The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

she accomplished an impressive feat. How had she put it back so swiftly, so deftly?

“Your eye, it’s back in,” I said.

“What’re you talking about, man?”

“It’s popped back in.”

“It wasn’t popped out, man.  I was just trying to show you the world-famous Jaycee eye-crossing trick.  I’ve been practicing since I was three.  Not shitting you. You ever see anyone do it like that?”

“No, I guess I haven’t.”

She stared at me, waiting for more.  I grew more confused as the period of silence continued.

“Well?” she said finally. “Your turn?”

I must have gawked at her, the thought of me popping my own eye out.

“Your eye trick, man,” she said. “Do yours.”

“Right,” I said with some relief. “You want me to look at the back of my own head.”

“Yeah, look at your brain, man. Show me.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t need the kind of preparation she required. I just did it. I rolled my left eye as far as it would roll, wanting very badly to impress her. I didn’t need a reflective surface to know that it rolled all the way to the back of my head so that nothing by the sclera showed. By now, I’d learned to keep the right eye completely stationary while I did this, so I could watch her reaction the whole time.  I could see her and the place where dreams form all at the same time.  I accomplished the feat so perfectly that the two things—her and the place where dreams hide—practically became one and the same, and I almost didn’t notice the expression forming on her face.

When I saw her look of horror, I stopped.

She stared at the pink slit under my left eye, my scar.

“Oh, Jesus, oh god,” she said, “what the fuck is in there?”

I didn’t know what she meant.  I just performed a perfect eye trick.

She extended the tip of her finger, as if to touch my scar.  But she stopped short, withdrew the finger without touching me, and walked away, perhaps remembering she’d wanted to avoid physical contact between us.

I wouldn’t have minded if she touched me, but she never did, and she also didn’t speak to me again for the rest of the day. Nor did she ever speak to me again for that matter, all the way until the day she died.

We didn’t notice she died, not at first.  It seemed like she just decided not to come in to work, which suited me just fine.  After all, when you work retail, especially fireworks retail, you don’t get rich; you just hope you’ll get by, and you need all the hours you can get, so when Jaycee didn’t show up for her shifts, I took the extra work and didn’t give her well-being a lot of thought.

Not until the authorities showed up at Hellstorm Fireworks.

They didn’t talk to me. They just wanted the boss, who left me in charge of the floor while he talked to the policemen inside his office.  Normally, I would’ve assumed they just wanted to check some of our recent sales—when you buy fireworks, especially the big kind, you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork and show your driver’s license.  But something about the demeanor of the policemen told me it had something to do with Jaycee not showing up for work.

Sure enough, the boss called me over when they left.

“Jaycee’s dead.” He said it just like that. No warning to prepare for bad or shocking news. He just laid it out in the simplest way possible. I don’t recall what I said or if I conveyed shock. I hope I conveyed concern.

“You know if she had a glass eye?” the boss said.

“What?”

“A glass eye. They asked me if I knew whether or not she had a glass eye.  Shit, half the people who come through the door here have glass eyes. Or burn marks. One of the two, at least.”

“Why would they want to know if she had a glass eye?”

“Beats the living fuck out of me.” Then he regarded me as if he’d just gotten a good look at my face for the first time and didn’t like what he saw. “Well? Do you know if she had a glass eye or not?”

Naturally, I thought of her eye trick.  I did see her eye pop out, no question about it.  I didn’t imagine it, and a glass eye explained everything. She crossed her eyes—or her eye, I guess—with such intensity that she caused it to pop out.

“I guess I did,” I said, finally.

“Must’ve been an exact duplicate,” the boss said. “Probably worth hundreds. Thousands even. And you knew she had it. Know what this means, don’t you?”

I didn’t.

He said, “Means the police’ll want to talk to you.  Probably show up at your house when you least expect it. Better be prepared. Have an alibi. Because,” he lowered his voice and leaned forward, “I suspect that whoever killed her performed some kind of mutilation on her. Took her glass eye. Why else would the cops be asking if I knew she had a glass eye?” He paused. “Alibi, kid.  Make sure you have an alibi.”

But I didn’t need an alibi. The fact that the boss said I needed one made me wonder about the conversation that passed between him and the authorities. Perhaps he knew more, or more than he confided to me. Perhaps he suspected me of something.

Or perhaps he himself was hiding something. Some kind of guilt. A crime, one for which he needed me to take the blame.

My house had grown old and fallen into disrepair.  I don’t make the kind of money that can pay for regular upkeep. The neighbors complained about it, too—just not to my face.  Instead, I received anonymous letters in the mail, very briefly worded and apparently typed on a manual typewriter. The more I think about it, the more I think the letters all came from the same person. Someone old, perhaps: a shut-in, someone who didn’t even know how to use a computer