Indian Rock

You walk ahead of me. Your trousers hang so ghetto-low they might come down. I follow you like a dog. I think how my friend Shannon should be here, but dolls are more important, so I’m stuck with you. The Indian burial ground isn’t here, you know that, but you insist on looking. Your hands dig deep in the wet earth, but come up empty. “These Indian heads have to be here. Michael saw them,” you say. But, Michael is dead; an Indian curse from touching arrowheads.

You climb up the rock first, to the closest cave. Telling me we’ll go up its face. I have to help you down and you start to cry. I laugh at you. Pussy-boy, I call you. This makes you hate me and the hate colors your smell. Like metal mixed with trash. It seeps around me and I choke on the you-air. You tell me if there isn’t enough water we’ll die. But, we live close. Too close. This isn’t a real adventure; it’s a scam. Just like how we think we are rich because we live at the lake. But we are poor. Not exactly white-trash but close. That’s why I’m wearing my sister’s hand-me downs. My sister who is six inches taller than me. Red clown pants.

You say you won’t have sex until the girl seems better than the girl’s you’ve met. I know you don’t see me as a girl. I’m a friend. I don’t care, Pussy-boy. You are eleven. I’m twelve. 

You say it’s around here somewhere. The life-jacket; electric orange and covered in blood. I don’t believe you. I see nothing. I think you made it up because you are too afraid to go up the face of Indian Rock. Pussy. I’m hungry. You never are. I have a snack in my pocket. I eat it and shove the wrapper deep in my jeans. You pretend a story, the one about your alcoholic mother vomiting in your bed, but how many times you gotta say it, anyway? We’re all fucked coming to earth, out somebody else’s hole.

The sky’s blue is getting covered in clouds. “It’s gonna rain on us,” I say. I can hear the rapids from the dam overflow violent and magical. “Let’s get a piece of Styrofoam and ride the water, as long as we’re going to get soaked.” You agree and run towards towards the water. You tear the branch off the first tree climbing up and jumping on it with all your weight. You fall to the ground screaming pain. Then you laugh and jump up with the broken tree branch and run to the rapids over the foamy infected part and reach way out for some Styrofoam. 

I go first. Push it out into the middle and jump on and ride down the fast water laughing as hard as anything. I hold on for dear life too, but I just keep going and you run along the shore trying to catch me with the branch, I’m not scared, I’m having fun, but there it is the place where Michael died, I push my memory away. I grab on to the branch and you pull me to safety. You hug me and grab the Styrofoam and run up to the top of the stream for your turn. You hand me the branch and push it way out and jump on. The water is too fast and you lose your grip with your feet all the way under the water and just your arms and head sticking out. I run down the shore trying to help, but you are too far out. I shout and try to grab you with the branch, but you end up stuck on the other side near a rock. I tell you to get over to me, but you can’t. I am soaking wet and the clouds explode in a gush of rain. We are laughing uncontrollable like crazies. 

I get in the stream and walk on the bottom, forgetting how shallow it really is. “Stand up, pussy-boy!” I yell. And you do, like it’s nothing. We are both standing in the stream laughing and laughing that we are out of danger and you turn around to the bank on your side to crawl out. “Something died over here,” you say. And you crawl up on the bank. I still haven’t waded all the way to the middle when you drag down a backpack covered with mud. Its burgundy like the one I used to have. “Open it,” I yell over the rain and the stream.

“Zipper’s stuck,” like with glue. “Let’s get it across to the other side.” I say. You look pale and your face wears an expression not like you. “I’m scared,” you say. I don’t call you a name, I am scared too. “It’s okay, I’ll help you.” I make it to your side and we put the backpack on the Styrofoam. The smell of death is gruesome and I throw up in the water before I can help it. You wade on one side and I wade on the other side and we get it to the safe shore, our shore.

I say, “Let’s leave it,” what can we do anyway? “Nothing,” you say. I lug the heavy pack to a tree. You say, “I have to know,” and you take out your razor and you cut it open. You scream the scream of the damned. The thing you can’t take away from memory happened, the pouring rain, our freezing bodies and the fact of it; a dead girl’s head. She is decomposing I can’t tell how old she is. I have no match in my memory for what this means or where to put this in my mind. You are crying full bore. “We have to find a ranger or a policeman,” I say, but you aren’t listening. 

“We can’t leave her here,” you scream. “Okay,” I say. And we carry what is left of her out of the park him on one side me on the other gasping for the air around us that wasn’t covered in death.

We don’t see anyone on the trail. You say, “Are you okay?” I’m not okay, but I lie to you and say I am. 

At the base of the trail out of the park you see a truck, you leave me with the she-head and run to it. You are waving and screaming over the rain. I am thinking of my parents and my sister and the boy at school I like. I am thinking of my dog and how I wish he were with us. I am thinking how death is so close to being alive. The man runs down to us he sees what we see and he shakes his head and starts to cry too. “We’ll drive her to the station, come on,” the man said. We follow him, you on one side, me on the other and we put it the dead-girl’s head in the back.

We sit in the front with the man. I have seen him before. He has hot chocolate in a thermos. You drink some and hand it to me. He is saying how he knows my parents and knows your parents. I am listening to the tires on the pavement and wondering when I can sleep. I wonder if this man is safe.

You tell the police where you found her. How she was on the other side, a place someone might never look. I tell the police I hope they find her parents and the person who did this.

We drive home with the man, who drops us off together in front of your house. After the man disappears around the corner, you walk me home. You hug me and say, “I’m sorry.” And I go upstairs to my parents and say what happened.

You call me the next day to tell me; her name was Mandy Williamson she went to our school. She went missing two weeks ago. She was twelve years old. Like me.