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Buckthorn Palace

John K. Plaski

Griffin had many admirable qualities. He was co-captain of the varsity basketball team, co-captain again for varsity cross-country, and one of the better sprinters in track and field. His long blonde hair complemented his tanned skin and sharp green eyes, and he was going to Wayne State University in the fall with full tuition covered by his parents.

He was also the subject of many debates amongst the underclassmen girls: they endlessly speculated over what laid beyond that inch of chalk-white flesh, peppered with long black hairs, that separated the tops of his thighs from the hems of his athletic shorts. And as someone who shared a locker room with him for first-semester PE, I had the inside scoop, but I soon learned to knowingly shrug and smirk whenever someone threw a question my way.

My three most persistent interrogators were Bella, Gwen, and Erin. Practically inseparable, this trio soon melded into a single noun in my head: Bella-Gwen-Erin. They sounded like a character from Tolkien, or the name of some random town in Ireland where the devil allegedly played cards and made his escape by scrambling up the chimney.

Bella was already on the team for varsity cross-country, despite being a sophomore. She didn’t run any of the same events as Griffin, but her being in the same vicinity as him so frequently lent her an air of authority on the subject of him, at least in the eyes of Gwen-Erin. Bella also had the longest, prettiest hair out of the three of them: white and fine, like the floss that clings to the inside of an ear of corn. Her only defect was her forehead, which was immaculate, but too much of a good thing.

Meanwhile, Gwen’s forehead was unremarkable in size, yet it was speckled with dozens of red bumps, like spider bites. Her hair was blonde like Bella’s too, but it was a thick, silly yellow, like the butter they pour on movie theater popcorn. And despite the fact that she played varsity volleyball and wore bicycle shorts to school every day, she was still beneath Griffin’s attention. Besides, by the time our hike to Buckthorn Palace was scheduled, Gwen still had two more weeks of wearing a moonboot on her left foot. All these misfortunes, and countless other slights, manifested as a constant, sweaty scowl that she never softened, not even with an eye roll.

But, at least neither of them was Erin. I had made it clear from the start that I was not in the running for Griffin’s attention, so Erin had to take last place amongst the group of three. She was tall like the others, brunette instead of blonde, and freckled rather than pockmarked. However, besides the fact that she lived on the same street as Griffin, and that her parents knew his parents, she had no other outstanding qualities. She didn’t take honors classes, like Bella-Gwen, and her only extracurricular was band: third clarinet. She had an even worse attendance record than me when it came to eating lunch together or hanging out after school. And when she was present, she still stumbled into third place whenever the topic of Griffin came up: she’d blush and look elsewhere and mutter unintelligibly, whereas Bella snapped up every morsel of conversation and Gwen whistled red-hot.

And the one topic that got the most noise (and color) out of Bella-Gwen-Erin was Daphne. I didn’t know she existed until my third year of high school, but she couldn’t be avoided any longer, now that she had slipped into Bella-Gwen-Erin’s minds.

She was a senior in Griffin’s section of AP English, and her parents owned the Qui Nhon grocery store on the northeast side of town, far away from the river. Nobody had ever seen her parents at school events, and the fact that Daphne was their daughter was pieced together after much conjecture and detective work: neither Bella-Gwen-Erin, nor anybody within one degree of separation from them, would be caught dead in that neighborhood, or inside that corner store packed to the ceiling with bags of rice and shrink-wrapped fish. Nobody mentioned her to Griffin either. Besides, it was widely-believed, inside the circle of three, that she already had her claws buried in him.

There wasn’t much to say about Daphne anyway. The top of her head reached my bottommost rib. She was also as broad as a billboard and always wore oversized men’s shirts, wide-legged jeans, and chunky running shoes to school; her choice of footwear, in addition to her lumbering gait in the hallways, betrayed the fact that she worked in her parents’ store after classes ended.

She had the complexion to match: baggy cheeks caked with acne, bleary eyes, and a thick tangle of wiry black hair that she never bothered taming with barrettes or conditioner. No nail polish, no bracelets, no makeup either: just a single coral stud dangling from each earlobe. Her voice was unusually low and raspy too, like she had just finished an hour’s worth of shouting. And most conversations people had with her trailed off into rants about obscure bands that she had traveled all over Michigan to go see. Most people also got a scrap of paper from her with a song title scribbled on it, but Daphne never pressed them on whether or not they had actually listened to it. My token from her, from the one day we both happened to be walking out of school together, was “Anything by Ten-Inch Stump.”

And despite all of this, she had managed to wriggle her way into the spotlight while nobody was looking. The first revelation was Griffin working at Qui Nhon since cross-country ended; from November to February, he spent up to four nights a week stocking shelves and mopping the floor. He didn’t have much to say about the work, or those he worked with, and Bella-Gwen-Erin caught these warning signs right away: Griffin was clearly keeping secrets.

In response, the three girls changed their routes between classes in order to keep at least one pair of eyes on him at all times. They had their designated lookout spots before and after school as well: Erin watched from her bedroom window for whenever Griffin came home from work, and with whom, and Bella-Gwen maintained regular interrogations of those in basketball and track and field. But, short of actually stepping inside Daphne’s parents’ store, or crawling behind Griffin’s eyes, there were still too many hours unaccounted for.

And all in all, I was aware of these maneuvers but never chose one side or the other. Griffin’s method of acquiring friends consisted of staying in one spot and pulling in all the bits and pieces floating around him, like a sponge welded to the ocean floor. I happened to drift too close to him during our PE class first semester, and we ended up at the same table during lunch, commenting on anyone who passed within view. Then, Bella-Gwen-Erin discovered this spot and fell into his orbit as well, and I became a second, smaller satellite after this invasion, procuring more than enough material to keep both parties happy: Griffin laughed at reports of Bella-Gwen-Erin’s antics, and those three gobbled up every rumor of a smile that I casually dropped their way. “Do nothing and raise no dust” was how I made it this far in high school, and it served me especially well as my junior year progressed.

▪

THEN, RIGHT BEFORE VALENTINE’S DAY, the second revelation finally arrived: Griffin and Daphne were dating. They were spotted holding hands that Saturday night by a junior who worked at an ice cream parlor across town; Griffin had even paid for Daphne’s scoop. Reports also trickled down from the senior class that the two of them were working on a Death of a Salesman presentation for AP English, but neither topic was broached during lunch as Griffin smiled at Bella-Gwen-Erin smiling back at him.

Instead, they shuddered and howled in private. Nobody outside of the circle of three brought up sex, and it was never mentioned aloud amongst them, but there was a nightly flood of text messages to compensate.

Gwen took the reins on this one: Daphne was too small to fit anything inside her, so why was Griffin so interested in a midget like her? Besides, were they fucking in the back of the store, behind all those bags of rice? Or were they sneaking out after closing time and parking his car in an alley somewhere? Maybe they were going all the way out to Buckthorn Palace? One night in particular, she was convinced that Daphne’s parents had given her to Griffin in order to not pay him overtime.

Meanwhile, Erin broke character and was the second-most vocal whenever Daphne was brought up. She had just watched Rosemary’s Baby and knew that Daphne had whipped up a witch’s brew and snuck it into Griffin’s drink. Or maybe Daphne and her parents had exchanged Griffin’s soul for a prosperous business. Or, if there was sex involved, Daphne was a succubus: she dragged Griffin up to her candlelit bedroom with crimson walls after every shift. And on his nights off, she crawled through his window in the form of a coral-colored mist.

But without burning Daphne at the stake, or drowning her in a pond, there were no definite cures for witchcraft that Bella-Gwen-Erin could implement: they each took more subtle measures. Bella made sure to ask if Griffin was feeling okay at least twice a day. She also fretted over the growing bags under his eyes and frequently commented on his tan slowly fading into a pale Germanic grey while Gwen went on the offensive: she changed her route once again in order to keep her eyes on Daphne as often as possible. Trailing close behind her target, she made her presence especially obvious by throwing her moonboot ahead of her with even more violence than usual. She also baked toffee cookies for Griffin, but both batches melted into gluey brown cobwebs in the oven; he tried one during lunch, complimented Gwen on her cooking, then returned a spotless Tupperware container the following day.

And even Erin took late-night strolls, without her parents’ knowing, and watched Griffin’s bedroom window. But if she saw or heard anything suspicious, she kept it to herself.

And occupied with all of these plots and procedures, everyone was startled by Griffin’s text sent out in late April: “You want to go hiking at Buckthorn Palace this Saturday?” The question was delivered to Bella but referenced the rest of the group too. And after playing it cool for ten whole seconds, a confirmation text was sent. The date was set, and Griffin would pick everybody up starting at eleven. I offered zero qualms or alternatives, and my ticket aboard was secured.

▪

THAT MORNING, I was last in line as Griffin rolled up fifteen minutes late. He drove with a pair of aviators on, despite the day being overcast, while Bella sat in the passenger seat, wearing a purple fleece jacket with a grey mini-skirt. And as I opened one of the back doors, Gwen scowled at me as she lifted a plastic shopping bag off the last remaining seat. Beads of sweat dotted her hairline, and I could tell that her deodorant was already failing while Erin was curled up as tightly as possible into her own corner, hands folded in her lap: she wore jean shorts and a black t-shirt with the Unknown Pleasures cover printed on the front and back.

Griffin muttered a hello as I buckled myself in; he was even paler than yesterday. He then put his car in drive and continued east down my street, rather than making a u-turn. Gwen-Erin’s eyes widened as Bella asked where they were going.

“Just one more stop,” he said lightly.

Boarded-up houses and empty lots started multiplying around us. Then, Qui Nhon appeared on the corner, and Griffin’s car slid to a halt in front of it, like a hearse delivering mourners to the cemetery gates.

Bella turned to Griffin with a fierce, quizzical look, and all he did was shrug.

“I didn’t think she’d say yes.”

Someone tapped on my window, making all of us jump. Daphne’s head hovered on the other side of the glass; her grinning face was buried beneath a wild mane of uncombed hair. But once she opened the door, her crooked smile slackened as her gaze darted from me to Gwen-Erin to Griffin-Bella. Her right eye, trapped between two swollen blue lids, twitched once.

“Hey guys,” she said softly.

“You ready?” Griffin grunted.

“Yeah. Of course. Where do you want me to sit?”

Bella suggested that Daphne sit on my lap, and Gwen-Erin tittered as Griffin turned away and stared through the windshield. Daphne then held out a bag for Gwen to take; I felt cold air radiating from within the white plastic film as it swung over my knees.

“You mind holding onto this?” Daphne asked.

Gwen skeptically glanced at the package before snatching it and dropping it on the floor beside her own shopping bag. Then, Daphne was in the middle of climbing on top of me and pulling the door shut when Griffin spun the car around, sending her tumbling onto my lap. She was bonier than I expected as she adjusted herself. Long black hair brushed against my mouth, and a whiff of salt lingered in my nostrils as Gwen asked about the bag with a sour expression.

“Just some treats for our walk,” Daphne answered breathlessly.

There wasn’t much conversation as we drove west through town. We kept the river to our left as we passed Halligan Park and the statue of the General. Daphne and I both stared him down while Gwen-Erin studied the backs of Griffin-Bella’s heads. Suburban lots appeared soon after, with increasingly-wider lawns. Then, the silhouettes of the Glass House and the old psych clinic in the distance were the last warning signs that we were leaving civilization behind. And after five more minutes of driving through rolling hills, Buckthorn Palace unveiled itself.

▪

ITS GROUNDS WERE A PAIR of drainage ponds about two hundred yards south of the train tracks. The county’s sewage treatment plant stood further away while a small pumping station sat beside the northern pool. And joined by a narrow channel beneath the overpass we were driving over, with a white gravel trail snaking along the perimeter, this site resembled a giant pair of smudged eyeglasses from above.

Griffin took a hard right turn into the parking lot; no other vehicles were there that morning as he jerked his car into the first possible spot, yanked his keys from the ignition, and stepped out without a word to anybody. Bella followed close on his heels, slamming her door shut as Gwen-Erin fumbled with their seatbelts and Daphne reached for her own door handle. She leapt onto the blacktop, and I stepped out after her.

A single-file line of hikers was already marching north along the gravel trail. Griffin-Bella led the charge while Gwen limped close behind them with her bag twisted around her fist. Erin floated further back with her head somberly bowed, and Daphne took up the rear with her own bag swinging an inch off the ground. All of us wore lighter clothes for the warmer weather, but Daphne chose a heavy orange sweater, tan cargo pants, and a pair of dingy white tennis shoes.

I jogged closer and fell in beside her, studying the thick screen of pine trees encircling Buckthorn Palace and shielding the train tracks from view. And right as the water curved northeast, a towering red brick wall topped with barbed wire wedged itself against the gravel trail. The pumping station lurked on the other side, and glimpses of its roofs made people imagine a secret castle, or an old Civil War fortress.

Meanwhile, the path we walked along ran parallel to the wall for several hundred feet with a steep drop-off to our right; four giant drainpipes gaped behind thick iron grating about halfway down the concrete slope. Muddy water surrounded a thick crowd of cattails at the bottom. It hadn’t rained for a few weeks, so nothing trickled from the drainpipes, and the chocolate-colored water inside the basin only touched the bottommost quarter of the stalks. Dozens of frogs chirped from inside the brush while, up on our level, blackbirds chattered back and forth.

I stared up at them flitting like moths against the wooly clouds overhead.

“You shouldn’t look up at birds when they sing.”

I asked Daphne why not.

“You don’t trust your ears?”

She answered with a grin, and I was about to ask her which band sang that line when somebody shouted my name first.

Everybody had stopped in the center of the path. Griffin-Bella-Erin stared at me and Daphne, each of them clutching a bright blue can of Bud Light while Gwen rummaged inside her shopping bag.

She pulled out a fourth can right away and shoved it into my hand; I dutifully took it and cracked it open while Gwen peered inside her bag again, then up at Daphne, then back down inside. Finally, she withdrew a long-necked plastic bottle and handed it to her. It was half-filled with a thick ruby syrup.

Daphne grabbed it and stared at the label. That same crooked smile ran up the side of her face again, crinkling the navy-colored bruise encompassing her right eye.

“Grenadine?”

She laughed as Gwen blushed and muttered that she could only take so much from her parents’ cooler in the garage before somebody noticed. She then pulled out two more cans of Bud Light and surreptitiously tucked one into the front of her moonboot before cracking open the remainder and taking a long, loud sip.

Daphne saw this sixth can, but she didn’t speak up. It was five sets of eyes versus one as she slowly unscrewed the top of her bottle and took a hearty swig with her head thrown back. She winced, coughed a little, and replaced the cap.

“Ooo,” she hissed. “That’ll give you a cavity.”

Griffin-Bella-Gwen-Erin were already marching ahead as she said this. Daphne inspected their retreating backs, then turned towards me as I stepped closer. The beer can in my hand was slick with condensation, and I hadn’t even taken a drink yet: the bubbly grass smell wafting from the top made my stomach turn. I handed my can to Daphne, but she shook her head and stuffed her bottle of stage blood into her pocket.

“No thanks. I hate Bud Light.”

I asked her what was in her own bag, and she opened it for me to see. The tops of two pints of ice cream stared back: scarlet for red bean, and dollhouse pink for lychee. I asked where the spoons were, and Daphne laughed and shrugged and walked away to catch up to the rest of the caravan.

We were now halfway along the wall, and Griffin was lecturing Bella on Death of a Salesman; Gwen-Erin kept pace right behind them, listening intently whilst tightly clutching their cans of beer. He talked about someone named Linda who was the key to the entire tragedy, but Daphne snorted as she walked between me and the wall. I asked her what was so funny.

“He’s forgetting about Happy.”

I asked her who was happy about what, but Daphne only sighed to herself.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older. Just try to keep that innocence going.”

She smirked at me, and I looked away. Beneath the water far below, the bottom of the pond was a quilt of slimy black reeds with who-knows-what hiding underneath.

▪

LITTERED WITH THOUSANDS of single-shot alcohol bottles and millions of condom wrappers, Buckthorn Palace was our high school’s longest-running make-out point. There were always plenty of open spaces in the parking lot. And if every spot was filled, farmland began within three miles, and kids could easily find a private road that nobody patrolled.

And whenever a school dance (or the biannual clean-up field trip) approached, students resurrected old legends about teenage girls throwing their prom-night babies into these bottomless pools. Older kids also pointed at the four drainpipes below the station and said that those grates had been installed over them after several children were lured inside by some notorious sex fiend.

Or, people whispered about how, way back in the sixties, a parks department employee slipped and drowned while inspecting the underside of the bridge, but not all of him had been recovered. But based on the number of people who claimed to have pulled his skull from the lagoon, the man must have been born with eighteen heads.

▪

A THIRD REVELATION SURFACED by the first of April: Griffin and Daphne had broken up. The fact that they had even been together was tenuous at best, but Bella-Gwen-Erin quickly devoured any and all evidence supporting this narrative.

First, Griffin stopped working at Qui Nhon: his official statement was that he needed to focus on his AP exam, besides the fact that he was going to do landscaping over the summer instead. Then, the junior who had spotted Griffin and Daphne holding hands was outed as a notorious liar when it came to another instance of gossip. It was also tacitly admitted by everyone that only so much lust could be read into a group presentation on mid-century American theater. Not much changed after this revelation, though: same paths to all the same classes.

But then, stranger signs materialized the following Monday. Griffin came to school sporting a shiny black bruise under his left eye. When asked, he shrugged and said that a box of ramen had fallen and hit him in the face. Bella-Gwen-Erin prodded Griffin about it every time they could, and he good-naturedly repeated the same simple story while refusing napkins full of ice cubes.

Nobody dared to mention how the timelines didn’t line up. Why was Griffin reaching for ramen when, five days earlier, he had worked his last shift at Qui Nhon? Then Daphne appeared, bearing a black eye as well. This one, on the right side of her face, had turned both lids into a pair of dusky, puffed-up inkblots, but nobody asked her where it came from. Someone, it might have been Erin, brought up this coincidence during lunch, and Griffin shrugged again and laconically agreed that it was indeed a coincidence.

And in the two weeks between the arrival of the black eyes and our hike through Buckthorn Palace, the whisperings amongst Bella-Gwen-Erin fell into a minor key. Erin reported that she had heard someone walking through her backyard that first night, underneath her window. She stayed up the following night, watching from a slit between her curtains, and it was Griffin. He circled her property twice: dressed in his pajamas, back straight as a board with his mismatched eyes squeezed shut. He was sleepwalking, but the pained expression on his face suggested that he was strolling through the depths of a nightmare.

Every night for two weeks he circled Erin’s house. She was terrified, and Bella-Gwen offered to keep watch with her, but she refused their help and bravely maintained her solitary vigil.

Then, soon after, Bella-Gwen made their own discoveries as well. Griffin’s tan was fading to grey, as if his bruise was spreading from his head down to his feet. He was also losing weight. Already tall and lean, he sat at lunch and didn’t eat anything. Instead, he stared at everybody like a stunned rubber chicken while turning in assignments half-completed and swiftly declining out on the track. Those interviewed described him as distracted: he’d stare at people as they passed him in the hallways, but he didn’t really see them until they were a foot behind him.

Most of us suspected that he might be going crazy, but nobody stated this outright. Thus, his request to hang out on Saturday was a surprise to everyone who thought he’d spend that weekend alone, decaying in solitude. Daphne was never brought up, of course, but she ended up at Buckthorn Palace anyway.

▪

IF THE NORTHERN LAGOON was the Palace with its unbreachable walls, then the southern lagoon was the Buckthorn through and through. Here, the usual screen of pine trees was about seventy-five feet from the trail, and the flatland in between was trapped in a continuous cycle of overgrowth and decimation. Several signs along the way pointed out that buckthorn was an invasive species that jeopardized ecosystems across the Midwest. Its thin, whip-like stalks and thick green leaves carpeted the earth and choked out the prairie grasses and wildflowers.

Therefore, once in October, and again in April, two classes from our high school were bussed over to Buckthorn Palace, handed gardening gloves and shears, and instructed to wage war on this unwelcome weed. The sophomores and seniors worked on the southern half in the fall while the freshmen and juniors mopped up the rest in the spring: the grand total for a day’s work was usually twenty black, bulging garbage bags and several acres of prairie that looked like they had been scraped down to the skin with a dull razor, and I believe this is where Bella-Gwen-Erin first fastened their eyes on Griffin as he sweated through his t-shirt whilst wrestling miles of dark green coils into submission.

These excursions kept the local legends going too. The upperclassmen talked endlessly about the drowned babies, the lonesome spirit of the many-headed inspector, and the fenced-off tunnels where the young, nubile corpses were found. They also pointed at those four black holes and said that one of those tunnels was a portal to hell, but the exact one was the secret knowledge of a band of Satanists that gathered in Buckthorn Palace every month from all across Western Michigan.

Meanwhile, at the southern end of the pools, past the buckthorn battlefield, there was a small, paved-over area with a half-dozen rough-hewn picnic tables guaranteed to give someone a splinter. Here, allegedly, they had found a young woman sacrificed on one of the tables, unspeakable things done to her body. The underclassmen would then be warned, with a sharp elbow to the ribs, to not be virgins by the time the next full moon arrived.

▪

GRIFFIN-BELLA-GWEN-ERIN STOPPED in the center of this concrete circle and leaned against the railing overlooking the southern lagoon. It was a fifteen-foot drop on the other side with no incline. And besides the quacking of a duck somewhere in the brush below, this half of the pond was silent.

Daphne and I walked over and sat on one of the pinewood tables: her on the bench, me curled up on top. We both stared at Griffin-Bella-Gwen-Erin’s backs. All tall and mostly blonde, with dark patches of sweat tucked between their shoulder blades, they looked like four siblings that had just run a marathon.

Then, this human curtain parted. Griffin-Bella stepped aside and stared at Daphne.

“You want a look?”

“Look at what?” Daphne said.

“At all the bones!”

Griffin smiled with two smaller Daphnes hovering inside his mirrored lenses.

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true!”

Bella’s forehead flashed as she dangled one hand over the railing, her index finger pointing straight down.

“They’re right down there.”

Daphne snorted and glanced up at me. I shrugged as Gwen-Erin stepped aside too, widening our view of the pool: they both scowled at her while Griffin-Bella grinned, turning the four of them into a two-pack of theatre masks. Griffin even scooped a pebble off the ground and tossed it over his shoulder. They all waited with frozen expressions as a soft plink followed three seconds later.

Daphne sighed, hefted herself off the bench, and strolled up to the railing: Griffin-Bella to her left, Gwen-Erin to her right. Griffin threw another pebble into the water, and they all turned back towards the railing to watch the ripples spread.

Then, they all started watching Daphne instead. Gwen lifted her head first, then Erin. They both straightened up and silently pushed themselves away from the railing. Erin slid to her left until she hovered directly behind Daphne. At the same time, Gwen hobbled backwards until she was equidistant from them both: one standing ramrod-straight, the other peering down into the water.

Griffin-Bella looked up and turned towards the two figures behind them: I saw their profiles in perfect relief while crows started cawing somewhere behind me.

Two cans of Bud Light clattered onto the concrete as Erin squatted and wrapped her hands around Daphne’s left leg. Then Gwen rushed forward and grappled with Daphne as well: one hand went under her right armpit while the other gripped the seat of her pants. And Griffin-Bella stepped away from this sudden burst of motion just as Daphne was launched up into the air, up and away from the four hands of Gwen-Erin.

She, Daphne, gave a shout of surprise (an almost-comical “Whoa!”) as she flew up and away from the railing and disappeared beneath the overlook. The moment following the last glimpse of her stretched itself longer and longer, like heaps of fluffy cotton becoming thread upon the spinning wheel.

There was a discordant splash, then another, then a gasp of pain. Four pools of foamy beer puddled around them as Bella-Gwen-Erin rushed towards the railing, but their mouths snapped shut once they saw what laid below. I leapt off the picnic table and hurried to Griffin’s side and looked down into the lagoon with them.

Daphne sat with the water wobbling around her waist, one leg stretched in front of her while the other was bunched underneath her hip. Her orange sweater had darkened several shades, and her hair pressed itself flat against her head while strands of muck just as black and oily clung to her cheeks. She cradled her right elbow with her left hand as she clawed at her waterlogged top. The pond’s regular brown mixture had separated into a mirror filled with billowing clouds of soft pink and translucent maroon as her face was lifted past us, beyond the railing: mismatched eyes squeezed shut, mouth torn open.

It was a laugh: long, loud, proud, and right beside me. I turned towards Griffin, and his head was thrown all the way back, his face parallel to the sky as he gripped the railing with both hands. His brows were scrunched up tight behind his glasses while his mouth opened wider and wider, swallowing all the clouds and birds above him. There was the sound of something whole exploding into hundreds of fragments in the water below, but Griffin gulped all that down too: he pushed himself away from the railing as Daphne’s wailing cut out, only given a half-second of space to ring forth while Bella-Gwen-Erin followed in his wake down the gravel trail.

Beneath the railing, Daphne sniffled loudly as she sloshed this way and that, searching for a way up and out of the pool as a crumpled white jellyfish slowly floated towards the reeds. I shouted and pointed to my left, to where the drop-off changed into a long, grassy incline. Daphne swallowed and gasped and waded towards that spot, still keeping her right arm pressed against her chest.

Griffin-Bella-Gwen-Erin were already dots in the distance as Daphne clawed her way up the slope one-handed. I stood at the top, squatted down, and extended my arm as far as I could. And as her thick-soled shoes, grey rather than white, slipped against the wet, pebbly wall, I glanced to my left, at four retreating backs, before turning right and seeing four cans sluggishly emptying themselves in between the slabs of concrete.

Daphne made it halfway up the slope before lunging and catching my forearm. Her grip was small, slimy, and tight as steel; she almost pulled me down into the water with her, but I dug in my heels and heaved her up to level ground. And once she landed on all fours, I quickly pulled my arm away and was immediately hit by the stench of old water and rotting vegetation.

Still gasping, Daphne looked up and stared at Griffin-Bella-Gwen-Erin as they crossed the road and entered the parking lot. In the meantime, I scraped the scum from my arm and stared down at her, not sure if laying a hand on her shoulder would help or not. The shape of her skull was visible beneath the wet hair plastered to her scalp, and the black crumbs of muck smeared across her face made the pink linings of her eyes even brighter.

I looked away from her navy-colored bruise, and my can of beer stood atop the farthest picnic table, proudly gleaming in the sunlight.

▪

SEVERAL MINUTES PASSED before oozing shoes squelched against the gravel path. Daphne had risen to her feet and was limping after the group of four, and I fell in beside her right away. She had stopped sniffling, but now every inhale of hers was a quick, seething suck without an exhale to follow.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Daphne nodded. She stumbled over a divot in the trail, and something fell from her right hand. I watched it strike the ground, cartwheel several times, and finally land upright inside a plume of white dust. It was a single vertebra: much too large to be from a cat, dog, or baby.

I quickly averted my eyes from this grey artifact and looked up at several blackbirds whistling over our heads.

“You shouldn’t look up at birds when they sing,” Daphne croaked.

“Why?”

“If you don’t trust your ears, you’ll get shit in your eyes.”

I instantly lowered my head. A brilliant red stain blared against the side of Daphne’s right leg. I asked her again if she was okay, and she sighed and pulled out her grenadine bottle, flattened and washed clean.

We crossed the road together, and Griffin-Bella-Gwen-Erin were leaning up against the side of his car, silently passing around the last Bud Light as they watched us approach. My footsteps were muffled beneath the wet slap of Daphne’s clothes against her skin.

“So, what do you guys want to do now?”

Griffin grinned at both of us as the crows resumed their cackling in the distance. I was about to offer my usual heap of suggestions, but Daphne tensed beside me and spoke.

“Can you drop me off at home?”

I glanced down at her, not believing what I had heard. Then I looked up and saw what she saw, if only for the briefest moment: four bodies versus two, in the middle of nowhere. It was better odds than five sets of eyes versus one, but not by much.

“Sure,” Bella said, throwing open the passenger door with a smirk.

Her gaze swooped towards me next, and I jerked forward, stepping ahead of Daphne with the sound of a single rubber sole grating against the asphalt, making it clear that no dust was being raised from this quarter of the parking lot.

▪

DAPHNE SAT ON MY LAP AGAIN on the way back, at least ten pounds heavier this time. She soaked through my shorts and t-shirt within seconds and dripped black water onto the upholstery while everybody rolled down their windows and averted their eyes. Gwen-Erin pressed themselves into the opposite corner of the backseat, trying to get away from the encroaching algae smell, as Griffin-Bella fiddled with the radio and quietly discussed someone named Biff Loman. Daphne clenched and unclenched her grenadine bottle the whole way back, making it crackle, while I felt a sugary-sweet scent worming its way through the stagnant haze surrounding the six of us. Positioned right behind her, I also noticed a missing coral stud in her left earlobe.

Then, Qui Nhon finally appeared: for several miles, all of our eyes were fixed on its eventual spot on the horizon, wishing it would materialize sooner. And once it manifested, Griffin made a sharp u-turn and glided up against the curb.

Daphne opened her door before the car even came to a complete stop. She leapt down with a splat and slammed it closed behind her. We immediately shot forward, and I quickly whipped my head around and caught one last glimpse of Daphne as she walked through the front entrance, not even looking in our direction.

▪

THAT MONDAY, Daphne hid the obvious bulk of a forearm cast under a pilled, canary-yellow sweater. In the meantime, the color had returned to Griffin’s cheeks, and his Death of a Salesman presentation went off without a hitch. Gwen got her moonboot removed one week early, and nobody took midnight strolls through Erin’s backyard anymore. The stench of pond scum and syrup lingered inside Griffin’s car the longest, but both odors faded away eventually.

Then, a month later, at graduation, too many admirers were mobbing Griffin for me to get close and shake his hand. And as I walked out of the auditorium, thinking of my long walk back home, I spotted Daphne and her parents hurrying away from the crowds dotted with royal-blue robes. She already had her cap and gown thrown over one arm. She also wore a dress for the first time (thigh-length, crimson-colored), and her hair shined: conditioned and curled.

It was the first time I saw Daphne’s bare legs as well, and there was a bright red mark, like the remnants of a splattered tomato, staining the right side of her right knee. Her dad wore a white suit while her mom gleamed in a bright ankle-length dress with orange sequins swirling all over it.

All three stared at me staring at them from across the parking lot, and I felt like I was lying beneath the water’s surface, looking up at them through a shimmering layer of glass. Then, without a word or second glance, they stepped off the curb and into the sea of cars.

▪

AND BY THE TIME my senior year arrived, Griffin had already moved into his freshman dorm. And Bella-Gwen weren’t talking to each other anymore. They had gone out with Griffin back in July, and the three of them had sex in his car a couple miles from Buckthorn Palace. From what I gathered from Erin, who was still a virgin and stuck playing the messenger for her two “friends” for the rest of eternity, Griffin fucked Gwen first, then Bella, but he seemed to have had a better time with Bella and went back for seconds. Much to the other’s chagrin.

And Daphne stayed inside her parents’ shop. I walked past it plenty of times that summer, reeking of chlorine with the top of my head burnt from countless hours spent at the public pool, but I never stopped inside Qui Nhon. I knew they had ice cream, but I wasn’t ready to pay four-fifty for an uncertain bet like red bean or lychee. Besides, the gas station by my house had Bomb Pops for one-fifty each.

▪ ▪ ▪

John K. Plaski (he/him/his) is a queer, neurodivergent writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Receiving BFAs in Secondary Education and English from Wisconsin Lutheran College, he teaches high school English, Theatre, and Film Studies and shoots film photography in his spare time. His written works have been published in Moonbow Magazine, Euphemism, Riot Ghoul, Louisiana Literature, Teiresian, HAUNTER, Lavendwriter, Marrow Magazine, In the Mood Magazine, the NoSleep Podcast, and samfiftyfour. Read the author’s commentary on his piece. IG: jkpphoto1196

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