My timing is so far from perfect.
I nod and look around. They seem way younger than most of the hipsters packed into this place.
“Are you back in school?” Rose asks. “Are you applying here?”
“Oh,” I say. “Uh, I don’t really know yet. I might take a year off or something.”
“That’s cool,” the pink-haired girl says. “You could travel!”
Yeah, I think. I guess maybe I could. I made it to Athens by myself. That’s a start.
Adam comes back with a huge mug of coffee. He puts one hand on my shoulder as he sets the mug down in front of me. “Nutella Latte,” he says.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he says. “They make the thing with real Nutella, straight from the jar. Every time I see them do it, I think of you, standing in your pantry, eating spoonfuls of the stuff.”
“Thanks,” I say. I take a sip. The flavor carries me home, to a place that feels safe and secluded. But I need to be here, and I need to be brave, so I put the coffee down onto the table.
Adam pulls an extra chair into the space between me and Rose, just as a group of three heads up to the stage.
A few people in the crowd call out an enthusiastic yeah, and the drums launch in. The beat is just a little off, but I think they mean for it to be that way. Then the bassist starts to fool around some, playing off the drummer. A woman tucks her violin under her chin and begins to move the bow across it really slowly. It lets out a series of high, mournful sighs.
“She’s so amazing,” Rose says, almost swooning.
Adam puts his hand on my knee. He looks over at me and smiles. I look down at his hand on my knee while the violin keeps sighing and the drumbeat intensifies. I grab on to Adam’s hand.
“Can we go outside for a minute?” I ask.
“Sure, yeah.” He stands up and pulls me toward the door.
I realize that it’s the first time we’ve held hands in a long time. His fingers feel cool and soft, his touch light and airy. It’s almost as if he’s already slipped away.
When we get outside, I gesture to one of the empty tables.
We sit there in silence for a while, which is unusual for Adam.
A few people pass by and look at us. I think about what they see, about how they don’t see our bodies inclined toward each other, because they aren’t; about how they don’t see that charge in the space between us, because it isn’t there.
“I’m so glad you’re getting better,” he says. “And that you could come up here alone.”
“Me too,” I say. “It feels really good.”
He nudges my hand, which is resting flat on the table. “I told you that you’d be back to your old self,” he says brightly. “You just needed some time.”
I take Adam’s hand in mine and I look directly at him. “That’s the thing, though,” I say. “I’m not back to my old self. I’m never going to be back, Adam.”
“I don’t believe that.” He’s rubbing the top of my hand with his thumb. “You’re still you, Gretchen.”
I’m completely at a loss for how to make him see what I’m trying to tell him. I think maybe we need to start over. I need a different way to bring us into the hardest part.
“Your friends seem nice,” I tell him, squeezing his hand lightly. “Are they the ones in the band you told me about?”
His eyes dart to the side, just as they did when we talked on the phone. “Rose is. She sings and plays drums.”
“Like Sheila E.,” I say.
He smiles and lets out a short laugh. “No, actually. Nothing like Sheila E.”
I’m reminded of when I was a kid, watching American Idol with my parents. We loved to watch that show together—the only program my mom would let us eat dinner in front of the TV for. It was a guilty pleasure, I guess.
Needless to say, Adam is not a fan of American Idol.
“I wrote a song about you,” he tells me. “She’s gonna play it this weekend.”
He wrote a song?
“I didn’t know you wrote songs.”
“I told you. Remember? I’ve been fooling around with it some in my creative writing class.” He bites the inside of his lip. “My professor really loved this one, and all my classmates did too. It’s called ‘Instigator.’”
Instigator. My head starts to spin while my mind forms the image. Deep-red lipstick smeared across my forearm. Why did I tell him?
“You can’t do that, Adam. You can’t take that from me.” My hands are shaking.
“Take what?” He looks genuinely surprised.
“My story—all that terrible stuff I told you. It’s mine, Adam.”
Adam leans toward me, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “No, Gretchen. It’s not just yours. It’s mine too.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to focus on what he’s telling me. But all I can think about is that he called me Gretchen. Adam never calls me by my name.
“It’s your mom’s and your dad’s. It’s Bree’s. We all went through it too.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe part of it belongs to him. But I know I don’t want any more of it to be Adam’s. Not another moment of it.
“I love you, Adam, but it’s time for us to let this go.” I breathe deep, relieved to have said it, finally.
“Let what go?”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him. “You have been patient, and good to me, and I wish I could be what you want.” I touch his hand. “We’re done, Adam. We’ve been finished for a long time.”
“So that’s it? After everything, that’s it?” He pulls his hand away and pushes back his chair. The metal legs scrape across the brick and we both look down.
“And I don’t want you to write songs about me,” I whisper. “About us.”
Adam stands up. “Thanks for sharing your opinion, but”—his voice is getting low, angry—“it’s not really your choice—who or what I write songs about.”
The door opens and we turn away from each other. We both watch a few people walk out of the coffeehouse. The band is still playing, but I don’t hear the violin anymore. I watch Adam as his gaze moves to Rose through the plate-glass window. He studies her, a puzzled look on his face. I see it all, suddenly. Adam and Rose huddled together while he recounts every detail of my dissolution. And then she goes to the keyboard or the drums, or whatever, and they dive into my story, my pain, my hurt. They use it to make music together. To make something beautiful, or maybe something totally sucky, but it’s mine. It’s not theirs to use. It’s not theirs to build a relationship out of.
“Hey, Adam?” I say. “You know how people talk about rebounding—how you’re supposed to take time to heal after a breakup and stuff like that?”
“Yeah.” He clenches his jaw. Once. Twice.
“I don’t really think that applies to us. I mean, you’re obviously ready to move on. We haven’t been—”
“Don’t say it.” He’s still looking at Rose. “I get what you’re trying to tell me.” He gestures toward Rose. “We haven’t—”
“I know,” I say. “Thanks.” I guess I am grateful, but I also feel used, like maybe I was the drama that Adam and Rose and all their artsy, emo friends needed to make their own lives more vivid or more meaningful. Like Adam stayed with me, not because he was worried for me, but because he needed to suffer to make art, or some crap like that.
“I’m going back in now.” His voice is cold, sharp at the edges. “Do you need me to walk you to your car?”
I shake my head once, and he turns away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
PHOENIX
SO NOW I’M THE GARDENER. The piece-of-shit gardener who waters the plants. How many ways could Gretchen have described me to her college boyfriend?
And she picked the gardener?
Christ, how I wish I hadn’t seen his face framed by Gretchen’s phone. He was looking right past me, like I was that Random Brown Person who waters the plants.
I guess that’s what I am.…
This is how the stupid, awkward conversation went, after she hung up:
Me: “Was that your boyfriend?”
Her: “Yeah. That was Adam.”
Me: “He seemed”—like more of a candy-ass wuss than I am—“nice.”
Her: “He is. He’s been there for me, you know?”
Me: “Yeah.” Oh, has he? Because when I met you, he was not there. You were a complete wreck, and he wasn’t anywhere near you.
Her: “He’s a really good guy.”
Me: “Yeah.”
Her: “Yeah.” And then her hand flew to her forehead. “What am I doing?” she said.
Me: Nothing. Not a word. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t asking me, and, even if she was, what could I say?
I’m losing my mind, thinking about her and that guy, and about me, the piece-of-shit gardener, watching them chat about the tree I planted. And I’m wondering what she meant by the whole “What am I doing?” thing. I figure that was just typical Gretchen, the crazy, beautiful girl who always goes on and says whatever strange idea happens to pop into her brain.
The girl who is driving me completely insane.
* * *
I’m walking through Downtown with Amanda, staring at my feet while all this keeps running through my head on a loop. But thinking about Gretchen might actually be a good thing, because it’s keeping me from thinking about the meeting with Ms. Pérez, my kick-ass lawyer. And about going into that court after our meeting.
This is it.
I didn’t tell Gretchen about court. I couldn’t figure out how. Part of me didn’t want to worry her, and the other part figured that, since we’re killing ourselves trying to be “just friends,” it would be too much, too personal for me to talk about how scared I am. At least I told Bo and Barbie. I’ve been spending a lot of time with them at the tattoo shop. At first I kept to myself, working my ass off every day to earn my tattoo removal. (I’m still a long way off.) But then I started to get comfortable. In Bo’s shop, nobody ever judges anyone, not even for the ugly shit they decide to put on their bodies—permanently. And then one day Bo and Barbie invited me over for dinner after work. About four of their houses could fit into Amanda and Sally’s, but I keep going back whenever they ask me. It’s just more comfortable over there or something. It’s, like, the couches already have a couple of stains and the wood on the kitchen table is scratched, so I don’t have to be so careful all the time, worrying I might mess something up. Last night I told them that today is my court date. It was good, talking with them.
Like I said, Bo and Barbie don’t judge, which makes it easy.
* * *
Amanda tugs on my arm. I look up, and she’s pointing across the street at a big sculpture in the middle of a park.
“Hey,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”
It’s pretty cool, actually. It’s, like, two stories high, and there’s this girl. She’s not wearing a top, but in an artsy way, like when you see pictures of angels painted on the ceiling of a church or something. I guess she’s not a girl—she’s more like a woman, but she looks young. Her neck is long, and her hair is flowing behind her back, like there’s wind blowing, but not too much. She’s leaning back a little and her arms are reaching up, holding a bird that looks like it’s about to take flight. It’s like she picked him up, all careful, and she’s helping him—releasing him—like she wants to set him free. And that bird, he’s all stretched out too. He’s totally ready to fly.
“It’s a Phoenix,” Amanda says. “Like you.”
I look over at her. “What is?”
“The bird. It’s a Phoenix, rising from the ashes.”
And here I went eighteen years thinking Phoenix was just a city in Arizona.
“Atlanta burned during the civil war—right to the ground,” Amanda says. “After the war, the people rebuilt the city. That’s how it earned its nickname, the Phoenix.”
“Yeah?” I say. “That’s cool.”
“I guess this place is your city,” Amanda says, smiling. “You were meant to be here!”
I shrug and look at my feet. A month ago I would have thought she was crazy for saying so. It was completely random that I landed in this place. But now I’m starting to wonder.
We walk for a while, not saying anything, and I’m trying not to think about going to court, or about Gretchen, or about being the stupid pinche gardener. So instead I think about how cool that sculpture is, that girl just lifting the bird and sending it off into the sky.
* * *
We see Sally from across the lobby as soon as we walk into the lawyer’s office building. I take one look at her, and I know something’s up. She’s standing there, her phone up in her face, reading something. She looks like she’s about to hurl the phone through the big plate-glass window.
“Wanker!” she cries out as we approach. “Feckin’ wanker!”
Did Sally just drop the f-bomb? Is that how people from England say it?
I look over at Amanda, wondering if she’s as shocked as I am, but she’s reaching out for the phone. Sally comes and puts her arm around my shoulders, and I just stand there, not moving, while Amanda reads Sally’s screen.
“Bitch,” she says. “Who does she think she is?”
What the hell? What happened to the sweet churchy lesbians I’ve been living with for all this time?
“Threat to our community. What a load of crap.” That’s Amanda.
And then Sally: “Criminal gang activity. Feckin’ horseshit.”
Oh. This must be about me.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“It’s Jane, that uptight ninny.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Walsingham,” Amanda says. “You know, the neighborhood watchdog? The one who gets on people’s cases for not bringing in their garbage cans? She posted something on our community message board, online.”
“Horseshit,” Sally says again. “Pure feckin’ horseshit spread around to a thousand people.”
This comes as no surprise to me. That woman does kind of seem like a first-class bitch. Or a “feckin’ wanker,” or whatever.
“We’ll take care of it,” Amanda says, putting her hand on my arm and trying to sound calm. “Don’t you worry about it.”
Sally looks right at me, and her face relaxes. “That’s right, sweetheart. Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours. This is nothing. Rubbish! We’ll send one e-mail and—snip, snap—all cleaned up.”
She wipes her hands across each other twice. As if cleaning up messes is that easy.
And I’m like, “Yeah, okay. I’m not worried,” because the sweet churchy lesbians are back, smiling at me. And anyway, how much damage can a few words on a screen do to a person? Not much. That’s what I say.
“We’re going to be late if we don’t go on up,” Amanda says.
Sally shoves her phone into her purse, and then we all head toward the elevator.
* * *
Pretty soon I start to question my whole theory about words on a screen. We’re barely even sitting down when Ms. Pérez looks up from her computer, her face all serious.
“I’m going to be as direct as possible with you three,” she says.
As if she usually beats around the bush? Ms. Pérez, my kick-ass lawyer, is always direct.
“In preparing for your merits hearing, we have encountered some evidence that Phoenix appears to have hidden from us.”
She looks right at me.
Am I supposed to say something? I stay quiet.
“The DHS attorney responsible for your case was in contact with a Federal prosecutor. They report credible evidence of criminal gang activity.”
“But, Ms. Pérez,” Amanda says, “Phoenix has been honest from the start about this. They know he was in a gang—for a very short period. Right?”
“Until this point, they”—she looks right at me—“we were aware that Phoenix had been coerced to join a gang at the age of thirteen.”
“Right,” Sally
says, “and that he left just a few weeks later. So what’s changed?”
I didn’t exactly leave. They all know that. I was too afraid of what they’d make me do if I left for real. The thing is, those guys make you do crazy, terrible shit before they’ll let you leave the gang—if they’ll let you leave. They say you have to prove your loyalty one last time, but if you suck at proving your loyalty in the first place—which I obviously did—they expect the worst from you. Like killing people. I’m not even exaggerating. I was not going down that road, so I hid out with Sister Mary Margaret and pretended I had nothing to do with them.
“There’s an FBI unit in El Salvador, the TAG unit. They work with the federales, the federal police on gang activity—to protect witnesses, victims, family members—”
Because the federal police in El Salvador really wanna help … That’s what I call horseshit.
“They have testimony from a man named Rogelio Cruz Benítez, El Turbino.”
El Turbino. A hole opens in the floor. I grasp the armrests of my chair and hold on, trying not to free-fall, trying not to imagine his face, his skin, his screams. Oh Christ, the smell.
“He’s alive?”
That’s me talking. Why can’t I keep my mouth shut?
“You recognize the name?” Ms. Pérez asks me.
I look down at the disappearing floor and nod. The little gray lines on the carpet are turning into complicated swirls.
“He offered testimony,” Ms. Pérez says. She is sitting still, but her voice is moving away from me, fast.
El Turbino spoke English. I remember that. He was in a rival gang—one of the big-shot leaders deported from California. It used to be that all the big shots were from California. That’s where these stupid gangs started in the first place. But then those guys were getting in trouble and getting deported. The US doesn’t want them—who would?—so they dump those gangsters’ asses in my neighborhood, broke, no job, don’t even speak much Spanish. Then the gangsters find a gun—which is way too easy—and they take charge.
Maybe that’s why Delgado made us go all apeshit on him. He was the one in charge. Maybe he wanted to prove we were as tough as the original gangsters, the ones from Los Angeles. Those mareros who had been sent back to San Salvador from Los Angeles, they were pretty much running the place. People like Delgado—the real Salvadoreños—they didn’t like it.
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