The Narrows, page 1
THE NARROWS
TRAVIS M. RIDDLE
Copyright © 2018 by Travis M. Riddle
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover by Luke Valentine – lukevalentine.artstation.com
Author photo by Jawn Rocha – jawnrocha.com
Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com
The Narrows/Travis M. Riddle. -- 1st ed.
ISBN: 978-1726768740
The Narrows
also by Travis M. Riddle
Wondrous
Balam, Spring
For Andrew, Barry, and Dean
I remember when we were just kids
We knew nothing at all, we’d talk about the life we lived
- Mac Miller, REMember
Table of Contents
The Neighborhood
The Park
The Funeral
The Party
The Beast
The Overpass
The Respite
The Howl
The Gem
The Conversation
FRIDAY 12/28/18
The Neighborhood
They had circled back around twice now. Maybe the third time really would be the charm. Given how early they’d arrived, they could have easily gone around five or six times if not for the holiday traffic causing the pick-up line to slow to a crawl.
As they approached the doors again, Oliver checked his phone to see if Sophia had texted him. “Nothing,” he told Davontae, thankful that it was his friend who was driving rather than himself.
Oliver had mostly outgrown the general driving anxiety he’d felt since high school, which was when Davontae had been unofficially deemed the group’s chauffeur (a fact which he had, surprisingly, never grown resentful of), but airports still stressed him out. Really, it was parking in busy areas that stressed him out, but there wasn’t anywhere to park at airport pick-ups or drop-offs anyway, so the anxiety didn’t particularly align with the fear. Perhaps it was the fact that it felt like constantly looking for a parking spot, or that everyone at an airport was already stressed or irritable or both, so he did not want to interact with them.
Whatever the reason, he was glad Davontae had agreed to drive when Sophia told them she didn’t want to pay what would surely be an exorbitant fee to take a Lyft from the airport all the way back to their hometown of Shumard, which would have cost around sixty dollars, a sum that she could certainly afford but did not want to pay.
Christmas music still populated the airwaves but would soon wear out its welcome. Oliver surpassed his limit several weeks earlier, but Davontae had always possessed more holiday cheer than him, and so he hummed along to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” while tapping his fingers on the steering wheel along to the tune.
Oliver stared out the front windshield, his eyes lost in the taillights ahead of them, shimmering and blurring as he looked further and further down the row of cars toward “Curb Zone 2.” He clasped his eyes shut and the blurry orbs still danced across the blackness.
“I love me some Bublé,” Davontae said.
Oliver was shaken out of his stupor. He opened his eyes and glanced at his friend, then to the radio. “Is that who this is?”
Davontae was affronted by the question. “Of course it is!” he said. “Ain’t no one better around Christmastime than my pal Mike.”
“I prefer the rendition by Alvin and the Chipmunks.”
His phone finally lit up with a text from Sophia, which simply read: “Outside.”
“Finally,” Oliver muttered. “She’s here.” He typed up a reply, saying they were in line and would be there shortly.
Twenty minutes and an excruciating “Silent Night” later, Davontae pulled the car to a stop in front of their childhood friend Sophia Won, dressed in a tightly-fit black sweater, a red plaid skirt, and dark leggings. Her jet black hair was in a single braid, trailing over her right shoulder. She had packed light as always, with no luggage except for a ratty backpack slung over her back.
“Helloooo,” she greeted them with chattering teeth, slamming the door shut as she settled into the back seat.
“You sound cold,” Oliver said.
“It’s cold out.”
“I thought you said Texas doesn’t actually get cold. Doesn’t it only get cold in New York?” he teased.
“Shut up.”
“That’s just what I heard.”
Sophia scoffed. “It was less than forty degrees when I left,” she said.
“You poor thing.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she grumbled, rubbing her arms to warm up. “I’m hungry. Are either of you hungry?”
They had picked up some fast food on their way to the airport, the evidence of which was crumpled up at Oliver’s feet. “Not really,” he answered, “but I would go somewhere.”
“Where you wanna go?” Davontae asked, pulling back out into the line of traffic, inching toward the exit.
She did not need to mull it over long. “Waffle House,” she answered predictably. It had been their hangout spot back in high school, with many late weekend nights spent crammed in a booth with the bright, bulbous lights hanging overhead and their table covered in messy, half-eaten plates of breakfast food. Back then, it was rare that they’d show up before midnight, but nowadays Oliver couldn’t remember when he had last been awake that late. He had gotten into a routine of being asleep by eleven.
The drive was largely spent talking about trivialities: movie and music news they’d read online, jokes they’d seen on social media. There was no reminiscing to partake in, as Sophia chatted online with them every day. Oliver had even briefly spoken to her that morning before her flight. They deftly avoided broaching the subject that had brought them all together. For the moment.
Sophia was only just now arriving in town, but Oliver had already been there a little over a week, and Davontae even longer. Davontae was self-employed and could therefore take as much time “off” for the holidays as he wanted, but Oliver and Sophia were still stuck working their desk jobs. Sophia had used up all her vacation time earlier in the year going on an impromptu trip with her family, and therefore didn’t have anything left over for Christmas. Circumstances had landed her back in Shumard in the end, though. Her parents would be happy to see her.
Oliver leapt at the opportunity to use up as many vacation days as possible, to escape for a little while, to be unburdened by any responsibilities. No job to check in with, no chores to do, no meals to cook. After having moved out to attend college eight years prior, his mother was now positively thrilled every time he came home to visit, even though he only lived a couple hours away.
She had prepared a huge welcoming meal for him, comprised of fried shrimp (with both tartar and cocktail sauce for dipping), french fries, and ice cream for dessert. He felt horrible afterwards, like his stomach was trying to fight its way out through his abdomen, but the food tasted amazing.
It took around forty minutes to reach the suburbs. As the familiar streets and sights came into view, Davontae said, “Oh, shit, I almost forgot! My ma told me they opened up a new location over in the Food Town lot.”
“What the fuck?” Oliver said, genuinely shocked by the news. In high school, when they had wanted to cruise down to their favorite diner, it was a thirty-minute drive minimum to the closest location, which contributed to the late-night nature of their visits. “Is it, like…standalone? Or is it part of that strip? I can’t imagine it’s in the strip, but I also can’t picture a standalone Waffle House in the middle of that parking lot.”
“Yup,” Davontae nodded. “It’s by itself, just right there in the middle of the lot. I drove by the other day and almost crashed into another car. I was transfixed. I forgot to text y’all about it.”
Oliver’s family hadn’t lived on that side of town in nearly a decade, so he hadn’t seen the parking lot in question any time he’d come home over the past year. He probably would have had a similar reaction.
“That’s fucking weird,” Sophia said. “We definitely should check that out.”
With that, Davontae took the next exit off the highway.
After a few minutes, they made a left turn into the Food Town parking lot where, sure enough, they were illuminated by the fluorescent golden glow of a new, untarnished Waffle House.
It was utterly bizarre, seeing the establishment plopped down into the middle of an area that Oliver had grown up in and spent so much of his time driving around. Food Town was where he had gone every year to renew his car registration, being only minutes away from his childhood home. It wasn’t the only change to his hometown in the intervening years since moving away; every time he came back, it felt like there was a new row of stores and restaurants just off the highway, with more and more land being flattened to make way for bigger and bigger parking lots. He didn’t necessarily feel like it was a bad change, but it was odd how different everything looked. How unfamiliar it all was.
The clock neared nine o’clock as Davontae parked the car. It might have been the earliest they had ever eaten there.
Sophia was rummaging through her backpack as Oliver and Davontae clicked their seatbelts off. “One sec,” she told them. “Looking for my card.”
“I can get it, it’s all good,” Davontae told her.
“You sure?” she asked, glancing up at him in the front seat. She was elbow-deep in the purple sack. Davontae nodded, and she removed her arm to zip the bag closed.
The three stepped out of the car and Oliver asked Sophia, “How do you pack for an entire trip in just that tiny backpack?”
“I mean, there isn’t much I need,” she shrugged. “Just my clothes, maybe a book, and my earplugs. My parents have a toothbrush and all that at the house I can use, so that’s convenient. No toiletry bag for me.”
“Earplugs?”
“Yeah,” Sophia said. “I’ve gotten in the habit of plugging up every night when I go to bed. I don’t know what it is, but my hearing’s gotten so sensitive the past few months. Every little creak or car door slamming or cat meowing or whatever the hell else wakes me up. I need my plugs!”
The sky was dark and starless, obscured by clouds, as they made their way into the restaurant. Normally they were the only people there, aside from one or two individuals at the counter, but either the place drew larger crowds earlier in the evening or the novelty of the new establishment had not yet worn off. Either way, it was nearly full when they entered.
Luckily there were still two open booths, one of which was at the back of the diner, which they opted for despite the left-behind crumbs. Oliver wiped them onto the floor as the trio sat.
A bubbly waitress named Marie took their drink order, which was a round of coffees and waters as well as an orange juice for Sophia. It took her two trips to bring everything to the table. As Marie stepped away to allow them time to peruse the menu, Sophia pierced the surface of her juice with a straw and sucked up a fourth of it in one gulp.
Oliver bounced his leg up and down underneath the table. The buzz of the overhead lights filled his head like tiny insects invading his skull. He remembered a story he’d heard from a classmate once years ago, about the classmate’s cousin, who had gone to sleep one night and awoke with a live cockroach stuck so far in her ear, she had to go to the emergency room to get it removed. He shuddered at the thought, wondering if it was even remotely true, or just some urban legend perpetuated by a dumb teen.
“So,” Sophia said with her eyes locked onto the menu. Avoiding eye contact. The tension between the three of them was palpable.
A knot tied itself in Oliver’s stomach. He’d known they would eventually talk about it, but he really did not want to. His leg was going to go out of control, knock against the table, spill their drinks everywhere. He looked from Sophia to his own menu, not even registering what any of it said. His eyes ran down the list of additions one could add to their hashbrowns, then jumped back up to the top of the list as he finished, over and over.
“Yeah,” Davontae said, contributing nothing.
“Guess I ended up here anyway,” Sophia said. “Shout out to bereavement days.” They let it linger in the air a moment before she asked, “Do you guys know what happened?”
“Uh…” Davontae looked to Oliver, who was still enraptured by the hashbrown menu and gave him no support. “I don’t know exactly,” he went on. “I know he was found in his car over in Shumard Springs.”
Sophia did not entirely understand. “He was just…in his car? Doing what?”
“I dunno.”
“And why would he be in Shumard Springs?”
“I dunno.”
“He overdosed,” Oliver said. Sophia looked at him from across the table, but he did not look up from his menu. He continued to read the inane words over again. Smothered. Covered. Chunked. Diced. Peppered.
“Overdosed?” Sophia repeated.
“I didn’t hear that part,” said Davontae. His voice was frail.
“He overdosed on his medication,” Oliver said. Capped. Topped. Country.
Sophia took a sip of her coffee while Davontae leaned back. “Was it an accident?” Davontae asked, perplexed. “Did he—”
“I don’t know,” Oliver blurted out, finally tearing his gaze away from the laminated menu. His heart thumped wildly in his chest, in rhythm with his untamed leg.
Assuming this action conveyed that they had chosen what they wanted to eat, Marie returned to the booth with a smile plastered on her face. “Y’all ready?”
The innocuous buzzing was irritating Oliver. He had never noticed it before, and he did not know why he was now.
“I think so,” Davontae answered for the table.
He and Sophia ordered their plates, and then Marie turned her attention toward Oliver. “How about you, sweetie?” she asked in her southern twang.
Any minimal appetite he’d had was now totally gone. He hadn’t even touched his coffee yet. “Just some hashbrowns,” he answered softly.
“Anything on ’em?”
“No.”
~
Even when there were people around to hang out with, there was nothing to actually do in Shumard, Texas aside from eating food and watching movies, so Oliver had been doing the latter on Christmas Eve when he learned the news about Noah.
He was in a dimly-lit auditorium, in one of the theater’s new leather recliners, leaned back as far as the chair would allow. He scrolled through his phone as the minutes ticked by, waiting for the trailers to begin. He caught up on all the new content in one app then opened up the next. Then the next. Then back to the first to refresh to see if there had been at least one new post since checking three minutes earlier. The standard routine while waiting for a movie.
As he opened up Facebook, the top post on his timeline was a news article shared by a high school acquaintance named Tim Villareal, who Oliver had not spoken to at all since graduating.
The headline read: MAN FOUND DEAD IN CAR, SUSPECTED SUICIDE
Tim, of course, had a caption to accompany the article. “Can’t believe Noah Cooper is gone. We had such fun times together. You’ll be missed, dude.”
He wasn’t sure why he did it, he knew it had to be the same Noah—there was no other Noah Cooper that he knew, and it would’ve been a wild coincidence if Tim had known two—but regardless, Oliver clicked the hyperlinked name “Noah Cooper” just to be sure.
The app switched over to the profile page, displaying the photograph confirming it was his friend. Weirdly, what jumped out to him was that the profile picture was new. He had never seen it before. It must have been taken sometime after Noah had moved the previous summer.
Oliver then tapped back to the timeline and hesitantly pressed his thumb to the linked article. It opened up in his web browser with huge, bolded text screaming the headline at him.
His eyes glazed over as he read the report. He couldn’t process what he was reading.
—found dead earlier this evening—
—appears to have overdosed—
—mother, local kindergarten teacher Sarah Cooper, says—
After reading it, he skimmed through again, and picked up on a detail he had somehow skipped over the first time.
Noah had died in Shumard.
Oliver hadn’t even known he was in town. He was only finding out because he was dead.
The lights in the auditorium began to dim as Oliver stared stupefied by the news article on his phone. An image of Noah’s smiling face at his college graduation stared back.
A green background set with white text filled the movie screen in front of him and Oliver was jolted, suddenly realizing where he was. He turned the phone’s screen off and slipped it back into his pocket, gazing ahead as the first trailer began to play. He did not make it to the second before exiting the theater and driving back home.
~
Less than ten minutes after ordering, Marie delivered bountiful plates of food to their table and topped off their mugs of coffee.
“Anything else?” she asked the group.
“Just some strawberry jelly, please,” Sophia requested. She hated the grape jelly they always brought out by default with the toast. After Marie returned with the requested fruit spread, they resumed their conversation.
