Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

But Carl didn’t want to hear any of that, so we just rode in silence the rest of the way, the radio playing easy listening that made me want to slip into a hot bath and dream about killing everyone I knew.

I wasn’t destined for greatness; I knew this. But I was figuring out how to steal it from someone stupid enough to relax their grip on it.

didn’t get angry with her. I knew that my mom loved me, though maybe not in ways that were obvious, that other people would understand.

I had always been good, but I got better with Madison on my team. She gave me some kind of extrasensory court vision; she was so beautiful that I could find her without even looking.

Right then, Madison looked at me. Her eyes were so blue, even in the dim light of this shitty steakhouse. It was such a strange feeling, to hate someone and yet love them at the same time. I wondered if this was normal for adults.

And was Madison’s husband even really all that rich? He hadn’t invented computers or owned a fast-food empire. And yet his level of wealth had given him this house. It had given him Madison, who suddenly appeared in the front doorway, and she was waving, so beautiful that I knew I’d take her over the house every single time I had a choice.

And like that, it was the two of us again, me being weird and her revealing that, by god, she was weird, too.

couldn’t tell if it was love, but I also knew that I was no real judge of love, having never experienced it or even witnessed it a single time in my life.

wondered where her husband was. I felt like we were about to make out. I felt like maybe the job was to be her secret lover. My pulse was racing, as it always did in her presence.

Maybe that’s what children were, a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn’t want it.

lot of times when I think I’m being self-sufficient, I’m really just learning to live without the things that I need.

We listened to the sounds of the woods, and we noticed how, once we made it back home, those sounds had changed, gotten quieter. Or maybe they had gone inside us.

We breathed. We held our breath. We breathed again. And I had never thought about it this way, had always assumed that whatever was inside me that made me toxic could not be diluted, but each subsequent breath made me a little more calm.

“What?” I said, though I understood perfectly fine. What else could you do but pretend that you didn’t know that was possible in this world?

Our hearts were so steady, so strong. If there were a button that would end the world, and that button were right in front of me, I would have smashed it so hard at that moment. I often thought about a button like that, and when I did, I always knew that I’d push it.

A wicked child was the most beautiful thing in the world.

But if a hole in the sky opened up and two weird children fell to Earth, smashing into the ground like meteorites, then that was something I could care for. If it gleamed like it was radiating danger, I’d hold it. I would.

I’m not joking when I say that I never liked people, because people scared me. Because anytime I said what was inside me, they had no idea what I was talking about. They made me want to smash a window just to have a reason to walk away from them.

And when you are weird, when your surroundings become quiet, you think maybe you aren’t quite so fucked up. You think, Why was it so hard before?

closed my eyes, but I could tell that Bessie was still staring at me, wanted to know what was inside me. And I knew a secret to caring for someone, had learned it just this moment. You took care of people by not letting them know how badly you wanted your life to be different.

“I don’t ever want it to go away,” she told me. “I don’t know what I’d do if it never came back.” “I understand,” I said, and I did understand. “How else would we protect ourselves?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I answered. How did people protect themselves? How did anyone keep this world from ruining them? I wanted to know. I wanted to know so bad.

Something was ending. Even if it had been awful, my life was ending, and it felt like this wasn’t my life anymore. It was someone else’s. And I had decided that I’d just live inside it, see if anyone noticed, and maybe it would become mine. Maybe I would love it.

Bessie had believed me. She knew that I wanted them, that I would always take care of them. And so I decided to believe her. I decided that this was the truth. It was this little fire. And I would hold on to it. And it would keep me warm. And it would never, ever go out.