SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The Evergreen winked out.

“Eternity should be a concern of the small-minded,” said Smokey.

I cracked my knuckles one at a time, focusing on that sweet, crunching sound so I didn’t hit him in the teeth. “Are you trying to say something about me, Smokey?” I asked.

He sat back in his cafeteria chair and put his hands in his lap. “Not your mind, just your perception.” He tapped on a sheet of paper in front of him. “Look at this.”

I glanced up from under heavy lids. Mom had found a new boyfriend with Dad away. He worked at a liquor store. Having to wait up for them was destroying any chance at sleep I got. It felt a little like childhood.

I looked at the paper. A snake was etched onto its surface, going round, eating itself.

I understood the feeling.

“Why’s he eating himself?” I asked. Crack, went my thumb. Snap, went my pinky. My wrist creaked and cracked with the motion. Smokey did not answer. Crack. Snap. Crack. Snap.

It had gone too quiet. I looked up from my raw knuckles and saw that Smokey’s eyes were on fire. The gasoline puddles, often docile, hazy, dead, had lit up with a heat I’d never seen before.

“He’s not eating himself,” Smokey said, his voice leaking through his teeth. I’d never seen him like this.

So I pushed him.

“He’s eating himself,” I said again.

His pale fists slammed onto the plastic cafeteria table, making our terrible lunches shiver and scatter. Other students, already afraid of the psycho and the smoke eater, jumped.

He stared at me and for a moment, I thought he would lunge. But then, I saw the shaking of his stringy arms, the vicious tide of tears cooling the fire.

“He’s not eating himself, because if he ate himself, he’d die. He’d die into nothing and would not come back. He pursues himself so he does not die! If he catches himself, the world is over. But if he cannot catch himself, he can never die. Do you understand?”

I regarded him for a moment. “No,” I said. “I don’t and I don’t think I ever will, Smokey.”

He stood then, the chair flying out beneath him. I wondered if he would run. I’d never seen him do it, run. His lungs were shit.

“But you don’t have to understand me to be my friend?” he finally said.

Crack. Snap. Crack. Snap. Crack. Creak. Crunch. Snap.

“Would I be here if that was true?”

Gravity found him. He fell into his seat, back arching, head flat on the table, arms draping his head. His whole body shook in the silence.

It took some time before I realized he was laughing.

Crack. Snap. Crack. Snap.

I should have been enjoying myself. It was early spring and the baseball game was just exciting enough that I didn’t have to sneak off to the drugstore for a pick-me-up. The sounds of the Saturday afternoon game were enough to drown out the exhaustion of my sleepless nights.

I’d taken a bat to the head of Mom’s monster. But I still could not sleep, only because when I closed my eyes, I saw his tear-stained face.

Still, it was a good day.

But I couldn’t enjoy myself. Smokey and Rebecca were making too much of a goddamn scene.

Smokey had told me once, “God blessed her with curves first and brains last,” but I think he was just in a bad mood. She was a sophomore, smarter than most people in a ten mile radius. She just happened to like boys better than books.

Which would have been fine if not for the kid she stood with, a kid with too much bone and not enough skin, whose thick tattoos spiraled up and around his neck: bat wings flapped into viper’s teeth gnashed into skull and crossbones grinning mad. He stood between her and small Smokey, who fought back against the tattooed man’s friends.

I rubbed my knuckles, watching Rebecca talk to her older brother, poor pale Smokey, who thought he was doing right by her but really just didn’t want to share.

He lunged for her, crying out.

Her red hair caught the sun and she burned like a thousand candles. She looked beautiful then, terrible, as her palm cracked against Smokey, stopping him in his tracks.

She had drawn blood. Smokey held a hand to his face to stop the tide of red that welled up from where her nails had dug deep. He did not move, not even as Skeleton laughed and his friends laughed with him. Only Rebecca was quiet, staring in horror at her brother, her brother who did not understand the meaning of, “stop.”

Rebecca and Skeleton moved off. The boys let go of Smokey, who sagged against the earth, holding his face.

I watched them walk away, watched them walk into the future, saw the spiderweb of possibilities fire off from every footstep they took.

I looked at Smokey and saw nothing.

He lay on the new grass of Spring, bleeding, and I felt my gut gnawing at itself, wrestling with the fact that my friend had no future, at least none that I could see.

I didn’t know what was more distracting, the way Smokey fingered the sheer white lighter with such love, or the way his eyes followed my sister around the edge of the pool.

She was a runner. Everyone in my family was. But her legs were made for pumping, and when she got going, not even the wind deserved to catch her.

Eileen sat back on a plastic deck chair and did her best to ignore the stare of men around the community pool, did her best to read in peace.

I had not seen Smokey since June. It was a little more than a month before school started. His cheek had healed nicely, had left only a pale scar below his eye.

“I read a lot over vacation,” Smokey said, his eyes darting between my sister’s legs and the bright spark of his lighter. “There’s some crazy shit out there, man.”

“Yeah?” I answered, shifting in my chair to block my sister. Smokey’s eyes flicked up to find me staring back at him. After a moment, he dropped his gaze, the hint taken. “I read the bible. Old Testament is especially fucked, all kinds of horror in there. Vengeful God is vengeful. New Testament though…that’s where all the ideas are.”

I raised an eyebrow. He laughed. “I know you don’t get it. I don’t fully get it, not yet. Still, I think I’ve solved it. Eternity isn’t the problem, it’s how we get there that’s been giving me trouble.” He winked, like we were in on the big conspiracy together.

He picked up a handful of grass, held the ends over the flame of his lighter until they bled. He breathed easier after snorting their smoke.

“Sure,” I said, rubbing my raw knuckles. “Sure, Smokey. I’ll pretend I know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Pretend enough and it comes true. That’s called faith,” Smokey said back, eyes focusing on the fire of his ivory lighter. He had a whole drawer full of them, but the ivory one was his favorite.

I looked away from the flame and turned over my shoulder. Eileen had an older man on the grass, his arm up, belly squelching into the mud. I smiled as she shoved him away. He must have tried something she didn’t appreciate. The last guy who did that got worse. Good for her.

I turned back and saw Smokey holding his hand over the flame, unwavering from the heat. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“Where’s Rebecca?” I asked, trying to pull him away from his worship.

“Eleven blocks away. Her hand is on Jimmy Henderson’s thigh and she thinks he loves her, but it’s not true.” He spoke like a machine gun, mechanical, rattling like the stutter of bullets. His voice was cold. His eyes did not leave the fire. “No one will love her, not since—” but he stopped himself and his eyes shot up to mine.

He waited for me to ask. I didn’t. Family business.

Eileen came up to us, book in hand.