Rhett McLaughlin - The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek

“Rex, come on, you think I don’t know that? Of course I offered. I was going to either way, but Shackelford beat me to the punch.”

“That’s true, honey,” Rex’s mom said.

Rex’s dad shook his head. “Jean and Bill had already signed the paperwork with Shackelford. I wasn’t gonna press ’em on it. They’re out of their heads right now, don’t know up from down, and I don’t blame ’em, either. Sorry, son.”

Rex clenched his jaw, then picked up the Nerf basketball and hurled it against the wall.

—

“IT DOESN’T FEEL real,” Leif said.

It was the first thing either of them had said in at least ten minutes. They were on their island, sitting on their rocks, not bothering to decide who would sit on which boulder, not adhering to the rules of statements and questions, maybe because they were too in shock to remember to. Or maybe because in a world where their best friend could be around one second and gone the next, those rules now seemed pathetic and meaningless.

“I know,” Rex said, staring out toward the woods where Ben lived.

“Remember when Alicia wore a cape for three weeks in fifth grade?” Leif asked. “And when people asked which superhero she was, she would say, ‘None of them, I’m just a girl in a cape.’ ”

“Don’t do that,” Rex said.

“Do what?”

“Start talking about her in the past tense. Like, reminiscing. I’m not ready for that.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Leif wasn’t necessarily ready either, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt an obsessive need to remember every little detail he could about Alicia, that if he didn’t do that right now, the memories would all fade, like a vivid dream that evaporates as soon as you lift your head from the pillow.

He’d thought about that time, only a few weeks after she’d moved to Bleak Creek, when Alicia invited herself to a sleepover he and Rex had already planned. Rex told her it would be weird to have a girl spend the night, and Alicia told him, “ You’re weird for saying that.” He’d also remembered when, in sixth grade, Jeremy Hawkins found a toad on the playground and proceeded to organize an impromptu game of “frog baseball.” Before the first pitch was thrown, Alicia took the wiffle ball bat from Jeremy and said, “How ’bout we play some Jeremy baseball?” She then proceeded to clock him repeatedly in the head with the plastic bat until the PE teacher intervened. She was sent to the principal’s office, but Jeremy never touched a toad again.

And now Alicia was gone.

She was never coming back.

She and Leif would never sit together near a cozy fireplace, or work on crossword puzzles, or make beautiful offspring that were perfect combinations of all of their best respective features. He wouldn’t even get to tell her how he felt. He would spend his whole lifetime never having told her.

That seemed impossible.

“I really don’t think there was a fire,” Rex said, still not looking at Leif. “Don’t you feel that too?”

“Honestly,” Leif said, “I don’t know what to think.”

“I bet Ben will have an opinion on this.” Rex scanned the woods. Ben didn’t seem to be home. Probably out squirrel hunting.

“Well, sure, we all know what that will be,” Leif said, sounding more sarcastic than he’d intended.

“What do you mean by that?” Rex asked.

“I mean…” Leif felt like the tension between them could reach a breaking point at any moment, like his animosity toward Rex might combine with their grief and quickly combust. But he didn’t care. “He already said that he thinks kids are being sacrificed. So he’s obviously gonna confirm your theory about…you know, about that happening to Alicia.”

“You don’t agree?”

“I already told you, I don’t know what to think.”

“So you’d prefer to believe their dumb-ass story about Alicia accidentally burning herself up over—”

“I’d prefer that she wasn’t dead at all!” Leif shouted, surprising himself but feeling empowered by his anger. “That’s what I’d prefer! Whether we know how she died or not, dead is dead!”

Rex looked stunned, as if he’d just been slapped. “All right.” He nodded a few times. “That’s fine. If you don’t care enough about Alicia to want to figure it out—”

“What’d you just say?”

“I said if you don’t—”

“You seriously think you care more than me?” Leif had been carefully protecting his affection for Alicia for so long, not wanting it to come between him and Rex and, if he was being honest, afraid of how vulnerable it might feel to reveal it. But now his rage was overriding his fear. “You have no idea how much I—”

“Rex! Leif!” Travis Bethune was wading in the river toward them, utility belt and all. “Thought I might find you boys here.”

“Oh, hey,” Rex said, his tone gentler.

“Yeah, I just…Gosh, man, I’m so sorry about Alicia,” he said, stepping up onto the island in his enormous work boots.

“Thanks, Travis,” Leif said, coming down from his fury.

“Yeah, thanks,” Rex added.

“She was a really great person.” Travis didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, and ended up planting them on his hips. “You know, the reason I…Well, I should say…” He looked at the ground and shook his head. “The day it happened, I was paintin’ a house over on Brewster. I got the call on my radio, and by the time I got over there in my gear, it was all…it had already burnt down.”

The color drained from Rex’s face. “You saw it?”

“Well, yeah…what was left of it. Wasn’t pretty, that’s for sure. I keep thinkin’ if I had been there cuttin’ the grass that day, I woulda…I don’t know. Maybe I coulda done somethin’ to help her.”

Rex hadn’t imagined Whitewood would go so far as to actually burn down a building to legitimize his cover story, but of course he would. Otherwise, it would be obvious that it had been a lie. “I don’t know that you could have done anything, Travis,” he said, “but thanks, man.” There was so much the poor guy didn’t know.

“Oh, right, so, yeah…When I got there, I found this.” Travis dug around on his belt, pushing aside keys and reaching behind his measuring tape, coming up with something small and black pinched between his thumb and index finger. “The rest of her stuff went to her parents, of course, but…I thought you might want it.”

Rex and Leif stared at Travis’s hand, unsure of what they were looking at.

“It’s a button,” Travis said. “From her jumpsuit. Burnt, but…you know. Hers.”

“Oh,” Leif said.

“Do you…?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Leif put out his palm and received the sacred piece of blackened metal.

“Huh,” Rex said, standing up from his rock and leaning over to see.

Something about the button made the situation that much more real for Leif—having an object on his skin that had so recently been so close to Alicia—and he began to cry. “Thanks for this, Travis,” he said. “This means…this means a lot.”

“Least I can do,” Travis said, his hands back on his hips. “Really. You boys shouldn’t have to go through somethin’ like this, at so young an age. I just…yeah. But remember, you’ll see her again one day.”

“Right,” Rex said. This was something he’d heard the pastor say at every funeral he’d ever attended. He wanted to believe it was true—that he’d get to hang out with Alicia on a cloud, telling her all the things she’d missed on earth—but he had his doubts.

“Anyway, I’m gonna get goin’,” Travis said. “But if you boys need anything, anything at all, you know who to call.”

Rex and Leif nodded, genuinely appreciative as Travis walked back into the river.