I wasn’t a bad girl. None of it had been my idea. Under the gazebo in the
park, it was Bethany who started up about the bath salts and how snorting
them was supposedly like taking acid. But she didn’t know for sure, it was
just what she’d heard some of the senior girls saying in the locker room
last week. And, of course, Ian wanted proof. So we piled into his car and
headed to Walmart, the only store that sold bath salts in our town, the
only store still open at this time of night. It was Friday, the first night
of summer vacation, and I was fifteen.

In the back seat, pressed up against the door handle and Bethany’s left
side, I looked up “snorting bath salts” on my phone and scrolled through
the results. I didn’t love the idea of running around town naked, out of my
mind, ripping people’s faces off with my teeth. It just didn’t seem the
best way to start the summer. But at fifteen, you can’t always afford to be
a conscientious objector, or even a conscientious observer. You are a
willing participant or you are alone.

“Ian, why are we taking these side streets?” Nola asked, sitting on the
other side of Bethany. “It’s faster just to go down Main.”

“I just want to see something real quick,” said Ian.

I watched the town roll slowly by—blue television light streaming out from
the windows of some houses while others sat dark, toys lying dormant on
front lawns, Little Tikes cars and inflatable swimming pools, a lone cat
prowling the sidewalk. I could feel Bethany breathing beside me, her rib
cage rising and falling in steady rhythm. I didn’t look at her. As Nola
argued with Ian and Joey up front, demanding they change the music, I
resisted the urge to grab Bethany by the arm, open the car door, and leap
out, taking my best friend with me. We would hit the pavement and roll onto
the curb, bruised but safe. She’d yell at me first, call me crazy, but much
later—years from now, even—she would see that I’d been right.

On Linwood Street, Ian slowed the car to a crawl. Nola began to laugh.
“Really, Ian? This is what you wanted to see?”

Ian didn’t answer, just looked across the street at the house we had
stopped in front of. We all looked.

There was nothing especially strange about the plain white house. The
windows were dark, and the grass in front was maybe a little longer than it
should have been, but not by much.

“I’ve heard he hasn’t been out since he came back,” Nola said after a
moment. “Just sits in there doing nothing.”

“How do you know, though?” said Ian, staring at the house. “He could be
doing anything in there: writing songs, recording. It’s only his mom with
him, so we don’t know.”

Suddenly, I understood. They were talking about Paul Frazier.

Four years ago, Paul had fronted a high school band called the Seizures.
The story goes that on the band’s first gig at Mullen’s, a restaurant
downtown, people half a dozen blocks away had called the cops about the
noise. Although the band had been together only a year, kids still talked
about their shows. If you were one of the few lucky enough to have seen
them play, you held a certain authority. At school this past year, I had
overheard many arguments between juniors and seniors claiming to have gone
to one of their shows, and the doubters and detractors who hadn’t.
Sometimes, walking through town I would see rip seizures spray-painted in
the alleyways between vacant buildings.

I hadn’t heard of the Seizures until this year, my first year of high
school. By the time I’d been “enlightened to the noise,” the band was long
defunct. Paul Frazier had left for college in New York City, and all that
was left of the band were the stories and the memories and a six-song EP,
still available for download on their Myspace page. But earlier in May, the
word was that Paul had returned. He’d moved back into his mother’s house
and had hardly been seen or heard from since. He stayed in his room, holed
away from the rest of the town, like a monk or a sleeping vampire.

“I think it’s over, man.” Nola ran her hands through her short dark hair.
“He’s never going to play again.”

Ian shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I’d learned quickly that this was the group’s favorite topic of debate:
Paul Frazier. Nola and Joey were skeptics, but Ian still clung to a slim
but dogged hope. Out of all of us, Ian was his biggest fan. Although he was
in our grade, Ian was a year older and the only one of us who could drive.
He was also the only one of us who had seen Paul’s band, sneaking out with
his older brother to one of the Seizures’ shows when he was only twelve—or
so he claimed. During these arguments, Bethany and I stayed silent. We were
the newcomers. I couldn’t speak for Bethany, but in this group’s presence I
evaluated every word before I said it, mentally proofing future sentences
in my head.

I was in this car because of Bethany, my best friend since first grade.
Wherever she went, I went, too. I hardly knew these other kids. But if
clever, pretty Bethany wanted to hang out with them, then I was coming
along, like a dog dragged on a leash. Just a dumb, anxious dog, with
nothing clear to contribute. Just Laura: sort of cute but not pretty, with
a cluster of freckles splattered across my nose, and thick, unruly red
hair. I was good at making myself invisible.

In the Walmart parking lot, Ian pulled into a space as far away from the
entrance as possible, although there were hundreds of free spaces closer.
We climbed out of his old Saturn. It was one of the first warm nights of
the year, and it felt strange to be out this late with bare arms, not
chilled by the breeze. While everyone else headed for the entrance, I
grabbed Bethany’s arm and held her back. She raised her eyebrows,
impatient. I tried not to show that this look hurt. “Hey,” I said, “do you
know what bath salts are supposed to do to you? I just looked it up.”

Bethany looked at my phone in disdain, as if phones were now beneath her.
“You know, just because it’s online doesn’t make it true, Laura.”

“It doesn’t make it false, either,” I said.

She glanced at Ian and Nola and Joey, who had stopped a few yards ahead and
were looking back at us, waiting.

“Apparently, they make you do weird stuff,” I said. “Really weird stuff.”

For a second, I could see her almost caving to me; then she shook her head.
“Don’t be so lame, Laura. I want to actually do things this
summer.” She turned and headed toward the store, and I had no choice but to
follow.

Inside Walmart, we drifted down the aisles, past mad, grinning animal faces
on the fronts of cereal boxes, past women’s underwear and kiddie T-shirts
graced with the latest Disney starlet, everything lit in a cold fluorescent
glow. This was where I went with my mom and little brother for laundry
detergent or school supplies, but tonight, it didn’t feel familiar.
Tonight, we were on the verge of something strange and dangerous.

It turned people into zombies, one article on my phone had said,
blood-hungry zombies. Ian led us to the health and beauty section and,
after a minute of scanning the aisle, pointed to a small tub with the words
“Soothing Bath Salts” on the front. The second he picked it up, my dumb
heart began to pound. None of us spoke on the way to the checkout line.

Only one register was open, and the large, scowling cashier raised her
eyebrows when she saw us. “Before I ring you up,” she said, “can you tell
me what five kids are doing buying bath salts at eleven o’clock at
night?”

Ian replied without hesitation. “It’s a gift for my mom. Her birthday’s
tomorrow.”

Eyebrows still raised, the woman made no move to ring up our purchase.
“These ain’t gonna get you high, you know,” she said.

I clenched my fist and glanced at Ian. “Excuse me?” he managed.

“The salts that get you high, you can’t get at a Walmart—or anywhere in
Grover Falls. Trust me, you aren’t the first bunch of kids I’ve seen try to
do this.” A bemused, almost evil grin spread across her face. “Just thought
I’d save you some time.”

We all looked at Ian. It was a full ten seconds before he mumbled, “It’s a
gift for my mom,” and pushed the salts closer to the register. The cashier
rang it up. “Twenty-two fifty, please,” she said.

The bath salts lay between my feet on the floor of the car, and as we
pulled out of the Walmart parking lot and onto the road, I wondered what
Ian would do with them now. Maybe he would give them to his mother after
all.

“I have some of that weed left in my bag,” said Nola, now in the front
passenger seat, as Ian began to drive back the way we’d come. “The stuff we
had last weekend.”

Ian nodded. From my spot in the back seat, I could see his profile, lit
intermittently by passing traffic. He looked sad and disappointed.

“Are we really going back to your basement to smoke?” Joey asked, sitting
next to me. It was the first time I’d heard him speak without being spoken
to first.

Nola looked at him the rearview mirror. “You have any better suggestions?”

Joey sighed but didn’t say anything. I felt my body begin to tense. I had
never smoked weed before, and the idea of doing it for the first time
around kids I was trying to impress sent my heart into overdrive. We had
just tried to buy bath salts to use as narcotics, but at least then we’d
all been equally clueless. Nola talked about weed the way Bethany and I
might talk about going to the mall—it was something they did all the time.
She had it in her bag, and we were going to her house to smoke it. No
Walmart cashier was going to stop us.

“It’s just so cold in your basement,” Joey burst out again, “and we go
there all the time.”

“Well, we could go to your house, except that your parents are fucking
Nazis,” Nola snapped, turning around in her seat to look at Joey. “Or, Ian,
what about your house?”

Ian shook his head. “Not happening.”

“Guess that leaves my basement.” Nola gave Joey a triumphant jerk of her
head.

“I have the keys to the church,” Bethany said in a rush.

For a moment, everyone was silent. Bethany’s father was a pastor. Our town
was small enough that they all surely knew this already, but during the
past few weeks, whenever Bethany was around her new friends during lunch or
study hall, she had gone out of her way to avoid the topic. I couldn’t
understand why she suddenly wanted to remind them.

Nola looked at Bethany. “So?”

“So we could smoke the weed there … if you wanted,” Bethany said timidly.

Nola was looking at her with raised eyebrows, and I could almost physically
feel the skepticism in the car. Then Ian broke it. “Hey, your dad’s church
is the one that used to be a school, right?”

Bethany nodded. “Yeah.”

“We could smoke on the roof and watch the stars.”

“How romantic,” Nola muttered.

New Life Center was in a brick school building that had been closed since
the eighties, after a new, larger school was built on the other side of
town. It sat in a field on the outskirts of Grover Falls, with a long drive
that spilled into a giant parking lot. New Life had bought the property
about ten years ago, after our old church building burned down in a fire.
In the years between the school’s closing and our church’s buying it, the
town had turned the giant surrounding field into a twelve-hole golf course.
Our church had decided not to anger the town by shutting down the popular
golf course, so instead, we ran it ourselves. Some people in the
congregation didn’t think it was right for the course to stay open on
Sunday mornings, but since that was when it got most of its business, it
didn’t make sense to close it. Sometimes, during Bethany’s father’s
sermons, you could hear a golfer yelling “Fore!” out on the green.

It had been easy enough to find a way out onto the roof. Bethany led us
through the door, and we sneaked through the dark hallway and up the
stairs. I’d been in the building countless times, but never this late at
night. The empty darkness had a menacing feel that our whispers and giggles
didn’t seem to relieve. One of the third-floor classrooms had a closet with
a steel ladder that led up to an unlocked trapdoor, bringing us out onto
the roof. By the time we were on top, I had pretty much forgotten about the
weed. It seemed thrilling enough to have broken and entered, to be out
here, the night breeze wafting across my face and through my hair, the
lights of Grover Falls visible in the distance.

But Nola wasted no time. She knelt down, dug the weed out of her backpack,
and quickly rolled a joint. After it went around the circle that ended with
me, I had no choice. When the smoke hit my lungs and I started to cough, I
panicked.

“Come here, son.” Nola placed a hand on my shoulder and gently took the
joint from me. “Let me show you how it’s done.” I watched her pale face
pull in and grow thin as she inhaled, and then the bloom of her dark lips
as she breathed out the smoke, talking in a pinched voice as she did. “You
have to invite it into your lungs. This weed is a friend; make it
feel welcome.” She brushed a strand of hair from her face and handed me
back the joint.

One minute I wanted to kiss someone, the next I was dying to talk about
extraterrestrial life. I settled for spreading myself out on the cold roof
deck and staring up at the stars. If I squinted, I could make them all come
together and form a giant ball of light, like how I imagined things had
been at the beginning of the universe, before God decided that his own
divine presence wasn’t enough.

As the others laughed and fooled around with some irons and golf balls Ian
had taken from the supply shed, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and held
it above my face. A new message was waiting for me on my MatchUp app:
Martin. Though I wanted to, I resisted opening the app and reading the
message. Someone might see. Also, my phone battery was almost dead.
Instead, I looked back up at the sky and wondered, not for the first time,
what Martin would say if he could see me now.

Our online conversations had grown longer and more intimate in the past few
weeks. Only the night before, we’d landed on the subject of death. Michael
Jackson had just died, and Martin was upset. On chat, I did my best to
appear upset, too, but in truth, the King of Pop’s death hadn’t fazed me
much. I didn’t listen to his music, so for me he was just a sad old R&B
star. To cover myself, I tried to steer the conversation away from Jackson
by talking about death in general. I mentioned how death scared me because
it was the one thing in life everybody had to confront, but the one thing
we knew absolutely nothing about. I talked about how I’d been raised to
believe in an afterlife, though usually the idea of not being
seemed more convincing to me, but also more terrifying. I’d begun writing
all this to Martin as a way of deflection, but as I typed, I realized it
was all true: I was afraid of death. If I thought about it at night, it was
hard to fall asleep. I was scared I would never again wake up.

I had worried that my fears would sound dumb and immature to Martin, that
he would think me childish. But, as usual, he understood. He told me he
used to feel the same way, but he had come to the conclusion that the idea
of not being, of nothingness, was comforting. Death was no different from
before we were born, when not being had meant no pain or fear. I’d never
thought about it that way before, and Martin was right, the idea was
comforting.

Bethany’s face filled up my vision. She lay down beside me on the roof.
“How ya doing?”

“Just stargazing.” I let my anger at her go. I could always get it back if
I wanted to.

I turned to look at her, and it hit me. “You like Ian, don’t you?” I said.
I had already been suspicious but hadn’t known how deep it went. If she was
willing to snort bath salts for this boy, if she was willing to break into
church and risk getting caught by her dad, then it must be serious.

We both looked over to where Ian stood, hitting golf balls off the side of
the roof. Nola was beside him, drawling in a voice I recognized but
couldn’t place—“Ah say, ah say, boy, ya gotta put more energy into yer
drive there, son. Really put yer back into it!”—while Joey looked on and
laughed.

Bethany looked back up at the sky. “No, Laura, I don’t like Ian.”

It was standard practice, of course, to deny any allegation of a crush the
first time it was made—even one made by your best friend. Still, her lie
hurt a little. “Bullshit,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.

“No, seriously …” she began, but then stopped.

A bright floodlight had come on in the church parking lot. Then a man’s
voice: “Whoever is up on that roof, you are trespassing on private
property. Do not move! I’m coming up.”

Of course we all moved. We moved in every direction, scrambling to find a
way off the roof that wasn’t the way we had come. My head felt weightless,
like a balloon filled with helium. It felt as if there were hundreds of us
up there, searching for an escape route. We kept bumping into different
versions of ourselves. Finally, out of the confusion, I heard Joey shout,
“Over here!”

He was at the far corner of the roof, looking down. When we reached him, we
saw the ladder leading down to the jutting wing of the first story. From
there, it was only about ten feet to the ground. I followed Ian down the
ladder, the others behind me, and soon we all were looking out over the
edge of the first-story roof.

Ian was the first to jump. Without hesitation, he launched himself off the
roof and into the air. We heard a dull thud at his body hit the grass, and
then his voice: “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. Jump!”

I found myself jumping. For a moment, I was airborne, falling through the
night. A second later, I was standing on the wet dew of the lawn next to
Ian, waiting for the others. I felt a sharp pain in my right ankle, but
when Ian asked whether I was okay, I said I was.

Nola jumped next, then Bethany and Joey. For a second, we all stood there
in the grass, slightly dazed. Then there was a shout; it sounded as if it
were coming from heaven. I thought it was God. We looked up to the
third-story roof. A figure stood where we had been five minutes before.
“You kids, I see you. Stay where you are! You’re only going to make things
worse for yourselves if you run.”

Beside me, Bethany let out a small gasp. “Shit, that’s my dad!”

“There’s no way he can tell who we are,” said Ian, and since I couldn’t
tell who was up there—Bethany had recognized her father only by the sound
of his voice—I guessed he was right.

Ian took off across the green, and we followed. Instead of heading back
toward the road, where his car was parked on the curb, he led us toward the
woods behind the church. After the golf course was a wall of pine, and
after that a small marsh. We would have to wade through the marsh to get to
the other side of town. I wondered whether Ian knew this as I struggled to
keep up with the rest of them. Sharp pain flared in my ankle every time my
foot hit the ground. I tried to ignore it and keep running. Warm summer air
whipped across my face, and I heard crickets singing in the night. Stars
fell down on me.

By the time I reached the pine grove, it was becoming harder and harder for
me to run. The others were getting farther ahead. I called for them to wait
but was so out of breath, I could manage only a weak gasp. The next second,
my foot caught on something—a protruding rock or an exposed root—and I fell
face-first onto the ground.

The wind was knocked out of me, but the forest floor was soft. When I
picked myself up, I couldn’t see the others. They hadn’t noticed me falling
behind, or maybe they had but decided not to stop. I felt like crying. I
considered turning around, going back to the church and finding Bethany’s
dad, ratting us all out. I’d get in trouble, but they would be in a lot
more, especially Bethany. But loyalty won out, and I continued through the
woods alone. Limping along, I thought of all the things I would say to
Bethany when I saw her again, all the wonderfully cutting things, trying to
keep other feelings at bay—feelings I couldn’t let get the better of me. I
was alone in the woods at night. Alone. Woods. Night. Three things
that didn’t go together well.

After what felt like forever, although it couldn’t have been more than five
minutes, I came to the edge of the grove. The marsh spread out before me.
Now the deep, jugging calls of bullfrogs mingled with the chirr of
crickets. Mosquitoes were already buzzing around my head. “Fuck my life,” I
muttered as I took my first step into the water.

When I made it to the other side of the marsh ten minutes later, I must
have looked like something out of a horror movie. Muddy water was
splattered all the way up to my waist, and my right elbow was wet from when
I caught myself falling. My hair had come out of its ponytail and was a
frizzy, tangled mess. My face and arms were now peppered with bug bites
that would stick out above the freckles, and my skin was damp with sweat.

I climbed up the steep embankment that met the road, flopped down on the
shoulder, and took off my shoes to check my feet for leeches. Relieved to
find that my feet were clean, I looked around and tried to get some idea of
where I was. I’d never had a good sense of direction, and although Grover
Falls was a small town, I could see no markers to help me find my way. On
one side of the street, the marsh stretched out as far as I could see. On
the other, a few unfamiliar houses were visible in the darkness. It must
have been close to two or three in the morning, although I couldn’t be
sure, since my phone was now dead. I wobbled to my feet and winced. My
ankle still hurt. I knew that walking on it wasn’t helping, but I had no
choice. I turned left and started out, barefoot, holding my shoes by their
strings in my hand, feeling the hard pavement against my soles. The night
had cooled down, and I was wet and a little cold.

I saw the headlights approaching slowly. Panic gripped me. What if a serial
killer was in that car, or a rapist? Or someone who didn’t normally rape
but would if they saw a young girl alone on the road at night? I had the
insane urge to scramble down the embankment, back into the marsh.

The car lights came closer; I had to squint. Then the high beams shut off,
and the car slowed to a halt next to where I stood on the shoulder. The
driver poked his head out the window and looked at me with wide eyes. “Hey,
are you okay?” he asked.

I knew right away who he was. I had never seen him in person, but I’d seen
photos online and in old high school yearbooks. The world knew the faces of
John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain. And Grover Falls knew his. I
knew who it was, I just couldn’t believe it. Now his face was looking at me
as if I were the weirdest thing it had ever seen. “Kid,” he said, “are you
all right? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” I breathed, “I’m okay.”

Paul Frazier had just asked me if I was okay. Paul Frazier. He
looked around the road, as if searching for clues to explain my being here,
looking like this. “Were you in an accident or something?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m just walking.” I realized how dumb that sounded
as soon as I said it—just limping down the side of the road at three in the
morning, soaking wet, barefoot—and I felt my face grow red. “I’m heading
back now,” I added stupidly, “back home.”

Some realization dawned in his eyes. “You’re April Swanson’s daughter,
aren’t you?”

Greater than my surprise at this unlikely meeting was that he, Paul
Frazier, knew who I, Laura Swanson, was. Or at least, who my mother was.
“Yeah,” I exclaimed, “I am!”

Paul shook his head, but now he was smiling. “What are you doing out here
in the middle of the night? Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?”

“I … sort of got lost.”

Paul nodded, as if this answer didn’t surprise him. “Where do you live?”

“Grant Street.”

“You’re heading in the wrong direction. Get in. I’ll take you home.”

He didn’t ask any questions once I got into the car. In fact, he didn’t say
anything. I should have come up with some explanation for myself, but I was
nervous and still a little high. I sat rigid in my seat, hands on my knees,
staring straight ahead. I was painfully aware of how awful I smelled and
that I was getting muddy water all over the seat of his old Toyota. Maybe
it wasn’t such a good thing that he knew who I was. After tonight, he
wasn’t going to forget.

Still, I couldn’t help but sneak sideways glances at him as he drove, his
face illuminated every now and then by a passing streetlight. He was
beautiful. Photos didn’t do him justice. His dark hair hung down, partly
obscuring his eyes—sea blue, and under them I could see dark circles. There
was a sadness to him that only made him more magnetic, and I resisted
another urge: to grab him by the hand and tell him that I loved him and
that everything was going to be okay. I dug my nails into my knees until it
hurt.

I wished that drive could have gone on forever, but it was only a few
minutes before we reached my house. He pulled up into the drive. I saw the
light in my mother’s room flip on.

Paul saw it, too. “Sorry, should have killed the headlights for you,” he
said.

I felt goose bumps rise on my arms and the back of my neck; we were
complicit. I shook my head. “It’s okay. I don’t think I could have snuck
past her anyway—she’s a very light sleeper.”

He gave me a smile. My heart raced. “Good luck, kid,” he said.

“Thanks for the ride, Paul,” I said. He looked surprised when I said his
name, but before he had time to say anything, I leaned forward and kissed
him, quickly but forcefully, on the lips. Then I opened the door, leaped
out of the car, and half-ran, half-limped up the driveway to the door of my
house, without looking back.

***

This is an excerpt from Another Life by Robert Haller, available now from Blackstone Publishing.