Black Chuck Read online

  “You did?” He laughed, surprised. His teeth were perfectly straight and white, and when he smiled, his bottom lip slid up to touch them.

  “Well, yeah.” She shrugged, like it was obvious.

  She took a step down and sat on the top stair, her face almost level with his.

  He only hesitated for a second, then climbed up and sat next to her.

  She didn’t say anything; she gripped the uneven boards under her legs, looking off across the field on the other side of the street.

  “So,” he said, “I guess you think it’s weird, me coming here?”

  “No, not weird,” she said slowly, thinking of his little white house at the other end of the road—they were sort of neighbors, after all. From the same side of town. “It’s just, I don’t know, why now?”

  He took a deep breath and blew it out slow. For a minute he, too, just looked at the fields. Then he said, “What are your parents like, Evie?” And without waiting for her answer said, “Mine are fucked.”

  She looked at the side of his face, the blond hair tucked behind his ear. “Yeah,” she said. “Mine too.”

  “I thought so.” He nodded, tugging at a string of beaded leather that wound around his wrist. “I knew there was something…I don’t know, I mean, we live in the same ’hood, and I see you at school a lot. I drive past here all the time thinking I’m just gonna stop.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said.

  “You are?”

  “Yeah, I mean—” She shrugged and looked around. “I’m here alone most of the time. It’s cool to have someone to talk to.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, a slim grin sneaking across his lips. “It’s cool.”

  They sat in silence again.

  “So, you wanna go somewhere?” he asked after a while.

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  That night he had taken her to the Olympia Café. She’d never been in before. She’d thought only townies hung out there—kids who actually lived in town, not just clinging to the dirty edges like her and Shaun did.

  But the waitress knew him. Her name was June, and she called him son. She dumped two greasy menus on their table and walked her big square hips away. Shaun leaned and in a low voice said, “June won the lottery twice. You should see her truck.”

  He didn’t look at the menu. He stretched his long arms across the back of the vinyl banquette. Evie anxiously scanned the greasy pages, trying to find something appealing, but she was too nervous to read any of it, so she just flipped through.

  “Nothing’s good here,” he said, taking the menu from her. “Are you hungry?”

  “Uh, no, not really,” she said, suddenly feeling dumb. “I had dinner before.”

  She looked around. There was an old drunk at the bar, nursing a beer. A radio played the baseball game in the kitchen, and June leaned in the pass-through, talking to the cook.

  The place was dark, with wood paneling and an ugly brown-and-orange carpet. Ceiling fans listlessly turned the air. It was pretty quiet, too late for townie kids to be there—at least, the ones with curfews.

  Shaun sat back and turned half sideways in the booth, stretching his long legs out across the seat. He must have stood six foot two in his bare feet.

  She’d noticed him as soon as she started at North Cold Water Collegiate. He hung out on the hill with Réal Dufresne and Alex Janes, but he could easily have been a jock. He was broad across the shoulders, lithe at the waist, and he moved with the determined grace of an athlete, each gesture flowing logically from the last. And boy, was he good-looking. Almost too perfect to be sitting across the table from her in real life.

  “So, what’s wrong with your parents?” she asked, just as the back door of the restaurant banged open.

  Sunny and Alex came in from the parking lot. Sunny looking scary and beautiful in a long, black, completely see-through skirt, worn over a shorter, tighter, opaque one, and tall black boots. Alex loped along ahead of her like a witch’s familiar.

  “H.D.,” Alex called, eyeing Evie as they came across the room.

  “Janes,” Shaun replied flatly.

  He introduced them to Evie when they arrived at the table, but he didn’t move his legs so they could sit down. “Evie lives down my street,” he told them.

  “Cool, cool,” Alex said, looking at her. “You’re a Northerner, right? I seen you at school.”

  Evie nodded. Northerner was local shorthand for their high school, though she was more accurately an Easterner, since the town was pretty clearly divided. Best and Least.

  “We were just at the band shell.” Alex jerked his head in the direction they’d come from, and Shaun nodded without comment.

  After a few minutes Alex and Sunny sat at another table, and Shaun turned to face Evie, taking his legs down from the seat. They talked, and as they did, he watched the other couple over her shoulder. It only dawned on her later that this had been her initiation. That Shaun had wanted her to meet his friends, to stir them together to see what happened.

  Lots of girls at school whispered about Shaun. He had a reputation for being kind of slutty, a player. It was a long time before she realized that, although he’d had plenty of hookups, he’d never had an actual girlfriend. At least, not until Evie.

  Shaun started coming around most nights after that one. They sat on the top step looking out across the grass, just talking. And then one night he put his hand down over hers, gently but with purpose, and she didn’t resist.

  “Does your grandmother ever wonder where you are at night?” she asked, trying to ignore the electricity from his fingers.

  “Nah,” he answered, voice full of swagger. Then he explained, “Nan’s pretty old. She doesn’t really understand much anymore. Mostly she just thinks I’m there anyway. Like, I catch her talking to me sometimes, but I haven’t been around for hours. Once I was even—” He stopped and grinned. “Ah, never mind.”

  “What?” Evie asked. “Tell me.”

  “Uh…” He cringed a little, and then he laughed, embarrassed, or at least pretending to be. “I was, uh, with someone, y’know, in my room, and she walked in and started talking to me.” He laughed again, this time for real, and shook his head, remembering. “I don’t think she even knew there was someone else there.”

  “You were with someone?” Evie asked, already knowing but not wanting to know what he’d meant.

  “Yeah,” Shaun said. “Y’know. In bed.” He cleared his throat and laughed again.

  “And she didn’t even know it?”

  Shaun squeezed her hand. “Yeah, she just walked right in and turned on the light! Started telling me the kitchen drain was slow again. And I’d just fixed it the day before, so I knew it was fine.”

  The thought of Shaun in bed with someone made Evie shiver. Picturing him naked, wrapped in sheets and legs and long hair, sweating and breathing over some other girl, made her both excited and a little scared. His story dropped the suggestion of sex into the conversation, and now all she could think was, Will we? as it circled them like a shark.

  Had he done it on purpose? She looked at the side of his face, behind its curtain of golden hair, and she could see his grin, could almost see the sidelong glance he wanted to throw her.

  Yes, she thought.

  When he turned his grin on her, it felt like he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t bug you.”

  Blushing, she deflected. “What, your grandmother?” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held tight.

  “No, dummy, that I screwed some other girl and just told you about it. Kind of a bonehead move, don’t you think?”

  “Ah, I uh…” she stammered, then looked away, face burning.

  She covered her eyes with her free hand and laughed a little too loudly. She felt like her thoughts—his sweat, his shoulders, the sounds he’d make, his tenderness or lack of it, even his low voice saying the word screw—were all over her face.

 
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the hand he held to his chest. “It was just some girl. I mean—it was a long time ago.”

  “A long time ago?” She raised her brows. “How old are you?”

  He sat up a little straighter, clearing his throat again. “Well, I just turned eighteen, but y’know. I been on my own a long time.”

  Then he bit his lip to stop grinning and said quietly, “That’s a really stupid story to tell a girl I like, huh?”

  His sweet embarrassment—and the unexpected confession—felt like a disarming spell he carried in his pocket, ready to cast at a moment’s notice. She wondered if he’d told this story a thousand times and guessed that he probably had. He’d probably driven past a hundred girls’ doors in his rusted old Dodge and sat on a hundred stoops, grinning like he was right now.

  But as she looked at his frayed jeans and dirty T-shirt, at the wavy blue lines of his homemade tattoos, she wondered if it was just survival—raising the odds of a warm body to sleep next to.

  “Do you ever worry about your grandmother?” she asked him.

  “Hells yeah,” he said. “All the time. She can’t really take care of herself anymore, and I mean, I can’t always be there. I worry that she’s gonna hurt herself or leave the gas on.”

  He looked away from her, out over the patchy grass. “She got really sick last year, and I had to leave school to take care of her. That’s why I’m not graduating.”

  “Oh, I thought—”

  “Yeah, it’s not ’cause I’m dumb.” He cut her off, proud.

  “But what about your parents?” she asked.

  He laughed, one short, hard sound, and didn’t say anything more for a minute.

  Then he told her, “My nan raised me. My mom visits once in a while, mostly when she’s broke. She’s pretty messed up. She drinks a lot. She’s pretty crazy.”

  Evie studied the side of his face again. She could see that he’d told this story many times too. To teachers, and probably to cops.

  But it really wasn’t any different from her own—her dad left when she was six, and she had no siblings. Mom had worked nights since Evie was just old enough to be left alone, two weeks on, four days off. She told her story as bluntly as he had told his. They weren’t comparing wounds, just confirming what they’d already known—they were from the same tribe.

  He turned to her with a relaxed smile. The twinkle was back in his eye, and instantly he was the invincible Shaun Henry-Deacon again. Swaggering, easygoing, nothing-can-touch-him Shaun. The wooden porch, the field and the crummy house all fell away when he smiled, and she could tell by the way he licked his lips that he was going to kiss her.

  4

  E

  Evie couldn’t remember what she’d just been doing.

  Dead, she thought.

  She slid down the wall at the end of a row of lockers, knees folding to her chest.

  Dead.

  She pressed her skull to the cinder block as she remembered him standing in her driveway, leather jacket and a handful of rocks in the middle of the night.

  Dead.

  A picture of his smile. Of him landing a perfect kickflip, long hair fanning out in a bright half circle of gold.

  Dead.

  A picture of him leaping from the fire escape at the Grains, like gravity couldn’t hold him…

  Evie leaned back against the cold wall. There were too many pictures. First kiss. First night together. First fight. Second fight. All the rest, until I love you. It had all passed by without a sound the first time, barely touching her, and now it all boomeranged back, knocking her lungs out.

  She’d never said I love you.

  She’d only laughed, mad that he’d waited till it was like leverage to say those words. Until they were not words but a bribe—my love for the rest of your life. I’ll trade you. I’ll marry you. I love you.

  And now he was dead. She heard Réal say it over and over, bleak and empty. She’d laughed, and now what did she have? Just those three little words. Shaun is dead.

  She remembered his eyes, sea blue and bright with the sting of her laughter. A wave of acid raced up her throat. She scrambled to her knees and splashed the linoleum with vomit.

  “Gross!” someone cried, and suddenly there was a crowd around her that she hadn’t noticed a moment earlier. She wiped her cheek with her sleeve. She wanted to tell them all where to stick it, but if she opened her mouth again, the rest of her breakfast would find its way out.

  “Oh dear,” a voice said, and there were hands on her. Warm, maternal hands pulling her up and away. “Are you all right?” the voice was asking. Evie couldn’t answer. She was being dragged down the hall, feet stumbling over each other.

  “We’ll just get you to the nurse’s station,” the woman said. Evie glanced at her. She recognized the teacher but couldn’t remember her name. Everything seemed to be slipping from her head.

  “But my—” Evie craned her head around to look for her backpack, but the teacher didn’t slow down.

  “We’ll get someone to bring your things, don’t worry,” she said.

  At the nurse’s station, Evie was given an empty wastebasket and told to lie on a cot. She didn’t bother lying down. She hugged the basket and just stared over the rim at a spot on the floor, letting it shift in and out of focus. Eventually a nurse arrived to take her temperature.

  “I’m fine,” Evie said around the glass rod. “Just ate something weird.”

  “Well, you’re a bit too hot for my liking.” The nurse wrinkled her brow at the numbers. “I’d really like it if you could lie down.”

  Evie scowled at her, then fell to her side, sneakers still on the floor, empty basket tipping sideways.

  “That’ll do,” said the nurse, going back to her desk.

  Evie barely blinked as she stared out the open door into the now-empty hall. All the normal crush and noise of the school had faded, leaving just the lonely squeaks of shoes racing the last bell to class. She could hear her own heart beating in her ear.

  Dead. Dead. Dead.

  A moment later the phone rang. The nurse murmured into it, pretending not to look at Evie, who stared back, expressionless. When the nurse put the phone down, she had a crease between her brows.

  “Sweetheart,” she said, “we’re having a little trouble reaching your mom.”

  Evie just blinked. So?

  “Are you able to get home on your own, or would you like to just stay here for the rest of the day?”

  Evie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to decide what would be worse—lying here all day in her puke-stained hoodie or going home, where Shaun’s ghost lay waiting. Acid scratched in her throat again.

  “Psst.”

  She opened her eyes. Sunny stood just outside the doorway with Evie’s backpack in her hand. She jerked her head sideways, gesturing for Evie to follow.

  “I think I’ll go home,” Evie told the nurse. “I’ll just call my mom on the way.”

  “Well, all right. But take this.” She scribbled an absence slip and handed it to Evie. “And you get straight into bed when you get there, okay?”

  Evie stood, dropping the wastebasket onto the cot behind her. She shoved the slip into her pocket and mumbled thanks to the nurse. Outside the room, she let Sunny put a bony arm around her. It was more comforting than it looked.

  “Where are we going?” Evie whispered. There was no way Sunny was taking her straight home.

  “The question is, where do you want to go?” Sunny grinned and raised her other hand. From it hung a worn-soft, black leather keychain, jangling a half dozen keys.

  Evie’s eyes popped. “How did you get those?”

  Sunny shrugged, still grinning. “I asked.”

  “Seriously? And he just gave them to you?”

  “Not exactly,” Sunny said, and threw her hair back with a laugh.

  They crossed the school parking lot to a blue Buick parked under a big maple tree. It was pocked and battered with rust and dings. A total boa
t, with a trunk big enough to hide bodies in. It was called a Century, and it was about that old.

  Evie stopped and stared. Réal Dufresne’s car. She’d ridden in it dozens of times, but never shotgun and never with anyone but him at the wheel. It was always the boys who sat up front with Ré. It was always Shaun, Alex squished between her and Sunny in the back, his bony joints all jammed into her.

  Sunny hopped in the driver’s side like she’d done it a hundred times and leaned across, unlocking the other door with two fingers. Evie swallowed her nerves and slid into the passenger seat, where that familiar burnt-oil-and-sour-milk smell greeted her.

  Sunny’s brow arched wickedly as the engine roared to life. Evie was surprised at her confidence with the massive steel machine. The Buick was sacred ground. Réal and his car—they were like two parts of the same object, though it was a really shitty, old car.

  As the girls nosed out of the parking lot, Evie’s eyes darted sideways. A police cruiser was parked half up on the boulevard, and two officers were striding across the lawn toward the front doors of the school.

  She remembered the principal saying police were investigating Shaun’s death. What did that mean? “Do the police think Shaun was murdered?” she asked aloud.

  Sunny glanced at her. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I guess so.” They turned left and rolled out into traffic, heading away from those dark blue uniforms. “He was, like, really beat up, Ev. That doesn’t happen by accident.”

  Alex’s description floated through her head again. No shoes, no teeth. “Who would do that to him?”

  Sunny tsked her tongue. She didn’t say anything for a second, just reached across and squeezed Evie’s hand.

  Then she dropped it, taking up the wheel again. “Asshats, that’s who, Evie,” she said. “People with no respect for true grandiosity. Cock monkeys. Penis wrinkles.” Sunny went on, throwing out every expletive she could think of, until Evie was almost laughing.

  She rolled down her window, letting out the car stink, and splayed her fingers to the wind. A picture of Shaun’s impossibly long golden hair wrapped around the headrest of the Buick, wind whipping it wildly around the cabin. Réal swatting it out of the way—“Get a frickin’ haircut, hippie!” Shaun just grinning, sliding his fingers down behind the passenger seat and taking Evie’s hand.