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Rust

Chris Lombardo

Rust Belt: (n.) the declining industrial heartland of the Midwest and the north-eastern United States. —The Oxford English Dictionary

1

Monica swung her legs over the fence, flashing a long length of sun-kissed skin as she dropped down on the other side. She landed catlike on the grass, the parched, yellowing leaves crackling beneath her feet as she straightened and stretched.

“Come on, Hailey!” She smiled at me from behind the rusted chain-links—her eyes like mountain pools, her dimples their dusky shadows, her nose crinkling in that adorable way that I was sure in that moment only I had ever noticed.

“I promise, it’s not that bad!”

“So you say,” I said, taking a deep breath as I sized up the fence.

It wasn’t that high—only about ten feet, and this section didn’t even have barbed wire. I’d climbed it before, every time we’d decided to trespass on the abandoned grounds, and until now it had never felt the slightest bit tall.

But now, with her waiting for me, it could have easily been the Great Wall of China. Or a ladder to the moon.

“What’s taking you so long?” She stuck her tongue out through a hole in the fence.

I rolled my eyes and tried not to laugh.

“Shut up!” I said, reaching up and working my fingers between the links. A cool breeze blew across the surrounding grassland, all overgrown and full of weeds but not yet retaken by the trees that were slowly creeping in on every side. Someday it would probably be shady again—just another part of the forest—but today there weren’t even clouds to cast a shadow.

“Man, I don’t remember you being such a slowpoke.”

I swung myself over the top. I said nothing as I readied my descent. I was a gymnast; this landing was my Olympics. It would be utterly perfect, just like hers had been. Graceful. Sublime. A testament to elegance in every form.

It went perfectly for about half a second, and then my shirt snagged on a loose wire and sent me tumbling into the dirt.

“Ow.” I groaned, coughing out a mouthful of dust.

“Wait, crap, are you okay? You didn’t break anything did you?” I felt Monica’s hand on my shoulder, just above where a brand-new current of air was blowing against my back.

“Well my shirt isn’t. But I feel fine. You know, pride excluded and all.”

“You should probably just take it off. Make sure it doesn’t get any worse. And besides, it’s not like it’s cold out.”

I started to say something, to proclaim to the world the exact reason that that could and would never happen, when I realized how ridiculous I would sound. This was the girl I’d had sleepovers with for my entire childhood. We’d played sports together, run wild together. Three months ago we’d skinny-dipped in a lake together—the memory of which, until now entirely innocuous, was making something flutter in my chest.

Hailey Brown, there is absolutely no reason for you to be uncomfortable taking off your shirt right now.

“Good call,” I choked out, pulling it over my head and tying it around my waist.

Monica started forward, her legs trailing through the thigh-high fronds. Her auburn hair bounced around her shoulders, sparkling in the noonday sun as it came to rest at the edges of her worn denim top.

After a moment, she turned back and frowned at my motionless form.

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

I started to speak, then stopped.

How do you tell your best friend that you were too busy staring at her legs?

Is that even a thing you can do?

“Nothing!” I said, as innocently as I could.

“Well, come on then!” she replied, the grasses wafting around her like palms at the foot of a queen—Queen Monica Young of Plainsview, Ohio, with whom I had the sneaking suspicion that I had started to fall in love.

In that moment, I found myself wishing I’d put a lot more thought into choosing my bra that morning.

2

THE RUINED FACTORY languished at the edge of the grassland, trees brushing against broken windows and runaway vines strangling its foundation. The metal pillars that had once supported its massive gates were all that remained of the encircling wall—two tired sentinels caked with rust, guarding an old dirt road that the weeds had long since retaken.

Our little hollow lay at the base of the southern corner, where the forest was close enough to cast some shade, but not catch us in its shadows. We’d been building our hideout for years, and back when we’d started, the space between the trees had still seemed full of monsters.

“So, what do we do first?” Monica asked, rummaging in our box of buried treasure. She sifted through our trove of old books—collected from elementary school book sales, nicked from household shelves, rescued from the dusty annals of our school library before it had closed down in 9^th grade. We’d read them all. Most, twice.

“Umm …” I paused, tapping my lip. The wind whispered through the trees and whistled through the holes in the factory’s concrete façade. Scorch marks still coated the halls and rooms, but the weather had scored every remnant of the fire from the outside walls.

“This one?” She held up a decrepit copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. “We were reading this last time, weren’t we? I think we were almost done.”

“Sure!” I said. She nestled into the little divot in the dirt and propped the book up on her knees. I stood there for a second, frozen.

“Hailey …?” she glanced up, and then patted the dirt by her side. “What’s gotten into you? You’ve been acting weird all day.”

“Sorry.” I said, forcing my muscles to move. “I, uhm …”

Monica laughed, the sound echoing against the factory walls and out over the meadow. “Just sit down, numbskull!”

So I did.

“Alright!” she said, flipping to the last dog-eared page, replacing as she went the ones that fell out. “When we last left off, the brave Professor Aronnax was planning his escape from the Nautilus! Will he be successful? Or will the mysterious Captain Nemo capture him on his way out of—”

“You know we’ve already read this one, right?”

“You’re no fun,” she said, and began to read.

“Just then, I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy harmonies from some unidentifiable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical trance that was drawing him beyond the bounds of the world. Then, a sudden thought terrified me! Captain Nemo had left his stateroom. He was in the same lounge I had to cross in order to escape! There I would encounter him one last time. He would see me, perhaps speak to me! One gesture from him could obliterate me, a single word shackle me to his vessel …”

I felt the words drift away in the heat of the afternoon, meaning lost, becoming no more than pockets of voice—her voice—playing like instrumental music in my ears. The hollow was small, and our arms were touching, my bare skin brushing her sleeve, every moment forcing a new breath in and out, and in, and out.

She didn’t seem to notice when I shifted a bit closer, when I pressed my side against hers and rested my chin on her shoulder.

You shouldn’t. This isn’t right.

“Hailey?” She stopped.

“What?”

“You okay? You just twitched. Like someone pinched your sides or something.”

“Oh.”

You know this isn’t right. What would they think?

“No, I’m good.” I smiled, trying to quash that little voice in the back of my mind. “I was just uh … cold, for a second, that’s all.”

She seemed to accept that, and as she went back to reading, I leaned back against the rough stone wall and let her voice carry me away.

She slowed as she read the final paragraph, teasing out the closing line like the last hints of a soulful melody. “Thus to that question …” she murmured, “asked six thousand years ago in the Book of Ecclesiastes, ‘who can fathom the soundless depths?’ two men out of all humanity have earned the right to reply. Captain Nemo …” she closed the book, the clack of its cover the only sound in the still, silent meadow, and turned to me.

“And I,” I whispered.

“You.” She smiled, our lips inches apart.

I felt myself blush and quickly turned away, staring off into the forest. She was quiet for a moment. I didn’t try to guess what she was thinking.

“Well,” she finally said, opening the box and dropping the book back with all the others. “Want to start another one? When do you have to be back?”

“Not for a while,” I was still avoiding her eyes.

She picked up our copy of Bridge to Terabithia. “We haven’t read this one in a while.”

“Actually,” I breathed, trying to calm my racing heart. “Want to just relax? We can start it next time.”

“Sure!” she said. “Radio? Or no?”

“Radio.” She slid the book back into the pile, digging around underneath it for our transistor radio—a little metal box scratched and dented in every conceivable place, but still somehow perfectly functional. It had been my grandfather’s during the Vietnam War. He’d given it to me for my thirteenth birthday.

Monica tuned into our local station, which played a full two genres—old and country, or old and rocky. The song we caught the tail end of seemed to be the latter, but it was always hard to tell.

“That was some Lynyrd Skynyrd here on 1220WPLV,” the anchor bellowed over the last notes, “hope you guys are all having a great day out there! Now for time and temperature—two-eleven PM here on this beautiful June afternoon, weather in Youngstown is a balmy 75 degrees, humidity hovering in the low-seventies, both a bit lower farther north, with …”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling my lungs swell with warm summer air. I could hear Monica breathing, soft and slow, relaxed and content. Beneath it all, I thought I could hear her heartbeat.

We made it back over the fence as the sun crept behind the trees, its bands of burning red and orange radiating out across the sky and coloring the dirt path gold. The wind had died down, leaving the evening warm and muggy and perfect for the start of a storm.

“Glad you woke up in time,” Monica said, glancing eastward to where thunderclouds had begun to form.

“Didn’t expect to fall asleep,” I replied.

“You must have been really comfortable.”

“Apparently we both were.”

She laughed, and I found myself laughing too, the clouds of dust we’d kicked up from the trail hanging in the air, shimmering and ethereal in the dusky light. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled this much in one day.

Then, someone shouted to us from down the path.

“There you two are!”

“Shit,” I said, watching as my brother stormed towards us, his arms pumping at his sides and his gelled blond hair in the process of escaping its moorings. He was only two years older than me, but in his worn work clothes and boots he looked too old to still be a teenager.

“Do you have any idea—” he stopped a few feet away, anger blending with confusion. “Where the hell is your shirt?”

I blanched, reaching for where I’d tied it around my waist only to find that, at some point that afternoon, it had unraveled itself and disappeared.

“She ripped it on a fence—” Monica began.

“I didn’t ask what happened to it,” he growled. She shivered and took a step back, her arm just brushing mine. “I asked where, the hell, is it?”

“I-I had it,” I said, glancing back down the path and finding nothing but grass and dirt. “Probably at the factory, it just—”

“I’ll go find it,” Monica said, patting me on the shoulder. “I can drop it off tomorrow, okay?”

“I—” I paused. “Yeah, okay.”

“Okay, Jake?” She turned back towards my brother, whose glare could have melted steel.

He waited for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. You do that. Now come on, Hailey. We gotta get home.”

The car sputtered a few times before it coughed to life—an old, rusted behemoth, its upholstery faded and peeling and its cracked dashboard coated with grime. Jake had given me an old jacket he’d dredged from the trunk, and as I wrapped it around myself I tried to ignore its odor of oil and sweat.

“I can’t believe you,” he said, wincing as the car bounced along the potholed country road. “What if someone had seen you back there? Someone who wasn’t me? What would they have thought?”

“Jake, it’s not a big deal—”

“You don’t tell me what is and isn’t a big deal!”

He slammed on the brakes and the car jolted to a halt, the engine whining in protest.

“Jake …” I trailed off, watching as he leaned over the wheel, eyes closed, breath rattling in his chest.

“I shouldn’t even be here anymore,” he said through gritted teeth. “I shouldn’t have to drive you around, or keep the house from falling apart, or spend every day loading boxes at that fucking store.” He laughed, his voice flat and mirthless. “Everyone’s leaving, you know? All my friends are gonna be gone in two months. And I’m stuck here.”

“Jake, I’m sorry—”

“No you’re not.” He snorted, starting the car back down the road. The sun had set, leaving a faint band of indigo above the faceless sea of trees. “You’re sixteen and they still let you pretend like you’re twelve. If you were me, you’d already be working, you know that, right? None of this summer shit—you’d be sweating there with me in Whitney’s store stacking boxes all day long and smiling at everyone that walks in. For god’s sakes, they bought you a freaking dress for your dance! Do you have any idea how much that cost? Do you know whose money that was?”

I swallowed and looked down at the floor mat, all caked with grease and crusted dog shit.

“Forget it,” he said. After a moment of silence, he flicked on the radio, catching the last notes of music before the newscast began.

“So first, in some sad news, State Representative Simon White, who has been battling mesothelioma for the past two years, died today at the age of 68 in his Youngstown home. The seat of the 64^th District, which mainly serves Warren, Champion, Plainsview, and a number of other small municipalities, will be filled through a runoff election yet to be scheduled by the legislature …”

“You know what I thought for a second, back there?” Jake said, drowning out the staticky voice. “When I saw you two?”

“What?”

“I thought oh god, she’s a fag.” He shook his head. “My perfect sister, the little fag. How incredible would that be?”

“Yeah.” I clenched my fists inside the jacket, my eyes ahead, everything in check. The little voice I’d forced away that afternoon crept back into my head. He’s right, you know. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? To be a little—

“But nah.” He tapped my shoulder and I tried not to jump. “I don’t have to worry about that, do I?”

“Nope.” I pushed myself back into the seat as the newscaster droned and the car trundled on, trying my best to disappear.

3

THE MORNING JOHN WHITNEY declared his candidacy I had slept until nine and staggered downstairs in a stupor, lured by the aroma of fresh-cooked eggs and hash browns. It was raining outside—the first tendrils of the thunderstorm that would arrive that evening—and that constant pattering drummed against my aching head like a bad middle school marching band.

I’d been awake until two that night, tossing and turning, thinking about the midsummer dance that would arrive in a few short weeks. It had been three days since the day with Monica at the factory, and since then every flutter and spark and twinge had only gotten worse. I could barely look at a picture of us without hyperventilating.

So I stumbled into our living room, barely cognizant of the world around me, and found my entire family gathered in their couches and armchairs around our ancient TV. To my tired eyes, they were all barely visible in the thin, watery sunlight—the shades half-drawn against a cloudy sky, keeping the room just dark enough to hide the blemishes and stains on the cracked, aging wallpaper.

“Nice of you to join us, young lady,” my grandfather said, his voice even more gravelly than usual. He tapped his cane on the chair beside him, raising an indomitable cloud of dust. “Come on, there’s an announcement comin’.”

“Wha …?” I blinked, my stomach growling, trying to figure out where the smell of food was coming from.

“Let her catch her breath, Dad,” my father said. His curly blond hair, a few shades darker than mine, hung wild around his face as if he too had just rolled out of bed. “It seems like coming down those stairs really took a lot out of you, huh Hales?”

I rolled my eyes and sat down, my eyes watering as another cloud of dust puffed up from the upholstery. It didn’t seem to matter how often we used or cleaned or polished anything in the house—old or new, vacuumed or brushed, there would always, invariably, be dust.

“Seems to be taking him a while,” Jake said, lying on the floor in front of the TV with our dog, an old yellow lab named Ronnie. Ronnie had glanced my way when I’d walked in, but had since gone back to his favorite pastime of lounging about without a care in the world.

“Who?” I asked, wiping the gunk from my eyes.

“Whitney’s runnin’ for that empty statehouse seat,” my grandfather said, stopping every few moments to cough into his handkerchief. “He’ll prob’ly be out pretty soon, Jake.”

“Wait, Jake’s boss? Mr. Whitney from Tallent Street?” I asked.

“Yup. Finally we’ll get someone who actually gives two shits—”

“Language!” my mom chided, glaring from behind her glasses.

“Sorry.” He winked at me. “Give two, you know what I mean, about us people here in Plainsview. Ain’t no one’s understood that for a long time, not since the war—”

“Dad—” my father began, but it was too late. My grandfather had mentioned the war.

There was no going back.

“Not since the war they’ve understood us, what we all need, what we care about here. I used to have a good job you know?”

I nodded. I did.

“Right out of high school, I made steel in the mill that closed down oh, ten-twenty years back, and then the war came, and they said, ‘son, you ain’t goin’ to college, you ain’t got nothing wrong with you, so you gotta go,’ and o’course I went.”

I nodded. This was not a story I expected to change.

“And then I survived—miracle, you know—and I came back from ‘Nam, and I worked for a while, and it was all workin’ out, and then everythin’ just—” he started to say ‘went to shit,’ but another glare from my mom sent him in search of a synonym of equal elegance.

“Well you know, it all just fell apart,” he continued. “All those fat cats made their money off us and then they didn’t need us anymore, so they told us we were done, and laughed, and they been laughin’ at us ever since—”

“That’s enough, Dad.”

“Is it, son? You sure?” My grandfather started to get up, but descended into a coughing fit before he managed more than an inch. “What’s the world comin’ to when someone like you’s gotta clean a school for a livin’, huh? That’s ne—”

“That’s enough!” My mom shout was interrupted by a loud peal from the TV.

“There we are!” Jake said, turning up the volume. Ronnie gave us all a perturbed look before settling back into his perpetual nap.

I’d seen John Whitney around the block my entire life—never really talked to him, but then again, I didn’t really talk to many adults outside of church or school. He and his wife were only about thirty-five—ten years younger than my parents—and their kids hadn’t yet outgrown their safety rails. He had that harsh face that people sometimes get when they don’t smile for years at a time, but today, standing at a podium in front of his store on Tallent Street, he had one of the widest grins I’d ever seen.

He started his speech a couple of times, and each time the microphone failed by the time he’d reached the third word. It was a full five minutes before they finally got the sound working, and by then my mom’s glare had weakened and my grandfather seemed to have forgotten that he’d made her mad at all.

“Hello, Plainsview!” he shouted, and his audience in the street cheered. It sounded about the size of my algebra class, but there seemed to be more trickling in every minute or so.

“Well I won’t beat around the bush.” He leaned over the podium, his black-and-gray striped head reminding me of a particularly irascible badger. “You all know why I’m here. Representative White, god rest his soul,” he paused so the crowd could murmur in agreement, “left us his seat in the state legislature, and I would like to put myself forward as a candidate.”

A few people cheered.

“I would like to put myself forward to you, today, because I think there are problems in this country, in this part, our part, of the country.” He unhooked the mic from its spot and walked out from behind the podium, holding one arm out toward the crowd. “I think, no, I know, sure as you all do, we got problems here in Plainsview that those folks in Columbus ain’t never heard of before. They don’t know how we’re living—they’ve never seen how we live. If I’m telling the truth—and of course I’ll let you be the judge of that—I don’t think they’ve ever set foot in a place like this, like ours.”

He paused again, and this time the cheers were just a bit louder.

“Now I’ve got nothing against them of course—sure, they’re all doing what’s best for them and their families—but don’t you think we deserve a voice? Don’t you think a town like Plainsview should be heard whenever business comes up—not just Cleveland, or Cincinnati, or places that already got people everywhere they can go? Now, I don’t know how you all feel about the things happening in our country right now, but I gotta tell you, some things just don’t sit right with me.”

The crowd was silent. They’d started to get a feel for where this was going.

So had I.

“Now, a lot of those things, we can’t do much about here in Ohio.” He shook his head. “We can’t do much about all the jobs going overseas, or our military—the greatest military on Earth, mind you—turning and leaving a fight when there’s still work to be done, or how people in other countries just laugh at us now when they talk about the United States of America. It’s sad, I know, but we can’t do much about that from Ohio.”

The camera panned back. I could see people nodding, see the agreement in their faces as Whitney paced around the makeshift stage.

“But now,” he paused, solemn, “now, they’re trying to steal our culture from us. My friends, my family, my people, they are trying to take away the things we hold most dear, and when we tell them that that’s not okay, what do they say? Oh, it’s ‘progress,’ just ‘progress.’ Progress to what? I’ll tell you what. Godlessness. That’s what.”

I realized that the audience had grown. Now, it filled the street from side to side, people coming out of their stores and walking over from their houses the next street over. He’d caught them like fireflies in a bottle.

He knew it too.

“I don’t know about you, but I do not want my children to grow up in a world where we have lost our values, lost God.” He held out a hand to quiet the cheers. “But they tell us God doesn’t matter! They tell us our values have to change! They tell us we have to stand by as they murder God’s children! They tell us we have to marry a man and a man, and a woman and a woman!”

The crowd screamed their approval, and I felt a column of bile rise in the back of my throat.

“What are they calling it now? Same-sex marriage? Tell me, what does that sound like to you? Because I know what it sounds like to me—we’re meant to stand aside, stand aside now, and let our country live in sin. They’re declaring war on our values, on our way of life, and we can’t even say anything because our voices have been silenced!”

I jerked up, a wave of dizziness washing over me. “Where you going, Hales?” my dad asked.

“Bathroom,” I choked out.

“C’mon, stay!” my grandfather said as Whitney segued into his next rant. “It’s gettin’ good!”

“Sorry,” I blinked and sucked in a shallow breath. “Gotta go now.”

I barely made it to the toilet before last night’s potatoes made their escape, plopping into the pristine porcelain bowl like an oily, acidic stew. I waited a few moments, expecting another heave with each passing breath, listening to the muted cheers from the TV set in the living room. Hopefully, no one had heard.

I closed my eyes and wiped a string of spittle from my mouth, all of the anxiety and excitement in my chest now coiling into a knot of pure, unadulterated fear. As Whitney’s shouts continued, the cheers ever-louder, I felt myself grow smaller and smaller, until I was nothing but an ant on the rim of the toilet bowl, waiting for a random breath to send me spiraling down into the acrid muck below.

It won’t be that bad, I tried to reassure myself. It’ll be okay. It always is.

It always is.

4

THE FOURTH OF JULY fell on a Sunday that year, so the whole town showed up to church at eleven o’clock sharp, their faces turned to heaven and their hearts set on the barbecue waiting for us that afternoon. The little Baptist church sat at the top of a low rise at the eastern edge of town, overlooking the forests and the fields and the swell of the Appalachians in the distance. When we set out that morning, fog had blanketed the valley, but by the time we made it to those old oak doors the sunlight had melted it all away.

It was a pretty plain building—red brick, with a little white steeple that seemed to grasp for a sky far beyond its reach. Inside were eight rows of wooden pews aligned with military precision, facing the pulpit and the big wooden cross on the far wall. Today, all were packed to the brim. People had already made new lines against the back, a kind of nervous chatter buzzing between them.

“Wow,” Jake murmured as we found a spot in the corner, already packed with people but cooled by the cross-breeze from the door. “It’s never this full.”

“Just here for all the food,” my grandfather grumbled before walking over to the nearest bench. The man sitting at the end saw him coming, and by the time he’d reached the pew, he’d already jumped out to offer up his seat.

“Jealous?” my dad asked.

“People always just let him do that,” Jake said.

“He can’t stand for the whole service,” my mom replied. “And they know he’s a veteran, and that he got cancer from that stuff they used on them in Vietnam. It’s the right thing to do.”

“I suppose,” Jake murmured.

“These are good people,” my dad said.

It had been about a week since John Whitney’s speech, and people had already started to talk—to parrot everything he’d spewed on that stage to each other over their lunches, or outside on their lawns while their kids were playing in the sun. My grandfather had been wrong; people weren’t only here for the free food.

They were here because Ellen Whitney was speaking at the end of the service.

She came decked out in a blue floral shirt and perfectly pressed jeans, her graying blond hair flawlessly curled and her smile fixed and saccharine. If her husband was the angry badger, then she was the immaculate mannequin—designed by committee after a Google images search for “Midwest housewife” and assembled in the last remaining Youngstown factory. I imagined that the people in the first row were already being overpowered by the calibrated scent of sweet corn and baby powder undoubtedly radiating from her body.

“Hello, everyone!” She beamed, and of course people cheered, each voice tying the knot in my chest tighter and tighter. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and waited for the hammer to fall.

“As you all know,” she began, stepping away from the pulpit, her voice crisp and clean even without the microphone. “There is an evil at work in our nation. A crisis of values, of children being taught that us—their parents, their guardians—are backwards and old and out-of-touch, of our beliefs being stolen away, no matter how tightly we try to hold on.”

“Amen!” someone shouted.

My brother murmured something under his breath.

“Amen, indeed. Make no mistake, we’re being threatened. And not just us, but our children, and our grandchildren, and their way of life, and their very memory of us. The—” she paused, teasing out the following word like one would the name of an exotic disease, “homosexuals are infiltrating our culture. They preach tolerance that doesn’t include us, and our beliefs, and our convictions. They indoctrinate our children and fill their minds with—”

I bent over, my heart tried to burst out of my ribcage, out of that suffocating pall and into the clear air and sky waiting outside those doors.

“Amen!” someone shouted again, and in the chorus that followed, I felt my dad’s hand on my shoulder.

“You okay, Hales?”

“I need …” I closed my eyes as another wave of dizziness hit. I would have fallen had he not caught me.

“Let’s go outside,” he whispered, and helped me towards the door, murmuring, “too hot in here,” “almost fainted,” to everyone we passed.

Not that they were paying much attention to the departure of a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old girl—too busy, as they were, stabbing me in the heart with every amen.

He didn’t say much after we got outside, after I’d dropped down onto the grass and spent three minutes trying in vain to catch my breath. I thought he’d believed what he’d said—that it was just hot in there, that I’d overheated and needed a breath of fresh air, so he gave me a little circle of grass and went to smoke by the corner of the church, watching the clouds drift by.

But as he stood there, his expression indecipherable behind that little wall of smoke, it seemed like he knew. Or at least part of him did.

I regained some of my appetite in time for the barbecue—enough that the aroma of ribs and hot dogs didn’t quite make my stomach quake in protest—and the people milling around in the church’s little courtyard now seemed much less threatening with their little floral plates and friendly banter and total lack of hivemind-fueled amens. No one seemed to have noticed my exit, or at least cared enough to glance over on their way out.

Still, when Monica tapped me on the shoulder, my heart nearly exploded in shock.

“Hey, Hailey, how’ve you been?” she asked.

“Hey,” I panted. “I … ah …”

“I haven’t seen you in what, a week? A week and a half?” She shook her head. “What are you doing with yourself, girl?”

“You know.” My eyes flickered around the congregation. Even though they were joking about sports or gasping that oh my gosh he was so much smaller the last time I saw him or chatting about their kids at Kent or Ohio State, I thought I could feel their eyes on us. I felt like they knew, like I was a bug in the grass, and they had just glanced down and were reaching for another plate of chips as they made to squash me with their boot.

“I know?”

“Ack.” I laughed, nearly choking on the sound in my throat. “I’m okay? How about you?”

“Umm,” she paused, her eyes shifting around the courtyard too. “Not bad.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “But hey, I was wondering if you maybe wanted to come to the fireworks with me tonight down at South Point?”

“I—” I stopped as I noticed my brother glancing at us from the hot dog line. Suddenly, I realized how close together we were standing.

“I can’t. I um … have family stuff I have to do.”

“Bummer.” Monica grimaced. “You are coming to the dance next weekend though, right?”

“I—yeah,” I nodded, and forced a smile. “I’m going.”

“Cool.” She smiled back, then glanced to where her parents were gesturing her over to their car. “I’ll see you there.”

I looked back at Jake. He was staring.

“Yep,” I said. “See you there.”

5

THAT NEXT SATURDAY, a few hours before the dance, I realized I had a problem.

I’d spent the past week avoiding two things at all cost: John Whitney’s voice—issuing as it did from every local news update and every mouth of every adult in Plainsview—and the wary gaze of my eighteen-year-old brother. I took dinner early; I ate in my room; I woke up at seven AM and took walks around the block, waiting for him to leave for his job before I ventured back anywhere near my home. Somehow, I’d made it this far.

But the dance was down by the lake, four miles away, and I needed a ride. And since my dad had driven the family car down to Warren that morning to clean the county courthouse—just like he’d been doing every Saturday for the past four months—the only car left was my brother’s Chevy.

My mom was washing plates when I crept into the kitchen, the light falling through the open window and transforming each puff of suds into its own rainbow prism. She had her dark brown hair tied up in a bun and an apron on over her pastel yellow shirt—the one we all liked to point out was the same faded shade as the old, scuffed up wallpaper.

I glanced around to make sure my brother wasn’t lurking about, and took a step closer.

“Mom?”

She didn’t seem to hear, still scrubbing away at a plate that she had rendered shining and spotless before I’d even arrived.

“Mom?” I asked again, a bit louder.

She frowned and shook her head, a lock of hair slipping out and falling over her shoulder. Then, her hand slipped on the sponge, and—without the slightest sound—the golden glint of her wedding ring slid off her finger and disappeared into the sink.

“Shit!” she said, motionless for a moment before tossing the gleaming plate down the counter and reaching into the basin. I stepped back, suddenly feeling like I should just turn and go and come back in a few minutes after this show had ended—like this was something I wasn’t meant to see.

Then I heard the awakening growl of the garbage disposal.

“Mom!” I shouted, lunging forward and grabbing her around the waist and yanking her away from the sink. We seemed to hang in midair for a moment before crashing into the hardwood floor—the landing squeezing every last ounce of breath from my body.

I lay there in a daze, my vision swimming with impact tears. It took me a few seconds to feel the breath whooshing in and out of her lungs, to hear her hushed voice murmur “oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” as she turned and engulfed me in a bone-crushing hug.

“Hailey,” she breathed. “Oh my god, thank you. Oh my god.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight. For a moment, I had the strangest sensation that our roles had reversed—that I was the adult, hugging my child after they’d fallen off a swing set or run out into the street.

She sighed, and slowly released, and we clambered back to our feet.

“I told your father that thing was broken.” She shook her head. The light had dimmed a bit, sending the little spaces between the worn cabinets into shadow. “You just push it the right way and it … it just goes off.”

“I know,” I said.

“And—” she stopped, her eyes widening. “Oh god, my ring!”

“It’s probably just caught in the pipe,” I said, grabbing her wrist as she spun back toward the sink. “Dad’ll know how to get it out.”

“I—” she bent over the counter. “Oh god, Hailey. What would I have done if you hadn’t been there?”

“I was there,” I said, giving her a quick, one-armed hug. “So it doesn’t matter, does it?”

She nodded. For a few seconds, we remained silent, watching the clouds drift through the sky beyond the window.

“But yeah, umm …” I trailed off, trying to figure out how to phrase my request now that the adrenaline had died down. “So, I was wondering if you could give me a ride to the dance tonight? It’s down by the lake, and it starts at seven, and—”

“Oh honey, can’t your brother take you?”

“I …” I paused. “I think he’s out with his friends.”

“His car’s still here.”

“Yeah, no, I think they went walking somewhere earlier. I don’t know if he’ll be back in time.”

She started to say something, and then stopped and bit her lip.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.

“I … I can’t, honey. I’m busy tonight. I—I’ve been looking for a job now, now that they cut your dad’s pay, and I just found this one shelving things down at the warehouse but I have to be there tonight at six for the evening shift. It’s—” she laughed. “It’s my first day, actually.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Oh I don’t know.” She turned away and glanced back out the window. “I guess just, I’ve been here for you guys, for you and your brother, since you were born, and now I can’t even do the little things you need me to do anymore. Now you’re the one taking care of me, for god’s sakes!”

“It’s alright, Mom,” I said. “It’s fine. I can walk. It’s really not that far.”

“But I do have enough time to see you in your dress, don’t I?” she asked. I could have been imagining things, but I thought I saw the beginnings of a tear in the corner of her eye.

“Of course, Mom.”

“Oh my gosh, Hailey, you look gorgeous.”

I stood in front of the mirror in my parents’ bedroom, slowly swaying from side to side and watching the flowy orange dress swirl around my knees. Mom had braided my hair into a long blond rope down the center of my back, and added a few swoops of makeup around my blue-gray eyes. She’d wanted to cover the little white scar on my lip—the reminder of one time I went a little too close to an angry cocker spaniel—but I’d persuaded her that it was already enough.

“Thanks, Mom.”

Jake’s voice tried to invade my mind, to guilt me, to whisper how expensive this had been and how many hours he’d worked only to have them yanked away all for this, but I forced it away. I could see how happy she was, watching me in the mirror and smiling the biggest smile I’d seen in a long time. This wasn’t just for me.

So I continued to gaze at the girl in the mirror, framed by the big bay window and old mahogany dresser in the background. She looked like someone I might have seen around town—maybe down at the store, or crossing paths on a morning walk—someone I would have smiled at and secretly dreamed about.

Someone who had definitely never been me.

“You’re going to make some young man very, very happy someday.”

6

SHE ENDED UP driving me down early, dropping me at the field by the lake with the sun still hanging high in the midsummer sky. I told her I would walk, but she insisted—it had rained the day before, and of course I couldn’t risk getting mud on that beautiful, beautiful dress.

It was always warmer down in the valley south of town, but that day, the breeze from the lake seemed to wash all the heat away. Wavelets lapped against the little beach, carrying pockets of foam up onto the sand. As it dimmed towards dusk, I saw the little yellow flares of lightning bugs start to flash above the grass. From the bench by the shore, I watched them for most of the evening—bright little things just looking for love, with no idea that they were putting on a show for creatures a thousand times their size. Even as people started to arrive, they continued to drift like bottles on the ocean with lovesick messages trapped inside.

I realized after a while—they’re the only bugs I can think of that fly without making a sound.

Monica arrived a little after seven, as the DJ was warming up and most kids were still milling around the edges in their dresses and pressed shirts and bright, striped ties. Her dress, the same vivid aquamarine as her eyes, eddied around her hips like a miniature whirlpool with every step she took. She looked like a naiad rising from a mountain lake: ethereal, magical.

Beautiful.

A cocktail of anxiety and hormones swept through my body, blasting away every plan I’d had, every line I’d memorized and every expression I’d tested in the mirror for this moment.

She saw me, and her face lit up.

“Hailey!” she shouted, dashing over and stopping a few inches away, close enough for me to smell her perfume and wish that I’d used some myself. “I’m so happy to see you!”

A lightning bug flickered just above her head, wafting down and landing on her shoulder.

“What is it?” she asked. I pointed.

“Ohh,” she sighed, reaching around with her other hand and letting the bug crawl up onto her finger. It lingered there a moment, its antennae tasting the air, before wandering back up into the sky.

“Don’t you love them?” I asked.

She nodded, and looked over at the flattened plain of grass that was supposed to be the dance floor, a mischievous light in her eyes.

“Monica—”

“Oh come on!” She grinned and grabbed my arm. “Someone’s gotta start!”

When we began to dance, everyone else came to join—all bouncing and swaying in that awkward rhythmless way that looks like a cross between leapfrog and hopscotch. The DJ gave up the pretense of an old country cotillion before the blaze of sunset had even faded from the sky, blasting into the playlist I remembered from my middle school dances as the stars burst out of the twilight and the lamps around the meadow buzzed to life. There in that haze of summer warmth and body heat, of music and lamplight and the crisp smell of lakewater, it happened.

There, it all fell apart.

As soon as the beat began to pound and Pitbull began his rap, Monica screamed with joy. I laughed as she mouthed the lyrics, her body rocking like a charmed cobra, the shadows dancing over her skin—one moment bathed in light, the next in darkness, flashing in delirium.

She pulled me close and we swirled together for a moment, our dresses transforming into one sinuous creature, rippling and billowing with sunset waves of orange and blue. I could feel her body pressed against mine—the swell of her hips and the curve of her breasts and the heat of her palm gripping mine, everything heightened and dizzy and delirious. My world suddenly seemed to be blooming, to finally be coming to life.

“Give me everything tonight,” she mouthed, and, as the next verse began, I whispered in her ear so softly I thought she’d never be able to hear.

“I really like you, Monica.”

And she looked at me, serene and confident and beautiful, everything hanging on those few awkward, clunky, middle school words—dangling on that precipice I’d been teetering over for the past week and a half. The world stopped. Time ceased to exist. All that I saw was her, inexplicable and wonderful and incredible and really all I’d ever had of this place that I’d never wanted to leave behind.

She grabbed my hand and, wordlessly, pulled me away from the throng of people and towards the trees.

Once we’d escaped—made it up the hill by the main road, to where no one could see us and the music was little more than a distant pulse, we stopped. The trees shivered in the twilight wind, their rustling all-consuming, the shadows between them long, private, hidden.

“Say it again,” Monica murmured, her face half-hidden in darkness. Something almost broke in her voice, and suddenly I wondered what this had done to her—the same doubts, the same creeping terror and guilt, everything that had spent the past days slowly tearing me apart.

“Monica—”

“Please,” she said. “I just want to make sure I’m not crazy.”

“I—” I glanced around, my neck prickling. It felt like someone was watching.

“Hailey?”

“I really like you,” I said, and she smiled, and we kissed.

While it was happening, it seemed to last forever. Her lips were soft and warm—they tasted like the cherry lip balm she always kept in her purse and pulsed with her heartbeat. The world around me ceased to exist, every anxious twinge and current resolving in those few short seconds before we pulled away.

We had already started to walk away, hand-in-hand, when my brother’s shout stopped us in our tracks.

“I knew it,” he hissed, breaking from the trees where he’d been hiding, shuffling towards us with loathing in his eyes so strong it could have fractured stone. Even from a yard away, I could smell the beer on his breath.

“Jake—” I began, but before I could finish he lunged out and slapped me across the face. The sound rang out like a firecracker. I staggered away, my face burning as he wound up to slap me again, but Monica grabbed my hand and yanked me away.

She was just as terrified as I was, there alone by an empty road with the silhouettes of trees rustling around us and the moon rising overhead. I knew it, but I still tried to shrink inside her like a wolf cub withdrawing into its den.

Except there was no safety there. There never would be.

“You fucking faggot,” he growled, and in one manic lunge grabbed my shoulders and threw me aside. I went sprawling onto the dirt, scraping my knees and tearing my dress on the rocks, the impact sending me into a daze.

I lay there for a moment, dizzy and faint, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness when Monica’s scream brought me back to reality.

I looked up just as Jake kicked her for the second time, sending her into a crumpled heap on the ground. “You fucking faggot,” he growled again, his foot driving into her curled-up form, each impact eliciting another cry. “Who the fuck do you think you are, fucking with my sister you fucking whore—”

“Jake,” I wheezed, trying to sit up. “Jake, stop! Please! Stop!”

I saw him glance in my direction—the tiniest look, just enough for him to pretend that he hadn’t heard but still let me know that this, all of this, the burning on my face and the cries of my friend, was my fault.

All my fault.

I forced myself up, doubling over in pain, when the snap of a breaking bone rang out into the night.

“Monica!” I stumbled forward, but Jake grabbed me and dragged me back—away from her motionless body that lay there like roadkill, dappled with the shadows of impassive sentinel trees.

“Let me go,” I shouted, trying to wrest myself from his grip. I had no chance—I knew that, somewhere in my mind, but even as we moved farther and farther away from that form in the deep blue dress, I kept trying. I tried until I’d exhausted everything I’d had left, until she’d disappeared into the shadows, until we had reached his car and I finally broke down and started to cry.

“You’ll thank me someday,” he said as he forced me into the passenger seat.

I looked out, taking in every familiar line of his face, each mapping itself into my brain without option or choice, seared forever into my memory along with every other second of that night.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

He slammed the door in my face.

7

SHE LIVED.

As soon as I’d been able to escape from my parents, thirty endless minutes after Jake told them about how I’d kissed another girl and left out everything else—left out the fact that he’d stalked us, attacked us, abandoned her by the side of the road—I’d called the police. I’d said there was a girl lying at the top of the hill. I said she’d been assaulted.

I didn’t say by who. I didn’t know how.

I heard everything else with my ear pressed against the seam of my door, straining for the sound of my parents whispering in the hallway. It was early Sunday morning, 2 AM—five hours after the officer had found Monica lying in shock by the roadside and called an ambulance from the hospital outside of town. That dark morning, I learned she was alive, conscious.

And that she was paralyzed from the waist down.

I lay there on the carpet for what felt like eons after that, squeezing myself into a ball, my eyes streaming and my body shaking with feelings I couldn’t even fathom, much less put into words. She was alive—alive and terrified, lost and abandoned. All I wanted was to go to her, to burst into that sterile hospital room and drape myself over her bed and sob and scream that I was sorry, so sorry, that it was all my fault, that I’d never meant for this to happen, that I shouldn’t have tried, shouldn’t have hoped, that I should have known—

But they would never have let me see her. I couldn’t even leave my house.

I could still hear Jake drunkenly spitting every word while I stood off to the side in my torn dress with tears running rivers down my face. I could still see the shock on their faces, still hear my mom’s voice whisper as she hugged me. “This isn’t you, Hailey, you know that right, you’re just going through a phase, a lot of girls do, and don’t worry, we’ll fix it, we’ll fix it, we’ll find someone who can fix it,” over and over and over until her words had lost all semblance of meaning.

My dad said nothing. He looked like the child who’d met the monster in their closet and discovered that it was very far from imaginary.

When I finally emerged from my cocoon on the floor, trembling and shredded and coated in sweat, I knew what I was going to do. The clock had ticked past three. The sky was murky and gray, the moon hidden behind a dense blanket of clouds. The silhouettes of my bed and dresser loomed like demons in the dark.

By now, they should all be asleep. Jake’s keys would be on the table by the door. His car would be parked in the driveway, right where he’d left it. Ready to go.

I didn’t know where yet, but sitting there on my carpet, the memory of their faces still playing in front of my eyes, I didn’t care.

I couldn’t be here anymore.

I stood and tiptoed over to the door and the handle turned without a sound, the hinges barely squeaking as it swung open. They’d left it unlocked. Apparently, whatever depraved monster I’d become, I was still their trusted little girl.

I crept down the steps, keeping to the sides, avoiding the ones with the loudest creaks. A gust of wind burst against the corner of the house—a howling prelude to the rain about to fall. I shivered, but kept going.

It was only when I reached the bottom that I realized there was still a light on in the living room.

My dad was sitting at the table, slumped over the wood, a little lamp flickering by his side. At first, I thought he was praying, but as I watched from around the corner—just one short hallway away from the door—I noticed him trembling, his back jolting and falling, his breathing short and quick and forced.

He was crying.

And then I saw the envelopes on the ground, stamped with company insignias that glared in bold black letters. Bills. He’d torn them open and dropped them on the floor—the little flecks of paper speckling the darkened wood like dandruff.

He sniffled and started to turn around, and I swung back and pressed myself against the dividing wall. I heard him stand, heard him groan as he leaned down and started to collect all the scraps, forcing myself to hold my breath, to keep my chest flat and level and soundless as he came closer and closer to the doorway.

Then I heard the chair creak as he sat down again.

For a split second, I wanted to go to him—to turn the corner and put my arms around him and tell him that everything was okay, that we would be alright, that none of this was his fault.

That I still loved him.

And then I imagined him shrinking away, trying to hide the fact that he didn’t care—that I was dead and gone and forgotten. That he’d never love me again.

I edged past the living room, eased open the front door, and slipped out into the night.

The storm had picked up by the time I made it to the field, raindrops exploding against the windshield and thunder rumbling behind the trees. I waited there for a moment, listening to the wind beat against the body of the old Chevy, the cracked leather bumpy against my back and the steering wheel cold and rigid in my hands, the smell of wet earth seeping through every crack and forcing the car’s thick, greasy odor away. In the darkness, I could barely see the fence—its outline like an intricate, translucent spiderweb against the black of the grass, blazing to life with each distant flash of lightning before vanishing back into the night.

Then, steeling myself for the chaos outside, I pulled my jacket tight around my shoulders, shoved the door open, and stepped out into the rain.

The first few steps were the hardest, my feet sinking and sliding on the muddy path, the gusts yanking me in every direction like a swimmer caught in a riptide. I didn’t think I’d be able to scale the fence, and it was only when I landed on the other side that I realized how close to a lightning strike I’d probably come.

As I started towards the factory, Jake’s car disappearing into the dark, I wondered what would happen if I never left—if it would decay there for years, overtaken by nature, until the trees had broken through its rusted carapace and the grasses had strangled its shell with their grasp. Would anyone question it? Wonder how it had gotten there? Or would it be just like the factory—another ruin lost to time, forgotten, no one left to care?

What about me?

The hollow at the southern corner had escaped the worst of the storm, guarded from the wind and rain by what remained of the factory’s overhang and from the flood by the gentle slope down into the trees. After a minute of searching, I found our box where we’d left it—half-buried against the foundation, the wood slick and damp but the crucial contents still clean and dry. I carried it through the hole in the factory wall, into what had once been a bathroom and was now just a box of concrete and stone.

For a little while I just sat there on the floor, my eyes closed and my back pressed against the cold, rugged rock, listening to the storm shriek and howl above my head. The sound seemed strangely distant now—muffled by the walls, leaving me in my own little world.

A world I used to share. A world I still did.

The dispatcher would have traced my call, and, when morning came, the police would show up at my door. And after these few hours alone with myself, alone with these memories of us, I’d find the strength to go back—to tell them what had really happened on that hill above the lake.

I was going to see her again.

I opened the box, and, as I shuffled for the flashlight we’d left mixed in with the piles of books, my hand brushed against something made of cloth. There, wrapped in the shirt I thought she’d just forgotten to return, was a book with a note folded against the cover.

We should read this next time. It’s been a while, and I know it’s your favorite. —M

A tear slid down the side of my face, the cracked and faded copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower glowing in the flashlight’s beam. I could already hear the first line playing through my head, and for a moment I waited, listening, letting the words carry me away.

Then I smiled, wiped the tear from my cheek, and began to read.

▪ ▪ ▪

Chris Lombardo is a writer from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. His fiction has recently appeared in EPOCH Magazine, Ovunque Siamo, and Oxford Magazine, where it won the 2023 Golden Ox prize. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Northwestern University and currently resides in Chicago. His writing on culture, media, and video game narratives can be found on his website sunsetoverithaca.com, and he can be found on X @canonicalchris, and on Bluesky @canonicalchris.bsky.social.

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