The Bodies Left Behind

mother.”
    “He’s lying.” Eyes evasive.
    “Why would he lie?”
    “He doesn’t like me.”
    “He sounded pretty concerned about you.”
    “You just don’t get it.” Apparently thinking that this was irrefutable proof of his innocence, he turned back to the frozen screen. A creature of some sort bounced up and down. Running in place. The boy eyed the game controller. He didn’t go for it.
    “Joey, somebody from school saw you ’phalting on Elden Street.”
    The boy’s eyes flickered. “They’re lying too. It was Rad, right? He’s making that up.”
    “I don’t think they were, Joey. I think they saw you on your board, going forty miles an hour down Elden Street when you wiped out.”
    He bounced onto his bed, past Graham, and pulled a book off the shelf.
    “So you didn’t tell your mother you cut and you didn’t tell her you were ’phalting, did you?”
    “I wasn’t ’phalting. I was just boarding. I went off the parking lot steps.”
    “Is that where you had the accident today?”
    A pause. “Not really. But I don’t ’phalt.”
    “Have you ever?”
    “No.”
    Graham was at a complete loss. This was going nowhere.
    Instinct . . .
    “Where’s your board?”
    Joey glanced at Graham and said nothing. Turned back to the book.
    “Where?” his stepfather asked adamantly.
    “I don’t know.”
    Graham opened the closet, where the boy’s skateboard was sitting on a pile of athletic shoes.
    “No more boarding this month.”
    “Mom said two days!”
    Graham thought Brynn had said three. “One month. And you have to promise that you’re never going to ’phalt again.”
    “I don’t ’phalt!”
    “Joey.”
    “This’s such bullshit!”
    “Don’t say that to me.”
    “Mom doesn’t mind.”
    Was that true? “Well, I do.”
    “You can’t stop me. You’re not my father!”
    Graham felt an urge to argue. To explain about authority and hierarchy and family units, his and the boy’s respective roles in the household. An argument on the merits, though, seemed like an automatic loss.
    Instinct, he reminded himself.
    Okay. Let’s see what happens.
    “Are you going to tell me the truth?”
    “I am telling the truth,” the boy raged and started to cry.
    Graham’s heart was pounding furiously. Was he being honest? This was so hard. He tried to keep his voice steady. “Joey, your mother and I love you very much. We were both worried sick about you when we heard you’d been hurt.”
    “You don’t love me. Nobody does.” The tears stoppedas quickly as they’d started and he slouched back, reading his book.
    “Joey . . .” Graham leaned forward. “I’m doing this because I care about you.” He smiled. “Come on. Brush your teeth, put on your PJs. Time for bed.”
    The boy didn’t move. His eyes were frantically scanning words he wasn’t even seeing.
    Graham rose and left the room, carrying the skateboard. He headed downstairs, fighting the urge with every step to go back and apologize and beg the boy to be happy and forgive him.
    But instinct won. Graham continued to the ground floor, put the skateboard on the top shelf of the closet.
    Anna watched him. She seemed amused. Graham didn’t think anything was funny.
    “When’ll Brynn be home?” his mother-in-law asked.
    He looked at his watch. “Soon, I’d guess. She’ll probably get dinner but she’ll eat in the car.”
    “She shouldn’t do that. Not on those roads at night. You look down for one minute, pick up your sandwich and there’s a deer in front of you. Or a bear. Jamie Henderson nearly hit one. It was just there.”
    “I heard that, I think. Big one?”
    “Big enough.” A nod toward the ceiling. “How’d it go?”
    “Not good.”
    She continued to give him a half-smile.
    “What?” he asked, irritated.
    “It’s a start.”
    Graham rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so.”
    “Trust me. Sometimes just delivering a message is the important thing. Whatever that message is. Remember that.”
    He picked up the phone and dialed Brynn again. It went right to voice mail. He tossed the phone on the table and stared absently at the TV screen. Thinking again about the yellow jackets. How he’d been going about his business, wheeling a big shaggy plant, enjoying the day, never realizing that he’d trod on the nest ten feet back.
    Never realizing it until the hard little dots, with their fiery stingers, were all over him.
    He thought now: And why does it even matter?
    Just let it go.
    Graham