It was Lyla’s fifteenth birthday and she was nowhere to be seen. Her momma Clara was crying on a lawn chair, sipping some lemonade she had pressed with me and Lyla the night before, hands sweet with sugar and rind. Clara was my momma’s younger sister but she looked years older, lines pressed into her face from years of holding all that sorrow just beneath the surface. When she laughed though you could see her true age, smile lines softening around her eyes as she grinned, hair coming loose from the tight braid she normally pulled it back in. Lyla loved to make her laugh, was often the only one that could.
Momma and her sisters in law sat around her, long-legged and stretched out in the afternoon sun, a couple of my baby cousins tugging at the bottoms of their frayed jean shorts for attention or hanging off their hips. Daddy sat with my uncle Red, Lyla’s father, hand resting on his plaid-clad shoulder. None of her friends had come to her birthday party and she had run off, heartbroken. The year before last summer, Sky, Lyla’s best friend since the first day of school had her name pulled. None of her friends could face another birthday party that could be any of their last before they headed out across the water, so it’d been a no-show. Candles and cake lay melting untouched dripping off the pine table Red had made way back when, and there was more than just lemonade in Clara’s glass.
But I knew where to find her. I walked to our grandparents’ farm in the low slung sunlight, kicking up dust trails with the tops of my sneakers, scattering the June bugs still sucking on the flowers even though June was long gone. The farm was empty except for the cows. I lowered my head as I passed them, white-bellied with their long eyelashes keeping away the flies. I hated the way the cows watched you pass, eyes all-knowing as they stood so still, all of their heads turning to watch you go. Granny said sometimes it was best not to look at the cows, just to let them get on with their business. She told me I had nothing to worry for as long as I didn’t turn around once they were behind me. They didn’t take kindly to that. As I walked I could feel them watching me in the heat, grass a hush around my legs as I walked through the fields and past the barn with its peeling red paint.
Lyla was floating in the middle of the creek, hair around her head like strings of bloody flowers. She looked so peaceful with her belly up to the sun, eyes closed and trailing her hands through the lily weeds. I called her name and she didn’t move. Behind me, something rustled in the tall grass, maybe a snake or a rabbit. I called again, voice drunk up by the fields. She was dead I knew, kicking my shoes off and running out to her, ready to push the water from her lungs, bring her back. I fell into the water, throwing my shirt behind me, yelling her name. She flipped over and turned to face me.
“Wren! Calm down. I was just daydreaming,” she half- smiled, pushing her hair from her face.
I splashed her, sending an armful of the creek over her head.
“You scared me!” she laughed, splashing me back, both of us fighting until we could hardly breathe for laughing and the water in our mouths.
“Everyone’s looking for you at the party,” I told her. She shrugged and turned to float belly up again, toes stretched out to kick at the butterflies skimming the surface. I joined her, drifting.
We spent the afternoon together, swimming and daydreaming and trying to catch the tiny fish that lived in the mud with our hands. As the sun went down behind the barn and the creek turned cool and green we lay out on the bank in our underwear, letting the sunset warm us dry. Lyla turned to me. The lights in the farmhouse were on, porch lit and beckoning us home.
“You got to promise me some things, alright? When I’m gone-” I cut her off.
“Where are you going? Can I come?” She didn’t reply, just carried on as if I’d said nothing.
“When I’m gone I need you to promise me you won’t ever go swimming with anyone else. And if you try out for the football team, shower when you get home okay? Don’t ever drink and drive or your daddy will kill you. Be nice to girls but don’t start dating until you’re out of school. Don’t let them get in your pants either. Trust me on that one, us high school girls got nothing to lose. Kiss your mama goodnight, listen hard to Granny when she tells you stories because most of them are true than you could ever know. Make Jonah teach you how to get birds in your hands because he never had the time to teach me and now I’ll never get to know.” She smiled, but it wasn’t in her eyes. Her voice wobbled a little towards the end. “And tell my momma about me every once in a while. You don’t have to do much, just sit with her sometimes and talk. I don’t want her to forget.”
She jumped to her feet then and ruffled the hair on top of my head, messing it up like she had done since we were little. She ran off into the purple dark, long-legged with her hair out behind her. It was the last time I ever saw her.
The day Lyla was chosen, I was in church with all the other kids who weren’t allowed down to the lake on the last Sunday of summer. Me and Tommy and his cousin Beth were seeing who could run the fastest, racing down the wedding aisle, sunlight streaming through the high glass windows in golden lines, zigzagging between us. Beth was sad that day because her best friend Leanne was allowed down to the lake for the first time, and she was real worried she wouldn’t come back. So I’d let her play tag with us, even though Tommy said girls couldn’t run for shit. I was going to go slower and let her outrun me so she’d feel better. Beth proved us both wrong, beating us every time, so fast we didn’t even have to let her win, could barely keep up as she paced through the pews, hair flying out behind her as Jesus watched us from the cross above the door.
When my dad came to pick me up, I asked him where mom was as she always came to get me on church days. Daddy said she was with Clara and Granny and when I asked why he said he’d explain when we got home. We drove home in his pick-up and he let me choose the music the whole ride home.
The house was empty when we arrived, followed by a low sinking feeling in my back teeth I always got before a storm even when the sky was clear. Dad sat me down on the porch and opened two beers, pouring half of one out into the grass before handing it to me. I wondered absentmindedly if the beer would get the worms chewing on the soil drunk. I wondered if they would be too drunk to get home. Dad explained that Lyla had gone. I told him I knew, that she’d told me last week she was going away. Daddy started at that, shoulders jumping like a coyote backed in a corner. He smiled with tears in his eyes, sipping his beer.
“I’m not surprised. That girl always knew what was going to happen. Had your Granny’s witchy ways about her.” He grinned, shaking his head and brushing a stray tear away with his thumb knuckle. Daddy opened his second beer as he explained that Lyla’s name got pulled and she wasn’t going somewhere you came back from. Boys don’t cry, even when it hurts, daddy always taught me that, but he had cried too so I thought maybe this time it was allowed as I put my head in my hands. Daddy put a hand on my shoulder and let me cry it out as the moon slid slowly out from behind the blacktops, until I felt the whole sky would fill up with all that grief stacked up on our shoulders.
It was two summers after Lyla had gone. I was fourteen, had started high school. Me and Tommy had decided to shave our heads and start lifting weights my uncles let us borrow, determined to be the hardest guys to walk the hallways when we got back. Beth had even done us matching tattoos on the backs of our shoulders with a biro and her momma’s sewing needle, matching crosses, bone turned holy before we’d fully grown. Grandfather let me borrow his truck sometimes, and I and Tommy would drive to the McDonalds in the next town over because our town didn’t have one. Sometimes we’d take the girls with us, impressed by four wheels and the promise of a milkshake, even though they intimidated us a little. Girls in our town were like wild animals. They could drink more than both of us combined, wore their skirts short enough that you didn’t have to imagine that hard what was underneath. When they kissed they were all teeth and hands.
Beth and Leanne grew up fast. Leanne had her tongue pierced and liked to take boys under the bleachers when she got bored. Tommy was one of those boys, came back to me with stories of belt loops and lip gloss stains. Beth said the girls in our town were ticking time bombs that had no idea when they were gonna go off. Beth once kissed me in the back of my daddy’s truck after I’d driven her home, in the winter when snow had turned the mountains into ghosts. She’d asked me to stay and have a smoke with her, said it made her lonely doing it by herself. She’d tasted red, like the cherry wine her older sisters gave her and she undid her winter coat and put my hands inside her shirt. I could feel her heartbeat through my palms. When her hand moved down to the zipper on my Levi’s I pushed her away, gently, remembering Lyla’s warning. She’d cried then, and I’d held her, fourteen and unsure what to do but kiss her forehead do her coat back up. She told me if she was still here when we graduated she was gonna love me forever.