Fiction

By Henry Fisher

La Lumiere School

Milk Teeth

Last summer was the last time Jonah and I were together. He made me help him dig a trench in my own backyard, because he swore we were at war with the ants. With the hose on, the wet mud sunk deep under my fingernails, as I scraped away a hole into the middle of the yard. He was busy lining up his plastic army guys like generals, a warm Capri Sun lodged in his back pocket like it was some kind of field ration. And Elvie, of course, was sitting cross legged, ripping out grass and laying it out on her thighs. She was always with him, even though she didn’t really do anything. She wouldn't exactly watch us, more like watch the ants. Or the dirt. Or the way the breeze blew around the grass. She only ever spoke when Jonah talked to her, and even then it was soft. 

If we were racing bikes down my favorite hill, she was there on the sidewalk with her knees pressed against her chest. If we went to look for frogs by the creek, she was the one holding the flashlight. I didn’t mind, or think about it much back then. She was just Jonah’s sister. Kind of weird, kind of quiet, always there.

Jonah was the kind of friend who made everything feel like it was important. Even sitting in the sun doing nothing felt like it was part of a secret mission when he was around. Once, we swore we saw a UFO fly over my house, and he made me help him draw out the landing coordinates in chalk across the driveway. My mom got mad about the mess, but Jonah said, “If they come back, they’ll know we saw them.” He said stuff like that all the time. To Jonah, everything was part of a bigger picture. And then, one day, he was just gone.. 

Anyway, it’s different now. Sometimes I still see Elvie in front of her house. She doesn’t sit cross legged and watch the world anymore. She walks up and down the sidewalk slowly and carefully, like if she steps wrong, something might happen. Her red hair now covers her face as she watches her feet walk. It’s longer now, tangled at the bottom like she forgot to brush it all the way through, or maybe doesn’t care to. 

She never looks up when I wave from my window. Never. 

The first time I noticed her do something different was the morning after a long storm. The air was earthy and damp, the grass between our houses was wet enough to get through the holes in your crocs, and drench your socks. I was on my porch, stepping my boots on, when I spotted her crouched near the edge of her front lawn, facing a bush. She had something clutched in her fist, I couldn’t tell what it was from where I stood. She looked around the area, checking if anyone was there, turning her head once over each shoulder quickly and suspiciously. Then she dug a hole in the wet dirt with her fingers and dropped the thing in. Covered it up, smoothed the soil with her palm. I thought it was a marble. Or maybe a dead bug. Kids bury weird things.

She stood there for a little afterwards, like she was waiting to see if something might happen. Not hoping for anything, just waiting. I went back inside before she looked my way. I thought maybe I should’ve said hi or something, but it’s hard to know what to say. Especially to someone like Elvie. 

The whole burying thing nagged at me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Why was she doing it? What was she hiding? Was it something important? Just another strange thing she did? She was always strange, but not in a bad way. Just like she was wired a little differently. A few days later, my mom was sitting at the kitchen counter scrolling through Facebook, the mom version of Instagram, when she said something under her breath. 

“Hey, Parker, look, someone posted this,” she said, flipping her screen around. “Some kid found a tooth sitting on the slide at Howard Park. Apparently it was old and rotting- so gross. If you see a tooth somewhere, don’t touch it.” 

I stared at the screen for a second, keeping my face blank. My mind immediately flashed back to earlier that morning, to Elvie’s fingers in the dirt. The way she buried whatever it was, so careful, so focused. 

“Maybe someone lost their tooth while going down the slide,” I said, watching my tomato soup pour off the spoon. My stomach had that sinking feeling, the kind you get before you throw up or when your parents are mad at you. 

The next day, my mom brought up the tooth thing again, this time jokingly as she told my aunt about it on the phone. “There have been three different baby teeth found scattered around town. Can you imagine? A kid playing Tooth Fairy in reverse.”

I couldn’t laugh. It didn’t feel funny. I thought of Elvie again, standing there in the grass, still as a statue. Watching the ground like she wanted it to swallow her. My brain kept replaying that image of her, hands dirty, eyes stuck on the ground. I didn’t want to think about it. Just because she’s a little odd doesn’t mean she’s leaving teeth around town. She’s been through a lot. 

I didn’t mean to spy on her. At least not really. 

But early one morning, just as the sky was starting to pink, I saw her. 

She stepped out of her house barefoot, wearing a big navy hoodie that hung past her fingertips. The street was still sleeping. No birds yet, no dog walkers, just that stillness before the world turns on. I don’t know what made me do it. I didn’t even put on shoes. Just grabbed my zip-up and slipped out the front door, keeping a couple houses distance behind her. I told myself I just wanted to make sure she was okay. Elvie’s only eleven. She shouldn’t be out here alone this early. 

She didn’t look back once. 

She moved like she had somewhere to be. Past the rusty dead end sign, through the opening in the chain-link fence at the back of the park, up the grassy slope behind the field. I followed her on a diagonal, stepping behind trees when she slowed down, staying on soft grass to keep quiet. 

She froze at the top of the hill. 

The hill. The one we used to race down with our feet off the pedals. Jonah always won. He said brakes were for cowards. There’s a wooden bench up there. She sat on it for a second, then pulled something from her hoodie pocket and laid it beside her on the wood planks.

A small browned white shape. A tooth. 

My legs brought me forward before I could think about it. 

“They’re Jonah’s,” she said, still not looking at me. “I’m putting them back. So when he finds his way home, he knows who he is.” 

Her voice was steady. That’s what gutted me. 

“I haven’t placed them all yet,” she added, like it was a secret. “But I’m close.” 

I didn’t know what to say. I stood there, useless. The wind picked up and the trees waved. Elvie slid her fingers along the edge of the bench. His name was still there, carved with a fork in jagged letters. JONAH. He wanted us all to do it, so people would know we’d been there. Like we mattered. 

“I think this one belongs here,” she said. 

She said it like it made perfect sense, as if his memory was a thing you could scatter like breadcrumbs. Then she turned around and walked down the hill like the moment hadn’t happened. Like she hadn’t just told me she was planting her dead brother’s baby teeth across town so he wouldn’t be lost. 

I didn’t follow. I sat beside the tooth. Looked at it. Tried to remember the last time he’d smiled with it in. The gap it left. I thought about the time he wiped out at the bottom of the hill and laughed even with blood in his mouth. I thought about how I never carved my name into the bench, even though he asked me to. Said it didn’t matter to me then. 

But now it did.

I reached into my hoodie pocket. I wasn’t even thinking about how I had it, but there it was. His old green army guy. I’d found it in my yard months ago and never threw it away. I set it next to the tooth. 

And walked down the hill.