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D E R E K
WHO IS THE bigger liar? Is it the boy who never told the truth, the one who sat on your doorstep and smiled through the gaps in his teeth as he sucked on his sticky-toffee thumbs, the one who nudged you to the edge of all the rubble on your cliff and blabbered a promise to follow? Or is it the image of this boy that lies more than he ever did, this self-crafted one where he never hurt you at all?
Really, it boils down to one question: how is Derek calling Connor Smith the biggest liar he knows when he himself has been here all along?
Forgiveness, he'd promised Smith if he stayed away. As if he can ever forgive anyone while he inhabits this body, the one that wrongs him most.
With gravel crackling under his shoes and a headache pulsing at his temples, Derek turns into Brooklyn Lane, wringing the once-shiny pole of the always-shiny street sign and stopping to catch his breath. This is where he always stops on his walk to the cul-de-sac to admire its constant changes, its bustling activity, to brighten the drabness with his mockery.
In the seventeen years he's lived on Brooklyn Lane, the second-most exciting thing to happen was Caroline Wilkin's heart attack half a decade ago. The loudest things he's heard hit this tarmac are her stretcher rattling into the ambulance, the storm every summer, Mom's car tires echoing her road rage. Sighing, Derek yanks his earphones out and hangs them around his neck, stalking into the street and toward where he sleeps.
His pace slows to a creep the closer he gets to his front deck. Lifting his stiff head, he notices that the 'FOR SALE' sign, hammered into the yard next door since before his birth, is gone. The formerly abandoned house, once draped in yellow shingle siding and darkness, has a working porchlight now, feeble though it is, attacked by the last of the season's moths. In the bedroom adjacent to his, warmth glows through the curtained windows. With a sharp jab in his chest, he keeps his eyes on where the sign had once been until he finishes his journey and reaches the Anderson doorstep. A kick scooter rusts against the main wall just under the kitchen window, unmoved for so long ivy has bound it to the building.
Derek leans his head against the front door as if to sense the lazy pulse on the other side of the clapboard. His hand hovers over the doorknob; he clenches it into a fist and tugs at the sleeves of his cardigan until they sheathe his wrists.
This is when he mutters a prayer under his breath—under his breath, so the air doesn't know he needs it. He always twists the doorknob on the final, drowning syllable of his, "Amen."
The foyer smells like his father: dust and stale whiskey, overpowering the faint earthy scent of his mother's dinner of black tea and crackers. As the door slows its creaking, he notices the absence of all other sounds; nobody washing the dishes, nobody blaring Fox News on the television, no ice or liquid sloshing against glass, no nails clacking on laptop keys. Just him and the weight of the floorboards, even the ones he'd trusted to be silent. The foyer light has not yet been fixed, or maybe it's off by choice this time.
