Burro Hills

by Julia Lynn Rubin

  “If she’s anything like her big sister, homegirl’s gonna be giving much more than hand-jobs,” said Katie.

  “Do you all ever talk about anything other than how superior you are to everyone else?” I snapped.

  Katie’s mouth opened and closed. Asha turned red and stared at her desk. Valerie put down her mascara and sized me up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t remember inviting you in on this conversation, Jack.”

  “I’m pretty sure you invited everyone in the room, you’ve been talking so loud,” I said, surprising myself. It felt good to speak up, to tell someone off in this dump for once. “Lay off Jess. None of you are saints, and if you possessed the smallest shred of empathy, you’d see she’s going through a lot right now.”

  Asha and Katie looked to Valerie, who was now applying sparkly purple eye shadow to her lids, studying her face in her mirror like I wasn’t there.

  Valerie lowered her voice. “You would know about her rough times, Jack. You were the one getting all rape-y with her on the couch at Skye’s party, weren’t you?”

  Katie gasped. Asha covered her hand with her mouth. A few kids looked over at us.

  I grabbed my backpack and stormed out of the room, slamming the door on my way out. I kicked a locker hard, and the lock clanked and rattled against the metal. I needed a joint. A huge hit off a bong. I headed off to the courtyard and lit up under the big sycamore tree.

  I realized I was shaking.

  I tried writing Jess a note. I crumpled it up and tossed it out. I tried writing an email, but my hands fumbled all over the keyboard and nothing came out right. I thought about calling her, but no, she’d said she needed space. I would honor that space.

  Still, I had to at least check to see if she was alright. We were still friends, weren’t we? I sent her a quick text message: You okay? I’m here if you want to talk. My heart picked up as three little dots appeared below my text message. She was typing something. She was actually going to tell me! But then they vanished, and nothing.

  I shoved my phone back into my pocket and went to my next class, trying to block it all out. If she didn’t need me, she didn’t need me.

  Then, later, right before school was about to let out, I spotted them: Connor and Jess, huddled together in a corner of the science wing. He leaned in close to her and whispered something to her, and my heart thumped so hard I could hear my pulse in my ears. Was he telling her about us? Jess bit her lip and stared down at the floor, and Connor moved in to give her a one-armed hug. She hugged him back.

  When he walked towards me down the hall, I grabbed his arm and he gasped in surprised.

  “Oh! Sorry, you startled me,” he said.

  “I saw you talking to Jess. What was that about?”

  He was looking around all distracted, but he just shrugged, forced a smile. “Oh. Nothing. She just needed help with something. Some class thing.”

  “You weren’t like, talking about me, were you?”

  He laughed and quickly kissed me under my jaw, my favorite spot to be kissed. The hall was empty by now, but it still made me freeze, watching and waiting for someone to walk by and see. “You’re all we ever talk about,” he teased, but I moved away from him.

  “Wait, so you’ve talked to her before? You guys talk in general?”

  He gave me this look like I was losing my mind. “Of course. We have classes together. Is that a problem?” He sounded annoyed, maybe mad.

  “No, forget it,” I said. “I’m just worried about her. It seems like something’s really bothering her lately.”

  He chewed at his lip. “Yeah. Well. If there is, she’ll tell you when she’s ready, you know?”

  I swallowed down the questions I desperately wanted to ask. He wasn’t telling me something. That was obvious. But I didn’t want him to be mad at me, or keep looking at me like that. I just wanted to go back to his house and watch movies and smoke, and for everything to be easy between us. I didn’t want to think about Jess.

  I didn’t really want to think, period.

  Still, as I followed him to his locker to get his skateboard, I tried again. One last time. I opened my messages and sent her one.

  If you need anything, you know I’m here.

  40.

  The anonymous phone calls on my cell started not long after.

  They were all from numbers I didn’t know. Each time I answered, all I would hear was heaving breathing, then something whispered I couldn’t make out. At first, I blew it off as a prank, but after about a dozen or so, I started getting nervous, started yelling at the person on the other line to quit being a pussy and reveal themselves.

  Sometimes they came with text messages, cryptic—not even whole words—but creepy. I’d block the number, but hours later, a different one would call me.

  “They must be using some ID spoofing app,” Connor reasoned. “It’s probably just Toby and the Rudoys fucking with you. Keep blocking them and ignoring them.”

  Connor and I were standing outside of the school after the last class, sharing a cigarette. More like, I was chain-smoking and he could barely get a puff in.

  “You need to slow down, babe,” he said gently. I stiffened at the word. There were kids all around us, within earshot. What if they heard us? What if the Rudoy brothers had walked by that very second?

  “Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t say that out in the open.”

  Even I knew I was acting weird, but I couldn’t stop. It was like something or someone had taken over my body, and I was running on pure adrenaline. I leaned against my bike, fidgeting with the handles, pretending to check the air in the tires so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “Is this about those fucking phone calls?” Connor asked. “Jesus, Jack, just ask Toby about it. Demand him to fess up. If you don’t, I will.”

  “No!” I said. “Don’t say anything.”

  “Why not? What is up with you lately?” He put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. “Let’s just go to your place.”

  He stood in front of me, blocking my bike as I tried to pedal off. “No,” he said. “First of all, you’re in a terrible mood, and you won’t tell me why. Second, we do that every time, and it’s starting to feel like we’re fugitives.” He gestured to the other kids standing around, smoking, laughing, chatting. Freshmen, athletes, artsy kids, theater kids, kids in gangs, kids who didn’t really belong anywhere but still managed to somehow avoid being harassed by a vicious ghost on the phone. Carefree and easy-going and la-dee-da kids. And there was Skye Russo, twirling her hair with manicured fingers and flirting with some senior guy. In that moment, I hated them all.

  And I hated Connor standing in my path, blocking me from moving. “Get out of the way, Connor.”

  “No,” he said.

  My phone bleeped. I reached reluctantly into my pocket, praying it was Mom or even Toby, but no. It was anonymous, as usual, some area code I didn’t recognize.

  RWILWEWY.

  Riley was all I could see. It was like someone had mainlined adrenaline into my heart. I needed to pedal out of there, get out of there fast, but Connor was still in my way.

  “What is it?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

  “Move!” I yelled, and some kids turned to stare at us. I rammed my bike so hard into his legs he was forced to jump to the side. I caught a glimpse of the look of shock and hurt on his face, but barely had time to register it. I had to get home, and I had to get home fast. That was all I knew.

  I biked down the freeway, the sun beating down on me. Soon I was drenched with sweat. It felt like the temperature had turned up one hundred degrees. I rode past the crude billboards, the strip malls coated in garish colors, minivans and SUVs roasting in their gummy lots. Everything was loud—a big, muddled mess.

  By the time I made it home, my legs hurt so badly I could barely walk to the front door. I kicked my bike and didn’t bother locking it up in th
e garage. I didn’t care anymore. Then I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

  There was a text, but it was from Connor. It wasn’t an accusation, or an angry message, or even a plea. It was just a heart, and in that moment, it was all I needed to calm down and root myself.

  I tried. I really tried. But my head wouldn’t stop spinning. My heart wouldn’t stop racing.

  And no matter how many times I blocked the numbers, the texts kept coming.

  RWILWEWY.

  RWILWEWY.

  And each time, my stomach dropped. I shut off my phone.

  41.

  He kissed my neck and I pulled away. It had been like this all day in school, him sneaking in sweet little gestures and trying to be close to me in math class, and me being the coward that I was. I wanted to kiss him back more than anything, to wrap my arms around him and let the whole school see us, but something always stopped me cold. Maybe it was the way that the Rudoy brothers or Toby would always sneer at us in the halls, and the way certain people were starting to whisper and laugh. It was like suddenly I heard and felt and saw everything, and everyone was always talking about me. Every conversation. Every passed note in class. I was paranoid, and I’d sit through class with my leg jiggling and my palms sweating and my stomach in knots.

  I turned off my phone and started avoiding Connor in the hallways. It’s not that I didn’t want to see him. Not exactly. But he didn’t understand. And I couldn’t explain why I was so damn scared. Maybe it was that I knew deep down that I wasn’t man enough for him, that I didn’t really deserve him or any of this.

  “What is it?” he asked. We were sequestered in the bathroom in the science wing during an assembly. “Why do you keep avoiding me? I know you are. You pretend like you don’t see me or know me. But then when we go back to my house, or somewhere else, you’re a totally different person.” I could hear the edge in his voice and see the mix of anger and hurt in his eyes. It was just us in that dirty bathroom, my nerves on edge, listening, waiting for someone to come in…to see us. To see me. To see us.

  “Jack,” he said. “Let me inside your head for once.”

  “I can’t,” I mumbled. I turned from him and went to the sink, pressing my face against the glass of the mirror. He reached out to touch my shoulder, and I didn’t mean to, but I pulled away.

  I instantly regretted it. We were standing on the precipice of something, and I was pushing us over the edge.

  He was silent for a moment, and then he spoke.

  “You know, Jack, I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. This has been going on since I first met you.”

  I went somewhere deep inside myself. I knew this would come…I’d known it all along.

  I’d willed it into existence.

  “But now you’re farther away from me than ever. I understand you’re scared, and not just of those phone calls. I get that. Trust me, if anyone knows fear, it’s me. But if this is going to work, if we’re going to…I just can’t keep hiding out like this, like some frightened fucking animal.”

  When I didn’t answer, he went on. “You know how I feel about this place, about the assholes that go here. Well fuck them all. Seriously, fuck them. Jack, come on, look at me. You matter more to me than these shitty people with their heads so far up their own asses they can’t breathe or think of anyone but themselves or anything but their own ignorant bullshit. Jack. Answer me!”

  A thousand words were caught in my throat, swimming through my mind, but I couldn’t speak.

  I heard him leave then, heard the door swing shut, the sound echoing into the cold chamber of everything I was making myself lose.

  42.

  The rattlesnake was enormous, monstrous.

  Its long, meaty body writhed in pain in the giant oven that was slowly burning it to death. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a spoon. I’d have to eat it when it was done cooking.

  I woke up gasping for air. My lungs on fire. Mom was there, rubbing my back. “You’re alright,” she said soothingly. “It was just a nightmare.”

  My sheets were sticky with sweat. I was shaking, terrified, the horror and the panic rising in me from some primal place. My teeth chattered as she put a cool hand to my forehead and rubbed my shoulders.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she said. “Everything’s alright now.”

  I let her tuck me back in, let her bring me water and feel my forehead again, gauging my temperature. Soon the chills ceased and I stopped shaking, the heaviness setting in as I settled back down. I could see her wrinkles in the darkness, the familiar shape of her face, all the lines and creases, the way her hair fell forward down her shoulders.

  “Mom,” I whispered. “Something bad is going to happen.” It was something I used to say when I was little, when I would wake from a bad dream, a long series of night terrors I used to get when I was nine or ten.

  She dutifully said her lines.

  “No, no,” she said, her voice a balm. “Everything is going to be just fine. When you wake up in the morning, everything will be better.”

  For the first time in a while, I felt love for her. Deep, endless rivers of love, warming me as I fell back into a stone-cold sleep.

  In the morning, I fished through my drawers, finally settling on one of my favorite shirts, a white graphic tee. On the front was a black-and-white photo of a handsome young James Dean, smoking a thin cigarette. I spiked my hair up in the front, checking myself out in the mirror. I looked good. I look good. I feel good, I told myself.

  It was warm and sunny that day, a cool breeze following me as I biked the two miles to school. Today would be different, it would be better. No one would try me today.

  Things were going well until second period, when I went to my locker.

  Carved into the metal was the letter “F”, revealing the cold gray steel underneath the sickly orange paint. It’d been done with a key or a knife, something that could allow for a quick and easy cut.

  I scouted the hallways for someone watching me, someone waiting for my reaction. But there was no one there that I knew, just pools of freshmen floating along aimlessly, happily oblivious.

  I breathed deeply, forced myself to relax. They can’t hurt you, I told myself. They’re just trying to rattle you.

  I opened my locker.

  Inside was a thick piece of rope fashioned into what looked like a noose. A pink sticky note had been stuck to it, along with the words in barely eligible writing: No one would miss you. And beside it, a badly drawn cartoon of Riley Adams, naked and covered in black scribbles.

  I slammed the locker door so hard it rattled.

  I felt myself getting hot all over, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. Things were tunneling away from my vision, the ground pulling me underneath.

  There were voices, a security guard snapping for me to move along, someone asking if I was okay. We were moving. Things were fuzzy, blurry. In my mind’s eye, I was in the backyard, running away from Daddy, heart racing, cold adrenaline sweating off me. I had to move quickly or the monster would catch me. Everything was very bright.

  I didn’t come to until someone laid me down on my back. I stared up at the ugly school ceiling, white with black spots.

  The school nurse was sitting on the edge of the sick bed, taking my pulse with two fingers. She had a placid, small smile on her face, a knowing look that made me feel calm.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’m not too sure, hon. It looks like you may have had a panic attack. Have you experienced anything like this before?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know. Maybe.”

  She helped me sit up. “Slowly, slowly. There you go.” She handed me a Dixie cup filled with water. I gulped it down and immediately wanted more. Why did they make these things so small?

  “You’re okay, now,” she said gently, her voice like warm milk. But I didn’t feel okay.

  “Do you want me to call your parents and have them pick you up?”

  “No, no. I’m fine
.”

  “I just need to see your student I.D., get some stuff logged into the system, and then you can head back to class if you’re feeling up to it.”

  I shook my head. The dizzy feeling was coming back full throttle. “Please, can we just keep this between us?” I said. “I don’t want this in the system. I don’t want my parents knowing. I don’t want anyone to know. Look, I know it’s your job and all, but I’m fine, really. I don’t want anyone worrying about me. Can we just…act like this didn’t happen?”

  She wiped her glasses on his shirt and studied me closely. “What’s your name?”

  “Jack,” I said. “Burns.”

  “Jack, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write an excuse for you that says you were sick that you can give to your teacher, and I’ll log this into the system as a stomach-related issue. I do think you should call your mom or dad and have them come pick you up early. I’ll be more than happy to arrange that, and I won’t tell them what happened.”

  “I think I’ll go back to class,” I said, forcing myself to smile.

  She sighed and shook her head, writing up the note, but before she relinquished it to me she said: “Listen Jack, I’m only a school nurse, and this is just a suggestion, but if you feel this overwhelmed a lot, I would recommend seeing a counselor. You know, someone you can talk to besides Mom and Dad.”

  “Sure,” I said, taking the note, forcing another smile. “Thanks.”

  I left the nurse’s office, crumpling the note in my fist. I got the pink sticky note, cartoon, and rope from my locker, shoved them in my bag, and went outside to unlock my bike from the rack.

  When I got home the house was quiet except for Gunther curled up against the wall with his legs splayed out, snoring loudly. It was weird that Mom wasn’t there eating a bag of donuts or watching bad TV, but I didn’t question it.

  I let Gunther into the yard and sat in the grass. First, I burned the rope, watching it smolder and disintegrate into the ground until I needed to stomp out the flames. Then I burned the pink sticky note and the cartoon, watching the smoke curl and rise into the blue sky. I rolled a joint and laid back into the soft grass and smoked until my eyes watered and all the thoughts left my head.