She starts talking before I can say anything else. Her voice is weird, like nothing is wrong, like this angry person in the house with us is not a weird situation at all, but completely normal. “This is Ray. I told you about Ray. He came to visit. You remember I told you about him. Ray, this is Tiger. My little sister. She’s back.”
Ray says, “I can see that.”
My sister looks at the ground.
Once, she expertly shamed the landlord, the bill collectors, and my principal, her voice strong and confident, her ponytail swaying.
But now, her hair is a tangled mess against her face and her voice is hoarse and shallow.
“He’s going to stay for a little while.”
Ray grins. I stop breathing.
My sister keeps looking at the ground.
I was at the horse ranch and I fell in love with a horse and fell in friendship with Mae-Lynn Carpenter and came home ready to be a family with my wild and unpredictable sister and now my sister is someone else. Someone broken and unfamiliar.
Maybe the broken was always in her and I just didn’t want to see it.
Maybe she was good at hiding it.
“Aw, come on,” Ray grumbles, lighting a cigarette and moving out from the doorway. His boots scuff the floor. “Don’t look so grim, kid. I’m not so bad. I’m great at taking care of people, aren’t I, Shay? I’m really good at it. It’s your sister who isn’t so good at it, are you, Shay?”
I don’t know who to look at, It’s Just Ray, or Shayna.
Shayna keeps looking at the ground, licking her lips. I think she’s hungover, really hungover.
When it comes out, her voice is small, and pleading.
“Don’t, Ray. Just don’t.”
He leans back against the counter, smiling. “But we’re all family now, right, honey? We should know each other’s secrets, start with a clean slate.”
“Shayna,” I whisper. “What’s—”
Ray barks so suddenly the phone drops from my hand, clattering on the ground. “Don’t. You. Talk. To. Her.”
He moves up close to me, as fluid as a snake, his face inches from mine, his breath a terrible cloud on my cheek. “Did she tell you what she did? Did she tell you what she did right before she ran away from me?”
Shayna starts to cry. “Don’t listen to him, Tiger. Please. I’m going to make a nice home for us, I promise.”
She sounds like a little girl.
Ray shouts, “You think she really wants to take care of you? Really? She was just using you as an excuse to leave the island. She doesn’t care about you. How could she? She’s a drunk. She killed our baby.” His voice cracks.
Shayna screams, Jesus, Ray, and the sound is so painful I wish I could stop up my ears. Frozen, I watch as Ray begins shaking her, her face crumpled and wet with tears. It’s not what you think, Tiger. I can explain.
His hands dig into the flesh of her bare arms.
I don’t know who I become, but whoever she is, she tries to pull him away from her sister, clawing at his flannel shirt, because blood is blood, kicking at his jeaned leg. Don’t you hurt her.
And then I’m flying, like I’m nothing, a speck, a feather or mote of dust, against the wall, still feeling the strength of his hands as they pushed me so hard, away.
And I’m looking at my sister look at me, her face stricken, and she doesn’t help me, even as the back of my head is ringing from hitting the wall.
But I see her mouth move as Ray nears her again, his eyes clouded over with something I am too scared to think of a word for.
Run.
And then I scoop up my phone and tear out the front door, down the dirt driveway, into the bright day.
* * *
• • •
Cracks spider up and down the front of my phone. The charge says “5%.”
I’m breathing so hard I think my ribs will break. My lungs will explode. My eyeballs will pop and bleed.
I had a mom and now she’s gone. I had a sister and now she’s gone.
I have no one.
I should go back. I can’t go back. I’m afraid to go back. I’m afraid of everything.
My fingers don’t even shake as I press 911, tell the operator a woman is being beaten up at 344 Morales Road, that they need to come quickly.
* * *
• • •
I just start walking. I have no idea where I’m supposed to go. I don’t want to call my sister, and even if I did, now I don’t have a phone. Maybe I’ll just walk to the desert and die there, in the heat and loneliness, coyotes and jackrabbits tearing at my flesh.
I don’t have any water, and I get tired and thirsty and hungry pretty quick.
I stagger at some point, and fall into a teddy bear cholla. The pain sears through my leg and I can barely breathe.
When I jerk my leg away, part of the cactus comes off in my calf. It dangles there, painfully, and I try to use my dress as a kind of mitt to pull it from my leg, but the needles are in too deep, and the spines of the cholla poke through my dress and into the soft pads of my fingers.
I give up. I walk, like a creature undone, slowly and haltingly, the piece of cactus bobbling in my leg. Wherever the black hole is, I am heading toward it.
I walk as far as I can, the teddy bear cholla hunk still dangling from my calf. Then I stop, because I can’t walk anymore, and I don’t want to, because there’s no point.
My sister doesn’t want me. My father doesn’t want me. Cake is all the way across the country. My mother is dead.
I think if I had something right now, something to help me along the path to the S word, I would do it.
I sit down on the desert floor, gather my dirty mourning dress around me, and start to cry. I think about things to do to myself. I scratch my arms with sharp rocks. I hit my forehead with the heels of my hands. My body feels electric with longing and dread and finality. That’s really the only way I can express it. I feel dark inside, and I feel something pulling at me, and I don’t feel like resisting anymore.
I don’t know how long I sit there. Time stops.
I hope when night comes, it swallows me whole. Whatever creatures live out here can eat me alive. It doesn’t matter. They can nick at me slowly, they can leap with great flashing teeth and tear at me, it doesn’t matter to me. Or I can die of infection from the cactus needles dug deep into my flesh.
I close my eyes. I might doze off. I rouse myself when my dress starts to itch from dried sweat. When the temperature is falling, the sun follows.
I listen to the sounds of the desert: the strange scratches, the odd caws and hoots. I become aware of a low rumble, too, in the distance. And the sound of something moving toward me.
When I look up, there are flames in the distance, great orange fingers licking the sky, and before them, a silhouette gliding silkily in my direction, hair fanned out like a black cape against the sudden orange of a large, luminous fire.
I blink, disoriented. I didn’t realize I was so close to Rancho Luna, the old abandoned hotel, and it’s the Friday bonfire, and soon, hordes of kids will descend upon the deserted hotel to drink beer and do nefarious things until the police break it up.
Gradually, I realize that the silhouette is my mean and beautiful and damaged friend Lupe Hidalgo, coming to me like a vision from another world.
I’m afraid maybe she’ll kick me, or throw sand in my face, or at least make fun of me, because it’s not like it’s after Grief Group, when we all feel close and conspiratorial. That’s over now. To tell you the truth, I relish the thought of her hurting me. Sure, do it. What do I care? One more thing isn’t going to make much difference.
Still, I duck my head behind my arms as she approaches.
But she doesn’t kick me. There isn’t any sand-throwing. She gives a great sigh, shines her flashlight in m
y face, which hurts my eyes, and mutters, “Tolliver, you horrendous fool, what the hell are you doing out here?” She waves a hand in front of her face.
“You stink, Tolliver. That dress. Do I smell horse shit? Ah, man, you guys went to that ranch without me while I was at orientation, didn’t you? You couldn’t even shower? Oh, shit, what the hell did you do to your leg?”
She kneels down, carefully aiming the flashlight at my calf. She tsks. “Stupid,” she says. She digs deep in the pocket of her sheepskin vest and pulls out a small pouch. She lifts out tweezers. Who has tweezers in the desert?
“Do you often feel the need for eyebrow maintenance in the desert, Lupe?” I ask hoarsely. My throat is raw from thirst and crying.
“Shut up. It’s for my smokes.” She considers me. “That’s what’s wrong with you, you know that, Tolliver? You always gotta be so highfalutin about everything. You sound like a damn book all the time.”
“I’m not the one who just used a word like highfalutin.”
She grimaces and bends over my leg, considering her options. “Gonna hurt,” she says. “Sorry.”
Lupe works quickly, tweezing the larger piece out slowly, which makes me wince with pain, and then works to extract the smaller, nastier needles. When she’s done, she licks the hem of her T-shirt and runs it over my calf. When she takes it away, little flecks of blood spring to the surface of my skin.
Lupe brings out a half-pint of peppermint schnapps from the pocket of her vest and regards me. She takes a sip and settles next to me, not too close but not too far.
“Thanks,” I say.
“You shouldn’t be out here. You should be at home.” She pauses. “How’s it going with your sis?”
“Quite poorly.”
She hands me the bottle of schnapps.
“Her boyfriend came out,” I say. “There was a fight.”
Lupe tsks-tsks. “Ay, shit. You okay?”
I take a big swallow and it floods through me. I immediately feel better: warmer, braver, fierce and mad and important. I take four more big swallows in a row, and feel myself getting woozy really quickly, probably because I’m dehydrated and hungry.
Lupe thinks it’s funny, I think, that I just start chattering, mostly about Thaddeus and the black hole and that maybe there’s a person who lives in the universe who’s turning the pages in the story of your life and you have no control over it.
Lupe scoffs. “That’s some messed-up shit, Tolliver. I don’t buy it. I believe we control our own destiny, you know? I make the choice, not some weirdo on a cloud. And I’m getting out.”
I burp. “What?”
“Out. Of here. Mesa Messed-Up Luna. I got a scholarship to the U, you know. Softball.” She gives a proud smile.
“Oh, right,” I say.
The noise from Rancho Luna increases. Laughter, shrieking. Bottles breaking.
Lupe says, “My girlfriend broke up with me.” She sighs.
“Oh,” I say. I reach over and gently ease the peppermint schnapps from her grip. I feel woozy and wonderful and I want some more. “I’m sorry. That’s terrible. She seemed nice.”
Lupe and Breisha Walters often liked to make out by the entrance to the library, leaning against lockers, entwined tightly. It was hard to avoid staring; they were both beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes. Together, they were weirdly like fantasy-novel heroines come to life, stalking the school with their flashing eyes and dancing hair. I half expected them to whip out swords in lunch period.
“I’m bereft,” Lupe moans. She slurs a little. “I bet that’s a word you like. I don’t want to go to Rancho tonight. She’ll be there. She said I was too controlling. I mean, what does that mean, even?” She reaches over and takes the bottle back from me and swigs.
“You going with anybody?” she asks me.
“No,” I say decisively. “No one wants me.” Briefly, I think of Kai, but then I don’t, because that doesn’t matter anymore, either.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Tiger. There’s somebody for everybody. And even if there isn’t, be a woman, for God’s sake! Learn how to be by yourself. Like I said, control your own destiny.”
I wonder how Lupe Hidalgo got so worldly.
We’re quiet, listening to the shouts and laughter of the kids at the bonfire.
“Sometimes I get so mad at my brother,” Lupe says softly. “For leaving me. I think it’s so selfish. Like, he did it because he was messed up, and sad, and things got ahold of him that he couldn’t control, it’s a disease, you know, being that way, but now I’m the one who’s left, and I’m messed up, and sad, and things are getting ahold of me.”
Her eyes shine.
“I mean, that’s fucked up.”
She finishes the bottle and throws it. I watch it arc through the sky, pinned briefly against the darkening sky.
“We should go somewhere,” she says. “Let’s go somewhere. I mean, somewhere.”
“Like, somewhere, somewhere?” I ask. “For reals?”
“Yeah. Like, gone. I don’t have any wheels, though.”
At Rancho, a bunch of them are singing “Highway to Hell,” deep and throaty voices slicing through the night. In my inebriated state, that seems like a fine thing to be singing, and an even more apt way to describe how my life is going at the moment, so I clap Lupe Hidalgo on the shoulder and say cheerfully, “I do.”
It’s going to be great, finally controlling my own destiny.
* * *
• • •
I’m not sure how long it takes to get to my house, because I’m drunk. We’d stopped by Rancho on our way so that Lupe could nick another bottle of something, at which point I vaguely remember Grunyon and Boots, tipsy themselves, raising their bottles to me. I raised an empty hand, which they thought was hilarious.
This new liquor is not green and minty and delicious. It’s sharper and, frankly, kind of gross. It stings my throat and smells terrible, like gasoline. Lupe seems to like it, though.
My house is dark. The Honda and the black sedan are both gone. I wonder if the police came, and the thought of Shayna hurt makes my stomach squeeze.
Lupe squats at the edge of the driveway, by the backyard fence, peeing.
I squat next to her.
The keys to the Jellymobile are under the front seat, as usual. I dangle them in front of Lupe, and she laughs. “The jelly truck? You kill me, Tolliver. Let’s go.”
It sounds like less goh.
I don’t have any thoughts like Don’t do this, this is bad. This is BAD.
The girl-bug is remaining suspiciously quiet, just watching everything.
The world is kind of cloaked in a gleaming, desolate light, one that seems to moan, Who cares?
I mean, who cares? Everyone in my life is gone.
If Lupe Hidalgo wants to “go somewhere” to get as far away from her broken heart as she can, then by God, I will take her in the Jellymobile, because I simply have nothing left to lose.
It’s a little hard getting it started, and we lurch forward a few times until I get us out on the road. Pretty soon, we’re tooling down San Gabriel, one of the back roads in Mesa Luna, a long stretch of dirt and houses set far back behind cottonwoods and cacti. The windows are down, a warm breeze ruffling my hair.
Lupe is disappointed to find there isn’t actually any jelly in the Jellymobile, but she finds a packet of Little Debbies in the glove box and that makes her happy.
We sing along to songs on the radio. I got that red lip, classic thing that you like….We never go out of style. Even I know that one. Lupe knows the words to all the songs.
Lupe complains about the smell of my dress, we trade the bottle, I try to drive carefully, though my vision is starting to get a little wobbly at the edges, and I do, just the tiniest bit, begin to think, I feel a little sleepy. Maybe we should
pull over and rest for a bit.
I don’t know where we are going. “Lupe,” I say. “Where exactly are we going?”
She hoists the bottle over her head. “To infinity and beyond!”
And I’m just about to say, “No, really, maybe we should go back now,” when suddenly, a long, gray, furry jackrabbit appears out of nowhere, darting in front of the Jellymobile, and then stops right in the middle of the road, turning its head to us.
In the headlights, the jackrabbit’s face is bright white, like a ghost.
Lupe Hidalgo screams, and I swerve, and the universe swerves with us.
32 days, 2 hours
YOU KNOW, IN THE movies, when people drive off the road, lots of times the driver can somehow maneuver the car back onto the road, but this isn’t so in real life, especially if you’re an inexperienced and extremely drunk teenager.
The universe swerves with us very quickly, but then slows down almost to a crawl, as if to say, I want you to see each and every minute of this as it happens.
Something huge and square-shaped and metal strikes the windshield, splintering it.
Flecks of glass spray out into my face, my hair.
Lupe Hidalgo screams again. I think I do, too, and instinctively I draw my feet up onto the seat, put my head down, and clutch my knees.
The Jellymobile careens down a residential street in the dark, plowing over a lawn ornament, which flies up and knocks off my side-view mirror. The window is open and pieces of the mirror hit my mouth. I taste blood.
Lupe Hidalgo scrambles over the seat and jams her foot down on the brake. The Jellymobile lurches to a stop mere inches from a telephone pole. Lupe’s head hits the dashboard.
Lupe is laugh-crying, holding her head in her hands.
“I’m so screwed,” she moans. “I am so done for.”
The doors of houses along San Gabriel Lane begin to open, and cellphone lights begin to shine in our direction, voices shouting, gravel crunching. People run to us.
How to Make Friends with the Dark Page 29