All I Do Is Miss You
Dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth “Eris” Aldrich. All words in italics are hers.

“Tell me a love story,” one whispers to the other, underneath the covers, late at night.

“But I don’t know any,” says the other.

“Then let’s make one up.”

Mary’s buried in the backyard of a house her parent’s built in the 50’s. It was modest but it was all they needed for a family, and one day when both Mary’s parents woke up dead it’d go to one of the kids, and it was important to keep it in the family because they built it together.

Lee, the father, was a bricklayer. The family on both sides worked construction, roofing, cement, something, whatever, whenever there was time to sit on the porch play cards eat a sandwich and bullshit, there was time to do tile work in the bathroom, come on just until the bread’s out of the oven, alright?

“And you know there’s talk around here of glow in the dark people? You boys believe that?”

The Sheriff says that to three identical sunglasses, navy jackets, blond parted haircuts. Tanner, Brad, and Henry, he wasn’t sure which was which so he never referred to them individually. “All around town, we get these calls, little faces late at night poking out behind trees, all black like a dog’s eyes…”

The agents spent the day unloading satellite dishes and monitors from the box truck they drove up in. Now it’s dusk.

“Hey, you boys hungry? I could take you three to Gleaner’s.”

“Too much set up to finish.”

“Can’t leave until finished.”

“Not allowed to leave until we finish.”

So, the Sheriff orders Chinese takeout from the bottom of the hill and spreads out boxes full of rice and chicken, beef, broccoli noodles all across the conference table. He loads his plate and takes a seat at the head of the conference table, he waits for them to sit with him but instead of sitting, they don’t.

They come in one at a time, scoop coffee mugs into rice and chicken and beef broccoli, grab forks and walk back over to their work. One comes, then the second, third, then another and another again. The Sheriff’s first guess isn’t that they’re coming in for seconds, his first guess is the damn spooks are multiplying, so he gets up and walks around the place to make sure his station isn’t overrun with blond haircuts. It isn’t.

And now the Sheriff is standing next to the least busy looking agent, Henry? maybe. “Now, you boys understand what I was saying, right? Little glowing men, flying saucers, that sorta thing…

“…

“…

“…

“…Is that why they sent you boys up here?”

Henry? looks up at the Sheriff and the only thing the Sheriff sees is his own fat face in the reflection of the blond man’s sunglasses. And while Henry? stays straight-lipped, an agent across the room, Brad? does the talking for him.

“Come on Sheriff, you’re not some sorta crack pot, are ya?”

And from further across the station, Tanner? says “you believe everything you read in the tabloids? You dumb-ass.”

Henry? still looking up blank at the Sheriff, splits his face open into a grin, big white horse teeth spotted with broccoli, and all three agents laugh the same laugh at him.

Things slow down after most of it’s done. What’s going on with the molding upstairs? You finish the bedrooms yet?

Lee stands up from the table, his wife’s brothers from the next town over came by for dinner and coffee, not that coffee’s an additional thing, coffee’s what you have after dinner.

Lee says no, don’t worry about it, and stacks up the dirty dishes.

Come on, we’ll knock it out real quick.

You do enough. You work, you come here, you work, build nearly half the house, it’s too much, relax. It’s beautiful out, let’s sit on the porch.

It’s late summer, even at six thirty the sun’s still high in the sky. A hose sprinkler is doing it’s  back and forth’s in the neighbor’s back yard. It’s cool but not cold, you don’t need a jacket, the coffee’s enough.

Lee unstacks the plastic chairs and drags them across the back patio. Lee’s wife Sue comes out with the coffee pot and him and her and all her brothers sit around, watching the birds sit on the power line.

“So, you two having kids or what?”

“That’s a pretty forward question, Jim,” says Sue.

“Mom wants to know is all.”

“Okay, so are you Mom, now?”

Sue’s other brother Johnny says “Yeah, he basically is. That’s what happens when you wait to move out. They spend all night gossiping, those two. You’re like a yappy old woman, Jim.”

Everyone laughs, except Jim, who’s pissed.

“It’s just conversation, alright?”

“That’s conversation?” says Lee. “Not ‘oh, how was your day’ or ‘weather’s nice?’ Asking your sister about the sex we’re having is conversation, yeah? You want us to describe it?”

Jim’s chair scrapes hard against the brick when he stands up, it scares the birds away.

“Aw, come on Jim, sit down,” says Johnny.

He does.

“Keep it light, huh? Look at you, all red. Maybe you are spending too much time with mom.”

“What do you want me to do!”

“Relax, relax, Jim. We’re just teasing.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s why I’m upset.”

Lee grabs the coffee pot and warms up Jim’s cup, “alright, listen. Tell mom we’re trying, fingers crossed, we’ll pass along the news as soon as we get it, okay?” Lee fills his own cup. “Now, what about you, you gonna find yourself a nice girl?”

“You know me, I have my prospects.”

“No you don’t,” says Joe, the tallest brother, “you had prospects. They always run when he tries bringing them home to Ma.”

“She means well,” says Sue. She means it earnestly, but then Joe, Johnny, and Lee start laughing and she realizes what a ridiculous thing it was she said, so Sue starts laughing, too.

“Oh, little Jimmy,” they say, imitating Mom, “my little baby, my baby boy, oh don’t grow up Jimmy, be Momma’s little boy a little longer.”

“Jesus, alright,” says Jim. “Anyone see a movie or something lately?”

“No.”

“Alright, well the weather’s nice, right?”

“Worst weather I’ve ever seen,” says Joe.

“Well alright, what do you all want to talk about then?”

“Let’s go back to talking about you and Mom,” says Johnny.

“You guys are jerks.”

“Awww, little Jimmy, it’s okay, don’t pout. Oh, Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, Mommy’s little baby.”

Jimmy only pretended to hate it, it was fun to play the part. When they buried Mom sometime in the mid 1970’s and Jimmy himself was pushing his late forties, he found it comforting that, at the funeral lunch, all his siblings still put on her voice and said “oh, little baby Jimmy, you’re still Mommy’s little boy.” And even twenty years later, Jimmy made a big stink about it.

“I am not a baby!” He really couldn’t even say it without finally laughing.

From the top of the hill everything looks like a miniature, and all the passing cars look like you could kick them away. It’s the last obstacle on the long walk to the sea and the higher they climb the lower the sun crushes the sand.

Chests against asphalt, holding heads up in their hands they make like they’re lying in bed on top of the hill and watch the sun go down and they feel the heat drain away with it. Miles of fly paper stuck up in the air falls down into big easy purple and now the fireflies are free to float around all in front of them. It’s always nice in California.

After the sun’s gone the two are quiet for a long time, staring down the hill, waiting for the point where nighttime can’t get any darker.

And when the moon’s all the way up in the sky, Razor Blade says, “you ever roll down hills when you were little?”

“Of course,” says Jelly Bean. “We had this big hill right outside the back of our school and everybody would roll down it. You’d race and see who could roll down the fastest. You had to roll like a log, though, you know? We had recess ladies who were watching and they said it was fine to go down like a log but you weren’t allowed to do somersaults or anything fancy, you’d get in trouble, and I’d always hurt my neck when I did it different, anyway.”

Razor Blade sits up. “That’s nice.” She brings her knees into her chest and looks down, feels the cuts healed smooth along her legs like speed bumps, thank god they didn’t scar like earthworms, she feels like a little kid with scrapes all over her knees. “I want to roll down this hill.”

“There’s traffic at the bottom.”

“Will you roll down it with me?”

“…I’ll race you to the bottom.”

“Oh yeah, I bet.”

“Oh yeah, and I’ll win. Nobody rolls like I do, I’m so quick down a hill…” Jelly Bean takes her eyes off the road and looks at Razor Blade, she looks so far away. “I think it’d be more fun to roll down together, though.”

Jelly Bean reaches out her hand, takes Razor Blade’s fingers away from the scars and they’re holding hands now. It’s a tall hill, Razor Blade knows that falling down it would mean dying, and Jelly Bean, seeing how Razor Blade looks down it, realizes the same thing.

In held hands, Jelly Bean can feel something want to pull Razor Blade down. She wants to hold on tighter but maybe she’s afraid of being yanked down with her, and even just their sweaty fingers interlocked feels like a threat, but it’s okay for now.

The adults hang around the kitchen, fall asleep on the couch, spend the rest of the day leaning back in lawn chairs on the porch, sweating through their church pants, casual shirts, eating birthday cake, watching fireworks, kids on their laps, kids in the yard, running through sprinklers, jumping through leaves.

Kids too young to read sneak off to pick flowers for their mothers and Sue cries each time an anemone is ripped from her daughter’s burial garden.

“Here Grandma, I picked these for you.”

Sue reaches out to the little hand and smiles, holds the flowers close to her chest, “thank you, sweetie.”

For the past twelve years, it’s been Lee’s job to crouch down and say “Jelly Bean, it hurts Grandma’s feelings when you pick those flowers.”

“Why?”

He takes her hand and they walk to the garden, “you see that big rock in the ground?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you read it?”

“Ummm…. Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s read it together, okay?”

“Okay!”

Lee leads and Jelly Bean chants behind him, “Mary Medina, in loving memory, 1958-1986.”

“That’s my name! Who is that?”

“That’s your aunt.”

“Oh. Where is she?”

“She’s dead. She’s buried there.” He points at their feet.

Jelly Bean jumps back like all the other kids do, eyes go big, hair stands up. First they’re shocked and scared and their minds jump to zombies reaching up dragging them down into the dirt for being rude little boys and girls and some kids scream and run away, others freeze, waiting for the monster to tear through the dirt, then the fear fades and the guilt comes on when they realize that under the grass isn’t a monster but instead someone they’re supposed to care about.

Either way, they always end up crying like Jelly Bean does now, and she cries for the rest of the party.

Her mom’s chair scratches against the porch, “uh oh, sounds like the little ones cranky.”

Lee picks up Jelly Bean, “hey, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Why is she dead!”

He hands her off to mom and she rocks her. “You wanna take a nap?”

“No!”

“Shh, shhh. Okay. Let’s go inside, okay?”

Hours later, when the party’s over, Jelly Bean sneaks out to the front yard and picks handfuls of dandelions until she can’t wrap her arms around any more. She knows her parents are looking for her so she sneaks through the kitchen out to the backyard.

“Hey Aunt Mary,” she says into the flowers. “I’m sorry you died. Sorry for picking your flowers and crying. And I’m sorry I thought you were a monster, I didn’t mean it.

“I picked you these new flowers.” She loses her grip on the bouquet and dandelions shoot everywhere. “Oops, sorry!” She gathers them all up in a pile by the headstone.

The sliding door opens, her Dad’s yelling now so she knows it’s really time to go. “Okay, got to go. I’ll bring you more flowers next time!” But she doesn’t because she’s only three and very forgetful, and she’s probably too young to remember a single moment of what happened today, so today’s the only day that there’s dandelions for Mary.

Do you have a warm heart? She asked. But she meant do you have worms in your heart like I do?

It was a first date. It was an AA meeting, but they weren’t alcoholics. Jelly Bean was crying in a bathroom stall when Razor Blade walked in. They didn’t know each other and they didn’t know it was their first date.

A public bathroom is at its brightest at night, during the day the janitors sometimes choose to leave the lights off, but by midnight the bulbs are buzzing at their full potential. A public bathroom is always too cold. It’s no place for blankets, you can’t get comfortable in a public bathroom, not with the buzzing, and the cold, the sterile tile, sometimes wet, someone walking in at any moment. The American public bathroom is the mixed up child of a hospital and a prison. On their first date, they don’t comfort each other in the bathroom, they comfort each other in shoulders arms and necks.

I’m sorry, says Jelly Bean, my hands are so cold.

It’s okay, says Razor Blade, I’m overheating all the time.

The Sheriff keeps hanging around in doorways ten minutes at a time hours after it was supposed to be quitting time. Tanner, Brad, and Henry pretend not to notice but it actually bothers them a lot.

“Hey, which hotel you boys say you’d be staying at again?”

“We didn’t tell you what hotel we’d be staying at.”

“Oh… huh. Must just’ve thought I asked… So, what hotel they put you boys up in?”

“We’re not staying at any hotels.”

“We’re staying at the station.”

“Not allowed to leave until finished.”

The Sheriff scans around the pile of boxes, “well, shoot. I hope you boys brought some cots cause we’re not exactly equipped to sleep three guests.”

“We’ll make do.”

“I’m sure you will.” He walks up behind one of them, “well, you boys need any help setting up some sleep quarters… huh, looks interesting.”

All three snap their heads over to the Sheriff, “no it doesn’t.”

They sit back, smile, smooth their hair, “hey, Sheriff,” says one of them, “it’s pretty late, why don’t you go home.”

The Sheriff grabs a half wall and stretches his back, no way in hell I’m leaving you three nuts alone in the station, “ahhh, that’s alright. I’m used to staying up late. All those calls about flashing eyes, speaking in tongues, makes the townspeople comfortable when they can reach me at night.”

“Oh, that’s very persistent of you, Sheriff.”

“Yep.” And he adds, “I try.”

One of them lets out a big yawn. “Wow, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette. Let me step outside. I will be right back.” He walks through the door, around the corner, pulls out a cellphone and dials.

The station phone rings, Sheriff walks to the front desk. “Clay County Sheriff, what’s the emergency…? Really? Alright, you stay inside, what’s the address?” He scribbles it down. “Okay, 435 Oriel, right? Got it. Be there in ten minutes. Stay inside!” He slams the phone down, “hey boys, I gotta run!” He jogs through the doors, surprisingly athletic for a fat old man, hops in his police truck and peels down the hill.

“You do that, Sheriff.”

That one guy, Brad? comes back inside. “He gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” And he locks the door behind him with chains and padlocks.

They sit down, click open three identical briefcases and pull out three identical envelopes. They place them on their laps and stick out their hands, Rock Paper Scissors, Tanner? loses so he swaps his sunglasses for readers.

“Alright… Today’s subject is the lovely Mary Medina, 1958 to 1986, backyard burial, will states Mary will be reburied next to her parents after they croak.

“Okay, let’s see, the fact that she’s currently buried in a backyard means there’s nearly no graveyard interference, which makes her a prime candidate for this trial…” Tanner? flips through the pages, skims, “uhhh… yeah, standard equipment… everything else, boilerplate, yep, okay, good luck, have fun, signed the government. Alright… well, let’s get to it then.”

It takes them about fifteen minutes to tear through and set up everything in their boxes. There’s twelve small satellite dishes setup in a circle around the station, all pointed at one large dish pointing straight up. The big dish has a long antenna, some sort of metal fish bowl running through it, and two pulleys that lift and flip the bowl along the antenna.

The contraption is connected through hundreds of wires and tubes to another contraption, one that looks like a human shaped bottle, six feet tall, standing on a metal base, made entirely of glass.

They set up their monitors and keyboards and go to work. On the screens, a signal comes through. A voice, and with some fine tuning the satellites dilate and the voice becomes clearer and clearer.

“And… ple. Mom…. It’s so…. Mom, what kind of flowers are these? They’re so pretty! And they’re purple!” Comes a girls voice through heavy static.

“Is that it?”

Tanner? reads through the government papers, compares the audio signal on screen to the examples on paper, “it would seem so.”

“Wow, that was quick.”

“Yeah, damn, that was quick.”

“Who wants to be on fishing duty?”

“Me!” Says one of them, “I think it’s kinda fun.”

Maybe it’s Henry? He walks over to the big dish and grabs a hold of the pulley cables, he tugs one and the metal bowl creeps up along the antenna.

“Mom, what kind of flowers are these?”

Something inside the bowl glows blue, and the higher he raises it the brighter it glows. When it’s at the top, the blue light spills over the rim. He yanks the other cable.

“They’re so pretty! And they’re-”

The bowl flips over, he lets go of the lifting cable and the bowl crashes against the dish, slam fires the blue light through cables and tubes and now there’s a tiny swimming glow floating against the top of the mannequin’s head.

“Well, you excited to do that for the next sixty hours?”

“Yeah, sure, why not.”

“Can I touch your hair?” says Jelly Bean.

“Only if I can feel yours.”

Walking down the hill, all the houses stand at attention, pressed against front lawns with each story stacked almost on top of each other.

“I like the way your hair feels,” says Razor Blade, both hands buried deep in Jelly Bean’s newly orange hair.

“I like the way yours feels, too. It feels like mine,” says Jelly Bean, running her hands all over Razor Blade’s head.

“We have the same hair.”

“We should dye it the same color.”

“Yeah! And everyone will think we’re sisters!”

“Or in a band.”

“But we’ll know the truth.”

“That we can’t sing or play any instruments.”

“Whoooaaaa, iiiiiimmm miiisss woooorrrld, I don’t know what you’re talking about I’m a great singer, sooooomebodyyyy kill meeee…” sings Razor Blade, badly.

They’re both wearing Frankenstein boots, tied in lace, and they smack hard against the pavement.

“What about you, you roll down hills at school?”

“At school? No.” Says Razor Blade. “My school was flat. We had a loading dock we’d jump off, sometimes.”

Razor Blade’s quiet now. She thinks about how many times she’s hit the ground and it feels like a lot. “I should jump off this hill.”

“From this high up? You’d die.”

“Yeah…”

There’s no traffic at the bottom, cars stopped passing by a half hour ago. It’s a clear night, it’s all crickets, the stars are out.

“Well, if you jump then I’ll just have to jump with you. Just promise we won’t land on our teeth, okay?”

Razor Blade learned to read the stars, she learned online. She was thinking about them, all the way up there, but Jelly Bean said something about teeth. “What?”

“Here,” says Jelly Bean, and puts her hand over Razor Blade’s mouth. “I’ll protect your teeth and you protect mine, so we don’t smash them on the hop down.”

Jelly Bean feels a little smile under her palm, then her mouth’s covered by Razor Blades hand. They walk down the hill, neither saying anything cause they can’t. Jelly Bean’s worried Razor Blade might take the jump, and if she does, the force might take her down with her, but with her hand over her face, she’ll try to bring her back down next to her. About a block down an idea pops into both their heads.

At the same time they lick each other’s palms and giggle. They repeat the process five times, trying to guess when the other will do it, not wanting to lick too early, somehow they can feel it before it happens, tiny sparks and thats how you know, when you feel the tingling.

On the fifth time, Jelly Bean licks and Razor Blade bites down.

“Ow! You bitch!”

The last block down hill is a footrace, Jelly Bean running and Razor Blade running away. At the bottom Jelly Bean tackles her to the ground, sits on top of her, snatches her wrist and bites.

“Ow, ow… are you giving me a hickey?” Razor Blade breaks out of the bite. “You freak.”

“Hey, you know what time it is?”

“What?” Razor Blade looks at the bite watch in the middle of her wrist, “oh my God, you’re such a geek. Yeah, I know what time it is, it’s time for me to spit the nastiest loogie into your mouth.”

Jelly Bean pops up and runs before Razor Blade can snatch her, “nooo, no way! We’re even!”

Last night of summer last day of school last night on earth, goodnight everyone. A disco ball spaceship lifts her away in her sleep, the insides all mother of pearl, even the captain’s seat, even the steering wheel, everything’s sticky burnt heroin and pixie sticks.

On the way up she kisses the world’s forehead goodnight.

And only at night I see her reflected in windows by light of stars millions of miles away from me.

And she comes to me, naked, floating, skin shimmering shining in the dark. Waterfalls smooth and quiet, obscured underwater she comes. She comes in fits hot nights bad sleep she comes to comfort she comes as soft as velvet lighting crashes as glowing constellations cool before my eyes and she comes in tears down my face, blurs roads into silent rivers and traffic signals into Christmas lights and why should everything look so pretty when she’s gone? Because tears smear the world into old impressionist paintings.

And every stranger, before they walk through the door, before they turn around, could always be her, and as long as I don’t know I can always believe. No, no, don’t turn around, let me pretend.

And it’s all fuzz, warm carpet in front of the TV. This street is my house, the middle of the road is my home. Home is a public bathroom thirty minutes at a time the world is my house at 3AM and there’s nobody around to tell me otherwise, and it goes on for miles and miles and it’s an old farm and an oil change and a broken up corn silo and a diner with the windows boarded up, and I am miles and miles and miles of empty corn fields and sleep comes wherever I lay my head.

Razor Blade’s apartment is all blue lights and a wide open door, “I lost the key,” she says with a laugh even though it’s not a joke. Her place is a mess Jelly Bean can understand. She could picture herself lying on the floor next to Razor Blade here.

“Do you want a coke?” says Razor Blade, “I have those ones in like glass bottles, they taste so much better I think it’s like real sugar or something, none of that aspartame or corn shit.” She turns the bottle in her hands looking for where on the ingredients label it says it tastes good. “Yeah, see, cane sugar.”

“Sure, thank you.”

She puts the bottle in Jelly Bean’s hands, “oh shit, bottle opener, I know I have one.” Razor Blade digs through cartoon landfills in the kitchen, careful not to disturb the structural garbage. She finds it right when her not roommate sits down on the couch.

Razor Blade trips over a pile of clothes. “Wait, stop! Don’t do that! Not in front of her!”

The not roommate says “What? Why do you care?”

“I…I…please, just not in front of her,” “I’m sorry.”

She leaves.

“She’s so dramatic, she acts like she doesn’t do it but she does it all the time.”

She’s gone. She ran away. She’s outside.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to freakout. I didn’t mean to act weird. I’m sorry.”

She looks so pretty right now, Jelly Bean thinks, with her makeup down her face, eyes all red, she’s bigger than herself, projected on a building. She keeps apologizing, I’m so sorry, you probably think I’m a total loser, I’m trying so hard, I’m a fucking loser. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Jelly Bean wraps her arms around her, “don’t be sorry, don’t ever be sorry. You’re not a loser!” She backs up. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thanks for spending time with me.”

The not roommate pokes their head out, “hey, come back inside.”

“Okay, just a second,” says Razor Blade. “It’s okay if you want to go home. I understand.”

“Fuck that,” says Jelly Bean. “Let’s leave, let’s… let’s go to the beach.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, let’s go, just you and me, right now.”

“Yeah, you want to? Yeah! Let’s do it! Let’s go!”

Jelly Bean grabs her hand tight and they run, run past the open door, run out of the complex and they start on their long walk to the beach.

Jelly Bean’s parents were in the process of packing up everything, listing the house and driving cross country to set down furniture in an empty house on the west coast. They send Jelly Bean to live with her grandparents for a few weeks while they get everything situated. Lee and Sue are happy to spend the time with their granddaughter.

Every day they go to the park and sometimes they go to all the little stores in town, and at night they play Go-Fish, and Lee never lets Jelly Bean win but most of the time she does anyway. “How are you so good at this? I’ve played cards all my life and I’ve never won so much as you.” Lee was unaware that Sue was sliding cards to Jelly Bean under the table. The nights always end with Jelly Bean and Lee staying up watching old cowboy movies, usually Clint Eastwood. Lee didn’t care for the Duke.

“Why does grandma go to bed so early?”

“She gets up early.”

“For work?”

“Ha! Yeah right. No, she goes to the beach.”

“The beach, I want to go!”

“Yeah? You’d have to wake up real early, like really really early.”

“I can do that.”

“Alright, I’ll wake you up early, but that means we’ll have to go to bed right now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Sue’s alarm goes off at 4AM, she slides out of bed into the bathroom. Lee fights to stay awake, “aaah.” He stretches big. “Sue.” She doesn’t hear him.

Knowing he has to get out of bed, he says “darnit,” and rolls out of the covers. “Sue,” he says, shuffling into the bathroom.

“What.”

“Jelly Bean wants to go to the beach with you, you want her along?”

“Oh,” says Sue, “yeah, that’d be nice. I’ll go wake her, you can go to bed.”

Lee’s already in bed. “Yeah okay good, God Bless,” and he’s snoring.

Sue goes to Jelly Bean’s room, “hey, Bean,” she rubs the girls shoulder until she stirs awake, “grandpa says you want to go to the beach with me?”

Jelly Bean’s half asleep. “Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s get you dressed and get going.”

They eat muffins on the drive and the sun isn’t close to up when they get there.

“It feels like night time.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Why are we here so early?”

“I’ll show you.”

They walk along the shore, looking at all the little shells that wash up until they come across a massive conch that must’ve just washed up. Sue sits down by the shell, Jelly Bean goes to pick it up but Sue stops her, “wait, don’t touch it. Sit over here.”

Jelly Bean does so.

“Okay, you know how if you put a big enough shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean?”

Jelly Bean nods.

“This is kinda like that, but different. When it’s really early in the morning, like it is now, and shells like this have just washed up and nobody’s touched them, sometimes in big enough sea shells you can hear little pieces of old conversations.”

“What, how?”

“Well, words are kinda like magic, they’re full of energy, and what happens is after you speak words with good energy, like when you talk to a friend you really like, all that good energy is free and floats up into space, and every now and then, when it’s floating up there, it gets bounced back down to earth by a comet or satellite, and when those words get bounced back down they can get trapped under certain things, like these sea shells, and when we turn them over we can hear the words one more time as they float back up into the sky.”

“But then won’t they be gone again? Can you keep them in a jar or something?”

“No, you shouldn’t. Good energy doesn’t want to be trapped, it wants to float up back into the sky, that’s where its home is. If you bottle them away, you keep good energy from being out there in the universe.”

“Oh…” Jelly Bean buries her hands in the sand.

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, get close.”

They put their ears down by the shell, Sue flips it over and out comes a womans voice, “five hundred Americans die every year from falling out of bed, John. Yes it’s true! I-I-I learned that on a website that tries to get people to not be afraid of flying, I’m not afraid of flying but I went on a website. Five hundred Americans, John, just think about it, it’s going to be old people and then like messy people. Or like, frail people. Did you know I’m on blood thinners right now if you like punched me and I bled I would diiiieeeeee…”

Jelly Bean picks up the shell and looks inside it for some sort of speaker, but there’s nothing in there. “Where’d that come from.”

“I wasn’t kidding, Bean.”

“Who was that? Do you know them?”

“Who said those words? No clue, could’ve been anyone. All I know was they were having a nice conversation with someone.”

“It didn’t really sound like that nice of a conversation. It sounded weird.”

“Don’t be so quick to judge, Jelly Bean. You never know how much some words can mean to a person. Even words like that, I’m sure someone would love to hear them again.”

Jelly Bean and Sue walk down the coast looking for more big shells until it’s light out. At day break they walk back to the car.

“You do this every day?”

“Yep, favorite way to start the morning.”

“You ever hear anything from anyone you know?”

The sun’s rising, something so pretty makes Sue feel so sad. “…No. But I’d like to…”

The sun rise just looks pretty to Jelly Bean. “Can I do this with you every day?”

“Of course you can,” says Sue, and maybe the sunrise isn’t so sad. “But you won’t be able to stay up late with grandpa every night, then.”

“Oh, shoot.”

“How about every other day, so you can still watch movies and look for shells with me.”

“Yeah! Let’s do that!”

Jelly Bean stays with her grandparents for another week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Jelly Bean goes to the beach with grandma and stays up late watching cowboy movies with grandpa. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday she catches up on sleep.

On Sunday her parents pick her up, put her on a plane, and aside from phone calls on holidays and birthdays, Jelly Bean doesn’t see Grandpa Lee and Grandma Sue until their funerals a few years later.

Every now and then the Sheriff goes out for dinner alone. He’s decided to try this place called Giorgio’s, a place he thought was Italian but turned out to be Georgian.

He already knows what he wants, a steak. A waitress runs up to him, he finds her terrifying. She has the body of a circle, short spike hair, lemur eyes wide open and eyelashes that branch out, she’s standing way too close to him and the idea of her brushing her long long eyelashes against him fills him with the same disgust he’d feel from a moth flapping against his skin.

She opens her mouth and he’s struck by how bad her breath smells.

“Hhello, hhoney,” she says, and the Sheriff nearly gags. Before he can stop her she starts reading the specials, “tonight, we have hhlibut, served with mahhhshed potatoes and aaasparaguus, and that comes with a hhhouse salaahd.” She’s smiling like an idiot.

The Sheriff wonders if he’s done something to upset this waitress or the owners of this restaurant, because she’s too close to his face blowing rotten tooth funk into his nose. His appetite’s gone but still, he orders a steak out of politeness.

The steak comes, she breaths more stink in his face, the Sheriff tries his best to hold his breath while making it look like he’s not.

The steak is disappointing and he’s not sure if it’s because of the waitress’s breath or because of mediocre cooks but it’s probably a combination of both. It’s bland and covered in a cold sauce that doesn’t taste particularly good. Came from the kitchen that way. Without the sauce a flavorless steak might have been okay but the sauce ruined it. The Sheriff only ate half.

It wasn’t a cheap restaurant either. With every bite he was reminded that he spent a full hours pay on this. An hour of his life, spent for no reason, he would’ve preferred dropping the money down a well rather than eating this steak, at least he wouldn’t feel so fucking stupid.

It was so upsetting to him, when the waitress ran over to ask if he’d like desert he just said, “no! Check!”

This happened a few days ago, and in spite of everything that’s been going on; the strange reports, the government spooks camped out at the station, and even the current situation he was driving to, still, when he got in his car and let muscle memory carry out the driving, he found that the night of bad steak and terrible breath had wafted back into his head, and now he was feeling a bit sick.

Serve and protect, but the Sheriff knows, unconsciously, that he would not respond to any calls from Georgio’s, and he secretly wished for something terrible to happen to that restaurant and that waitress, not because the Sheriff was a bad person, but because deep down everyone has secret fantasies of unreasonable cruelty against people who annoy them.

“Fucking steak… Fucking bitch….”

Clint Eastwood’s hiding on top of a bell tower. A group of outlaws search the town for him, Robert Duvall’s men. A goon walks over to the bell tower, circles around the perimeter but never looks up. Clint watches the goon, the camera leans over with him when Clint leans over each side watching the goon round corner after corner.

The goon stops at the front door, turns and looks over the town. He strikes a match against his boot and lights a cigarette. Clint lifts a clay water pot over the edge, drops it, crashes, cracks square against the goon’s head, knocks him out cold.

Clint lights a cigar, squints and says through the corner of his mouth, “looks like a splitting headache.”

Lee spits his coffee out and laughs so hard he cries.

Lee dies. Sue dies. Sue’s brothers; Joe, Johnny, and Jimmy, die. Tanner dies. Henry dies. Brad dies. Jelly Bean’s parents die. The Sheriff dies. The waitress dies. Robert Duvall and all his men die. Robert Duvall’s and all his men’s horses die. The one, underneath the covers, and the other, die. The kids die. The adults die. The flowers die.

Razor Blade dies, alone in her bed, and it looks like she just fell asleep.

It’s so early in the morning by the time they get to the beach that it feels like nighttime, still. They’ve taken off their Frankenstein boots, walk hand in hand on the shoreline, the warm water washes up to their ankles.

The most beautiful thing in the entire world is never ever getting what you want, ever. Tears burn Jelly Bean’s eyes, it washes the world into one big hazy dream, stars in every window, colors running far away out of the lines, the world very very far away from her, she’s just looking in on it. Is it really a dream if she never wakes up from it?

Razor Blade’s face down, writhing on the beach, tears in her eyes, crushing sand between her fingers. All Jelly Bean can do is hold her tight. She’s not afraid of being dragged down with her, she’s keeping her here, nobody’s dragging them away, she’s here, she’s keeping her here with her, and she’ll always be right here.

She takes her face out of the sand and buries it in Jelly Bean’s shoulder. Don’t let me go, she says.

I won’t, I’m here with you, forever.

Months later, Jelly Bean sits at her grave, holding onto anything she can. Razor Blade walks up, wearing a trench coat and hat, talking in a gruff tone, “hey kid, what’re you crying about?”

Jelly Bean jumps up and squeezes the hidden Razor Blade.

She explains that she faked her own death, they don’t have to worry about the past, they’re free to be together now.

No she doesn’t.

Jelly Bean sits alone at the grave and cries.

But now, they’re still walking down the beach, whispering nonsense into each others ears:

“You’re more perfect than 300 dollars”

“You’re more perfect than 400 dollars”

“You’re more perfect than 500 dollars.”

“More perfect than 500 dollars, you really think so?”

“Yea, even more perfect than that.”

And they skip through the sea foam kicking it all up in their wake, slipping pretty sea shells into each other’s pockets, jingling like Christmas bells.

Jelly Bean spots a big conch up the beach. “Razor Blade, come here.”

The two girls lean against each other, sitting by the shell.

“My grandma once told me, when I was real young, in big enough sea shells you can hear pieces of old conversations bounced forever in space off a hundred different satellites.”

“Really?” says Razor Blade, “flip it over, maybe some ghost has something to say to us.”

They both reach out, turn the shell over together. “Those are called anemone’s, they’re very pretty, aren’t they?”

“Can we plant some in the garden?”

“No, we don’t have any room, maybe next year.”

For the first time in nearly two decades Jelly Bean thinks about her grandmother’s flower garden, meticulously kept, with anemones everywhere.

On the beach, they find a towel to fall asleep under. The sun rises. They hold each other tight and whisper into each other’s ears.

“Can I tell you something?” says Jelly Bean.

“Anything,” says Razor Blade.

Each word comes out warm against the ear, makes them blush.

“It sounds silly.”

“I won’t laugh.” A tidal wave hits LA.

Jelly Bean and Razor Blade dye their hair matching pink, everyone thinks they’re in a band. They make like beach boys and surf down Sunset Boulevard on matching Hello Kitty boards. Capitol Records, Sunset Tower, crumble against crashing waves.

Jelly Bean has this bashful smile on, knowing she can’t back out of saying it now. “When I’m with you, you make me feel like I’m a little kid again, picking dandelions.”