just put in the right situation. Right and wrong are just these labels people use to oppress each other.”
“You are fucking crazy,” I said.
“There is no justice in the world, Michael,” she said, composed as a baby vampire. “My father is the worst person I know, and look at him. He’s fucking rich.”
At least that much was true.
“Coach Eric kissed me,” she said. “When we were practicing.”
Of course he had, I thought. That rotten, blue-eyed, Disney-villain-looking creep.
* * *
—
I did not stay and help Bunny pour coyote urine in the closet of the master bedroom. But I find myself now, years later, unable to discharge from my memory that house. I can remember every room, every detail of its odd layout. I think about Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell and everything they built together, that library with its built-in bar, its secret compartments. I imagine Mrs. Mitchell had a book club and that they felt special meeting there, and maybe Mr. Mitchell played bartender, and maybe he was even hokey about it and pretended to have an Irish accent as he served the ladies Guinness or something. And their children. Imagine having grown up in that house. Imagine trying to describe it to someone else. There had been so many amazing spaces, even beyond the child’s library in the attic. There was a huge deck off the second story with a hot tub inside a screened-in gazebo. There was an artist’s studio with built-in rolling storage because Mrs. Mitchell had liked to paint. There was a two-thousand-square-foot garage filled with machinist equipment worth thousands of dollars where Mr. Mitchell had done his work. You could have parked eight cars in there. There was a tiny pond with a little bridge over it in the side yard, and there was a turtle still living in it. Bunny and I saw him, basking on the edge. Did the developer know to get the turtle out before he tore it down?
Did adults even give two shits? It was hard to believe they did.
I remain, in some way, in love with that house, tortured by it, even though it no longer exists. I think it may be the most perfect thing I have ever seen. Better even than the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal or the Palace of Versailles.
I used to believe you could cross a line. And once you had crossed it, you would never be the same. Metaphysically. If you stabbed someone. If you killed someone. If you ate someone. If you fucked someone. I remember after the first time I had sex, examining myself in the mirror afterward. Was I different? Or was I exactly the same? I was horrified to see my face there, my piranha underbite, my blackhead-seeded nose, the exact same, too-tender pink eyelid skin. Nothing, I suddenly knew, nothing could ever truly change me. All magic vanished from the world with a hiss.
So why was I so uncomfortable with Bunny hitting Ann Marie in the face? Why did the thought of her kissing Coach Eric make my stomach clench? Why was I so incredibly angry that she had soaked that house in coyote urine?
Why did I still refuse to talk, really talk, to my mother, even after all these years?
* * *
—
I was walking home from my shift at Rite Aid, deep in an internal reverie, when a car door popped open right beside me and I almost screamed, sure I was about to be murdered.
“It’s me, oh god, I scared you! Can we talk?” It was Anthony. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of the dark car and he looked like hell. The bags under his eyes were fat as change purses.
“I shouldn’t,” I said, knowing that I would, that I wanted to get in the car and that I was helpless before that want. The most I could do was delay. “My aunt has forbidden me from talking to you or seeing you,” I said, as dryly as I could. “Or she’ll kick me out.” I shrugged in my coat. It was cold from the night sea breezes and I could feel my own saliva chill on my lips. My neighbor Mrs. Cowan’s black cat, the one with no tail, meandered down the road ahead of me.
Anthony visibly deflated. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “You poor fucking kid. I’m so sorry.”
I had never heard Anthony swear before, but here he was using no-no words. It felt good, how bad he looked,