looks naked now without the porch that Cal and I removed, turns, and brackets her annoyance with her hands on her hips. “You didn’t need to get down.”

  “You said you needed help,” I say, not sure how to address the fact I somehow upset her, though I’m not sure what I did. I feel breathless, my heart pounding as I slide back to the fight with Tanner. We aren’t friends anymore. “I’m here.”

  She doesn’t respond and uses the step ladder to climb into the house. I follow, the white overclothes whispering out loud as I do, and I wonder what to say, feeling like maybe I should turn around and climb back up the ladder where my thoughts seem easier than trying to solve the enigma who is Max. Even if I do like puzzles.

  “The house is coming along. In a minimalist kind of way.” I follow her through the living room. It’s just boxes lining the walls under the windows. I’ve learned they do most of their sitting at the dining room table.

  “All of this stuff will have to be moved again when you do the inside of the house.”

  “And what will you be doing then?”

  She stops at a cabinet that has seen better days and looks at me. “I’m leaving.” She swipes at something on the wood, and I hope it hasn’t given her a splinter. The cabinet looks about as appealing as the house did that first day I arrived.

  “Leaving?” I ask. The thought makes me feel thin, as though I’m a balloon that’s lost some air, still bouncing about in a breeze but drooping now.

  “College.” She walks around to one side of the cabinet and grabs a hold of the sides.

  Words catch in my throat until I’m able to cough out, “Oh. Yeah. That’s good. Me too.” I mirror her on the other side and peek aroun
d the cabinet at her.

  Her eyes catch mine even though she doesn’t have to chase my gaze very hard. There’s something about her eyes that make it difficult to look away. “You’re leaving for college?” She says it with curiosity rather than it being an impossibility which is more like I might have said it.

  “No. I mean, I’m going to community college in September.”

  She offers me a polite smile, but it isn’t her usual one. I like the other one better. “That’s good.”

  I don’t really want to talk about school. That conversation will lead to questions about why community college. Then I’d have to talk about high school and the kind of guy I was only a month ago. It feels like a lifetime because I feel stripped down to my bones. Except that past is really recent history. It’s a relief she doesn’t have that info to judge me.

  “This is huge. You want to move this?” I lean back to study the cabinet.

  “Yes. It’s an old china cabinet. Solid wood.” She thumps on it, and I see her dad in the movement, which makes me smile on the inside even if it doesn’t touch my face; it’s a warmth that spreads through my chest. She doesn’t notice, still looking at the cabinet. “I wanted to move it out into the workshop.”

  “Your dad doing something with it?” I ask.

  Her eyes jump to me and narrow. I’ve annoyed her further. “No, Serial Killer. I am.”

  “You haven’t called me that for a while,” I say. She hasn’t called me anything for a while, avoiding names altogether.

  She makes a noise that comes through her nose and reiterates her annoyance. “You haven’t deserved it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for annoying you,” I say and roll my eyes. “I can help.”

  After tipping the beast of the cabinet to its side, Max and I maneuver it through the house. Together, with her at one end and me at the other, we lift it. It’s heavy, awkward, and requires stops along the way to regrip and regroup, all without fighting about it, which I think might be a win.