Page 36 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Stagger puts a hand into the overgrown hair at the back of Crane’s neck.
“I’m not stupid. Believe it or not.”
Crane glances uncomfortably over his shoulder back to Washville. It sounds like she’s going to cry.
The best part about being a mute is that he doesn’t have to respond to stuff like this. He could really play up his autist status today too, if he wanted. Just get up and leave.
“And, like, I get it. That’s fine. I fucked up that night and—” She packs a handful of dirt around the flimsy bag. The stillborn disappears under bugs and innocent earthworms. “I know I’m a giant baby, and I’m annoying, and I can’t take care of myself, I know, believe me. Sean told me all the fucking time. I amfullyaware of my flaws.”
Well. Crane hasn’t even been around her enough to make value judgments like that. Sure, she did fuck up, and then she snitched about it, and she’s anxious about the register and bad enough at math that he keeps having to recount the cash drawer. But that’s notwhyhe dislikes her. Not really.
(It should’ve been her.)
The final handful of dirt goes down. Jess shoves her weight on top of it once, twice, to tamp down the musty earth.
“I don’t know.” She’s sniffling now. “At least I’m grateful, right? Sean’s dead. I have my first job. You know this is my first? And when I showed up at your gas station, it was the first time I’d been outside in weeks. I’m not even from here. I’m fromCleveland.I thought I was going to die in that stupid fucking cabin. I prayed every night that he’d change his mind and see that what he was doing was wrong and he’d let me out and I could just. I could see the sun again.” She gets up. She’s unsteady on her feet. “Turns out, after everything, it sucks outside that cabin too.”
When she smiles again, it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Why would you care, though. Swear to god, all of you like it here.”
Fifteen
Crane can’t stomach going back to the apartment. Levi hasn’t texted him, hasn’t called Tammy demanding his whereabouts, hasn’t beat his fist on the door to drag him back. So Crane stays the night like he’s seventeen again.
Hannah and Jess sleep in the guest bed that used to be his, curled up facing each other. When Crane wanders past to brush his teeth, because Tammy always keeps a spare toothbrush for him, he hears Jess whispering through a crack under the door. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah whimpers. “I thought it moved.”
“It was a bad day.”
Crane sleeps on the couch. Stagger sits at the end, entranced by the documentary playing on TV, volume turned down to the notch just before mute. It’s about filial cannibalism in the animal kingdom. The mother hamster eating her pup to regain the nutrients it stole. A bird destroying its own chicks so it doesn’t have to care for them anymore.
Crane tosses a pillow onto Stagger’s lap and lies down and watches professors talk about caloric reclamation until his eyes hurt.
His phone buzzes.
Aspen:Hey, Crane.
Aspen:Birdie’s asleep, but I just wanted to let you know we’re thinking about you.
Crane can’t stand to read the texts as they roll in. He jams the screen against the couch and stares at the TV, presses his face into the pillow or Stagger’s leg, and waits until his phone stops vibrating and he can read them all at once.
The one class Sophie and Aspen shared for that single overlapping semester was Intro to Art. Honestly, Aspen scared Sophie. Aspen was angry—always bursting into frustrated tears or storming out of class. Looking back, of course they were. Their parents kicked them out of the house for days at a time and the much-older boyfriend whose house they ran to was a massive piece of shit. But they must have made enough of a connection for something to click, right? Because when Aspen reactivated an old social media account to celebrate their second anniversary of HRT, Crane had been brave enough to ask where they’d gone.
That’s how it started. With an account Crane was supposed to have deleted, with Crane in the shotgun seat of Birdie’s car, driving down to Planned Parenthood with a bruise on the side of Crane’s neck that raised one too many questions.
What are they doing? Why do Aspen and Birdie keep doing this to themselves, thinking they can say the right words and fix this?
He can’t go back. He won’t.
Aspen:If we’re pestering you, let us know and we’ll lay off. But I know when I was with that motherfucker, people stopped reaching out to me and it was worse than being alone, even when I never knew how to respond to them.
Aspen:So no matter what happens, we’re here whenever you want to come back to us.
Aspen:Even if it’s with a baby.
There’s a baby inside him. Somehow, out of all the things it could’ve been, a tangle of tapeworms or squirming pile of grubs, this is the worst.
