The Language of Moths
1. Swallowing Bubbles
The four of them had been traveling for what seemed like forever, the two in the front seat rattling maps like they did newspapers on Sunday mornings. They rode in the wagon, her favorite car, the one with the wood paneling on its doors. The wagon wound through the twisty backroads of the mountains, leaving behind it clouds of dust through which sunlight passed, making the air shimmer like liquid gold. The girl wanted the wagon to stop so she could jump out and run through the golden light behind her. She climbed halfway over the back seat and pushed her face against the rear window, trying to get a better look.
The little old man beside her shouted, "No! No! No! Sit down, you're slobbering all over the glass. Sit down this instant!" He grabbed her around her waist and pulled her back into a sitting position. He pulled a strap across her chest, locking it with a decisive click. The little old man narrowed his eyes; he waved a finger in the girl's face. He said things at her. But as his words left his lips, they became bubbles. Large silver bubbles that shimmied and wobbled in the air. The bubbles filled the car in mere moments. So many words all at once! The girl laughed delightedly. She popped some of the bubbles between her fingers. Others she plucked from the air and swallowed like grapes. She let them sit sweetly on her tongue for a while, before taking them all the way in for good. When the bubbles reached her stomach, they burst into music. The sound of them echoed through her body, reverberating. She rang like a bell. One day, when she swallowed enough bubbles, she might understand what the little old man beside her was saying. All of the time, not just now and then. Maybe she'd even be able to say things back to him. She wondered if her own words would taste as sweet. Like honey, maybe. Or like flowers.
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2. Being Selfish
Eliot is watching his mother hang bed sheets from a cord of clothesline she's tied off at two walls facing opposite of each other in their cabin. "To give us all a sense of personal space," she explains. Eliot tells his mother that this cabin is so small, hanging up bed sheets to section off rooms is a futile activity. "Where did you learn that word," his mother asks. "Futile. Who taught you that?"
"At school," Eliot says, paging through an X-Men comic book, not bothering to look up.
His mother makes a face that looks impressed. "Maybe public school isn't so bad after all," she says. "Your father was right, as usual."
Eliot doesn't know if his father is right, or even if his father is usually right, as his mother seems to imagine. After all, here they are in the Allegheny Mountains, in Pennsylvania, for God's sake, hundreds of miles away from home. Away from Boston. And for what? For a figment of his father's imagination. For a so-called undiscovered moth his father claims to have seen when he was Eliot's age, fourteen, camping right here in this very cabin. Eliot doesn't believe his father could remember anything that far back, and even if he could, his memory of the event could be completely fictional at this point, an indulgence in nostalgia for a time when his life still seemed open in all directions, flat as a map, unexplored and waiting for him.
Eliot's father is an entomologist. His specialty is lepidoptera, moths and butterflies and what Eliot thinks of as creepy-crawlies, things that spin cocoons around themselves when they're unhappy with their present circumstances and wait inside their shells until either they've changed or the world has, before coming out. Eliot's father is forty-three years old, a once-celebrated researcher on the mating habits of moths found in the Appalachian Mountains. He is also a liar. He lied to his grant committee at the college, telling them in his proposal that he required the funds for this expedition to research the habits of a certain species of moth with which they were all familiar. He didn't mention his undiscovered moth, the one that glowed orange and pink, as he once told Eliot during a reverie, with his eyes looking at something unimaginably distant while he spoke of it. Maybe, Eliot thinks, an absurd adventure like this one is a scientist's version of a mid-life crisis. Instead of chasing after other women, Eliot's father is chasing after a moth that, let's face it, he probably imagined.
"There now, isn't that better?" Eliot's mother stands in the center of the cabin, which she has finished sectioning into four rooms. The cabin is a perfect square with clothesline bisecting the center in both directions, like a plus sign. Eliot owns one corner, and Dawn, his sister, has the one next to his: That makes up one half of the cabin. The other half has been divided into the kitchen and his parents' space. The sheet separating Eliot's corner from his sister's is patterned with blue flowers and tiny teacups. These sheets are Dawn's favorites, and secretly, Eliot's too.
Eliot's mother glances around, smiling vaguely, wiping sweat off of her brow. She's obviously happy with her achievement. After all, she's an academic, a philosopher, unaccustomed to cleaning house and rigging up clotheslines and bed linen. The maid back in Boston--back home, Eliot thinks--Marcy, she helps around the house with domestic things like that. Usually Eliot's mother uses her mind to speculate on how the mind works; not just her own mind--but the mind--the idea of what a mind is. Now she finds herself using her mental prowess to tidy up a ramshackle cabin. Who would have guessed she'd be so capable? So practical? Not Eliot. Certainly not herself.
The door to the cabin swings open, flooding the room with bright sunlight that makes Eliot squint. He shields his eyes with one hand, like an officer saluting, to witness the shadowy figure of his father's body filling the doorframe, and his sister Dawn trailing behind.
Dawn is more excited than usual, which has made this trip something less than a vacation. For Eliot's father, Dr. Carroll, it was never a vacation; that was a well-known fact. For Dr. Carroll, this was an expedition, possibly his last chance to inscribe his name in History. But the rest of the family was supposed to "take things easy and enjoy themselves." When Dr. Carroll said that, Eliot had snorted. Dr. Carroll had placed his hands on his hips and glowered. "Why the attitude, Eliot?" he'd asked.
"Take it easy?" Eliot repeated in a squeaky-scratchy voice that never failed to surface when he most needed to appear justified and righteous. "How can you expect us to do that with Dawn around?"
Dr. Carroll had stalked away, not answering, which didn't surprise Eliot at all. For most of his life, this is what Eliot has seen whenever he questions his father: his father's back, walking away, leaving a room full of silence.
Dawn pushes past Dr. Carroll and runs over to Eliot's cot. She jumps on the mattress, which squeals on old coils, and throws her arms across the moth-eaten pink quilt. The quilt smells of mold and mildew and something a little like mothballs, as if it had been stored in a cedar chest for a long time. Dawn turns to Eliot, her wide blue eyes set in a face as white and smooth as porcelain, and smiles at him, her blonde hair fanning out on the pillow. Eliot considers her over the top of his comic book, pretending not to have noticed her.
Dawn is autistic. She's seventeen years old, three years older than Eliot. But when she's around, Eliot feels as if he's already an old man, forced into an early maturity, responsible for things no fourteen year old boy should have to think about. He blames this all on his parents, who often encourage him when he pays attention to Dawn, who often scold him when he wants something for himself. "Being selfish," is what his mother calls that, leaving Eliot dashed to pieces on the rocks of guilt. He feels guilty even now, trying to read the last page of his comic book instead of paying attention to Dawn.
"I'm leaving," Dr. Carroll announces. He's wearing khaki pants with pockets all over them, and a wide-brimmed hat with mosquito netting pulled down over his face. A backpack and sleeping bag are slung on his back. He lifts the mosquito netting and kisses Eliot's mother on her cheek and calls her Dr. Carroll affectionately, then looks at Eliot and says, "You take care of Dawn while I'm away, Eliot. Stay out of trouble."
He walks outside, and all of them--Eliot, Dawn and their mother--move to the doorway. As if magnetized by Dr. Carroll's absence, they try to fill the space he's left. They watch him become smaller and smaller, a shadow, until he reaches the trail that will take him farther into the graying mountains, where his moth awaits.
"Good luck," Eliot's mother whispers, waving goodbye to his back, his nets and pockets. She closes her eyes and says, "Please," to something she cannot name, even though she no longer believes in higher powers, ghosts or gods of any sort.
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3. First Words
It was strange for the girl in this place; she hadn't been prepared for it. Suddenly the wagon had come to a stop and they all spilled out. The mother and the father, they seemed so excited. They smiled so hard, their faces split in half. The little old man kept scowling; he was so funny. She patted him on his shoulder and he opened his mouth to make room for one huge silver bubble to escape. She grabbed hold of its silky surface and almost left the ground as it floated upwards, towards the clouds. But it popped, and she rocked back on her heels, laughing. When the bubble popped, it shouted, "Get off!"
The father left soon after. The girl was a little frightened at first. Like maybe the father would never come back? Did the father still love her? These thoughts frightened her more than anything else. But then she watched the little old man chop wood for the fire, his skinny arms struggling each time he lifted the axe above his head, which made her laugh, sweeping the fear out of her like the mother sweeping dirt off the front porch. Swish! Goodbye, fear! Good riddance! She forgot the father because the little old man made her laugh so much.
There were so many trees here, the girl thought she'd break her neck from tilting her head back to see their swaying tops. Also, strange sounds burrowed into her skin, and she shivered a lot. Birds singing, crickets creeking. This little thing no bigger than the nail of her pinky--it had transparent wings and hovered by her ear, buzzing a nasty song. She swatted at it, but it kept returning. It followed her wherever she went. Finally the mother saw it and squashed it in a Kleenex. But as it died, it told the girl, "You've made a horrible mistake. I am not the enemy." Then it coughed, sputtered, and was dead.
The girl thought of the wagon. It was still one of her favorite things in the world. But now she was thinking she wasn't so sure. Maybe there were other things just as special as riding in the wagon with the mother, the father and the little old man. She wished the mother wouldn't have killed the winged creature so quick. She wanted it to tell her more things, but now it was dead and its last words still rang in her ears. When the winged creature spoke, no bubbles came out of its mouth. Words, pure and clear, like cold water, filled her up. The winged creature had more words for her, she just knew it. She knew this without knowing why, and she didn't care. She only cared that the bubbles didn't come between her and the words when the creature spoke to her. One drink of that and she wanted more.
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4. The Scream
Before Eliot's father left, he placed him in charge of Dawn, and his mother seems more than willing to follow her husband's orders to the letter, leaving Eliot to look after Dawn while she sits on the front porch of the cabin, or in the kitchen, and writes. Eliot finds his mother's loyalty to his father's declarations an annoying trait, as if she had no say-so about anything when it comes to her children; she simply goes along with whatever his father says. He's watched Dawn every day since his father left, which has been for an entire week. He's taken her on the trails that are clearly marked; they've stared into the shallow depths of a creek where the water was as dark as tea, where red and blue crayfish skittered for cover under rocks. He's introduced Dawn to grasshoppers, which she loved immediately and, to Eliot's amazement, coaxed into a perfect line, making them leap in time together, like figure skaters. He was proud of Dawn for that, and could tell she was too; she looked up at him after the synchronized leap went off without a hitch and clapped her hands for a full minute.
Each day they pick wildflowers together, which, when they return in the late afternoons, hang tattered and limp in Dawn's grip. Still, their mother takes them from Dawn gratefully when they're offered. "Oh, they're beautiful," she says, and puts the ragged daisies and buttercups in empty Coke bottles, filling the cabin with their bittersweet scent.
Eliot never gives his mother flowers. He leaves that pleasure for Dawn. And anyway, he knows something Dawn doesn't: his mother doesn't even like flowers, and Dr. Carroll doesn't even give them to her for Valentine's day or for their wedding anniversary. Eliot has to admit that his mother's graciousness in the face of receiving a gift she doesn't like is a mark of her tact and love for Dawn. He couldn't ever be so nice. He watches his mother and Dawn find "just the right place" for the flowers and thinks, I am a bad person. He thinks this because he's imagined himself far away, not from his present location in the mountains, but far away from his family itself. He's imagined himself in a place of his own, with furniture and a TV set and his own books. In none of these fantasies does his mother or father appear, except for the occasional phone call. He never misses them and he wonders if this means he's a wrong person somehow. Shouldn't children love their parents enough to call every once in a while? Apparently in these fantasies, parents aren't that important.
Dawn isn't a part of these fantasies either. Eliot doesn't even imagine phone calls from her because, really, what would be the use? At most, Dawn might latch onto a phrase and ask him it over and over. She might say, like she once did at his twelfth birthday party, "How old is your cat?" sending all of his friends into fits of laughter.
Eliot doesn't have a cat.
Eliot's mother has begun a new essay, and during the day, she spends her time reading essays and books written by other philosophers and scientists who she thinks has something to say on the subject she's considering. "This one," she tells Eliot one morning, "will be a feminist revision of Walden. I think it has great potential."
She's packed her Thoreau, Eliot realizes, irritation suddenly tingling at the base of his neck. He's beginning to suspect that, this summer, he has become the victim of a conspiracy got up by his parents, a conspiracy that will leave him the sole caretaker of Dawn. Within the frame of a few seconds he's turned red and his skin has started to itch. He's close to yelling at his mother. He wants to accuse her of this conspiracy, to call her out, so to speak. To scold her for being selfish. I could do that, he thinks. Scold his parents. He's done it before and he'll do it again. He finds nothing wrong with that; sometimes they deserve to be reprimanded. Why does everyone think that because someone gives birth to you and is older, they inherently deserve your respect? Eliot decided a long time ago that he wouldn't respect his parents unless they respected him. Sometimes this becomes a problem.
Before he unleashes his penned-up tensions, though, his mother stops scribbling and lifts her face from her notebook. She smiles at Eliot and says, "Why don't you go into that village we passed on the way in and make some friends? You've been doing so well with your sister. You deserve a break."
She gives Eliot ten dollars from her purse, which he crumples into a wad in his front pocket. She's releasing him for the day, and though he's still fuming over the conspiracy, he runs at this window of chance. He grabs his bike and trots with it at his side for a minute, before leaping onto its sun-warmed seat. Then he peddles away, down the mountain.
When he thinks he's far enough away, Eliot screams at the top of his lungs, an indecipherable noise that echoes and echoes in this silent, wooded place. The scream hangs over the mountainside like a cloud of black smoke, a stain on the clear sky, following Eliot for the rest of the day. Like some homeless mutt he's been nice to without thinking about the consequences, the scream will follow him forever now, seeking more affection, wanting to be a permanent part of his life.
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5. The Butterfly's Question
The girl found the butterflies by accident. They were swarming in a small green field splashed yellow and white and orange from their wings. She ran out to meet them, stretched out her fingertips to touch them, and they flitted onto her arms, dusted her face with pollen, kissed her forehead and said,
"Child, where have you been?"
The butterfly that spoke to her was large, and its wings were a burnt orange color, spider-webbed with black veins. It floated unsteadily in front of her face, cocking its head back and forth as if examining her. No silver bubbles came out of its mouth when it spoke, just like the first winged creature, just like the grasshoppers who performed their leaps, their little tricks just for her pleasure.
"Well?" The butterfly circled her head once.
"I don't know," Dawn said. "It's hard to explain. But there are these people. They take care of me really nice."
"I would expect nothing less," said the butterfly, coming to rest on the back of her wrist. It stayed there for a while, its wings moving back and forth slowly, fanning itself. Finally, it crawled up the length of the girl's arm and came to rest on her shoulder. It whispered in her ear, "Why now? Why have they brought you too us now, so late in your life?"
The girl didn't know how to answer the butterfly. She simply looked down at her bare feet in the high grass and shrugged. "I don't know," she told the butterfly, and nearly started crying. But the butterfly brushed her cheek with its wings and said, "No, no. Don't cry, my love. Everything in its own time. Everything in its own time. Now isn't that right?"
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6. Centipede
When Eliot rode into the village his first thought was: What a dump. When they passed through it a week ago, they had driven through without stopping, and he figured his father must have been speeding because he hadn't noticed how sad this so-called village is. It has one miserable main street running through the center, a general store called Mac's, a gas station that serves ice cream inside, and a bar called Murdock's Place. Other than that, the rest of the town is made up of family cemeteries and ramshackle farms. The Amish have a community just a few miles out of town, and the occasional horse-drawn buggy clop-clops it way down the main street, carrying inside its bonnet girls wearing dark blue dresses and men with bushy beards and straw hats.
Inside Mac's general store, Eliot is playing Centipede, an incredibly archaic arcade game from the 1980s. He has to play the game with an old trackball, which is virtually extinct in the arcade world, and it only has one button to push for laser beam attacks. Ridiculous, thinks Eliot. Uncivilized. This is the end of the world, he thinks, imagining the world to be flat, like the first explorers described it, where, in the furthest outposts of undiscovered country, the natives play Centipede and sell ice cream in gas stations, traveling from home to school in horse-drawn buggies. He misses his computer in Boston, which offers far more sophisticated diversions. Games where you actually have to think, he thinks.
The front screen door to Mac's squeals open then bangs shut. Mac, the man behind the counter with the brown wart on his nose and the receding hairline, couldn't have oiled the hinges for ages. Probably not since the place was first built. Eliot looks over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of the tall town boy who just entered, standing at the front counter, talking to Mac. He's pale as milk in the gloom of Mac's dusty store, and his hair looks almost colorless. More like fiber optics than hair, Eliot thinks, clear as plastic filaments. Mac calls the boy Roy, and rings up a tin of chewing tobacco on the cash register. Another piece of pre-history, Eliot thinks. This place doesn't even have price scanners, which have been around for how long? Like more than twenty years at least.
Eliot turns back to his game to find he's been killed because of his carelessness. That's okay, though, because he still has one life left to lose and, anyway, he doesn't have to feel like a failure because the game is so absurd that he doesn't even care anymore. He starts playing again anyway, spinning the trackball in its orbit, but suddenly he feels someone breathing on the back of his neck. He stops moving the trackball. He looks over his shoulder to find Roy standing behind him.
"Watch out!" Roy says, pointing a grease-stained finger at the video screen. Eliot turns back and saves himself by the skin of his teeth. "You almost bought it there," says Roy in a congratulatory manner, as if Eliot has passed some sort of manhood rite in which near-death experiences are a standard. Roy sends a stream of brown spit splashing against the back corner of the arcade game, and Eliot grins without knowing why. He's thinking this kid Roy is a real loser, trashy and yet somehow brave to spit on Mac's property when Mac is only a few steps away. Guys like this are enigmas to Eliot. They frighten him, piss him off for how easy-going they act, fire his imagination in ways that embarrass him. He abhors them; he wants to be more like them; he wants them to want to be more like him; he wants them to tell him they want to be more like him, so he can admit to his own desire for aspects of their own personalities. Shit, he thinks. What the hell is wrong with me? Why do I think these things?
After another minute, Eliot crashes yet another life, and the arcade game bleeps wearily, asking for another quarter for another chance. Eliot turns to Roy and asks, "You want a turn?"
Up close, he can see Roy's eyes are green, and his hair is brown, not colorless. In fact, Eliot decides, in the right light, Roy's hair may even be auburn, reddish-brown, like leaves in autumn.
Roy gives Eliot this dirty grin that makes him appear like he's onto Eliot about something. His lips curl back from his teeth. His nostrils flare, then retract. He's caught the scent of something. "No," he tells Eliot, still grinning. "Why don't we do something else instead?"
Eliot is already nodding. He doesn't know what he's agreed to, but he's willing to sign on the dotted line without reading the small print. It doesn't matter, he's thinking. He's only wondering what Roy's hair will look like outside, out of the dark of Mac's store, out in the sunlight.
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7. Do You Understand Me?
The mother came out of nowhere, and the girl looked frantically around the field for a place to hide, as if she'd been caught doing something bad, or was naked, like that man and woman in the garden with the snake. Sometimes, the grandma who babysitted for the mother and the father would tell the girl that story and say, "Dear, you are wiser than all of us. You did not bite that apple." The grandma would pet the girl's hair, as if she were a dog or a cat.
The mother said, "Dawn! What are you doing so far away?
I've been looking for you everywhere! You know you're not supposed to wander." The mother was suddenly upon the girl then, and she grabbed hold of her wrist, tight. "Come on," said the mother. "Let's go back to the cabin. I've got work to do. You can't run off like this. Do you understand me? Dawn! Understand?"
The mother and father were always talking about work. The girl didn't know what work was, but she thought it was probably something like when she had to go to the special school, where the Mrs. Albert made her say, "B is for book, B. B is for bat, B. B is for butterfly, B. Buh, buh, buh." It was a little annoying. But the girl was given a piece of candy each time she repeated the Mrs. Albert correctly. The candy made the buh, buh, buhs worth saying.
The mother tugged on the girl's wrist and they left the field together. The girl struggled against her mother's grip, but could not break it. Behind her, the butterflies all waved their wings goodbye, winking in the high grass and yellow-white flowers like stars in the sky at night. The girl waved back with her free hand, and the butterflies started to fly towards her, as if she'd issued them a command. They ushered the mother and girl out of their field, flapping behind the girl like a banner.
When they reached the cabin, the girl saw that the little old man was back again. Something was funny about him now, but it wasn't the kind of funny that usually made her laugh. Something was different. He didn't look so old anymore maybe, as if all the adulthood had drained out of his normally pinched-looking face. He didn't even scold her when she ran up to him and squealed at him, pointing out the difference to him, in case he hadn't noticed it himself. The little old man didn't seem to be bothered by anything now, not the girl, nor the mother. His eyes looked always somewhere else, far away, like the father's. Off in the distance. The mother asked the little old man, "How was your day?" and the little old man replied, "Great."
This was a shock for the girl. The little old man never sounded so happy. He went into the cabin to take a nap. The girl was curious, so she climbed onto the porch and peered through the window that looked down on the little old man's cot. He was lying on his back, arms crossed behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His face suddenly broke into a smile, and the girl cocked her head, wondering why he would ever do that. Then she realized: He'd found something like she had with the insects, and it made her happy for them both.
The little old man stopped staring at the ceiling. He stared at the girl, his eyes warning signals to keep her distance, but he didn't yell like he usually did. The girl nodded, then backed away from the window slowly. She didn't want to ruin his happiness.
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8. Life in the Present Tense
Eliot and Roy are sitting in the rusted-out shell of a 1969 Corvette, once painted red, now rotted away to the browns of rust. The corvette rests in the back of a scrap metal junkyard on the edge of town, which Roy's uncle owns. His uncle closes the place down every afternoon at five o'clock sharp. Now it's nine o'clock at night, and the only light available comes from the moon, and from the orange glow on the cherry of Roy's cigarette.
Eliot is holding a fifth of Jim Beam whiskey in his right hand. The bottle is half empty. He lifts it to his lips and drinks. The whiskey slides down his throat, warm and bitter, and explodes in his stomach, heating his body, flushing his skin bright red. He and Roy started drinking over an hour ago, taking shots, daring each other to take another, then another, until they were both good and drunk. It's the first time for Eliot.
"We need to find something to do," Roy says, exhaling a plume of smoke. "Jeez, this'd be better if we'd at least have a radio or something."
"It's all right," Eliot says, trying to calm Roy down before he works himself up. He and Roy have been hanging out together relentlessly for the past few weeks. Here's one thing Eliot's discovered about Roy: He gets angry over little things fast. Things that aren't really problems. Like not having music in the junkyard while they drink. Roy's never satisfied with what's available. His mind constantly seeks out what could make each moment better than it is, rather than focusing on the moment itself. Roy lives in the future imperfect, Eliot's realized, while Eliot mainly lives in the present tense.
"I hate this town," Roy says, taking the bottle from Eliot. He sips some of the whiskey, then takes a fast and hard gulp. "Ahh," he hisses. He turns to Eliot and smiles, all teeth. His smile is almost perfect, except for one of his front teeth is pushed out a little further than the other, slightly crooked. But it suits him somehow, Eliot thinks.
"I don't know," Eliot shrugs. "I kind of like it here. It's better than being up on that stupid mountain with my parents. They're enough to drive you up a wall."
"Or to drink," says Roy, lifting the bottle again, and they both laugh.
"Yeah," Eliot says, smiling back at Roy. He leans back to rest his head against the seat and looks up through the rusted-out roof of the Corvette, where the stars pour through, reeling and circling above them, as though some invisible force is stirring them up. "It's not like this in Boston," Eliot says. "Most of the time you can't even see the stars because of the city lights."
"In Boston," Roy mimics, his voice whiney and filled with a slight sneer. "All you talk about is Boston. You know, Boston isn't everything. It's the not the only place in the world."
"I know," Eliot says. "I was just trying to say exactly that. You know, how I can't see the stars there like I can here?"
"Oh," Roy says, and looks down into his lap.
Eliot pats him on the shoulder and tells him not to get all sad. "We're having fun," Eliot says. "Everything's great."
Roy agrees and then Eliot goes back to staring at the stars above them. The night air feels cold on his whiskey-warmed skin, and he closes his eyes for a moment to feel the slight breeze on his face. Then he suddenly feels hands cupping his cheeks, the skin rough and grainy, and when Eliot opens his eyes, Roy's face floats before him, serious and intent. Roy leans in and they're lips meet briefly. Something electric uncoils through Eliot's body, like a live wire, dangerous and intense. He feels as if all the gaps and cracks in his being are stretching out to the horizon, filling up with light.
"Are you all right?" Roy asks, and Eliot realizes that he's shaking.
"Yes," Eliot says, so softly and quietly that the word evaporates before it can be heard. He nods instead and, before they kiss again, Roy brushes his thumb over Eliot's cheek and says, "Don't worry. We're friends. It's nothing to worry about, right?"
Eliot can't help but begin worrying, though. He already knows some of the things that will come to pass because of this. He will contemplate suicide, he will contemplate murder, he will hate himself for more reasons than usual--not just because he doesn't want to be away from his family, but because he has turned out to be the sort of boy who kisses other boys, and who wants a son like that? Everything seems like a dream right now, though, so sudden, and maybe it is a dream, nothing more than that. Eliot is prepared to continue sleepwalking.
He nods to answer again, his voice no longer functioning properly. Then Roy presses close again, his breath thick with whiskey and smoke. His body above Eliot blocks out the light from the stars.
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9. Sad Alone
In the woods at night, the girl danced to the songs of frogs throating, crickets chirring, wind snaking through leaves, the gurgle of the nearby creek. A happy marriage these sounds made, so the girl danced, surrounded by fireflies and moths.
She could still see the fire through the spaces between the trees, her family's campsite near the cabin, so she was safe. She wasn't doing anything wrong--she was following the rules--so the mother shouldn't come running to pull her back to the fire to sit with her and the father. He was back again, but he didn't seem to be there. Not really there, that is. He didn't look at the girl during dinner, only stared into the fire before him, slouching. He didn't open his mouth for any bubbles to come out.
Now that it was night, the little old man was back again. This had become a regular event. In the early evening, after dinner, the little old man would leave, promising to be back before sunset at nine-thirty, or else he'd spend the night with his new friend. This time, though, the little old man had come back with his new friend riding along on a bike beside him, saying, "This is Roy. He'll be spending the night."
The girl missed the little old man when he was gone now, but she didn't dwell on this too much. The little old man no longer glowered at her, no longer gripped her hand too tight like the mother did; he no longer looked angry all the time, so she forgave his absence. He was happy, the girl realized, and in realizing the little old man's happiness and the distance between them that went along with it, she realized her own happiness as well. She didn't miss him enough to be sad about his absence, unlike the father, who made the mother sad when he was gone, who made everyone miss him in a way that made them want to cry or shout in his face.
This moth, the girl thought, stopping her dance for the moment. If she could find this moth, the moth that the father was looking for, perhaps he would come back and be happy, and make the mother happy, and then everyone could be happy together, instead of sad alone. She smiled, proud of her idea, and turned to the fireflies and moths that surrounded her to ask the question:
"Can anyone help me?"
To which the insects all responded at once, their voices a chorus, asking, "What can we do? Are you all right? What? What?"
So the girl began to speak.
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10. Each in their Own Place
Dr. Carroll is sitting by the campfire, staring at his two booted feet. Eliot's mother is saying, "This week it will happen. You can't get down on yourself. It's only been a month. You have the rest of the summer still. Don't worry."
Eliot's mother is cooking barbecued beans in a pot over the campfire. The flames lick at the bottom of the pan. Dr. Carroll shakes his head, looking distraught. There are new wrinkles in his forehead, and also around his mouth.
This has been a regular event over the past few weeks, Eliot's father returning briefly for supplies and rest, looking depressed and slightly damaged, growing older-looking before Eliot's eyes. Eliot feels bad for his father, but he'd also like to say, I told you so. That's just too mean, though, he's decided. The Old Eliot would have said that, the New Eliot won't.
The New Eliot is a recent change he's been experiencing, and it's because of Roy. Roy's changed him somehow without trying, and probably without even wanting to make Eliot into someone new in the first place. Eliot supposes this is what happens when you meet a person with whom you can truly communicate. The New Eliot will always try to be nice and not so world-weary. He will not say mean things to his parents or sister. He will love them and think about their needs, because his no longer seem so bad off.
Roy says, "Is it always like this?" He and Eliot are sitting on the swing in the cabin's front porch. The swing's chains squeal above their heads as they rock. This is Roy's first visit to the place. Eliot's tried to keep him away from his family, because even though he's made the choice to be nice, he's still embarrassed by them a little. Also, he'd rather have Roy to himself.
That's another thing that's come between them. It happened a couple of weeks back. Roy and Eliot had been hanging out together, getting into minor trouble. They'd spray-painted their names on an overpass; egged Roy's neighbor's car; toilet-papered the high school Roy attends; drank whiskey until they've puked. It's been a crazy summer, the best Eliot can remember really, and he doesn't want it to ever stop. Usually he goes to computer camp or just sits in front of the TV playing video games until school starts back up. Besides the vandalism and the drunken bouts, Eliot thinks he has fallen in love. Something like that. He and Roy have become like a couple, without using those words, without telling anyone else.
"My father's like Sisyphus," Eliot says, and Roy gives him this puzzled look.
"What did you say?"
"Sisyphus," Eliot repeats. "He was this guy from myth who was doomed by the gods to roll a rock up a mountain, but it keeps rolling back down when he gets to the top, so he has to roll it up again, over and over. Camus says it's the definition of the human condition, that myth. My mother teaches a class on it."
"Oh." Roy shakes his head. "Well, whatever."
That whatever is another thing that's come between them. Lately Roy says it whenever he doesn't understand Eliot, and doesn't care to try. It makes Eliot want to punch Roy right in the face. Eliot has taken to saying it as well, to see if it pisses off Roy as much, but whenever he says, "Whatever," Roy doesn't seem to give a damn. He just keeps on talking without noticing Eliot's attempts to make him angry.
The fireflies have come out for the evening, glowing on and off in the night mist. Crickets chirp, rubbing their legs together. An owl calls out its own name in the distance. Dawn is running between trees, her figure a silhouette briefly illuminated by the green glow of the fireflies, a shadow in the woods. Eliot still hasn't introduced her to Roy, and Roy hasn't asked why she acts so strangely, which makes Eliot think maybe he should explain before Roy says something mean about her, not understanding her condition. Dawn irritates Eliot, but he still doesn't want other people saying nasty things about her.
"She's autistic," Eliot says all of a sudden, pre-empting
Roy's remarks. He pushes against the porch floorboards to make them swing faster, so Roy can't get off this ride too quick.
Roy doesn't seem shocked, though, or even interested in Dawn's erratic behavior. And why should he be? Eliot thinks. Roy himself has told Eliot much weirder things about his family. He told Eliot that first day, over an ice cream at the gas station, that he lived with his grandparents because his mother was an alcoholic, and his father was who-knows-where. That his mother would fight anyone in town, even Roy when she was drunk. That his grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, that he had found the white robes and the pointy hood in his grandfather's closet. That his grandmother used to sit him down at night before bed and read to him for a half an hour out of the Bible, and that afterwards she'd tell him he was born in sin, and should pray for forgiveness. It frightens Eliot a little, and makes him shiver, thinking of what it must be like to be Roy. He only hopes Roy's secret-sharing doesn't require an admission of his own private weirdnesses. He's not ready for that.
"Let's go inside," Roy says, putting his feet down flat on the porch. The swing suddenly comes to a halt. Roy stands and Eliot follows him into the cabin, already knowing what's going to happen. It's a vice of Roy's, fooling around in places where they might get caught.
We won't get caught here, Eliot thinks. His parents are outside by the heat of the fire, involved in their own problems. They won't bother to come inside the cabin now. Roy leads Eliot to the pink-quilted cot and they lay down together, and begin to kiss.
Roy's lips are larger than Eliot's. Eliot feels like his lips aren't big enough. They're too thin and soft, like rose petals. Roy, he thinks, would probably like his lips bigger and rougher, chapped even. He can feel the cracks in Roy's lips, can taste Roy's cigarettes. Roy's stubble scratches Eliot's cheeks in this way that makes him crazy. Then Roy is pulling off Eliot's shirt, kissing Eliot's stomach, unbuttoning Eliot's shorts. Eliot closes his eyes. He mouths the words, Someone is in love with me. He is in the habit of mouthing sentences silently when he wants what he is saying to be true.
He feels his shorts being tugged down, then his breath catches in his throat, and he is off, off, off. Far away, his parents argue and his sister runs through the wilderness like a woodland creature, a nymph. Each of them in their private spaces, like the sections his mother made of the cabin when they first arrived. Each of them in their own place.
#
11. What the Firefly Said
"So," said the firefly, "you're looking for a moth."
The girl nodded. "Yes," she said. "Actually, it's for my father. He's been searching for over a month."
"And what does it look like?" the firefly said, floating in front of her face. "You know, a moth is a moth is a moth. But
that's just my opinion."
"This one glows," she said. "An orangey-pink. It has brown and gold streaks on its back, and also it only comes out at night."
"Hmm," said the firefly. "I see. Wait here a moment."
The firefly flew off. The girl watched it for a while, then lost it among the other greenish blips. She sighed, sat down on the ground beneath a pine tree, picking up a few needles covered in sticky sap.
"I'm back," said the firefly, and the girl looked up. It had brought a friend, and they both landed on her lap.
"I know who you're looking for," the other firefly said.
The girl felt a rush of excitement churl in her stomach. Her face flushed with heat. "Really?" she said. "Oh, please, you must help me find it."
"This moth, though," the firefly said, "it's a bit of a loner. There are a few of them I know of, but they don't even talk amongst themselves. I don't understand them. You know, we fireflies, we like to have a good time. We like to party." It chuckled softly and nudged its friend.
"I'll do anything," the girl said. "Please, if only it would make my father happier. He looks paler and thinner each time he comes back."
"Well," the firefly said. "Let me see what I can make happen. I have a lot of connections. We'll see what turns up."
"Thank you," said the girl, "Oh, thank you, thank you."
The fireflies both floated off. She sat under the tree for a while longer, thinking everything would be good now. Her whole family would be happy for once.
Then the mother and the father were calling her name, loud, over and over. She saw them coming towards her, running. The mother pulled her up from the ground and said, "I was so worried, so worried." The father grunted and led them back to the cabin, where the little old man and his new friend were sitting by the campfire.
"I can't do this anymore," said the mother. "I can't keep her in one place. She's always wandering off."
"Just a little longer," said the father. "I can't go back without it. I've been teaching the same classes to an endless stream of students. I can't go back without this."
The mother nodded and rubbed her temples. "I know," she said. "I know."
Then the little old man told his friend, "This is my
sister. Her name is Dawn. She doesn't talk much."
The little old man's friend stared at her for a moment. His eyes grew wide; he smiled at her. The little old man's friend said, "Your sister's beautiful," as if he couldn't believe it himself.
#
12. Your Sister's Beautiful
Your sister's beautiful.
Your sister's beautiful.
Your sister's beautiful.
Lying on his cot, staring at the bare rafters of the cabin, imagining Roy hanging by his neck from one of the rafters, his face blue in death, Eliot cannot force Roy's words out of his mind. He's been hearing them over and over since Roy--stupid idiotic trashy no-good thoughtless bastard--said them three nights ago.
Your sister's beautiful.
And me? Eliot thinks. What about me? Why couldn't Roy have said the same thing about Eliot, with whom he's much more involved and supposedly loves enough to take to bed? Eliot is thinking, I should kill him. I should be like one of those people on talk shows, or in novels. I should commit a crime of passion that anyone could understand.
Outside somewhere, Roy is hanging out with Dawn. He's been with Eliot for over a month and never once cared to come up to the cabin until Eliot brought him himself. Now he's come up everyday since that first night, and Eliot has been ignoring him defiantly, walking away when Roy starts to speak, finding opportunities to make Roy feel stupid, talking to his mother about high-minded philosophical things in front of Roy. Even if Eliot himself doesn't understand some of the things that comes out of his mother's mouth, he's been around her long enough to pretend like he knows what he's talking about; he knows enough catch-phrases to get by. Whatever works, he's thinking, to make that jerk go away or feel sorry.
Eliot notices that everything is strangely quiet, both inside the cabin and out. He sits up in bed and looks out the window. The campfire is a pile of ashes, still glowing orange and red from last night. His mother is nowhere to be seen, and both Roy and Dawn aren't around either. His father, he thinks, is who-knows-where.
Eliot goes outside and looks around back of the cabin.
Nothing but weeds and a few scrub bushes and saplings grow here.
He walks to the edge of the woods, to where the trails begin, and starts to worry. Dawn. He hasn't been in a state of mind to watch her, and his mother has proved ineffectual at the task. He mouths the words, My sister is safe and around that tree there, playing with a caterpillar, and then he goes to check.
Dawn's not behind the tree, and there are no caterpillars in sight. Eliot suddenly clenches his teeth. He hears, somewhere close by, Roy's voice. He can't make out what Roy is saying, but he's talking to someone in that voice of his--the idiotic stupid no-good trashy bastard voice.
Eliot walks in the direction of the voice. He follows a trail until it narrows and dips down into a ravine. There's the creek where he and Dawn watched crayfish for hours. The way water moves, the way it sparkles under light, and reflects the things around it, the trees and Eliot's and Dawn's own faces, can entrance Dawn for hours. The creek holds the image of the world on its surface, the trees and clouds and a sun pinned like a jewel on its narrow, rippled neck. Beneath the creek, under the water, is another world, full of crayfish and snakes and fish no bigger than fingers. Eliot wonders if his mother has included something philosophical about the creek in her feminist revision of Walden. He wonders if she's noticed the same things that he notices.
Roy's voice fades, then reappears, like a trick or a prank, and soon Eliot sees him sitting under a tree with Dawn. Roy's talking to her real sweet. Eliot recognizes that voice. He's playing with Dawn's hand, which she keeps pulling away from him. Roy doesn't know Dawn hates to be touched. The only thing she can stand is a tight embrace, and then she won't ever let go. It's a symptom, her doctor has told the family, of her autism.
Now Roy is leaning into Dawn, trying to kiss her, and Dawn pulls her head back. She stands up and starts walking towards the creek. Eliot feels his hands clench, becoming fists. Roy stands up and follows Dawn. He walks in front of her and she squeals in his face. A high-pitched banshee squeal. The squeal, Eliot thinks, of death.
Eliot finds he is running towards them, his fists ready to pummel Roy. He wonders if he can actually do it, he hasn't ever used them before, not like this. Can I do it, he wonders, as Roy turns with a surprised expression on his face.
Yes, he can.
His first punch lands on Roy's cheekbone, right under Roy's eye. The second one glances blandly off of Roy's stomach, making Roy double up and expel a gasp of breath. Then Eliot is screaming at the top of his lungs, "Get out! Get the hell out! Get the hell out!" His voice turns hoarser each time he screams, but he keeps screaming anyway. Roy looks up at Eliot with a red mark on his face. It's already darkening into a bruise that Eliot wishes he could take a picture of and frame. He'd like to hang it on his wall and keep it forever. A reminder of his ignorance.
Roy says, "Whatever. Fucking faggot," and starts to walk away, back up the trail. When he reaches the top of the ravine and walks over it, he disappears from Eliot's sight, and from Eliot's life, forever.
Eliot is breathing heavily, ready to hit Roy again. He's a little surprised at how easy it was, that he has a space inside him that harbors violence. At the same time, he's impressed with himself. He's not sure if he should feel afraid or proud of his actions. He's not sure if he has room for both.
Dawn stands beside him, looking into his face. She's quiet and still for once in her life. She smoothes down the wrinkles in her shorts with the flats of her hands, over and over. He's most likely disturbed her. Or Roy has. Or both of them did. Eliot says, "Come on, let's go back." He doesn't yell at her or yank her wrist. And Dawn follows him up the trail, out of the ravine, back to the cabin.
#
13. The Assignation
Something woke her late in the night. Tap, tap, tap. Something kept tapping, and so she sat up in bed and looked around her. The mother and father were asleep on their cots, the little old man slept on the other side of the sheet separating them. None of them were tapping.
Then she heard it again, and looked over her shoulder. In the window square, two fireflies hovered, blinking out a message. Outside. Five minutes.
The girl quietly got out of her cot and stepped into her sandals. She pulled a piece of hair out of her mouth. Peaking around the corner of the sheet, she watched the little old man for a while, his chest rising and falling in steady rhythms of sleep. Earlier that evening, she and the little old man had sat in their respective corners, on their respective cots, and by the light of a lantern, they had made shadow creatures appear on the sheet separating their rooms. Bats and butterflies, and even a dog's head that could open its mouth and bark. She loved the little old man, and wished she could tell him as much.
Then she tiptoed out of the cabin, closing the door behind her carefully. The two fireflies were waiting for her by the smoldering campfire.
"What's the matter?" the girl asked. "Has something happened?"
The fireflies nodded together. One of them said, "We've found your moth. The one you asked about. Orangey-pink glow, gold and brown streaks on its wings? We found him."
"Oh, thank you so much," she told them. "How can I repay you?""Wait," the fireflies both said. "He isn't here with us. You'll have to wait. He was busy. A real snob, if you want our opinions. But he said he would drop by tomorrow evening. He asked why you wanted to meet him. We said you were a new fixture here, and wanted to meet all the neighbors."
"That's wonderful," the girl said, liking the idea of her being a fixture here, of being a part of the natural surroundings.
She told the fireflies she would be waiting by the campfire the next evening, and that they could bring the moth to her there. "Won't my father be surprised!" she told the fireflies, and they both shrugged, saying, "It's just a moth, I mean really! What's so special about that?"
You have no idea, she wanted to tell them. But she simply told them thank you, and crept back into the cabin to sleep.
#
14. Why Now?
When Dr. Carroll returned from his latest outing, he looked ready to fold up and die on the spot. Eliot and Dawn hung back in the shadows of the porch, swinging a little, while their mother sat at the campfire with their father and tried her best to comfort him. There was still no moth, he told her, and he was ready to face up to the possibility that this summer has been a total waste, that his memory of something unique that no one else had ever discovered was probably false.
Eliot decided to make himself and Dawn scarce, so he took her inside the cabin and, lighting a lantern, entertained her with hand shadows thrown against the sheet separating their cots. They fell asleep after a while, and when Eliot wakes the next morning, he finds his mother and father already outside, cooking breakfast over the fire.
"We're going to leave tomorrow," Eliot's father tells him, whisking eggs in a stainless steel bowl.
"Good," says Eliot, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He yawns, and takes a glass of orange juice his mother offers him. She's been to town already, and has brought back some fresh food and drinks from Mac's. He takes a sip of the orange juice and holds it in his mouth for a moment, savoring the taste.
"Well, I for one have got a lot of work to do when we get back," Eliot's mother says. "A whole summer spent camping, and I haven't prepared anything for my fall classes yet."
Eliot looks at Dawn, who sits on a log on the other side of the fire, eating sausage links with her fingers. He smiles at her, and gives her a wink. Dawn, to his surprise, smiles and winks back.
The day passes with all of them making preparations to leave the next day. They pack the wagon full of their clothes and camping equipment, and then retire at dusk to the fire, where their faces flush yellow and orange from the flames. All four of them stare at each other, or stare at the last pot of beans cooking on the fire. They're tired, all of them. Puffy gray sacs of flesh hang under their eyes. They are a family, Eliot thinks, of zombies. The walking dead. Faces gray, eyes distant, mouths closed. No one speaks.
Soon after they're finished eating, Dawn gets up from her seat and wanders away from the fire. But not so far that her mother and father can't see where she has gone. Finally, when the fireflies have come to life, filling the night air with an apple green glow, Eliot spots it, his father's moth, pinwheeling through the air around Dawn, surrounded by an orangey-pink halo.
"Dad," he says, "Dad, look." And Dr. Carroll turns to see where Eliot is pointing. A strange little noise comes out of his mouth. Almost a squeak. He heaves himself off the log he's crouched on, and stumbles towards Dawn and the moth.
There it is, thinks Eliot. Why now? Why has it decided to make an appearance after all this time, after all this pain? Why now? he wonders, wanting answers that perhaps don't exist. He suspects Dawn has something to do with it, the same way Dawn made the grasshoppers line up together and do synchronized leaps.
Dr. Carroll shouts, "Keep an eye on it, don't let it get away!" and he rushes to the car to dig through the back for a net or a box. He comes jogging back with a clear plastic box that has a screen fitted into the lid and vents on the sides. A few twigs and leafs wait inside of it. He opens the lid, scoops up the moth, and snaps the box shut.
But then Dawn is squealing. She runs over to her father and tries to pry the box out of his hands. What is she doing? Eliot can't understand why she'd do a thing like that. She's beating at her father's chest, saying--what?--saying, "No! No! No! You can't lock it up like that!"
What? Eliot's thinking. He's thinking, What's happening here?
His mother steps between Dawn and Dr. Carroll, grabbing Dawn around her shoulders to pull her in for a hug. Dawn is sobbing now, her shoulders heaving, and she leans into her mother for the hug, and doesn't let go for fifteen minutes at least. Eliot stays by the fire, afraid of what's going on in front of him. He doesn't know what to do or say.
Dr. Carroll says, "What's wrong with her? I can't believe she tried to do that."
Eliot's mother says, "Leave her alone. Just leave her alone, why don't you? Can't you see she's upset?"
Dr. Carroll walks away from them, holding his box with the moth inside it close to his chest. It glows still. The box lights up like a faery lantern. The smile on his father's face tells Eliot exactly what he is holding. This box, says Eliot's father's smile, contains my youth.
#
15. The Message
It is late now, so late that Eliot has fallen asleep for several hours and then, inexplicably, woke in the night. He doesn't have to pee, and he doesn't feel too hot, or sick. But something is wrong, and it makes him sit up and look around the cabin. His parents are asleep on their cots. The cabin is quiet except for their breathing. He gets out of bed, and once again, the coils of the cot squeal as he removes his weight from them. He pulls back a corner of the sheet separating his room from Dawn's and finds that she is not in her bed. She's not in the cabin at all.
Eliot runs out of the cabin in his bare feet. The grass is dewy, wetting his feet. He doesn't look behind the cabin, or by the fire, or in the nearby field. He runs down the trail to the ravine where he hit Roy, and finds Dawn there, standing by the creek. Mist and fog hover over the water. Dawn stands in the mist surrounded by a swarm of fireflies. She looks like a human Christmas tree with all of those lights blinking around her. She looks like a magic creature. Like a woodland spirit, Eliot thinks.
"Dawn," he says when he reaches her. But Dawn holds out her hand and raises one of her fingers. Wait, she is asking. One moment. Wait.
Eliot stands before her, and suddenly the fireflies drop from the air as if they have all had sudden heart attacks, their lights extinguished. They lay at his feet, crawling around in the grasses. Then, all at the same time, their lights flicker on again, and Eliot finds they have arranged themselves into letters. Spelled out in the grass, glowing green, are the words Love You, Eliot.
Eliot looks up to find Dawn's face shining with tears, and he feels his own eyes filling. He steps around the fireflies and hugs Dawn, and whispers that he loves her, too. They stay there for a while, hugging, until Eliot takes Dawn's hand and leads her back to the cabin before their parents wake up.
#
16. Now
When the Carroll's return home from Pennsylvania, they do their best to return to their lives as they once knew them. Eliot's father, uncanny specimen in hand, sets to work on his new research. His mother resumes classes in the Fall and publishes an essay called "Woman, Nature, Words" in a feminist philosophy journal.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, Dawn attends school--she has learned how to say "My name is Dawn Carroll, I am seventeen years old, Thank you, You're Welcome, Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye." Goodbye is her favorite new word. She sometimes shouts it at the top of her lungs, and Goodbye floats up to the vaulted ceilings at home, spinning this direction and that, searching for an escape route, a way out of the confines of walls and floors and ceilings. Eventually it bursts, and bits of Goodbye, wet and soapy, fall back down onto her face.
Eliot returns to school as well, to high school, where he learns to slouch and to not look up from his feet, and how to evade talking to other people as much as possible. He begins to dress in black clothes and to listen to depressing music--"Is that what they mean by Gothic?" his mother asks him--but he doesn't dignify her question with an answer. His grades flag and falter. "Needs to work harder," his teachers report. Mr. and Mrs. Carroll send him to a psychologist, a Dr. Emery, who sits behind her desk and doesn't say much of anything. She waits in the long silences for Eliot to begin speaking, and once he starts talking, it's difficult to stop.
Eliot tells her everything that happened over the summer, and Dr. Emery nods a lot and continues to offer little in the way of conversation. Dr. Emery advises Eliot to tell his parents whatever he feels he needs to, and that she will try to help them understand. But Eliot isn't ready, not yet at least, and now that he's told someone else what happened, he wants to think about other things for a while. Video games, music, television, even his schoolwork. Things that are comforting and easy. For now it's enough to have Dr. Emery to talk to, someone safe and understanding. For now.
This is the first in a series of people that Eliot finds he can actually talk to. The others will come to him, friends and lovers, scattered throughout the rest of his life. In a few years he won't even be thinking that no one can understand him. He will be leaning back on his pillows and staring at the neon plastic stars he's pasted to his ceiling, in his own apartment a few blocks from where he attends college, and he will be thinking about that night in the ravine, by the creek. He'll remember Dawn lit up by fireflies, and how they arranged themselves into glowing green letters, like the constellation of glowing stars above him, like the stars he watched through the roof of the rusted-out corvette with Roy. He'll think about his sister and how she learned to speak the language of moths, the language of fireflies and crickets. How he had learned the language of love and betrayal, the language of self-hate and mistrust. How much more his sister knew, he realizes later, than he ever did.
When he thinks about Dawn's message, Eliot will be in love with someone who loves him back. This boy that he'll love will be asleep beside him while Eliot stays awake, staring at the stars above, thinking about Dawn's message.
Love You, Eliot, she had instructed the fireflies to spell out.
At the time, Eliot had interpreted Dawn's message to mean she loved him, and of course there's that, too. But when he thinks about it now, in the future, he's not so sure. The "I" of her message was mysteriously missing, but its absence might only have been an informal gesture on Dawn's part. He wonders now if Dawn was saying something entirely different that night. Has he misunderstood her message, or only understood half of it? Meaning is always lost, at least partially, in translation, he thinks.
Love You, Eliot, she had told him, the letters glowing like green embers in the grass.
Now, in the future, this future that he imagined so many years ago, the future in which he lived in his own apartment, with his own television and his own books, the future in which he goes to college and finds himself not as wrong or as weird as he once thought he was, in this future he wonders if Dawn was also giving him a piece of advice.
Love You, Eliot, she had told him.
And he does that. He knows how to do that.
Now.
Copyright 2005, Chris Barzak. Story may not be reproduced or copied, except for one-time personal use, without express permission. Story first appeared in Realms of Fantasy.