EVELYN
Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 11:35 p.m.
One Minute After
The options flash through my mind like lightning, faster than I can act on them.
Cry. Scream.
Stay. Leave.
Fight.
Escape.
Destroy.
Don’t give up, Evelyn.
Please give up, Evelyn.
Please.
Run, Evelyn.
Go.
Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 1:34 p.m.
Ten Hours Before
Smoke is curling up into the crisp October sky over Tyler McBee’s head.
It’s gray against more gray, a bleak, cool day in McNair Falls, South Carolina. I’d dug through my dresser for an old sweater this morning, pulled it out, putting my fingers through the holes eaten into the knitted navy material.
Tyler’s eyes catch mine when he sees me walking toward him, interested. He has a long face, his hair too short in the front, probably work done by his mama’s scissors. He’s leaning against the cheap aluminum siding on the outside of the gym, facing the trees next to school.
“Can I bum?” I call to him, once I’m close enough. I shiver against the breeze. Weather tends to yo-yo around this time of year, one day hot and humid, the next a chill stealing into the air, wrapping you up in its windy tendrils. I hate the cold. And I hate the weakness of a nicotine craving.
Tyler’s already got his box of Salems out, offering me one. He flicks the box toward me with his wrist, shaking a cigarette loose. I grab it, pulling it between two fingers.
Sometimes, when I like to imagine I’m a better person than I am, I think I’m less addicted to the nicotine than to the moments before it hits my lips. Holding the cigarette between my fingers, watching some desperate boy offer a flame to me, and then sucking in the smoke like sweet release. Like a brief twinkle of freedom, control.
I lean against the wall of the gym next to Tyler, looking out over the trees blowing in the breeze. My red lips leave a stain behind on the cigarette wrapper.
“What are you missing?” Tyler asks, not quite looking at me and not quite not looking at me.
“History,” I answer, easy. Exhaustion works to drag me down, and I fight back just as hard. History is death, I want to tell him, and there’s enough dead things around here without piling on. But if I did that—said that—I might not ever be able to get another cigarette, so I keep quiet.
I know what to do. Glance over at Tyler, keep my gaze down, my eyes soft. There’s not a lot I can get in this world, so I always play nice with those who give.
“You?” I ask, letting smoke escape out the side of my mouth.
He snorts, ashes his cigarette against the wall. “Haven’t been to math all week. To be honest, I’m not really sure I have time for all this anymore.”
“School,” I finish his thought for him, inhale, blow out slowly. I feel the way he’s watching me, eyes catching on all those holes in my sweater. I always feel it.
“You know the deal. I figure I could at least be working for the Dowds on their land, doing something useful, making some money. Instead of in here”—he gestures at the wall, the school beyond—“learning nothing. This shit’s never gonna do people like us any good.”
Drag. I roll the words people like us around in my mind. “You gotta do what’s right for you.” I don’t really know what that means, but I’ve gotten used to speaking to people in clichés. Keeps me from saying anything real.
“You still work over at the store?” Tyler asks me. “For Reid Brewer’s parents?”
Reid Brewer. The name sounds so foreign coming out of his mouth. Like a thing that only existed before, in the quietest breath of the wind, in the deepest secrets of a soul.
But that’s not right, is it? Reid existed everywhere.
“Yeah,” I say.
“She’s been dead almost a year now, yeah?” he asks.
I shrug. “It’s sad,” I say because that sounds true.
Tyler thinks on that for a minute and then nods. “That’s life, isn’t it? Can’t escape sad shit.”
I can’t help but laugh, surprising Tyler and me both.
Tyler drops his cigarette, stubs it with his toe, and kicks it off the thin sidewalk bordering the gym and into the grass. “You wanna get out of here?” he asks me.
I push my fingers through my hair, slow, careful. Glance up, like I’m ready and willing to be offered up to him as compensation. Like a prize pony. “I’ve got biology. And I’m not ready to quit just yet.”
“Aw.” He moves closer, head tilted down, eyes hungry like all boys when they look at girls like me. “Maybe some other time.”
“Maybe.” I toss my cigarette down after his and step on it on my way around him. Once I’ve turned the corner, I lean back against the siding, breathing in and out slow, letting myself have this moment alone.
I hate when anyone gets too close to me.
But the bell rings a moment later, signaling for me to get on with it. I straighten back up, dust off my too-tight jeans and ratty sweater, and I keep going.
It’s not like the alternatives are any better.
Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 11:40 p.m.
Copyright © 2021 by Laurie Devore
