Bad Glass

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” I said, keeping my voice low, trying to radiate calm. “Maybe you should leave, get out of the city. It’s not good for you here.” And after a prolonged beat, I added, “It’s not good for any of us.”

“But he’s down there.”

“He’s dead.”

He shook his head. “But he’s down there. And I’ll find him this time. I won’t run away.”

He turned away from me and reached through the living room door on his far side. “Look,” he said, pulling something back into the entryway. “I found this. He wasn’t there this time, but I found this, down in the tunnels.” He handed me a skateboard. It was cracked in the middle and covered with mud. “It’s his, the one he loved. See—” He brushed aside some of the drying dirt, revealing a picture on the bottom of the board. “—it’s him. See? He’s flying.”

The board felt surprisingly heavy in my hands.

“We didn’t find it in the woods. We didn’t even know it was gone, not until later, not until after his funeral. I went to look for it, but it wasn’t in his room, it wasn’t on his dresser.” I looked up from the board and saw Floyd smiling. It was a different smile now. It was reflected in his eyes, in the subtle lift of his shoulders. It no longer looked out of place on his face. “It means he’s here, Dean, he’s real. Just like the board. It’s here. It’s real.”

I looked back down at the board and remained silent. No matter how much I wanted to tell him otherwise—tell him that he was wrong, that the city was just messing with his head, that his brother was gone, and that he should flee as far and as fast as possible—I couldn’t.

The board was here. The board was real.

And I had no idea what that might mean.

News clipping. “A Hole in the Map: Spokane, and What They Aren’t Telling Us,” the Seattle Times, November 7, pages 7A and 12A:

The article has been clipped from a daily newspaper—aged, yellowing newsprint with sharp, scissor-cut edges. It is in two pieces: a narrow lead column stapled to a wider three-column continuation. It has been well handled. The ink is smeared, and words have been lost beneath smudged fingerprints. The paper is a webwork of creases; it looks like it has been crumpled into a ball and then smoothed back out.

The article describes the quarantine, several months in, and revisits official press releases. It quotes government officials, and there are several “No comments” scattered throughout the text.

There are two pictures incorporated into the final column of type, stacked one on top of the other—large blocks of ink reduced to abstract blurs by excessive handling. The topmost picture is nothing but a dark morass of ink, with the barest hint of a face lurking in the bottom corner. The bottom picture is easier to parse but still difficult to understand. Underneath the maze of creases and beneath the smudged ink, where a sweaty fingertip has traced body and limb, it looks like a spider. A giant spider, perched atop seven spindly legs and one outstretched human finger.

I put Floyd to bed. Then I watched him sleep.

I don’t know how much oxycodone he actually took, but his breathing was shallow and he lay perfectly still. He didn’t toss and turn or fidget and mumble. In fact, there was very little motion in his body, very little life. I’m not sure what I would have done if his breathing had actually stopped—CPR, I guess, even though I didn’t have any training or knowledge on the subject—but I didn’t want to leave him alone. I wanted to be there in case he needed me. In case he needed me to—I don’t know—to do something, anything to keep him safe.

I just … I had the feeling that if I turned my back, if I shut my eyes, he would disappear. He would just … be gone. As if it were my attention, my concern that was keeping him rooted to the world, and without that he’d just fade into the ether.

And that would be that. One fewer person in Taylor’s house.

And I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want that. I liked Floyd. I liked his relaxed skater charm, his playful smile, the way he laughed so easily and with such an inviting warmth. I didn’t want to see the house without that. I wanted the chance to once again sit out in the backyard, listening happily as he played his guitar.

At least Charlie isn’t here, I told myself. That—the two of them together—would have been too much for me to handle.