AttaboyMason Atkinson

“So, what do ya think? Pretty sexy, huh?” 

Elliot’s cousin shook the phone at him, looming over the passenger seat and grinning with his shark teeth. It was a picture of his girlfriend: long brown hair, bangs, white tank top, smiling. His arm was locked around her waist, pinning her in place as the two posed in front of a chemically green golf course. Her eyes were obscured by dark sunglasses. 

“Um, yeah,” Elliot mumbled, returning his attention to the car. He was anxiously aware of his own posture—the awkward tangle of his legs, the nervous fluttering of his hands, the tightened edges of his face. He was locked in a performance of ease that looked more like rigor mortis than anything. Levi’s gaze probed deeper, searching Elliot expectantly for a reaction he didn’t know how to produce. Say something, say anything, his brain pleaded. 

“Yeah, she’s hot.”

He tried to give the words some feeling, but failed. His mouth was dry, and his tongue felt clumsily thick. It sounded like a question, not an answer. Elliot stole a glance up at Levi, silently pleading to be dismissed. As the oldest cousin, the authority he wielded was unquestionable. After an amused snort, Levi leaned back and eyed the photo with a satisfied smile.

“Yup.”

The nervous thrum of Elliot’s heartbeat asserted itself in the quiet car. In a desperate attempt to fend off the silence, he sheepishly asked, “What’s her name?” 

Whether or not Levi heard him, he did not answer. Instead, he carefully scrolled through his camera roll, picking through the little flashes of color in search of something specific. When he found it, he smiled. Elliot hated Levi’s smile. His lips pulled taut against his teeth, as if they needed to be restrained. As if he were telling a joke and needed to stop himself from blurting out the punchline. 

“Well then,” he began, leaning in close enough for Elliot to smell his deodorant. “How about this one?” 

Levi’s thumb swiped across the screen, revealing a new picture. His girlfriend: long brown hair, bangs, lacy maroon bra, posing in a bathroom mirror, smiling.

Elliot wanted to escape the photo, but some part of him couldn’t be pried away. With shame and curiosity in equal measure, his eyes stole in light faster than he could tell them to stop, tracing the contours of the photo and secreting away its purple filigree into his memory. Meanwhile, the muscles around his guts began to constrict, crushing the shallow breath out of his chest in an unsuccessful attempt to punish the fascination out of him. He seemed to fall into the frame for a breathless moment, until his eyes met hers. In that instant, he wrenched his focus away and fixed it on the dashboard where it belonged.

“Sorry!” he whimpered, voice cracking. Levi brayed with laughter, shaking the seats and pounding the steering wheel as Elliot drowned in a wave of hot blood. He could feel his cousin moving the picture closer to his face, edging into the border of his vision. 

“Come on, I want to know what you think!” Levi cackled, endlessly amused by Elliot’s squirming. Against his will, he took two more staccato glances at the photo before the embarrassment fully petrified him. 

“Um,” he pleaded.

“Dontcha like what you see?” Levi smirked, shoving the screen directly in front of Elliot’s face. He could feel his cousin’s beady eyes from behind his impenetrably black shades, pinning him in place.

“Well, just wait ’til you see what she looks like,” he whispered, leaning in. 

His thumb slowly drew to the other side of the screen, preparing to reveal a final picture. Elliot choked on the stagnant air in his lungs.

“In this.”

The performance was suddenly interrupted by the mechanical clunk of the door handle and the soft impact of Elliot’s father tossing bags into the backseat. In one smooth motion, Levi turned off his phone, slipped it into his pocket, and turned to smile at him. The tension released its grip and Elliot managed to steal a few shallow breaths. 

“You boys ready?” his dad asked, leaning into the window.

“You know it!” Levi hopped out onto the driveway, allowing the older man to slide into the driver’s seat. A dozen feet away, Elliot’s uncle finished securing a large black bundle to the bed of his truck before calling out to his son.

“The hell you are! All your shit’s still upstairs!” he shouted, causing a sour look to twist across Levi’s face. He trudged off to the house, muttering some gripe just loud enough for his father to hear. Elliot’s uncle fired a parting glob of chewing tobacco before roughly slinging the rest of the luggage into the narrow back seat. 

“We’re gonna go on ahead,” said Elliot’s father, trying to ignore the older boy’s sulking. “If that’s alright with you.” 

“No, no, you two can hit the road. We’ll be right behind you.” 

His dad nodded, gave half a wave, and curved their car down the driveway before settling into the familiar route. After a few minutes of quiet, Elliot noticed his father staring at him with a quizzical look. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Yeah,” Elliot responded. He could hear the lie in his voice, distant and automatic. This made him feel guilty. He didn’t want his dad to worry. After a deep breath, he redoubled his efforts. “Yeah, I’m excited for the guys’ trip.”

His dad smiled and patted his knee twice, the gentle weight of his large palms providing a familiar comfort. 

“Guys’ trip,” he repeated. 

Elliot sat back and passively watched as the sun-bleached concrete flowed by. He was glad to get away from the edge of town; the strip malls bothered him. They were the pale, graying husks of failed businesses, each one sporting a ghostly epitaph in the window advertising some last-ditch sale to pull out of bankruptcy. None of it had worked, and now their corpses hung about the highway like bad omens. Elliot was almost relieved to see the monstrous carpet of kudzu slowly swallowing them, hiding the ugly failures in a coiling sea of green. He let his focus dissolve as they climbed higher, mesmerized by the slowly narrowing road and the soothing tunnel of fresh leaves arching over it. A lush, fragrant summer that had bloomed over the mountains, and Elliot scarcely said a word until he felt the sudden lurch of the car.

His father had parked the car in the cabin’s long gravel driveway and was already unloading their bags. Elliot hopped out in the vain hope that he could land a hand, but his dad had already managed to gather up most of their things in one go.

“I can get some too,” Elliot said, quickly adding, “if you want.”

“Nah, that’s alright,” his dad replied, shouldering a large duffel.

“But you can run ahead to the house and let Grandpa know we’re here,” he said, nodding towards the huge, impossibly polished coupe that was parked next to them.

Elliot turned on his heel and started up the hill, reveling in the dusty crunch of the magnolia leaves. The cabin was built in the 70’s, half-improvised from an old Sears template, and had already mildewed by the time Elliot was old enough to remember it. Although this made his mother fret, he felt embraced by the familiarly damp scent as he ran upstairs to the living room.

“Grandpa!” he called, rounding the top and kicking off his shoes.

He called twice more, poking his head into different bedrooms. A dubious concern began to creep into the back of his head, adding a tension to his voice.

“Grandpa!”

Finally, he caught sight of the older man through the porch window, stooped over a railing with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. Relieved, he jogged over to the sliding glass door and threw it open.

“Grandpa!”

The older man jumped at the sudden greeting, sputtering as his cigarette was launched from his mouth and into the algae-covered fish pond below.

“Elliot, God, you scared the bejesus outta me!”

Elliot shrank for a moment, worried he had made him angry, but was swiftly wrapped up in his grandfather’s customary bear hug. The embrace was firm and loving, though noticeably weaker than it had been in the past. He was not crushed or lifted up; he couldn't be anymore. Elliot pushed the thought away, making up the difference with his own strength.

The sound of his father’s heavy footfalls began to rise up the stairs, and his grandfather pulled away.

“Hey, pal,” he said in a low tone of voice. “Would you mind not telling your dad I was smoking?” 

He grinned a yellow grin.

“Oh. Uh, yeah, sure.” 

Elliot stumbled, throwing a glance backwards.

“Thanks pal. Maybe we can share one when he ain't looking, eh?”

He patted Elliot on the back, standing up before his stammering refusal began. His uncle and cousin arrived shortly after, and everyone began to settle into the house. Grocery bags containing little except beer and sandwich meat were dug into, filling the living room with the familiar bad jokes and laughter. Elliot sat motionless at the center, intently listening as the chatter grew cruder. It was as if they were slipping into a different language, quickening and slurring their speech. Some words Elliot was not allowed to say, so he would try to look at the ground when he heard them. 

To his surprise, his dad gave begrudging approval for a viewing of Inglourious Basterds, sitting down next to him on the old couch as Levi slid the DVD into the television.

“Just don’t tell your mom, ok?” he said, winking. 

Elliot’s dad was halfway through a stack of dishes by the time the credits began to roll. Levi had slumped into the couch, absorbed by his phone, leaving Elliot with the full attention of his uncle and grandfather, looming over him with tipsy, knowing smiles. 

“So, Elliot,” his uncle began, trying to rebalance himself into an upright position. “How old are you by now? What grade?”

“Fourth. Ten.” Elliot swallowed. “I’m ten, and I’m just done with fourth grade.” 

“Wooooow,” his grandfather replied, drawing out the single syllable in mock amazement.

“But last time I saw you, you were down here!” He waved a hand somewhere vaguely down by his ankle. “What are they teaching in school these days?”

“Well, we just finished our unit on Native Americans. We did a project on the Sioux. They were the ones who lived on the plains.” 

“Ah, Indians, huh? What didja learn, makin’ arrowheads and startin’ fires?”

Elliot frowned, trying to stomach it and move on.

His father caught this, mercifully interjecting with, “Native Americans, dad. You gotta call ‘em Native Americans now.” 

Grandpa grimaced and gave a dismissive wave, knotting the deep lines of his forehead in preparation for a counterargument. Eager to not lose any momentum, Elliot quickly brushed past it.

“I mean, we never learned how to make fires, I don’t think we would be allowed, but we did use bamboo poles and tarps to make a teepee. It was waterproof and everything. We got to stay in there overnight a few weeks ago.”

“Wow, no kidding?” his uncle said.

“Yeah,” Elliot answered. “Like, as a field trip. We made it through the whole night, even though it rained.” He allowed a small swell of pride to straighten his spine as a round of thoughtful nods passed between the older men.

Suddenly, Grandpa sat up, struck by an idea. He scootched closer to Elliot, spilling a bit of his drink on the couch in an excited lurch before asking, “Hey, tell me, how many girlfriends do you have?”

Elliot’s smile faltered, thrown off guard by the sudden shift. He glanced towards his uncle, hoping for some escape, but this new line of questioning had piqued his interest and now both men leaned forwards, intently waiting for an answer. After a string of stuttered syllables shook their way out of Elliot, his uncle jabbed an invasively friendly elbow into his ribs.

“What’s the matter, too many to count?”

Elliot quietly stared into his shoes as he turned the question over in his mind. It had been mostly latent, until recently. The girls were like anyone in his class, except maybe that they played with different rules. Crushes were just a game, like any other they played; silly and pretend, meant to be left outside when it was time to come in. Now, though, there was a persistent awareness of proximity, a constant trade of stolen glances. An invisible divide had begun, and everyone seemed to be holding their breath for the other shoe to drop. Holding onto each other’s sleeves in the dark. 

But he knew that isn’t what they wanted to hear. 

“Yeah,” Elliot said, voice steady. “I gotta beat ’em off me with a stick.” 

The older men erupted in jeers as the bony hand of his grandfather clapped him on the back, the impact vibrating his chest with a hollow feeling. Elliot heard that line from an old TV show. He thought that it didn’t sound much like himself at all, and that made him feel tired. Still, the warm, woody laughter had an infectious quality to it, and a small smile grew across his face.

Sighing, Elliot’s dad gestured out towards the violet ribbons streaking away from the setting sun.

“It’s about time to set up the fire, if we want to be able to see on the way down.”

“Ah shit, you’re right.” his uncle agreed, drawing himself up from the impression he had sunk into. “I’ll get the chairs, you can get the cooler.” 

All five men rose from their seats and began to gather their things, ambling down to the lake at a leisurely pace. As he looked up at the dimming orange in the sky, Elliot was struck by something he had forgotten.

“Wait!” he said. “Mom told me to call her before it got dark.” 

“Ah, shoot, sorry bud,” his dad replied. “My phone’s dead.”

“Mine isn’t,” Levi called back over his shoulder. “You can use it.”

“Alright, just come right down when you’re done,” said Elliot’s father. 

He nodded and turned back, running up the rickety wooden stairs, ignoring the twigs and seeds that jabbed into his bare feet. Once he found Levi’s chunky, camo-colored phone, he opened it and traced his finger over the call application. 

He didn’t click it.

Instead, intently listening to the quiet house, he secretly swiped over to Levi’s camera roll. The memory of that purple lace urged him forwards as he scrolled through the photos for a flash of maroon. The picture remained elusive for several minutes, prompting him to look through the other albums. He grew more anxious as time passed, paranoid that someone would return and catch him in the act. The urge was fading, and he was about to give up when he saw an album named “misc” tucked away in the back. He threw a glance over his shoulder, then jabbed it with a finger.

Elliot froze.

It was pictures of Levi’s girlfriend, but they were different. She was on the ground, translucently pale against a mulchy forest floor. Long brown hair, full of pine needles. Those bangs, a bruise on her cheek, a black jacket, a green bra, some cuts, a small golden cross on her neck. Some dried blood, eyes glassy, looking at nothing.

Not smiling.

The living room was quiet for that moment, muted by an endless static. Elliot swiped his thumb across the picture, dismissing it and revealing a wall of photos, each one a slight variation of the one before. Brown and white and black and green, and red. He tapped the back arrow, returning to the menu. He hit the home button and saw Levi’s background, a picture of his father’s german shepherd. He set the phone down on the table and stared at it for a long time. Then, Elliot turned around and walked down the trail, his footsteps making a silent, rhythmic crunch as he approached the campfire on the edge of the lake. The four men sat in relative quiet, their low mumbles interspersed with sudden bouts of bubbling laughter. They were surrounded by a pitch black forest, inky lake waters quietly lapping against the rocks of the shore.

Elliot walked over to his dad, sitting in the foldout chair next to his and staring into the fire. It crackled and jumped with hypnotic rhythm, red embers pulsing with his heartbeat. He didn’t realize his father was speaking until he repeated himself for the fourth time.

“Elliot, did you talk to your mom?” His dad had put a hand on his shoulder, and a look of growing concern was spreading across his face.

“No,” Elliot said, the single syllable rolling off his tongue like a lead ball. “She must have gone to sleep.”

Surprised by how easily the lie had come, he turned back to the fire. He felt the hand hesitate, then retreat as his father settled back into his chair.

“Want a beer?” said his grandfather, sitting on a nearby log. He was smiling at him as he offered up a brown bottle.

“Dad,” Elliot’s father began, uncomfortable but unable to finish the sentence.

“I was younger than him when I had my first beer, you know,” he replied, raising an authoritative eyebrow. “So were you.”

“Come on, let the punk live a little,” Levi snickered, taking a long swig from his own bottle.

“Are you even old enough to drink?” Elliot’s uncle asked, letting his head roll on a drunken swivel towards his son. 

“Jesus Christ, I will be in a month, alright?” Levi spat back, clutching the beer towards his chest. 

Elliot’s uncle tried and failed to muster enough willpower for a retort, releasing a gurgling belch instead. 

“You don’t have to try it if you don’t want to, bud,” his dad said softly. 

Wordlessly, Elliot took the bottle and brought it to his lips. A lukewarm acid flashed across his mouth, followed by a wave of sickly bubbles that seeped through his gums and trickled down his throat. Stifling a cough, he muscled it down with a slightly painful gulp.

“It’s good,” he said.

“Attaboy.”