“I was fired today.” I touch the bump on my neck.
He’s quiet for a minute. He doesn’t move in the water and I’m proud of him for maintaining his concentration. “That doesn’t matter,” he finally says. “You can still be Bigfoot.”
“It’s not as convincing without the costume. I’ve told you this before.”
“Then imagine it,” he says. “You’re supposed to be an actress, right?”
I shut my eyes and picture Bigfoot lumbering through the forest, more alone than any human could grasp. I imagine the weight of his solitude. I open my mouth and fill my lungs with air, then arch my back and push it all out. The noise that comes from my body is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It beats against the thinning branches and the fall air, shoots towards the clouds like smoke. The echoes last for a long time, the vibrations moving across my skin like electrical currents. When I open my eyes, the lake and treetops are washed in a blue darkness.
Jimmy has floated out of my reach, but I don’t swim after him. When the crescent moon turns luminous, he asks to be taken back to the car. I guide him to shore and once he’s on dry land, he crouches and begins to shiver violently. I scold myself for not bringing a blanket or towels and try to get him to at least put on his clothes. But he shakes his head and asks me to help him wait it out. It will pass, he tells me. I’m being tested, I realize, to see how long I can endure suffering in another person. I bend over and press my hand between his shoulder blades, feeling the slender ligaments and bones a healthy body conceals. The moonlight makes the lake glow like an enormous black pearl. The soft skin on my stomach hardens with goosebumps. The night is quiet, save for the sound of Jimmy’s rapid breath. I kneel next to him, the damp leaves sticking to my knees. I look down at Jimmy’s thigh, at the dirt smudged across the pale stretch of skin; I brush it away, the grit damp and cool. I bring my hand to my lips and let the dirt melt off my fingertips, tasting bitterness and metal. The moon shifts and the grass ahead catches silver, the light passing over us and away.
goodbye my loveds
My brother entered my room at dawn. He wanted to show me the hole outside our building. I got out of bed and he drug me through the blue-black light of our basement apartment. He was twelve, although most people thought he was younger. I didn’t tell him I was already awake, lying on my back and gazing at the ceiling, trying hard to return to sleep until my alarm sounded, trying hard to be normal.
The streets were quiet, the slender trees dusted in a papery fog. It was warm and humid, the beginning of summer. Denver crouched behind a car. He was wearing swimming trunks and a Superman cape. “Look at that.” He pointed to a dark circle on the asphalt. It was the size of a dinner plate, the borders uneven and jagged. “I found it when I was patrolling.”
The patrolling started shortly after the school year ended. Denver walked the sidewalks in the early hours to make sure there was no spilled garbage and all the cars were where they should be, no loose pets or broken windows.
“That’s just a crack,” I told him. “It happens.”
“No, Shelby. It’s a hole.” And to prove it, he reached inside, his arm disappearing to the elbow.
“Okay,” I said, hoping he would stop before a rat found the soft tips of his fingers. “You’re right. It’s a hole.”
He pulled out his arm and rocked back on his heels, satisfied.
It looked like a patch of asphalt just melted away, a miniature sinkhole precariously close to the rear of a brown Honda. I kneeled on the concrete and peered into the opening. I saw a narrow stream of darkness, as though I was gazing through a telescope trained on a black and starless sky.
Denver produced a large flashlight from underneath his cape. He pressed a button and for a moment his face was washed in an eerie whiteness.
“You shouldn’t be playing with that,” I said. “It’s for emergencies.”
“What kind of emergencies?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “Snowstorms, blackouts. That sort of thing.”
“But I see emergencies all the time.” He cradled the flashlight protectively. “So doesn’t it make more sense to keep it with me?”
His hazel eyes widened and his mouth tightened. He was starting to get anxious, which meant this was not the time to force adult logic. “Okay, Denver. That’s a good point.”
He aimed the light into the hole; the beam was swallowed by shadows. “There’s no bottom,” he said without looking up.
“Of course there’s a bottom,” I replied. “We just can’t see it.”
“It’s weird to have a hole without a bottom,” he continued, ignoring me as he always did when I contradicted his imaginings. “Maybe it’s some kind of tunnel.”
A terrible image came into my mind: Denver slipping underneath the street and getting stuck in some dark, underground compartment of the city. I examined the diameter and, to my relief, decided it wasn’t large enough for him to squeeze through.
“Come on.” I felt the heat of the sun, which had risen above the rows of brick buildings. “Let’s go inside. I have to go to work.” Soon the neighbors would be out and I didn’t want them to see Denver like this, dressed in swimming trunks and a cape, shining his flashlight into a hole. They already thought we were a strange pair, brother and sister living alone together. We’d been on our own for just over a year.
I told my brother it was time to put on some regular clothes.
“I’d rather not,” he said.
“Please, Denver.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’m tired.”
He hesitated for a moment, then clicked off the light and followed me to the apartment. He thanked me for looking at the hole and apologized for waking me so early. I told him it was okay, I was glad to see it. We closed the door just before a car passed on the street.
Our parents were killed in the Amazon. Their guide, Lugo, sent me a letter after the bodies were brought back to the States. It was tradition, he told me, to tell the oldest child the story of their parents’ death. In the opening paragraph, he mentioned spending time in Cape Town and learning to speak and write in English. He described the libraries he frequented while abroad and getting hooked on English novelists and, after returning to South America, squeezing copies of Jude the Obscure and The French Lieutenant’s Woman into the backpack he carried on expeditions. He lived in a floating house along the banks of the Amazon River. I could tell from the tone of the letter that he was fond of my parents.
My parents were scientific explorers. They specialized in terrestrial primates and had discovered several new species: a long-tailed monkey in East Africa, a macaque in India, a highland mangabey in Tanzania. Their expeditions were featured in National Geographic and Time Magazine. They co-authored six books and delivered lectures at Ivy League universities. My brother and I spent most of our childhoods in boarding schools — his in New Hampshire, mine in western Massachusetts — but sometimes the spring and winter breaks coincided with lecture circuits and they’d take us along. I remembered sitting in the front row of auditoriums, Denver’s legs barely long enough to reach the floor, and hearing the thunderous applause when they appeared on stage. After they died, my mother’s sister came into their house, a pale blue Victorian in Lowell, and started throwing away all the articles and photographs. This is what got them killed, she shouted when I objected, waving a picture of my mother standing with a crocodile at the Great Barrier Reef. Aunt Lucille had been angry because she thought she was going to have to take Denver. The day he heard about our parents, he defaced a statue of the school’s founder with black spray paint, and Aunt Lucille received a call from the headmaster, who suggested boarding school wasn’t the best place for him right now. I was three semesters away from finishing an art history degree at a college in the Berkshires, but insisted my brother live with me. I left school and took Denver to Boston, where jobs were easy to find and nothing was familiar.