Alex Adams: White Horse

“Maybe.”

We get to work. I don’t linger over old photos. I barely recognize the happy people depicted in the quilted albums. They belong to a time I’m not entirely convinced ever existed. Maybe the past is all a fairy tale we tell ourselves over and over until we believe it’s true.

I find Feeney crammed into a box with other old toys and claim him for my child.

On the way out, I use the bathroom. Stare at the trapdoor in the floor.

It’s locked.

I wonder which of the neighbors was left standing long enough to slide the bolt home.

Morris sneezes. “Allergies.”

It’s not allergies. Morris knowsit and I know it. But neither of us wants to jump to the right conclusion. We’re walking down the hall at the school when she paints the floor in two of three primary colors.

She pulls out her pistol, shoves the end into her mouth, and bang! Just like that. Her skull shatters. Brains splash. The wall is Morris-colored on institutional beige. And that damn jingle keeps dancing around my head: How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Cleanup in aisle five, Dr. Lecter. Don’t forget to bring a nice Chianti and those fava beans. And a spoon. You’re gonna need a spoon because this is one sloppy mess and a fork isn’t going to cut it.

The voices are distant, miles away at the end of a long dark tunnel. But they’re getting nearer. Closer. Closer. Closer. Until they’re right in my face, shouting at me, trying to pull me away from Tara Morris. That’s when I realize I’m kneeling, holding her in my arms, trying to scoop up her brains and shove them back into her head. A rerun of Jenny’s murder.

“Don’t touch me!” I scream, but their hands keep tugging until I’m forced to let her go. A sob blocks my throat, reducing my voice to an animalistic whimper. “No. No.”

Then something inside me snaps into two pieces—maybe my mind compartmentalizing, stowing away the grief and horror in a steel vault until I can gain perspective and cope. Suddenly I’m looking down on the scene, not dispassionately, but through a cool veil. Separate. Other. Not part of this. Not part of this at all.

“Let’s clean her up,” I say.

Detached.

I stride down the hall in the direction of the broom closet. Bucket-and-mop time. Someone has to clean the Morris mess.

It’s me who lights thematch that burns my friend. I try to pretend I can’t smell her body cook. When she’s reduced to the contents of an ashtray in a dive bar on a Saturday night, I let myself into Nick’s room and pull his letter from my pocket. The envelope’s edges are worn now and the paper brittle from the cold. This room smells like him, like sunshine and citrus still, although there’s nothing of his left in here. Not that any of us brought much. A person doesn’t need a lot of stuff for survival in a temporary home.

That Nick smell intensifies as I lift my feet off the floor and sink into his bed. I close my eyes and rifle through my memories, searching for the perfect image.

I remember him. I remember us. The things we did. The things we talked of doing back when I had no idea how little time was left for us. A mixture of anger and lust builds inside me. How dare he go without giving me a choice? How could he make that decision for me? I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be safe. I can’t exist on some fucking pedestal like some precious thing . I picture him standing there, listening, riding out the tempest until I’m empty of rage-coated words.

My hand slides down the flat plane of my stomach, down, down between my legs, and I remember everything good until I’m biting my lip to stop from calling out to him.

Sometime between the storm and the calm that comes afterward, I slide Nick’s letter back into my pocket, unopened still. And I know that I am leaving.

The librarian would understand: Itell myself that as I tear maps of Europe from her precious atlases. She would understand.

The week whittles away.

Monday creeps. Tuesday crawls. Wednesday stumbles by like a drunk searching for the perfect gutter to piss in. Christmas never took this long to arrive.

On Thursday I hear a familiar rumble. The bus sounds close, but it’s still blocks away. Nonetheless, I pull on my boots, grab my backpack, and run, leaving my good-byes to float back over my shoulder. The well wishes fly at my back like arrows. They hit true: right at my heart. It’s all I can do not to turn back and look at what’s become my family. But I have to go. I have to find Nick, if he’s still to be had for the finding.

The morning air takes a crisp bite out of me like I’m a chilled apple. I jiggle to stay warm.

The bus hisses to a stop. The doors whoosh open. Same guy behind the wheel.

“More questions?”

“I need a ride.”

He chews on this a moment. “Where to?”

“The airport.” I slide the backpack strap off my shoulder, offer him payment: a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. He snatches them from me, stashes them between his heavy legs.

“Where else?” he mutters.

Shocks whine as we take the first corner. The old school disappears from my view, probably forever. In the round mirror mounted high at the front of the bus, I see the driver peel the foil from the candy. He meets my eyes and something primal creeps across his expression as he chews furtively. Don’t you touch them, don’t you dare. Mine .

I slide my hand into the backpack’s front pocket, finger Feeney’s soft fabric, and hate that the world has become every man for himself.

The easiest distance between the two towns is a highway. The shortest distance is whatever road our feet can make for themselves. My biggest problem with the former is that it’s so visible. Our every move is out there for the Swiss to see.

I remember his too-healed wound and wonder if he used this same voodoo to overcome the death I gave him.

The battle rages in my head. Take the high road and hide, or take the highway and risk open warfare?

“You cannot walk the mountain,” Irini says. I know she’s right. Neither of us is as sure-footed as a goat.

I nod. There’s nothing else to say. At least if we’re in the open, our enemy is, too.

We are turrets with feet, so tightly are we concealing our respective pain, following Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice, doing the things we think we cannot do. I lose myself in thoughts of Nick; he is alive there in perpetuity.

The numbers parade through myhead. I divide the total distance into palatable chunks that we can safely chew in a day. One hundred and forty miles. It’s nothing compared to the trek across Italy, but the funny thing about the past is the gloss with which it paints itself the further it is removed from the present. Those miles passed seem sweet and easy, walked with a calm and luxurious gait, while these are fraught with tension and peril. Maybe because the Swiss walked with us instead of chasing behind us, when he should be good and dead.

My feelings divide themselves in two teams: one berates me for not waiting until his body cooled on that cot bed. The other gleefully wipes the black smudge from my soul with a ragged sleeve edge. In the middle is my heart which stands up for what it believes: we would be safer with him deep in a hole in Greece’s rocky earth.

The sun moves faster than we do, waving as she climbs overhead and sails by. By the time a small arrangement of stones shimmers on the horizon, my shoulders have crisped to bacon. My face stings. Thank whatever deities are listening that I don’t possess a mirror. I don’t think I could bear myself.