But I’m not hungry when Mom is here. I drink her in, the way she smiles at me. I eat her laughter. I don’t feel empty at all.
“We have to go in soon. Mommy has to go to work.”
I know this because the sun is sinking, and she always goes to work at night.
But this time is ours, and I don’t want it to end yet. I want to play just a little longer. “Not yet. Let’s go higher,” I plead.
Mom smiles when she says, “Oh, my Trixie”—I know even though I don’t turn around because I can hear it in her voice. I save this moment, drawing it in my mind, memorizing every detail. Her hands, warm and firm on my back as she propels me higher, the smell of the metal chains on the swing, the way the motel falls away below me again.
“A teensy-tiny bit higher. But don’t fly away on me, little bird,” Mom calls, laughing now.
“Hey,” Jasper says, startling me. His boots crunch in the sand as he comes to sit in the swing next to me. The light from the streetlamp casts the scarred side of his face completely in shadow, as if that part of him doesn’t exist. The part I like the most.
“So you can see me now?” I reply, my voice tight. I take my hands from the cold chains of the swing, pushing away that memory of Mom and the swing set.
“Yeah, I’ve been kind of an asshole. I’m sorry about that.” He runs a hand through his curls. “You didn’t say anything to them. About the pills,” he adds quietly, so his voice doesn’t carry over to Grayson and Ember twenty feet away.
“Is that a question?”
“No.”
“So then why say it?” I ask. Unable to keep an edge out of my voice, I realize that I am mostly angry that he thinks he can’t trust me. Even after the secrets we’ve shared, the things I’ve told him that no one else knows.
“I was just surprised.” His voice is soft, thoughtful.
“Why? You think that telling a bunch of your friends something they may or may not already know is the kind of thing that I would do?”
Jasper remains quiet.
“Well, news flash: I don’t give a shit about your prescriptions.”
“They don’t know. About any of it.”
“Any of what? You taking antidepressants? It’s none of their business.”
“Yeah. I guess not.”
“Not unless you want it to be.” I add that because I want him to know that there’s nothing to be ashamed of. That there’s nothing to hide. My anger is fading, retreating into the darkness as I rock gently in the swing.
“I don’t.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He’s still sitting there, staring at me like he wants to say something, his boots looking ridiculous in the play sand.
“What is it?” I ask.
“You know about Jesse. My brother.”
I wait for him to finish, grabbing the chains of the swing and leaning back to look at the stars.
“It just messed me up really bad when he died.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me.” I don’t want to be one of those other people in Jasper’s life. The kind of person that he can’t talk to, that he’s afraid to confide in. I want to be his pie-delivery buddy. The person who knows how to open Cleo’s door on the first try.
“I want to. I want you to know. I was worse. It was like being at the bottom of a hole and knowing there was no way I could ever climb out of it. But it’s getting better now. I mean, I still have good days and bad days, but I feel like I’m getting better. The medicine helps a lot.”
“That’s good.” I kick at the sand. “That’s what medicine is for. It’s to help you. There’s nothing wrong with getting help.” All I can think of now is Mom after rehab, Mom in the Good Year, her face full and shining.
“You don’t think I should’ve just gutted it out, been a man and gotten over it?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever told someone to gut it out. But I’ll remember the phrase for the future. Could come in handy. Is that something you hear a lot?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“There’s some things that gutting it out can’t fix. Believe me, I know. If it was possible, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Where would you be?” Jasper asks, angling his swing closer to mine, until we bump together.
“I’d be with my mom,” I say, my voice quavering a little. But the idea moves me in a way I had not expected, it pushes me to imagine the Good Year not as a collection of happy months, but as of Good Years. I let that image fill my mind, and I close my eyes. “I’d be living above a Chinese restaurant in a tiny apartment. I’d have a Persian cat. I’d be in a rock band. I would probably have pink hair.” I chuckle when I say that last part because I remember how much Wendy had wanted us to dye our hair pink.
Jasper laughs, too, and when I open my eyes, he is closer than before. I catch the scent of cinnamon on his breath. There’s a twinge of urgency deep in my gut, and I finally admit to myself that I want to be more than Jasper’s pie-delivery buddy. God forbid, I want him like I wanted Shane, and we all know how that ended. I want to feel Jasper’s lips on mine, his callused hands on my skin the way they’d been when he tried to help me with the seat belt of his crappy truck.
He leans nearer, one curl falling over his eye, and I can feel the heat from his body, the smell of cinnamon and the leather from his jacket enveloping us. “I think I’d like to see you in a rock band,” he murmurs, his breath tickling my ear, and for one brief moment I think he’s going to kiss me, and I want it more than anything.
“Trix!” Ember’s voice calls, interrupting the moment. “It’s almost nine. Grayson’s going to take us home now.”
Jasper winces, like cold water’s been thrown over the both of us.
The ride back home is quiet. Ember sits shotgun in Grayson’s Jeep, and they’re talking about music that I’ve never heard of. Meanwhile, in the back seat, Jasper’s boots are planted wide, the fabric of his jeans rubbing up against my knee, and every once in a while he leans forward to add something to the conversation with Grayson and Ember, and his knuckles graze the top of my thigh, and we both know it’s on purpose.
At the farmhouse, all the lights are on, blazing a welcome return. I can only imagine that Mia is peering out between a set of calico curtains right about now, nearly dying inside with excitement.
In the dark interior, Jasper’s hand grabs mine, and it’s warm and rough like I remembered it. “Sorry,” he says, “wrong buckle.” But he’s smiling that grin that pulls the corner of his eye down, and I know that I’m not the only one who wanted that kiss on the swings.
Ember and I get out, and Jasper climbs into the empty passenger seat. We wave goodbye to them from the front porch steps. The scent of the roses surrounds us, and for a few moments, as Grayson’s Jeep crunches down the gravel drive, we are silent.
Finally, Ember turns to me. “Thanks,” she says. “That was really cool of you.”
“Sure,” I say, my voice much cooler than the rest of me. “No big deal.”
She smiles.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Grayson asked me to go to the homecoming dance with him.”
I grin back. “Well, the good news is I know someone who can make you a dress.”
When we enter the house, the spicy scent of ginger hits me immediately. Auntie is brewing a pot of tea. “Come here,” she calls from the kitchen. “I’m trying this new ginger-jasmine tea. I think we could offer it at the shop.”
“No,” I say immediately, taking a step back.
Mia sees my reaction, and she frowns. She gets up from the couch, folding a magazine and tucking it beneath the crook of her arm. “Is everything okay?”
All I can think of is Mrs. Yang at the Jasmine Dragon, carrying a fresh pot of ginger-jasmine tea to the elderly couple who came every Wednesday to their restaurant. The what-ifs with Jasper make me imagine myself there again, a seventeen-year-old Trix who might’ve been in a rock band, who almost had a mother who never left her. I tell Mia, “
I think I’m going to go to bed.”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Mia asks, coming closer. She holds up one hand, as if she wants to check me for a fever.
“No,” I croak out. “I just want to go to bed. Please just let me go.” My voice quavers, and I am ashamed.
Ember frowns a little, and I know that she’s disappointed in me.
I flee upstairs anyway, and I wait until I’m safe in my room before I go back to the Jasmine Dragon.
The Yangs invite us to celebrate the lunar New Year with them in late January. Jack says it’s better than Christmas because all the children get the best gifts: red packets, beautiful red-and-gold embossed paper envelopes with money inside them.
When the evening of the lunar New Year arrives, I’m nervous because I know that it’s a special holiday, a family event that Mom and I have been invited to join, one night for us to be part of the Yangs’ beautiful family. Mrs. Yang teaches me to make dumplings, her hands over mine as she shows me how to make tiny pleats in the dough so they stay shut after we’ve put pork filling inside. I can’t seal them as well as she does. Wendy, Jack, and I fill the metal trays with rows and rows of dumplings, more than I think we will ever be able to eat. The restaurant is closed tonight, and Mrs. Yang plays contemporary music instead of the instrumental kind that usually plays softly in the background of the dining room.
Mom helps Mrs. Yang steam the dumplings in the kitchen, and Wendy, Jack, and I play Scrabble with Mr. Yang. We have special rules so that we can play slang words, too, and we use a battered dictionary to solve our arguments. Mr. Yang only listens to American music on the small radio in the kitchen while he cooks, and if he hears a word or a phrase he doesn’t know, he writes it down and looks it up in the dictionary after the restaurant closes. Sometimes the list is only one word, other times three or four slang words or idioms splashed with smoky sesame oil. He nearly trounces us in Scrabble, but when I get up for a drink of water, I notice that he holds back at the end and doesn’t play aspire for two rounds so that Jack can play ago on a triple word score tile and win the game.
When the food is prepared, we all sit down at the big guest table in the middle of the restaurant. Mrs. Yang made all my favorites because she says I still look too skinny, but there are new foods, too: a whole roasted fish with its eye staring up at me; brown, wrinkled duck eggs; a shredded-cabbage salad with fermented tofu. We eat with chopsticks, family style, all of us sharing the same dishes. Mrs. Yang smiles at me when I use my chopsticks faultlessly after practicing every night for two weeks with Wendy. Not too high, not too low. And never spear them into the rice like a grave marker. Jack says a bad word when he pulls a fish bone from his mouth, and Mr. Yang taps him lightly on the back of the head, admonishing him with a smile. They are a family, and they are perfect, and for this one night, Mom and I get to be a part of that.
I think that maybe someday Mom and I will be a family like the Yangs. Maybe someday I will have a father, too, and a little brother like Jack, and we will sit around the table and share a meal like this.
I bite down on something hard in my dumpling. Confused, I reach up and pull a shiny penny out of my mouth.
Wendy notices. “Look!” she says. “Trix got the coin!”
“Look at that!” Mrs. Yang says. “You will have good luck this year, Trix. Money will come to you.”
I can’t imagine being any luckier than I am right now. Mom squeezes my hand, and she smiles at me. She looks exquisite in the golden glow of the restaurant chandeliers, and I can forgive her anything.
I put my new lucky penny in my pocket and vow to keep it forever, like this warm, happy feeling that radiates through me, lighting me up until I feel like even my scars are glowing and beautiful.
At the end of dinner, Mr. Yang gives us our red packets. Mom gets teary and says I can’t accept it, but Mr. Yang tells her all children get a gift tonight. Mom lets me keep it, and I tell myself that I will save it all so that next year I can buy a gift for him.
A week later, Mom slips and falls in the kitchen and hurts her back. One of the cooks broke a bottle of oil on the floor and didn’t clean it up well. Mom goes to the doctor, and he gives her some pain pills. I go with her to the pharmacy to get them, my lucky penny in my pocket. A month later, her back still hurts, and she goes back for more. She starts going out at night, after her shift, leaving me upstairs alone. Sometimes she comes back smelling like smoke and beer. Other times she smells only of ginger. I lie in bed alone waiting for her, rubbing my lucky penny between my fingers.
I am afraid that things will go back to the way they were before. I pretend to have stomachaches, lots of them, so that Mom will stay home with me after her shift. I hold my penny as she reads to me, her voice detailing the many exploits of Harry Potter. I don’t know if she leaves after I fall asleep.
Six months later, the cabinet above the sink in the bathroom is filled with little orange prescription bottles. I watch from our apartment window as a strange man meets Mom behind the Jasmine Dragon. He gives her pills in a small plastic baggie. I ask her about them, angry that she is using again. She rubs her hand over my hair, tells me it will be all right. The pills are just for her back.
Mrs. Yang frowns when Mom’s eyes start to get that glazed look. She’s tired, I tell Mrs. Yang. I don’t know if Mrs. Yang believes me, but she tells Mom to take the afternoon off to rest.
While Mom takes a nap, I rub my lucky penny, waiting for it to work, to change our luck, which seems like it is running downhill again.
My fingers, damp with sweat, slip on the copper coin, and it falls to the floor. My breath catches in my throat, and I am on my knees, crawling after the penny as it rolls along a groove in the wood floor, straight to the air-conditioning vent by the wall.
I reach out and slap my hand down, stopping the penny just in time, before it plummets.
I stare down the air-conditioning vent, a deep, dark hole that seems to descend into nowhere.
Inspiration strikes.
I dump all the pills down the toilet and flush them away. I rub my lucky penny between my fingers, sure that I have fixed things this time, and our luck will return.
When Mom wakes up, I tell her what I’ve done. At first I think she will be angry, but she’s not. She starts to cry and says she’s sorry. She takes me in her arms and holds me, and we rock together in the tangle of sheets in the middle of the bed, her tears wet against my hair.
I am too scared to tell Mrs. Yang what happened, afraid they will kick us out if they knew how close we’d come to losing everything again. So that night I lie and say Mom has the flu and can’t come down for the dinner shift. Mrs. Yang makes a sympathetic sound in the back of her throat and sends me back upstairs with some soup.
Mom seems better again. She goes to work; she smiles like before. Mr. and Mrs. Yang smile, too, and the tightness in my chest eases. I have my lucky penny to thank for all of it.
More time passes. The lunar New Year is coming soon. I am excited. I have a new shirt that I will wear, and I have saved some of my red packet money from last year to buy Mr. Yang a new dictionary of American slang and idioms because Jack accidentally spilled a glass of Coke on his when we were playing Scrabble together in the back booth. Everything is going to be perfect.
But it’s not.
In the space of a moment, I know the Good Year is over.
Mom wakes me up. It is dark. Sleep makes me slow. She doesn’t smell of ginger, but of something stale, like dishrags that need washing. “Get up,” she says. “We have to go.”
I search desperately in the sheets for my lucky penny.
“Damn it, Trix, come on.” She’s got something in her hands. It’s the deposit bag that Mr. Yang takes to the bank every night after close. Sometimes he asks Mom to take it if he’s had a long day, like when one of the cooks calls in sick. I keep frantically digging through the sheets. If I have my lucky penny, I can stop this, like I did when I dumped the pills. Mom won’t leave the Jasmine Dragon. We will be
a family like the Yangs, and everything will be like a beautiful snow globe.
Mom yanks me out of the bed, pulling hard on my arm until her fingernails dig into my skin, making tiny crescent moons beneath my pink scars. “I said get up, Trix!” I stumble out of bed, and she grabs my sneakers from under the bed and tosses them at me. “Get your shoes on. Hurry.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, pulling on my shoes.
“Don’t worry about it. Get your damn shoes on.” In the light from the bedside lamp, I see them. The fresh track marks on her arm. I’ve seen them before, back before she went to rehab. There’s a deep, sinking feeling in my stomach.
“No,” I tell her. “I don’t want to leave.”
“You’re coming with me, Trix. Now shut up and get your coat.”
“Let me stay here,” I beg.
I want to stay here forever in the Jasmine Dragon with the Yangs. I want to find my lucky penny. I want to show Mrs. Yang the perfect pleats I can make in the dough of the dumplings. I want to give Mr. Yang the new dictionary that I bought for him. I want Wendy to be my sister, to be my best friend forever.
Mom yanks my arm again, and she drags me along with her while tears prick my eyes, hot and wet. I follow her down the staircase, past the steamy windows, and out into the dark night.
Fifteen
MY OLD LIFE WAS HAUNTING me, so I find myself on Cedar Mountain. It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m sitting in the abandoned lawn chair on the crest of the hill, checking my phone messages with the one bar of signal I can reach. One text message from Charly. Big surprise soon. Wait for it!
After our last phone conversation, I have a feeling that the surprise is Shane coming home. I wonder if I will be able to resist him if he calls, the sound of his voice deep and smooth like the softest, darkest charcoal. He was my safe place. My shelter. Maybe I loved him because he was the first person to ever love me back. Or maybe it was because he was the only person who ever shared his dreams with me. Dreams that were far beyond the Starlite, far beyond the cramped rooms and cardboard-thin walls and the smell of sweat that clung to the sheets and the glint of needles that littered the parking lot.
A Constellation of Roses Page 15