Page 80 of The Bright Lands

Joel felt another question forming, but a moment later Wesley’s attention fell across something on the floor near the kitchen.

The phone, Joel’s gut asked him.Where’s your phone?

“You son of a bitch,” Wesley said.

Joel spotted it a few feet away—he must have knocked it from the sofa’s arm a moment ago. A little red square was blinking on the phone’s screen, the universal sign for RECORDING.

Joel looked up, saw the fury in Wesley’s eyes.

The man’s heavy glass came flying toward Joel’s face.

LUKE

Driving, Luke recounted to Garrett and the Turner twins his bizarre meeting with Joel Whitley at the park that evening. Garrett, with a thin smile, said only, “He’s on the list for tomorrow. Kill the lights.”

They parked outside a sagging two-story house on the northern edge of town. The house, like the neighborhood around it, let off a sour scent of decay. Luke had never actually seen the Staler house before. He wished he weren’t seeing it now.

“Didn’t KT run off?” Luke said.

The twins chuckled in the back seat of Luke’s truck. “He tried,” said Stevey.

“He couldn’t even do that right,” said Ricky.

A strange stasis descended in the cab. The fetid breeze, the creak of old vinyl siding. Luke’s mind turned briefly back to Joel. He almost couldn’t believe the man still hadn’t figured it out.

Lovewasn’t the word for what Dylan and Luke had shared as boys. Not love, but a few years of confidence, of mutual discovery. Or, in Luke’s case, years filled with an uncanny sense of reacquaintance. It was enough to make a person believe in past lives. Those pleasures he and Dylan had found when clinging sweaty to each other beneath their pillow forts, behind the shed of practice equipment in Luke’s yard—those things which had been revelations to Dylan—had never felt to Luke all that profound. Even as a young boy they’d felt like old memories, half-forgotten, that had needed only a sudden touch to swell with life again.

But it had never been love. Dylan had never allowed it to be love.

And what about these old friends of Dylan’s sitting now in Luke’s truck? What had Dylan been to them?

“Hey,” Luke said, eyeing KT’s dark house. “Why did y’all need a ride to Sparks’s Auto Body last night?”

The Turner twins went very still. Garrett turned to Luke. “You want what Dylan had, yeah?”

Yes. Yes, oh yes God, Luke wanted to be needed.

“I guess,” Luke said.

“Then drink your beer.”

After a last moment’s hesitation, Luke brought his bottle to his lips, and with one swift motion Garrett tilted the bottle upward. Luke struggled not to choke as the beer drained down his throat.

“Good,” Garrett said. “Let’s go.”

Insects thrummed in the balmy night. Luke, still fighting a retch, followed the three boys across the house’s overgrown yard. Garrett rapped on the front door.

A woman answered, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Half her face still bore the lines of a corduroy cushion. Luke had heard stories about KT’s mother. He was surprised to see that most of them were true.

“Excuse us, Mrs. Staler,” Garrett said, still smiling, the picture of courtesy. He held Luke’s empty beer bottle behind his back. “Is Kyler Thomas home?”

Mrs. Staler seemed too exhausted to stand. She propped herself against the door frame and said, “Ain’t nobody come in this house.”

“What is it, Garrett?”

KT appeared on a dim staircase behind his mother, dressed in basketball shorts and a baggy shirt that read MAKING MONEY MOVES. He carried himself down the steps the way Luke had seen boys drag themselves from the field with broken wrists, shoulders popped loose like cherry pits.

“KT!” Garrett said brightly. “We missed you, brother. Want to throw a few?”