Third Place—2019 First Annual Short Story Contest
“Tell us about camp,” Stephen said, turning to Heather after a lull in the conversation. Heather paused, licked her cone of butter pecan, and swallowed.
“Camp was awesome,” Heather said, trying to sound cheerful. “I got home yesterday.” She looked around at them—Stephen, next to her on the bench, so close that she could feel the heat from his arm on hers; Daniel and Morgan on the bench across from them—and they stared back with red, stoned eyes. Heather wondered what that felt like, to be stoned, but she didn’t want to find out. Stephen hadn’t known Daniel and Morgan when Heather left for the summer, but they had been in Heather’s chemistry class last year. It seemed that they were now pretending they had never met before, which Heather was fine with. “I’m always sad to come home,” Heather said. “I work at Homer Lake, as a counselor—” she added, for Daniel and Morgan’s sake.
“The horse camp?” Morgan asked, raising her too-blonde eyebrows.
“You’re not sad to come home,” Stephen interjected, grinning. “I’m at home.”
Heather laughed. Morgan blinked. A stream of ice cream dripped down Daniel’s fingers.
“My horse Daisy . . .” Heather started talking just to talk, and then wondered why she had brought up this. “Um . . .” She decided to keep going. “She died last year. So this year they assigned me a new horse. Pearl. Well, Daisy wasn’t my horse, like I didn’t own her, but I rode her every year at camp and sometimes we went to competitions . . . She broke her leg in May, and they put her down right after I got there in June. It was really sad, but I at least got to say goodbye.” Heather swallowed. “We threw her a really beautiful funeral. I made her a memorial box and . . .” Heather trailed off, bit her ice cream, looked around. Morgan’s eyes were glazed over. Daniel was watching his ice cream drip on the table. Stephen was watching her, his eyes red but bright, alert. Heather bit her ice cream, closed her eyes at the brain freeze.
•
This was supposed to be Heather and Stephen’s first date. They hadn’t called it a date, but that’s what it had to be. Even though what had happened last night on the dock was a tiny thing, very insignificant really, how could this not be a date? Heather had worn pink lip gloss and a new dress that hugged her thighs, bought with her own money from working all summer, but she felt silly, now, for dressing up just to eat ice cream with Morgan and Daniel, who Heather didn’t even know, who had skipped chemistry all the time to get high outside the music room. Heather had thought last night that Stephen looked different. That something about him had changed since she left at the beginning of the summer. Now, his hair greasy and pushed behind his ears, she wasn’t so sure. Today, he just looked like the same old Stephen, her lifelong neighbor, the one she had played with as a little girl, the one she left behind when she went to camp each summer. The one she had called first after Daisy died.
“Anyway, Pearl and I were on different rhythms for a while. You know, horses run in a rhythm, like music, and if you can’t figure out your horse’s rhythm you can’t get the horse to jump, lead change, anything. We’re still on different rhythms, I guess, even after the whole summer. It takes years and years to fully know a horse. Maybe forever. Just a couple of years ago, Daisy threw me off.” Heather knew that Daniel and Morgan didn’t care what she was saying. She didn’t even know if Stephen cared anymore, but of course Stephen knew all of this already. “I broke three bones in my left wrist,” she pointed to each one. “Our rhythms were totally in sync, everything felt normal, but horses are hard to predict.” Heather took a bite of ice cream to stop herself from talking anymore.
“She’s been going there every summer since we were babies,” Stephen said, his mouth full. The sun was setting and the light caught in golden pools on Stephen’s face, morphing the shadows under his cheekbones. He had lost weight this summer, that was certain. Last night, when Heather saw him for the first time in two months, she almost hadn’t recognized him. When he took off his shirt, she could have counted his ribs. But then again, it was the first timeshe had seen him with his shirt off in years.
“Babies can’t ride horses,” Daniel said. “Maybe a midget horse . . .”
“Dwarf horse!” Morgan exclaimed. Stephen laughed. Morgan looked to Heather. “Which is politically correct?”
Heather felt a drop of ice cream plop on her finger. She wondered if Morgan had rubbed bleach in her eyebrows to get that exact shade.
“I don’t know,” Heather said.
“It’s crazy, how long you two have been friends,” Morgan said. “I haven’t known anyone but my parents since I was five.”
“That’s what happens when you’re neighbors, when there aren’t other kids around,” Heather said.
“You stick together,” Stephen said. “We’re like brother and sister.” Stephen suddenly put an arm around Heather’s shoulders, grinned at her. His teeth were more yellow than she remembered. “Hey,” Stephen said, starting to laugh, “remember the picture I drew for you, the first time you went to camp?”
“Kind of,” Heather said, looking away from him. Of course, she remembered the picture. Two brown horses, fat circles with four stick legs.
“I fucking hate horses,” Daniel said. Something withered in Heather’s chest. “It’s their eyes.”
Morgan laughed, covering her mouth with one hand. Stephen grinned at Heather, his arm still slack around her shoulders, suddenly heavy.
“Sorry,” Daniel said, in a way that made Heather sure he wasn’t.
Heather shrugged Stephen’s arm off her and stood up to throw away her ice cream cone, which was too melted to eat anymore anyway. Heather wondered whether it was the brother in Stephen that had asked her to go skinny dipping last night. Or whether it was the friend in him that had taken off his clothes, his back to hers, as she took off her clothes. Which Stephen had swum so close to her, both of them naked, that she could feel his breath on her mouth? Which Stephen was the one that she had wanted to kiss, before she chickened out and dunked her head under?
When Heather walked back to the table, Stephen was watching her. Heather tugged her dress down her thighs.
•
“What are we doing here?” Heather asked. Daniel had parked in the lot of the torn-down factory and turned off the car. No one answered.
After Daniel pulled the bag of cocaine from his pocket, after Heather realized what it was, before Heather realized it had been waiting there all evening, Stephen said quietly, “Dan, I said not tonight.”
“You said no pot,” Morgan shrieked, staring straight at Heather in the rearview. Heather looked out the window at the empty parking lot and everything beyond it—forest on one side, a pile of rubble on the other.
“And you didn’t listen when I said that either,” Stephen said.
“Says the guy who still smoked his third,” Morgan retorted.
Under the orange glow of the lamppost, the cocaine looked almost gray. Heather had never seen cocaine before, but she had expected it to be white, whiter than the pure heat at the base of a fire, so white it would sear her eyes like steaks.
In the driver’s seat, Daniel drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the music, while Morgan pulled a library card from her wallet and used it to push the powder into lines on the cardboard back cover of a notebook. Morgan bent over the notebook.
The dashboard clock read 9:26. They had school in ten and a half hours. Heather’s curfew was 10:00, and they had a fifteen-minute drive back to Heather and Stephen’s neighborhood.
“I need to go home,” Heather said. Morgan lifted the notebook from her lap and passed it to Daniel, holding it perfectly flat with both hands like an offering.
“We have plenty of time,” Stephen said. Unexpected tears welled up in Heather’s eyes. “Heather and I watched them tear this building down,” Stephen said, to no one in particular. “Remember?” Stephen touched Heather’s knee lightly, leaned his head toward her.
“Not really,” Heather said, jerking her leg away. Stephen withdrew his hand, crossed his arms over his chest.
“Who’s next?” Daniel asked, looking around. “There’s some left.”
“I need to go home,” Heather repeated.
“Give it to me,” Stephen said, leaning forward. Heather tried not to watch Stephen’s long pale fingers gripping the library card, gently arranging the powder into lines. Heather wondered what kinds of books Morgan took from the library. Heather wondered how many times Stephen had done this before. Stephen leaned down, his hair falling over his face, and pinched one nostril. Heather looked away, she couldn’t watch. The snorting sound was magnified somehow, almost slurping, and Heather felt as though he were suctioning off some part of her as he did it. Stephen snorted again. Heather winced involuntarily, trying to focus her gaze out the window at the pit of bricks and dust that was once the factory.
She and Stephen had biked here the day before she left in June and parked their bikes at the edge of the lot. It was overcast that day, gray everywhere, dust everywhere, the sky blending into the ground. They watched the wrecking ball careen back and forth, so loud it was almost otherworldly. The parking lot shook with each hit the factory took, and Heather could feel the tremors all the way through her body.
“This must be what the apocalypse will sound like,” Heather had said. Stephen didn’t hear her. Heather grabbed Stephen’s arm to leave, but he wouldn’t, arms slack at his sides, lips parted just slightly. His lips were always dry. Heather rode her bike home alone, wondering what it was they had made in that factory, anyway.
Stephen took one finger and brushed it across the cardboard and then stuck his finger in his mouth. Heather wondered what the cocaine tasted like. Sand? Sugar? Stephen passed the notebook back up to Daniel.
“Can we go?” Heather asked, her throat tight.
“It doesn’t take thirty minutes to get home,” Stephen said.
“I don’t want to risk it.”
“Let me ride on the roof,” Stephen said. Daniel and Morgan laughed.
Stephen opened his door and climbed out of the car into the hot August night.
“What is he doing?” Heather leaned across the seat to look out the window. Stephen was climbing onto the trunk of the car.
“He always does this,” Morgan said, “It’s fine.”
Heather climbed out of the car, slamming the door behind her.
“What the fuck?” Heather yelled.
Stephen looked down at her, crouched on the roof like a cat. He smiled, teeth shining, eyes black.
“What?” Stephen asked.
Another door opened and shut.
“I hate you,” Heather said. “You’re fucked up.”
“Heather, it’s really OK,” Morgan said. “They do this all the time. Daniel will do a couple of circles really slow, Stephen will just sit there and hold on to the rail. It will be fine. And then we’ll take you home.” Heather let Morgan drag her out of the way by her arm. “There’s nothing to cry about,” Morgan said, but Heather wasn’t crying anymore.
The car moved to the grass at the edge of the parking lot at a snail’s pace, Stephen on his knees on the roof, gripping one rail in each hand. In the darkness, Stephen and the car seemed to Heather to be one entity. Stephen’s shaggy hair flew back, and his silhouette became one with the darkening twilight sky.
“You’re right. It is fucked up,” Morgan said, as the car made its first loop.
And then Stephen and the car became a great shapeshifting beast.
“What is he doing?” Morgan whispered. “He never stands up.”
But Heather understood the feeling of the jump. She knew how it felt to want to be that much closer to the sky, of the feeling of some creature that powerful and supportive beneath her and of being one with it. She understood how easy it was to get ahead of yourself, to think you were in control when of course you weren’t. Nothing felt more powerful than a single moment of being airborne.
It happened fast. There was a thump as Stephen hit the grass and the car kept going. Morgan dug her fingernails into the skin of Heather’s wrist, but Heather felt nothing.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Morgan was saying, but she was behind Heather now, and Heather was running. Daniel was slumped against the steering wheel, back heaving, and at first Heather thought he was crying. Then he lifted his head, as Heather passed the car, and she saw that he was laughing.
Stephen lay on his back in the grass. His left arm was bent back, crumpled beneath him like fabric.
“I’m sorry,” Stephen said. Heather knelt to the ground next to him.
“Motherfucker,” Morgan had caught up. She ran to the other side of the car, gagging.
There was blood on Stephen’s face, blood in his hair. His eyes were very large and dark. She thought of Daisy’s eyes the last time she saw her.
“For what?” Heather asked.
Stephen didn’t move as Heather called the ambulance. His eyes were back to normal now, just red. His unbroken hand rested on his chest and he looked peaceful, staring up at the stars, smiling slightly at the fate he saw unfolding in them.
•
Daniel went with Stephen in the ambulance, and Morgan drove Heather home in silence. Heather’s parents said nothing as she crept along the hall to her room. She pulled Daisy’s memory box off the bookshelf. She flipped through the pictures of the two of them, the ribbons, until she reached the bottom of the box. The construction paper was wearing at the edges with time. There they were, the two fat stick-figure horses. A line of green below them and a line of blue above them, huge yellow stars all around, the horses suspended between the stars like constellations, maybe. “It’s you and me. We’re the horses,” Stephen had said when he gave it to her, all those years ago. Heather ran a finger over the words “Best Friends,” arcing over the horses in orange crayon, and tucked the paper away in the box before her tears could wreck it.
•
“So you’re asking if you can see me naked,” Heather had said, last night, when Stephen asked her to go skinny dipping.
“No, I want you to see me naked,” Stephen had said.
They undressed with their backs to each other.
“Hurry up,” Stephen called, and he jumped into the water, his arms flying out, legs bending at the knees. His body was smooth and ethereally pale. Seeing his nakedness, Heather felt something she couldn’t place. Longing, yes; lust, maybe. Heather looked back at Stephen’s house up the hill, half-hidden by trees, and paused, waiting to see a light turn on.
When she reached the edge of the dock, she saw Stephen floating ten feet away, facing away from her. She half wanted him to turn around, to look at her.
The water was colder than she had expected. Heather kneaded the velvety sand at the bottom of the lake with the tips of her toes. She moved her arms like wings. Stephen smiled at her from ten feet away, and then he closed his eyes and disappeared under the still-rippling surface.
•
The next day at school, Heather and Stephen would cross paths once, while Heather walked with Becky to French after lunch. Stephen’s left arm would be robotic in its heavy cast, already painted with well-wishes, his jaw blooming delicate bruises, his eyes bloodshot. Stephen and Heather would lock eyes, briefly, and then pass one another in the crowd. Heather had to cross her arms over her chest to avoid touching him, but still she felt the heat of him next to her. For a flash they were the only two in the hallway, for half a second, they were back on the dock, naked, backs to each other.
Heather felt a phantom pain in her left wrist. Stephen had been the first one to write on her cast, two years ago. “Stop jumping so high,” he’d written, and she hadn’t been able to explain that he didn’t understand, not at all.
“I heard he got high and fell off a car,” Becky whispered.
“Oh yeah?”
“What an idiot, don’t you think?”
Overhead, the one-minute bell rang, drowning Heather’s response.
“You don’t talk to him still, do you?” Becky asked. Heather turned her head, trying to find Stephen’s retreating back in the crowded hallway.
“No,” Heather said. “He’s changed.”
Emily Roth is a writer, librarian, and yoga teacher living in Chicago. She holds a BFA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago, and is currently pursuing a master’s in library and information science from San Jose State University. She has performed fiction and nonfiction live at Everything That Rises, Tenx9 Chicago, and Reading Under the Influence. She was a co-writer of the play Three Daughters Who Are Not Daughters, which premiered at the Chicago and Elgin Fringe Festivals in 2016.