This Is How It Ends

Finally her family moved away, and Tannis came over.

“Hey.” Natalie put her arm around Tannis, coming up to about her shoulder. “It’s okay.” Nat’s nose wrinkled, and I realized Tannis was really sick. There was puke on her uniform and the car. She stank and was crying.

“It’s okay, Tannis.” Trip clapped her on the back, careful not to get too close. “What’re you doing even trying to race with a stomach bug? You think you’re some kind of iron man? Of course it was a tough day.”

She didn’t even smile, just swiped at her eyes. “It’s not a stomach bug, Trip,” she said dully, barely looking at him. “I’m pregnant.”

***

“So . . . holy shit,” Trip said. We were driving aimlessly through town the way Trip did sometimes when there was stuff on his mind that needed to come out. Nat and John had driven separately, and we’d already dropped Sarah off. Tannis, of course, had stayed at the track.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I can’t . . . I mean, the whole thing . . .” I’d been shocked by her announcement but completely floored when she’d told us who the father was. Matty Gretowniak.

“Does he know?” I’d asked.

She’d glared at me. “Of course. You think I’d tell you dorks first?”

I’d wanted to ask what he’d said about it. What they were going to do. But those questions seemed way too personal. The kind of thing Tannis wouldn’t hesitate to ask. Except she was the person in trouble.

“Sarah’s been acting weird lately,” Trip said.

My gut felt hollow. Oh God. Is that why we were driving and talking? Did he know?

“I wonder if Tannis told her?” he mused. “Got her freaked out.”

“Maybe,” I croaked.

He glanced over. “You okay?”

I nodded, clearing my throat. “Yeah, fine.” I knew I shouldn’t ask. Should change the subject to something less dangerous. But I wanted to know. “Weird how?”

Trip turned the corner, cruising toward the rec fields where he used to practice football drills while I read. “I don’t know. Distant. Doesn’t call me back as fast. Doesn’t come over.”

“Doesn’t send you flowers,” I said, feeling unbelievably guilty.

Trip snorted. “Exactly.” He was looking out the window, and I thought back to that summer and how things might have been different now if I’d practiced too, made the football team. Or whether they’d have been just the same. Trip still drifting away to other friends, finding his way back to me when it suited him.

“I’m sure we’ve all been acting weird lately,” I said. “It’s been a weird couple of weeks.”

“Understatement of the year,” he said, pulling to the curb and abruptly changing the subject. “Want to go throw a ball for a while?”

I didn’t but agreed anyway.

He pulled an old football from his trunk, and I went long, my half-frozen hands fumbling the ball.

“C’mon, Ri,” he said, grinning. “No butterfingers.”

“They’re more like Popsicles, thank you very much.” I threw him a bullet, which he caught against his chest.

“No excuses.”

We passed back and forth a few more times before he said, “You get that this is another thing from that night coming true, right?”

I paused midthrow. Then nodded. I had, subconsciously if nothing else. Nat’s dad. Tannis with kids. And of course, the one Trip didn’t know about. Me and Sarah.

“It’s only a matter of time before she realizes it and freaks,” he said. “You still have those binoculars?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“At my house.” Not 100 percent true. I’d moved them somewhere farther away, the sense of them in my underwear drawer too unsettling.

Trip nodded but didn’t say more. I dropped a couple more passes before he said, “You had enough?”

“I’m f**king frozen,” I told him.

“Maybe not the best day for football,” he agreed.

“Don’t be a wimp,” I said, walking back to the car. He drove to my house, idled the car while I detangled myself from his seat belt when we got there.

“Hey, Ri,” he said as I opened the door.

“What?”

“Good luck tomorrow.”

“With what?”

“You know,” he said. “Your dad.”

My chest tightened. My mom and I always visited his grave on the anniversary of his death. Trip was the only one who knew about it. That he remembered meant something. “Thanks, man,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

CHAPTER 27

THERE ARE THREE CEMETARIES IN Buford. My dad was buried in the one farthest from our house. I wouldn’t have minded if it were across the country. The idea of his body in a box felt so wrong.

I preferred to think of him as perpetually sitting on a rock by the banks of Stipler’s Creek like he had every summer he’d been alive. Dangling a line into the clear water, watching for the fish that you’d see long before they reached you.

But visiting his grave with my mom made it hard to hold on to that. She talked to him, and I couldn’t help thinking really weird stuff, like how she was talking to a pile of dust. Or how he’d never be able to hear her through all that dirt.

“You ready?” she asked as I clomped down the stairs.

I nodded. My mom was wearing a skirt like she did every year. Like a fifties housewife, he’d have teased her. They’d always been more the blue jeans and flip-flops types.

We’d both taken the day off, skipping school and work for the occasion. It was overcast and cold but not raining. Late October was a shitty time to visit a cemetery. Probably a shittier time to lie dying in the woods. He’d been shot clean through the gut. The other hunter hadn’t even known it’d happened until he’d read about it in the paper. He came forward as a witness, having been up on Neversink that day, only to find out it was his shot that had killed my dad.

My memory of it is crystal clear: I was working on a ham radio with pieces my dad had left me and some barely legible instructions his dad had written about a hundred years before. I stopped when the phone rang, listening. Maybe I always did that, or maybe I had a sixth sense about that call.

And then a crash in the kitchen.

I walked out there, my heart thumping. My mom’s teacup was broken, and there were brown splatters all across the floor. She wasn’t even looking at it.