Hidebehind

Twenty-Four

The two of us—Jay and I—sat marveling at the tick jar, the three-legged dog hovering about, hoping for us to reach down and scratch its scruffy neck.

"Why does your Great Grandma do that?" he asked in reference to the bloated ticks suspended in liquid like blue marbles.

I shook my head. "No idea."

"She's crazy," Jay confirmed.

I couldn't disagree with him on that one. "Okay. So let's get down to business. I'll go first. My Grandpa wasn't in any sort of mindset last night for conversation." I sighed. "I couldn't get anything out of him."

"Did you actually try? Did you try hard?"

His obvious assumption that I hadn't irritated me. "Yeah, I did. He was out of it. Totally blank. He wouldn't even look at me, just stared off into space."

Jay sighed. "Well, ok. That pretty much leaves us nowhere. I didn't figure anything out, either. Like you said—there isn't much to say about any Hidebehind. I don't think anyone's ever seen one. It's this thing that's always behind something, never really showing itself . . . except when it does, and you have to face it, I guess. And that's probably pretty difficult."

"Understatement."

"I'm just guessing; I can't say I'd know."

"It eats your intestines!"

"Ugh."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Exactly."

Jay tipped his head to one side, thought a second. "So if it ate the kid who your grandpa knew, there would be leftovers, then, right?"

"Leftovers?"

He wiggled his fingers out in front of him. "Yeah, you know. Bits and pieces of his body in the woods or cave or wherever. If that's all it eats is intestines. But nobody ever found any trace of him."

I sighed. "We've had this conversation before."

"But that's before we knew this was an actual monster. I mean, that it has a name. And it was before we thought it was chasing you, too."

I closed my eyes and swallowed. All this was starting to give me a headache.

"Hey!" came a voice from the path. I blinked my eyes and turned to see Alex walking his bike up onto the patio.

Immediately, Jay was standing at my side. "What's he doing here?" he hissed.

I was a little taken aback; I had known Jay would be annoyed that I'd asked Alex over (which is why I hadn't told him I'd done it), but I hadn't thought he'd be angry. "Geez, Jay. It's just Alex. I hate him, okay?"

"Could've fooled me!"

"What's up?" Alex asked casually, trying unsuccessfully to prop up his bike against the brick retaining wall. He gave up after three tries and just let it fall to the ground. "Kickstand broke off," he explained.

I shrugged. "I don't care." I'd invited him, but it didn't mean I had to be nice to him. "We were just talking about . . . well about that—Hey! Where are you going?"

I'd been so preoccupied with watching Alex try to stand his bike that I hadn't noticed Jay get on his and start off. By the time I yelled after him, he was far enough to pretend he hadn't heard me.

"Don't leave!"

"I'm not going to leave." Alex was standing over me, his shadow feeling almost ominous.

"I know you're not."

He looked at me sideways.

I sighed. I might as well just get what I could from him, as my meeting with Jay clearly hadn't done much of anything. "What about that stuff on the rock? The symbols you found?"

"Yeah. I can show you it."

"What are you, crazy? You think I'm going back out in the woods with you?"

Alex actually looked offended, which annoyed me. What was I supposed to do? Pretend he'd never been horrible? Overlook the fact that everyone at that stupid school probably thought I was the biggest coward after my freak-out in the woods, which he'd caused? Why was he offended?

"I'm not trying to trick you, again."

"Doesn't matter. You know what, just forget about it. I don't even know why I asked you over."

I guess he could only take so much from me, because that was enough for him. He didn't even speak to me as he got up, got back on his bike, and rode off down the path. Our interaction hadn't lasted two minutes. As I watched him go, anger filled me. I kicked a patio chair, but the sound of it grating across the cement irritated me even more. I hated it here. I hated it more than anything I had ever hated.

No longer able to be still but also unable to go back into the house, I went around to the back, where the dead peach trees stood in sad rows, and where Grandpa liked to sit on the porch in his creaky chair. He wasn't there now, but it was warm, and I absentmindedly wandered into the midst of the trees. Just as before, I could've sworn I smelled peaches, and I wondered if that was normal—if the trees smelled even without fruit, even if they were dead. There were no leaves, no indication that there was any sort of life in them. They were just standing there, sad, neglected, but stuck.

It would've been better to tear them out. Why had Great Grandma left them?