I breathed in the delicate scent of Claire’s candles and the aroma of Doug’s sweaty boots in the corner of the kitchen, which lingered softly throughout the house. As I looked around, I became familiarized with the combination of fragrance, and familiarized with home.
I sunk into the soft couch pillows, absentmindedly reaching for the fluffy green blanket on the seat, wrapping myself in its warmth.
I could almost hear Matt’s voice gruffly mumbling to me, ever so clearly, as if we were having the conversation by the emergency vehicles all over again, but mentally.
It was all so strange and foreign to me as he approached me in the hospital room, I remembered.
“Sea,” he said. “I need to tell you something. I wouldn’t on any other circumstances, but you apparently would like to know this.”
I sat crisscross on the papery bed, waiting for the doctor to return. I was baffled that he even managed to figure out what room I was in. I figured that he saw me as he came in, and shrugged it off. “Yes,” I eagerly said. “Tell me.”
He looked away from me, carefully inspecting the detailed bacteria poster on the white walls. He spoke slowly, almost hesitant. “I…when I went back…”
He trailed off, waiting for me to nod or something in acknowledgement.
“To the forest, right. Did…did you find it? Did you find the wallet by the truck?”
He paused a moment, then looked up to meet my eyes. I saw a slight, timid spark of triumph in his eyes, like a rare gem of in a dark stone cave, as the pink plush of his lips tweaked into a sly smile. “Yeah. I knew exactly where to look. The police might be onto me, but that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I get to it.”
I smiled with relief, but then felt a pit hardening in my stomach at the thought of him disrupting what might turn out to be a crime scene. We still weren’t even sure what happened.
“Good…is it burnt or anything? Can I see it?”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I hid it before I went back to the crowd. I buried it... do you want to see it??”
I nodded and tried to conceal the sense of victory from my face. “Thank you.”
“School tomorrow then.”
As I sat in the couch, I twisted my hands, desperately hoping that it would have some form of significance, and that it wouldn’t be for nothing. I urgently wished that I wasn’t mistaking anything, looking for a clue that is nonexistent outside of my imagination.
The grasping fingers of my mind trembled as it tugged at the knot before me. They began to burn before I even properly examined it.
“Are you hungry, darling?” Claire called from the kitchen.
I wasn’t certain on the amount of time that passed away to the unreachable world of before. Claire eventually came in to sit, then urging me to get some rest.
I remember guiltily climbing the stairs, wishing that the day would come quickly, when I didn’t fall into things that disappointed and concerned her so.
There a presence of another around me at the tip of the morning, and it slowly broke me from my careless, dreamy sleep. I wanted to sink back under the deep layers of the ocean in my unconsciousness, but my eyelids began to flutter with the knowledge of someone near. Groaning, I opened my eyes to the bright light streaking across the room from the open window. I could smell the freshness of the day in the sunrays.
Sitting up, I find Doug, casually sitting on my bed. He stared at me with his hard but soft eyes with curiosity. He looked as if he had been there for a while.
After a moment of the two of us staring at each other, I opened my mouth to speak, keeping my eyes fixated on his.
“Um…good morning,” I said awkwardly.
He nodded. “Morning.”
Another moment of silence settled down upon us, like a thin trickle of dust.
“How long have you been sitting there?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A couple a minuets. Just making sure you were alive. You were pretty damaged up yesterday, you know?”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I nodded. “Not too badly. Just shaken up,” I stammered.
Doug seemed not to capture my words, as he then got up off of my bed and casually left the room. The action felt somewhat unsystematic, and I cocked my head, twisted my eyebrows together in confusion, before leaping out of the mess of blankets to follow him down the stairs.
“What time is it?” I asked him as I hurried down the stairs to catch up with him. He made a strange gruff sound in response, before telling me that it was just after eight o’clock.
Doug was soon slowly moving around the kitchen to some unheard tune, picking through cupboards and such to scrounge together a decent breakfast. He finally gave up on looking for eggs and pancake batter, looking rather disappointed, as I was, and then settled for a box of cereal. He poured us both a bowl, and nodded for me to sit with him.
I dug my spoon into the bowl and slurped up a mouthful of cornflakes, crunching in between the silence. I could hear birds sweetly chirping from the open kitchen window, the sound of cornflakes being crunched on, and nothing else. I gulped down the mouthful of cereal and cleared my throat.
“Where’s Claire?” I wondered.
Doug paused, as he always seemed to do before he spoke to anyone, and said, “Upstairs sleeping. Had a heck of a day yesterday, so I let her sleep in. Don’t you make her any worse, stay outta trouble.”
It was only after he grinned when I realized that he was joking. His teeth were full of mushy bits of cereal, but his grin was something so rare and precious, I couldn’t help but smile.
“She worries a lot about you, you know,” he said after another period of quiet. His spoon banged against his teeth, a sound that always made me internally cringe.
I shrugged in remorse. “I'm so sorry about that. I really didn’t mean for that to happen. It was a pure coincidence. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
He raised his fluffy grey eyebrows. “Coincidence? I don’t believe in that word at all, probably just as much as you do.”
I looked at him in silence, before spooning more cereal into my mouth.
He continued. “You’re a lot stronger than your father. I trust that you’ll be able to piece things together, if that’s what you want. Just be careful. And, yeah, I vaguely know about what happened, even before the fire. What was it, at the library too? I don’t know; Claire talks. But it doesn’t matter. None of that matters really, if you want my advice. You just have to do it” He shrugged simply and looked back down at his cereal after the longest eye contact we have ever encountered, and the most words ever passed between us. I didn’t even know how to respond, for the words sunk into me so perfectly, it was unimaginable.
I could only nod, giving my thanks. I timidly look up to him, wanting to provoke something more. “Thank you…I see.” I paused. “Um, what do you mean about him? Sorry, but was my father like me too?”
He shrugged like the question could just roll off of him and it wouldn’t make a difference at all. “Oh, he was a young fellow when I came into Claire’s life and married her. He was a bit lost, not knowing what to do about things, and because of that he often ran away, as you probably know. You aren’t like him in that sense, because you don’t seem to mind hitting things like last night head on. Keep doing that kid; who knows? Maybe it may just get you somewhere.”
I nodded again, and then looked down at my cereal, which I was surprised to see it had all been devoured. I realised that there was a slight pain in my stomach from hunger had been then silenced, and I hadn’t even noticed.
Doug scraped his chair across the floor to rise from his seat, carrying his bowl to the sink, and I followed him.
“I'm heading off to work now,” he said, and looked in my eyes as if to see if I was alright. Satisfied, he broke the eye contact and went off to track down his boots.
I looked at the ground, intensively absorbed in the perfect angles of each floorboard, before remembering. My eyes shot up to Doug, whom was calmly drifting in the waters of what I know as reality.
Hesitantly, followed him and asked, “Do you think that you could give me a ride to the school on your way? I was supposed to meet someone around now…” I trailed off awkwardly.
He didn’t look up from his boots when he let out a rumbling sound. “Write a note or something to your grandmother so she knows.”
I nodded in surprise of his acceptance, and went off to do just that, searching for a pen, and scribbling down the message on a napkin on the kitchen counter. I made sure it was as happy and loving as Claire’s soft soul, and even drew a few messy hearts as if to apologize for having her so worried.
I then tracked down my own shoes, but not before catching a glimpse of my gritty self in the mirror. I still wore the then rumpled and dirty dark jeans and black sweater from the previous day. My skin was caked with dirt and dust, and my stringy loose oily hair was falling down my back in tired strands. With my tight, darkened skin, I felt as though I resembled something that crawled out of a grave.
After pulling on my sneakers, and plunging into the frigid of the falling autumn morning, I caught up to Doug, and anxiously crawled into the passenger seat of the cherry red truck. I never noticed the vehicle on the property before, so I questioned him about it, receiving the brief answer of that he and his fellow workers often passed around the truck because of financial reasons. I didn’t press further.
The shock of the draughtiness had awakened me for a moment, but with the truck’s entrancing hum, I became lured back into the cosiness of unawareness. The gentle feeling of the truck rolling down the street, and Doug’s peaceful presence almost made me wish to be back in my bed. Only for a moment however.
The school zipped into view, slipping before the window in a flash. Baffled, I straightened up and rubbed the sleet from my eyes.
“Is that the guy you’re meeting?” Doug asked, cracking me from the silence.
I looked over Doug’s side of the truck and out the window to see Matt standing by the trees, like a murky ghost visiting the silence of a morning fog.
“Uh, yeah. He’s the guy who witnessed the fire with me. He’s my partner for that project thing?”
Doug seemed to be curious about this, and perhaps of everything I wonder about, for his eyes sparkled with interest and danced around the area as if to try to piece things together for himself. Despite his interest, he remained quiet, and waited for me to unbuckle.
“When’s it due?” he asked lowly, as if trying to ask of more. The sudden burst of conversation pouring out of that man surprised me, but also impressed me rather so.
“Monday,” I scoffed sheepishly.
He gave me a timid smile, and nodded as I hopped out of the truck.
Back into the shock of the cold, I slammed the truck door shut, and hugged my arms close to my body in hope of preserving any body heat. The winds placing their hands upon my head in a greedy lust began to become friends of mine, they were so familiar.
I waved to Doug as he pulled away down the empty street, and I hurried across to the edge of the school property.
Out in the distance, I could see him slowly trying to make eye contact. He seemed colder than the air dancing around us with his blue eyes of ice and disinterest.
“Hey!” I called as I got closer, and my sneakers brushed against the dewy grass with each step.
He looked up nodded back in acknowledgement.
I jogged up to him, where he slowly walked to meet me. Morning mist clung to our feet, grasping our footings in the wet glossy grass.
“How are you?” I asked breathlessly.
He nodded again, and grumbled something in response. Yeah, he was okay.
We stood there, out in the field of twisting, swaying grass, with the slight icy breeze, and the dark figure of the school ominous in the distance. The sky opened up with a bluish greyish tinge, like a canvas filled with murky milky paint thrown onto it.
I waited, until he finally spoke.
“I dug it back up. It could be the guy’s. You know, it might belong to that guy we heard from the porch?”
I nodded. “Do you think it’s his?
He shrugged, and racked his stubby fingernails through his thin dark hair. “Maybe. Here, I’ll get it.”
He o his back pocket, fishing out the dark leathery object. He clutched it in his hands for a moment, before outstretching his hand to hand it to me.
I accepted it, and examined it in my grasp. It was a simple thing, and rather old and battered. The material was wearing out, and pulled out in spots. I brushed it with my fingertips.
I carefully opened it, only to find a few bills in a small compartment, along with a few assorted unused gift cards. Eventually, I discovered a bus pass, the only source of identification. There wasn’t a picture, only a simple blank space, and I wondered how that was even possible. I looked up to Matt for a moment to question it, but he simply plucked it out of my hands.
“Wait, what’s his name?” I asked.
“Sea, you aren’t getting the whole picture here,” he informed. He put the wallet back in his pocket and faced me.
I shook my head. “What? What do you mean?”
He sighed. “I though we were on the same page. Don’t you want make something off of this?”
I stared at him blankly, watching how his pale ragged face questioned my own. “What do you mean…make something off of this?” I muttered to the wind.
“You know, like at school and stuff. I caught a lot of the guy around the house on video, and it’s already on the internet. With this,” he explained, waving the wallet out again, “people may want to take matter into their own hands. You know the type; gothic kids love this sort of garbage. I was going to sell it, you know?”
Bewildered, I stepped back. “What? Why would you do that? No one’s going to buy a stupid wallet off you. What would they do with it?”
He grinned, revealing a set of yellowing, but perfectly straight teeth. “Well, what would you do with it?”
I continued to stare at him, not answering.
He went on, feeling a confidence I hadn’t witnessed him wearing before. “I know a lot of people who like to poke around people’s lives, in any way possible. And if, by some miracle, that they don’t want to, then I can simply sell it to the police. I might not get as much from them, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll still get what I want in the end. Kids like me, they always do.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, breathing in more toxically cold air. Looking at him, while trying to see past the edgy greed we advertised on his face, I shook my head. “Matt. Just tell me his name. Please.”
He looked away, past me, into the houses worlds away. “I would, Sea,” he finally murmured, barely audible. “But you don’t have what I'm looking for.”
A sigh escaped me, and I scanned my eyes over the misty grass in frustration.
“Matt,” I started away from his eyes. “Just remember that if you can’t answer a simple question, for me, a friend, then I'm quite sure that I’d be able to answer other people’s. To what I know anyways. When people start knocking on my door, the police, your friends, or customers, whatever, I do know things. And I honestly wanted us to be friendly, and to help each other out. It’s up to you.”
I left him with that, unable to read his stone hard face. To me, he might have been amused. I could only turn around, and face the direction of the trailing wind.
I walked away feeling his gaze on me, but I soon felt it shift away, as his attention drifted to another layer of favours and secrets. I couldn’t understand how one would want to burry themselves in a heap of scandal and rumours so willingly. Perhaps I couldn’t understand the reward for it all. It probably worked, at least for him.
I thought of Samuel again, wishing that there would be something to pull him back into the investigation. I needed this in order to do so and failed miserably. Just when I thought I would be reaching for the glass box on the very top shelf of the store, it toppled over and shattered before my feet, where I would pay the consequences.
As I tried to look confident with my even stride, I felt the question linger on my mind, pulling in and out of focus. It rang around, like a string of small tinkling bells, and then rang around much more powerful, like the dong of a church bell.
What if I was given the missing pieces of all that was left behind for me? The forgotten pieces of a shattered life, all scattered in the rotting dust. Where were those shreds of knowledge, and life? I couldn’t even pick them up without slicing my fingers open with deep bloody scratches.
“Sea!”
I heard the call from behind me, just as I thought my time had been wasted.
I turned, and saw the scrawny boy a good distance from me. I could see no remorse on his face, as he was evidently the master of disguise. Some people simply were.
“Jarrod Emery,” he called, loud and clear. “That’s the name of the wallet guy!”