For the first time, my brother turned his gaze from the window.
“The Stranger’s dead?” I said.
My dad turned and gave me a stern look. “Be quiet,” he said. “No one’s talking about that.”
I looked at my brother, to see what this information did to his face, but he was through looking at any of us. Later, when I couldn’t sleep, I let my mind imagine Chris’s death. I put Chris in the woman’s chair, instead of behind the camera. I made Chris take her place and I let the Stranger, whoever he was, whisper how I felt. You need to tell them. They need to understand that you deserve this. I made the Stranger put the gun to Chris’s head. I made Chris beg and cry. You know me, he said. You know me. Do I look like a stranger?
I made the Stranger say shut up. I made him shoot and I watched Chris fall to the floor. Do you know me? the Stranger said. Do you know me?
After my dad put his notepad away, after my mother hugged my brother for hours and the doctor said we could go home, after my mother made my brother a bed on the couch and lay next to him, so he wouldn’t have to sleep in the basement, so she could watch him — after all this, when it was just me in the basement, me and the spiders, I let the Stranger loose. I brought Chris back to life and let the Stranger kill him over and over. In all the ways I could think of. In all the ways I’d seen villains die in movies.
Nobody knows anybody, and if you think you do, this is what you get.
In my mind I made Chris suffer the worst, and I tried to make myself believe that this made things better.
You deserve this. You deserve this.
seventeen
THE STRANGER WAS FOUND weeks later, states away. My dad never mentioned the story, but it was all over the local news, the front page of the paper. He was caught hiding in an old barn on a random farm. The barn was rarely used, apparently, and had been all but abandoned. Boards were missing or cracked, the paint was worn off, and the roof had gaping holes and dents from suffering decades of storms. The land’s owners might never have known about the Stranger had their teenage son not snuck a girl and some wine to the barn. They discovered the Stranger sleeping behind an old bale of hay, wild cats circling his head, meowing for food and water. The son told his dad and the dad, too old to deal with squatters anymore, told the sheriff. An hour later the Stranger was on his way back to Kansas. Back to Leavenworth.
We stayed with my dad, and the city continued to heal. Every day the news ran a different heartwarming video telling the story of some small miracle related to the storm. A dog was picked up by the tornado and thrown two miles. Its owners gave up the dog for dead, until last week when they heard a whine at the door. The dog had crawled its way home, broken legs and all.
By September, when school was ready to start, there were few signs of the tornado’s damage. You had to know where to look.
My mother took me by the apartment to gather the rest of our things. When I had put the last trash bag of our belongings in the van, I went to the pool. It too might’ve looked the same to someone who didn’t know better. The water was calm and blue, and every pool chair was in its row. But the diving board was gone. Ripped out, I assumed, by the tornado. All that was left were rust-colored holes where the board had been bolted in. Four small circles that showed what once was.
Instead of going back inside the apartment when I was finished, as my mother instructed, I sat at the deep end. A dead leaf descended from some tree and floated in the water. I thought of Chris. How he died. My parents never told me directly, but of course there had been articles about my family in the paper. I wasn’t allowed to read any of them except the one that told of my brother’s return. It was brief and dealt only with facts, listing them in a way that didn’t assign blame. The police officer’s son had been found. Locked in the basement of a vacant house close to the city pool. Officers were led to the house after discovering the body of a twenty-year-old Leavenworth man, Adam Sharp, drowned in the city pool. An apparent suicide. A neighbor had seen Mr. Sharp leaving the vacant house on several occasions, but thought nothing of it. The officer’s son, my brother, was in stable condition.
So here was the leaf. Here was Chris, Adam, facedown in the pool. I thought of the time my brother and I went out to the apartment pool and found Chris in the same position. How we knew he was joking, but still grew worried. How when my brother swam out to make sure Chris was alive, Chris dove underwater like a shark and grabbed my brother’s legs, pulling my brother down with him. I tried to imagine what it felt like when whoever found Chris poked at his body, waiting for him to roll over, to come to life. I thought of my brother, how he was changed, and tried to imagine what it would feel like when you realized someone was no longer alive.
* * *
My dad was waiting when we got back to the duplex. He eagerly helped us bring our leftover things inside, lapping us multiple times and carrying cartoonishly large loads. When the van was empty, he slammed the doors, and for the first time since my brother’s disappearance, his mouth wasn’t dragged into a frown.
“Well,” he said, “is that it? We’re all moved in?”
My mother and I looked at each other, at our dad, who was doing a terrible job hiding his excitement. Behind him the van rattled, even though it was parked and the engine was off. I grabbed the last bag out of my mother’s hand.
“That’s it,” I said. “We sold all the rest. When you left and we were poor.”
My dad’s face fell. For a moment, I felt what my brother must have when he knocked Rick out with his words. For some reason it felt good to hit my dad, and a part of me wanted more.
My dad checked the van’s side door, to make sure it was locked. “I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll go clear some space inside.”
He went in, and my mother followed him, but not before giving me a long, serious look. A warning maybe. Or a worry. Either way, she didn’t say anything, and when I finally went in minutes later, I caught her and my dad whispering to each other in the living room. They shut up when they saw me.
* * *
My brother did not return to school with me. No one told me for how long, but for now he would be homeschooled by my mother, who ditched the bathrobe for slacks and her golf course polo, the closest thing she had to teaching attire. The encyclopedias were the schoolbooks, the kitchen was her classroom, and by the time I left each morning my mother and brother were sitting at the table, leaning over the day’s lesson. The sound of my brother’s voice was a comfort, but he still talked only when he had to. Every day I tried to think of something to say to him, something that would inch us back to the way we were, but every word or sentence I thought of sounded stupid in my head, worthless aloud. It was like the dialogue I forced upon my G.I. Joes, small and meaningless. Words that took up space and nothing more.
A few weeks into school I came home and my brother was in the basement. His things gone from the couch. I found my mother on the back porch, staring at the weather. The sky was gray, but the threats were gone. Storm season was over in Kansas. The dumb weathermen could relax.
“It was his idea,” my mother said. “To go down there. I asked if he was sure.”
I looked up at her. A light rain misted our faces.
“How was school?”
“Fine,” I lied.