Tonight Richard wore his green slicker, the rain coming down so heavy it molded the plastic to his upper body, making him look something like a topiary himself. He looked into the eyes of that Sherman work of art and saw the same vacancy that he noted in the eyes of the actual man he’d just been with. Did Wayne Sherman recognize this in Charles? When he lifted his shears to clip the leaves, did Charles’s vacancy burn in his mind like it burned in Richard’s now? Perhaps every topiary, marble statue, and plaster casting ever rendered had something of that same void.

The void that Charles was.

Richard closed his eyes and when he opened them, the bush statue remained. Charles in nature. Charles’s nature.

Richard thought back.

Charles wasn’t the only kid Richard’s mom advised her son to steer clear of, but it struck him as extra meaningful when, after seeing Charles the eleven-year-old for the first time, she leaned in and said,

“You must try to avoid that one, Richard.”

It was clear to everyone who met him that Charles was something problematic. Not the manic, destructive hell-raiser or the conniving and enervated bully that unnerved so many adults, but the sort that even those types of kids stayed away from. From the start, Charles was different in a different way.

And Richard became his only friend.

You’ve put me in a spot, Charles, Richard thought, staring into the deep-green eyes of that Sherman topiary.

Even by Goblin standards the rain was fantastic, punishing, and Richard thought back, attempting to isolate Charles’s history in a jar, the history he’d witnessed himself, growing up in Goblin, through the years.

There were scenes…

High school parties where girls pulled Richard aside to ask him what was wrong with his friend.

Times at Charles’s house when Richard saw real and raw fear in the eyes of Charles’s own parents.

Times when Richard was just as afraid.

Was there a singular moment, a beat or a bump, that could act as a finger and point to the story Charles had just unloaded in the car? Should Richard have seen this story coming?

Staring into the dark-green, leafy eyes of the false man before him, Richard thought hard about the real one.

Yes, he knew, there were scenes….

2

The day Charles moved to Goblin, Richard’s doorbell rang and his mom, looking through the living room window, flashed Richard a concerned expression.

But Richard was curious. A new friend? Richard, a shy bookworm, could use all the friends he could get.

Richard answered the door himself.

“I’m here to introduce myself,” Charles said.

“Okay, so who are you?”

“I’m Charles Ridnour. I live in the green house…there.”

He pointed up the street. Richard knew the house.

“I’m Richard Robin,” Richard said.