Two hours later we were in my room, alternatively crying and yelling, comforting and accusing each other. We talked about what the monster could be and where it could have come from. We talked about Everett’s sacrifice to save us, and how we had no choice other than to leave him behind. We talked about how we should have never gone to the cave in the first place (or at least, I added, been more careful), and how we only had ourselves to blame. We talked about whether or not it was over now, or if it would keep coming until it had taken us all. We didn’t talk about rescuing Everett or telling anyone so they could help us. We both knew Everett was gone now.
Sara didn’t want to go home, so we asked if she could spend the night in the guest room. After the house was dark, my door opened as she crept into the room.
“Is it okay if I stay with you?”
My heart thudded as I whispered yes in the dark, and moments later her body was inches from mine, her breath stirring in my nostrils as I tried to rein in the thoughts that jumped and burned through my mind like wind-lofted embers before being replaced by the next red-orange cloud. Should I say something? Do something? Go to sleep? Hold her? Kiss her?
I sat for half an hour or more, frozen in a state of inaction and fear. My choice was made for me when I heard her softly snoring next to me. Smiling to myself, I buried my face in my pillow, eventually drifting off to sleep.
I’m convinced that the only reason that human beings have been so successful as a species is that we can adapt to anything given enough time and motivation. Yet whatever benefits that may bring, it also creates our worst monsters. It allows child abuse to become a routine and concentration camps a job. It allows violence and hatred to become background noise that only gets dialed up when it directly affects us. It was that same adaptability that allowed me to wonder what to do while lying next to Sara, despite the fact that just hours before I had seen my best friend get dragged away by a horror that shouldn’t even exist. That adaptability, and perhaps some hidden truth nestled in a dark corner of my brain, or some insight into what was to come.
When I awoke the next morning, my first thought was of Sara beside me, not of Everett. The second was that something hard was resting against my leg. Finally, the third was Everett—guilt, pain, and panic fluttering in my chest as I rubbed my eyes open. I looked over at Sara still sleeping, her black hair fanned across her face. So beautiful that it made me ache. I turned to look at her better and felt the hard object resting against my leg roll slightly. Looking down, I saw it was another message rock and nearly screamed.
After staring at it for a full minute like it was a snake waiting to strike, I gently sat up enough to grab it before lying back down as quietly as possible. Whatever it was, I wanted to read it and think about it before waking Sara. Pulling off the string, I eased open the dirty paper, thick and discolored like old parchment.
It said: Tribute accepted. Now name your need.
I kept re-reading it, my heart deafening in my chest. It seemed to be saying that it was satisfied with the “tribute”, and that in exchange it wanted us to name what we wanted? I didn’t know. And if so, why? Out of curiosity? So it could grant our wish like some kind of homicidal genie? So it could demand another tribute? Or was it simply playing with us for its own purposes? I didn’t know. Finally, I woke Sara.
She took it better than I had. Her face had gone pale as I told her, but within a couple of minutes she was concentrating on the note, her eyebrows bunched as she went over it again and again. I sat watching but unfocused, and I jumped a little when she spoke.
“Make sure there’s not a second rock anywhere.”
Nodding, I got up and checked the bedsheets and the floor, searching the entire room until I was satisfied there was nothing to be found. When I was finished, I went back to the bed and I asked her what she thought.
“Well, it looks like its saying that Everett….God….Everett was the tribute it wanted.” Tears welled up in her eyes and she wiped them away angrily, taking a deep breath before going on. “And that now it wants to know what we need. Maybe as a gift for the tribute, or maybe to start another round of us “owing” it something. I don’t know.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I think too. I don’t know which it is either, or if its something else we haven’t thought of.”
Wrapping her arms around her legs, Sara stared off at nothing as she spoke. “Two other things. I think that it’s meant for us to name what we need together. Otherwise, why not two rocks? Unless there’s one waiting for me at my house, I think it wants one request, not two. Which I guess makes sense if this is some kind of repayment for…for our tribute.” She started crying then, gentle sobs muted by her face being pressed up against her legs. I rubbed her back, trying to awkwardly comfort her while fighting back tears myself.
Then, to take her mind away from crying, I asked, “What was the second thing?”
She looked up, her eyes red and puffy. “Wha? Oh. Y-yeah. The second thing is that I don’t think it was asking us to tell what we need.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head slightly. “No. I think it was telling us. Telling us to tell it what we want.”
I was going to say more when there was a knock on the door, followed a moment later by my mother sticking her head in, looking uncomfortable as she saw us sitting together on my bed. Then she noticed Sara had been crying and her expression turned to one of concern.
“Sweetie, are you all right? God, did you already hear?”
Sara looked up confusedly. “What? Did I hear what?”
My mother’s face fell a little. “Your grandmother just called here looking for you. It’s your mother, sweetie. Your grandma had to take her to the hospital last night. She’s real sick.”
Sara’s mother had been growing worse for months. It had reached the point where the woman could barely stand or walk at all, and Sara's grandmother had been staying with them the last few weeks to help out. Still, Roberta’s sudden downturn during the night came as a surprise to both of us, and as I drove her to the hospital, Sara just kept saying it was her fault.
“You couldn’t have known, and you couldn’t have done anything that hasn’t already been done.”
“But I could have been there. I haven’t been there enough. Instead of goofing off or spending time with you and…with you guys, I should have been taking care of her.”
I shook my head, not taking my eyes from the road. “No, that’s shit. You did help take care of her. But you had to live your life too. You couldn’t just lock yourself up in that house with her all the time. That’s no kind of life for anybody.”
I saw her nod out of the corner of my eye, more to end the argument than out of agreement. “Yeah, I guess. Just hurry.”
We were told that Roberta’s kidneys, damaged in the car accident years before, had failed and that her liver and pancreas were both on the edge of shutting down. She was on dialysis, and while the doctors we spoke with promised to do what they could, they indicated that it was more a matter of time than anything else.
I stayed at the hospital until midnight, and when I got home I saw that my mother had left me a note saying that Everett’s parents had called twice asking if we knew where their son was. I called them back the next day and began repeating the lie that Sara and I had worked out the night she had stayed over—we last saw Everett the morning of his disappearance, and yes, we sure were worried too.
It was three days later when Sara called me, her voice hoarse and trembling. She started in without saying hello. “She’s getting worse. I’ve been thinking, and I know what I have to do. What we have to do if you’ll go with me. If not, I’m still going.”
I asked her what, but I already knew. Had already decided that I would go with her. The next day we returned to the cave, our message rock already prepared so we wouldn’t have to spend any more time there than necessary. I made Sara stand at the edge of the clearing as I threw the rock into the cave, my eyes everywhere as I watched for a sudden attack. Everything was silent, only a lonely bird’s cry far above momentarily breaking the quiet.
Within three hours Sara’s mother began a miraculous recovery. Within twelve her kidneys were fine, her pain was gone, and she could walk as if the car accident had never happened. They kept her in the hospital another two days out of confusion and consternation more than any need for treatment, and when she was released, she drove us all home, laughing and making jokes as if the last few years had been a bad dream.
I smiled at Sara, reaching out to give her hand a squeeze. At that moment, we felt no fear or regret, despite everything that had happened. As everything does, we were moving on.
In the months that followed, Sara and I still spent time together, but I noticed a growing divide. As terrible as it was to think of it in such terms, there was no longer anything to keep us from being together, and yet instead of growing closer, we were moving further apart. That summer Sara and her mother went up north to visit relatives they hadn’t seen in years, and when they came back, I knew something was different. She came to see me a few days after she was back, dropping by casually even though it had been killing me to not rush over the second I heard she was back. It was a short and awkward visit, and less than five minutes into the conversation she tossed out that she had met someone on her trip—rotten meat thrown between us, greasing to a stop and making me want to vomit.
I nodded and tried to act interested, but we both knew that this was playacting. She acted as though nothing was wrong, which she probably justified as sparing my feelings but which was really intended to spare herself any discomfort. But then she hit me with her next news.
“Dylan, I think I need to take some time off from being around you.” We were sitting in my front yard, and she studiously watched the street as she spoke.
I felt my stomach fall further than it already had. “What? Why?” Then, after a pause. “Didn’t we just take a two and a half month break from seeing each other?”
She nodded, throwing me a sad smile before looking at the road again. “Yeah. I know. And that’s kind of what made me realize I need some time apart. We’ve been through so much…we’ve always been so close, and we always will be. But…I’ve been eaten up with guilt and worry the last few months. And while it wasn’t gone when I was away, it was a lot better. And I’ve realized that a lot of that is because I wasn’t around you.”
“Me? What the fuck did I do to…”
She held up her hand to stop me, turning to meet my eyes for a moment. “Let me finish. When I look at you, I see Everett. I see everything we’ve done. And no, maybe it wasn’t our fault, but it still doesn’t feel right either. I need time to sort through that.”
I wanted to scream at her and storm away, but I fought off the urge and kept my voice level. “What about your mom? Are you sorry we did that?”
She started tearing up and looked away. “No, of course not. But…”
“And what about me? Do you think there’s not anything that I wanted? But I didn’t say anything but ‘sure thing’ when you wanted to use our wish or whatever on curing your mom. I was happy to do it.”
Sara sighed and nodded, wiping her cheeks. “Dylan, I know that. I do. And I love you for it. But that doesn’t change how I feel.” She turned back to me. “It’s not forever, you know? I just need some time to clear my head.”
I stood up then. “Fine. Take your time. Let me know when you want to be my friend again.” I walked away purposefully, ignoring her calls for me to come back and slamming the door behind me when I reached the house. I thought she’d call me that night, hopefully having realized her mistake and begging for my forgiveness. She didn’t call that night, or the next, or the one after that.
Aside from chance encounters, during which I made a point of ignoring her attempts at greeting me, we didn’t see each other the rest of the school year. I found out through mutual friends that she had decided she was going to college in Michigan to be with her boyfriend, Chad. I had seen him once or twice when he had come down to visit during the past year. He looked like a stupid blond ape, always smiling and looking goofy as they rode around with her friends. Time of their lives, I’m sure.
I was staying local myself. My grades were good enough to go pretty much wherever I wanted, but I didn’t care where I went, so I didn’t see the point in wasting the money going somewhere far off. To “thank” me for my frugality, my parents gave me a month-long trip in Europe. My first instinct was to politely refuse, but then I realized the only reason I didn’t want to go was Sara. Some pathetic part of me was still holding out some hope of changing things over the summer. Once I knew that was the reason, I forced myself to accept. The trip was wonderful, and it gave me some perspective. I didn’t understand why Mystery had lied to me about Sara loving me, or at least tricked me as to what it meant by love, but I would have to accept it and move on.
By the time I got back in August, Sara was already gone to Michigan and classes started for me two weeks later. Months passed, and I never considered returning to the cave or feared finding message rocks waiting for me on my bed. Strange as it may seem, I rarely thought about Mystery or Everett in those days, and by the time that Christmas vacation rolled around, I was feeling more normal, more like me, than I had in years.
Then Sara called. She was crying, telling me that she was in an airport waiting for her flight home, but she needed to talk to somebody. Needed to talk to me. I said okay, my head swimming. I asked what was wrong.
“They say I’ve got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Cancer. It’s…It’s already in the late stages.” She laughed bitterly, her voice brittle and slightly metallic over the phone. “They say they don’t understand why I didn’t show more symptoms earlier on. Guess I’m pretty hardy, huh?”
I couldn’t breathe. I sat down on the edge of my bed, shutting my eyes tight as I tried to focus on getting something out. “They can treat it, right? They’ll treat it, yeah.”
Her despair was palpable as she answered. “They’re going to try. But they’ve already let me know it’s pretty much a done deal. It’ll take a few months probably, but I’m going to die.”
I gripped the phone tight enough to make the plastic creak in protest. “No. No, you’re not. Just get here and we’ll figure something out. I swear to you we will.”
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Credits
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