Chapter Three
When Skinny and I were starting middle school, we went camping.
We used to go camping a lot when we were in elementary school, usually with his dad–who we lovingly referred to by his last name, Ortega–since he always needed an excuse to “get away from the missus.” Ortega was an old-fashioned guy, always lecturing us about the bountiful spoils of masculinity and how it was our God-given duty to learn manly things, such as hunting or building fires or pissing in the woods efficiently and shit. Throughout my many conversations with Ortega, it seemed like he’d given up on Skinny or his siblings having the adequate amount of manliness for his taste, so by the time I turned 12, he turned his teachings to me.
He started planting the seeds early. When I came over to hang out with Skinny, Ortega would be flipping through firearm magazines or cleaning one of his several rifles. He would wait for me to ask about what he was doing, and then he would strike–listing the exact make and model of every gun in the house, their cost, and how important they were to the foundation of American society. According to Skinny, his dad never even let him touch any of them, but I guess I was different in Ortega’s eyes. He saw something in me, he said, and by the time I entered Sixth Grade, I was shooting paper targets in their backyard.
In all my life, it was all I was ever stupidly good at. Like, I could play guitar decently, but I was no Jimi Hendrix. I also was decently fast in middle school, and I even did track for a bit Freshman year, but I wasn’t a superhuman. With shooting, I was damn near close–I had pin-point accuracy at a young age, almost as if I was made to do it. It was a shame I could never afford a gun, or that I never had the desire to join the military. In the modern suburbian age, it was a useless talent, really. There was only one thing for kids like me to do with guns, and I really didn’t feel like ending up on the news, or getting video games banned.
Anyway, Skinny used to get kind of jealous. Not because of his dad showering me with more affection than him–he couldn’t give less of a shit–but because I was the only person besides Ortega that could touch the guns. His dad wouldn’t even let him clean them, and I never knew why. He said once that Skinny wasn’t “ready” for them, but I never knew what made me so ready in the first place.
This is what Skinny used as leverage for the camping trip. Usually, since we were barely 12 years old, Ortega would have to come along with us, but this time Skinny was dead-set on camping alone. This would be unheard of for any other preteen, but Skinny argued I wasn’t like any other preteen–I could fire a gun, and I could protect myself. Ortega eventually let us go out camping in the woods in the outskirts of town, under the condition that I always had his Beretta M9 close by. He also gave me a long lecture on what targets I was allowed to shoot:
Bears (mainly black bears): Don’t shoot directly at one. Just fire in the air to scare them off. Squirrels: Don’t be stupid. Bucks: Don’t fuck with bucks. Coyote: Shoot it. Quickly. Pedophiles: See “Coyote” above. Perform several times over.
Skinny was very happy about this deal, because the second we set up camp, he practically begged me to see the Beretta.
We were sitting in our canvas tent, cross legged and exchanging one of my mom’s cigarettes while he examined the barrel of the gun. He held the grip in his hand, felt his finger on the trigger, looked down the muzzle–everything Ortega definitely told us not to do. The safety was on, but one wrong move and Skinny would probably have shot me. We didn’t care at the time, though, since we were 12 and very stupid.
He turned to me, “Do you think we could actually kill something with this? Like a deer, not a squirrel.”
“With a pistol? Probably not, at least not well.”
“What about, like… I don’t know, a turtle?”
“Why do you want to kill something so bad?”
“Isn’t that the point of a gun?” He glanced at me. At the time, he had these weird red highlights in his hair, and it was around the time his parents let him pierce his ears.
I shook my head. “It’s for defense. What would you do if a bear came in here, and we blew all the bullets on a fuckin’ turtle?”
“I don’t know why Ortega brought up bears. It’s all wolves in these woods.”
“Wolves?”
He shrugged, throwing his hands in the air like it was the most obvious thing ever. “Well, yeah. The Walten Woods–everyone knows that. There’s, like, wolf packs in there.” He gazed off, “Well, in here.”
My voice raised, “You never told me that.”
“We’re fine. They only come out at night.”
“We’re sleeping overnight, dipshit.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He scratched the back of his head. “We should hold onto that Beretta then.”
I tried to forget about that conversation, but I kept the Beretta close to me, strapped into the front pocket of my backpack. We went down to the water for most of the day, throwing rocks into the river and dipping our shoes in. I wasn’t a fan of swimming–I hated the feeling of being cold and wet–but Skinny had undressed down to his boxers and was having the time of his life. He kept kicking sprays of water towards me, and eventually I started kicking back, and by sundown, we were both completely soaked, and laughing.
Skinny also wanted to find animal carcasses, for whatever fucking reason. He said he’d seen a deer corpse somewhere in the trees, and we spent a good hour searching for it. I’d asked what he wanted it for, and first he said he just liked looking at dead things, and then he said he wanted its skull. Needless to say, we never found the deer carcass.
That night, I prepared the fire in a circle of stones, gathering some dry leaves and snapped twigs together to burn with my lighter. It was one of those extended ones with a long arm, like the ones you use to light a candle. It’s all I had at the time, and for about a year that’s what I used to light my cigarettes.
We sat around it, eating our pre-packed ham sandwiches and bags of Lays chips for dinner. Potato chips after swimming always tickle a part of my brain in a way I can’t explain–it tastes like ambrosia when you’re still damp. The saltiness, mixed with the cool sweetness of the night air, scratched a dull itch in the back of my head. We’d also brought along two cans of beer, but we’d forgotten a cooler, and they’d gotten lukewarm by the time we cracked them open. We were 12, though, and it wasn’t like we had a good palette for beer to begin with.
It was around that time we heard the first twig snap, and I’m not gonna lie when I say that I leapt out of my skin.
It was dark out, with the full moon and scatterings of stars overhead, and crickets had already begun to chirp in the trees. The wind had begun to pick up, and the sound of owls hooting echoed through the thickets. After hearing that twig snap, I glanced at Skinny, who was glancing right back at me. We stared toward the origin of the sound.
There was another crack, then a snap, and then this strange sound–a mix between sobbing and panting, but not one of an animal. We rose to our feet, and immediately I grabbed the Beretta from off my backpack, and held it straight, holding the barrel eye-level, and tried not to shit myself. Skinny stood behind me, completely silent.
We watched as the bushes in front of us stuttered and rustled. We trembled as the snapping of twigs became more common, more vibrant, and louder as the rustling continued. I almost fired off a shot right then, until I saw a figure emerge from the bushes.
It was a kid, probably around our age, standing bent-over, with his hands on his knees. He was panting loud, struggling to catch his breath, clad in only a pair of basketball shorts and a baggy T-shirt. Strangely, there were three large slits carved from his left shoulder to his stomach, carved straight through his shirt and deep into his skin, covering his torso in crimson blood.
Then he saw the gun, and he fell to his knees.
“Don’t shoot!” He raised his thin, scarred arms in the air. “Don’t shoot! They’ll hear you!”
“Who’ll hear us?” I called firmly, keeping the gun extended. I was shaking a bit, but I never let Skinny know that.
The kid struggled to breathe, his shoulders rising and sinking haphazardly as he slowly crawled closer to us. I kept the gun on him the entire time, but as his breaths grew heavy and tired, I realized it was kind of salt in the wound for him. When he sat down next to the fire, extending his hands to warm them as if it were the most normal action in the world, Skinny and I glanced at each other. Then, we sat down beside him.
I repeated, this time without the gun, “Who’ll hear us? Who are you?”
He was quiet for a moment. His ears, parted behind his dark, fluffy mane of hair, were pointed near the tips, like a compass pointing north. “Rod is chasing me again.”
“Who’s Rod?”
“He’s the guy chasing me.” The kid didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he stared deep into the fire, feeling the warmth soak over him. “My mom’s boyfriend’s brother.”
“That’s confusing.”
“I know,” the kid said. “He doesn’t like me. I’m like his wife. I do wife things for him.”
Neither Skinny nor I knew what the kid meant by that, but the way he said it made our skin crawl. Skinny piped up, “Are you okay? You–”
“Rod got really mad today. That’s why he’s chasing me.” The kid leaned back onto his elbows, the fire washing over his cold skin. “I fought back. I never fight back. He clawed me and I ran away.”
The way the kid spoke was disjointed, almost stilted, like he was speaking in a different cadence than the rest of human society. He almost spoke like someone much younger than him, even though he seemed our age, but he said everything so matter-of-factly, it was almost hard to not take him seriously. Skinny interjected again, “‘Clawed’ you?”
“With his claw. He hurts me after he transforms.” He shrugged, “I can transform, too. I just get scared when he’s around.” The kid finally made eye contact with us, and scanned us from our shoes to our hair. “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever spoken to humans before.”
Skinny and I went silent, and glanced at one another. It was at that moment, we both leaped up from the firepit and ran toward civilization, running as far away as possible from the forest kid.
I hadn’t even realized until we got home that I’d dropped my Beretta on the way.
Lowell was at the grill, pushing around a large pile of prawns and crawfish over the sizzling flame. Thomas was beside him, making sure everything was running smoothly, and being the target of frequent screaming fits. Skinny, Tracy, and I watched from the fire pit, about ten or so feet away.
It was late, probably around eight o’clock in the evening, and the moment Skinny and I arrived at Thomas’ house, we could detect some hostility. Thomas had kindly walked us to the backyard, but was hesitant to tell us how he was feeling. He was a patient guy, but we could tell he was wearing thin–he spoke minimally, and when he did speak, it was about mundane topics, i.e. whatever the Patriots had done at last night’s game. It wasn’t until we entered the backyard when we realized why, and it was because Tracy and Lowell had been shouting at each other for hours.
When we arrived, and as Skinny and I stood near the fire pit awkwardly, the two simmered down–Tracy sat quietly with her arms folded over her chest and Lowell greeted us with only a hint of animosity. It was like that until Thomas asked Lowell if he wanted to grill something up for dinner, and that’s where they were at currently.
“You’re not gonna wanna cook them for too long,” Thomas spoke calmly, his voice sweet as he stared over the hood of the grill. Lowell’s face was red with anger, his eyes wide and his movements jagged. “Probably around two minutes, tops.”
He snapped, “I know how to fuckin’ cook prawns.”
“You brushed the grill with oil, right?”
“If you ask me about the grill again, I’m gonna smack you.” Lowell was jabbing the pile of prawns with his spatula, with more ferocity in each prod.
Skinny and I watched, trying not to snicker and placing bets on how long it would take until Lowell started swinging. Tracy sat near us, quiet, but all I could focus on were the blister-shaped scars on the inside of her arm. She was staring intently at me the entire time, as if she was going to say something.
Eventually, she did.
“Collin, I like your shirt.”
For a moment, my brain short-circuited, as I glanced down to remember what shirt I was wearing under my zip-up hoodie. Alice in Chains, with that creepy, three-legged dog from their self-titled. The cheap graphic paint glistened against the fire pit.
“Oh, thanks.”
She continued, “I was really upset when Layne Staley died.”
“Who?”
She stared at me for a moment. “Layne Staley. From Alice in Chains.”
“Oh, yeah.”
The conversation ended as soon as it had started, and for a moment, I remembered I’d never listened to an Alice in Chains song. In fact, I forgot how I even got that shirt. Skinny picked up quickly after.
“Trace, what’s that tattoo on your shoulder?”
She turned, pulling up the sleeve of her crop top. “It’s the Agent Orange logo. They’re, uh, kinda my favorite band.”
“Ah, gotcha, gotcha.” That’s when Skinny pulled out a pre-rolled joint from his pocket and flicked on his lighter. “You smoke weed, Tracy?”
Ten feet away, Lowell piped up from the grill, which he’d turned off after plating the crawfish and prawns. “She’s not smoking tonight. She’s not drinking tonight. I don’t want any of that shit.”
She stood up, like a fire was lit under her chair. “What’s your problem?!”
“You know what my problem is. Don’t play dumb.” As Lowell rattled on, Thomas pulled the plate of shellfish from his hands and walked over to sit with us. Skinny plucked one from the plate, wincing at the heat. “You’re on, fucking… Probation.”
“What are you, my dad?”
“I don’t know,” he threw his hands in the air and slammed the grill hood shut. “You called me Daddy last night when I–”
“Why don’t we all just chill out, and eat some prawns?” Thomas reasoned, plucking one from the plate. “I made my mom’s garlic lemon butter sauce and everything.”
Skinny nodded, sucking on one of the prawns with the joint in the corner of his mouth. “This tastes divine, man.”
Tracy groaned, ignoring them both. “You’re such a fucking asshole! You don’t believe a word I say!”
There was tension in the air. Lowell brought his fingers together, wildly gesticulating with his hands as he walked over to us–typical Sicilian. He stretched out his words, “Because everything… that comes out of your mouth… is bullshit. All of it. You say you’ll do one thing and you don’t. You don’t do anything I tell you.”
“Am I supposed to?!”
“You said you wouldn’t drink at the party. Now I hear you were fucking wasted, and talking to everything and everyone.”
“So, what? I can’t talk to people now?”
He raised his voice, “You’re not. Listening. To me.”
Skinny interrupted, turning to Thomas. “These shrimps are friggin’ scrumptious, dude.”
“They’re actually prawns,” he responded gently. “They’re a little bigger, but I think they have a much sweeter, more aromatic taste.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting the sweeter nodes, especially complemented by the lemon sauce.” He exhaled the breath he’d be holding in, coughing slightly. “Also by the pot smoke in my mouth right now, oh my God.” He handed the joint to me, and instantly I took a long drag. I couldn’t handle this social space anymore.
“Who told you I was drinking?!” Tracy’s voice cut clean through the air.
He pointed a thick, sausage-like finger at us. “These dipshits told me.”
Skinny garbled through a mouthful of prawns, “I did nothing of the sort.”
“You think this is funny?” He started walking towards Skinny, his finger still pointing. “You’re tryna get my girl to smoke. I told you fuckers she doesn’t do any of that. She’s sober. You know what that means, Skinny? It means you don’t take shit from faggots like you.”
Thomas interjected, “Whoa, whoa, dude. Dude, calm down. Don’t say that.”
“Am I wrong?” he sputtered back. “Tracy, you told me you been sober. Was that all just a lie?”
“I wasn’t drinking!” Tracy shouted back. “I didn’t drink anything. I don’t know why they’d say that.”
Skinny sucked out a chunk of prawn from its shell. “Well, ‘cause you kept telling me about all the guys you wanted to fuck.”
Everyone, including me, slowly turned to stare at him. He continued to munch on his shellfish, none the wiser, before the weight of his statement dawned on him. His eyes darted from me, to Tracy, to Thomas, and then to Lowell, who had his fists grasped into tight, white knots. Skinny quietly swallowed his prawn, then took the joint back from me. He took a long drag.
“Tracy,” Lowell paused, drawing in a harsh breath. “What is he talking about?”
“I… I don’t know.” She was violently red, her cheeks flushed with color. Strangely enough, she was staring at Lowell, but her torso was pointed towards me. My face was red, too, but I hadn’t said a word in this conversation, and I wasn’t about to start. “I was there for you.”
Lowell stared at her, and he continued to stare at her for a long time–probably around thirty seconds of unrelenting, palpable silence. His head was tilted up slightly, but his eyes were narrowed, his nostrils flaring in and out with constant breaths. In a weird sort of way, as he breathed, I almost thought I saw his hair and thick stubble flaring in and out, like a porcupine detecting a threat. He looked like a pot of boiling water about to overflow, but somehow he contained it.
He closed his eyes, bringing in a deep breath before exhaling, his bulging shoulders relaxing as he shoved his fists in his sweatshirt pockets.
“Ralphina,” he said at last, disturbingly calm, in which Thomas turned immediately to face him. “Let’s go inside for a minute. I need a drink.”
“Um, yeah. Sure, man.” He rose to his feet, and followed Lowell, who was already walking up the back porch steps.
We stared in paralyzing fear, watching as the two disappeared into Thomas Ralphina’s house. I could almost hear yelling, but that might have been the whisper of the wind against the Ralphinas’ house. Tracy tried to speak. “Skinny, why would you–?”
“It was a slip of the tongue.”
She had tears in her eyes. “You ruined everything.”
He stared at her for a while, with the roach between his fingertips. Skinny was never a very introspective guy–he blurted out what he thought, and he never looked too deep into what any of it meant. If it happened, it happened, and everyone should know. That’s how Skinny operated–there were no secrets with him, especially if he didn’t think it was a secret to begin with.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last, with his words soaked in guilt. “I… I’m way too fuckin’ high right now. I can’t believe I said that.”
“It’s my fault for even thinking about doing it,” Tracy groaned through his hands, which were tightly bound against her face.
I interjected, for the first time in this entire conversation, “Doing what?”
“Cheating on Lowell.” She said it flatly, like it was her deciding her favorite color.
Skinny asked, “Have you been… like, planning on getting with someone else?”
“I told you who, Skinny.”
He sat there, lost in his own stupor. Slowly, his gaze turned to me, and then to the firepit, still blazing with heat and tossing embers. “Lowell seems like a good guy–”
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said, finally lowering her hands. Her dark eyeshadow was puffy and messy, with her eyeliner barely even visible anymore. “He’s angry all the fucking time, about nothing. I can’t even get a word in. I hate him.”
Skinny sighed, “Don’t say that–”
But she quickly retorted, “I’ve been with him for three years! I know him. It used to be good, he used to be my home. My everything. He used to be, but now… He’s… different now. He’s been so clingy and overprotective and… I don’t know. I hate it.” She repeated, “I hate him.”
“Don’t… cheat on him then? Just leave his ass.”
“You don’t get it,” she said, folding her arms. That’s when Tracy continued, this time speaking to Skinny. “Lowell’s probably gonna pat me down later… You should take this.”
“What is it?”
“What do you think it is?”
I whipped my head around and witnessed Tracy handing a small bag of white powder to Skinny, who held it gently in his grasp. She then grabbed her stitched satchel purse and threw it over her shoulder, exiting the backyard through the back steps, entering through the back door. Her thick, black, leather boots clicked over the damp grass, her thin figure becoming untraceable.
Skinny and I stared at the bag in total disbelief, the white dust sparkling against the fire. His eyes floated over to me, and my gaze returned what we were both feeling–delightful confusion.
“Did she just hand me cocaine?” Skinny gasped, laughing to himself. “I just almost ruined her relationship and she’s giving me gifts?!”
“That’s gotta be, like, $300 of coke.”
“Who even deals coke in this town?!” Skinny held the bag between his thin hands, like a mother holding her newborn baby. “It’s probably half-baking soda, but still. I’m, like, dumbfounded.”
“So…” I leaned in, staring over his hands. “We doing some now or what?”
He scoffed. “With Lowell around? He’ll snort the whole bag.”
“So, what? What are we gonna do?”
His eyes never left the bag, but slowly, he began to smile. “Well, first, we’re getting outta here, and then, we’re gonna get fucked up.”
We decided to head to the creek at the edge of Walten Woods.
There’s this cliff overlooking a rolling stream in the back of the forest, where there’s plenty of large, flat rocks to chill on and small pebbles to throw through the river bank. The current, although heavy and quick in the autumn, had this really pleasant melody to it, almost like a lullaby tumbling on through the woods. Navigating to the top of the cliff wasn’t an effortless trip, though–dense packs of thorn bushes, tall grass, and low shrubs caused every step to be calculated, with one wrong move leading to a scrape or a cut on your ankles.
“You’ve done coke before, right?”
Skinny nodded, lining up the powdery substance with the edge of his debit card. I was chucking stones into the flowing river, while he laid down next to me on one of the rocks, lining up the coke in the center. “Yeah, at all the parties you declined to attend.” He smiled up at me, and then down at his work. “Alright, you ready?”
“I don’t know.” For some reason, I had this massive chill up my spine, like an electric current circling from the bottom of my feet to the top of my neck. My stomach was in knots–something wasn’t right, but it could’ve just been my nerves. I hadn’t ever been nervous to do something like this before, but there was something off about this whole situation, and what led up to it. “Does it kick in right away?”
He shrugged. “It takes, like, five minutes-ish to peak. I think. I don’t know.”
“You got the experience,” I reasoned, tossing another stone overhead. “You do it first, and then when it kicks in for you, I’ll try it.”
“Yeah, alright. Sounds good.” He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket and rolled it up tight. “God bless you, Tracy Phan.” Then, he brought his face close to the rock’s surface and snorted the line.
Immediately, he sat back, his eyes wide. “Fuck, that burns,” he winced, stuffing the residual powder up into his nasal cavity. He was smiling, though. “Man, you’re my best friend. I can’t imagine doing this shit with someone else.”
“Ditto.”
He stood up next to me, and together we took turns tossing stones into the stream, one after another. He was a lot better at skipping stones than me, but as we continued, his stones began to skip less and less, and eventually, they sank altogether. At first, I laughed, and I commented, “Man, you lose your stamina pretty quick,” in which he responded with a weak chuckle.
“Fuck,” he slurred, stepping back. “Collin.”
I glanced at him, and immediately, the image of him shattered my heart. His face had gone pallid, his eyes wide, and his pupils had seemingly disappeared. He was staring at me with such fear and delirium, I thought he was going to start screaming. As he began to sag, his knees buckling, I grabbed hold of him and supported him by his shoulders. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
“Something’s wrong,” he said slowly, his eyes drooping down. “Something’s wrong. I can’t…” His words dissolved, as he fell deadweight against my body.
“Skinny, come on, buddy. Talk to me.”
“It’s not coke, it’s not coke…” he repeated, gasping for air, his words barely above a dull gurgle, “Don’t do it.”
As I held him in my arms, his frail body shaking, I glanced around the dark woods, with only the moon overhead. There was nowhere to go. It was at least a mile back to the parking lot, and we’d gotten here on foot. “What do I do? Where do I… Do I call for help? Do you need help? There’s no reception out–”
“Collin.” I met his eyes, his pin-point pupils staring directly through my skull.
That’s when the weight of the moment hit me, when I finally realized what was happening. Tracy had those track marks on her arm. My heart was racing, thumping, beating against my ribs, with those cold shivers growing more and more frequent. My stomach was churning–I was struggling to not vomit all over him. My grip tightened around his arms.
“Oh… oh my god…”
He continued to stare up at me as I realized this, his body quickly shaking and quivering under his internal stress. He spoke like his tongue was caught in the back of his mouth, and his eyes continued slipping closed, over and over again.
“Collin,” he repeated, and I felt his arms loosen, his body falling numb as his fingers gripped onto my shirt. His fingertips were blue, almost purple. He gurgled, “Collin.”
I started down the cliffside, with Skinny wrapped against my chest. His shaking never stopped, instead growing more and more inconsistent as I felt his heart slowly beat against mine. With his mouth agape, he was drooling on my shirt, with his cold saliva stinging against my skin. At one point, one of those fucking thorn bushes scraped my ankle practically raw, but I wouldn’t notice that until much later–the adrenaline was pumping through my veins. I could feel it in my head.
We made it down the hill to an opening in the trees, and that’s when his shakes turned to spasms. Violent, stilted spasms, back and forth, back and forth.
If I called 911–if I even could, in the middle of the woods–we’d be arrested. We’d go to jail for decades, for having this much heroin. I knew, though, deep in my heart, that didn’t matter. If I had to go to prison for twenty-fucking-years, I’d do it for him. That wasn’t the issue–even if I walked a mile out to my car, I couldn’t fathom if Skinny would even make it that far.
“Collin.” I realized I was spacing out again, and finally, I met his eyes–his bloodshot, shaking eyes. That’s when Skinny said, “Am I going to die?”
I couldn’t respond, but in the space between the words we could’ve exchanged, I felt the beat of his heart slow to a stop, and his eyes shut completely.
I dropped to my knees, holding him over my lap. I tried shaking him. I tried slapping his face. I screamed. I shouted. I tried to wake him up. I tried to feel for a pulse, but one moment he was there, and the next he was gone. I tried everything. I laid him on his back and pressed beats of life into his chest, but there was nothing. There was no life behind his eyes.
All I remember after that was driving to a phone booth, and calling the police to report Skinny’s body in the woods. I remember the coldness of the phone’s thick plastic exterior, and I remember the feeling of Skinny’s flesh on mine.
last updated: april 28 2023
created: february 14 2022