Chapter 31

“Hey, do you want to go for a walk?”

Sinder was pouring two more shots of tequila.  He switched the glasses so Gavin didn’t have to drink out of the donutty one.

“A walk.”

He and Sinder had been roommates for almost three years, now, and they had done a lot of things. Some of those things had been pretty weird, some of them had been depressingly normal, some of them were too messed up in his mind to remember correctly.  But a walk seemed kind of unprecedented.

“Yeah.”  Sinder poured the shot down his throat, looked side to side to side like he was checking the living room for spies but he wanted to be subtle about it.  “I can’t talk about all this in the apartment. Too much baggage in here.”

“Okay, sure.”  It was a good idea, actually. A clear, sunny morning outside, and some fresh air would probably be good for both of them.

“Drink your tequila,” Sinder said.

“I have office hours.”

“What, at like five? It’s only.”  He picked up his phone, squinted at the screen, turned it around once, twice.  “Eight thirty. You’ll be sober by then.” 

Fine.  Gavin drained the glass.  Coughed a little, ate one of the cinnamon donuts, put on a quick pot of coffee.  Went to his room, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt and running shoes.

When he came out again, Sinder was packing the tequila and donut boxes into a big empty backpack.

“How long is this walk gonna be?”

“I don’t know.”  Sinder jostled the bag a little to make sure everything was in there okay.  “Depends where we end up.”

“Maybe water?” Gavin said. His throat was all clogged from the tequila and donut grease.  He filled his aluminum bottle and another random one he found in the cupboard.  Then he poured coffee into two plastic travel mugs, Sinder topped them off with some old Jack Daniels from the freezer, and they were out the door.

Sinder started walking in a weird direction, south, which wasn’t towards anything. 

“So, you wanted to talk about stuff,” Gavin said.

“Not yet.”

Sinder was just walking, focused, kind of determined, next to Gavin or sometimes a few steps ahead of him.  Past student apartment buildings like the one they lived in, run-down houses on small lots. Then just houses, real ones with yards and swing sets that you could see because there were no fences. Silent walking, just the sounds of feet hitting cement, woosh woosh woosh woosh.  Gavin sipped his coffee, wished there wasn’t whisky floating at the top of it.  Decided he didn’t care.  The whiskey was okay. Fewer houses, farther apart, more trees.  No houses. 

The road became narrow and bumpy and mostly forest now. All forest, shady and chilly.  Gavin finished the last sip of coffee.  He wanted more. Also, he was kind of drunk. The trees had gotten too thick to see through.  No one was driving past.  Was this even part of New Buffalo? He wasn’t sure how long they had been walking, took out his phone.  It was nine-thirty.  Only forty-five minutes, right?  Seemed like hours, like they might never get back.

“Do you know where we’re going?”

“Shh,” Sinder said.  “It’s around here somewhere.”

Gavin was starting to feel turned-around, like he was facing backwards or the ground was really the sky or something.  There were a lot of chipmunks, with the little stripes on their tails, chasing each other around trees, making weird faces at him. Drink some water.  But Sinder had the backpack, and Gavin didn’t feel like asking. 

Sinder stopped, pointed at a dirt trail off the road. It wasn’t marked or obvious, an opening between trees, a bit of packed dirt. Gavin never would have even noticed it.

“I think this is it.”

He pushed a small branch out of the way, started down the trail.  He’s going to kill me, Gavin thought, which was silly.  Sinder only weighed like a hundred and forty pounds, to Gavin’s two-ten. Okay, two-twenty. But the tequila bottle.  Stop being crazy. Gavin followed behind him, between the trees, through muddy patches and thick spider webs.  Should I grab the backpack off him now?

Sinder stopped, turned around. Gavin raised his arm to strike.

“Wrong path,” Sinder said.  “We need to go back to the road.”

Oh, okay.  But now Sinder was behind him.  Gavin could feel the tequila bottle hovering over his head, ready to crash down on him.

“Hey.”  He stopped, had an idea. “Could I get some of that water?”

“Oh yeah, sure.”  Sinder handed him the backpack.  Gavin drank—ah, water, that’s what he needed—put the lid back on.  Opened it again, drank some more.  Better, much better.  Right away some of the darkness lifted out of his brain.  He put the backpack on his own shoulders and stepped backwards on the path, so Sinder could walk ahead of him again.

Now he was watching Sinder’s dark hair in front of him, his skinny shoulders, t-shirt soaked with sweat where the backpack had been.  Sinder, his best friend.  He had a strong, sudden desire to hug those shoulders, you know, just in a friend kind of way.  Okay, maybe not really hug him; it was just a weird passing thought.  But for real, why did you think he was trying to kill you?  What a dumb thing to think.

They got back to the road.  Gavin dragged his shoes on the grass at the side of the road, trying to get the mud off.  Walked for who knows, fifty trees more, a quarter mile, a half mile.  Another path.

“This one,” Sinder said.  “This is it, for sure.”

This path was a little less overgrown, but muddier, windier.  There were snakes on it.  At least two black and yellow snakes, and a couple fast little lizards. Sinder paused where the path split, looked right and left, stood some more.  Then he went left, which was into a giant puddle, so they had to walk on their tiptoes on branches around the sides.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?”

“Up there.”  Sinder pointed up ahead, like there was something to see up there, but it was just a bunch of trees.  Gavin wondered what kind they were.  They looked kind of generic, just regular tree-trees. Not redwood or eucalyptus or anything they had a lot of in California.  Not even oak.  Maybe elm? Maple? 

Rona would know.

He imagined her here in this forest, freaking out with internal tree-excitement but not showing it outwardly. Just walking calm and majestic, tall, listening to tree conversations normal people couldn’t hear.

There was some light up ahead, a clearing.  The path opened up into a bigger, muddier puddle, and then a lake. No, smaller, a pond, about the size of a city block. It was murky with algae and grassy stuff growing up through the water. There were mosquitoes buzzing over it, all kinds of little bugs flying in circles.  If you went in it you’d probably get leaches or ringworm or something. It was really pretty, though, green on green on green, green light shimmering down through the treetops, up from the water.

“Are we here?” Gavin asked.

But Sinder was halfway up a tall, straight tree on the side of the pond.  His arms were stretched over his head, grabbing a high branch, his feet scrambling against the knotty trunk. Gavin looked up.  Hidden behind a mess of leaves and branches and spider webs, there was a wall.  A window.  A door. A platform in front of the door, Sinder squatting on it, panting a little.

He reached his arm down, made a hook with his hand.  “The bag.” Gavin lifted the backpack, stood on his toes, until Sinder looped his wrist under one of the straps and pulled it up.

“Come up,” Sinder said.

Fuck.  Gavin's legs were sore, his feet swollen. He was so, so thirsty.  Now he had to climb a tree?   With all those scratchy branches, scraping up his dry, tired skin?  It hurt just thinking about it.

“Hurry up,” Sinder’s voice called from inside the tree house.

Gavin reached up, as high as he could, grabbed the lowest branch.  How did Sinder even do this?  He pulled, walked his feet up the trunk, dropped back down.  Ouch.  Okay, there was no way this was gonna work. 

He thought about yelling up to Sinder, asking him how to get up.  Or telling him to come back down. They could talk down on the ground just fine.  But actually, no. Admitting that he was too big a wuss to lift his own giant ass off the ground—humiliating.   A hundred times worse than just figuring out a way to do it. 

He reached up with his right arm, jumped, looped his left arm around the branch, hanging off like a monkey.  Good.  Kick off the tree trunk, swing your right leg over the branch.  There!  He was up.  He sat on the platform, wiped some leafy-spiderwebby stuff out of his hair.  Rolled up his left sleeve, checked out the deep, red lines the tree bark had scratched into his arm, right through the sweatshirt.

“What are you doing?” Sinder said through the door.  Gavin turned, crawled through the kid-sized opening. More scratches.

It was small inside, dusty, not high enough to stand.  But there were giant windows on two sides, letting in air that smelled healthy, like sap and dirt. Sinder was slouched against a wall in a streak of green-tinted light, drinking tequila out of the bottle. 

<Chapter 30

Chapter 32>

Chapter 30

Sinder didn’t come home that night, which was too bad, because Gavin had been hoping for some roommate bonding. 

He ordered pizza and beer, put the pizza in the cold oven to keep it insulated, searched the internet for student-teacher porn Sinder would like. He wanted to offer something.  Something besides, What the fuck is going on between you and Rona Gomez.  He didn’t want to be jealous like that.  Sinder was his true friend, the only person in Indiana who really cared about him.  It was Sinder who had gotten him drunk whenever he was depressed about his dissertation, gone out with him when he was bored and lonely, entertained him when he was too unmotivated to leave the apartment.  Cleaned up his vomit at least twice.  Spent hours when he should have been studying for his exams searching out porn with Liam Stump references, just to make Gavin laugh.

And who was Rona? Some girl he had slept with once, some girl who was barely talking to him.  It was time to get his priorities straight.

He had some trouble finding the right porn.  Especially because he really, really wasn’t in a porn mood.  Kind of like the opposite.  But disinterest was good, in fact required for proper judgment. So he was going to roll with his lack of enthusiasm and find a lesbian porn, the best fucking lesbian student teacher porn ever, one that would blow Sinder’s mind.  

He put a couple of slices of pizza on a plate, opened a beer, a can because the pizza place had run out of bottles.  Let’s see.  Sinder liked hot but not too serious.  The actors should talk, like as much as possible. Bonus for some exaggerated physical characteristic like ginormous boobs or really really tiny ones or huge crazy pubes or something.

He skimmed through maybe four of them, but they all seemed to have punky girls who reminded him of Rona.  One with a black hoodie.  Another in combat boots.  Forget it.  He gave up on lesbian porn, switched to interracial, which actually meant white girls with black guys.  He found a pretty good one with a kind of ugly guy with a seriously donkey-sized dick fucking a really skinny blonde girl with big fake boobs.  They talked a lot about Einstein’s theory of relativity, because the guy was supposed to be her physics teacher.

So, um, E equals…MC?

Very close, very close. It’s MC squared.

Oh! I knew it was something like that.

Excellent work. You’re my top student.

Nothing in it reminded him of Rona in any way.  Perfect. He emailed the link to himself, lay on the couch, watched some Korean hip hop videos and some extreme natural disasters caught on film and a rap battle between Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton that Sinder had told him to watch like two months ago.

Then it was three in the morning, he had eaten twelve of the sixteen pizza slices and drank all the beer, and it was time to go to bed.  He slept weird, bad, dreaming about Sinder on some crazy drug binge in someone’s dirty basement.  Sinder getting hit by a car as he stumbled home, bleeding to death on the unlit roadside. Sinder alive and well in Rona’s dorm room, their bodies pressed together on the narrow bed, his brown skinny body on her pale curvy one.  Lovers kissing in a field of mosaic and gold.

When Gavin got up to make coffee at eight the next morning, Sinder was sitting on the couch with a bottle of tequila and two boxes of supermarket donuts.  Which meant he hadn’t gone to bed yet, had been up all night, but Gavin didn’t want to ask where he’d been.

“I found a pretty sweet porn.”  He got his laptop off the kitchen table, sat down on the other side of the couch.  “Wanna see it?”

Sinder shook his head. “Not in the mood.”

The response seemed a little weird to Gavin, actually really weird.  He wished he had made coffee before he sat down. 

“You’re never not in the mood for student-teacher porn.” It was always Gavin who wasn’t in the mood, because he was too stressed out or he had gotten rejected by some girl or he had just masturbated in the shower or it was eight in the morning.  Sinder never seemed deterred by those kind of things.

“That was the old me.”  Sinder poured a shot of tequila into a souvenir shot glass from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. There was a whole set of them in the cupboard. He tipped his head back to swallow it, sighed.  Held up a second glass, empty. “Want some?”   

Gavin shook his head.  He was pretty depressed already, and the day was just starting.

“Donut?” Sinder held out a box.  Chocolate-covered.  That smooth, even chocolate that looked like it was made of plastic.

“Okay,” Gavin said.  It squished between his fingers as he pulled it out.  Sugar and margarine smell, slimy chocolate.  He shoved most of it into his mouth in one bite, the rest in a second bite, just to get it out of his hand as fast as possible. He looked around for something to wipe it on, but there weren’t any napkins or anything over here.  He considered using the bottom of his t-shirt—he had already slept in it, and he could put it right in the laundry when he got dressed—but it just really wasn’t his style.  He got up, still morning-creaky, went to the kitchen and got a paper towel.

“How was Kansas?” Sinder asked.

“Okay.”  He sat back down, checked out the donuts in the other box.  Cinnamon.  “Kind of weird.  They offered me the job.”

“Congratulations.”  Sinder poured tequila again, this time into both shot glasses.  “So you’ll be moving.”

“One way or the other I guess.  I still haven’t heard from Santa Clarita.”

“You should just call them.”

“I can’t.” Right?  One, two, three hours earlier, so that meant. “It’s five in the morning there.”

“Call them later.”

Sinder passed one of the glasses to Gavin. Gavin took it, even though there was no way he was going to do shots at eight fifteen on a Tuesday morning. It was actually good tequila; they had bought a few bottles of it in Mexico last year during spring break.  They drank the others ones but this one had been sitting on top of the refrigerator for a year.  The label had a painting of a desert landscape on it, and a picture of a worm on the back, but there wasn't  an actual worm floating at the bottom.

“Okay, I’ll call them,” Gavin said. “This afternoon.”

Sinder swallowed his shot.

“Drink yours.”

Gavin held it to his nose.  Yup, tequila. It had that kind of sweet smell that made him think of margaritas.  He dipped the tip of his tongue into it. Not bad, okay really.  Seemed like it would clear the donut grease out of his mouth, anyway. It would go down better with salt and lime, but of course they didn’t have any limes or even lemons or anything, and just salt was kind of nasty. He drank about half the glass. 

“I’m going to drop out,” Sinder said.

Gavin put the half-finished glass down on the coffee table.  No more.  Clearly morning tequila had been a bad idea.

“Why?”

“Let’s see.”  Sinder took a cinnamon donut out of the box, pulled a piece off of it.  “You won’t be here. Randy hates me. I’m sick of philosophy. I have nothing of value to contribute to the study of ethics.  I hate New Buffalo.  I fucking hate Indiana.”

He pressed the chunk of donut into a greasy disk, rolled it into a ball, pressed it back into a disk.

“Okay,” Gavin said.  Calm, adult, reasonable. “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know.”  He threw the ball of donut in a neat arc at the coffee table.  It dropped into Gavin’s shot glass, plunk.  Little bits of grease and flour floated up to the surface.  “Move somewhere.  I haven’t figured it out yet.  I mean, I could do anything.”

It was true.  Anyone could do anything, couldn’t they.  He watched Sinder lean across the couch, grab Gavin’s tequila with the dissolved donut pieces floating in it, swallow it down.  Anyone could do anything they wanted to, and there was nothing you could do to stop them. 

<Chapter 29

Chapter 31>

Chapter 29

“I imagine a child who has swallowed up his parents too soon, who frightens himself on that account, ‘all by himself,’ and, to save himself, rejects and throws up everything that is given to him—all gifts, all objects.” —Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

Gavin had never hated a flower before this one.  Fucking lilac or whatever it was, poking up through the dirt of a New Buffalo flower bed, right by the gate at the south entrance to campus.  Surrounded by unopened green buds, but this one was precocious, sporting a cluster of blue-purple blossoms so perfect you kind of wanted to eat them.  They probably smelled great, too, but there was no way Gavin was going to smell them.  Fine, fuck it, he was going to smell them.  He put his knee to the cement path, felt the damp ground through his jeans, lowered his nose.  Yeah, it smelled fucking awesome, sweet and soapy like your grandmother would smell if you lived in England.

He stood up, gave it one last look, so cheery and springy rising up from the bare winter ground, symbolizing hope and new life and probably love. He felt like kicking it.

Fucking Rona Gomez was ruining everything.  

He had seen her in class last week, on Wednesday, fresh off his Kansas trip.  Flew in Tuesday night, and the message from Lee was already on his voicemail when he got off the plane.  The committee has conferred to discuss your candidacy.  We would like to offer you the position of Associate Professor, starting in September.

Which was sort of a relief, to know for sure that he had a job.  A job where cows were an academic discipline, where barbed wire was a cultural activity.  Sort of a relief and sort of the scariest thing ever.

He had gone to class all messed up, totally off his game. He could barely manage to talk about Time Slide, which was usually the thing he was best at talking about.  The tragic downfall of Thomas McGrew III and IV.  The abject inherent in silence, the degeneration of the self. Who fucking cares.  Terrifying things were happening.  Somewhere in windowless offices with unpleasant lighting, his fate was being decided. Who could care about two make-believe guys on a make-believe slide, rambling on about their fear of death or the unknown or whatever. All he could think about was dusty fields and classrooms that wobbled when you closed the door. 

Don’t think about Kansas. Be present.

He looked at his students, thought about the empty seat where DeJuan should be sitting.  And of course, worse than that.

Rona Gomez.

Her hair was in a high ponytail, showing a long pale expanse of neck from her hairline to the collar of her t-shirt.  Zoom.  He  was kissing it, biting it, licking her collarbone, sucking on her nipple.  Fuck.  Stop it.  Her nipple, brown and hard, the bottom curve of her breast swelling over her ribcage.   

Stop looking. 

God, it was like he has no freaking control of himself.  Five years perfecting the art of inconspicuous boob-watching, and here he was losing his shit over a neck.

It didn’t matter; she was too busy being a model student to notice. Flipping through the book, taking notes, drawing trees, participating in discussions.  He’d even seen her smile once, working in a small group with that Asian guy who was so obviously into her, it was embarrassing.  Why would she smile for that guy?  What the fuck was she so happy about, anyway?

He looked at the neck again, searched it for marks someone else might have left in the less than two weeks since he’d been with her.  A blotchy spot, probably just a bruise or something. Whatever, you don’t own her.  If she wanted to go around letting any random asshole give her hickies—and of course not just that but probably fuck her, definitely fuck her or at least stick his fingers in her and whatever—that was her business.

Stop it!!!

She was out the door the second the bell rang. He had hoped she would stay after class, talk to him.  It didn’t have to be about hanging out or whatever had happened between them.  Just, you know, catching up for a minute, saying hi would be nice.  Even if she didn’t want to sleep with him again, didn’t want a relationship or anything, she didn’t have to act like he was invisible.

Maybe she’s just laying low.  Being discreet.  She’d probably call him over the weekend, ask him to hang out so she could hear about how his trip went, tell him how class went with the sub while he was away.  After all, she was the one with his phone number—he didn’t have hers—so it was kind of on her to be, you know, friendly and communicative.

Now it was Monday, the call had never come, and class was starting in ten minutes.  Today, he wasn’t going to leave it up to chance.  He was going to grab her after class, make sure they talked.  Nothing too big a deal, just for a minute, just some brief normal human contact so he wouldn’t lose his mind. 

As he walked through the middle of campus, past at least five more nauseatingly beautiful fucking flowers, including a yellow one that looked like it should be on a greeting card or something, he planned what he would say.

Hey, can we talk?

No, nothing’s wrong, just wanted to see how everything is going.  How is it going?

My week? Nothing special. Just the job interview in Kansas.  Yeah, they want to hire me.

Fuck.

There had to be some way to do this without sounding like a total fucking creep.

He opened the door, looked at the clock—three minutes late.  It was the first truly nice day of the year, spring for real now, mating season.  The Ashleys were all in tiny shorts, like tiny, like their butts were going to have red marks from the plastic seats. The Brandons were all in white tank tops with beer logos. Really the whole room was just a lot of skin and restlessness and B.O. Students were sitting backwards and sideways on chairs, squirming, staring out the dusty window at the little square of blue. Kayla had her shiny bare legs draped over Braden’s lap.  This must be one of their on days.  Even the Asian girls were in miniskirts, slumped over, doodling flowers and hearts in their notebooks.

This would be the worst kind of day to pull Rona aside, with all this weird horny energy everywhere.  Whatever semi-creepy thing he said to her, it was going to sound about ten times more creepy with all these hormones floating around everywhere.  But he was going to make himself do it—he looked around the room for her—be a grownup and initiate a polite conversation, no matter how—um, awkward, he was going to—hey, wait. Where was she, anyway?

Fuck.

He sat down at his desk, thunk, dropped his heavy book bag hard onto the floor.

“Work in groups,” he said.

They didn’t even look at him, just kept chatting, giggling.

“I said, work in groups.”

He stared at them and they stared back.  A sea of confused and grumpy faces, entrusted to his care, waiting for his guidance. He had zero idea what they were supposed to be doing.

Maybe he was losing his mind.

“What do you want us to work on?” Rona's Asian guy asked. 

“Discuss the ending of Time Slide,” Gavin said.

“What about it?”

God, couldn’t this guy do one thing for himself? Just talk about it.

“You know,” Gavin said.  “How it made you feel.”  Okay, what else?  “Whether it was a good ending or a bad ending.  And, oh, the abject.”

Whispers, nervous laughter. Kayla pulled on one of Braden’s blond curls, straightened it and let it spring back to his head.  He rolled his eyes and pushed her legs off his lap.

“Ten minutes,” Gavin said.  “Each group will tell the class what they discussed.  You’ll be graded out of twenty points.”

That always got their attention. They moved their chairs around, got in the same groups as always. Except the Asian guy worked with the other Asian kids, since Rona wasn’t in class. And Braden and Kayla didn’t work in the same group, which meant they had gotten in a fight sometime in the last five minutes.

“Fucking depressing,” one of the nerd guys was saying.  The other nerds in his group nodded.

Gavin propped his chin in his hand and watched them thumbing through their books.  His body felt really heavy.  Maybe not heavier than usual, but more like he had lost the strength to hold himself upright. He kind of wanted to slouch the way the students did, to put his feet up on the desk next to him, to lie down on the floor.  To go straight home and get under the covers and sleep for like a year.

“Okay, time.”  He forced himself to sit up straight, like a normal teacher.  “Kayla, what did your group talk about?”

“Me?”

She scrunched up her face, rolled her eyes up in her head, thought. From the neck down, she looked healthy as ripe fruit, her thighs soft and tan on her chair, her boobs pushed up on a platter.  But her face was kind of grotesque, a mask, if you thought about it, pale and dark-circled and painted thick with tan powder.

“I guess.”  She pressed her knuckles to her cheek and chewed on her pinky.  “Mostly how sad the ending was.”

“It is sad,” Gavin agreed. That was weird, agreeing; he could tell from Kayla’s narrowed eyes. “I mean, what’s sad about it?” 

She sighed, slouched a little lower in her seat.  Gavin tried not to look down her shirt.  Actually he really didn’t want to.  He closed his eyes. He could hear his phone buzzing in his bag.  Santa Clarita.  He hoped.  Five weeks now, and still no word from them.

“Well, I guess it kind of made it seem like life has no meaning.  Like you could have one person or one thing that makes your life worth living, and then when it’s gone.  It’s like, what’s the point.”  She sighed, bit her finger again.  “It sort of made me understand why people commit suicide.”

“Wow,” Gavin said.  And then, because he couldn’t imagine any good direction for things to go from here, he told the class to go home early. Before I fucking shoot myself. 

“Sorry, I’m not feeling too well,” is what he said.

He stared at his bag as they left, waiting for the room to be empty. This probably wasn’t a good time to check his phone or listen to a message from Santa Clarita.  If it was bad news, if he didn’t get the job, he probably wouldn’t even be able to drag his ass back home.  He’d just have to stay in this room until the next class started, crawl out into the hall, spend the night half-sleeping in the stairwell.

He considered just picking the bag up and leaving without even looking at the phone.  He could go home, get into bed, and then check the message.  That way he’d already be in the right place for his subsequent nervous breakdown.

Good idea.  Go home.  He stood, went to his bag, and then, somehow, the phone was in his hand.

No call from Santa Clarita.  The buzzing had been a text message.  It was from a number that wasn’t programmed into his phone.

Need to drop your class, sorry.

Fuck.  What?

He sat back down, put the phone on the desk, stared at the message for a minute. Maybe it wasn’t Rona.  Some other student?  No, of course it was her.  He had never given his cell number to another student, never ever.

Sorry to hear that, he texted back.  Reason?

He waited for a few minutes, looking out the window.  The dust made a pattern kind of like a crow.  Maybe a crow in the rain.  On a wire fence.  Long rainy drips.  Barbed wire.

No message yet.

He picked up his bag,  put the phone in his pocket. Turned off the light, walked through the dim hallway and out into the bright afternoon sun.

He was almost to the edge of campus when his pants began to vibrate.  He sat down on a bench, looked at the screen.

Want to come to a party on Sat? Talk then.

He was sitting across from that same lilac, or whatever it was.   It had been less than an hour, but some of the barren plants were starting to show slivers of purple that hadn’t been there this morning, peeking out of their green buds.  They were sending out a sleepy perfume that he could smell even without leaning down. 

Ok, he texted back.

His phone vibrated immediately.

Cool. Sinder is coming too. 

Uh huh.  Sinder was coming.

Cool, he texted.

He stood up, put the phone in his pocket, lifted the bag onto his shoulder.  He walked to the edge of the flower bed, raised his foot extra high, and brought it down on top of the perfect lilac. He smashed his shoe into the ground like he was putting out a cigarette.

When he pulled his shoe away, the flower was flat, a little oozy, squashed like road kill.

“Fuck,” he said.  What the hell is wrong with you?

He leaned down, picked up the ruined flower.  Its roots loosened easily from the dirt, like they knew there was no point holding on.  The plant draped across both his hands like a doll corpse, fragrant and limp.

He wanted to take it home and do something with it.  Bury it, maybe. Some kind of redemption for murdering it, some sort of rite.  But of course that was silly.  And anyway, there was no way he could carry it around.  People would see him with it, the mark of guilt draped on his body. That would be way too much shame for him to handle right now.

He lay it over the concrete bench, almost left it there.  But it looked so lonely, he picked it up again and dropped it gently into the bed with the other plants.  At least it would be among its kind this way.  And when it disintegrated into the dirt, it would help its friends grow. 

<Chapter 28

Chapter 30>