John Brandon - Citrus County

She walked around the outside of her house, finding no way to get onto the roof. She ended up in the backyard, lost. She lifted the kiddie pool and flipped it over and curled underneath it. The sounds in the air, the accidental noises of the world, were different under the plastic shell. They seemed to come from a long way off, from the bottom of some blue sea. Shelby felt animalistic. She detected a strength, a madness, a rogue element inside her that would help her shape the days of her life. She wanted to determine herself. She wanted to force her way into an open destiny.

On his way to track practice, Toby walked up on Shelby at the playground. She had a newspaper, like the first time he’d talked to her here, when Kaley had been swinging. She held the paper at arm’s length as if it smelled bad. Toby didn’t know what she was doing at the playground. She ought to be avoiding this place. Toby kind of missed the old Shelby, the regular Shelby. It was disorienting to be around someone bleaker than himself. And Toby still had a slight fear that Shelby would detect his guilt with some sisterly sixth sense. He sometimes suspected she could read him like a book, that she would look into his eyes and see Kaley slumped against the bunker wall on her cot, her dirty feet smudging up her sheets, her ears red and teeth gnashed. Shelby wasn’t looking for clues, though. She had never been part of the search. She was just trying to understand what it meant that her sister was gone.

Toby sat down on the end of the bench. Shelby wore a thin T-shirt that revealed the soft form of her breasts, which shifted each time she moved her arms to turn a page.

“They’re opening a jazz bar in Crystal River,” she said. Nothing was happening in her face. “Have you ever heard anything more pitiful?” She folded the paper, taking the time to follow the original creases, then flung it under the bench. ”They say music soothes the soul.”

“I haven’t heard much music.” Toby found that he wanted to say something to make her feel okay. He wanted to see some hope in her.

“How come you still haven’t asked for my phone number?” Shelby said.

“Because I don’t have a phone,” said Toby.

“In your house, you don’t have a phone?”

“Never have.”

“Your uncle again, huh?”

Toby shrugged. The swing set looked lonesome. Toby wished they’d come and tear it down already, get rid of this old playground that didn’t belong here.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “Did you really throw a bunch of Cracker Barrel on a girl?”

Shelby’s lips pinched. “All that stuff is still in the fridge. My dad won’t throw it out because that would mean admitting how much time has passed.” She looked at Toby flatly. “I don’t know what we eat anymore. I really don’t.”

Toby tried to keep his eyes from darting to Shelby’s chest. He felt sick. He felt like he might throw up and he never felt like that. Shelby rested her arm down the length of the bench. She touched Toby’s ear.

“What the hell are you wearing?” she asked him.

Toby had on skimpy green shorts and a tank top that read greece.

“You’re shallow,” he said. “Making fun of someone’s clothes is shallow.”

“You haven’t been to Greece, have you?”

“I haven’t even been to a Greek restaurant.”

Shelby drew her arms to her chest and shuddered, startled to be cold.

“I know it’s going to be okay,” Toby said. “We’ll be okay.”

“You don’t have to try to be a good guy.” Shelby drew a breath. Thunder could be heard, far off. “We won’t be okay, you know that.”

“I don’t. I don’t know anything.”

The thunder was steady and not very threatening. If it did anything harmful, it would be to other people. Toby, out of nowhere, could feel his courage gathering. His stomach didn’t feel bad. This wasn’t the dashing focus his evil sometimes provided him, but his own simple, native courage. Shelby considered Toby the one good thing about Florida and Toby knew it. He slid down the bench toward Shelby and heard the newspaper crumpling under his feet. He could smell Shelby’s hair. She had goose bumps but to Toby she was warm. Suddenly she hopped up, startling Toby, her boots making a chirp. She strode past the swing set, leaving muddled tracks in the sand. As she passed, she pulled one of the swings in the air and released it and it was still swinging when she disappeared around the corner. It was the swing Kaley had been in that day. Toby couldn’t raise himself off the bench. He watched the swing. He watched it until it stilled, until its slight movement was the work of the breeze.

When Toby got to practice, Coach Scolle was herding everyone into a circle. He said they had to move ass because if he felt one drop of rain he was clearing the field; no one was getting struck by lightning on his watch. He went around and made everyone name their goals for the season. Vince, the kid who tried to buy friends with gum, wanted to clear six feet at the high jump. Rosa and Sherrie, the enormous girls, wanted to beat Pasco High, a black school that, with the exception of girls’ volleyball, dominated all sports within the district. When it was Toby’s turn, Coach Scolle complained about having a pole-vaulter on the team, about having to lug the apparatus out every day, about the high-jumpers sacrificing valuable mat time, about worrying that Toby would break his neck on Coach Scolle’s watch. The coach informed Toby he would waste no energy instructing him.

“You better check that book back out and do some trial and error,” Coach Scolle said.

“I still have it,” Toby said. “I’m on chapter two — conditioning.”

“Could be a long chapter for you.”

Toby shrugged. Plenty of people on the team were in worse shape than he was, overweight even. Coach Scolle asked Toby’s goal. Because pole vault was a middle school sport only in Citrus County, Toby could not hope to win a state title, possibly not even a district title. “To learn to pole vault,” he said.

Coach Scolle huffed. “Believe it when I see it.”

This was the point at which, normally, Toby would’ve been a smart-ass. He would’ve asked the coach if the real reason he was afraid of a few clouds was that his man-perm could get damaged. If the real reason he was afraid of rain was that one of the windows of his Firebird was busted out and covered over with a plastic bag. But Toby said nothing. Being seen as a bad seed would only hinder him from here on out. He didn’t want that kind of attention. Though he hadn’t realized it when he’d tried out, he saw now that he’d joined a sports team to appear average, and showing up the coach and getting booted from the squad would defeat the purpose.

On his way to the taco place, Toby made another stop at the big bookstore. He dropped his bag off at the front and maneuvered back to the TV. The national news had abandoned Kaley, and Toby found that the Tampa news had let her drop off, as well. He figured out how to change the channel and watched for almost an hour. The weather in St. Petersburg. Sports in Tampa. A drowning in Lutz. Someone had driven an El Camino into the side of a flower shop. A girl at the university had blackmailed her poetry professor. A cemetery was being sued. These people didn’t give a damn about Citrus County. They didn’t give a damn about Kaley. They would if they knew she was alive and who had her. They’d give a damn then. Toby sat there before a bank of magazines — motorcycles, health food. All these interests. Everybody had all these interests.

The shop that sold used hardware and appliances was right up near the Chinese buffet. It was about a mile from Uncle Neal’s, which was a long haul with Toby toting a wide two-wheel dolly behind him the whole way. And he was going to have to drag it the whole way back, but loaded, right along the roadside, right through the weeds.