Blood and Ashes

this is last week's story, but the site was being weird so here it is this week

Kial is Finley’s best friend.  Kial is also dead.  This doesn’t bother Finley as much as his parents think it does, or as much as his friends think it should. 

“You smell just like my favorite color,” Kial says. 

“And what would that be?”

“Nine.”

He nods, drifting into the far right lane of the expressway.  Of course it’s nine.  Everything is nine, these days, and he doesn’t like it.  Good things might have come in three’s, but he’d had a feeling that whatever loomed over the loose horizon of his future wasn’t a triple treat.  Triple threat, is more like it. 

“Do you ever get tired of dying?” he asks, accelerating on the ramp that takes him from one highway to the other.  “Does it ever stop feeling like anything?”

At eleven-thirty, there’s not a lot of traffic.  If he gets pulled over, he can’t use the excuse that he was trying to go with the flow, but he never gets pulled over.  It’s only been three years.  Every day for those past three years, Kial relives the way it happened.  Finley can’t quite comprehend what that’s like, or why Kial would do it, but he doesn’t have to understand. 

Kial’s mother had always said his imagination would kill him.  Turns out, Kial’s imagination both kills and keeps Kial alive.  It will take at least seven years for Kial to decide if he really wants to be dead.  That leaves four years for him and Finley to keep secrets. 

“You know the reason why the lottery works?” Kial asks him. 

“Why?”

“Because you get something different every time.”

Finley thinks life is like that too.

“How many times do you have to die to see if life and the lottery are the same?”

“They’re not,” Kial says, shaking his head.  “With life, you hit the jackpot every time.”

“All sevens?”

“Strawberries.”

There it was again.  Nines.  Finely blows out a sigh and decides to slow down mostly because he has to get off the highway and the light at the bottom of the ramp is always red.  Ten minutes later he pulls into his father’s driveway. 

The clock on the display reads ten-o-one. Subtract one from each side, and he’s balancing nines again.  Kial doesn’t tell him not to think about it.  Kial doesn’t tell him to not let it get him down.  Kial knows he will think about it, always thinks about it, and it often gets him down.  Finley has never been particularly expressive, but Kial can read him like a book like best friends always do.  Finley breathes out another sigh.  He’d only been strong enough to watch Kial die the first time.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Kial nods and stays in the car.  Finely locks the car, unlocks the side door.  He walks into the kitchen, where his father is waiting for him.  There are two mugs on the table, and a pile of peanuts. 

His father is a mess, fingers grey from shelling and snacking, waiting for him to get home.  His father isn’t an angry man, or a large man.  Finley is sometimes scared that he will hurt him with more than just words. 

“Driving with Kial?” Arman asks.

Finley nods.  At first he was angry that his father had believed Finley had said he was still hanging out with Kial.  Now he’s okay with it.  He would rather his parents think he’s grieving, instead of whatever it is he’s actually doing.  Not that it matters so much.

“How is he?”

Finley shrugs.

“Thinking about playing the lottery, thinking it wouldn’t be worth much of anything.”

“Gambling’s a bad habit,” Arman shakes his head.  “Do you want some peanuts?”

Finley shakes his head.  Is gambling a bad habit if you always win?  Jackpot every time, but the prize money isn’t always the same.  He wonders what Kial won today, what he’ll win tomorrow. 

“I’m worried about you, Fin.  You don’t sleep much, I almost never see you eat--I feel like I never see you at all, honestly.”

Finley looks over his shoulder.  The little curtain on the side door’s window was some strange frilly thing his mother had put up when his parents had first moved here.  It always looks like part of a wedding gown to him, but he’s never been sure.  It’s sheer enough to screen out specific shapes, soften everything to silhouettes. 

He can see Kial on the other side: head tilted back, throat exposed, on the passenger side of the ’86 Nissan 300zx.  First his father’s high school graduation present, and now Finley’s.  If he hadn’t decided to commute to the state university’s local campus, he would have wanted something more practical for moving in and out of the residence halls.

“It’s almost like you’re a ghost,” his father says. 

“What?”

Arman waves his hand.  Finely had been eight when he’d realized that his father sometimes said weird things.  It had taken him another three years to learn that his father’s little hand wave meant something like let your old man talk and don’t worry about what all this means.  Finley hadn’t worried.  He wasn’t the type to worry. 

“You know, sometimes I tell your mom about the life you should have had.” 

His father picks up the plate of peanuts and dumps them in the trash.  Shells and shavings avalanche off the plate.  Dust plumes in applause.

“In your third year at Mountain State, maybe met someone you could spend your life with, thinking about moving to the city.”  Arman shakes his head.  “You always wanted to move out of this town, Fin.  Now you’re stuck here.”

His father pauses, staring out the window over the kitchen sink.  The sink is on the same wall as the side door.  Finley knows his father is looking out at the Nissan.  He can only guess that his father is wondering how many times he took his own chances, and if the risk was worth the reward. 

“It’s like you’re a ghost,” his father says again, quieter this time. 

Finley shrugs. 

“I chose to stay.”

His father turns, stares at him.  Finley shrugs again, not to dispel his father’s worry but to show that he isn’t worried about himself. 

“I think it’s better for me,” Finely says.  “Besides, it saves a lot of money.”

“You’ve always been practical.  I don’t know if Kial appreciated that in you, but your mother and I certainly did.  I think Kial’s parents did too.  He was good for you.”

His father switches verb tenses when he talks about Kial, but never when talking about Finley’s mother.  Finley doesn’t let it bother him anymore.  Arman looks at him like he’s about to say something else, but instead he shakes his head and sets the plate over by the sink.

“Get some sleep, son,” he says, heading to the stairs.

Finley nods, not sure if he’ll actually sleep.  His father goes upstairs, and Finley rinses off the plate.  He washes the two mugs, setting them upside down to dry.  He gets a tall glass of ice water and takes it to his room, which is in the back of the house on the bottom floor.  He used to be scared of sleeping all alone, back here, but his mother had come up with a way to make the dark less terrifying. He misses his mother: the way she used to light a candle by his bedside while she read him a story, and then let him make a wish before blowing it out. 

He’d never had much of an imagination, but he’d always tried to think of what Kial would wish for.  A sister who would teach him how to paint his nails and do make-up.  A rich uncle who would take him on yacht trips.  A week off from school to sleep in and relax.  He wished for those things for Kial, just in case those things could come true.  Maybe he should have believed more. 

The corners of his room are dark.  Above him, silence.  He stares at the ceiling, imagines his mother’s voice, remembers her arm around his shoulders when he made a wish every night.  It has been a very long time since he has made wishes, but tonight he wishes his mother had chosen to stay. 

Author's Note

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