Song of the Fireflies

Chapter Twenty-Five

Elias

Caleb saw my fist coming, but he didn’t have time to react. I heard the crunch and felt the pain sear through the bones in my hand as he fell against the side of the Jeep.

“You ever fucking hit on Bray again,” I said, pointing my finger at him, “I’ll beat you unconscious.”

“Elias!” Bray came running out of the motel with wet hair. “Baby, please! I told you he wasn’t serious!”

I felt both of her hands pulling on my arm, but I didn’t move from in front of Caleb. And he wasn’t fighting back. He massaged his jaw with one hand and just looked at me with no emotion.

Tate came out of his room, wondering what was going on. “Something tells me you deserved that, little brother,” he said, looking between Caleb and me.

“I guess I did,” Caleb said, and a small smile crept up in his eyes. I almost hit him again on principle, but I stepped away from him and let Bray feel as though she was pulling me back.

Tate gave me a nod of approval and said, “All right, we need to hit the road. Rocky is expecting us by four o’clock. I want to get this over with.” He looked at Caleb. “Get your shit together,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about personal belongings.

Two hours passed and we were getting closer to the Texas state line.

Tate glanced at me over his shoulder from the driver’s seat. “When we get there I’ll drop you and Bray off at a store or restaurant somewhere. It’s not a good idea if you come with us.” He looked at Caleb in the front passenger’s seat and then put his eyes back on the road. “It’s probably not a good idea that you come, either.”

“No way, Tate,” Caleb argued. “I’m fucking going with you.”

“Look, I can just go in, meet with Rocky, hand him the money, and go about my day. If you’re there it probably won’t go as smoothly.”

“I’m not letting you go in there by yourself,” Caleb snapped.

“But you’ll let me use my savings to bail your ass out,” Tate retorted.

Caleb stared right through Tate from the side.

“Hey, Tate’s right,” I spoke up from the backseat. “I may not know what this is all about, but I have a pretty good idea. Caleb, you’re likely to just create tension.”

“Nobody asked you,” Caleb snapped, turning his head to look back at me. “Why don’t you deal with your own damn problems? Remember? You got cops looking for your ass. Deal with the dead-girl issue and stay out of mine.”

I hated to admit it, but Caleb had a point.

Bray and I spent the rest of last night talking about what other options we had. Of course, there were none, so the conversation was very short. Then mostly we just stared up at the ceiling, wrapped in each other’s arms. I never wanted to let her go. I felt the same from her. Eventually, our minds drifted from the matter at hand and we started reminiscing again. We talked about our childhood and about all of the things we missed and enjoyed and loved. But time passed all too quickly, and the present snuck up on us again. We thought about what else we could do, but still came up short. Stared at the ceiling some more. Fell asleep. And that was that.

But Bray was different. She hadn’t been herself since we saw the newscast back in Panama City. Since I found her on the bathroom floor. I got the feeling that she wasn’t really worried anymore about finding other solutions. She seemed more laid-back than concerned or on edge. It scared the hell out of me, and I didn’t know why.

We stopped at a gas station to fill up.

“I’ve got to pee,” Bray said and hopped out of the Jeep.

Tate tossed me a folded-up twenty-dollar bill. “Mind getting me a bottle of water and a Reese’s? Oh, and see if they have a hot bar. Grab me a hot dog or somethin’.”

“Sure thing,” I said. I took Bray’s hand and walked with her through the lot and into the store.

Inside, I pointed over Bray’s head toward the far back corner. “Restrooms are over there.” She weaved her way through a few people in the aisles toward it. I found everything Tate asked for and stood in line. Bray was out before it was my turn, so she stood next to me until finally I checked out.

Bray had wanted to check the newspapers sitting in the metal display near the register. Thankfully, she didn’t find anything about us inside.

We got back on the road.

“I’m going to pay you back, bro,” Caleb told Tate.

They had been arguing about money and all of the times that Tate had used his to bail Caleb out of something since he got out of prison. They went from money to their parents to their sister and then back to money again. Bray and I kept to ourselves in the backseat, and eventually I didn’t hear much anymore. I held Bray close to me on the seat, my arm wrapped around her from the side.

“I know you called your parents,” I said softly with my cheek resting against the top of her hair.

“I had a feeling,” she said.

“You know, maybe if you sat down with them and just tried to talk,” I began. “Tell them what I know about what’s been going on with you. Make them understand.”

“They don’t want to understand.”

“What makes you think that?” I squeezed her arm gently in my hand.

“Elias, they gave up on me the day I turned eighteen. Well, technically, they gave up on me before that, but until I turned eighteen they at least had to pretend they were doing everything they could for me. I could see it in their faces. Well, when they’d look at me anyway. But mostly, I was just a ghost…” She titled her head back so she could see me. “Other than just wanting to be around you, why do you think I spent so much time with you?”

I pressed my lips to her forehead, and she laid her head back down.

Memories of when we were teenagers moved slowly through my mind. I swallowed and took a deep breath and squeezed her arm again when a particular memory came into view:

“I only got one C,” Bray said, coming up to me at school in the hallway, her eyes lit with excitement. She shoved her report card into my hand. “Math, of course. But it’s better than the D I had last nine weeks.”

“That’s awesome,” I said. “I can help you study. Told you I’d help.”

She snatched the report card away from me and smirked. “I can do it myself,” she said and kissed me on the cheek. “Besides, if my parents found out you helped me, they’ll think I can’t do it on my own.” She wore a bright yellow T-shirt with an anime character with pink hair imprinted on the front, hip-hugger jeans, and a pair of black flip-flops. Her long, dark hair was pulled behind her into a ponytail.

“Are you still coming over tonight?” she asked me.

I dialed in the last number of my locker combination, pulled the door open, and shoved my books inside.

“Definitely,” I said, smiling. “I’m bringing the marshmallows.”

“And the beer,” Bray whispered and pressed her hip against mine.

My eyes grew wide as I looked around and over the top of her head to see if anyone was listening.

“Not so loud,” I said in a harsh, low voice. “Besides, I said I’d try to get a few beers. My mom hasn’t touched the ones my Aunt Janice left over at our house last month, but it makes me nervous that she might notice them missing.” I retrieved my book for my next class and shut my locker door.

“I know, I know,” Bray whispered. “But just get two then. Make Mitchell and Lissa find their own. Mitchell’s dad always has beer.”

“I dunno, Bray, if my mom finds out, she’ll kill me.”

She laid her head on my shoulder. “Just try. If you can’t, then it’s OK. We always have marshmallows.” Then she grinned with a crafty glint in her eye. “But if we play Spin the Bottle, you might have to kiss Lissa, and I’m sure you don’t want to be sober for that.”

I inwardly cringed. “Spin the Bottle is lame,” I said. “Who does that anymore?”

“Who cares? It’s still going to be fun.”

I met up with Bray after school, and we walked home together down the dirt road toward Mr. Parson’s land, like we did every day. Bray was excited about her good grades. Last year she had gotten mostly Cs and Ds, and she was depressed for a long time about how disappointed her parents were. Bray was a smart girl, intelligent even, but when it came to school she couldn’t focus. She got bored easily, and it was hard for her to get along with most of her teachers, so she got into trouble a lot.

“They’re going to be so proud,” she said later, as we made it to the end of the driveway at her house. She let go of my hand and said, “Want to come in with me this time?”

I shook my head. “Uhh, nah, your dad doesn’t like me much. I’ll just see you in a couple hours for the marshmallow roast.”

She grabbed my hand again and started pulling me along. “My dad always looks like he doesn’t like people,” she said.

I let her pull me, but I really didn’t want to go inside. I never liked to, because her parents always eyed me with suspicious looks, as though I was something evil that needed to be exorcised. I crawled inside her bedroom window a lot over the years, after her parents had gone to sleep, and I never got caught, but I was always pretty terrified.

“Bray, really, let me just catch up with you later.”

We made it to her front porch. A little swarm of bugs buzzed around the porch light just above the door. An old wooden swing hung from the porch roof on one side; two lawn chairs were pushed against the side of the house on the other side, with a table situated between them. Cigarette smoke lingered faintly in the air, as though someone had sat out here and smoked in the past hour.

The screen door opened with a creaking sound as she pulled it back. She was smiling so brightly. I knew she wanted me to be there when she showed her parents her grades. And I wanted to be there for her.

We entered the living room together, the smell of pot roast and potatoes and garlic filled the air and made my stomach rumble. It was always a little too much on the warm side in Bray’s house. I didn’t know if her parents just didn’t like to turn on the air conditioner or if it was because her mom cooked a lot and it kept the house heated. Every time I went there it seemed like I smelled freshly cooked food of some kind.

Bray dropped her backpack on the floor and looked back at me, her smile getting bigger as she walked around the back of the couch to where her parents were watching TV. I stayed where I was, at the entrance to the living room, where it felt safer.

“Mom, Dad, you’re not going to believe this,” Bray said and started unfolding her report card.

“That you didn’t clean your room last night when I told you to?” Bray’s mom snapped as she looked away from the TV.

Bray’s smile almost faded, but she was too excited to show them her grades, so she didn’t let the comment about her room not being clean get to her. “I promise I’ll clean it right after I show you this.” She unfolded the report card the rest of the way and held it out to her dad first.

“Why don’t you clean your room now, Brayelle?” he said sternly, not even looking at the paper in her hand. “It’s always about later with you. You’ll do it later. You’ll get to it later. Do what your mother said and clean your room now. Elias can go home. You won’t be roasting any marshmallows tonight. You’re grounded.”

Her face fell. I saw it. But she gathered herself quickly and tried once more to get them to look.

“Daddy please just look at my grades.” She pushed the paper further into his view. “I only got one C. The rest are Bs, and I have an A in Art.”

Her dad snatched the report card from her fingers, looked down into it, then back up at her.

“Better than the last one,” he said still with the same uncaring emotion as I always expected of him. “But bringing up your grades doesn’t excuse you from having to do your chores, or keep your room clean. Rian has good grades, does her chores every day, and her room is spotless. If she can juggle them all, why can’t you?” He dropped the report card on the table and turned back to the television.

“Honey, please go clean your room,” her mom said, probably with a bit of guilt for the way her dad was treating her. But the woman never stood up for Bray, and I just never understood it.

“But—”

“Now!” Her dad shot up from the chair, and the remote control hit the hardwood floor.

Bray stepped backward away from him. Her parents were never abusive to her, but from what I had seen over the years, the way they talked to her at times was almost as bad.

Her mom looked at me and said in a calm manner, “Elias, it’s best if you head home.”

Bray’s blue eyes were brimmed with tears. She looked at me once, grabbed her report card off the table and tore it to shreds in front of them. She screamed something inaudible, clenching her fists down at her sides and threw the ripped pieces of what was once something very dear to her at her dad and then ran off to her room. The door slammed shut so hard behind her that it rattled the pictures hanging on the walls in the living room.

Bray’s older sister, Rian, walked through the front door just as I was going to leave.

“Hi, Elias,” she said, but I pushed my way past her without a word. “Is Brayelle home?” she called out to me.

I turned to face her as I stood at the door with my hand on the knob. “Yeah,” I said icily. “But some home this is.”

I slammed their door almost as hard as Bray had and ran down the dirt driveway and away from that house.

I looked down at Bray curled up next to me in the Jeep, and I combed my fingers through her soft hair, choking back the memory. I guess Bray was right. They didn’t want to understand her.