The bartop is scratched and slick with an expanding ring of condensation from my glass. The guy on the other side of the counter keeps flitting his eyes towards the little puddle forming, rag at the ready to wipe it away, but my hand remains plastered to the drink. Honestly, it’s a shithole bar, I don’t think my self-contained mess could possibly be their biggest problem, but something adjacent to shame starts picking a scab deep in my chest. My legs and eyelids are heavy. I keep unwittingly glancing over to see if the bartender is still waiting for me to move. We accidentally lock eyes, and I try to look busy reading the flyers littering a corkboard on the wall between me and the emergency exit.

Support the Rogue Theatre Booster Club! This Thursday at Bjorn’s, 20% of the night’s profits will benefit the RTBC.

Open all night. Cardinals Taxi Cabs: 617–555–1329

SEE SOMETHING? SAY SOMETHING! Report any suspicious or unwanted behavior to staff. Help ensure everyone gets home safe.

A faded and half-torn Stranger Danger sticker clings to the metal frame. At this point, the scratched off text only reads anger Do g. The world spins a little, and I feel the card in my pocket start to burn a hole in my jeans.

The guy behind the bar, giving up on his not-so-subtle glances, gives a world-weary huff and pulls out a bottle of surface cleaner, sprays down the counter, and wipes, leaving me in a small perimeter of my own germs. The smell of antiseptic tugs at something in me.

✧✦✧

People tend not to remember much about elementary school, but for whatever reason, just about every person you ask can recount their lesson on Stranger Danger. Maybe it was the shock of learning that the boogeyman was real, or simply the novelty of getting to talk about something gruesome before you were old enough to go to PG-13 movies, but it was burned into us. It sort of took on a life of its own in Hurston. In the final summer of the 1970s, the nation rather suddenly awoke to find the impending and ever-present dangers of the modern world. Much to the dismay of aging hippies, hitchhiking had lost its romance, and front door locks creaked with the strained sudden movement of long-unused metal. Kids began showing up on milk cartons, and come fall, schools were left with the unenviable task of explaining that, actually, no one is safe. Hurston’s largely Catholic population was more than happy to adopt the Stranger Danger program as the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s stole more headlines.

By the time my siblings and I were in school, the Stranger Danger programs were almost a rite of passage. If you took a walk in town at the right time of year, you could almost always spot “don’t talk to strangers” stickers slapped on the back of stop signs, the sides of trash cans, anywhere public enough to feel the rush of vandalism without actually risking anything. If you were lucky, you had an older, taller brother who’d let you scramble onto their shoulders just so you could place a sticker that much higher than the other kids. John would let me climb up his back when I was still quite little, but he had reached his limit with me by the time I hit second grade. Ever dutiful in his role as the overachieving older brother, I officially lost interest when he started talking about the role of weight distribution in the spine on bone longevity. Not my sister Laura, though, she’d walk around town with me every year, finding creative places to hide the stickers. In those days, I was stuck to her hip like a lost dog.

Like most other schools in the area, all safety campaigns and programs at Saint Joe’s were held in those useless few days before Thanksgiving break no one ever knows what to do with. Each class would tidy up their room for break, then start whatever program after morning recess. The smell of cleaning supplies would linger for the rest of the day in the freshly cleaned rooms.

✦✧✦

I’m several drinks in before finally forcing myself to reach for my pocket. The bartender has placed a coaster within reach and gone on break. Something softens in me a little. Each time I set down the glass, it slides a few inches across the bartop, slick and frictionless with condensation. Acquiescing, I drag over the coaster and let it become part of the imaginary atmosphere I’ve created for myself, sitting alone in an increasingly empty bar. Both my vision and my hands shake a little as I pull the embossed cardstock out of a torn white envelope.

John + Christina

You’re invited to the wedding of John Callaghan and Christina Drake

3 p.m. June 4th at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church

I let the large, curving script blur into abstraction. There’s no use claiming the invitation got lost in the mail, I already opened a text from my mom asking if I would be staying at the house or in a hotel, and if I was staying at home, did I need Dad to pick anything up from the store for me. If there’s a conveniently plausible but ultimately unverifiable way to get out of your own brother’s wedding, I’m yet to find it. My chest tightens. I want to say I’m happy for him, but I think about the inevitable pontification that “love is patient, love is kind” and find myself slamming back my drink before the image settles clearly in my mind’s eye.

I consider the possibility of returning to my childhood bedroom, and the homecoming seems all the more dreadful. There’s a perverted sort of intimacy in knowing where all the stairs creak. Their positions are laid out in my mind like piano keys, cacophonous at the worst time of night. Christina will be lovely, as she always is, and that will just make it worse. John will clap me on the back and search my eyes for any sign of trouble. He will then brush this off by asking if I’ve done something different with my hair, and I’ll say no, that I haven’t done anything different to my hair since like junior year, and he’ll laugh in a forced sort of way. No one will mention the chasm devouring the room or the silence between sentences. I just don’t have the energy for that song and dance anymore.

✧✦✧

It must have been around fourth or fifth grade that the Stranger Danger program changed. Hurston joined as one in a long line of communities rocked by scandal; a ground-shaking report backed by a wave of local survivors made the longstanding culture of abuse increasingly impossible to sweep under the rug. Pressure in the church was building, and schools were scrambling to respond. What you need to understand is that in places like Hurston, the Church is a political institution, even if it isn’t on paper. An exposé written for a major news network the following year would describe the atmosphere of the archdiocese to be like that of “a black-out drunk’s morning after,” scrambling to piece together a semi-coherent explanation, all while nervously wondering if their own name would come up in the recounting of events. In need of a PR life raft, Catholic schools in Hurston and neighboring towns would drop the typical Stranger Danger curriculum for one that taught students how to recognize and protect themselves from people who weren’t strangers at all. It’s a weird thing to tell a kid that kindness is a sign of danger.

It goes without saying, we didn’t get stickers that year. For Thanksgiving, I watched us all eat as a family with a 20,000-foot view. Everything looked treacherous from that height. I thought of Christmas cards from teachers, and when the neighbors used to babysit my brother, my sister, and me. The edges of my world seemed to sharpen, and threats appeared where there were none before. Favors became sinister. But when we went back to school after the long weekend, it was back to business as usual, at least for us kids. No follow-up with students, low-toned conversations between teachers were shut down before they could start. A slow simmering sort of panic began to settle between my neurons. I folded in on myself.

Every so often, a kid would leave school without more than a whisper. Sometimes teachers or clergymen would leave, too, but far less often. Hurston was built and thrived on the unspoken.

By eighth grade, I had gotten good at playing the obedient quiet kid. I picked up the piano and tried to be a basketball star, but to no avail. Christmas that year had a good snow — the type that muffles sound and smooths out the world, the previous mounds of brown ice and gravel that adorned the roadsides were hidden for the day. Laura was spending less and less time at the house. She started taking walks, and by winter, they were counterintuitively getting longer. So that Christmas, a quiet kid made quieter in the soft white landscape, I followed after her. She stood in a clearing of evergreens past the library on the far side of what would be a soccer field in warmer weather, smoking a cigarette. The smoke and the cold visibility of her breath offered her a mystical quality. Time stood frozen for a moment, as did I. My eventual appearance garnered nothing more than a puff of white air somewhere between an exhale and a sigh. Her face was tear-streaked, but I don’t think she noticed me noticing.

“Can I try some?” I pointed at her half-smoked cigarette. She raised an eyebrow.

“No.” She mustered a level of incredulity that can truly only be achieved by big sisters who have just been asked a very stupid question.

“Why not?”

She looked at me sidelong, considering her answer.

“You have to know the rules before you break the rules,” she said. “And you’re not old enough to know the rules yet.”

And she was right. I didn’t know the rules. God knows I’ve never been very good at knowing how to break them either. That winter, I tried once more to follow her, to glimpse whatever worldly secrets she understood that I did not. I found my answer in the library back parking lot when the high school math teacher at Saint Joe’s pulled in, the block completely abandoned save for Laura waiting against a cement wall. He was still wearing a clerical collar when she stepped into his beat-up Taurus. I watched silently from out of view as he reached across her front and buckled her seatbelt for her before driving off, his right hand resting on the inside of her thigh. I almost made it home before the onset of vertigo got the best of me. I threw up in the neighbor’s bushes. I didn’t see much of Laura after that, but to be fair, I didn’t see much of myself either.

✦✧✦

The man behind the bar looks exhausted when he makes the last call, the edges of his hair sticking with sweat. I’m staring at my phone screen, hoping that if I look at the texts from my mom for long enough, the whole situation will resolve itself.

“Caleb is sorry he couldn’t make it,” I make my mom say in my head. Her mouth opens to offer a better excuse, to let me off the hook in some way, but neither of us has anything more to say. Just the refrain “Caleb is sorry.”

Glancing up, I realize the bar is empty save for me and the bartender. He looks at me like he’s trying to remember a question he wanted to ask, but quickly looks away as I raise my chin to him. This time, it’s his turn to pretend he is busy — fiddling with a dishwasher that is already running, picking up bottles of liquor as if to mark their volume. I yank out cash from an inside pocket without bothering to count it. I probably over-tipped, but I simply cannot summon the energy to care. My mind is still stuck in Hurston. As the bartender collects the cash from the bartop, he gives me a once-over and seems to make a decision.

“Hey man, can I call you a cab?” he throws his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the flyer on the corkboard.

He is studying me with a sincerity that makes my skin itch. The more I try and stop my hands from shaking, the more twitchy they become. The alcohol flush prickles my cheeks, and I turn out my pockets. A few more dollars flutter to the floor, but that is all they hold.

“No keys. Not driving. Just gonna enjoy the snow,” I try to point out the window, only to realize the bar does not have one.

Over the course of the night, its ceiling has somehow gotten lower. I turn back to the man, hoping he understands what I’m getting at. Looking at him now, I realize he is younger than I thought he was, his impatience reading more as a genuine eagerness. He looks rather unconvinced, which only makes the space feel smaller.

“Really, I’m fine. I just live up a few blocks,” I steady my voice and attempt to still my swaying.

There is something akin to recognition in his eyes that makes me hyperaware of every facial muscle I have. Trying desperately to maintain a certain level of calm, I breathe deeply, letting my lungs expand to their full capacity. The smell of antiseptic hits me hard enough to make my head ache. His forehead creases with soft concern, and he opens his mouth as if to protest. I feel myself start to walk out before I make any cognizant decision to.

Caleb is sorry.

I very suddenly do not want to be in the bar or drunk in front of this guy or in a church where my brother is getting married or in my childhood bed or around anyone with eyes really.

Caleb is sorry.

My skin is growing too hot and too tight and all I’m breathing in is Laura’s cigarette smoke and my face feels like not mine and it’s leaking out rivulets and I think this is what it feels like to burn forever, oh my God I’m going to hell …

✧✦✧

I spent the rest of my time in Hurston unsure of where to step. After that winter, I started to get excruciating stomach aches, each accompanied by a sense of sheer terror. Abdominal migraines. Doctors and nurses would always ask me the basic “rate your pain on a scale of 1-10.” I still don’t know how to answer that question.

Laura was right, which is deeply annoying. For a long time, I did not know how to properly break the rules. Breaking the rules was dangerous. It made you a bad person. I only ever learned things the hard way. I was not taught boundaries. I was taught that if someone showed you attention, you run as fast and as far as you could. The difference is subtle but distinct. This is how I found myself with no one to look up to.

When Laura died, I stopped trying to know the rules or how to break them. I had no interest in knowing anything if it wasn’t from her. Everything felt foreign, everyone appeared a stranger. She left a note, addressed only to me, tucked in the pages of a paperback she had borrowed. It was damning in ways she knew I would understand. This is something my parents have never seen, and they never will. With her gone, I once again found myself looking at my life with a 20,000-foot view, and everything looked minuscule. There was no hidden design amidst it all, the objects just became smaller. Hurston felt the smallest of all.

The first time I slept with someone, I cried because, for the first time, it struck me that I was taught the word “rape” but not the word “sex.” It is hard to recognize the former without the context of the latter.

I find all these facts dizzying. I don’t know what to do with them. Zooming out doesn’t mean you can see the future; you just see more of now.

✦✧✦

I am out of the bar and across the street, yelling all this at a statue of Jesus. It is dark, but the fresh snow reflects what little light can be found. It is all quiet except for me. I did not mean to find a church, nor did I mean to end up screaming outside of it — but I do and I am. The statue, of course, does not respond. I realize that this is the first time I have been on any church property since high school and that it is indeed not for John’s wedding. This, for whatever reason, is incredibly funny to me. The tears and dripping snot start to roll down my face again, but for different reasons. I topple into the snow with the heaving type of laughter, charmed by the sheer ridiculousness of it all, the breaking down, the silent Jesus statue, all over a wedding invitation.

Cradled in the snow, I think about how this is the type of thing Laura would never have let me live down. The joke becomes a little less funny, and I pause to see my breath become visible in the night air. Lungs filling and emptying. Still alive. Still okay.

The silence of the night is cut through by the distant sound of a door chime and quickening footsteps. Drunk and delirious, I’m suddenly being pulled up by my armpits. Trying to turn around, I slip from the hands and topple once more into the snow. The world stops spinning long enough for me to see the bartender half concerned, half amused above me.

On the second try, he helps me to my feet. The prickly flush hits my cheeks again, and a sharp twist of shame settles in my chest. I try to offer some sort of reassuring explanation that I’m fine and all is well, but of course, I can’t. Instead, I stand frozen like a deer in headlights, mouth slightly ajar. Seeing the panic on my face, the bartender begins to scramble for words.

“Sorry, you just ran out and you didn’t look too good and I thought I heard screaming,” he drags out the end of his words as if to say more, but he cuts himself off with a shake of his head.

“Are you okay?” he tries again.

Apparently realizing that that was not the right question to ask the guy who had been yelling at a statue mere moments before, the bartender pauses.

“Can I drive you home?” he finally offers.

A part of me wants to run. A part of me wants to convince myself that if I back away fast enough, he can cease to be a witness to any of this. And if no one saw anything, there was nothing to see. But the cold is already cutting through me, and remaining upright takes considerable effort. He looks at me with such sincerity, I allow the kindness to just be a kindness.

He leads me gently to his car, allowing the heat to run as he goes to lock up. With my head leaning against his window, I face my phone screen once again. I still don’t love the idea of returning home or sitting through the wedding, but I text my mom and block off the first week of June in my calendar.

The bartender returns. The drive to my apartment isn’t long, but definitely further than I originally suggested. Mercifully, he doesn’t ask me questions or offer half-baked advice about drinking in moderation and yelling at statues. He just plays the radio softly, and the hum of the city sings along with it. Safely delivered home, he flashes me a genuine, good-natured smile.

“Hey, don’t be a stranger.”