How to Make Friends with the Dark

by Kathleen Glasgow

  “I don’t know about the couch,” I tell her hesitantly. “That’s where my mom slept. Also, just so you know, I think it might be…you know, where she maybe—”

  Shayna holds up a hand. “Say no more.”

  She sighs. “This place might be a little too small. Don’t get me wrong, I’m feeling the whole southwestern rustic kind of thing, but space-wise, it’s a little tight,” she says. “Probably we’ll have to talk about that. When the time comes. If things work out.”

  If things work out.

  She gazes around the room at our stuff, my stuff, my mom’s stuff.

  I feel protective of my mom suddenly, like I want to scoop all her tiny glass bottles of patchouli and her raku bowls of earrings into my arms and hide them.

  “Maybe I’ll sleep out back. You know, all rugged-like, the great outdoors, etc., and all that shit. I’ve slept in my car at rest stops. Lots of time on the beach out in Hawaii. It’s no biggie.”

  I don’t say anything. She can learn on her own about bugs and cicadas and coyotes.

  Shayna picks up her sleeping bag.

  “Well,” she says. “Ciao.” She leaves. The back door opens and closes.

  I get out of bed and take my mom’s boxes out of the hamper and put them on the floor of our shared closet and close the door, but that feels like I’m putting her in a time-out or something, so I settle for the top of the dresser, covering her with one of her flimsy scarves from Ted’s Threads.

  “Good night,” I tell her, turning off the light. I lie down and stare up at the ceiling. One by one, my glow-in-the-dark stars pop out above me.

  But alone in the bed, and in the house, I start to feel weird. Wobbly inside.

  If she was still alive, I’d be listening to her in the other room, humming to herself as she prepared the couch for bed. Scooching herself under her blanket, cracking open her book.

  I’m wiping away tears when Shayna stumbles back, clutching the pink pillow and her sleeping bag. “It’s cold out there. What the shit? It’s May. And it sounds like the jungle or something.”

  “Javelinas,” I sniffle. “They come up through the wash.” Can’t she see I’m crying? Shouldn’t she notice my voice is broken and weak?

  “The who and the what, now?” She pees in the bathroom, leaving the door open. I look away as I answer her.

  “The wash. An arroyo. You know, like a river. Only dry. They fill up when it rains, though. And javelinas are kind of like nasty pigs. Boars.”

  “That’s hideous. And why would they call it a wash? That’s dumb.”

  She comes out pulling up her pink pants. She shakes out her sleeping bag on top of the bed, way over on the right side, at the very edge. She hops up, slips down into her bag, mumbles good night. In a few minutes, she’s snoring.

  I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.

  The moon burns through the window, full and bright.

  Next to me, Shayna shifts. I can’t believe I have a sister, and that she’s in my house, snoring next to me. Big life events are supposed to happen over time, and in a certain order, like birth, school, marriage, death. And your parents are supposed to die when you’re older, not when you’re young.

  That’s the way life is supposed to work.

  The universe is supposed to be kind and wait until you know things about life, like how to open a bank account, or purchase a vacuum cleaner, or get a job, and to eat responsibly, not Little Debbies for dinner, and the universe shouldn’t let your parents die when they are still young, either. You’re supposed to grow old, so old you get sick of people exclaiming how old you are and turning the television down when you want the volume up, and then finally you just get tired of no one listening and not being able to hear Grey’s Anatomy and that’s when you die.

  I feel like I’ve had fifty-seven million giant life things happen in the space of nine days, and suddenly, being back in my own house is both comforting and overwhelming. I don’t know whether to be relieved or still scared. Sleep or stay awake.

  I feel myself sinking into the familiarity of my musty, unwashed bed, the comfort of my own sheets and blankets. My phone lights up and I see the words, You there? And a moon, a star, and a tiger, but I can barely lift my hands to respond. Thaddeus’s words drift before me in the darkness of my room: Good night.

  I fall back and back and back into a grayness that tightens like a spider’s silk around me.

  10 days, 12 hours

  I WAKE UP TO SUNLIGHT on my face, my walls of many colors, my skateboard posters, my familiar soft, pilled blanket.

  I’m home.

  For a minute, my whole body is a golden, glowing thing, because I can hear someone walking outside my bedroom door, moving things around in the kitchen area. I smell fresh coffee.

  It was. It was a terrible dream. A nightmare. A something. Like when Dorothy wakes up and sees Auntie Em and starts babbling about Oz and Auntie Em is like, wtf, Dor? But she’s kind to her anyway, because she thinks Dorothy’s just hit her head.

  Maybe I just hit my head.

  The door opens.

  “Mo—”

  But the person holding the chipped red mug isn’t my mom. My eyes flick to the dresser.

  My mom is in her boxes, under the silk scarf from Ted’s Threads.

  It’s the other person, the strange one. My sister. Her hair on top of her head, mussed and dark. She’s sipping from her mug and scratching her butt through her pink velour pajama pants.

  “Jeez Louise, I thought you were never going to wake up. I even went through your stuff to see if you’d, like, taken something. I mean, you don’t seem like the type, but who knows, right? Grief does weird shit to people.”

  Shayna blinks. “Are you okay? I was just joking. Say something. You were asleep for almost two days. Your friend, that tall girl, she came by and we couldn’t even wake you. She said you were probably traumatized and sleeping it off. Seriously, I was worried.”

  I look at her. “Really? You were worried?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugs. “I didn’t come all this way for nothing, you know. I didn’t come out here just so you could up and die—”

  Her face drains. “I’m sorry. I can be really stupid.”

  I tell her it’s okay, because I’ll probably be getting a lot of that. I try to smile.

  “Good,” she says, triumphant. “That’s what I like to see. A smile. Now, you missed some days of school, which is fine, but we have bigger problems on our hands.”

  “Like what?” I scooch up in bed.

  “Like the fact that your mom hasn’t been paying any bills.” She leans over and flicks the light switch. “We got a letter that this is jussst about to get turned off. We need to get down and pay it in a few days or it’s dunzo. I have a little money, but not too much left, and I don’t know when you’ll start to get whatever it is the state is going to give you or even how much that’s going to be. I called that caseworker but she didn’t call back.” She stares at me carefully.

  “I’m not sure there are a lot of job prospects for me in Mesa Luna. I just want to say that up front. We might have to make some…changes.”

  My heart squeezes.

  “I have some friends in Boise. They bought an old motel by a ski resort. But that’s so much snow.” She shudders. “It could be fun, I guess. And I know people in Portland who do artisanal cheese and raise ostriches, but it’s so damn gray up there. Not even an ostrich can make up for gray skies.”

  The last thing I want is to leave Cake. Leave the little I have, the only place I’ve ever known, but the job thing is true. My mom had to cobble stuff together. A lot of people who live here commute to Tucson or Sierra Vista, or they’re on welfare, or they work for themselves, like the artists and people like Grunyon’s moms, who run the coffee shop/diner/bookstore and are trying to start some sort
of alpaca farm in their backyard with dreams of alpaca scarves, mittens, and hats, though neither of them knows how to make that stuff. Yet.

  “I’m not ready to ditch everything for ostriches and weird cheese,” I say tentatively.

  My sister and I stare at each other.

  “Well,” she says. “You think about it. I know stuff is rough. It would be hard. I’m gonna go sit outside. Get some sun.” She turns.

  Outside. My brain is working overtime through my two-day-sleep fog, through my fear that we might move.

  Outside.

  “Shayna!” I yell so loud she jumps, coffee sloshing from her cup and onto her pink pants.

  “Dude! Turn the volume down!” she shouts back, flicking brown liquid from her pants.

  “No, but, Shayna, outside, outside!” I’m waving my hands.

  “What? What’s outside?”

  I try to kick the blankets off me, get tangled, and half roll onto the floor.

  “Jesus, that dress. Still with the dress?” She shakes her head.

  “Never mind that.” I pop up, pushing hair out of my face. “Outside. The Jellymobile. It’s May, Shayna. It’s time for the Jellymobile.”

  I don’t think I’ve smiled so hard in months.

  10 days, 13 hours, 19 minutes

  IN THE BACKYARD, SHAYNA stares at the Jellymobile. “Um,” she murmurs. “Hmm.”

  “Don’t you just love it?” I say to Shayna, brushing dust off the sexy jalapeño pepper in her cowboy boots. There’s a nick in her big red-lipsticked smile that we’ll have to paint over, and her crown of strawberries and red chiles could use freshening up, too.

  “My God,” my sister says. “Is this for real? Is this real life?”

  “Well, yes,” I say. “Mine. Five days a week in the summer. That’s how we make some money.”

  “All day?” she asks. “Like, sitting in this truck. And people really buy this stuff?”

  “Well, sometimes seven days, depending on how much we made. And sometimes we sit outside, under an umbrella, but yeah, mostly in the truck. We move around town, or over to Sierra Vista, week to week, change up our stops.”

  “And it worked? Like, you made money?”

  “Some. Enough. She drove the Bookmobile for the library, too, and worked at a daycare.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Shayna says hesitantly, “but here goes. Where are these mythical jams and jellies? And who, where, what, why, and when do they happen?”

  I open the door to the outbuilding so she can see the shelves packed with jars, neatly lined up and waiting for a spritz of gingham around the lid, tied with bright yarn.

  Shayna whistles.

  “And your mom made all this? How long does it last?”

  “She does it during the winter, mostly. At night. It can last for like two years if it’s sealed properly. We usually move it into the kitchen in the summer and store it in crates, because it can get hot out here.”

  “Why didn’t she just sell it online? Wouldn’t that be easier than sitting in a truck all day?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. She seemed to like it. We hung out together. She met people. Sometimes, they’d buy more when they got home, wherever that was. I mean, she had business cards and stuff, and then she’d just mail it out after they sent her a letter saying what they wanted and a check.”

  Shayna runs her hands over the truck. “You know, this thing would totally fly in Portland. They love any kind of truck that sells something you can eat or drink.”

  “Well,” I say slowly, toeing the ground. “We don’t live there.” Is she really thinking about making us move?

  Us. What a weird thing to think, that we are an “us” just because we’ve been thrown together. I feel like you need to earn “us-ness.” Or it’s built in. Like with a mom.

  “Well, we have to keep some options open, right?” She walks around the Jellymobile, disappearing for a moment. “There must be a permit or something for this, right? Any idea where she kept it?”

  “You can check inside. She kept stuff like that in the desk in the front room.”

  Shayna’s phone vibrates. She frowns. “Shit.”

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “Nobody. It’s just Ray. I have to take this. I’ll be back.” She pushes the latch on the backyard fence and walks down the alley.

  I text Cake. I’m showing her the truck. We have no money. My mom wasn’t paying bills.

  OMG. June’s Jams. The Jellymobile. Also, you were OUT COLD.

  I know.

  You must feel good being back.

  Yes and no.

  I’m not sure your sister is a jams kind of girl, but maybe?

  Do you want to come over?

  She texts me back a sad face. Can’t. I’m filming my performance video for that camp.

  I thought you didn’t get in. There’s some violin camp in Massachusetts that Cake wanted to go to this summer for three weeks, but she got put on a wait list.

  They had two kids drop out so they’re picking from the list. I have to submit a new piece, though.

  She types, I was going to tell you, but then all this happened. I mean, I’m not going to go! I won’t leave you. I just want to do this video. It’s good practice for when I apply to music schools and stuff.

  You should go. If you get in.

  I don’t think I’ve ever texted anything so slowly in my life.

  Oh God no. Hey, let’s hang out Sunday, okay? I’m thinking we could dig around the house, maybe see if your mom left something.

  Okay.

  Okay.

  I sit down on a lawn chair, the sun warm on my scalp. Cake away for three weeks.

  This is like a whole summer of leavings, all of a sudden.

  Shayna comes back, her face grim. “Let’s do this,” she says with determination. “I need to work off some steam.”

  I notice that her hands are shaking a little bit. “Are you okay?” I ask. “Who is…who is Ray?”

  “Just a guy. It didn’t end well. Not even worth talking about.”

  “Was he your boyf—”

  “I said, not worth talking about. You got a tool kit or anything? We’re probably gonna need to get air in these tires, too.”

  She leans down and feels the tires. She won’t look at me.

  Ray. Something about this worries me. She doesn’t seem like a girl who would get upset about a guy, not the way she handled Pacheco. She seems like somebody who doesn’t take any shit.

  “You gonna help or not? This was your idea, after all.”

  I head into the shed to get cleaning supplies and the tool kit.

  We spend a lot of time cleaning the truck off, which means I get to listen to Shayna swear. A lot. Completely and utterly transfixing combinations of words that I never even knew existed. Probably, if my mother knew her, she’d have found this hysterically funny.

  Which makes me wonder: Did my mom know about her? Shayna was four when I was born. I watch her wipe beads of sweat off her forehead as she runs a sponge over the back bumper.

  What would my mother think of her, of this? Of us, together. Was my mom ever going to tell me about all this…this stuff from her pre-me life?

  And how much does my dad, Dusty Franklin, currently languishing in a minimum security facility in Springer, New Mexico, know about my mom’s life? I mean, don’t people in love share secrets? They must have been in love, right? I mean, there was me, after all.

  Or maybe I was just an accident.

  Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Shayna, maybe we could call Da— Dustin, sometime? Would that be okay? I think he might know some stuff. About my mom. Like before she had me and all. She never…she didn’t really talk about herself all that much.”

  I don’t feel right calling him “Dad” in fro
nt of her. After all, he did that, was that, with her, not me. I feel like she owns that part of him.

  Shayna’s inside the front of the truck now, dusting off the dash. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea right now.”

  “Why not? I mean, you must have the number—”

  “It’s very complicated.” She winds the dust rag into a tight ball.

  “Why? It’s not like he’s going anywhere soon.”

  “Let’s just drop it. I’m here. Isn’t that enough for right now?” She’s getting annoyed.

  “I don’t understand why you’re getting mad. I just want to ask him some questions about my—”

  She throws the balled dust rag down and tightens the scrunchie in her hair. Her voice comes out fast and angry. “Maybe I don’t want him to talk to you, okay? Maybe there’s that. Maybe I don’t think he should get a damn reward for bad behavior, how about that? I’m already out here cleaning up his mess, just like I’ve always cleaned up—”

  She looks at me.

  My face is burning. I bite my tongue as hard as I can without drawing blood.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” She jiggles the Jellymobile’s keys and doesn’t look at me. Her voice is soft.

  “I’m not a mess.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m a little stressed. This is stressful on me, too, okay?”

  “Do you even want to be here? Because you can just go. Really, just go.” My heart’s beating so fast I can hear it in my ears.

  “Of course I want to be here. You’re my sister. Blood is blood.”

  “I’m not a mess,” I whisper.

  “No,” she says. “You’re not.”

  She sighs. “I have a stupid quick mouth, okay? I’ll try to work on that. Let’s just get this going, all right? We’ll talk about Dad later.”