The End of the World (6 page)

“Sure.” Her eyes cloud as she passes the towel to me, and suddenly I no longer want to punch the kids at school. I want to punch me.

“Thanks.” Her voice is barely a whisper as she steps out of the room.

I stare after her, barely registering the sound of Pete asking me for a sandwich.

Shaye

N
o one is
waiting for me when I return to this part of the house. The lights are off and all noise has ceased for the evening. The only sound I hear comes from the
drip drip
of the bathroom faucet that wasn’t turned off all the way after bath time earlier. I tiptoe into the bathroom and tighten the handle, wishing with everything in me that I could fill up that tub and sink into it. Immerse myself in a vat of steaming water and never come up for air.

I’m not clean. I’m dirty. I need to scrub my skin raw down to the third…fifth layer. But the layers wouldn’t lie. No matter how deep I go there would still be filth. The stain of sin would still be visible even through smears of crimson blood and pallid bone.

No one wants me, because I’m too difficult
. I heard an aunt whisper it at my parent’s funeral. It didn’t take me long to believe her.

“What are you doing?”

Cameron’s voice cuts through my thoughts and I blink into the dimly lit room. It’s only then that I realize I’ve climbed into the bathtub and curled myself into a ball, lying on my left side like an infant who’s afraid of a storm.

I sit up quickly and try to act like the storm I’m currently living in isn’t scary.

“Nothing. I just like to hide in here sometimes.”

Cameron takes a tentative step towards me. Even through the darkness, I can see the troubled look on his face. “In the bathtub? What are you hiding from?”

I lean backwards and pull my knees to my chest. A defense mechanism, but my legs are the only shield I’ve got. Besides, I barely know this kid and he’s interrogating me like I’m wanted for a felony or something. My chin goes up as my knees go down.

“From the kids of course, and yes in the bathtub. Sometimes the dripping faucet calms me down. Why does it matter to you?” A protective edge creeps into my voice.

“It doesn’t, really. I just need to go to the bathroom, but I can’t exactly drop my pants with you in the room.”

Thank God it’s dark, because my face blooms red. I scramble to my feet, ignoring the way everything hurts below my waist. Keeping a grimace off my face, I step out of the tub and slide around Cameron. His eyes are on me, but my face stays neutral.

“Shaye?” His soft inflection makes me flinch, ridiculous because the sound shouldn’t have an effect on me at all, even if it does seem particularly gentle. I accidently glimpse my reflection in the splattered mirror and look away. I’ll need to clean that glass tomorrow. Toothpaste is a nuisance in the same way reflections are unwanted.

“What?” I can’t bring myself to turn around. I feel particularly untethered, like a flimsy Band-Aid is the only thing holding me together, and I can’t risk it coming undone.

“If you need to talk about anything, you can. I’m good at keeping secrets.”

My breath catches in my throat. One more word and I might come undone.

“Thank you, but I’ll be alright.” My voice is watery, matching my rapidly filling eyes.

“Okay. But Shaye?”

“What?” The word comes out on a sigh, but if this kid doesn’t stop speaking, I’m going to fall apart. It’s been years since I’ve fallen apart in front of another person, am I’m sure not going to start now.

“Do you want me to let you know when I’m finished? I understand the need to hide. In my old home, I used to hide under the stairs, sometimes for hours. It was the only way I knew how to deal with losing my mom.”

I close my eyes as one tear slides down my cheek. Never before. Never before has anyone told me they understood. It doesn’t matter that he can’t truly comprehend my reasons for needing the bathtub and the seclusion it offers. That isn’t important. The only thing that matters is that he just tried. An olive branch extended. A poultice spread over my festering wounds.

“That’s okay. I think I’ll head to bed.” I tell myself I’m tired. I tell myself I’ll be able to sleep before the sun makes another pass over the horizon.

I lie to myself a lot these days.

“Okay, then I’ll be quiet. I’ll see you in the morning, Shaye.”

I leave the bathroom, careful not to look over my shoulder at him. One look, and the tears will start to flow. I feel that single Band-Aid pull against my self-control.

“Goodnight, Cameron.” It’s all I can manage before slipping quietly out of the room.

*

Cameron

Something is wrong.
Something is wrong with Shaye and school and this house and Mr. Bowden and my ridiculously small bedroom with two little boys who flip and twist and moan more than newborn puppies fighting for a spot around their mother’s nipples.

Something is wrong. If I wasn’t sure before, I’m certain of it now. Teenage girls don’t lie catatonic when a boy bangs his way into a bathroom and lets one, two, three, four seconds go by before asking what they’re doing. Teenage girls don’t wrap themselves in a ball inside a dried out bathtub in a dark room and call it searching for a moment of peace. There’s nothing peaceful about that room. There’s nothing comforting about a dirty bathtub.

I’ve seen the hateful notes that sometimes fall out of Shaye’s backpack. I’ve seen the bits of paper often stuck in her hair. I’ve seen the Playboy magazines stacked behind the toilet at home. I’ve seen the box of condoms tucked underneath the kitchen sink.

Teenage girls don’t suck their thumbs.

She doesn’t think I saw her, but I did.

And now I just need to figure out how to make her tell me.

Shaye

F
or me, it’s
just another Saturday afternoon. Another part of the routine. But Cameron looks as though he’s never seen something this frightening in his life.

“Cameron, it’s underwear. It won’t bite.”

He gives me a look. I’ve seen this look enough since he moved in to memorize every nuance and eye twitch surrounding it.

“It’s girl underwear. I don’t fold girl underwear.”

I fling a pink pair with tiny white hearts at his head.

“Now you do. You offered to help, so help me. And fold them left to right this time.”

“You have a formula for folding underwear?”

“I have a formula for folding underwear just like you have a theory for washing dishes, and if you’re a smart kid you won’t argue with me about it.”

This makes him stiffen, though he tries to hide the reaction with a quick neck roll. I’m not sure if it’s the implication that he’s not all that smart, or if it’s that I just referred to him as a kid, but he’s definitely ticked off. And if I spent as much time caring about other people’s feelings as I spent making sandwiches and folding underwear, his reaction might actually affect me. As it stands, I reach for a pair of socks and roll them together without as much as a glance his direction. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him reach for another pair of underwear. These belong to me, and for some reason my face begins to warm.

He folds them carefully. A little too precisely. He knows what he’s doing.

“So does it take a full three years living here to develop a crap attitude, or should I expect my own transformation to happen earlier than that? Like, say, six months from now?”

I want to be mad. I look at him and will myself to get mad. Nothing materializes except an annoying sense of amusement that stupidly reveals itself in a smile.

“Sorry about the kid comment. It won’t happen again,” I say.

He grabs a dingy gray T-shirt that used to be white and tucks the sleeves into themselves, giving me a look. “It was more the questioning of my intelligence that threw me over the edge. I’m smart. Way smarter than you. The smartest ever, in fact.”

“And super, super mature. Clearly.” With an eye roll, I pick up a stack of Alan’s clothes and hand them off to Cameron, then balance all the others under my chin and motion for him to follow me up the stairs. We’re halfway up when I hear it.

“Shaye, can you come in here for a minute?” I freeze. My knees begin to tremble. It’s been two days since the last time he called me. Two freaking days. And I have a pile of three kids’ clothes in my arms. But Carl doesn’t seem to notice. Or maybe, like always, he just doesn’t care.

“Um… I’m sort of busy at the moment and—”

“Shaye.” My name is a command. He isn’t used to being questioned.

“Actually,” Cameron interrupts, turning around on the third step to face an impatient Carl standing just outside the living room. “I just asked Shaye to show me around the property. It just hit me that we haven’t done that yet. And I figured it would be better for her to do it rather than you or your wife, particularly since it’s so cold outside right now. And considering spring is coming and I’m sure there’s lots of yard work to do, now is probably a good time to get started.”

A pause. A long, uncomfortable pause as the man of the house and the newest resident of the house, whose social worker will show up any time now because that’s what social workers do especially at the beginning—mine didn’t, but Cameron’s should if she cares about him—face each other in a tense stare down. It’s at that moment I realize Cameron was right: he is smarter than me. Smarter than maybe everyone I know. Way smarter than all of us put together.

Either that, or he just has impeccable timing. Whichever, it works in my favor.

I can practically see the two choices floating across Carl’s brain as he stands there: he can either demand my obedience here and now with Cameron standing by to witness it all, or concede and let me head outside. He’s conflicted. Tense. Angry.

And defeated. At least for now.

“Fine. Shaye, show him around,” Carl says with a glare through Cameron’s head. To his credit, Cameron doesn’t seem fazed. “Take him out back and show him where we keep the lawn mower and tools.” He points a thick finger at me. “But don’t take too long. I’m leaving in an hour and want to talk to you first.”

“Okay.” I nod, then look at Cameron standing two steps below me with the strangest look on his face.

He’s gazing at me, but his stare seems to run through my eyes and grab onto my brain and take off skipping down to my heart where it gathers up all the secrets I’ve managed to keep hidden away while curled up inside a dirty, leaky bathtub. And then while I’m staring back at him, he tucks all those secrets in his back pocket before quickly looking away.

My voice works, but only barely. “Let’s put these clothes away and I’ll walk you out back.”

“Sounds good,” he says.

Two minutes later, we walk out the front door to a dreary February afternoon absent of sun and ripe with the promise of rain.

*

Cameron

“So what exactly
did you want me to show you?” Shaye asks. We’ve taken seventy-three steps away from the house and now we’re approaching a patch of evergreen trees lined up like military guards at the back of the property. It’s clear they were planted here purposefully; nothing grows wild in an arrangement this precise. Their order makes me feel like a kid in juvenile detention, like I’ve broken some unspoken rule written in a leather-bound book that no one has handed over yet.

In the time I’ve been here, I’ve never ventured far enough to notice these trees before. I follow Shaye through a cluster of them. If she isn’t nervous, I won’t be either. I might be only fourteen, but any year now I’ll be a man. I’m not a kid, no matter what she said while we folded that nasty underwear. It’s time to suck it up and prove it, if only to myself.

“I didn’t have anything in mind, actually. I just wanted to get you…to get
us
out of that house for a few minutes.”

I feel her body go tense even before she stops walking. When she plants her feet in front of me and tucks her hands in her back pockets, I figure it’s time to break off my relationship with the single blade of green grass I’ve been staring at for a full five seconds, and I look up. I desperately miss that piece of grass.