by Emma Scott
After a short moment of awkward, Evelyn turned her smile up another watt. “Anyway, if you want to come to the party, give me your number and I’ll text you the address.”
I had to hand it to Evelyn—when she wanted something, or someone—she didn’t waste time.
Holden smiled a lazy smile. “Oh, I think I can find my way.”
“Cool. But if you change your mind about a tour, I’m around.”
“Yes, you get around,” said a voice from behind us. Chance and River Whitmore approached with Frankie Dowd tailing after the football players like a scrawny puppy tagging along with the alpha dogs.
“Fuck off, Frankie.” Evelyn punched the lanky red-headed guy in the shoulder.
River’s glance flickered to me, and he smiled before turning to Holden. I watched the guys size each other up. If Holden was intimidated by the two jocks and a skater punk surrounding him, he didn’t show it.
“I was just inviting our new friend to your party, Chance,” Evelyn said, recovering her poise. “Guys, this is Holden.”
“Good to meet you, man,” River said, offering his hand.
“Likewise,” Holden said, not taking it.
The two locked gazes for a moment and then River broke with a laugh. “Okay, whatever.”
“Holden is from Seattle,” Evelyn said. “Isn’t that right…?”
Her words trailed as Holden, wearing that strange, faint smile of his, languidly rolled his shoulders along the curve of the pole until he was on the other side and then walked away.
“He’s dressed like it’s winter,” Frankie muttered. “What a fucking weirdo.”’
“Do you ever stop being a jackass?” I shot at him.
He laughed and pretended to be scared. “Ooooh. Someone’s on the rag.”
My face reddened. Frankie Dowd and a couple of his skater friends bullied Miller all through middle and high school. Miller always told me to stay out of it, and I knew he could take care of himself, but I hated it. Chance and River were never among the bullies; they barely tolerated Frankie, but we’d all gone to school together since forever. Like one big dysfunctional family.
River’s gaze lingered where Holden had gone, then he loomed over Frankie. “Get lost, asshole.”
Frankie chuckled. “Touchy, touchy, Whitmore. Later, my dudes.” He flashed a peace sign and walked away backwards, as if the choice to leave had been his.
River pulled his gaze to me. “You’re coming to the party, right, Vi?”
I nodded. God, he was cute. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Built like the quarterback that he was, his shirt clung to the muscles that packed his arm and torso. My heart skipped a beat, and it never did that with Miller.
Except that wasn’t exactly true.
My heart beat for Miller in a completely different way than it did with anyone else: when his numbers were off and he got sick. When I remembered that awful night when he’d nearly died in my arms. When I hugged him goodbye after hanging out, and I could feel his own heart beat in his chest, like it was talking to mine.
I realized River was waiting for me to answer his question while I stood there like a dope, lost in thought over another guy.
“Uh yes, I’ll be there.”
“Great. I’ll see you then,” he said and strode off with his friend.
“Yep. See you then.”
Evelyn was glaring at me, hands on her hips.
“What?”
“Do you have to be such a goody-two shoes? You chased Holden off.”
“Me? Hardly. And anyway, I get the feeling it would take a lot more than someone lecturing him about secondhand smoke to scare him.”
“True. He looks like he’s seen some shit. I wonder what his story is.” She ran her tongue over her lower lip. “That’s my kind of challenge.”
We crossed the grass again, and I spotted Miller sitting on a boulder just outside the crowd of cafeteria tables. He wore torn jeans, boots, and a faded vintage Sonic Youth T-shirt. A sack lunch sat in his lap and he was rummaging in his backpack, probably for his insulin case.
Evelyn followed my line of sight and sighed. “You’re going to tell him about Chance’s party, aren’t you?”
“Of course, I am. Why? Do you think Frankie and those guys are still going to give him a hard time?”
Evelyn shrugged. “Frankie’s a moron with nothing better to do. But Miller looks like he can handle himself. Your little boy is all grown up, isn’t he? Too bad.”
“Too bad, what?” I asked, anger flaring. “Too bad he’s poor? Why does that even matter?”
“It’s not that he’s poor. It’s the whole picture. He lived in a car. His mom prostituted herself. The whole thing puts a…something around him. A cloud?”
“An aura?” I said, crossing my arms.
“Aura, yes! It radiates off of him like a bad smell.”
“Evelyn, that’s a horrible thing to say.”
He used to smell like the forest and now he smells like the beach.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I know he’s your friend. Or your pet project, with his diabetes stuff.”
“Yes, he’s my friend and you can’t talk about him like that. Ever.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Forgive me?” She gave me a quick hug. “Go. Invite him to the party if you want and I’ll call you later.” She air-kissed my cheek and bounced away, ponytail swinging.
I looked to where Miller sat.
He’s not my pet project or a lost cause. He’s brilliant.
I only wished everyone at school could see what I saw when I looked at him. I saw the kid who’d lived in a car too, but it’d made him more in my eyes, not less. More beautiful, stronger, braver. And he never complained but instead channeled himself through his music.
And it was high time that everyone at school knew it.
Chapter Four
“Hi, you.”
I looked up to see Violet approach. My heart thudded dully, each beat like poking an old bruise. She was so beautiful, drenched in the late summer sun. It glinted in her black hair, pulling out threads of blue. Dark blue, like her eyes that were heavier today, despite the bright smile she put on for me.
Something’s wrong.
She plopped down on the grass beside the rock I sat on.
“Hey,” I said, my insulin injection pen in hand. “Just about to shoot up. Figure I’d give the new kids something to talk about. First day of school and all.”
Vi smiled wanly. She knew I’d endured my share of stupid taunts: that I was a junkie who brazenly shot up in broad day light. Fuck the assholes if they thought I’d hide out in a bathroom to take the medicine that was keeping me alive.
I had to rotate injections all over my body so that no parts were oversaturated. Today, I rolled up the short sleeve of my T-shirt.
“Wait, let me guess your dosage,” Violet said. “For practice.”
She peered into my bag lunch: ham sandwich, a few strawberries, bag of popcorn, bottle of water.
“Looks like forty grams of carbs so…four units of insulin.”
“Correct, Dr. M,” I said and injected myself with the pen.
The pain stung, then mellowed into an ache, as I pushed the meds under my skin. When I’d returned the pen to its case, Violet handed me my lunch, though I didn’t dig in; I had to wait a few minutes for the insulin to get to work.
“How’s your first day going?” Vi asked. She narrowed her eyes at me, taking in my dark circles. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Fine. Rough night, that’s all.” I fixed her with a stern look that told her not to push it. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about Mom’s new boyfriend. “I was going to ask the same of you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Vi. It’s me.”
She smiled sadly. “You must be psychic.”
“I can read your face,” I said. I have you memorized. “Your parents?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry about last night.”
�
�They’re the ones who should be sorry,” I said darkly. “They tell you what all the screeching was about?”
“Not really, but I have my suspicions. I think my college fund is drying up. Or maybe it’s already gone.”
My eyes widened. “Oh, shit. You sure?”
“I’m not sure of anything.” She waved a hand. “It’s fine. If it’s true, I’ll deal with it. I’ll apply for scholarships and make the best of it.”
“Don’t try to gloss over it, Vi. It’s a big fucking deal. To go from home-free to two hundred K in debt? More, since you’re going to be a surgeon. Be mad if you’re mad.”
“I can’t be mad at them for that,” she said. “That feels tacky and what good does it do? I said I’ll apply for loans—”
“You’ll have to apply for every loan under the sun to cover med school, but the low-interest kind are for poor schlubs like me.”
“You’re not helping, Miller,” she said, tears building in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t even know if it’s true, so no point in dwelling on it.”
I bit my tongue. Violet faced everything with hope and a smile and even more hard work. I admired that about her. Hell, I envied it. But it made the desire to protect her from anything that would hurt her even stronger.
I’ll pay for her college. Every damn penny.
After a moment, she asked brightly, “Have you thought about what you’ll do after you graduate?”
I shrugged as if I hadn’t been thinking of exactly what I’d do after high school. “I’m going to get the hell out of here and make my music.”
Her smile faltered the way it always did when I mentioned leaving Santa Cruz. “You realize you have to play for actual people before you can make it as a musician?”
“I will. When I feel like it.”
“How does this Saturday sound? Chance Blaylock’s party?”
I set down my food and gave her a look. “You want me to be the douchebag asshat who brings his guitar to a party he’s not technically invited to? Solid plan.”
She laughed and nudged my knee. “Shut up. People will flip their shit to hear you. You’re a diamond in the rough! They’ll never see you coming!”
I grinned, took a pull from my water. “Uh huh. Next, you’ll suggest I wear a fedora and announce my presence with a loud, pretentious cover of ‘Wonderwall.’ That should solidify my stellar reputation.”
Vi’s laughter rose and then her voice turned soft. “If you let them hear you play…if they hear your voice, they’ll love you. How could they not?”
I don’t know, Vi. Why don’t you tell me?
I stiffened with sudden bitterness and looked away. “I don’t owe them anything.”
Violet started to protest, but the bell rang, ending lunch. Students began pouring out of the cafeteria area.
She got up and brushed the grass off her butt. “Walk with me to class?”
“You go head,” I said. “I gotta finish my food or else my CGM will go off in Calculus.”
“Okay. And I know you hate this stuff, but promise me you’ll at least think about coming to the party? Even if you don’t play, I want you to be there.”
No chance.
“I’ll think about it.”
She beamed. “Great. See you later. Or tonight? Are you coming over?”
No chance of that either.
“I have to work tonight.”
“Oh. Okay.” She smiled faintly. Sadly. “Well…don’t be a stranger.”
“Nope.”
She walked away, almost reluctantly. I wanted to follow her. I wanted to spend every fucking second of my day with her. But after last night, everything changed. The hopelessness of us…
It’s already too hard.
The next few days of the new school year were blessedly uneventful. So far. I’d gotten into fights at least once a month since middle school. The rumors and whispers had been waiting for me when I got out of the hospital.
Frankie Dowd and his gang of assholes had been waiting for me.
Violet felt terrible that everyone knew I’d been living in a car. “But what was the alternative?” she’d said. “Let you die in my arms?”
That didn’t seem so terrible to me.
The first time I came home with a split lip and swollen eye, Mom looked up from watching TV on her short break between her job at the dry cleaners and her job at the 24-hour diner up the street and then went back to the TV again.
“Fight back, Miller. Fight back, or I don’t want to hear about it again.”
So, I fought back, even though I risked smashing my fingers and losing the dexterity I needed to play the guitar—my ticket out of this shit life.
A life that had, thanks to Chet fucking Hyland, just gotten shittier.
As I feared, he’d become a permanent fixture on our couch and in Mom’s bed; I had to sleep with a pillow crammed over my head to block out the squeaking bedsprings.
Worse, Mom seemed to have ditched her second job to hang out with Chet, who was a drain on our already delicate household economy and contributed nothing. Despite his promise, he didn’t stop pilfering from my meal plan, and Mom seemed helpless about how to replace it all. Beer became the top import in our apartment, with cigarettes a close second.
“How long’s he going to be here?” I whispered to Mom on the morning of the fourth day of school. I’d snuck into her room as she got ready for her dry-cleaning job while Chet watched The Price is Right in the living room.
“As long as I want him to be,” she said. “Don’t give him a hard time, Miller.”
“Jesus, Mom, he’s a fucking leech. Does he even have a job? Does he—?”
Mom moved in close, her brown eyes hard as they bore into mine. “Don’t give him a hard time, Miller,” she repeated, her smoky breath hissing and wavering. “Do you hear? Don’t do it.”
“But Mom…”
“I’m tired, honey. Just so tired.” She smiled wanly and gave my arm a squeeze. “You’ll be late for school.”
I went out without another word. In the living room, Chet watched me prepare my food and meds for the day.
“Off to school, son?” he asked with a hard smile. He threw that word out to bait me. Casting a line to see if I would bite.
I tilted my chin up. “Yeah. And then to my job. You know what a job is, right? One of those places you go to earn money, which is then used to do things like pay bills and buy food.”
“Smart guy, aren’t you? You got a smart mouth on you.” He smirked. “What happened? Your daddy didn’t teach you any manners before he took off?”
I felt something in me—that human internal mechanism that kept driving us onward, despite everything—begin to crack and falter. Rage and humiliation flooded me. I thought about what Violet had said, about our senior year being our best yet.
Bullshit. It’s all bullshit.
Chet chuckled darkly. “I can see why he left.”
“Fuck you.”
I heard a gasp from the hallway. Mom, staring and shaking her head at me. I stared back, silently begging her to get rid of this guy before he imbedded himself any deeper—like a thorn that burrowed too far beneath the surface to tear out.
Mom’s mouth open and then shut. I went for the door.
“You better watch that smart mouth of yours, son,” Chet called after me, his voice chasing me into the early morning fog. “Yes, indeed. Better watch it.”
I usually took the bus to school, but I walked through the gray morning, letting the chilly air cool my skin. The sun was out by the time I made it to the front entry of Santa Cruz Central, the bell ringing as I hit the first step.
Vice Principal Chouder stood in front of the administration building, hands in the pockets of his gray suit. “Hustle, hustle, Mr. Stratton. You’ll be late.”
I kept my head down and continued down the walk, past banks of lockers and classroom doors. My first class, English, was at the end of the open campus on a grassy hill overlooking the band and science rooms.
Because of course it is.
The lanky guy had his legs stretched out, scabbed knees visible from under his long shorts that were perpetually halfway down his ass. He flipped his head to get a lock of russet hair out of his eyes and smirked at me.
“Why’re you late, Stratton?” he whispered. “Car wouldn’t start?”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed with his tongue poking out, like a deranged hyena. I made an easy fist, no pain or bruises. I figured by the end of this shitty fucking day, that wouldn’t be possible.
“Frankie,” Ms. Sanders called. “Since you’re so chatty, perhaps you can answer something for me. Fitzgerald makes numerous references to dust in this novel. ‘Ash-grey’ men and dust coating everything from cars to actual characters. What do you think it symbolizes?”
“Uh…I think it means stuff is old or…whatever.”
A few students laughed, and Frankie triumphantly fist-bumped a friend.
Ms. Sanders pursed her lips. “Let’s try a little bit harder next time, eh?” She looked to me. “Miller? Care to give it a shot?”
Some heads in the class turned to look at me with curiosity. Frankie with derision. I’ve never fit in here. Not in four years. I was still the kid who’d lived in a car and nearly died after pissing his pants in the McNamara’s backyard.
“He writes that dust settles over everything,” I said. “Because it does. It settles over the whole fucking town. The school. It even gets in your home. You can’t get rid of it.”
Ms. Sanders nodded, ignoring my f-bomb and the snickers that had followed it. “And what do you think it means?”
“That there’s no hope.”
They cornered me during P.E., on the way to my locker.
Despite all my calculations and precautions, my numbers were low after running laps. I was still wearing my gym clothes—white t-shirt and yellow shorts, like a dork. My locker was ten feet away when Frankie and two of his buddies rounded the corner.