By Megan Kenley

This short story was published in TM Magazine on August 8th 2012.

“Please come home,” I pleaded.

“No.”

“Danny, please.”

“Jen, I can’t!”

I sat down on the rusted school desk. It squeaked and wavered under my weight and I wondered how long it would last as my chair. Even in elementary school, the teachers had advised us not to sit on these desks, now both it and I had aged, and I was disobeying the rule once again. The walls of the old school were no longer covered in maps and children’s painting, but graffiti, and it smelled of mildew instead of new pencils, but, regardless, I always felt safe here.

He looked like a lost child and that innocence reminded me of when I first met him. The memory flooded me with emotions and longing for when things were simple. Back when we could tell each other anything. Danny and I had been friends since first grade. We were “inseparable,” my dad used to say, “cutest darn things ever”. That was back before my Dad’s cancer, nearly six years ago, before high school, before things changed. 

 In those days, Danny went by Danny to everyone. Later on, his buddies called him Dan. Not even his mother called him Danny anymore, she called him Daniel, but to me, he just stayed Danny. And to him, I was always Jen, not Jennifer or Jenny like my Mom called me.

 “If you could just tell me what’s wrong,” I said, our shoulders barely brushing as I sat down next to him on the floor of our old first-grade classroom.

The old elementary school building had been abandoned for so long. I was afraid one day they really would go through with their plans to demolish it, but until then it would always be Danny and I’s spot, a place that was timeless, like Neverland, where we could escape from the world and be as careless as children again. It was where I had gone when I first found out my Dad died, and it was where I found Danny when they said he was missing. I knew I would find him here.

“You need to tell your mom what happened. Tell her it was an accident, that you’ll pay for the damage.”

“It’s more complicated than that. I can’t. I can’t go home.”

“Why though?  You haven’t explained it to me. You’re not afraid of your mom, so—”

“It’s complicated, Jen. Please, just trust me.”

He sighed, then looked at me, the corner of his mouth tugging up. His smile made my cheeks heat. I wasn’t even sure what the smile was for. Was he smiling at a thought? A memory? Me? I could never be sure with Danny, but sometimes it didn’t matter what he was smiling at. The mere fact that something made him happy made me happy. The smile didn’t last near long enough.  

It was hard to sit there next to him and not show him how much I cared. I wanted to comfort him—to reach out and hug him, hold him close, maybe kiss him lightly on the cheek. I wanted to tell him how much I cared about him, but his next question reminded me why I couldn’t.   

“So how is Stephanie taking my disappearance?”

“Stephanie?” I said, my blush fading rapidly. “She . . . she’s been okay. You know, teary-eyed and worried, but okay.”

I wanted to tell him she was probably more distressed that she didn’t have a date to prom anymore. I wanted to tell him that I only ever tolerated her because I am friends with him and that she was not his type. I wanted to tell him how, apart from my Dad, he was the only one who really understood me and I wouldn’t know what to do without him.

But I couldn’t. 

So I told him about Stephanie instead. I tried to be quick and vague about it—because the rock in my stomach seemed to get bigger and bigger the longer we stayed on that topic—but if he asked, I gave him details about her. I couldn’t look at him though, not while I talked about his girlfriend. Talking about her brought all my emotions to the surface, it made me vulnerable.

Sometimes I felt like even if I spent every waking moment with Danny, I would never get to know him as much as I wanted to. I could get lost in those eyes. Sometimes I was afraid that one day–while searching that infinite blue–he would see the jealousy surfacing in my own eyes and then he would know. My secret would be out. He would know just how much I cared, how much I loved him. It would ruin our friendship. I was so afraid to lose him too—I couldn’t bear the thought of him finding out.

Darkness finally fell around the school. I lit a candle, gave Danny a few more dry blankets, and promised to return the next day.

When I got home, a black sedan was in our driveway. I didn’t recognize it. I went in through the back door as I had the last few nights, covered in dust and carrying a backpack full of my Dad’s old clothes that I had brought to Danny. The house smelled of roast and I wondered who must be visiting. Someone had to be. Mom never cooked anymore unless someone was over.

The aroma filling the house was so inviting that for a moment I felt like I was a child again. I felt like I could sprint through the swinging door into the dining room and find my Mom and Dad sitting at the table as they used to, laughing and eating, asking me where I had been, and inviting me to sit with them and enjoy dinner. But, I knew that wouldn’t happen—because Dad was gone. He had been gone for so long that sometimes I had a hard time remembering the sound of his voice and that scared me.

I took the stairs two at a time, discarded my backpack in my room, and threw on a clean t-shirt and jeans, then dashed downstairs to the dining room. Mom sat at the head of our table.   

At the seat to Mom’s right was a man, but it wasn’t Dad. He wore a suit and had a graying beard—it almost looked like a goatee. Something about him seemed almost familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

“I just don’t know what to do, how to tell her,” Mom was saying in a hushed voice. Her brown hair—that used to curl and bounce at shoulder length—seemed particularly limp as she shook her head, her whole frame slouched over a plate of uneaten roast. “Her father—” She looked up and wiped at her face as if brushing away a tear. “Jennifer, hi there sweetie.”

“Hi, Mom.” I said stiffly, still staring at the suited man, wondering what he had done to make my mother cry. I hated it when my mom cried.

“This is . . . D . . . Ryan, honey. He’s uh, was a friend of your fathers.”

The man next to Mom stood, straightened out the black suit, and then came around the table to shake my hand. It was a strong handshake. 

“Hello, Jennifer,” he said, smiling down at me. “It’s very nice to finally meet you.  Your mother told me so much, I feel like we’re already friends.”

…..

“I think my mom is dating someone,” I told Danny the next day. 

“Really?” Danny took an old classroom ruler from the chalk tray and flexed it. “That’s odd; your Mom hasn’t dated anyone in years. Did she say something to you?”

I shook my head, watching him play with the ruler like a little boy, waving it around the room like a sword, then twirling it through his fingers like a baton. He hadn’t done anything like that since we were young.

“No, she hasn’t actually said it yet. But this guy was over last night, tall, suited guy, sort of creepy, with a beard.  He told my mom he’d be back and then my mom was all teary eyed the rest of the night. I think she feels bad about dating someone other than my Dad.”

“Or maybe she just misses me,” Danny said, throwing down the ruler.

“Not sure that’s it,” I laugh. It was hard to dwell on home when he was in such a good mood, another reason why I loved him—he made all the bad stuff go away. “After all,” I continued. “My mom never quite forgave you for running over her mailbox.”

He laughed, sitting down next to me on one of the rickety old desks. It annoyed me that it didn’t squeak under his weight like it had mine. “She hated me long before that, Jen,” he said. Not even one creak, like he wasn’t even sitting on it. Had I gained weight? “Your Mom has never liked me. Only your Dad ever did.”

In the corner next to it was some of my Dad’s old clothes, folded neatly where I had left them the day before and next to them was the lunch I’d packed him, uneaten.

“Danny,” I scolded. “You didn’t eat anything yesterday?”

“I wasn’t hungry,” he shrugged. “And the clothes didn’t fit me right so I decided to just keep mine on.” 

“You can’t just not eat or change, this isn’t some adventure, Danny, in fact it’s anything but that, people are worried.  Can’t I just convince you to go—”

 “Tell me more about this guy your Mom is dating,” he said, looking away from me to the ceiling. “He sounds sort of familiar. Is he from Chicago?”

“Don’t change the subject! We can’t do this forever, you know.”

“Chicago defiantly sounds right. What did you say he looked like again?”

“Danny! You need to go home. So you wrecked the car, your mom will forgive you and—”

“It’s more than that, Jen. It’s not just the car. No one can know I am here, okay?”

“But why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Danny!”

“Jen,” he said softly. He scooted to the edge of his desk and grabbed my hand, holding it between his. Whatever I had meant to say next got lodged in my throat. “Jen, I know this doesn’t make sense. You’ve been the greatest, keeping this from everyone, but I just can’t go home. I can’t.”

He begged me with his eyes, those deep blue eyes that I loved so much, and, as if he knew just how much his touch affected me, he kissed the tops of my fingers. A shiver ran through my entire body, like a caffeine rush that was emanating from the place where his lips had touched my skin and running through my veins to the rest of me. “Please,” he said. “Just keep me a secret, okay?”

“O . . . okay.” I said. It was all I could manage. His shoulders dropped then and he sighed his relief . . . but he never let go of my hand. Instead, he ran his thumb over the spot he’d kissed, back and forth, back and forth. It was a hypnotic sensation.

“Do you remember,” he said, looking up at the cracking paint on the ceiling again. “When we were younger, when I used to pick you daises?”

I laughed and squeezed his hand. He squeezed back.

“Yes,” I said. “You thought flowers were like medicine that made people better.”

“Hey, you were over those chicken pox the very next day, right?”

He leaned in close to catch my gaze, which was transfixed with our hands because I felt like if I looked away it might not be real.

 “Yeah,” I finally said. “I thought they were magic too, I won’t lie. Though your mom got really mad when she realized where you got the flowers.”

“Her garden has never been the same since.”

 I laughed. “And do you remember you bought me a bouquet a few years back after I broke my ankle?”

Danny shrugged and it was his turn to blush. “You have always like daisies. I thought I’d keep up the tradition . . . just, this time, not from my mom’s garden.”

He smiled to himself and looked back up at the ceiling. I squeezed his hand tighter and he shifted his hand to interlock our fingers.

“When this is over, Jen, I’ll buy you a big bouquet of the best daisies in town and they’ll be white, just like my mom’s.”

“Danny, you don’t—”

“No, I’m serious.” He turned to face me straight on, taking my other hand as well.  “I’m glad that if anybody was here with me right now that it’s . . . that it’s you. You know? I’m glad that you’re here.”

“I’m glad too,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around what was happening. Was this real? How long had we been friends? How long had we been just friends, and now, finally, he was feeling the same way I had felt about him since the sixth grade?

“Danny I . . .” But I couldn’t say it.

I love you was what I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come. They had been caught there in my throat for too long, lodged in a place that only made them harder to retrieve over time. I was too scared to say it.

He held my hand nearly all afternoon, that blissful afternoon. It was like a dream. I came so close to telling him, to letting him know how much I loved him. How much I thought of him every day, how much sleep I lost over worrying about him, wondering if he was okay. We talked for the rest of the evening, remembering the old days of elementary school when life wasn’t as complicated. When my Dad was alive and my Mom and I got along better. When Danny and I were inseparable and no girlfriends got in the way, when it was just the two of us.

…..

“So tell me about yourself.” 

Ryan sat in my Dad’s armchair across from me, his legs crossed, his head cocked to the side as he cleaned his glasses with a handkerchief. My mom had left nearly ten minutes earlier to put the pie on plates for dessert. I sat there on the couch, feeling as though an interrogation spot-light hung down over me. I wanted to leave soon, I hadn’t been to visit Danny yet today because of the early dinner my mom had put on for Ryan, who wouldn’t stop staring at me.

“I’m in high school,” I shrugged. “I like sports and music . . .”

“Do you play an instrument?”

“Used to.”

“What about friends?” He asked casually, placing the glasses on his face. “Your mother says you were really good friends with the neighbor boy, Daniel?”

I tensed and looked up. Ryan caught my eye and held it. “Tell me a little about Daniel?”

I swallowed and shrugged again. “He’s on the baseball team, he has a girlfriend, he doesn’t show it, but he is probably one of the smartest kids in our class. . .”

I trailed off, not wanting to say more. Ryan waited. “Jennifer,” he finally said in a slow, deliberate tone. He shifted in his seat then stole a glance at the kitchen before continuing. “Jennifer, do you know what happened to Daniel?”

“So, how did you meet my Mom?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

Mom finally came with dessert. It was such a relief. I ate it as fast as humanly possible then got up to leave.

“Going somewhere, Jennifer?” My mom asked.

“Yeah, just for a walk, you know to get some fresh air. I’ll be back.”

…..

“Something is not right about the guy my mom is dating,” I told Danny when I got to the elementary school.  It was getting dark outside. I lit the single candle that sat on top of the desk I’d used as a chair a few days earlier.  Danny sat in the corner next to the unopened lunches and folded up clothes, but he shot up as soon as the candle flickered to life, illuminating the room with a soft ebbing mixture of light and shadows.

        “Danny,” I began, pointing at the lunches. “You still—”

        “I need to go.”

        “What?”

        “I have to leave, Jen. I—”

Car lights flashed through the window, casting strips of yellow that chased each other along the wall until they vanished.  I extinguished the candle as fast as I could and then moved to the window where Danny stood looking out.

I could see the outline of a sedan in the darkness, parked in the desolate street just outside the school, its color looked black.

“They’re here!” Danny cried, backing up from the window as fast as he could. “Jen, get down.”

“Danny, what?”  I said, dropping to the floor. Even in the darkened room, I could see his face. It was ghostly white, stripped of all confidence. “What’s going on?”

“It’s complicated,” he said, the same infuriating answer. “I don’t know how to explain. Jen, the car wreck . . . it wasn’t an accident. They are after me. They . . . they’re trying to kill me.”

“What?”

“You need to leave. They know you’re here too. They’ll find you. Don’t listen to them, Jen, okay? Run away.”

Danny shot up from the ground and made for the door, I followed right behind. We left the classroom, racing down the hallway, kicking up dust and debris as we went.

“Jennifer?”

I heard the familiar voice, but I didn’t respond. I just kept running, my footsteps echoing through the empty halls as I slipped and stumbled in dust and debris. Danny turned, sprinting out of sight, past the old gym and down another hallway. I followed . . . and ran right into a tall man in a black suit. 

Ryan looked down at me. “There you are,” he said.

“Get away from me!”

“Jennifer?”

I scrambled back, away from Ryan, and looked to find my mother standing behind me. 

“Mom?” I panted, still backing away from the pair of them, looking to see where Danny had gone.

“Honey,” she ran with open arms to embrace me. “What are you doing here?”

“Nothing,” I said too quickly. “Nothing at all.  I came here, I walk by sometimes, what are you doing here?”

  My mom sighed. It was such a sad sound that I stopped searching for Danny and looked at her properly for the first time. She didn’t look all that well. Her hair, I noticed, was still limp and it was graying. Her eyes were bloodshot and deep shadows lined their base. I wondered whether she was sick, or if Ryan had made her this way. 

I glared up at the suited man. “Is this guy hurting you, Mom? What’s going on? Why is he here?”

 “Honey,” My mom said, holding my hands in hers as Danny had the day before. Her hands were so much colder. “Ryan, well, Doctor Collins, he was your father’s doctor when your dad was ill, remember? You were so young when he first started treatment, you might not. We met him in Chicago.” 

I looked at Ryan. He smiled. I didn’t return it. Instead, I glanced quickly to see if I could see Danny then turned back.  

“Are . . . you sick mom?”

Again she shook her head.

“Jennifer,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’ve been meaning to tell you . . . well, more ask you,” she glanced at Doctor Collins, who nodded to her, then she looked back at me, “Honey, Daniel is dead, you know that, right?”

My stomach tightened at her words. I looked from Doctor Collins to my mother then back again. I stepped away, pulling my hands from hers.

 “His car ran off the road into the river two weeks ago, he was going too fast.”

“No,” I said confidently, shaking my head, glancing at the doctor again. “Well yeah, I mean, he did drive off the road but he’s still out there someplace. You never know he could—”

“No Jenny, he’s gone.”

“You don’t know that!” I yelled, and, despite myself, tears began to spill from my cheeks. I had just seen him, just seconds ago and yet, for some reason, what my Mom was saying was really starting to scare me. “They haven’t confirmed anything, Mom.”

“They found his body, honey.”

“No, they found a body. That doesn’t mean it’s his,” I said, still panting. I wasn’t sure it was from running anymore. I looked at my mother. Had we really grown so far apart that she would take the only thing left in my life that made me happy and try to convince me he was dead?

“Why are you doing this?”

My mother looked at Ryan and began to cry as well. Suddenly, it was all too much. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep the secret.

 “Danny!” I called. “Danny, where did you go, come out. He’s here, Mom, he was just here.”

“Oh, Jenny,” she sobbed, coming closer, wrapping her arms around me. I stayed as I was, frozen, unwilling to yield to her console. “It’s alright, calm down. We’ll figure this out together.” I couldn’t understand what she meant. “Your father had a hard time with it too, but we will figure this out.”

“Had a hard time with what? His cancer?” I said. “I’m not sick.”

Again she shook her head, dislodging more tears from the corners of her eyes.

“It was never cancer, Jenny,” she sobbed into my shoulder. The words made me sick. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like she was holding so tight she was constricting my lungs. I pushed her off, but the tightness didn’t leave. “I . . . I just didn’t want you to remember him that way,” she said, her arms outstretched toward me. “What he did . . . it was . . . honey, I didn’t want to scare you. He was so overwhelmed when he found out, and now you too—”

“What are you talking about?!” 

“Jennifer, you’re not sleeping at nights, sometimes you’re talking to him, you’ve been taking your fathers things. You’re . . . you’re seeing Daniel when he’s not really there.”

“He is there!” I backed away from my mother, shaking my head, frantic now. Every breath threatened to rip open my chest. “He’s alive, he just couldn’t tell anyone. He was just here.” I cried.

  They were lying, they had to be. He was here. I had just talked to him, just touched him. I ran toward the gym, opening the door to look inside, it was empty.

 “Jenny, honey,” my mother pleaded, still chasing me with outstretched arms. “Please, stop.  You need to stop this before you hurt yourself. He’s not there and he never has been. He’s dead.”

I slammed the gym door then sprinted to our classroom. My mother followed. Doctor Collins stood where he was. When I pushed open the door, all that was in our classroom were the untouched clothes and lunches. There were no signs of Danny. No signs that anyone other than me had been in that room. A sinking feeling overtook me. I felt dizzy.

“Jenny?” My mom said, running up behind me, trying to hug me again.

“Outside, he is probably outside.”

I tripped and stumbled to the door, checking the street, the bushes, and the parking lot. I went back to the school. I was nearly running circles in place as I checked and double checked every classroom in the school, under desks, in closets.

All the while my mother followed, sobbing to herself, a constant reminder of why I couldn’t give up the search. Why I had to prove to her that I was right.

Why would Danny have left me? Where would he have gone? Or were they right, was he really never there. Soon, I found myself too blinded by tears to search properly. I tripped and fell to the ground, but I didn’t get up. I couldn’t get up.

I couldn’t find him. 

“Danny!” I cried, tears spilling from my cheeks. “Danny, come out, please. Please!”

 But he never came.

…..

It had been a few weeks since the elementary school.  Mom and I drove up to the house in silence, she smiled and handed me a small, white paper bag. She had been looking much better since I started taking medication. I, on the other hand, had not.

“Take this inside dear, I’m going to put some things in the pantry.”

I did what she said, taking the bottle out of the paper bag as I walked inside. It was yet another version of the same drug. The drug that made me feel miserable and that took my illusions away. This one, Doctor Collin’s assured me, would make me feel not so depressed.

It disgusted me.  

Doctor Collins had said if I took one pill each day, Danny would go away for good.
I didn’t want him to go away. I wanted him here, with me. I wanted him alive.

The label on the bottle became blurry as my regular bout of tears began to stream from my eyes. I couldn’t look at it anymore; I couldn’t stand it. I threw the bottle. It burst open spilling little capsules everywhere.

Seconds later, I followed the bottle to the ground, collapsing in a heap of uncontrollable sobs as rivulets of water streamed down my face, meeting at my chin and dripping onto the tile. I wanted to fall apart, break into tiny pieces and scatter across the floor with the pills. Maybe if I fell into pieces, the aching would finally stop.

I wasn’t crazy, right? Or is that what crazy people say? I hadn’t imagined him. He had been real. He had to be real. Did they think I had imagined him holding my hands? That I had imagined the way his thumb ran across my fingers? I loved him. I loved him and I knew he felt the same way.

But I’d lost my chance to be with him. I’d lost my chance to hold him close, to whisper a soft ‘I love you’ in his hear and have him whisper back to say he’d never leave me.

If it had all been in my mind, then why wasn’t he here now? Why hadn’t he shown up at the elementary school when I called for him? Why couldn’t I concoct him again just to say goodbye, just to ease the pain? 

Tears still streaking down my face, I picked myself up off the ground and began to pick up the pills, but as I stood, something on the dining room table caught my eye. 

It was a daisy. A white daisy.

Danny

I looked around, but I was alone.  My heart began to race. I looked back at the table. The daisy was still there.

Jen, the car wreck . . . it wasn’t an accident.

 The daisy was the only thing on the table’s surface, it lay there bright white against the cherry wood.

You need to leave. Don’t listen to them, Jen, okay?  Run away!

Run away.

The pills still lay scattered on the ground. I walked over them and picked up the daisy as if in a trance.

 I wasn’t crazy . . . right?

I held it close, smiling slightly as the soft petals caressed my cheek. It smelled so good, and it made me feel better than I had for days.

“Just like medicine.” I said.