by Natalie Lund
“‘I’m on top, right on top, where I wanna be,’” Dot sang. Her voice was rich and smoky, like the jazz singers of the thirties, and powerful, too. The band members’ voices trailed along behind hers like kite tails.
“Whoa, you’re great! You should be up there,” Brenna said.
“That’s the dream.”
Up close, Brenna saw that black eyeliner had filled the tiny creases beside Dot’s eyes. Her skin was so pale and her cheeks so powdered that Brenna wondered whether Dot might be covering something. Brenna knew all about using makeup to hide.
“Have you used the notebook yet?” Dot asked.
“I’ve tried, but I can’t really figure out what to write.”
Dot beckoned her to an empty picnic table near the back of the courtyard and pulled a green notebook out of her purse. The leather cover was so scratched and worn that it looked like a crumpled dollar bill. Dot fanned the pages, and Brenna could tell every single one was filled.
“I’ve never been good at saying what I feel out loud. But I can write it,” she said. Dot flipped to a page and traced the lyrics written there, crooning like Nina Simone. “‘Make him watch me walking away. I’m not his, not his, not his doll for play.’”
“Wait, what did you just sing?” Brenna asked, her hands suddenly icy. It was the line her seventh-grade self had written on the cover of her old notebook.
Dot sang the line again, “‘I’m not his, not his, not his doll for play.’”
Brenna swallowed hard. “I wrote that same line years ago.”
“Uncanny!” Dot said. Her smile had a wink to it, like they were having a conversation between the lines. Brenna just wasn’t sure what about.
Brenna’s phone buzzed. We’re here, Amy had texted. She was easy to spot by the entrance, her pineapple-yellow hair sprayed stiff around her face, a black Victorian collar to her chin, her skin vampire pale. Dutch stood behind her, his hair spiked into a Mohawk and his ears gauged with black discs. He wore a Nirvana T-shirt tucked into a kilt.
“I want you to meet my friends,” Brenna said, but Dot seemed to be shrinking away from her, her eyes darting to where Amy and Dutch had stopped at the bar, probably trying to buy drinks with their fake IDs.
“I can’t stick around, but I heard the band has another show tomorrow at the Alehouse on River Road. You should come, and we can chat again.”
“I’d love to if I can use the car,” Brenna said, embarrassed by how eager she sounded. It was hard to mask how excited she felt: like Dot knew her, the real her—however crazy that seemed.
Dot waved goodbye, each of her fingers taking a quick bow, and danced toward the stage.
Amy strolled to the picnic table, licking beer foam off the rim of her pint glass and dragging Dutch by the hand. The pair was always sort of dating, sort of not. She offered the beer to Brenna, who swallowed a sour gulp.
“Where’s the girl who invited you?”
“She had to go.” Brenna gestured toward the small knot of fans, but Dot, with her polka dots and patent leather, was nowhere to be seen.
A FEW OF US
A few of us remember getting a black eye from Detonator Dorothy when we played Kick the Can. She was this pigtailed, saddle-shoed girl who flattened herself in the shadow of the town square’s band shell, just within sight of the red Campbell’s can guarded by Bobby or Kevin or Donny or whatever dumb twerp volunteered for the job. As soon as Bobby or whoever took a step back, Dorothy would unfurl herself from her hiding spot and sprint, making this terrible shrieking sound like a bomb about to explode. The can guard always reversed his direction too late, his baby-fat cheeks wobbling, arms pumping. Her toe would connect with the can, send it clatter-rolling across the bricks, before she collided with the can guard: eyes open, elbows up, refusing to flinch.
We saw her parents fighting from the street a few times, and one of us whose bedroom windows faced the same alley as Dorothy’s had seen her dad in the hallway light, a sallow scarecrow of a man, slip into her bedroom. The door closed off the light and there’d been noises in the still alley air, that same bomb shriek, but quieter, like a dog whimpering. The light in her mama’s room flicked on once, but then right back out. Word of the awfulness spread quickly in Mercer.
We stopped playing Kick the Can with her. We stopped looking her in the eye.
We didn’t know what else to do.
Joshua’s mother was on the living room couch when he walked in, a file open in her lap. Her eyes were on him, wide and worried.
“What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing, Mom.”
“Oh, Joshy.” She stood, papers sliding to the floor, and cupped his cheeks. He longed for his neighbor’s hands on his face, those powder-dry calluses.
“I’m fine. Nothing’s broken.”
“Is this why you skipped first period this morning? Has someone been bullying you at school?”
Joshua thought about lying and saying yes. Maybe it would end this conversation. But he knew his mother would demand meetings with the vice principal and counselor; there’d be no end. Just the thought of that exhausted him.
“I told you before: no one pays attention to me at school, Mom. It’s like I don’t exist there,” he said.
“Well, you certainly didn’t this morning. Missing a class? What were you doing? And how did this happen?”
“Can’t we just skip all that and go straight to my punishment?”
She looked bewildered. “I’m on your side, Joshy, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”
Joshua felt the urge to hurt her, to ask why she couldn’t just be the supportive mom after the fact. She should have protected him all along, should have homeschooled him instead of working. But he swallowed his words; it wasn’t her fault.
“Can we just talk later?” He started up the stairs. “I presume I’m grounded.”
She didn’t say anything in response, but Joshua recognized his mother’s silence. Her gaze would be sharply focused on his back, zooming in like Ruthie’s did.
* * *
* * *
In his bedroom, Joshua unfolded the stolen note next to the car drawing he’d started at school. I want to memorize your geography. That was passion befitting a superhero.
Joshua got lost in his drawing, sketching his neighbor as Wolverine on top of the Pontiac, about to save whoever was inside, a shadowed silhouette. It was more of a movie Wolverine than a comic book one, simple and realistic: a perfect whorl of chest hair above the sleeveless tee and glimmering adamantium claws extending from his clenched knuckles. His hair feathered out above peaked dark eyebrows. He glared from the picture with wolfish brown eyes that were more alive than anything Joshua had ever drawn before.
Holding the pencil in his teeth, he dragged an eraser across the sketchpad. He couldn’t get the legs right. He tried to re-create the overlapping diamonds of his neighbor’s quadriceps, the lean bulbs of his calves, but failed every time. At the bottom of the torso, Joshua sketched the crouched hind legs and bushy tail of an actual wolverine in light, wispy lines. He imagined the man prowling the fields for deer and rabbits—yellow-eyed, teeth bared, hackles raised. Joshua wanted to wear the man like a hot fur pelt on his back and become a predator himself.
And this Wolverine had noticed him? Had given him advice and held his face? Despite the aching around his eyes and at the bridge of his nose, Joshua could only feel excited.
Brenna woke to banging, loud, like wind catching the shutters. She sat up, sure that she’d slept through a siren, that another tornado was on its way, and kicked free of her sheets. The room was dark, so she lit her phone: 2:37 a.m.
“Brenna Daniela Ortiz!” Her mother’s voice. The pounding resolved into angry knocking. Adrenaline drained into Brenna’s chest, where it welled, hot.
“God, Mom, what?”
The door swung open, the knob smacki
ng the drywall.
Her mother was still in uniform. She held a wad of black material in her hand. Brenna recognized her mother’s anger because it was like her own: formidable and fast, but all wind.
“What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” Brenna said, though she recognized the dress she’d borrowed. She must have put it back in the wrong place, or maybe it had fallen off the hanger and smelled like smoke. Her mind flicked to the towels, still piled on the floor. Double shit.
Her mother sucked her cheeks in. “You wore it somewhere, didn’t you? To that concert?”
“I’ll wash it,” Brenna said.
“That’s not the point. The point is you don’t listen.”
Her mother stepped into the room and paced. Four steps to the dresser. Four back to the closet. Faster each time, gathering force.
“I asked for one thing.” Turn. Four steps. “You can’t do one thing?” She sounded more hurt than angry.
“In all fairness, you asked for three.”
Her mother kicked the TV tray Brenna used as a nightstand. The flimsy leg gave way, bowing to the floor. The ashtray Brenna hid under wads of Kleenex hit the carpet with a thud. Her mother nudged it with her toe and Brenna braced herself for a smoking lecture, but her voice was surprisingly soft.
“You just take and take and take and do whatever you want. You don’t think of anyone else, mija.”
Brenna felt this slice deep into her. “You don’t think of anyone else,” she said, a spectator of her own anger again, like she was watching it build from the other side of glass. “You pretend to be a pious Catholic because your mom wants you to and then parade men through here like this is a truck stop.”
The smack caught her jaw, and her ears crackled. Brenna buried her face in her arms, preparing for a flurry of slaps, but none came. She peeked out. Her mother’s work visor hid the top half of her face in shadow.
When her mother spoke, she sounded resigned. “I expect that kind of talk from them, but not from you.” Them—Brenna knew—were all the Lisles, the bag-booters, and the gossips of Mercer, the kind of people who had made Brenna’s seventh-grade year so miserable. Brenna still couldn’t see her mother’s eyes, but she knew what was next: “You got an hour to get out.”
Brenna dropped her arms when the door slammed. She’d been kicked out before; it was bluster—a duet they played often: angsty teenage daughter; overworked, frustrated mother. Brenna always stayed put and, the next day, there’d be a few dollars for lunch on the counter or a clean bowl and a box of cereal. She returned the peace offering by wiping down the countertops or lighting a stick of incense so the house didn’t smell so dank from Manny’s weed. But this was different. It was the middle of the night, and she’d said something she couldn’t take back.
Still, she wanted her mother to hurt, to feel her absence like a nail in the soft flesh of her sole. Brenna pried her cell phone charger from the wall and picked up the lavender notebook from where she’d flung it beside the bed. Maybe tonight she’d be inspired enough to start writing again. She stuffed the journal, along with some underwear, a tank, flannel, and jeans into her backpack and pulled on her boots, not bothering to change out of the T-shirt and boxers she slept in. Her mother’s door was shut, but Brenna found her purse in the kitchen. Brenna snatched the only cash—a five-dollar bill—and flung open the front door. The night was starless and chilly. Brenna took a deep breath and tried Amy’s phone. No answer. Golden Girl wasn’t in the driveway either, and Brenna wasn’t about to call Manny.
Brenna stood at the end of her driveway. Behind her was downtown. Across the street was the cemetery, then the impound lot beyond that, which was kitty-corner from the high school, and then the great wide stretch of country. She felt like she could be wild, like she could plunge off a forest path into dark brambles, and go deeper, go through. But something tugged at her. The white car from the night of the tornado would be in the lot. And by now the VW would be there too. She could study them up close. Maybe even sleep inside one of them.
* * *
* * *
The lot kept a dog, but it was old and would bark only half-heartedly at Brenna and her friends on their way to school, wagging if someone threw a powdered doughnut or granola bar. She could see its squat white shape outside the office. It was still—probably asleep.
The high school across the way was dark, and the street was deserted, so Brenna wrapped her fingers around the chain links, forced a toe through, and hauled herself up. She rolled over the top and let herself drop. Her feet crunched on the gravel, and she expected to hear the sigh of the aged pit bull while it gathered the energy to stand, but it didn’t stir.
The VW was easy to spot in a crowd of cars near the front of the lot. She walked around the powder-blue behemoth, touching each ding and spider crack she could reach. Hail, maybe? From the storm? She pulled on the doors, but they were all locked.
Brenna weaved through rows of vehicle carcasses, trying not to imagine what or who might be crouched in their shadowy interiors. She finally found the white car at the other end of the lot—right up against the fence. Brenna could see the pockmarks in the car’s white paint, the places where the chrome bent, reflecting moonlight back at itself. She walked around the car until she found its name scrawled in silver. Pontiac Catalina. It was a musical name, begging to be chanted like a spell. The car had a Route 66 bumper sticker. From history class, she remembered that the highway stretched from Chicago to LA—a whole swath of the country that could contain clues. The interior was white leather, pristine—not cigarette-burnt and losing its spongy yellow stuffing like Golden Girl’s seats. Brenna tried the doors, but they were all locked too. Strange, when she could just climb onto the hood and lower herself, feetfirst, through the shattered windshield.
She positioned herself in the driver’s seat and tried to imagine the terror of being lifted in the car, having only the steering wheel to hold on to. As she sat there, Brenna felt something tugging at her again, a strong feeling that she should look for answers. She ran her fingers over the leather, checked under the seats, hoping for a drop of blood, a wallet, something the police had missed, something that would explain what was going on.
Under the passenger seat, her fingers brushed a piece of cloth wrapped around the springs. When she pulled, the fabric ripped and something came free. A grease-stained name patch: Luke. She thought the owner’s name was Edward. She held the patch up to the moonlight, hoping it would reveal something other than grease.
Brenna tucked it into her backpack so she could study it more in daylight, and pulled out her flannel shirt and jeans. She climbed into the back seat, changed, and then reclined to look out at the cloudy night. It was too dark to write, but she held the new journal against her chest. She knew that she’d grow cold soon, that she’d be hungry in the morning, that she’d have to sneak out without being seen and find somewhere to go. But, maybe, if she fell asleep again with the journal on her chest, Brenna’s heart would write her as someone new. A someone who could figure out why this Pontiac and the VW were important, and if the Storm Spirits were trying to tell them something.
MANY OF US WATCHED
Many of us watched from our porches the night Dorothy’s mother chased her father out of the house with a paring knife before sobbing, hands on her knees. Detonator Dorothy, probably thirteen at the time, was barefoot with her hair mussed like she’d been asleep. She had tiptoed off the stoop to her mother, but she pushed her daughter away as though it were somehow Dorothy’s fault the man was gone.
When the medics put Dorothy in the ambulance a few weeks later, she was gray-faced and purple-lipped but alive, her mother tripping alongside the stretcher in a housedress. Rumor had it that Dorothy had taped a plastic bag over her head. It was months before she returned to school.
But soon we heard the Zenith crooning every night and Dorothy humming along until her mother scolded he
r for “all that noise.” We’d drag Mr. McLauren’s porch chairs into the alley to listen, at first to the Billboard hits: Elvis, Dean Martin, the McGuire Sisters. All sugar and pop. Then Dorothy found jazz: Ella, Billie, Nina, Peggy, and Carmen. How could the same person who made that bomb-shriek sing like them?
She bought a used guitar. We watched her walk home with it, her arms wrapped around it like a newborn—though it was anything but. Its wood was almost worn through beneath the strings, the yellow varnish chipped to reveal silver. From the alley, the notes had a dusky smokiness to them that seemed to strip everything away, down to the very soul. Despite her mother’s protests that it was a waste of time, Dorothy even joined the high school choir. After the bell, she hung around the cavernous choir room with its arched ceiling. And those of us who’d returned for our forgotten canteens and sheet music saw her singing at the piano, alone. It was slightly out of tune, the notes dampened, but she transformed the room into a chapel, the songs into prayer.
A few of us were hovering in the doorway, listening, the day Mr. Cannon returned for his briefcase. We ducked away, fiddling with our lockers and instrument cases. Our choir teacher was gray-haired, his face thick at the jaw, the mustache and beard widening it even more. He had the same bleary, unfocused red eyes as so many of our uncles and fathers, including Dorothy’s.
“You sing like a real grown-up,” he slurred at Dorothy.
“Is that a good thing?”
Mr. Cannon smiled. “Depends on whether you want to be a grown-up or not.” He gestured at the piano bench. “May I?” Without waiting for a reply, Mr. Cannon climbed onto the bench, barely fitting beside Dorothy. He played something moody and slow that we’d never heard before.
“Sing,” he commanded.
“I don’t know the words.”
“Hasn’t stopped you before. I’ve heard you.”