Hello and welcome to another Fiction Friday!
Today, I’m thrilled to share the latest (and probably final) revision of a story some of you may have already read at some point. For a number of years, I considered this to be the best example of my writing, both in style and quality. While I’m not certain this piece still holds that particular distinction, it’s still high up on the list.
In any case, it deserves to be officially out in the world, even if I can’t summon the will to endure the exquisite tedium of submitting it to dozens of publications in the hopes of finding some obscure audience of people who don’t even know me.
Which isn’t to say I’ll never do that — I probably will. But until then, it’ll be here, for you, my friends, to read at your leisure.
The story clocks in at just over 4000 words, so I split it into two parts. Each should take about 10 minutes to read.
Oil from a Stone
He wanted my help getting it into his car.
Half a tombstone, cracked down the diagonal. A birth date without a death date and no last name.
I just wanted to go home. I'd been on my feet all day at the Dog Shack, and now here was this big slab of stone, and Dare (short for Derrick) was begging me to help him lift it and take it back to the car.
“This is someone’s grave,” I protested.
Dare gestured broadly at the garbage dump hidden in the woods — his favorite place on Earth — and said, “You really think so?”
“I mean it’s someone’s. We can’t just take it.”
“They threw it away.”
"Still," I said, out of arguments.
He reached down and got his fingers around the edges. “Help me out." That was Dare's way. Just start in, and you could go along or stand staring.
I grabbed the granite with both hands.
We wobbled at first, before we got it steady, then picked our way across the trash.
Dare could hardly keep his eyes off the things we were stepping over. He was fascinated by other people’s garbage. I told him he’d make a great archeologist one day. He said he’d probably be a lawyer.
He explained to me, the first time he showed me this secret dump in the woods, that it wasn’t like normal garbage. “Most of the stuff people throw away, they chuck it because it's old or broken or used up. But some stuff — this stuff — it's about the shame of it.”
He’d found collections of pornography, half-empty bottles of liquor, broken antiques. A bin full of old toys. “You gotta wonder.”
I didn’t wonder. It all made me feel like I should apologize. Like I’d walked in on someone masturbating. I knew Dare didn’t see it like that. It wasn’t about the voyeurism so much as it was about some kind of connection, like finding a hidden pulse.
He always liked asking people, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” You don’t make a lot of friends with questions like that. “Best way to get to know a person," he explained to me, "find out what they’re embarrassed about. What they wish they hadn’t done.”
“So everyone is a hypocrite."
“No, that’s too easy. Everyone is lots of things. It’s just that they wish they weren’t of some of them.” He nodded at a big broken mirror.
“Why do you think that’s here?”
Looking over made me stumble under the weight of the tombstone. “I don’t know, why,” I snapped.
“Are you superstitious?”
I shrugged.
“That guy is. But he also hates superstitious people. He probably kept that thing around for a while to prove he’d have seven years of just fine. And then the bad luck set in, and he needed that thing to disappear.”
“Why didn’t he just throw it away?”
“Exactly!”
I didn't see his point, but I was tired of trying to find it. No harm in letting him go on as much as he wanted.
As for myself, I don’t have much of an imagination. I can’t even think what I’d want to throw in this pile of shame. I’m not creative enough to feel embarrassed. Way back when Dare asked me what was the worst thing I ever did, I frowned for a minute and then said I don't know.
“What do you mean, like you can’t think of anything? Like you’re a saint?”
I shrugged. I was a strong shrugger. “Haven’t thought about it.”
I think he thinks I’m slow. Maybe I am. Simple, at least. Uncomplicated. Dare is the opposite, a tangle of exposed wires.
I’m his best friend, but he’s not mine. If I had to pick a best friend, I guess I'd go with Gemma. I’m probably hers, too, because I’m too dull to be dangerous, and she doesn’t actually like any of her other friends.
Also, there’s a rumor going around that I’m gay, and I haven’t bothered to shut it down. I’m pretty sure Gemma believes the rumors, which is why she’s not threatened by me. She tells me everything, and I never discourage her. I like her mix of bile and charm. She’s smart and funny and has serious anger issues, but I’ve never been one of her victims.
Whenever I tell her about the stuff Dare and I do, she never assumes there's anything physical going on. Instead, she can’t understand why I spend so much time with a weirdo from another school.
“He’s interesting.”
That really is the whole reason. The true truth. And despite all of Dare's teenage philosophy to the contrary, it’s been my experience that the truth is usually no more complicated than I am.
Dare was still going on about the mirror. “The guy, or maybe it was a chick — she throws the thing away like regular trash, and it’s an admission. So she keeps it around. Until her luck turns bad, and she can’t let the universe see it in the garbage. It needs to just GO AWAY. So here it is.”
“She’s hiding her superstition.”
“Yeah. Basically. She’s hiding it because she’s not superstitious. She’s not and she is. She’s both things.”
“That doesn’t work,” I said as we hoisted the broken rock into the trunk of Dare’s car.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re either superstitious or you're not. If you’re a little superstitious, then you are. Even if you pretend you’re not or you hide it. That’s like the whole definition of hypocrisy.”
“Hypocrisy is intentional. But multiple truths, contradictions — that’s just being a person.”
This sounded suspiciously like bullshit to me. But now the token of someone’s finished life sat stiff in the trunk, and I worried that it snapped the wiring for one of the tail lights on its way in. That was how creative I was -- wondering if we’d get pulled over for a dead bulb then go to prison for grave robbing. Because that was how it happened in the movies.
I wiped my hands off and felt grateful I hadn't seen or smelled any rotten food or dirty diapers. Just a urine soaked mattress that had fallen far enough to the side to be out of the way.
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
He must have heard the idleness in my voice, because he ratcheted up his energy in a truly unconscionable way.
“I will summon the undead!” he exploded. “And I will have answers! Answers about the story of this old stone.”
I remembered the birthdate being in the 1800’s.
“Probably died of old age.”
“But we can’t know unless we ask.”
“Ask who?”
“Him!” He gestured at the trunk with both hands.
I recalled the chiseled first name that had been clearly visible. “Redman...something-or-other?”
“Who else? Who else would know for SURE?”
"OK," I said, then got into the car, very much ready to leave this place.
I asked him to drop me off at my house. I was hungry and tired and done with weird shit for the day. He thanked me for my help and drove away.
I went inside and doom scrolled Instagram for three hours and fell asleep on the couch before my mom got home late from work.
Groggy and miserable, I gratefully accepted the cheese steak she’d brought home for me. She asked me about my day. I told her about the gravestone. The whole story in about two sentences.
I don't hide things from my mom. Never have. Like that time Dare spent all night burning rings around trees up and down main street, me carrying the bucket of glue he used to guide the fire. When I woke up in the middle of the afternoon the next day, mom asked what I’d been doing all night. I told her. She nodded, then asked if anyone had gotten hurt.
How could someone get hurt?
She let it drop.
Tonight, she watched me eat my sandwich in silence for a couple of minutes. I knew she was worried about me, but what could I do? When she asked me what was going on, I told her: Not much.
I did therapy for a while. She tried to diagnose me with depression, but I don't feel depressed. Life is boring and annoying. Is that depression? Do I need to take some pills to be less bored? Hm.
Finally mom broke the silence. “So how IS Dare doing?”
Dare had a terrible reputation. To my mom’s credit, she never pressured me to stop hanging out with him. Instead she telegraphed her disapproval with gentle curiosity.
"Same as always," I said.
"That's good. Has he started applying for schools yet?" *Is he as much of a delinquent as I'm afraid he is?*
"Probably," I said.
Sleep didn’t come easy after my three hour nap in the afternoon, but I must have dozed off because a phonecall from Dare startled me awake just after one in the morning.
This was unusual. We weren’t that kind of friends.
“You have to come over right now." He sounded panicked, which registered weirdly to my half-asleep brain.
“What are you talking about? What time is it?”
“You touched it with me.”
And then he hung up. Just like that. Like I was gonna hop right over. Bastard.
I stumbled into the kitchen to leave a note on the counter: “Be back soon. Addie.”
If Dare had lived within walking distance, I wouldn't have bothered with the note. But when you steal the car your mom will need for work in the morning, you leave a note.
I was stone tired behind the wheel. I wanted to wonder why I was doing this, but I couldn’t summon the energy. It was hard enough to keep the car in the lane.
When I got to his house, there was a glow from his window. No way I was gonna ring the doorbell. Instead I tried to get his attention with a hissing whisper. I could see him moving around, but the window was closed and I guess he couldn’t hear me.
Cursing his damned dead-of-night call, I tried the front door. It was locked.
The thing is I had driven all this way. It was cold outside and I was AWAKE now so Dare was going to show me what he was going to show me or nothing.
The door in back had a screen with a hole, which I reached through to turn the knob. Next thing I found myself sneaking through Dare's house, not even remembering who else lived with him. Did he have siblings? Parents? Distant relatives?
I said I’m not imaginative, but it doesn’t take an overactive imagination to get the shit scared out of you by a little girl in polka dotted underwear in the dark.
I was half-lost, looking for the stairs to the second floor, and there she was. Standing there like a spectre.
“Did you come to see Red?” Her voice was soft, innocent. Just like a damn horror movie.
“Uh...Dare told me to come over?”
“He’s not here anymore,” she informed me.
“I— I thought, he’s—“
Before I could figure out how to finish, she padded right by me and into the kitchen to fill a glass with water from the sink. All I could do was watch.
When the glass was full in her hand, she walked back up to me and declared, "It's very sad," as though this settled whatever issue was at hand. Then she disappeared around a corner.
Despite what she said, I finally found the stairs and made my way to Dare's room to find him pacing and staring at something in the corner.
I followed his gaze to the broken gravestone.
The surface glinted in the soft light from his lamp in the other corner, giving the granite a slick look. A big blotch darkened the carpet underneath, and a stain streaked the wall behind it.
I blinked.
“Dare.”
He swung around to see me, and some of the tension left his body. He pointed at the stone.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Wonderful work, and a good way to ring in the New England fall. Can't wait to read the second part.
What. A. Stopping point.
Ahh! It’s a good thing you said “20 people” and not “20 comments” because I assure you I would have spammed this puppy to get the rest of the story