Gem & Dixie

by Sara Zarr

“No. Forget it.” I hung my new coat in the closet to dry, and my hoodie, too. I took off my boots and peeled off my socks; my little toe was red. I got my phone out. “Show me how to put Kip’s number in here.”

  “Do it yourself.”

  “This phone is different than the one I had before. Anyway, you have it. The place mat.”

  She sighed and leaned over to pick her jeans up and dig in the pocket, then tried to throw the scrap of paper at me. It fluttered to the floor between the beds. I retrieved it and figured out how to save the number while Dixie turned on the TV and flipped channels.

  “Why did you turn our problems into a joke like that?” I asked. “With Kip?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Saying I kidnapped you and you’re a victim and all of that.”

  “Maybe I am a victim. Maybe I should call the police.”

  She wasn’t going to do that and we both knew it. While she kept flipping through channels, never settling on anything, I stared at the ceiling, picturing the money I’d thrown out. Probably that bathroom garbage with my jacket in it had been emptied by now. Probably hours ago.

  I’d have to let go of it. I’d have to let go of a lot of things.

  “I’m sorry I let you keep thinking Kip was a guy,” I told Dixie. “I’m sorry for what Mom did to you.”

  “She didn’t do anything to me,” Dixie muttered.

  “Well, you’re mad at her. And taking it out on me. Like I was mad at Dad and taking it out on you. I’m sorry.”

  I rolled onto my side so I could see her.

  “I don’t want to do that anymore,” I said.

  “Do what?”

  “Be mad at the wrong people.”

  I wished she’d say something, that it was okay or she understood. I wished we could talk, in a close way. She kept her eyes on the TV, though, and I rolled onto my back again.

  I wondered if she’d ever forgive me for this whole mess. Everything that happened, it was only because we wanted our parents to be better, to know how to take care of us. We could at least try to forgive ourselves for wanting that.

  21.

  WE BOTH dozed off. I woke to the sound of rain pattering against our window. Before I opened my eyes, I couldn’t be sure where I was, or when, or with who. I thought I could smell pine trees.

  “Are you awake?” I asked, eyes still closed.

  Dixie answered after a second. “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember that time we went camping with Mom and Roxanne?”

  There was a long pause, and right when I’d given up on her answering, she said, “We had to eat those cold hot dogs all weekend.”

  Mom and Roxanne had wanted to get us out of the house while Dad did a weekend detox. Roxanne borrowed a tent from one of her boyfriends and we drove in her beat-up hatchback to this camping place over two hours away, near Port Angeles. We walked the tide pools and Roxanne put a rough pink starfish in my hand. It undulated, mysterious and strange, against my skin. At night, Mom and Roxanne tried to get a fire started so we could cook out, but they didn’t know what they were doing and the wood never caught.

  I opened my eyes. “What else do you remember?” I asked.

  “Cold marshmallows and Hershey bars and graham crackers.”

  Deconstructed s’mores, Roxanne had called them, after we tried and failed to roast the marshmallows over her lighter.

  “What else?” I asked, turning to see Dixie. “Not only about that trip. About anything else. About us. Good things.”

  She rolled over, too, so we faced each other. Her hands were tucked under her cheek. That’s how she’d lie when I’d read to her before she could read on her own. “I remember going to a school recital that you sang in. I was little. Mom and Dad took me to hear you.”

  I’d forgotten that. It was probably second or third grade. My teacher that year believed in the importance of music for “at-risk” kids, and didn’t seem to think twice before calling us that to our faces.

  “You could sing, Gem.”

  “Really?” I’d had a short solo. Something from the musical Annie.

  “Yeah, you were good. Dad had me on his lap and he said to Mom, ‘She can sing.’”

  I tried to remember if he’d said it to me. “Are you making that up?”

  “No!” Dixie laughed, then suddenly stopped. “No. I know I lied about the Ferris wheel, but I wouldn’t lie about this.”

  “I never did any singing after that, though. I wonder what kinds of stuff we would have done if Mom and Dad hadn’t been . . . like they were,” I said. “Don’t you wonder? Maybe I’d be doing school plays. Maybe you’d be in a band.”

  She smirked. “What would I play?”

  “I picture you as a lead singer.”

  “I was thinking tambourine.” She propped herself up to see the clock on the nightstand between the beds. It was a little after four thirty. We’d napped for maybe an hour. Dad was probably leaving more messages on Dixie’s phone. I imagined the screen lighting up somewhere at the bottom of the Sound.

  Dixie moved to a sitting position at the edge of her bed and stretched her arms overhead. The nap seemed to have erased our fight about Kip and everything else, and I didn’t want to mess with the fragile peace. Especially since in the back of my mind I knew this would probably have to be our last day together. I would take more money out of the backpack, or find a way to disappear with the whole thing.

  She got up and walked across the room in her underwear, then bent over to get a dry shirt out of her bag. I watched her, and was surprised by something I’d never seen before.

  “Is that a tattoo?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” she said.

  “When did you get that?”

  “The day after I got my fake ID. That was another reason I wanted one.”

  “Can I see?”

  She came over to me with an armful of clothes and turned her back. I lifted her shirt. It was a star, just a simple star, above the back of her left hip. I touched it.

  “Don’t tickle me.”

  “You used to draw stars just like this all the time, on your notebooks, and around our heads whenever you drew us. Remember?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did it hurt?” How had I not noticed it before, sharing a room like we did? She must have been trying to keep me from seeing.

  There was so much I didn’t know about her. Like if she’d had a real boyfriend, or if she’d had sex or done drugs—like the kind of drugs she’d brought home for Mom or anything else. I didn’t know what she did at night when she wasn’t home, what her friendship with Lia meant to her. It felt urgent, now, to find out everything, but I also knew it was probably too late. It made me sad, the idea that for the last few years I’d stopped knowing my sister, who she had become.

  “Yeah, it hurt a little,” she said. She stepped away from me and pulled on a new pair of leggings after ripping off the tag. “A tattoo like this just takes like ten minutes; it’s over fast.”

  I watched her finish getting dressed. “How much did it cost?”

  “I don’t remember. Not a lot.”

  “I want one,” I said. “A matching one.”

  She blew out a little laugh, as if I’d never really do it.

  I reached for the new phone. “Maybe Kip knows a place around here we could go.”

  “You want to do it right now?” Dixie asked.

  “I’ll chicken out if I don’t just go. You know how I am.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You’re coming, too. I want mine to be just like yours. They need to see.”

  “It’s a star. It’s not like it’s the Mona Lisa or something.”

  “Come on,” I pleaded.

  There was a little bit of risk leaving her alone at the hotel. I’d take the phone and the money with me, but she could call Dad or Mom if she could remember their numbers. They could get over to the island within a couple hours and be waiting for me.

  But that wasn’t the reason I wanted her t
o come. At least, not the whole reason. “I need you there,” I said. “For support. I want to do it together.”

  She studied me, then gave a small nod.

  Kip knew a place over on the other side of the island that wouldn’t card me, and said she could come pick us up. As soon as we got in the car, Kip said to Dixie, “Sorry about how I didn’t just tell you right away, before, that I’m . . . me.”

  Dixie climbed in the backseat. “It was dumb,” she muttered. “I should have figured it out.”

  We drove farther into the island. Apart from the sound of Kip’s car, things were still and quiet. And green. So many trees lined the road that it seemed like the sun itself was beaming emerald and jade from its low position behind us. We passed a woman on a bicycle that had swooping lines and a big seat and a basket on the back. The handlebars had streamers. The woman’s dark hair, gathered in a ponytail, flew behind her as she pedaled.

  I twisted in my seat so I could see her until we went around a corner.

  That could be me, I thought. I could get a bike to ride around the island and put groceries or whatever in the basket.

  “. . . come to the city,” Dixie was saying to Kip. She’d leaned forward to rest her chin on the front passenger seat. “I can take you to the best places. Our dad is gonna open a club. . . .”

  Her saying that, those same old words, didn’t do anything to me then. It didn’t make me anxious or angry or jealous, not anymore. The space in me kept opening and the green light that surrounded the car seemed to fill that space. While she talked about her imagined future, I thought about my own.

  I’d never thought much before about having a future. When Mr. Bergstrom would ask me about my plans after high school, I’d say I don’t know, I’d say Stop asking, I’d change the subject. I couldn’t see beyond the walls of our apartment or the few miles between home and school. Every day was about getting through it. Every weekend was about getting back to school, where there could be some structure and my routines.

  It’s not that I didn’t want to see possibilities for myself. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see how or where I’d wind up. I knew it couldn’t be the same as Mom and Dad, but I didn’t see exactly how it could be different from them and the whole twisted root system of our family tree.

  And then I did see, in that moment. In the light, in the air, in the order and the disorder and Kip’s noisy car and the woman on the bicycle. I don’t know how or why right then—but I saw. I could belong in the world. There was space for me.

  22.

  THE TATTOO place was small, with every inch of its walls covered by pictures of tattoo designs. There was only one person working there, a middle-aged guy with a huge mustache and a black snake tattoo that wound around his neck and disappeared under the collar of his flannel shirt. If I’d seen him on the street, I’d have walked the other way, but here he didn’t look out of place, and he was nice. Just like Kip said, he didn’t even ask for ID.

  Dixie showed him her tattoo and he looked at me and asked, “Is that all you want?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But somewhere I can see it.” I pulled up the sleeve of my hoodie and showed my forearm. “Here?”

  He tapped closer to the inside of my elbow. His hands were covered in inked vines. “Up here is good. You can see it, but you can also hide it, like if you’re at a job interview or something.”

  Kip had wandered off to look through a binder of more tattoo art. She’d told us on the way there she secretly had her own—a red balloon—on her shoulder and was thinking of getting another one.

  “Let me trace yours and I’ll make a stencil,” the guy said to Dixie. “I’m Elton, by the way. I guess I should introduce myself before I go touching you.”

  I looked at Dixie’s star while Elton made the stencil. It was so plain and alone. I wanted to mark myself to remember these days with her, but she was going to leave this place the same as when she got here.

  I scanned designs on the walls. One was of two hearts linked together, sort of overlapping.

  “Dixie,” I said. “What if we did something like that?” I pointed. “Only with stars. Interlocking stars.”

  “Like add one to hers and put two on you?” Elton asked. “I like it. Want me to go draw something up? So you can see how it would look?”

  Dixie pulled her shirt down. I waited for her to say no, that my idea was dumb or what would make me think she’d get a tattoo for me—something representing us—permanently on her body?

  “Go ahead,” she told Elton, and I smiled.

  We sat with Kip on the bench and waited. “Are you going to do one?” I asked her.

  “Not tonight. I have to think about it more.”

  Next to me, Dixie sniffled, and I looked in time to see her brushing a tear away.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and again wiped her hand across her face.

  Elton came back and brought over his stencils. One with two interlocking stars for me, and another with just one that he could lay over Dixie’s existing tattoo to match. He’d added a little shading to both.

  “That’s awesome,” Kip said.

  I loved it. I wanted Dixie to love it, and to say so, and smile at me and hug me. All she did was nod and say “Okay,” and it was almost enough.

  Kip got up. “I’m going to take a walk.”

  “You can stay,” I said.

  “There’s a bookstore near here I want to check out. I’ll be back.”

  We paid cash up front, then he did mine first. I took off my hoodie and he cleaned my arm and shaved some of the fine hairs there. He used the stencil to position the design and transfer an outline to follow. “You sure that’s exactly how you want it? Because this is forever.”

  I nodded.

  Dixie sat with me. We were both mesmerized, by how the needle left ink on my skin and by the high buzzing of the gun. It didn’t really hurt. Just enough for you to know something was happening to you. Elton worked fast—he was already moving on to the second star when I glanced at Dixie and saw tears in her eyes again.

  “What?” I asked quietly.

  “Nothing.”

  When Elton finished mine, he cleaned everything up and wrapped my arm in plastic and told me how to take care of it. “You guys can take a walk around the block if you want while I clean everything and set up for you,” he said, nodding at Dixie.

  We went out and I took the pack of Haciendas from my bag. “You want a smoke?” I asked Dixie. She shook her head and I realized I didn’t want one, either.

  She wasn’t crying anymore but she didn’t seem herself. My arm felt bruised. “It kind of hurts now,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’ll be like that for a few days.”

  We walked down the street. It was dark by then except for streetlights, and colder than it had been the night before. Dixie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “Don’t you think Mom is probably worried for real now?” she asked. “Like, reporting us missing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t want her to worry. We should call just to say don’t worry. From Elton’s phone or something so she can’t get the number of yours.”

  It was like she had a kind of amnesia. About how mad she’d been about Mom earlier, after their phone call. And how obvious it was our parents weren’t worried about us. Dad wanted the money, Mom wanted the money. Maybe they wanted us, too, but neither of them would want to have to explain the money to anyone like police.

  “We’re probably going to be on the news tomorrow,” Dixie continued. “Our pictures will be around, so it will be harder to stay hidden. If we call her, maybe she won’t report it. If she hasn’t already, which she probably has.”

  She waited for me to say something.

  “Maybe.”

  We’d walked around the whole block and were back to the tattoo place. Without speaking, Dixie went in and climbed onto the table and pulled her shirt up and the waist of her jeans down. She rested her
head on her folded arms, with her face away from me.

  Afterward we waited outside for Kip. I wanted Dixie to talk. About how she was feeling, or maybe to say that it meant something that we had matching tattoos now. All I got was the back of her head, then her annoyed face when she turned to ask, “Where the fuck is she?”

  A minute later Kip’s car rolled up. “Hey,” Kip said.

  Dixie yanked the door open and climbed into the backseat; I settled into the front, holding my backpack on my lap.

  “You guys want to go to a party?” Kip asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “What kind of a party?” Dixie asked.

  “A party.” Kip cranked up the windshield defrost and looked at Dixie in the rearview mirror.

  “Not if it’s, like, five people sitting around smoking a bowl and talking about five other people that we don’t know.”

  Kip turned around in her seat and stared at Dixie. “You like to have things your way, I noticed.”

  Dixie stared back. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “It’s not going to be five people sitting around smoking a bowl. It should be pretty big. Everyone knows each other here. Music and snacks and probably whatever you want to drink.”

  “I thought you said your school was all assholes,” Dixie said.

  “I was in a mood. Anyway, even if they are, they’re the only people I know and I get bored. So.” Kip hit my thigh lightly with the back of her hand. “Do you want to?”

  “We should get back to the motel,” I said. I touched my wrapped arm. It was tender. I was tired. I needed rest so I could leave in the night, if that’s what I decided to do.

  “You can go back,” Dixie said. “I’m going to the party.”

  Maybe it was an opportunity—I could ask Kip to drop me off, send Dixie to the party with her. But when Kip pulled the car out onto the road, she said, “I’m only taking you if Gem comes.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  We drove a short way. It was one more thing we could do together. Then, then for sure, I could make a move. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  We went back in the direction of the motel for about fifteen minutes. Kip pointed. “That’s where I live. Down that street.”