Past: Empty
School always started back too early in Oklahoma, if you asked me. We started back the third week of August and our first football game was that weekend. The freshmen had barely had time to learn the school song, and we were nowhere near ready to start marching.
It didn’t matter much that night, though. It had started raining early in the afternoon and hadn’t quit for even a minute. The field was soaked and all our football players seemed to be wearing uniforms made entirely of mud. Everyone in the band had to huddle under umbrellas to keep their instruments dry – especially the drummers. I was one of them, and it was really hard to keep the big bass drum I played under the tiny umbrella the band director had given me. By halftime, after we had finished playing a very stationary version of what would be our halftime show for that year, Mr. Dixon was ready to call it quits and told us just to pack up our instruments.
I knew that meant I could leave early if I wanted to, but my van was still on the fritz and I was supposed to be getting a ride home from Taylor, who had promised to be more reliable than last time. Also, it meant that I could spend the rest of the game seeking dry ground under the bleachers with Shelby, who had been sitting by herself a few rows away from the band.
Since I couldn’t exactly walk home, at least not in a rain as hard as that one was, I decided to spend the rest of the game with Shelby. After I came back from putting the bass drum and my music in our band room, which was in a separate building not too far from the field, I saw that she was still sitting in the same place. I motioned for her to follow me, and made my way up under the bleachers. I chose the far end of the field, where there wasn’t as much lighting and not as many people sitting above. Not that I was planning anything that needed much secrecy, but I just liked having some space between us and the rest of the crowd.
Mostly we just cuddled there, not even really saying much to each other. We kind of worked better that way, I thought. And I didn’t like to talk much, anyway. Shelby tried to smoke a cigarette, but the whole pack had gotten doused in the rain earlier and didn’t want to stay lit. I laughed at her persistence, and she didn’t really appreciate it.
When the game was over, we pulled our jackets up over our heads and began the walk over to her car. She couldn’t quite remember where she had parked it, and the thing was small enough to hide behind most of the larger ones in the parking lot. Before we spotted hers, I saw Isaac’s car and him standing beside it.
“Looks like Taylor didn’t show up again,” Shelby pointed out, noticing Isaac at the same time I did.
“Guess not,” I said, then placed a small kiss on the side of her face. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, alright?”
“Yup. And I can come over to your brothers’ this weekend, right?”
I nodded and smiled. “Yeah, definitely.”
Shelby blew another kiss to me as she walked away to continue the search for her car. I walked over to Isaac, who I realized when I got closer to him, had a really strange look on his face. I couldn’t figure out what it meant at all. Probably he was just upset that he had to take over Taylor’s responsibilities again. I would never know why they kept assigning Taylor to look after me, when he could barely look after himself.
“Get in,” Isaac said, not even offering me a chance to reply before he turned around and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
I walked around to the other side and sat down in the car. With his jaw set tightly, Isaac started up the car and steered us out of the parking lot. I realized immediately that he was headed back to the house and not to his apartment, like Taylor and I had planned the night before.
“We’re not going back to your place?” I asked, reaching my hand out to turn the radio on.
“No, we need to get you home,” Ike replied, turning the radio off just as soon as I had adjusted it to my favorite classic rock station.
“Where’s Taylor?” I asked, looking straight ahead at the road. The rain was making everything glittery and bright, even in the growing darkness.
“He went over to the house this afternoon after work… I think Mom was still mad at him,” Ike replied. It didn’t really answer my question, and it felt like there was a lot more to the story that he wasn’t saying.
“Oh… okay,” I said, not knowing what else I could say. His answer hadn’t answered anything at all, but I wanted to at least acknowledge it.
Isaac didn’t say anything else, so I just focused on watching all the cars pass us by. Their headlights bounced around in the rain and reflecting off the wet road hurt my eyes, but I didn’t have anything better to watch, and evidently I wasn’t allowed to turn the radio on. So I just steeled myself to squint at the bright lights and keep watching the traffic.
It really wasn’t very interesting to watch. We were on kind of a back road heading toward our house on the outskirts of town, so even on the night of a football game there wasn’t much traffic. Just a few cars here and there. Then a big wrecker came rolling by, its rumbling sound enough to attract my attention. The bright flash of red in an otherwise dull colored night also caught my eyes.
It wasn’t the wrecker, though. It was the bright, shiny red Camaro on the back of it.
I knew there had to be tons of Camaros in Tulsa, and maybe even one or two more in Jenks. But my stomach still did a giant flipflop at the sight of it. The whole front end of the thing was crunched and folded up, making it look more like an accordion than a car. The windshield, or what I could see of it, was all smashed and broken into jagged pieces. It looked like the teeth of a monster jutting out, with speckles of – I didn’t even want to think the word.
Blood.
Blood all over it. When our headlights passed over it, I could even see the stuff covering the driver’s seat. Then it felt like that was all I could see. Red. The bright red of the car and the dark, thick red of blood. I had to close my eyes and I still couldn’t get away from that color.
“Fuck,” Isaac said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m so sorry, Zac.”
Then I knew. I could have convinced myself otherwise, but then I knew. And he had already known and didn’t tell me. I couldn’t look at Isaac for the rest of the drive home. I just sat with my eyes closed and my hands clutching at the dashboard, trying to keep myself from throwing up.
When we got home, I didn’t even wait until the car was in park. It was still rolling when I threw the door open. I ran straight into the house and down the hall to the bathroom. I was in there for a long time, even long after the contents of my stomach were gone. It still kept turning and forcing me back onto my knees in front of the toilet, even though I could feel the emptiness of it.
Once I could finally stand up and felt like my stomach was going to stay put, I walked back into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the table, her head pressed against it, sobbing. Dad was in a chair next to her, and a cop sat across from them. Isaac stood against the counter, clutching Jessie and Avery to his side.
This time, it wasn’t my stomach that gave way. It was my legs. I fell to the floor, and sat there, feeling like all of my bones had taken leave of my body. Everything was numb and tingly. I could barely even hear the cop talking through the buzzing in my ears. Something about how fast Taylor was going, that they didn’t think he had even used his headlights, that he probably died on impact with the tree and didn’t feel much of anything.
I thought about what Isaac had said. He had a fight with Mom. He was driving too fast, but he always did that. His windshield wipers were shitty, anyway. Of course he hadn’t gotten around to buying new ones.
And he was gone.
He wasn’t going to walk in the door and apologize for being late. He wasn’t going to take me behind that dumpster again. He wasn’t going to smile again and light up any more rooms. He wasn’t going to play the guitar, or the piano, or try to play my drums anymore. He was gone.
The world felt empty. My body felt empty. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw things. I wanted to cry. I wanted to do something. To feel something.
But everything was just too empty.