Neverchangeable | Chapter 3

<< Click to read from the beginning (Chapter 0)

< Click to read Chapter 2

On the security camera app installed on my cell phone, I watch the nothingness on the screen. In front of me, Farley walks across the bridge. It’s the same easy walk he’s had from since when we were kids. He doesn’t look back which makes it easy to take a moment and dip into my pixelated reverie. The cabin is black and grey except for the clump of dim white glow near the bottom corner of the screen. No sound comes from the room, no footsteps or crackling of a wood-burning fire from when Farley and I were kids. Even in the middle of the day, the room on the screen is midnight dark.

Before Mama moved into the cabin, I installed the security cameras all around the premise. I put one in the cabin’s living room even, just in case of intruders. After Dad died and before Mrs. Developer came, the cabin sat at the top of the hill, semi-abandoned. From the farm below, I’d hear partiers and vandalizers, vagabonds and drug-addicts optimizing the cabin at night. In the morning, I’d make my way up to stumble upon graffiti tags on the walls, beer bottles smashed around the campfire, condoms under the kitchen table, and needles next to the toilet seat. The cabin smelled like piss and smoke and depravity. I put the cameras up. The rest came after Mama.

Farley stops at the end of the bridge and I slip my phone back into my coat pocket. A chill lifts off the river. Farley calls out, “What, you’d rather look at your phone screen than look for the young maiden on the water?”

I ignore him. I ask, “How’s Becca?”

Farley lights another cigarette. He says, “Becca had twins."

I stop. I ask, "Your twins?"

"Yeah," He chews on the word.

"My twins."

I tell him congratulations and he offers me a drag of his cigarette. I tell him, if I'd known, I would've brought cigars. I can tell he wants to move on, but I can't.

I take the cigarette. I ask, “When did that happen?”

He says, “About six years ago. Becca loves being a mom. She’s a good one too. Yep. Wife’s good, kids are good, van’s good. Good, good, good. Good all around.”

I pause, mid-drag. My free hand clenches but Farley doesn’t notice. I’m glad. I repeat, "Van's good?"

He tells me, "Van's always good."

I ask, "Better than home?"

Farley looks at me sideways. "The van is home."

I pass the cigarette back, "I didn't realize the van could fit that many people. Hell, it barely fit us two back in the day."

There was a time after high school when Farley and I had tried to live with each other, officially. We crammed ourselves into the van dad sold him for dirt cheap and slept in parks. Never too far, though. Always close enough to come back and set up camp on the farm. Always close enough to walk up to the cabin for a bonfire with those greasy twins from up the road, Dusty and Jeff. On a good night, there’d be Peter, Brad, Becca, and Annie. Annie was always looking for reasons to come around. I was always looking for a reason to bring Becca around. So was everyone else.

Farley shakes his head, "Don't do this to me, Mutt."

I don't tell him I go by Matthew now. I let him continue. He talks about Becca and their children again.

"I visit Becca and the girls sometimes. Weekends, mostly. They don't need me. Besides, Becca knows: van's home. Always will be. You know how it is. I can't live choked up in the suburbs. But the 'burbs are good for the kids and all that, you know."

I nod. I put my hands back in my pockets. I press the on and off button on my cell phone and think of my pixelated reverie.

He tosses the cigarette butt into the river, "I tried it for a bit. Becca says I'm neverchangeable, whatever that means. I tried. I keep money in the account for them. I'm around. I try."

He picks up walking again and I follow. He says, “Besides, she doesn’t mind. You know, I’m a slob, anyways.”

I reply, “Sure.”

Of course Becca minds. Running after two bobbing heads all day, vulnerable, alone. Of course she minds. If Farley doesn’t see that, I do. Even without seeing Becca in twenty years. I know. She minds. She has to.

He asks, “How about you? How’s your old lady?”

I shake my head, no.

He punches me in the shoulder. He acts surprised. He asks, “You still living with Moms?”

I shudder.

I tell him I moved out after the farm sold. He presses, “Did she become a snowbird or something? I haven’t heard from her in a week or two. Figured she must’ve finally went down to Florida for the winter like she always talked about.”

I nod my head, yes.

Farley asks for Mama’s new temporary mailing address and I give him Aunt Rachel’s so he can send a postcard. My mind is still on Becca. We’re far enough away from the conversation now there’s no touching it again. Not today. Farley’s made sure of that.

Farley picked the green trail to walk down first. It’s the one that leads directly to the farm. Used to. Now it’s a fake farm with a fake barn filled with women dressed up as fairies. Fake woodland creatures hide in the bushes along the pathways, laughing, whispering, pointing. A woman with dyed pink hair waves at a little girl with glittery nylon wings. Her mother beams and takes a picture of the moment with her cell phone. She looks away to post the shot to whatever social media she’s on and doesn’t notice her daughter staring up at her, waiting to be seen, waiting for that precious moment of eye contact from Mama. The daughter looks away after a few moments of lingering, back to the pink-haired fake fairy. I bend down and wave to the little girl. I look up at her mother, refreshing the page on her phone. Nothing. I look to Farley. He doesn’t notice either. He’s staring at the old barn, painted magenta now instead of green and white.

Inside, each stable has been turned into a tree-hollow home where families of human fae sing, giggle, and play. Each stable has a sparkly wooden post with the respective fae-people’s histories read. I go over the signs one-by-one and mouth the names of the horses that used to live there instead: Sugar, Maple, Daffodil, Killer.

The barn walls have been alchemized to look like tree trunks that reach up into a canopy of plastic leaves. The leaves hide the metal rods in the ceiling Farley and I used to hang off of before dropping into piles of hay at the bottom. Where the piles of hay once were in the center of the barn, is now a large kiddie pool surrounded by the yanked-off stones from the old trails to make it look like an old well. A mermaid with aquamarine duct tape over her mouth waves from inside. The sign next to her display includes a small bowl of cotton balls for guests to shove in their ears. The sign reads, “Do not listen to the sirens under any circumstances.”

Underneath, there’s a map with the orange trail high-lighted, leading to the Mermaids’ Lagoon.

I look for the little girl and her mom again. The mom is talking to an actor dressed up as Prince Charming while her daughter spins in circles, chasing images of fae around the make-believe forest. Her eyes follow the string of warm little bulbed lights, hung lazily from ochre-painted, papier-mâché branches. She bounces, hops, 1, 2, 3, as she counts the bulbs, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…

The little girl follows the string lights out the back door of the barn Farley and I used to dirt bike through. She slips into the dusk and traipses over the branches to explore the dark woods, to search for fae of her own.

Ten minutes pass before the little girl’s mom’s scream shatters the hazy barn.

> Click to read Chapter 4