by Amy Reed
Everything in Rosina’s body stops—her heart, her lungs, the blood flowing through her veins. Every cell inside her simultaneously surrenders.
“I know you wouldn’t want to do anything that might get your family in trouble. Maybe send the health department to your uncle’s restaurant? All it would take is a call from a concerned citizen.” Her voice is suddenly robotic, soulless. It is no longer a human saying these words.
Without thinking, Rosina turns around to see her mother, still standing there, staring at Rosina with that same fire in her eyes. Two women, poised to hurt her more than any man could. Rosina turns back around to face the wall. She is trapped.
“What do you think, Miss Suarez?” Slatterly finally says. “Do you want to make trouble?”
“No,” Rosina whispers.
“You know, I could forget about all of this if you’d help me a little. If you’d tell me what you know about this Nowhere Girls group. Perhaps when and where the next meeting will be, who the leader is, what kind of plans they have in store. That information would be very helpful to me.”
“I don’t know anything,” Rosina says. “I already told you that.”
“Of course you did,” Slatterly says.
Again, the agonizing silence.
“Well, I’m sure your mother is eager to speak with you,” Slatterly finally says, way too cheerfully and way too fast, as if she is trying to end this conversation as quickly as possible, as if she is trying to convince herself it wasn’t as bad as it really was. “The good news is, if you stay out of trouble, you have nothing to worry about. But you’re on probation, Miss Suarez. One wrong step, and you’re gone. Understood?”
“Yes.”
“And of course, if you happen to remember something about your friends’ little organization, I’m all ears. If the information is useful, I’ll have no reason to pay such close attention to you anymore. All right? Wonderful. I’m glad we had this talk. Please tell your mother I say good-bye, and I hope you have a great weekend.” Then Slatterly is gone.
“Drugs?!” Mami screams as soon as Rosina faces her.
“What?”
“The principal told me you’re on drugs,” she says, grabbing the phone out of Rosina’s hand. “So that’s where you’ve been sneaking off all the time. That’s why you can’t babysit. Because you’re getting high? You’re choosing drugs over your own family? I knew you were up to something, but not that. Even I didn’t think you could sink that low.”
“I haven’t done a drug in my life!” Rosina says. “Slatterly doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“She said you’ve been skipping classes. She said you’ve been hanging out with bad kids at school.”
“Mami, you’ve met my friends,” Rosina says. “You know they’re not bad.”
“What I know is that girls lie,” Mami says. She steps forward, forcing Rosina up against the wall. “What I know is that you lie. You have been lying to me since the moment you could speak.”
“Mami,” Rosina cries. “I’m telling the truth. I’m not doing anything bad. I swear to God.”
Mami grabs the front of Rosina’s shirt and pulls it tight, catching Rosina’s breath in her grip. “Don’t you dare,” she growls. “Don’t you dare talk about God. Don’t you even utter His name.”
Rosina can’t speak. She can’t breathe.
“One more call from the principal and you’re gone,” Mami says, almost calmly, which is so much worse than her rage. “I’ve had enough. This family has had enough. I am done being your mother.”
When Mami lets go, Rosina stumbles against the crate and falls to the ground. Now that the noose around her neck has loosened, everything is bubbling up, all the tears she hasn’t cried, and Rosina is sobbing, she is a heap on the floor, she is reaching for her mother’s feet, crying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” but all Mami does is look at her like she’s a mangy street dog, too sick and dirty to love.
“Clean yourself up and get ready for work,” Mami says.
Rosina looks up at her, face red and blotchy and drenched with tears. “Mami,” Rosina says, forcing herself to meet her mother’s eyes. “Please. I’m sorry. I love you.”
For a split second, Rosina thinks she sees her mother soften, but just as quickly, it is gone.
“You make me sick,” Mami spits, and walks away, and Rosina couldn’t agree more.
ERIN.
The blanket on Erin is heavy, like those X-ray bibs dentists use. It is a special kind of blanket for people on the spectrum, like a hug for people who don’t like to be hugged. She has spent most of the weekend under it, either reading in bed or dragging it downstairs to watch randomly generated episodes of TNG. She skips the ones with Wesley Crusher.
Erin has been nonverbal for two days. Mom has been trying to reach her all weekend. She’s asked her repeatedly if something happened at school. She called Slatterly’s office, but the principal never called back. She’s made calls to Erin’s doctor and therapist and specialists, even her old OT in Seattle. They have all told her to wait, to let Erin decide when she’s ready to talk. But patience is not Mom’s strong suit. Giving Erin space is not Mom’s idea of fixing a problem.
Erin sat through dinner tonight, listening to Mom’s desperate, tear-filled attempts to fill the silence. “Was it the bullies, honey? Did they say something? I thought they were leaving you alone this year. You haven’t done this in so long. You’ve been doing so well. Is this a regression?”
Erin did not say answers to these questions out loud, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have them. She was having a full dialogue with her mom in her head. This is not about regression, she thought. I am not linear. I just hurt. I just want the world to be quiet.
Erin thinks maybe she will start talking again tomorrow. Monday is always a good day to start over. But tonight she just wants to be in her room. She wants stillness. She wants silence. She wants to make herself solid again.
Her phone has been buzzing with calls and texts from Otis for the past half hour, so she turns it off, not reading or listening to any of his messages. She is employing her oldest and best defense—she is choosing not to care. The whales and waves of her noise machine sing to her. She is underwater, so deep the pressure would crush a normal human, but she is safe, boneless.
But just as she is drifting off to sleep, Erin hears something new, something close. Something real and here, not a recording, not an electronic buzz. A series of small taps at her second-floor window. A freak hailstorm? Kamikaze birds?
She opens the window and looks outside, hears rustling below, sees a shadowed figure in the shape of Otis Goldberg, arm raised in midthrow.
“Ow!” Erin says, rubbing her suddenly stinging forehead. “What was that?” These are the first words she’s spoken since Friday. Since Eric.
“Oh, crap,” Otis says. “Sorry. It was a rock.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Why? How’d you know where my bedroom is?”
“Lucky guess. Can you let me in?”
“No,” Erin says. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“Please.”
“Good-bye.”
“Erin, stop being difficult.”
“You’re the one throwing rocks at my head.”
“Dammit, Erin!” Otis shouts. “I just got my freaking ass kicked.” He fiddles with his phone, turns the flashlight on, and shines it on his face. He is bloody. His lip is cut. His right eye is swollen half closed.
Erin forgets everything she’s thought or felt or decided about Otis since Friday afternoon. She forgets about Amber. She forgets about silence. She even forgets about Eric. She’s not thinking about her parents, if they’re still awake, if they will hear. The only thing on her mind is how fast she can get downstairs to let Otis in, how fast she can get him safe in her room, how fast she can help him stop hurting.
Spot follows Erin downstairs and stands beside her as she opens the front door. Otis is l
eaning against the wall of the front porch, holding on to his side. Erin stands there, frozen, looking at him.
“What do I do?” she says.
“Help me.”
Erin takes one tentative step forward. One more. Spot nudges the back of her calf with his nose. She reaches out her hand and Otis takes it. She feels his warmth, his weight, as he puts his arm around her waist and leans on her. He flinches with each step as she guides him into the house and up the stairs. She wonders why this weight is scary but that of a heavy blanket is not.
“Don’t get blood on anything,” Erin says as she closes her bedroom door behind them.
Otis’s laugh quickly turns into a grimace. “Ouch,” he says. He unzips his jacket and pulls up the side of his T-shirt to inspect a bruise the size of his hand forming on his ribs. “Well, that doesn’t look good.” He collapses into Erin’s desk chair.
“Don’t move,” Erin says, and runs out of the room.
She returns with a pile of wet washcloths and enough first-aid supplies for a small hospital. Without saying anything, Erin sits on her bed facing Otis. With slow and gentle hands, she commences to wash his blood away. Spot follows her lead, licking Otis’s hand as it rests on his knee.
“Spot is a very empathetic dog,” Erin says.
“I can see that,” Otis says.
“Stop smiling,” Erin says. “It’s making your lip bleed more.”
“Are your parents going to hear us and freak out? Because I don’t think I can handle getting my ass kicked twice in one night.”
“Their bedroom is downstairs on the other side of the house,” Erin says. “So, we’re fine unless you start screaming at the top of your lungs.”
“Be gentle then.”
Erin notices that she feels strangely comfortable with Otis in her room. She likes being so close to his face. She likes dabbing it with hydrogen-peroxide-drenched cotton balls, likes soothing his little twitches with antibiotic gel and pressing Band-Aids on his warm skin. She likes the silence and the stillness of this touching, how it feels like they are talking even though no one except the noise-machine whales are saying anything.
“This is trippy music,” Otis says.
“It helps me relax,” Erin says.
“You’re pretty good at this. Have you thought about being a doctor?”
“Doctors have to talk to people.”
Erin leans back and admires her work. All cleaned up, Otis’s face is starting to resemble its usual symmetrical self again, at least as much as it can with a quarter of it swollen.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Erin says.
“I was wondering when you’d ask me that.”
“I was busy taking care of you.”
“Does that mean you care about me?” Otis says with a smile so big it makes both of them flinch.
“Stop smiling,” Erin says.
“Since you’re dying to know, I’ll tell you.”
But Erin doesn’t know if she wants him to. She’s enjoying this too much. This being with him in the silence. This bubble of stillness before the bad news.
“I went to the Quick Stop,” Otis begins. “I wasn’t thinking. It was like ten o’clock and I just finished writing that big paper for Ms. Eldridge’s class, and I was fiending for a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, which is like my favorite late-night snack. Do you like Honey Nut Cheerios?”
“I don’t know,” Erin says. She can’t remember the last time she had them. “Do Honey Nut Cheerios have anything to do with why your face got smashed?”
“We were out,” Otis says. “So I decided to walk to the Quick Stop to get a box.”
“At ten o’clock at night.”
“Yes. Like I said, I needed them. Desperately. You don’t understand my relationship with Honey Nut Cheerios.”
“That’s weird.”
“So I walk through the door, but I guess the doorbell dinger thing was broken, because no one noticed I was there. The place was empty except for Spencer Klimpt behind the counter. And guess who else was there? Eric Jordan. And they were talking all serious, so my detective instincts took over and I knew I had to listen to what they were saying.”
“Why do you have detective instincts?” Erin says.
“I’m going to be a journalist when I grow up. I like asking questions and making people uncomfortable.”
“Oh.”
“They were talking about a girl named Cheyenne who lives over in Fir City, and it sounds like—” Otis pauses. He looks Erin in the eye. She does not look away. “It sounds like they did the exact same thing to her that they did to Lucy.” Otis looks away before Erin does. “I don’t know if I can say it out loud.”
“You have to,” Erin says.
Otis takes a deep breath, looks up. Spot licks his wrist. “I remember Spencer’s exact words,” he says. “He said she should feel lucky they even wanted her. Then Eric said she just laid there.” Otis looks like he’s going to be sick. “Eric said he likes it better when they fight a little.”
Erin realizes she’s holding Otis’s hand.
“Then Eric started complaining about how Spencer always gets to go first, how he wants to go first next time. Like they’re planning a next time. And then Eric started talking about Ennis and asking Spencer if he thought Ennis was going to tell, how he never should have been a part of it, how he’s a pussy and they can’t trust him. But that’s when I fell over where I was sort of crouching in the cereal aisle, and I knocked some boxes off the shelves.”
“Oh no,” Erin says.
“Oh yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Spencer said something like, ‘What do you want?’ and Eric said, ‘Oh, shit, do you think he heard us?’ and then I just sort of ran away.”
“You sort of ran away?”
“I ran away.”
“But they caught you.”
“Eric did. I was running, but I’m not a very fast runner, and he’s, like, a football player. I heard him coming and then I just felt myself getting pulled back by my jacket. And then I was on the ground and he was punching me. He kicked me in the stomach. I didn’t even fight back.”
Erin dabs Otis’s tears with a cotton ball.
“I begged him to stop and he just laughed at me. And in that moment I think I knew, just a little, what it felt like to be Lucy. To be Cheyenne.”
And me, Erin thinks. And then she’s crying too. And Spot is frantic, his face snapping back and forth as he tries to lick them both.
“Then Eric stood up, like totally calm,” Otis says, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “He said I’d get worse if I told anyone what I heard. And then he spit on me and walked away.”
“You need to tell the police,” Erin says.
“Yeah, right,” Otis says. “Like they’ll believe me. We both know they’re not going to do anything. Eric’s dad plays poker with the police chief. And weren’t they, like, in Desert Storm together or something?”
“Why’d you come here?”
“I don’t know. I feel safe here. With you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Why are you looking at me?” Erin says. “Do I have snot coming out of my nose? I’m not good at crying.”
“I just like looking at you.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I know.”
“I can’t breathe,” Erin says. “I think I’m having a heart attack.”
“You’re too young to have a heart attack.”
“But it hurts,” Erin says. “Here.” She puts her hand over her heart.
Otis puts his hand on top of hers.
“It’s my fault you got hurt,” Erin cries. “Because of the Nowhere Girls. Because I’m one of the people who started it. If we hadn’t started it, you wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
Otis smiles. “Just when I thought I couldn’t like you any more.”
“What?”
“I do.”
&nbs
p; Erin’s trickle of tears turns into real sobs. She covers her face with her hands. “But you’re so ugly!” she cries. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. You’re not ugly. Your face is. No, wait—”
“I think you’re beautiful,” says Otis.
Erin stands up and starts pacing the room, Spot following close behind. She needs an anchor, something familiar and soothing to counter all this weirdness. “Have you ever thought about how deep-space travel like on Star Trek is similar to deep-ocean exploration?” she says. “It’s all about going where no one’s gone before, finding new life-forms, and expanding our knowledge. Did you know that less than five percent of the ocean floor has been explored? Did you know that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the seafloor? Did you know that there are whole ecosystems down there that don’t rely on the sun, like all the energy comes from chemicals that come through hydrothermal vents, and there are six-foot-tall tube worms that live around them, where the water’s like eighty degrees Celsius, and there are copepods that eat chemosynthetic bacteria, and eels and crabs that eat them, and what this all means is there could be life on other planets, maybe even intelligent life, that isn’t based on photosynthesis.” Erin stops pacing. Otis and the weirdness are still here. “Wait, what are you going to tell your parents?”
“I’ll say I fell off my bike riding to the store.”
“They’ll believe that?”
“Sure.”
“Your parents must not be very smart people.”
“Erin?”
“What?”
“Did you hear me say you’re beautiful?”
She starts pacing again. “You only have one eye right now,” she says. It is a shiny brown rock sprinkled with light.
“What do you think about that?” Otis says.
Erin’s hands flap wildly. “This is who I am. You think this is beautiful?”
“Don’t you?”
Erin stops. She looks Otis straight in the eye. “You’re delusional.”
“That’s entirely possible.” Otis stands up, facing her.
“Why are you standing up? You’re hurt. You’re supposed to be sitting.”