Me and June are making out on the couch in the dark, while Taylor and June’s sister are in her mom’s bedroom with the door closed. June says kissing in the dark is more exciting than doing it in the light, but I know the real reason: She’s worried about the zits on her chin. Other girls make fun of her at school, calling her names like Granite Cheeks and Mountain Head. I don’t say anything when I hear them. It’s not like June and me are together.
Taylor and June’s sister aren’t together either. Their bodies break up the light spilling underneath the door the same way a catfish casts shadows on smooth creek rock. I only caught a glimpse before they disappeared behind the wooden door, but that’s all it took to understand why Taylor was so eager to get over here. June’s sister is Taylor’s age, a year older than me, and her cheeks are smooth as eggshells.
Me and June aren’t moving around as much. When we do, the plastic slipcover protecting the couch cracks and pops like a bonfire. June was too scared her mom would notice dirt on the furniture to take it off before we sat down. She tilts her neck to the right, offers the hollow part of her shoulder, and I kiss her the way men kiss women in the movies, up the neck to her earlobe. She has the special kind that is disconnected from her head, like mine. Her breath is slow and focused as if she’s blowing out a candle. There’s a heat to it. It feels good knowing I can make someone breathe that way.
Everyone has a fire in them, and Taylor’s is the biggest I know. It’s what makes him how he is, always getting angry and into trouble. It makes his breath short and quick, like he’s ready for a fight.
Last Spring, it rained so much that the river overflowed its banks by nearly up to Second Street. Taylor wanted to skip school and test out our new fishing poles at our secret spot. When we arrived, the water had already receded, stranding fish in ankle-deep pools created by bromegrass. We stood in them, and the fish—sunfish, bluegill, and a few small walleye—acted like we weren’t even there.
Suddenly, headlights cut through the thin curtains of June’s front window, and she pushes me away as if she wasn’t the one to let us in the back door and then turned off the light when her sister led Taylor into the other room. Taylor told me what to do in case this happened: Two hard smacks on the wall mean get the hell out. June flips on the lamp, and the room fills with an off-yellow color that makes the couch, its plastic cover, and the rest of the furniture appear sick. She pulls her hair back, trying to return it to a ponytail, and I can’t understand why she was ever worried about her chin; those bumps are no bigger than flecks of gravel.
Headlights rest on the closed bedroom door, ready to tag Taylor the moment he leaves. Even if we run, it’ll be too late because June’s mom will call our dad, and he’ll get pissed, yelling that Taylor knows better and should be looking out for me. Taylor will tell how I begged to come along, that I was too scared to stay alone in the house by myself, and then the fire in him will start raging, and he’ll run into the woods to prove he doesn’t need anyone. That means, even after all this, I’ll still end up sleeping alone.
I’m ready to put a hole through the wall when my brother finally explodes from the bedroom, lurching toward the back door in a half-run, half-hop, bent double, hair cat-scratched in every direction, one shoe still in his hand. In the bedroom, June’s sister pulls down her shirt, and there’s a glint of silver from the piercing in her belly button. I turn to June. She’s concentrating on pushing the lumps out of the plastic couch cover, so she doesn’t have to watch me leave. I grab Taylor’s abandoned ball cap off the coffee table and follow him.
We hide in the ditch, waiting for enough time to pass so we can pull out our bikes. The full moon hangs down on us like an eye, and now I’m wishing for the dark. Now it’s my breath that’s kicking, and if anyone pokes their head out the door, it’ll be my fault that we’re found.
I still have Taylor’s ball cap crushed in my fist. It’s one of our dad’s old work hats, stained with topsoil and Taylor’s lucky fishhook, the one we caught the gar with, bent over the brim. I rub my finger along the hook, hoping it still has some luck left, but the barbs aren’t sharp enough to tear my fingerpad.
We’re in the ditch long enough that the eye touches the tops of the bare tree branches. June’s mom never sticks her head out the door. Our dad’s truck doesn’t appear on the road. The rabbit kicking in my chest eventually calms. Taylor moves first, unfolding slowly, like a machine gone cold. My eyes are playing tricks on me. Taylor is tall enough that he could grab the moon and throw it away to give us the darkness to sneak home. Instead, he cuts back to the porch.
I still know my brother well enough to understand the house is pulling at him, and that he can’t break away even if he wanted to. We made it out, but it wasn’t our choice, and that burns at Taylor. He needs to make it even, and that means pushing our luck one more time. I hold my breath as if by capturing it, I can wrestle Taylor from the house, but he’s big enough that his body does what it wants.
Red twig dogwood bushes are scattered about the yard, the kind our dad calls accent plants. They don’t do much other than look pretty. Taylor’s shadow shuffles over to one bush that’s by itself, planted far enough from the house that I can tell it was an afterthought. It’s dry, and the spark from his Bic catches easily. He runs back to me in the ditch, not worrying if he’s seen now. He’s made his mark. June’s mom will know someone was here, even if she doesn’t know it was us. He doesn’t say anything. The pops and snaps of the burning bush talk for him.
Sometimes, if Taylor can let the flames out early enough, everything ends up okay.
When we’re back at the house and in bed, Taylor says June’s sister let him into her pants. He waits for me to ask what it’s like to have the lights on. Our fishing poles lean against one another in the corner of the room, their lines a tangled mess of loops and whorls that snare the moonlight coming through the window. Taylor whispers that we don’t need to worry, June’s mom won’t find out because the girls will get in trouble if they tell, more than us, even. I want to ask Taylor if he thinks it will rain enough that the river will overflow again. The day his fishhook became lucky, Taylor didn’t want any of those trapped fish; he said there was no fight in them, and I followed my brother into deeper water, where it was up to my crotch, a few feet short of a fallen tree. That’s where he spotted the gar, an ancient-looking thing, lost and out of place in the new water world. Taylor asks what June and I were doing on the couch, if I did that move with my tongue he told me about. We worked for over an hour to bring the gar to shore, taking turns pulling against the swollen river and wading further out to weigh the line. Taylor asks how good of a kisser June is and if she has any silver stuck in her body. We used a bottle of Clorox to clean the gar bones. The bleach burned away all the meat in three days, turning the gar into something beautiful and clean. On the wall opposite his bed, Taylor mounted its skeleton with a piece of presswood. He’s going to the drive-in with June’s sister next week. There, they can park in the back and not be interrupted. Taylor has stopped waiting on my answers, his breath now slow and heavy with sleep, the calmest it’s been all night. Finally, I’m able to match my breathing to his.