Southern Legitimacy Statement: I am from the South shore of Long Island which is positively Faulknerian if you compare it to Gatsby’s East Egg.

Cody

 “You ever seen a dead body?” asked Cody.

I was just glad he was speaking to me again. 

“No,” I said.

“Interesting,” said Cody.

“Have you?” I asked. 

No answer.

“Not yet,” he finally said.

We sat high above the quarry swinging our legs over the edge of the precipice. It was a long way down.

Cody was new in town. 

He had brought some danger and excitement to the summer. I was a pretty strait-laced kid. Riding your bike with no hands made you a rebel in my book. Well, Cody was the real deal. He cut classes. Cussed. Smoked.

 He was moved into my science class that spring. Normally I would never talk to a tough looking kid like Cody but by pure chance we were assigned to a group project. On flowers of all things. We agreed to meet at the park for the assignment. We didn’t talk much, just took the required pictures of native vegetation. I did all the work to be honest. The only time Cody showed much interest was when we stumbled across a rabbit caught in a trap. I couldn’t look but he stopped and stared at that for a long time. 

After that I would see him at lunch period. He would disappear during our scheduled eating time. After we were released outside for the second half of lunch, he would sit alone under a tree at the end of the play yard. He mostly just sat there and whittled. Until his knife was taken away. I got the nerve to approach him one day in the line returning from lunch recess. I asked him where he went during the mealtime. He said he forgot his lunch so just waited in the John until they let us outside. 

“Every day?” I asked. 

No answer. 

After that I began bringing an extra sandwich and dropping it by Cody under his tree. And then I began staying with him while he ate it. We started to talk a little then, about nothing special just normal things. Although he didn’t know much about sports or music or gaming or influencers like other kids. He liked to talk about cars. Girls of course. And old movies. Gangster movies. 

By the end of the school year, we were spending almost every day together. We would ride out to the quarry. He on his old rickety bike. Sometimes he would have a different bike each week. We would sit and smoke high above the rocks below. We’d throw down empty pop cans and hear them rattle the long way down.  

It wasn’t just about him, my parents said when they told me I needed to take a break from Cody.  They didn’t want me spending so much time with any one person. It wasn’t healthy. And they knew nothing about his family. 

Cody did not take it well when I told him I couldn’t see him for a while. He just stared at me for a long time. Then he turned and rode away without a word. 

After two weeks of my moping and sitting home alone my parents relented and said I could see him on occasion just not as often. They saw I was not exactly brimming with social opportunity myself. They unblocked him on my phone and I proposed a meetup. With apologies. This trip back to the quarry was our first outing since what he called his banishment. He said he bet I was surprised he knew that word. I asked what he’d been up to since I last saw him, but he didn’t answer. 

“I want you to look very carefully at this picture,” said Cody gently placing his phone in front of my face. I looked in expecting to find who knows what, maybe a picture of a corpse. I was surprised to see my own confused face reflecting back at me. He had switched his phone into selfie cam mode. It acted like a mirror. 

“It’s just me,” I said, “what’s the big deal?”

“Remember when you said you’d never seen a dead body?” He asked.

“Yes,” I said, not yet understanding. 

“Well, now you have,” he said,” gently pushing me over the edge.