Free Undercurrent by Paul Blackwell Page A

and makes me feel strangely sleepy, sort of the same way lying on a sofa in the sun does. If Cole heard that, he’d call me an even bigger weirdo. Not that he seems to be able to call me anything anymore.
    I’m starting to wish my cell phone were working. Then I could have made this call outside, from inside the red hatchback, where something else would at least feel normal to me. But I’m stuck in my strangely unfamiliar room, hovering over the crumpled poster, a single eye staring up at me from the floor.
    “Hi, Willow,” I say. “It’s me, Callum.”
    There’s a pause. “Who?”
    “Callum,” I repeat. The receiver is now shaking so badly, I’m worried I might drop it. “I just got home. But I’m not feeling too good, to be honest. I don’t know. Maybe it was hitting my head or something, but things have gotten really weird. . . .”
    As I keep talking, I start to feel hurt again that Willow didn’t visit me. But she can be shy sometimes and doesn’t like to intrude on family stuff. Maybe it’s my fault. I confided a lot of things about my family that weren’t that great. She’s probably afraid of walking in on some fight, like the ones her own mother and father must have had before he left years ago.
    “Wait, is this Cal Harris?” she asks. “From school?”
    What kind of question is that? From school?
    “Yeah, it’s me,” I say, rocking uncomfortably on the side of my bed. “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing, I guess,” she says in a flat tone. “Listen, I’m sorry about your accident and everything, but if this is about homework, I’ve been off with the flu all week and have no idea what’s due. . . .”
    I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Willow,” I say, my voice cracking, “it’s me, Callum. . . .”
    “Uh-huh, I heard you,” she replies.
    “Willow,” I plead. Tears fill my eyes. “Please. Why are you acting like this? I’m in trouble. I need your help!”
    “My help?” she answers, sounding surprised. “Why my help?”
    “Because it’s me!” I answer, losing my temper. “Don’t you want to help me?”
    “Oh, help yourself,” she says, and then hangs up.
    Willow. She hangs up!
    I sit there for a while, listening to the dead line. I’ve never felt so disconnected. Finally I hang up.
    This is wrong—too wrong. Maybe I should go to the hospital, but one in another town or in the city even. I wonder if I can convince my parents. If that’s the only way I’ll agree to go to see someone, they won’t have any choice.
    I open my door. I can hear the clatter of dishes in the sink and my parents talking. They’re using their unhappy voices—the ones I remember from back when Dad still lived here, which I heard long into the night after they thought Cole and I were asleep.
    God, I hate those voices.
    I get up and walk over to my desk. I pull out an old swivel chair that Cole and I used to have these crazy endurance tests in, spinning each other to the very limits of our stomachs. I sit down and feel its wooden edge poking through the flattened foam into the backs of my legs. This chair hasn’t changed. This chair is the same.
    I swivel and pull open the middle desk drawer. As always, inside sits a neatly stacked pile of old school notebooks, underneath which should lie my secret shoe box where I keep Willow’s bobby pins, among other keepsakes.
    I remove the notebooks and put them on the desk. The box, to my relief, is still there. I lift off the lid and place it on top of the notebooks.
    Without the overhead light on, the interior of the box is in shadow, so I have to lean over and peer inside.
    I quickly discover that nothing familiar is in there. Instead the shoe box now contains two things, neither of which I have ever seen before.
    The first is a roll of bills, tightly wrapped in a rubber band.
    The other is a gun.

CHAPTER 8
    I’ve never considered blowing my brains out before, but that’s what I think about doing when I pick up the heavy automatic pistol.