Drowning in You by Rebecca Berto Page A

through my hand on his shoulder. “Charlee!” He
snatches the drawing away and scrunches it in his pocket.
    A mother calls to the group and
one boy throws his school bag over his shoulder, waves and drags
his feet over to her. The rest disappear, leaving Darcy with his
hands behind his back and the scrunched drawing in his pocket.
    For something his friends and
he were so proud of, it seems like a source of embarrassment now,
with Darcy speechless and walking back to his car wearing his own
bag, not complaining how heavy it is or about homework. Not even
about how boring class was. He’s silent and compliant, which is
worse.
    We buckle our seat belts. “So
what was that thing you were showing your friends?”
    “ No, you’ll
get mad.”
    “ How do you
know that? You haven’t shown it to—”
    “ No, Charlee.
You will get mad.
You’re mad a lot and this drawing will make you mad.”
    I start the car and take off.
Gee, I thought I never got mad, actually. For the little boy I
picture needing help with homework, reaching the top shelf in our
pantry, and playing Warcraft games on the internet, he’s more
mature than I give him credit for at times.
    That and he can probably read
my face as well as I can read his.
    I reach for his pocket, but he
grabs my wrist. I turn to him for a split-second and we both erupt
in goofy grins. We fumble for a full minute, my one hand on the
wheel, my other grabbing and tearing at Darcy’s pocket, his hands
everywhere in my peripheral vision. The car darts over the center
line and someone beeps me back into position. We slow down and
Darcy’s laugh diminishes to silence eventually.
    “ Give me that
ugly drawing, you little thief.” I blindly grab again but he
cackles and darts out of the way.
    “ Never!”
    We drive in silence again down
a main road until we stop at a set of lights.
    Darcy says, “You really think
you can handle it?”
    “ Sure I can.
I’ve been putting up with you for weeks in the damn house alone, so
I bet I can handle an ugly picture.”
    “ It’s not
ugly!” He thumps his hand on the passenger side dashboard. “It’s
better than your ugly face!” At that he bends over in laughter at
his own joke.
    I snatch up the picture and
hold it to the opposite corner of my driver’s side. When he lashes
at my arm, I tease, “Get back or we’ll have a car crash and you’ll
die.”
    He doesn’t laugh as I expect. I
need him to laugh because between Elliot and this banter, today has
been a happy day.
    I start wondering why he’s
cowering in the seat and refusing to look anywhere other than out
of the window.
    Until I unscrunch his
drawing.
    There’s a pair of kidneys,
linked together by a vein of sorts, dripping with blood. The
kidneys have black crosses on them and eyes and limbs. The outer
hands of the kidneys hold a sword each and growl with a speech
bubble saying “I will fight!” They say this to the creature on the
opposite side of the page. Its body is hidden behind a full-body
black cloak, the hood exaggerated and gaping over its bony head. He
holds a big scythe that towers over his skeleton-like body.
    My face is hot, my underarms
sticky with a swirl of heat, so my face must be red by now. The
drawing doesn’t stop there. There are shadows behind it, which
aren’t from the car or anything else.
    Please let this be normal.
    On the other side of the page
is the same pair of kidneys, but this time they don’t have black
crosses littered over them. They’re a browny-red color and spooning
over a type of bed or mattress. The vein that links them is just
red, not bloody, and the caption under says: “We’re too lazy to
work properly!”
    Even in my head I don’t cuss,
but I swerve onto the shoulder of the road and have pulled to a
stop in seconds. “What the hell were you thinking, Darcy!?”
    Head hanging to his chest, he
mumbles, “I thought—”
    “ You thought
you could make fun of our dying father?”
    He shakes his head quickly,
still not