Henry Franks Read online

  “You.” Henry sat up, brushing the hair away, trying to forget the brief image of her eating breakfast with his father. He wanted to ask her about it but the words caught inside his throat and all that came out was a hiss.

  “Anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you talk with Justine?” she asked.

  “On the bus.”

  “That’s someone.”

  He shrugged. “She does most of the talking.”

  “Do you know that you smile when you talk about her?”

  Henry pulled his hair in front of his face and then turned away. “So?”

  “You don’t smile when you talk about Elizabeth.”

  “So?” He took a deep breath, held it and counted to ten on his fingers, then released it.

  “So, Henry,” she said. “Better?”

  Who’s Henry? But like all the others, that question was silent as well.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  nine

  The door opened up to the heat, and where the outside met the air-conditioning inside was a weather system unto itself; moist, hot, and too thick to inhale. The bright sun burned off the blacktop and his sunglasses did little to dull the impact. A headache started almost immediately.

  His father waited in the parking lot, engine running to keep cool, and Henry slid in as quickly as possible.

  “How’d it go?” his father asked as he pulled onto Demere Road.

  Henry turned up the air-conditioning and then rested his head back on the seat, eyes closed. “Fine.”

  “Henry?”

  He opened one eye, peering at his father through the hair falling in front of his face. He sighed. “It’s a process.”

  “Did Dr. Saville say anything?”

  “About?”

  “You?” his father asked.

  “No.”

  Henry pulled at the collar of his shirt, closed his eyes, and looked away.

  His father turned the car into Harrison Pointe and parked in front of the house. “I’ll be working late again. Don’t forget to do your homework.”

  “Fine,” Henry said before grabbing his backpack and opening the door.

  Inside, he waited until his father drove away before rushing down the fragile wooden stairs into the basement, stepping carefully to avoid the splinters that were poking out of the old lumber.

  He pulled the cord but the weak light failed to reach the corners. The mess he’d left the day before was gone. Stacks of cardboard boxes lined the room, with well-swept and cobweb-free aisles between them.

  Henry ran to the circuit box.

  The SCRAPBOOK SUPPLIES box sat nearby, but when he lifted the box on top, it was far too light to still be filled with ancient photographs. A few scraps of archival paper and stickers rattled around, but there were no pictures.

  One by one, he searched through the rest of the boxes. It took him hours, but by the time he was done he’d failed to find the photographs in any of them.

  Drenched in sweat, he climbed up the stairs, put the cart back in place, and collapsed into a chair, resting his head on the kitchen table next to his backpack. A branch scraped across the side of the house like fingernails on a blackboard. Henry jumped up and crossed to the sink to look into the backyard. Light filtered through the leaves, casting fluid shadows that seemed to move with the breeze. Spanish moss hung, still and silent, from the towering oaks, not moving, and when he looked closer there was no wind at all.

  Henry walked down the hallway, to the door to the master bedroom. He put his ear to the wood, trying to hear something from the other side, but there was nothing but the hum of the air-conditioning. Just to be safe, he knocked. The sound was loud and seemed to linger in the too-warm air. The knob was cool in his hand but, even though it turned, it didn’t open the door.

  “Damn,” he said, before slapping his palm into the door. It tingled, but just a little, and there was no pain from hitting the wood.

  In his father’s office across the hall, Henry pulled out drawers, looking for the photographs of Frank, but the drawers were empty. Dust coated the top of the desk and the shelves were bare. When he rolled the desk chair out to look underneath, the metal wheels squealed in protest and left tracks through the dust on the floor. Behind him, his own footprints stood out in stark relief, and only when he was in the hallway again did he relax enough to breathe.

  Henry ate dinner alone in the empty house and then went upstairs to his room. He surfed around the Internet but gave up after only a minute or two. The sun was still bright in the August sky and he watched it crawl toward the horizon. In his lap, his dark index finger idly scratched at the scar on his wrist.

  He took a deep breath and then unfolded the piece of paper hidden beneath his pillbox. When he grasped the pen, it slipped out of his fingers and, try as he might, he couldn’t get his mismatched index finger to hold on to it. With it squeezed in his fist, he added Frank to the list of names.

  Henry went back downstairs when he heard his father return home, but by the time he got to the kitchen, the room was empty again. He looked down the hall toward the master bedroom. Beneath the door, a sliver of light glowed.

  He took a step onto the hardwood floor and stopped. The corridor seemed longer than it had when he was still standing on the tile of the kitchen. The floor squeaked with each step, a high-pitched echo of his heartbeat, until he finally reached the door. Up close, it was carved, the dark wood etched with faint patterns that matched the wainscoting. He took a deep breath, thinking of all the questions left unasked. Unanswered.

  He knocked.

  “Dad?”

  Silence, save for the constant hum of the air-conditioning. Henry tried the knob but it didn’t turn. He rested his finger on the deadbolt lock above it.

  “Dad?”

  He knocked, again.

  At his feet, the light from under the door disappeared without a sound.

  Henry sat at his desk, the house an empty shell around him despite the presence, somewhere, of his silent father. The summer sun had finally given way to night, cooling his room almost enough to notice. Still, the central air and ceiling fan worked non-stop.

  Next to his monitor a generic plastic box divided into sections held his medicine. AM and PM and each day of the week were scrawled on pieces of masking tape on top. He flicked his finger through the Tuesday PM pills but couldn’t find the energy to take them.

  He closed the lid and sat there unmoving, staring at the screen saver on his computer defining words he couldn’t remember as he re-opened the pillbox.

  He was still sitting there when he fell asleep, medicine untaken in his hand.

  “Daddy!”

  Elizabeth comes running up to me, flinging herself into my arms. Her weight is a comfort against me as I swing her around. Just a child, she still shrieks with glee, making funny propeller noises as she flies.

  Around us, petals fall off the trees like leaves in autumn, falling in patterns to the ground. They smell of earth and roses and I know they’d taste of ice cream.

  “Chocolate,” Elizabeth says, her tiny hand tucked in mine as we wait in line.

  “One scoop?”

  “Two,” she says.

  I have to use more pressure than I expect to drag the spoon through the vat of ice cream, scraping up a small ball that rattles around her cup, making odd metallic creaking noises like artificial bones held together with pins and prayer. The sun burns down, melting the ice cream into drinkable joy.

  Elizabeth slurps and smiles and holds my hand as we wander through the empty park. Red and golden leaves crunch underfoot.

  “I’ve got a secret,” she says.

  Ice cream has given her a chocolate mustache and she licks it off. Her pigtails are coming undone and her dress is communion pretty; a small red poppy trails a Memorial Day ribbon on her chest.

  “A secret?” I scoop her up in my arms and she squeals with delight.

  “Daddy!” She laughs as I swing her around, ma
king airplane noises.

  We land, walking hand in hand down a deserted airport concourse. She tugs us forward, pulling me faster and faster until we’re running, flying over the moving walkways and abandoned luggage to our gate.

  “See?” she asks, pointing toward the two people sleeping in the hard orange chairs. On the TV above them, all the flights have been cancelled.

  “This is your secret, Elizabeth?” I ask.

  “Your secret, Daddy.” She smiles. “I promised you I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not even Mommy.”

  “My secret?”

  She pushes me toward the gate, closer to the people lying there. At first, I think they’re Martians, their skin is so purple. They aren’t breathing.

  Humans. Beaten so badly as to bruise their skin darker than grapes.

  “Elizabeth?” I call her name, spinning around and around in the empty airport. “Elizabeth!”

  But there’s no one there.

  Just a white dress lying on the floor, a growing red stain like blood from where I’d pinned the poppy on her.

  On the TV set above my head, there is suddenly one more cancelled flight.

  ten

  Henry was awake long before the alarm; early enough to lie on his bed and watch the room lighten as the sun broke through the leaves outside his window. He moved his hand to the table and crawled it toward the clock until he could turn the beeping off. Then he rubbed his eyes but failed to banish sleep or the half-formed memories of his dream.

  His heart beat too slowly, and it seemed to be more of a conscious decision to breathe than it should be. The thought, inhale/exhale, repeated itself.

  “Breathe, Henry,” he said.

  He rolled out of bed and rubbed his hands over his face as he walked to the bathroom. His fingers came away wet and red. He stared at his bloody palms. In his reflection in the mirror above the sink, his nose was bleeding and he’d rubbed blood over the bottom half of his face.

  When he was finished washing up, his nose was sore, his eyes puffy, and his pale skin seemed translucent where he’d scraped it raw with the towel. The snooze alarm sounded as he was about to get in the shower. He dragged himself back to his room to shut it off and collapsed onto the edge of the bed, head in his hands. His nose started bleeding again.

  “Breathe.”

  Henry walked to the end of the Harrison Pointe subdivision to wait for the bus. The sidewalks were cracking where the roots of the trees were trying to escape and Spanish moss hung so far down that he had to duck under it at times, but he still managed to get some tangled in his hair.

  At the bus stop he stood alone, the only student not wearing shorts. He kept his eyes on the ground until a pair of sandals appeared, pink-painted toes sticking out. Henry glanced up, far enough for his vision to travel halfway over long tan legs, a small scab healing on the right knee, before returning to her toes.

  “Who died?” Justine asked.

  “What?”

  “You look terrible,” she said. “Well, all in black as always, so maybe you’re in perpetual mourning. But, seriously, new heights of goth, very impressive.”

  He looked up at her, meeting her gaze. His eyes still red from rubbing and his pale skin glistening with sweat, he swallowed whatever he had been about to say when he saw her smile.

  “Henry?” she said. Her hand reached out but she didn’t touch him, then she took a step closer and dropped her voice, her smile melting away in the heat. “I’m sorry, did someone die?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just...” He lowered his eyes. “Just a dream.”

  The bus pulled to the curb with a hydraulic groan, the door opening on hinges in need of oiling, and they filed on board. Justine sat down in the seat in front of him as the bus pulled away.

  “I’m a good listener,” she said. “Well, I’m a better talker, but … ”

  Henry rested his head on the window, the glass cool to the touch despite the heat, and looked at her. The bra strap once again matched her tank top, blue this time. “You don’t match.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Your toes. They don’t match.”

  She laughed, and he could feel other people on the bus looking at them. “I matched yesterday. Didn’t you notice?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re blushing,” she said. “You noticed.”

  “Sorry.” He smiled, and then looked out the window at the imposing bulk of the Georgia Regional Psychiatric Hospital. The towers at each corner of the barbed wire fence cast a shadow over the trees lining the road.

  “Who died?” she asked. “In your dream?”

  “I don’t know.” Henry shook his head before looking back at her. “Strangers.”

  “You didn’t know them?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Your dream?” she asked.

  “No. If I knew them before.”

  She turned around in her seat, resting her arms on the back. “That’s what the doctor’s for, right?”

  “So I’m okay with not remembering.”

  “Are you?”

  He shrugged.

  “What do you do when you’re there?” she asked.

  “Talk.”

  “You? You never talk.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  She smiled. Pink lips tilted upwards, honey eyes sparkled in the summer sun, the whole framed by brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Stray strands had escaped and curled down along her neck, sticking to her skin in the heat.

  Inhale/Exhale, he thought. Breathe.

  Just breathe.

  eleven

  The school bus baked all day in the August sun. Even with the windows opened, it was still baking when the driver pulled into the parking lot to wait for students. Dressed for summer, they placed sheets of paper on the benches before sitting down on the hot vinyl seats.

  As Henry walked down the aisle, Bobby was sitting in Justine’s seat, his arm resting on the back of the bench. The bus slowly filled up and Henry briefly tried to lower his window but gave up without success.

  “Justine,” Bobby called down the aisle. “I saved a seat for you.”

  Henry looked up; even from a distance he could see her eyes widen as she saw Bobby sitting in her seat. She stopped for a moment as he patted the plastic cushion, then shook her head.

  “Bobby, you’re incorrigible,” she said. “That’s Latin for ‘incapable of being corrected.’”

  “Is that a good thing?” he asked, still patting the seat.

  Behind her, a couple of students were backing up in the aisle.

  “No,” she said, a bright smile taking some, but not much, of the sting out of the word. “It’s not.” She took a step down the aisle and stopped at Henry’s seat. She looked back at Bobby and then turned to Henry.

  “I sweat more just looking at you,” she said. “Move over.”

  Henry slid to the side as Justine put down a protective notebook paper barrier between plastic and skin.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Bobby swung around in his seat, leaning over toward Justine. “You’d rather sit with Scarface?” he asked.

  Henry tried to squeeze even further into the window, but Justine simply laughed. “That’s the best you could come up with, Bobby? You might want to work on that. And, if you need to ask, I was raised to believe that the choice of where to sit was mine.”

  Bobby looked from Justine to Henry, then grabbed his backpack and walked to the back of the bus with the other football players. Justine waved goodbye but he didn’t see it. As the diesel engine coughed to life, she giggled.

  “Scarface?” she asked, looking at Henry. “I’m sorry, he’s a jerk sometimes, but he’s not as rude as he tries to pretend to be. He does have a slight problem with persistence, though.”

  Henry shrugged, and then brushed the hair out of his face. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “I’m not allowed to date,” Justine said. “Not football players, not pre-med students at Coastal
College, not twenty-something teachers or the guy that sells pretzels at the mall.” She laughed. “Well, I’m exaggerating about most of that, but still.” She smiled. “My parents have made it perfectly clear that I’m not to date until I’m a senior, and then only in groups, if I keep my grades up. So persistence isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though, even if I could date, it wouldn’t be Bobby Dixon. But it is rather pointless, don’t you think?”

  He opened his mouth but nothing came out, so he shrugged again and simply closed his mouth.

  “So,” she said, “you never really told me about your dream from last night.”

  “What?” he asked, still trying to absorb everything else she’d said. Too many words in too little time, leading to such a random statement.

  “You looked terrible all day, didn’t even say hi when you shuffled past me in the halls,” she said. “Not that you noticed I was there. Don’t you walk into walls staring at the ground all day?”

  “I don’t … ”

  “I can’t really picture you talking with a shrink,” Justine added with a smile. “You don’t say much.”

  “Is it my turn to talk yet?”

  She laughed, then nodded. “Your turn.”

  “No one-word answers,” he said. “It’s on a sign in her office.”

  “That’s a start, at least.”

  “I waved.”

  “When?”

  The blue straps of her tank top were wide enough to hide her bra, while leaving long stretches of tan skin exposed up her neck and down her shoulders. Beaded with sweat, she glistened in the sunlight. Henry ran his fingers through his hair, unable, as always, to figure out where to rest his eyes.

  “When?” she asked again, leaning into him with the turns the bus was making on its journey home.

  “After second period. You walked by me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Pink nail polish.” He looked up in time to watch a smile crawl across her face.

  “What will you do when I change colors?”

  He shrugged. “I check in the mornings.”

  She turned to face him, her smile as wide as he’d ever seen it. A slight blush spread across her skin and for a moment he not only forgot to breathe, he forgot how.