Soulmate by James Callan

We were too young for sex, not quite the age yet, but we were in love, or as in love as kids might think they are. We held hands, ignoring the summer sweat gathering between our fingers. We walked through the bush and swam naked in its cold mountain pools. Sometimes we’d buy candy at the corner store, hiding the flavors we purchased so we could play a guessing game based on the taste of each other’s tongues. At the age of eleven, nothing is more thrilling than a cherry-flavored kiss from the girl you love.

When I was twelve, my mom remarried, and Carl, her long-term boyfriend, officially became my stepdad. After that, he put in the effort to win me over. He’d buy me shit I didn’t want—car magazines and comics. I wanted a dog. He got me a gerbil. I tried to find the gratitude hidden within me, but my room smelled like gerbil piss, and really, I’d had my fill of fathers after the first.

One time, I overheard Carl talking to Mom. He said my name, so I stopped to listen at the top of the stairs. Carl had no idea I was eavesdropping, which, from my point of view, made what he said seem sincere.

“He’s my kid, too, you know. If we’re going to live in the same house, we might as well get along.”

“Just go easy, Carl,” my mom had urged him. “Remember… you’re replacing his father. Big shoes to fill.”

“His father was a drunk. He hit the kid! Hit you, too.”

“Go easy,” she said again. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

Carl didn’t go easy. Nothing slow and steady about the way he moved. He asked too many questions. Offered too many invites. In return, I gave him monosyllabic answers, routinely declining his proposals to go camping, to play catch, and evading questions about girls.

“How about that Emily girl? She your girlfriend?”

She’s my soulmate, I wanted to say. “Just a friend,” I told him.

“Well, she’s pretty cute,” he said, which made me angry.

She’s the most beautiful girl in the world. “Yeah, I guess.”

I’ll never forget the summer I turned thirteen. There was a drought that coincided with Emily’s family trip to Europe. While she was away, the neighborhood lawns turned brown, and the hills across the region lost their color, appearing dead. Emily came home when the drought was at its worst, when the summer was at its hottest and driest. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly six weeks.

We went to the corner store and covertly pocketed our candy of choice. It was too hot in the sun, so we hiked in the shade in the bush. Despite the lack of rain, the streams were still running. Under the trees, the world seemed fresh and new.

We cooled off in the mountain pools which remain icy yearlong. We left our clothes on the mossy rocks and dove in. We ate our candy, filling the forested gully with laughter. I don’t know how it began —who touched who first, or if we acted as one, entwining ourselves like two appendages belonging to the same creature— but one thing led to another. It’s all a blur, but I guess we had finally reached that age.

Walking home, I could still taste the wild cherry Nerds on Emily’s tongue. The dead hills and scorched lawns looked beautiful through my rose-tinted glasses. I felt like a man, yet slept like a baby. That night, the rain came down in buckets.

Carl got me a dog for my fourteenth birthday. A border collie named Blue.

“The dog you’ve always wanted,” he said, mussing up my hair like I was still twelve.

My mom arrived from the kitchen balancing a cake with my name in red frosting. Blue, who I would have named Max, jumped up and nearly knocked my mom over. The cake fell on the table, face down, and Carl hit Blue harder than I thought was necessary. My mom flinched when Carl raised his hand to hit the dog a second time. Or maybe she flinched at seeing the destruction of my cake.

“Well, shit,” Carl sighed. “It’ll still taste good.”

He wasn’t wrong. The cake tasted alright. We ate in silence as Blue whined under the table.

Blue wasn’t allowed in the house—Carl’s rule—but I took him with me wherever I went. I called him Max for a few days, but in the end stuck with Blue. It suited him. His eyes were the color of summer sky, and that summer we went everywhere together.

Emily loved Blue as much as I did. We’d take him deep into the bush and run and swim and play. We called him our son, and it sometimes felt like we were an odd little family of forest dwellers. After summer ended, we swam at the pools late into Autumn. It was colder in the forest, but the water was always the same, icy and clear.

One evening, we arrived at our favorite pool, which appeared as if the water had come to life. We had heard of the mountain trout spawning: how eight to ten fish might gather in a single, small pool. But this was different—there were so many more. It was hard to tell exactly how many, but I’d guess there were thirty fish. Red and gold and spotted, they shimmered near the surface.

I started to undress, but Emily said we shouldn’t disturb the spawning. We gave up on swimming, but Blue had other ideas. He got excited by all the movement in the water, the thrashing tails and splashing. He barked at the edge of the pool, scaring the birds from the trees. I laughed, telling my dog to shut up, but Blue kept on barking. I missed my chance to grab him by the collar as he leapt in among the teeming trout.

In the small pool, there was nowhere for the trout to hide. Blue savaged a big one, then started on another. The water turned red with blood and fish eggs. I thought it was funny, laughing long and hard until I saw Emily crying. She told me to stop Blue, going so far as to throw some rocks at him. It wasn’t a big one, but one of the rocks struck Blue in the face. I told Emily to stop, pushing her down onto the rocks.

“Are you fucking crazy?” I shouted. I turned back to the pool to see if Blue was okay, but he had taken off into the bush. This far out, a dog is an easy thing to lose.

Emily kept crying, and I went to her, apologizing. Her hands were red with blood, her backside black with mud.

“I’m sorry,” I must have said one hundred times over the next few hours. “I’m so sorry,” I kept saying. But like Blue, Emily was miles away.

About a year after Blue ran off, Emily and her family moved back to Germany. I remember when they first arrived, neighbors with strong accents and unusual ways. I remember meeting a girl my own age, and from that point on, a stirring inside me that would never go away.

We didn’t talk much in the months leading up to her moving away, but I never wanted to end what I had with Emily. We were only kids, but I thought we’d be together forever. After she left, something inside me remained stirring—to this day, it still does.

At sixteen, my mom taught me how to drive. Carl was an ace behind the wheel, and he was supposed to do the honors, but he left for work one day and never came home. My mom was sad for a long time, and I think she still sort of is. But now there’s Dan, and Dan isn’t so bad, though he can’t stand animals and hates dogs in particular.

I’m eighteen now—a legal adult. I have a job, but I still live at home. Dan says I have until nineteen to find my own way, but we’ll see. Who knows, he may not even be around.

These days, I skip out on the candy when I go to the corner store. Typically, I buy smokes, but today I was in a wild cherry mood. I bought some Nerds and ate the whole pack. I felt sick, but I walked it off, hiking in the bush up to my favorite mountain pool. I dove in, and even though I know it’s cold year-round, the icy water stole my breath—it’s the kind of cold you don’t get used to.

Sometimes I swim for hours or throw rocks into the water. Occasionally, I call out for Blue, sometimes even Emily. I swim some more, throw more rocks. I wait, but no one arrives to join me. I dive deep down into the icy water. When I come up for air, I am all alone. I look around, but nothing has changed. The forest is dark and the water remains cold.

James Callan is a writer from Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, BULL, Citywide Lunch, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His debut collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is forthcoming with Anxiety Press.

X: @JamesCallanNZ