Growing up, it was like a ghost story. Local folklore…and people talked about this place the same way they talked about anything else that was haunted or unexplained. It was a legend from the playground told to us by some other kid and we were young so we never thought to question a word. The story of this place was something every kid in Bradenville has repeated at some point. There were lots of other stories too impossible to believe just like it…
One was about the old place on Maple Street. You heard about Old Maid Everdeen's? A hundred twelve years ago, when that creepy house was built, a boy and girl got theyselves stuck right inside the wall beams. Next day come the builders to put up the bricks. It's them two kids the reason why Everdeen’s so mean. She listens to their ghosts just scream and scream inside the walls. Happens all day and all night long but she's the only one who can still hear them after all these years…
Another was ‘bout the twins, Mary-Jean and Tommy Lark…you know them? Well they got powers. Honest to God. Can hear all of your thoughts. Why would I make that up? They really can. Homeschooled; so ‘course you're not like to see them much but if you do, it helps to sing hymns from church under your breath. Keeps bad things out your head. Fills it up with the word of the Lord instead. What you mean ‘what's so bad about them knowing what you think?’
They're gingers.
You want a ginger rifling through your mind?
Ask Rooster Collins about them. You know him. We all do. Yeah, the blind kid. He lives next to them. He told me he used to see just fine. One night when their dog wouldn't stop barking, he says he thought some things that he'd like to do that just weren't very nice to that dog. Nothing that would hurt it for good or kill it, but just enough to shut it up so he could get some sleep. They heard what he was thinking in his own bedroom, through the walls and across the yard, all the way in their own house next door. They punished him that night. Broke his eyes right then and there. He can't see the dog anymore to hit it like he wanted to but now he sure can hear it. That thing barking is all he hears every night forever. Blind people got, like, super hearing to make up for what's missing.
What?
They did too do that to him! Ask Rooster yourself if you think I'm fibbing. Or just ask anybody…everybody knows…something ain't right about them two…it’s how they look at you.
Looking through you.
These were the kind of spooky stories Avery, me, and shit, just about everybody in this town shared at recess.
The funny thing is they got passed around the exact same way everything else did.
Secrets.
Rumors.
Gossip.
News.
Stories somebody swore were true.
Stories somebody else swore were bullshit.
Small towns don't really separate those things. They all travel together.
Everyone knows everyone and everyone talks to everyone about everyone. They talk in church parking lots. They talk over coffee. They talk sitting on benches in the park. They talk while standing in line at the grocery store. They talk because they're curious. They talk because they're bored. Mostly they talk because in places like Bradenville every new today looks an awful lot like the yesterday that came before it.
The stories are the part that changes.
That's why everybody always has something to add.
A detail gets forgotten.
A detail gets invented.
Something ordinary becomes strange.
Something strange becomes impossible.
Somebody hears a rumor and repeats it wrong.
Somebody hears a ghost story and decides the thing they added in their new version sounds better.
Before long the thing's grown so many extra parts nobody remembers what it looked like when it started.
It's like that game: telephone.
By the time the story gets back around to you, who's to say what was said first?
The older the story, the worse it gets.
Not worse because it's bad.
Worse because it accumulates people.
Everybody who tells it leaves fingerprints behind.
Fear.
Wishful thinking.
Personal grudges.
Misremembered details.
Things added because they make a better story than the truth.
After a while the whole thing becomes a knot of fact and fiction twisted together so tightly nobody can tell where one ends and the other begins.
The strange thing is that doesn't make people stop believing...
...sometimes it does the opposite.
After a while some stories become more than just stories about unbelievable things, or crazy things. There's a little bit of truth in there somewhere. That's how even something like this place---something nobody should believe in---well people do just that irregardless. They do it in that desperate way you believe in something not because you want it to be true: because you need it to be.
A story like this one grows legs so it can walk. After that it doesn't just take a strut here and there around the room.
It runs away.
Old Maid Everdeen was just a crotchety old bat.
The Lark twins were beyond weird, but they were just pale with too many freckles and bright red hair.
And Rooster? He did say they took his sight, but even blind kids want attention. You try standing out from everyone else because of something you can’t control, and then tell me that if you had a way to choose you wouldn’t pick something else to stand out for instead, too?
When someone suggested they did it, he said it was true but the truth is he never saw a damn thing a single day in his whole life.
Just ask his mama.
But The Orchard In-Between…? I won’t believe in it until I see it with my own eyes. That's what I told myself anyway. No way could the story about the strange field of trees growing what they grow; no way could that be real, I believe it now but I know you won’t either. I didn’t for years. Not until I needed it. I needed it to be real and not just some story we grew up with.
Decide which parts of this are make-believe if you want to. I won't get mad if you decide to tell it all again to someone else and parts get left out or it don't stay the same. I won't be mad if things I thought were important get tossed away or lost. If you keep it as is though, it's a good foundation. A starting point to jump from. Just try not to add too much.
Everything that can grow will. It does it on its own…even small-town legends. The first whisper plants itself and every ear that hears it helps it on the way. Some stories get passed around so long the thing they become is much older than anyone who helped it grow could have guessed, and this one has much deeper roots than anyone ever retelling one of those whispers knew it could.
The Orchard In-Between is real and it didn't care that I spent my entire life believing it was a fairytale. I might not convince you about it either, but I went where they all said it would be and there it was.
I realized today it didn't matter that I didn't think it really would be. It doesn't matter if you think it’s where I say I found it either. Most trees don’t bother themselves with the things that people think or believe. They don’t think at all. They’re made of wood. But these ones are a different sort. I can’t say if these ones here have an awareness…can think as they seem to; but everything I know about this grove suggested that if any trees had opinions, these were the ones that can and do.
When I arrived, I was struck with the notion something became aware that I’d come and why---but in that same moment, I also understood that whatever it was, it chooses not to waste any of whatever focus it might have to worry about what I believe, or worry about what you might think. If it thinks of things, it doesn’t bother wasting any of that thinking on us.
I think this is one of those times where we're both allowed to be wrong.
I hadn't thought of it in years. When the idea comes into my head again today and I consider looking for The Orchard In-Between, I quickly shake it away.
In fact, when the thought first comes to me, I’m furious it’s there. Such a stupid thought to have right now. I’m consumed by what’s happening right here, right now, right in front of me. I don’t have time for things like daydreaming that there might be some way…
…I don’t have much say in how my time or my thoughts are spent today and every time I manage to push things away, they seem to come back stronger and louder than before
The thing is, certain days will always dictate your schedule for you. My entire schedule today is free because there are some days when your time simply isn't yours. Stolen is the simplest way I know to describe it, even if it isn't exactly right.
When it's time to cry, it's time to cry.
The rest of whatever it was you'd put into your planner that day? Scribble all of it out. Just throw the whole entire day away. Fuck it. Throw away the rest of your life. Trashed. Who knows when you’ll be done crying? Feels like time doesn’t move at all when you’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you to do that. Cry when you wake up. Cry when you get dressed all in black. Cry at a box and what's inside: your best friend since you were in diapers.
Dead.
You don’t even get to see his face so you can say goodbye. Closed casket.
Because of how.
Two types of thoughts are competing for my attention and they’re each competing hard and I find myself drifting in and out…
Before this moment I don't think you could convince me that anyone could feel alone with two---maybe three dozen other people standing in the same crowd. It's present. I'm here and this is happening now and I'm watching it play out.
The second won't leave me alone.
Could I have talked to him? Said something? Anything? Whatever it was he needed to hear so I wouldn't be standing here watching this happen right now?
I keep thinking about how I can change it.
I can go back and change it.
There's no room for me to waste a single second of my time on any sort of idle bullshit. No room for false hope. I try to shake the idea away again, and I fail.
How old were we? Nine? Ten? Who told River Dunbar about that place? She was even younger. Who tells a seven year old there's a way to go back and cheat death like that? Such a specific
sort of way? Does a seven year old even know what death really is yet?
River did. I knew that. She knew what death was like. She lived in the group home near the bus depot downtown after she and her mom and dad spun off the bridge and their car flew over the rail and into Braden River. She said she made it out because when they weren't looking she always undid her seatbelt and her window was down…
No. It's an urban legend. Just a story. That's it. Pay attention, Holden. Pay attention. It's stupid you fucking idiot. It isn't real.
Not a dry eye can be found here and every one of them is tunnel visioned on the ground. Looking down. Staring at the same thing happening in front of us. A light chill dancing in the air, quietly swaying the orange and yellow painted leaves in the branches they still cling to. The sound they're making doesn't compete with the quiet weeping in all directions.
We're all here together in the bright autumn sun.
We're all experiencing this from a dark and isolated space where our eyes burn with the crying for days and days.
What if I could have said something to stop this?
The story River told us wasn't something new. It was like hearing about the ghost at the bottom of the lake or a haunted house on the outskirts of town. River knew all the stories that would make your hair stand up.
Before River told Avery and me, before I was born, someone told it to my mom. Before that someone told my grandmother. They both heard it too. Probably when they were just as young as we were. I know that because I remember asking mom about it.
“Everyone knows that one baby. Even Nana. Even me. Trust me there's no such place,” my mother said. “Kid named Ernie told me about it something like 20 years ago. He heard it from his brother Scooter. You know what Ernie and Scooter do now? They make license plates. Your daddy’s coworkers.”
She did a quiet snort and began to snicker at the comment the way she always did when she mentioned someone’s incarceration. It didn't matter to her if they were in the same facility or even locked up in the same state he was. They ‘made license plates’ or were always my father's ‘coworkers.’
“You know why they ended up there right? Couple of liars. What happens to liars Holden?” as she asked me this she looked up from the road to glance at me in the backseat with the mirror.
“They go to jail?” When I said it, it wasn't a question but a statement disguised as one. The corners of it rounded down to make what you were saying feel less sharp.
“That's right. Now mommy doesn't want to be mean but I know about this girl River and maybe you shouldn't be playing with her, I don't think. Not if she's telling you stories about dead people,” she said, glancing at me in the mirror once more for just a moment. Then her eyes flicked back to the road ahead.
“We talked about ‘dead’ with your hamster, remember?” She asked, and I very much did remember that just like I wasn't supposed to drink out of Mommy's special cup, neither was Buster.
“When someone's gone, that's forever, you don't get to say nothing extra to ‘em and you don't get to take nothing mean you said back so you just forget whatever she told you, okay baby?” she said and I said I would and we didn't talk about it again.
Thinking about that place as I'm watching the mechanism lowering Avery's casket into the
ground feels like a certain type of especially awful disrespect.
Looking to my left, I see his Mom and Dad. He's crying. Hard. I've never seen him cry before. I
wonder if Avery ever saw him cry like this?
Is he watching now?
He'd seen my own tears plenty, and I shoot the bird at the casket while discreetly muttering to myself.
I picture him in there, resting with calm painted on his face.
Eyes shut so softly. Just like taking a nap…
Reality reminds my imagination this isn't how he looks right now.
Shut up.
I know whatever's in my head is wrong. His face can't look like this. They kept the lid closed for a reason. I won't think of him looking however he might look right now.
Because…
I'd rather think of him like this. Asleep
So I can slap him right across the face.
Shake him until he's fucking awake.
Grab him by the shoulders and shake him and shake and shake and shake him.
Wake up you fucking---!
Wake up and explain yourself!
Why did you do this?
WHY AVERY?!
I've known you my entire life. Since playdates at the age of three. Since elementary. High school. We were roommates in college. I know you. I know you like a brother. Like my brother.
Nobody can say how far back it goes, but everybody seems to know exactly where the Orchard In-Between grows when it comes onto our plane.
River told us it came from another place and they called the place it came from “the in-between.” It lurks somewhere unchartable and unfindable until it comes here. The space between seconds. The gaps between impulses. In between life and death.
That's the place it goes back to again when it decides to go away.
I remember her shaking her head very slowly when she explained it was only here briefly and it always had to leave again. She never explained why it came and why it had to go but I'll never forget her saying: “It never, never stays. And we don't want it to. The best thing that could happen is if we could know a way to find and close the hole it comes here through.”
“The In-Between” sounds like something somebody made up but I know it wasn't River. It's just a story. Some spooky horseshit made up by someone generations back and being passed along and on and on and on. Kept alive for decades somehow. Passed around and around by the kids, and grandkids and great grandkids of a bunch of small-town Kentucky hicks.
His mom is quiet now, but for most of the day she'd been making the loudest sobs and wailing sounds of anyone attending. Now though, that wailing woman is gone. Taking her place is someone looking through her eyes in a way nobody’s ever seen.
Who is this new woman? Never met her. Don't know her.
She's been whittled away. Carved into a statue now. Her unfocused wooden eyes are glassy things shining with the reflection of a starry haze a million light-years away. She's watching something else.
Lots of people standing in this grass circled up around the hole probably wish they could pop away into safe-mode or blast off to a distant moon at will. Wherever she is now, Avery's mom is the only one of all of us to figure out how to escape this without physically leaving.
Poor Donna.
Good for her.
Over the years, I've heard some theories about this place: The “In-Between.” I'll explain what I think I know. What I think I understand. I don't think I’d believe anyone who claimed to know anything for sure. It's just a series of guesses that I hope will make some sort of sense by the time I'm through.
Think of reality as something like sidewalks. They're solid. They're right beneath you and they're real. When you're walking you only see the path and where it's headed. Every sidewalk has cracks you can see and thousands you don't. Your eye skips over them. That's where they say it comes from. Tucked between worlds. That’s where they say it belongs. If you believe what a lot of people seem to, it don't care much for staying where it belongs.
It's something so dark not even Pastor Thomas can chase it away, if Evangeline Pike is to be believed. She says he tried to exorcize it and failed. Twice! Catholics are the ones with the exorcism rights, I think, and the pastor's Baptist. So obviously that bit of gossip is a fuckin outright lie. Evangeline? Everyone knows better than to take her word about any fuckin’ thing. Don't believe anything out of her mouth. She'll say anything for attention. Might be a mental condition, even.
The way Evangeline does it, it's compulsive. It's got to be.
Avery’s boyfriend Connor has been very calm this entire time. I don't think he even cried but I couldn't say for sure. I've actively been trying not to stare.
There are some people staring right at him. Have been during the entire thing. He's been so unreactive, they're wondering if he'll react and when. Wondering if he'll snap suddenly. If he'll climb into the grave and insist on being buried too.
Most of the people staring at him are just sad because everyone is. Some look curious too. They're wondering if there might be something extra they should say or do. Deep down they know there's nothing to soften this blow. The smallest group among the ones who stare are the ones who don't even bother masking their naked hate for him. Glares as accusations.
You don't have to guess what sorts of things they're thinking. They're not even hiding their blame as they telegraph their thoughts between blinks.
Did he know something was wrong? Of course he knew. He said there wasn't a note but he could have easily gotten rid of it if he was the reason for the note. I bet that's what this is all about. It was him. He's the reason for this.
Him. Him. Him.
Oh, Connor, you don't even seem to notice how many of them think you're to blame.
Now I'm staring too before I know I'm doing it and I look away.
The sky has been black with storm clouds all day and finally after hours of threatening, it begins to rain. Just like something you'd see happen at a funeral in a movie or the pages of a book, it starts to drizzle. Not a great big spectacular storm that sends everyone running. A sort of quiet, soft shower. The type that seems to barely wet you at all.
Everyone starts to disperse, heading in different directions. As I watch, the crowd breaks apart and the pieces of it begin to move away.
But I don't move away. I stay.
I watch one by one as they head to their cars. I listen to them start. I watch them drive away.
And I stay.
When it first came through, it found a place to take. Made that spot its own. Even if you knew exactly where it was, probably, you'd never find it. That's the other thing about it. They don't say it couldn't be seen…but it decides whether or not to let you. When it pulls itself onto our sidewalk it doesn't let you see it unless it wants. It chooses you.
Nobody stumbles into lines and lines of apple trees that nobody can see by mistake. You have to be there intentionally. Once you're there you have to be looking for it. That might not be enough because it's got to want to be seen at that moment…most importantly not only do you need to be looking for it---it’s got to be looking for you, too.
The schedule never changes. Every year they say it stays the same: when autumn passes it quietly slips away. Its familiar place. Quiet. Between time and space. Where it fits. Tucks itself end to end until the last of it here is only a fraction of what it was when it came. A brief stay. It folds itself flat like paper, crease over crease, until the whole orchard is thin enough to slip back through whatever crack first let it through. Back to where our universe and the others parallel fit snugly in their place.
Who can say what it does in its crevices in the time it goes away? Depending who tells you this, this part of the story never seems to be the same. Maybe it sleeps. That's what I think. It dreams. Dormant for months and months until the changing seasons make it wake.
I don't realize when I head to my car. There's a gap.
I remember looking around as the rain continued to fall; Connor and I are the only two who remain. We look at each other on opposite ends of the hole. It's not filled in yet. They do that later, I suppose. Makes sense I guess. He looks away and then he leaves as well. Then it's only me who's stayed.
After that, the next time I'm aware is now. By the sun, it's late afternoon. I'm not sure how much time has passed. Like Donna, I went into safe-mode or a distant moon and only just got back. At least an hour is gone and I find myself seated behind the wheel and the car is already running. How long have I been sitting here staring through the windshield at nothing?
I drive home. I have to find something, anything that meant something between us…or was his…and when I find it, I'll tell myself how stupid the compulsion was. To need something connected to Avery. To put it in my pocket. I tell myself what I'm doing is stupid.
I tell myself it's like a game.
Like a dare.
Yes. That's it. A dare.
Truth or dare and I choose dare instead of truth but I know I'm going to welch. Drive to the edge of town for what exactly? It's just a story. I won't find anything because there's nothing there.
Out from the void of nothing, unnatural and goblinlike, it unhinges and unclenches itself. Splays itself wide; just as large as it began. It sprawls into presence as though stretching countless needled limbs in a horribly fluid blend of grotesquery and calculated grace as it bends back into place. An entire orchard; perfectly spaced rows and rows of apple trees sit on a span of land. That land stretches itself atop an empty field covering every divot and mound like a mask, roots extending outward past the clods of dirt. It wriggles into the space it's come to know so well and the roots begin to dig and dig themselves back into the land. Spreading right and left; popping like fingerbones and bending wrongly in some places---an uncanny hand with too many knuckles and clutching at the brown grassy open field and burying the edges of itself against the ground. Here it quivers until the seams of it meld with the natural landscape it came to smother.
Everyone knows this is how it comes. At the start of every autumn it comes, and likewise, at the end of autumn it pulls free from the land as if it were never even there as it leaves.
Most only knew that part for sure because it was always part of the story but some said they witnessed it happen at one time or other. The coming or going. Liars, those ones.
Evangeline swears she saw it leave once…
How then could we possibly know its comings and goings? How can you know something that has, since the stories of it began, gone unseen?
Since a week before Avery did what he did, I've known it arrived. I've watched it night after night in recurring dreams. I've seen it appearing and unfolding…gripping the land, taking shape…wriggling and burying itself in the dirt. I watched it for a week before and every night since. Like it was calling out to me.
I had this dream over and over as something that I knew by instinct was very old whispered in the background. A voice that was made up of unknowable things: the wet sound of fruit rotting on the vine, shown in time lapse. A buzzing underhum mixed between the words. Organic static. Brought on the wings of flies coming to nourish themselves.
A voice that whispered:
“Choose,”
Roughly and wetly and full of some other kind of life. The taste of nectar carried back to the hive and spilled forth. Sweet but in a strange way; partially decayed. Putrefying. A noticeably poisoned honeycrisp. A taste twisted into a sound.
“Choose…”
Almost unheard on the edge of the wind whipping through the trees.
It was tempting and beautiful and mysterious and terribly dangerous at once.
“Chew…”
And with a start, I'd spring awake violently in my bed, tangled in the sheets.
I know from the nightmares that once the apple trees returned, they would stand exactly where the storytellers always said they did. Though without being told explicitly, I wake knowing that anyone not meant to see them would swear the field remained as empty as it had ever been.
From the road: a dead strip mall with an empty field beyond, acres and acres of swaying brown grasses, stretching back and back until the hazy treeline and the ridge of mountains that seemed too distant to be real. They looked less like a place you could actually go and more like somebody's idea of one.
The field: long dead and brittle brown, a groundscape that swayed rhythmically like it wished to hypnotize away any second thoughts about exiting your car and wading into it. Moving like a beckoning finger anytime the breeze played whatever songs that breezes play which only fields and crops and the leaves of trees can hear.
Anyone not seeking this place would see just that endless stretch of untended land where the grass wasn't ever green. Just brittle, dead and waist deep all year long. You had to know the apple trees…that the grove itself was even there.
I get out of the car. From the highway I could only see the crumbling building, with its bricks toppling away. It blocked whatever lay beyond. The Orchard In-Between might be just on the other side, waiting like a promise, but probably not.
The mall was built in the mid 90’s. Barely made it twelve years before it was strangled by shopping online. Before that it was one of those generic big box warehouse places. Before that and as far back as it went it had been a general store as big as a barn on the outskirts of town.
You'd get off the highway. Exit 73 just outside of town. There'd always been something in the way. There was only one way to know for sure what was on the other side of the building.
I approached what was left of the entrance to the mall. Kids with rocks had shattered every window and glass door years ago. Now it resembled a dark open mouth. I duck, carefully stepping over the lip and consider the idea that I'm about to willingly let this darkness swallow me so I can pass through and out the other side.
I prop the heavy door at the back open with a cinder block and step out into the fading day. Sunset.
It’s just a field. Full of brown grass.
Nothing else.
Heartbroken, I breathe out slowly. I’d come through the building holding onto the stupid hope there'd be something waiting on the other side.
It really is just a story.
I'm about to turn back when the world begins to ripple like it’s made of silk and something is pressing its face against the other side.
Forcing itself through.
The faint shadows of twisted dark trunks and branches pierce through the fabric of reality. It's worn thin here so it's like watching the shapes of things slowly appear on the opposite side of a sheer curtain. The fading light of the sky has grown as purple as a bruise. Everything beyond is a blurry outline. Then slowly it defines itself and becomes clear.
As frail and skeletal as the limbs of winter trees, they appear. Not a single leaf clings to any branch and each and every tree in the perfectly parallel rows seems as dead as the mall between here and the road. Suddenly, flickering into view I can see the apples. A great altar of candles lit all at once, as if by a spell. More than any natural tree might grow, the haunting yellow hue of a hundred spots of ghostly light hangs from the brittle, thin arms of every symmetric row of trees.
The trees all seem to be dead but the fruit growing from them is flickering inside with the light of life.
“Choose…”
A whisper on the back of the wind. Carried to me. I'm not sure how to interpret exactly what it means to say.
I looked for it and it chose me?
Allowed itself to be seen.
By me? Of all people.
It was waiting.
To choose me?
To be found?
There's a reality where I didn't spend this morning watching a funeral. Where I hadn’t sobbed until I didn't even have the energy to cry anymore. Where I hadn't gone into shock and found myself suddenly seated behind the wheel of my car after everyone was gone.
There was another place. A place where my morning went a completely different way. A different morning where nobody stood around a hole. That fucking hole. Avery wasn't down there in that other place. Nobody cried as the casket was lowered slowly into the ground. He was still alive.
It was so far away when it was just a dream, but when I find the grove of apple trees I know it was always much closer than I believed it could be.
Everything I’ve heard about this place is true.
There is a doorway through.
What if you could say all the things you always wished to say to someone gone? Someone who died before you could say you loved them one last time? Before you could ask that final question? Everything. Every question. You could ask it. Nobody would fight for what was left. You could ask them who and where it went?
What if you could get to the moment just before they made a decision that changed your life too? Not just theirs but yours? But everyone? Everyone they know…and when you got there, what if you could ask them why?
Who could put the barrel of a gun between their teeth with an audience in the room?
Not many.
Not Avery.
It might actually work.
If the apples really can pull you in---right into the cracks where the orchard hides---how do I know which one I’m meant to eat? You get to say the things you need to say. You get to slip through the cracks and say it all.
The apples here are closure.
I don't know how I know where to go. I just start going there.
Did I need to see the passage that led into the cracks? Or would the field itself eat me up and pop me in a parallel place? Pop me out the other side like spitting out a seed?
Or maybe that isn't how it works?
Maybe it throws you sideways through time?
One of these apples belongs to Avery.
“Choose…”
That strange wet voice reaches me again, moving quietly through the branches alongside whatever’s watching me within every shadow.
“How will I know---” I begin to ask how I'm meant to choose the right one. Avery's apple. My voice falls suddenly short because I'm answered. Not in words. I just see it already. Maybe I choose or maybe it reveals itself somehow. I can't say.
It’s the one.
It isn't brighter. It doesn't flicker faster. It isn't particularly larger or smaller than any apple hanging from any tree. I don't search for it. My eyes go straight to it. If you ask me to point to it, I can. Fourth tree ahead. Two rows right. That one.
It doesn't stand out in any way.
I walk to it and reach the tree, shivering a little with both the cold and worry too. Before I touch it, I reach into my pocket and pull out what I’ve brought. A broken friendship bracelet. I saved it with a bunch of things I’ll always keep inside a little box beneath my bed. It was there with the photo. I pull that out of my pocket too. I stare at Avery and me. High school graduation. Our eyes are glazed and red from the joint we shared in my car. My mom knew but his parents never found out. They couldn’t ever tell. I smell my arm where I sprayed the cologne he gave me for my birthday before I left the house. That’s something I use every day, but I suppose it counts, too.
I hope all of this is enough.
I put the things back into my pocket.
I hope this is the one.
I know it’s the one.
I reach for it and pull it towards me, breaking it free from its branch.
I expect the light to grow stronger, but instead of this, it begins to flare and fade. The light looks like it’s going out.
I take a breath and close my eyes.
The air is twisted, intermingling smells of apples, cinnamon and chimney smoke. Someone nearby has lit the first fire of the season.
I have the feeling that I’m being watched from the shadows again, only now it’s more certain. Stronger. I know someone I haven’t seen is here. I squeeze my eyes tighter.
I’m raising the apple to my lips when I hear the sound.
I remember learning it, but I don’t remember where. Trees, some of them, talk to each other through the roots. It’s a drought. There’s a fire. Got nutrients to spare?
When I hear the click-click-clicking of metal quietly tapping against metal, I know that the sound is coming from beneath the dirt. Instead of the tap-tap-tapping of wood against wood, I can hear their strange roots tapping messages to each other. Tree morse code. Deep within the ground. I picture the roots that twist beneath the field of dead trees standing all around me. Every root is made of brass.
I hear a gasp, opening my left eye to anxiously look around and realize quickly it came from me. I look at the apple again.
The light is still guttering.
It’s almost time.
Not yet…
Not yet…
Now…
I squeeze my eyes shut again…
I take a bite. The crunch of it doesn’t seem as loud as I’d imagined it would be. A word reaches me. That voice reaches me for the final time:
“Chew.”
Before I can question it, I do…but everything feels the same.
Is it working?
I swallow and take another bite.
I don’t think it is.
I decide to open my eyes.
When I do, Avery sits at the table, click-click-clicking rounds into a clip. The fireplace burns quietly in the living room.
He notices me with a little jump and then immediately calms. He doesn’t ask how I’m standing in front of him. Instead, he looks momentarily impressed but then his face grows quickly bored. With a raise of his eyebrows, he quietly sucks his teeth and picks up another round. Looking down again, he presses it into the clip.
“Orchard is real?” He asks without looking up. He sounds mildly surprised, but only just.
“Huh…that’s neat, I guess. Didn’t have that on my Bingo card.”
We grew up with the same stories. His voice is matter-of-fact.
“Avery, stop.” I say as he loads another round into the clip without looking up at me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He finally looks.
“What does it look like, Holden?”
“Wait, you’re still doing this?
With me in the room?” I ask.
“Uh-huh,” he replies looking down at his hands again.
“Well stop. Your funeral was today.”
“That’s nice.”
“No. No it wasn’t. It was actually…it was awful.”
I reach out to take the gun from the table and in one fluid motion he grabs it first and slides the clip home with his other hand, leans back from the table and points it at me.
“Don’t.” Avery says and I ‘don’t.’ I take a step back and raise my hands up to my shoulders.
“I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Holden. You wouldn’t.”
“Well you didn’t leave a note. There wasn’t a note Avery, so help me. Help me understand. Why are you about to do this?” I ask.
"Fuck a note. You wouldn't understand and you can’t understand, Holden, because you've never been in love. Not in your whole life."
"Yes I have." I insist.
"Oh yeah? With who? Name one person you loved.”
“You don’t get to tell me who I loved.” I reply.
“You haven’t loved anyone, dude.” He says coldly. “You've cheated on everyone you've ever dated. All of them. Vernon. Silas. Chaz. You cheated on them. Which one did you love?"
"Well, I mean…” And what he says about the cheating isn’t a lie. “That doesn't mean I didn't love them." I say. My voice comes quiet but frantic. Desperate but without being pathetic.
"That's exactly what that means."
"Avery, put the gun down, please?” I beg him. “What are we even talking about?" I don’t understand why he’s still pointing it at me and I’m on the verge of tears.
"Connor.” Avery says bluntly. “Connor. Fucking Connor. It’s about Connor cheating on me and that’s exactly why you wouldn’t understand."
“What? No. He wouldn’t do that.” I say.
“Yes. He would.”
“Connor wouldn’t do that.” I insist.
“But he did.” Avery responds.
“Avery, no. He’s not cheating on you. He loves you.”
“Cheating? Maybe not. Cheated? Yes. He definitely did. At least once. That I know about.”
I don’t want to tell him what I decide to tell him next. I’m not supposed to.
“I went with him to buy the ring. He has a ring.” I say. “It’s for you. There’s nobody else…” I say it because I can’t see any reason to keep secrets when sharing them might keep me alive. I don't think he'll shoot me. Not really. Putting the gun down would convince me much better.
“Well, fuck him.” Avery says, “Fuck him and fuck his ring. I’ll say no. For sure I will, because, obviously. Or I would have. If I was around for a ring. But I won’t be. He cheated, Holden. I'll never trust anyone again. And the thing is I love him so much that's enough to ruin my life. I don't think I come back from this.”
“Connor isn't a cheater. Why do you think that?”
And then he tells me. The words come out so quickly it’s almost like if he doesn’t want to say them. That's because he doesn’t want to hear them. It’s like ripping off a bandaid:
“He didn't come home all night long and when he did finally come home the next fucking day, I knew he wasn't where he told me. It was a lie and I knew it. I knew it because he came home smelling like someone else!”
“What?”
“Their cologne. I could smell their cologne. It was all over him. I could smell them all over him.”
“Ok. Well. I mean, you’re doing this because he smelled different? Let’s think about that. The escalation? Really? If you do this you're absolutely fucking crazy. You know that? Really think about what you’re doing because this is crazy.”
“I have thought about it,” Avery says matter-of-factly, “why do you think I kept doing it even though you just popped into my house. At first I thought you came through the wall because if you’d walked in the door I would’ve heard.”
“Maybe he could’ve tried some new stuff at a store? Sprayed it on himself. Or he borrowed it from someone else?”
“No. He wouldn’t have. Not this scent. What he wears is muskier. He always goes with stuff like cigar tobacco and vanilla. Ambergris and leather. Truffle and suede. This was bright. Citrus. Yuzu and grapefruit. Bergamot and melon. Carrots. Those among other things.” Avery insists. He still points the gun at me, but now his hands are shaking. “You forget how much I know about this stuff. He wouldn’t have put this one on. Not willingly. Not willingly. It's like…I don't know. It's like an identity violation. The personality of that fragrance and him? They don't fit. He just wouldn’t wear it. Not on purpose.”
“Think about what you’re saying.”
“I am.” Avery says coldly. “You just don't get it. You never did…waste…”
“This isn’t a good reason to do this.” I say.
“Maybe I think it is.” says Avery.
And then, when I say: “Avery, goddammit! The solution isn’t killing yourself…”
He pauses and finally looks at me thoughtfully. It’s like he’s just thought of something or like something finally clicked. I think I’m finally breaking through to him. He’s finally listening.
“Maybe you’re right Holden.
Maybe the solution is…
…I kill...you.” Avery says.
Taking the top of the gun and pulling it towards him. He puts his finger on the trigger now and his hand stops shaking.
“Wait!? What?!” I shout.
“Maybe the solution is I kill you, Holden. You.” Avery says exasperated, “because he smelled like you. Your cologne.”
“Me?” I say, “Avery, you’ve got this all wrong.”
“No.” Avery says quietly, calmly. “I don’t think I do.”
I tell him: “A hundred people have the same cologne.”
And I tell him: “A thousand.”
And I tell him: “You’re not the only one who bought this.”
“That’s the worst part!” Avery shouts, slamming the fist of his free hand on the tabletop, “I gave that cologne to you. For your birthday. And you do this? To me? I knew you were an asshole, but what I imagined before this? Exponentially worse. You out of everyone, Holden? You? Really!?”
“You don’t know how many people are wearing this same shit.”
“I don’t? Have you heard of that company? It’s a newer kind of thing. Bespoken Aura, have you seen that before I gave that to you Holden?”
“Please? Avery? Put the gun down?” I say and I’m starting to cry now. I can’t help it. I’m starting to cry.
“Bespoke, Holden. Bespoke. Have you ever heard of that word? Bespoke? Do you know that word, Holden?” Avery asks.
I tell him I don’t. I tell him I don’t understand what he’s saying.
“Bespoke. It means custom. You’ve never heard of that? Bespoke?”
“No.” I say quietly.
“I had that cologne made specifically for you.” Avery explains, “I thought about every note. That’s what that company does. I thought about you. I made something special. For you. I spent hours on it. I recognized it immediately.”
“I’m sorry.”] I say quietly. “It wasn’t a thing.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Holden.” Avery says, raising his voice.
“We were drunk.” I say. “It didn’t mean anything.”
When he shouts, “IT DIDN’T MEAN ANYTHING!?” his hand starts shaking again.
“It meant something.” He says through clenched teeth. “To you it meant nothing. To me---to me, it meant more than anything. Fuck you. Fuck both of you. Maybe that's the solution? First you and then I sit here and wait. When he comes back, then him too. Both of you. What do you think about that solution Holden? Nothing? It meant nothing? It doesn't matter if it was one time or a hundred. That single time it happened meant more than you could ever possibly hope to know because you're incapable of loyalty or understanding or trust or anything, you fucking piece of shit. That's what it means.”
As I stare into the dark black of the barrel of Avery's gun, his hand keeps shaking with rage. The last thing I said sent him right off the edge. The opposite of what I wanted. He’s filled top to bottom now with hate. Filled up to his eyeballs with so much rage it’s searing out.
Burning through me.
Me, then the house.
Then burning down everything.
Everything else.
Right to the ground.
But I stop thinking about that.
About what I did.
What WE did.
Connor and I.
My life doesn't flash before my eyes.
There's just one thing.
One thought.
A hope.
It’s all alone.
I don’t deserve help. I know I don’t…
I won't beg. Judge me if you want.
I did it. He’s right. I’m guilty…
but I don’t deserve to die like this…
Nobody does.
I know I've only got a moment. Maybe two.
Just listen.
It could be anybody. Maybe even you.
Go to my house. Find something. Sentimental is better.
But how will you know?
You won't.
You won't know.
Anything.
Take anything.
Anything you find.
Put it in your pocket.
As long as it was mine.
That should be fine.
Then the highway. Take it south.
Exit 73.
The building falling down.
Walk between the trees.
It might choose you.
If not, that'll be alright.
If it don't pick you,
send whoever else
The Orchard In-Between
is likeliest to choose.
They’ll walk to my apple.
Gleaming just no different
than any other they can see.
They'll choose the one that's right.
The one that undoes
everything I done
from the moment I believed.
Pull it from its twisted branch.
Watch the fire inside begin to fade.
And then before the final light,
all you have to do...
...is take a bite.
