Justin Taylor - Flings - Stories

The next day was a Friday and Isaac was absent from camp. I couldn’t believe how much better the day went. Alana and I made a good team — no, a great one. I did whatever she asked me to and made her laugh. When I picked up the snack I got her favorite: those chocolate cupcakes with white frosting in the center and the curlicue of icing across the top.

Benjamin Schneer came up to me holding a big piece of green construction paper covered in close-set curving purple lines, like something halfway between Arab calligraphy and a pile of intestines. It was one of his mazes. He held the paper flat on the palm of one hand like a tiny waiter; in his other hand was a yellow crayon for me to use. “I forgot to make an exit on this one,” he said solemnly, “but you can still try.” So I sat there and worked my way through his sealed maze while he watched me, making all the wrong turns and hitting all the dead ends until every purple pathway was filled with a yellow line. I put the crayon down. He took the paper back and walked away without saying another word.

Before we knew it Alana and I had strapped our last kid into her car seat and were walking together through the parking lot. I asked her if she wanted to get high and her eyes lit up. She asked if there was somewhere we could go. I told her there was and she said she’d follow me.

I didn’t want to go to the park in case Isaac was there, so I decided to bring Alana to my spot under the road. I had never shown it to anyone before and felt like this made our outing into a kind of adventure. We parked our cars at my house and walked down the block. I went down the embankment first, offering my hand to her to help her down, and we continued to hold hands as I showed her the skinny oak that made the mirror tree, then led her around the corner and onto the concrete ledge. We sat with our legs hanging out over the water and our backs against the curved stone wall, which felt cool through my shirt even though it was a hot day. Naturally, I gave her greens.

“Oh, wow,” she said, coughing out a thick cloud of smoke. “This shit is great. I thought you were never going to ask me.”

“Well, I sometimes smoke with Isaac,” I said. “And he can be pretty weird about stuff.”

“You know what? Fuck that dipshit pain-in-the-ass. I don’t care if he is my cousin.” She passed the bowl to me. I hit it and passed it back.

“Wait, hang on — Isaac’s your cousin?”

“Yeah. That’s why he’s in my group. My aunt wants me to help straighten him out or keep an eye on him or something, and she’s on the J’s board, so even though he’s like a walking child neglect lawsuit they have to put up with him.” She passed the bowl back. The cherry was burning. “Did you know he had a twin brother?”

“Seriously? Isaac’s a twin?” I took my hit while she answered so I didn’t have to worry about the look on my face. I made a little show of holding the smoke in and blowing it out through my nose while I listened to her.

“They were identical. Like, they’d switch places at dinner and you wouldn’t know it. His brother’s name was Jake. He had cancer.”

“Oh, shit. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean it was awful, but it was, I don’t know, like four years ago now. Anyway Isaac’s mom is convinced that that’s what his problems are all about. His gangsta bullshit and everything. She donated like half a building to his high school to keep them from kicking him out this year. God knows what she gives to the J. And he freaks out every time she suggests therapy, so here we all are. I just hope he’s not ruining your whole summer, too. Jesus, wow, sorry to lay all that on you. So TMI, I’m sure.”

“Oh, no way,” I said. “I’m glad that you told me. Things make a lot more sense now.” We sat there with our backs to the wall and the cashed bowl cooling between us. I asked her if she wanted to share a clementine. She said sure and watched my fingers as I worked the rind.

I tossed the spiral peel into the green-brown water. We watched it splash down and resurface, then float off. Leaves and bits of trash bobbed by as well. I halved the fruit and held her piece out to her and our fingers brushed when she took it. She ate hers section by section. I put my whole share in my mouth and chewed it up. I wiped my hands on my shorts and then put the bowl away. Now there was only empty space between us. Alana shifted position, stretched her legs out on the concrete, leaned back and let her head rest in my lap. I knew she could feel me through my zipper, poking at the back of her skull. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve got a boyfriend at school so we can’t go all the way. That’s like my serious rule.”

“Okay,” I said. “Yeah, that works, sure. We can just do whatever you want.”

“You’re a good guy, Adam,” she said. “Do you know that?”

I told her I did.

Isaac was back at camp on Monday, no explanation offered (or sought) for his absence, and Alana went back into senior counselor mode — bubbly and solicitous with the kids, curt and impersonal with the two of us. Did she regret what had happened, or was she being overly cautious about her cousin finding out? Maybe, I thought, she was as sorry to see him again as I was.

When snack time came around that afternoon, Isaac walked out of our room without a word. He returned fifteen minutes later, red-eyed and reeking, a smirk on his face, the box of Nutty Bars already open. I could feel Alana’s rage coming off of her in waves. When he offered her a Nutty Bar she smacked it out of his hand. It spun across the floor and a couple of our campers gasped. “Hey,” I said to her. “Do you want a clementine?” Ignoring my question, she walked over to her cubby, dug around in her purse for a granola bar, and took it outside to eat alone. Isaac shrugged, picked Alana’s Nutty Bar up off the floor, unwrapped it, and took a big bite. “Bitch,” he said.

“Ooooh,” said Brianne. “You said a swear.”

“True. But that’s gonna stay our little secret because otherwise you might never get snack again ever, which wouldn’t be too fun — right?” Brianne nodded, her eyes already wet. He surveyed the crowd of small faces looking up at us. “That goes for all you bitches,” he said.

That night I dreamed that I was swimming at the Adelmans’ like old times but Alana was there, too, only she was her real age but me and Isaac were young again. Jake wasn’t around. It was dark out and the pool light was bright as the moon — a moon at the bottom of the pool. I saw Isaac standing on the top step at the shallow end. “Let’s see who—” I said, but didn’t finish because I heard that my voice wasn’t mine; it was Jake’s voice, and I realized then that I was Jake, or part of me was, that when he had died a spark of his soul had joined with mine so I carried him with me, and so did Isaac, and so we had these strange sparks in us that could never be absorbed or expelled. Alana dove deep into the water, all the way to the bottom of the pool where she swam in tight circles, going faster, a dark form outlined in churning brightness, which was the last thing I saw before I woke up with a seizing pressure in my lungs like I’d stayed underwater too long or slept with a stone on my chest.

It was a quarter to six, dishwater light trickling through my blinds, and I could have gone back to sleep for another half hour, maybe forty-five minutes if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go back to that other world for anything. Instead I closed my eyes and slipped my hand into my boxers and thought about Alana and the things we’d done under the road. I thought about the way she’d smelled — lavender soap and pennies — and the sweat under her tits and the impatience with which she’d guided my hand into the slick hot hair between her legs. True to her word, we hadn’t gone all the way, but she let me touch her and also did things to me nobody had ever done before, except for Isaac, which the more I thought about it somehow seemed like it shouldn’t count, though I knew that it did. And what would Alana say if she ever found out that I’d used to be friends with him, that I’d feigned ignorance about Jake’s existence and death? Was Alana the reason he was in our group, as she thought, or had the pairing been about both of us — or just me? Mrs. Adelman wanting to rekindle an old friendship — a “positive influence” is probably how she would have phrased it — or maybe it had somehow been Isaac’s idea? And what about me? I wasn’t… whatever, obviously, because I’d hooked up with Alana and only in general ever usually thought about girls, but then what about what Isaac and I had done? I had hardly thought about him and what we used to do since it had happened, but now all that buried stuff was coming unearthed.