All That Remains (Manere Book 1) Read online

  All That Remains

  Megan Bushree

  Prologue

  Dusk depressed me. Lucy never quite understood why. Having been friends most of our lives, there were certain things we could agree on without ever discussing them. Dusk was a time of day she went home to her welcoming family but for me, it was the time I went to a dark empty house and wondered if I would be eating alone the dinner I made. We kicked a chunk of gravel back and forth as we walked down the partially paved street. I looked ahead at the split in the road. The dirt road went to Lucy’s house, the cracked, aged paved street went to mine.

  Lucy stopped abruptly, “Is that car on fire?” I turned quickly knowing she wasn’t the type to say, “Made you look!” A car was, in fact, ablaze under its body with what looked to be cardboard lying underneath soaking engine fluid. The already suffocating heat of the late afternoon was only magnified by the rapidly growing flames only yards away from us. We each searched around in hopes of finding someone, anyone really, who knew more about what to do than we did. I sprinted toward the house and began pounding on the front door of the home before noticing a water hose coiled near my feet. Without hesitation, I unraveled the hose while Lucy grunted with each turn of the faucet’s unused rusted handle.

  Lucy grabbed the hose while I ran back to the front door pounding until my fist ached. The doorbell was hidden under a spiderweb that was better left unharmed knowing there was a good chance the bell no longer worked. The door finally swung open after what felt like an hour but was probably less than a minute. “Angie, it’s too much, it’s not getting any smaller,” Lucy cried.

  “What is it!? Who the hell are you?!” a woman a decade shy of being retired but more than a decade after having worked, shouted at me. “Your car is on fire and if you don’t call the fire department, your whole house is going to burn down,” I shouted back with even more bile than she gave me. Before she could say anything more, I pushed past her, scanning the cluttered house for a phone. “Phone, where is your phone?”

  “In the kitchen,” the woman said while being hypnotized by the flames in her driveway. I grabbed the phone realizing it was sticky with the number-pad caked in an unknown brown substance. “What’s your address?” I screamed. “Angie!” Lucy appeared at the front door. The woman didn’t respond. “Lucy, what is the address on the front?” “7902, we’re on Fox Trail!” Lucy said.

  The firetruck was on its way when I went back outside to see that Lucy had made a substantial gain in her efforts to put out the fire. I grabbed the hose pushing my thumb over the rushing water to spread out the stream. The fire became manageable and then became nonexistent just as the scream of the firetruck sirens came closer. “Hey. What’s going on?” a nearly toothless man in a pickup truck called out to the still dazed woman. “There was a fire. I ain't seen you at the PJ’s no more. The wife ain't letting you drink no more?” the woman asked the man.

  Lucy and I looked to each other, sweaty, exhausted, and only momentarily shocked at the woman’s chosen conversation without a hint of concern that her entire home could have burned to the ground leaving her yard nothing more than an ashtray for her to toss her many cigarettes.

  There was nothing more to say. Lucy and I walked away from the yard and as the distance between us and our momentary act of heroism increased, we shook our heads in disbelief. Not disbelief because of the nonchalance the woman had taken the entire event, or the fact that the woman did not acknowledge what we had done for her and her home, or even that she was able to carry on a casual conversation with her neighbor about bar attendance.

  No, the disbelief was Lucy and I believing what had happened would have shaken someone to the point of expressing gratitude. Believing the woman would assist us in fighting a fire that was not our own. That is how the story would go in any other town. The desert we lived in was Manere. In Manere, a catastrophic event was nothing more than another mirage.

  Chapter 1

  It was the time of the year when my entire room was under assault. Even with the blinds closed tight, the heat would sneak itself through the inhibiting slats, rousing my bare legs, arms and every inch of exposed skin that wasn’t hidden beneath the thin cotton sheet. Usually, I would become furious with the aggressive coaxing from the sun to start the day as it was typically a weekend in which I didn’t wake up before the sun. This was a morning, unlike the others. This time it was a signifier of summer. Not just any summer, but the last summer I would sleep in my childhood bed. The last summer I would have an east-facing window. In only a few months, seventy-four days, I would be living in a dorm room away from everything I had known.

  My mom begged me to go to school nearby but living in the middle of the desert for nearly eighteen years was long enough, and I wouldn’t wish a lifetime in Manere Valley on my worst enemy. Manere became physically and emotionally exhausting and was more than I could handle for another year. My chosen University was Carnegie Mellon, a school I fantasized about since before I knew what I wanted to do there. I found a brochure hidden beneath old magazines and advertisements in our school library. There were pictures of young people laughing on the steps of historic buildings, others goofing off on the lush green lawn while some were studying under massive oak trees.

  Manere had none of that; just dirt, cactus, and devastating winds that would knock down innocent strolling pedestrians, regularly. There was rarely studying done outside because of the limited shade, not to mention how difficult it was to think straight with the blistering heat melting our developing brains. If it weren't for hiding away inside and utilizing air conditioners and swamp-coolers, nothing would ever get done in Manere. Even so, many people walked around like depression-afflicted zombies unable to ask for help. Life was completely different across the country, the cheerfulness on the faces on those brochures sparked a motivation that never wavered. I was going to leave Manere.

  Beyond the most vital reasons to escape, I chose to go to Carnegie Mellon to get away from everything I had amassed in my life, so far. It was more than a pile of memories, it was a heaping junkyard of past indiscretions that needed to be cleared out, so I could start fresh. My friends were the only thing in my life that I knew I would miss when we all went our separate ways. Though, even that was beginning to become less true.

  I had the same best friends practically since birth. They were my friends before we grew up and became deplorable. Maybe we weren’t any worse than the average awful teenager, it was just our natural state of being. This realization only occurred to me a few months before graduation. The first moment I became aware of the unkindness of my group came during Calculus. Mr. Machinski was giving some lesson on the rules of derivatives, but I became distracted by the notes Ellie and Lucy were passing. It was one of those long tables, not our standard single desks, so they were just passing back and forth a spiral notebook.

  Look at Mr. M with those special Ed shoes and high waters. Vomit! No wonder his wife left him. Ugh, now he has a wedgie. I wonder if he even notices. He probably doesn’t even care. He’s probably just going to kill himself, anyway.

  When I saw those words on the paper, which could have been so easily seen by Mr. Machinski, I just felt incredibly sad for him and more than anything, disappointed in my friends. There were plenty of times when we would make jokes about people, even Mr. M but some feeling of unrest swirled inside of me that day, making every interaction with my group slightly less appealing.

  That wasn’t the first or last time I felt isolated, even from Lucy who had been my best friend since we were three-years-old. The second moment I knew I needed to get out of Manere came when we were in line waiting to get our graduation caps. For four years, the concept of waiting in lin
e seemed to have vanished. Elementary school was all about waiting in line. Coming from recess, going to lunch or the library, was all done in a single-file line. Once high school came around, there was no need for it. Everyone forgot how to behave, and it became impossible to stay civilized. The lack of civility may have contributed to the nasty attitude we all seemed to have developed. Sure, when we were kids, we teased and were teased. Once we became teenagers, it became a brutal psychological game that never let up. Every time I did something rude, I would feel instantly terrible about it. Sometimes it would make me feel sick to my stomach, I couldn’t eat, and my sleep would become all wonky. Yet, I would keep doing it. It was an addiction like anything else.

  Rather than seeking out some help for my addiction, I needed to cut off my supply by moving far away from these people who made it far too easy to scorch the world in which I lived. Since the world I lived in was such a tiny place in the universe, I knew it was time to expand where I had been, so I could develop who I would become.

  Lucy was running late and if there was one thing I could always count on; it was that Lucy never showed up anywhere even close to on time. Her tardiness was just one of the traits I was not going to miss about Lucy, especially if it meant we would miss part of Ellie’s final soccer game ever. Lucy snuck up behind me and faintly smacked me in the back of my head.

  “Dude, what was that?” I slurred, unsure of whether she left any permanent damage. “You told my dad we weren’t going to go out of town for the camping trip? What was that?” Lucy was indignant, but it was tricky trying to figure out when something was going to stew with her for days or if this was something that could be cured with a change of subject.

  I decided it was best to address the problem. “I thought you said we weren’t going to go, anyway. My mom doesn't want me to leave town until it’s time to leave in the fall. Your dad nearly had a conniption fit when you told him we were going to go.” I explained. “That was the best part, Angie. What is the point of doing stupid things if you’re not terrorizing your parents?”

  “Lucy, you know we wouldn’t be able to leave, anyway. I’m sure the trip will be canceled for everyone, once word gets out that a bunch of teenagers wants to get out of town,”

  “It’s barely out of the town’s limits,” Lucy whined.

  “Still.”

  “Ugh, but it would be so entertaining to drive my father crazy,” Lucy whimpered.

  “I don’t know why you have to be so bitchy to your dad. He loves you, but you treat him like he just annoys you all the time.”

  “Ding! Ding! Ding! My dear friend. That is exactly what he does.”

  “Come on Lucy, he is not that bad. He just doesn’t want anything bad to happen to you. He’s a worrier. I can understand that,”.

  I used to worry about everything. When I was younger, the incessant worrying felt like part of my identity. It started out in ways that seemed inconsequential. I didn’t realize it was the beginning of everything else. When I was ten, Lydia Baker came over to play, and she didn’t close Squiggle’s cage after playing with him. That night, there was a clamoring that jolted me out of bed. The flimsy cassette holder that was standing in the corner of my room was now on the ground in pieces. Under the debris of cheap pine was my hamster, poor Squiggle, trapped. Squiggle gave out a single breath and died. It was the worst experience I had ever had, and even years later I think about his tiny startled face.

  After that, not only would I check doors to make sure they were locked, anchored things to make sure they didn’t fall, but I also questioned the safety and potential outcome for all possible future activities. Somehow this led to an obsession with germs which lasted a bit longer than securing the house four times before bed. The concern made me physically ill at school. I spent half of the fifth grade in the nurse’s office.

  Along with discovering I had severe anxiety problems, my time there was how I met Derek Mayhew. I recognized him as the kid who transferred into my class mid-year. Through his persistence and the rest of our group taking an interest, he became part of our close-knit team too. That was back when Milo was still talking to me.

  “What are you thinking about?” Lucy nearly shouted.

  “Nothing. How it all used to be.”

  “Oh, no Angela. Please don’t get all nostalgic on me. Is this about Milo?”

  “No.” “Yes. It seems like whenever you get lost in your thoughts, we start talking about him.”

  “I guess I just miss him,” I said under my breath, trying not to dwell on it too long.

  “It’s his fault. Don’t even think about him for another minute. He sucks, and you are awesome. What kind of friend just decides to ditch his friends and make them feel bad about who they are?”

  “I know, I just wish,” I said sulkily while I rolled my open palm on the pencil that sat on my desk.

  “He is the one who changed. Not us. If he doesn’t like it, he can sit in his sad, dark room with all his friends. Oh wait, he doesn’t have any friends,” Lucy smirked.

  Milo was the one who had decided he didn’t want to be friends with us anymore. At first, I couldn’t understand why which made me hate him. It took me far too long to understand it all. He could see what I wasn’t ready to see.

  Chapter 2

  Ellie’s soccer season was cut short for her final year since most of the people on the team were seniors and didn’t feel the need to extend their after-school activity much longer than High School. Rather than the season ending in September, like it had been for the last eleven years, June fifteenth was their final game. There was still going to be multiple celebratory parties for the players, an official league send-off and countless parties that mostly consisted of the players getting drunk in the middle of the desert reminiscing about their favorite, most vicious, plays while kicking a ball around.

  “Thanksgiving,” I said with a pang of nostalgia working its way through my chest.

  “Thanksgiving will be the next time we will see each other again after this summer. Maybe not even then. What if my mom wants to come to see me? She’s practically never been anywhere; she would probably like to see the east coast.” I contemplated aloud trying to keep the melancholia at bay.

  Lucy looked past me, toward the field but not necessarily at the game. Lucy’s disinterest in what others said was another of her tiring traits.

  “That’s kind of your choice Angie. You’re the one who has been obsessed with getting out of this town since before we could cross the street by ourselves. I’d be surprised if you come back for the holidays, or even at all,”.

  Lucy had a way of keeping me on my toes in our conversations. I was never sure if what I said was going to be slapped down as being far too theatrical for a Saturday morning chat or if she would reply with something even more maudlin.

  “Why do you say that? I mean, the not coming back part?” I asked.

  “Because you’ve wanted it forever. You can say you just want to see what else is out there, but I have a feeling we won’t be seeing you again,” Lucy said with certainty.

  “Well, how do I know you won’t go off to Wellesley and leave everything behind too? I’m not the only one who has talked about leaving Manere.”

  I didn’t know why it mattered that I reminded her of this fact. She wasn’t altogether insulting me with the assumption, and she wasn’t entirely wrong. A large part of me contemplated ditching town for good and never looking back. Lucy took in a deep breath like she was going to dip her head into the deep end,

  “I know you won’t have to worry about that with me because I decided I’m staying.”

  She somehow managed to state something that was nothing more than a statement of fact for her, but a form of betrayal for me, all in one breath.

  “You aren’t going to Wellesley in the fall? Or like at all?” I begged desperately wanting an explanation.

  “It’s not a major deal. I just decided to save my money and go on a life education. Learn by doing.” Once again, Lucy h
ad found a way to make light of a poor decision. Her getting into college seemed like a bizarre fluke, but to turn it down seemed ludicrous.

  “What kind of life education? Like how to bag groceries or work the fryer?” I said.

  “I knew you would say something bitchy about this.” Lucy continued, I wasn’t even going to tell you. I was going to wait to see if you ever came back to visit and then I would break the news to you”.

  Her reasoning was confusing, “What about when we talk on the phone, or if I wanted to send a letter to your dorm? Would you have just kept some elaborate lie go on forever” I asked. Lucy shrugged and began to skate her foot back, forth, and across herself against the dirt in a bungling, disjointed movement. She knew there was no way to make any of it seem better and I was not going to accept it without a fight. “Lucy, this is our chance. We always talked about this. Getting the hell out of this town. Leaving it behind to start fresh.”

  We had never left the town. Not even once. Not for a trip to a nearby relative or to go to an amusement park. There were always rules in our town. Rules that seemed pointless most of the time, but rules that were rarely broken. It was a law that was enacted in the 1950s. The explicitly stated law that residents were unable to leave Manere until they turned eighteen. Most who became eighteen rarely left, anyhow. It was as if moving was forsaking your entire family, friends and the town in general. No one really knew why the law existed. There had been tall tales spread around for as long as I could remember. Whether it was that beyond the border there lived so much crime and dangerous people, it would forever scar those who experienced it, or there being a nuclear disaster, which somehow Manere avoided, and no one talked about it.

  Mostly, they seemed like rumors that had been altered so many times in the previous few decades that they weren’t even worth researching. My mom would probably never let me leave the town limits by myself anyway, at least not until I was going to college to do it. It seemed well worth the wait.