Boys with Sharp Teeth

by Jenni Howell

I need three days ago to have never happened. I need to rip the threads of time and tell him Yes, I’ll come to the party. I need to have been there when he left; when they followed; when his head was held beneath the water. I need him to come home. I need them to pay. But you can’t say any of that to a stranger, not this close to Amberdeen, where everyone is someone’s second cousin once removed. So I say what I should, and leave everything else to fester.

down the gravel road on foot, cutting around town on hillsides until I get far enough that people don’t know my dad’s name or my mom’s past.

It’s safer to be angry than sad. Anger is a weapon. Sadness is a tomb.

The road clings to the side of the mountain like a cottonmouth, all sinuous curves and promises of a quick death if you flinch.

Her look wraps all my nerves around a rock and sends them plummeting to the bottom of my stomach.

Henry’s fingers curl into mine, tender as springtime poetry.

I scan the woods for that slash of white. But Killary’s shadow and the steep mountain slope join hands to block out the sun. The white multiplies, becoming any number of brilliant sunspots cast between the branches.

Her happiness is quicksand. I go still, refusing to be pulled under.

It’s a boy, not a ghost; it’s a boy, not a monster, I tell myself. But I know boys, and now I know monsters, and there isn’t that much difference between them.