Page 5 of Bent Heavens

By the time she caught up to him, he should have been resetting Hangman’s Noose. Instead, he was staring, and her stomach clenched. At least once a month it happened, and naturally it had to happen today: an animal caught. The Iowa timber was rife with underbrush scurriers that, unlike Lee’s intended targets, actually existed. Liv didn’t like to picture all the dead or dying animals they’d extracted.

They was the wrong word. It was Doug who did the deed while Liv squinted through the protective slats of her lashes. Today it was only a squirrel—only, as if that minimized the suffering, and suffering was what it was doing, the wire pulled tight around its tiny neck, its four feet scrabbling midair. The noose was designed for a bigger creature and hadn’t cinched tight enough for a clean kill.

How many hours had the squirrel been hanging here? How many days? Doug glanced at Liv, his jaw jutted against reproach, and took the squirrel by the midsection, loosening the wire with the screwdriver and sliding the animal free. Doug stepped over to the oak tree he’d used for this very purpose so many times Liv could see the scarred bark, and brought the squirrel back for the head blow that would kill it.

Doug hesitated, waiting for Liv to turn away. She always did. But today she couldn’t. She’d had a chance this morning to change things and had blown it. As screwed up as Doug’s trapping and killing was, he did it out of love—for Lee, yes, but also for her. So her apology was this: not turning away. Liv would try again next week. Or the week after that. Surely she would.

Doug smiled, just a twitch of the lips, before whipping the squirrel forward in a brown blur. The snap of its head was crisp, and without pausing, Doug tromped past the tree and off the trail into brambles, because you had to bury animals away from the devices that killed them. That was just smart hunting.

Liv watched him disappear, then turned back to Hangman’s Noose. She could reset the trap. She knew how. It would be a nice gesture. She hunkered down, took hold of the snare, and pulled against the weight. Two years had passed since her dad had vanished, but his traps, all six of them, still worked. Just look at the creature they’d trapped today. Look at her try to gnaw her leg free, silly thing. The creature’s name was Liv Fleming.

4.

It took twenty minutes to get to senior year’s first calamity. After parking her dad’s too-recognizable station wagon far from the building, the first nineteen minutes were everything Liv had dreamed about. This was the thirteenth first day of school of Liv’s life, and the exhilaration of knowing it to be the final one for her and her friends could only be countered by blatant coolness. When Monica fist-bumped Liv hello, Monica was impersonating the jittery theatrics of the younger classes. Liv took the cue, and, while hugging Krista, who’d been out of state all summer, she did so with a bored yawn that made Krista laugh.

“We’re so over this,” Krista said.

“We’re doing the teachers a favor,” Liv agreed. “Don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

Darla and Phil swung by, Phil’s hand already in Darla’s back pocket, placing his usual bet that no teacher wanted conflict on the first day of school, thereby setting the precedent that Phil could have his hand on Darla’s ass all year. Darla kiss-kissed at Liv, who made a facetious yuck face and tossed the kiss back.

Then Laurie, Amber, and Hank descended upon them in a sheet of excited shouts and hugs so forceful Liv could not tell who she was hugging at any given second. Except maybe Hank, whose hug was quick; the one-night sexual encounter she’d had with Hank last year still hadn’t fully shed its awkwardness. The whole gang’s coolness, so perfectly drawn a few minutes ago, broke apart, and they yielded to it. It was thrilling, being at the edge of whatever came after.

When the group began to disassemble to find their lockers and unload their stuff, Liv found Krista still clinging to her with two adamant fists.

“Just once, and then I won’t mention it again,” Krista said. “Just doing my fall check.”

Liv sighed to convey that this wasn’t necessary, but in truth felt a deep gratitude. Liv was a relative newcomer to this crowd (sports girls, mostly, and the guys who liked them) and sometimes still felt like a fraud: Hank and Phil going on about some grade school prank they’d pulled on an old friend of Liv’s, or Monica, when she was feeling bitchy, celebrating old times with the others without letting Liv in on the joke. Krista, though, had a heart and, when Monica wasn’t around to chide her for it, knew how to use it.

“Make it quick,” Liv teased.

“Your dad—nothing?”

Liv shook her head. Still smiling. Keep up the smile. None of this hurts, none of it.

“And your mom—she’s…?”

Keep smiling. “She’s fine. Same. I mean, she’s fine.”

Krista tilted her head skeptically, an angle sharp enough to dig under Liv’s ribs and hit something soft. Liv grabbed Krista by both shoulders and pretended to shake sense into her like men did to hysterical women in old movies. The pain of that little cut, however, did not go away.

“She’s okay!” Liv play shouted. “I’m okay! Everything’s okay!”

Krista pretended to zip her lips. “All right! I’ll shut up about it, forever and anon.”

“Too much British lit for you. Get a life.”

Krista nodded guiltily and slunk off for her locker. Liv heard the squeak of a sneaker stopping suddenly and turned to see Krista, who had leaned back to speak more quietly.

“I meant to tell you. I came in the back way, by the band room. And Doug Monk was there with a bunch of idiots. I know you and Doug…”

Krista trailed off—of course she did—because no one in Monica’s group knew how to finish that sentence. Liv and Doug what? Liv herself wasn’t certain. To the others, Liv supposed, Doug was a bewildering holdover from an older version of Liv Fleming, a Liv none of them were particularly interested to know. And it was for reasons just like this: first day of school, everything going great, and suddenly there’s some situation near the band room.

Liv nodded an embarrassed thanks and took off for the stairs. The bottom floor at this hour was nothing but lonely halls. Away from watchful eyes, she sped up, past the shuttered home-ec kitchen and vo-ag wing, until she’d homed in on the southeastern bottom-floor stairwell, at the weird intersection of the chorus room and wrestling room. It was the hour of neither singing nor wrestling, and yet there huddled a group of four boys, just like Krista had said, their schoolbags slung across mom-ironed shirts so as to better record video on their phones. Each screen gave Liv a mini but unobstructed view of a scene that was as preposterous as it was predictable.

Doug was lying on his back on the floor, his hair spread out beneath his head like black tentacles. The parachute pockets of his shorts sagged to the floor with payloads of gorp. From all indications, Doug had been persuaded to bench-press Jackson Stegmaier, a kid who had what teachers called a “developmental delay.” He was skinny with narrow shoulders, both of which, Liv hated to admit, did give him a barbell shape. The stunt was absurd, hence the laughter, hence the twist in Liv’s gut.

The videos would be uploaded by day’s end. By tomorrow, they’d be flickering from every gadget in sight. Jackson Stegmaier wasn’t Liv’s problem; he’d deal with it. Doug, though—Doug never made anything easy. Sweat rolled down his scarlet face as he pumped the kid up and down while a jerk named Billy shouted out reps. What Doug didn’t get, what he never got until too late, was that the boys cheered only to mock him.