Prologue
I sleep with the dead.
I don’t remember the first time I did it and I try not to
think about why. It’s just something I do. And my
fascination with the dead has become part of me, like the
way my middle toes jut out. They make my feet look like
they’re shooting the finger twenty-four seven. My “screw
you” toes are my best feature, but that doesn’t mean I brag
about them. Those babies are kept under wraps—just for my
entertainment—the same way I now keep my habit of sleeping
in cemeteries a secret from anyone. Not even my mother knows
I sneak out at night sometimes to curl up with the
headstones … and the stillness. Some things are best left
unsaid.
In the arms of stone angels, I’m not afraid.
I wish I had remembered the part about not telling
secrets when I came across my friend White Bird under the
bridge at Cry Baby Creek. A woman’s spirit cries for her
dead baby and haunts that old rusted steel and wood plank
footbridge. I’d seen her plenty of times, I swear to God.
She never talked to me. The dead never do. She only cried
and clutched the limp body of her baby to her chest.
Back then I didn’t fully understand how fragile the
barrier was between my world and another existence where the
dead grieved over their babies forever. And I had no idea
that a change was coming. Someone would alter how I saw the
thin veil between my reality and the vast world beyond it.
And that someone was my friend, White Bird.
When I saw him crying in the shadows of that dry creek
bed, just like the ghost of that woman, the sight of him
sent chills over my skin. I should have paid attention to
what my body was telling me back then—to stay away and leave
him alone—but I didn’t.
He was rocking in the shadows and muttering words I
didn’t understand. When I got closer, I saw he wasn’t alone,
but I couldn’t see the girl’s face. And tears were running
down his cheeks. They glistened in the gray of morning, at
the razor’s edge of dawn. I wish I had stayed where I was
that day—hiding in the dark—but my curiosity grabbed me by
the throat and wouldn’t let go.
Like an omen, the buzz of flies should have warned me.
And thinking back on it, I wished that I had paid more
attention to the sound. Even now, a single housefly can
trigger that dark memory. And on nights when the dead can’t
comfort me to sleep, I still hear the unending noise of
those flies and I think of him. Our paths had crossed that
day for a reason, as if it was always meant to be, and both
of us were powerless to stop it.
I remember that morning like it was yesterday and I can’t
get him out of my head.
White Bird was the first boy I ever loved. He was a
half-breed, part Euchee Indian and part whatever. He was an
outcast like me, only I couldn’t claim anything cool like
being Indian. Because he was half-breed and without parents,
the Euchee didn’t officially claim him, but that didn’t
matter to White Bird. In his heart he belonged to the Dala,
the Bear clan of the tribe, because the bear represented the
power of Mother Earth. And the strong animal was a totem
sign of the healer. The way I saw it, he had picked his clan
well.
In school, the teachers called him by his white name,
Isaac Henry. But when it was just the two of us, he
preferred I call him by his Indian name and that made me
feel real special. He was different from the other boys at
my school. I was convinced he had an ancient soul. He was
quiet and didn’t speak much, even to me. But when he did
open his mouth, the other kids listened and so did I.
Some people were scared of him because he was taller and
bigger than most of the boys and he kept to himself.
Sometimes he would get into fights. But after he got his
tribal band tattoos, the fights stopped and everyone left
him alone, including his teachers. His tattoos made him look
like a man. And that was fine by me.
He wore his dark hair long to his shoulders and his eye
color had flecks of gold and green that reminded me of a
field of wheat blowing easy in the Oklahoma wind. And his
dark skin made me think of a golden swirl of sweet caramel.
That’s how I thought of him before the nightmare happened.
He dominated my mind like a tune I couldn’t get out of my
head, something unforgettable and special.
White Bird was my first crush.
And in a perfect world, my first crush should have been
unforgettable and magic. But when mine turned out to be the
worst nightmare of my pathetic excuse for a life, I knew I’d
never deserve to be happy and that magic was overrated. And
as for White Bird being unforgettable, the day I saw him
under that bridge covered in blood and ranting like a crazed
meth head over a girl’s corpse with a knife in his hand, I
knew that image would be burned into my brain forever.
It was highly unlikely that I’d forget him and I made
sure he’d never forget me. I was the one who turned him in
to the sheriff.