I unbuckle my seat belt and stare out the window. There’s three deer in the next yard over, frozen at the sight of our car—thinking we can’t see them, I guess, if they only hold still. It’s crazy how certain creatures can be so timid and destructive at the same time. Dom clicks the garage opener and they all sprint off at the noise.
“Ready, honey?”
“No.” I glance back at our house. I guess there’re certain views from inside our house that I’m not ready for yet. Like the cornfield, for starters.
“What’s on your mind, Sugar Brains?” Dom asks. It’s the tone of voice that would usually drive me crazy.
“He never seemed nuts,” I mutter. “Just arrogant and annoying and nasty. But also maybe I should have known.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Cactus—heck I’m a trained professional and even I didn’t think he was anything other than obnoxious and a little untamed.” Dom does some verbal nodding. “But see, that’s the thing about mental illness—not to sound offensive or anything, but it can be very annoying, like you said. Very hard to watch, hard to empathize with. It comes across as pure selfishness—the only difference is it’s not self-serving.”
“Which is why Colt was always getting into trouble,” I say. “He wasn’t channeling his selfishness in productive ways. He was being self-defeating.”
“Exactamundo.” Dom reaches over and unlatches my door, pushing it open. “You’re my smart girl. Now go ahead, Chompers—home sweet home. Meet you in there.”
As soon as I bang through the front door I hear Ralph shouting at his video game in the other room. I’ve never been gladder that Ralph has a key to our place. Dom’s just pulling the car into the garage—he’ll be in any moment—but I can’t stand an empty house. Not even for a second. Especially not right now.
“Ralph, how goes it in there?” I call.
“I’m winning for now,” he shouts, and even though he’s bragging there’s a tinge of caution in his voice, like I shouldn’t bother him.
The garage door rumbles shut and Dom saunters into the kitchen. “What will it be for dinner, Chocolate Butt? Hot Italian sausage on a kaiser roll, or Chicago deep dish from The Pizza Place?” There’s only one pizza place in Friendship and it’s literally called The Pizza Place. Hot Italians are usually my favorite but tonight I just want to feel lettuce in my mouth.
“Something lighter,” I say. “A salad.” After the news came in about Colt and I finished crying on Ralph, I immersed myself in Diane Sawyer clips. In one of them she did this whole thing about the health benefits of substituting salads for our “usual go-to’s.” She said vegetables help with everything from basic lethargy and depression to digestion and ensuring a longer life span. Then she did a segment on the year’s best rainbows.
“Eat lasers!” Ralph shouts. We can hear him clicking frantically on his controller.
“A salad.” Dom looks at me like I’m speaking Chinese. He furrows his brow. “You mean like a potato salad?” In Wisconsin, nobody knows about real salads. We grow fresh vegetables for the rest of the country, sure—and when you’re a kid, the Friendship lunch ladies give you a side of frozen peas with your baloney, or whatever. I guess we also grow corn, but mostly that goes to feed the cows.
Anyway, when it comes down to it, we’re a hunting town, and all anybody keeps around is meat. Rabbit and wild turkey, or burgers and bratwurst if you want to be casual. Venison, too, obviously—and lots of sausage: venison sausage, cheddar-cheese-infused chorizo sausage, Italian sausage, summer sausage. I remember when Ruth was thirteen, she told everyone she wanted to be a vegetarian, and her parents kept offering her chicken, saying it was the lighter option—“Hardly even a meat,” they kept saying. She had to revert back to being a carnivore just so she wouldn’t starve.
I stare back at Dom defiantly. “I want a salad.” He sighs and opens the freezer with a smack, still looking very confused.
It occurs to me that we probably don’t have a single vegetable in the whole house, except for frozen stuff. “Never mind,” I say, but he waves at me like, No, no, I’m doing it, see? and starts throwing various things into a bowl. First bacon bits, which we usually use on our baked potatoes, then cheese—lots of shredded cheese. He rips open a bag of frozen peas with his teeth, then goes to the pantry and gets canned tomatoes, and dumps those in, too. Before you can say, “Gross,” he puts the whole thing in the microwave, beeps in five minutes, then turns around with his arms crossed, looking proud.
“Kippy and Dominic Bushman,” Ralph calls. “Are we getting a pizza or what? I have cash, I’ll chip in.”
“We’re eating salad!” Dom shouts.
“Oof.” I feel like I’m going to cry again. I put my head down on my crossed arms and peer out over my wrist, so Dom won’t see how annoyed I am. “Don’t we at least have carrots or something?”
“Carrots?” Dom crosses the kitchen to put his elbows on the counter across from me. “Pickle, talk to me,” he whispers. “Is this a female body-image thing?”
I moan into my forearm. I can still see the perfect salads that Diane Sawyer laid out on the news anchors’ desk. “I saw it on YouTube.”
“Tell me about it,” Dom says, misunderstanding. “Those buxom models in the underpants ads are enough to give anyone a complex—heck, even I feel fat looking at some of the ads online.” He pats my arm. “I wish you’d talk to me more about the real stuff, Cactus, the Colt stuff,” he adds gently. “You’re not alone if you’re upset, don’tcha know—you should have seen the PTA.” He raises his eyebrows. “There was an uproar of I-told-you-so’s, you betcha.”
The truth is I don’t want to talk about it—at least not with Dom, who might grab my knees at any second and start singing “I’ll Stand by You.” The microwave is whirring with our garbage salad and if we have to chat I’d like it to be about something that has nothing to do with anything.
“Hey, check out this clip of that journalist I told you about,” I blurt, reaching across the counter for my laptop. I watch the screen turn from black to blue as it boots up. “It’s even cooler than the one I showed you before—what?” Dom’s giving me a funny look.
“For one thing I’m familiar with this Diane Sawyer, and it’s just she’s been a lot on your mind lately, that’s all.” He licks his lips. “You think maybe this is”—he shrugs, trying to be nonchalant—“I don’t know, one of your new obsessions?”
My face gets hot. Ralph’s in the other room and even though he’s got the TV on too loud to hear us, I still wish Dom would lower his voice. “I don’t know, Dom,” I whisper. “Maybe I’m dissociative, maybe I’m a psychopath. How’s that?”
He tries to reach for my hand, but I pull away. “Hey, remember after Mom?” he asks. “How you wrote a whole little book on surviving animal attacks? I’m only suggesting that beneath these fascinations might lie something articulable.”
“Oof. Listen.” I close the laptop and take a deep breath. “For once could it just not mean anything?”
Dom smiles. Behind him the microwave beeps, finished. “Sure,” he says softly, getting up.
My phone buzzes and I jump. Who could be calling me right now? Ralph and Dom are the only people who call me anymore and they’re both right here.
Ruth cell calling . . .
I leap off my stool and run into the living room—bounding over Ralph and ducking into the hallway, clutching the cell phone in front of my face. What a huge mistake—a total mix-up. Where did she go? How did she fight him off? Whose body did they actually find? My chest is tight with relief and excitement—but also there’s that heart-dropping-into-stomach thing, like when you’re in your driveway after dark, searching your car for a textbook you probably left at school, and all of a sudden you feel like someone’s watching you.