Blink

by Sasha Dawn

  It also means Aiden is granted a certain modicum of freedom most of the time because his dad is gone a lot. And his mom . . . well, she lives across town and doesn’t pay too much attention to what he does. It’s a vastly different environment than the one in which I live and breathe.

  The fact that I haven’t heard from Rosie since her barrage of texts around noon—which is probably when she finally decided to venture down to the basement to get me moving, but found me gone—isn’t all that unusual.

  There are three stages to her wrath:

  First, the vilification. She unloads a string of insults at me. I’ll never make anything of myself. I’m just as reliable as my motherfucker of a father, and she should’ve known better than to trust either one of us. We’ll see how cute it is when I’m thirty-five and cleaning toilets for a living . . . because that’s where I’m headed.

  Check. Stage one complete. And because I wouldn’t answer the phone when she called, she texted this round of insults, so I have it all in writing to prove it.

  Phase two: the cold shoulder. She’s sweet as anything to my sisters, but pretends I’m not there. She walks around me. Ignores anything I say or do. She heats whatever frozen concoction we’re having for dinner, but makes only three portions of it. Whatever. I can live on cereal and milk.

  I used to walk on eggshells during this phase, but lately, I’ve taken to whistling in the midst of her freeze-outs. It makes the girls feel better, and she can’t stand it, which is an added bonus.

  This phase is what awaits me when I return home. It used to bug me, but I actually prefer it these days. The less we speak, the better. If not for the fact that the tension eventually bothers Margaret and Caroline, I wouldn’t mind hovering in stage two for a year or so.

  Then, days or sometimes weeks later, Rosie will crack and fall headfirst into stage three, which I call the self-deprecation phase. Tears are involved—lots of tears—and an underhanded soliloquy (or three or four) about how she’s sorry she’s such a bad mother. Maybe she should’ve given me up. But then I’d be living in some group home with other orphaned kids whose mothers didn’t care enough to try. Maybe then I’d realize she does the best she can, that she’s the only one who loves me. My father didn’t want me, my grandparents begged her to get an abortion. But she had me. So why do I blame her for everything that goes wrong in my life, when she’s only trying to give me the best she has to offer?

  It’s worth noting here that I don’t randomly blame her for shit. But everything that seems to go wrong is a direct result of some fucked-up decision she’s made, so whether or not I blame her, it’s still her fault.

  The tears used to get to me, but I learned long ago. You don’t apologize at this phase or try to make her feel better about herself because it only serves as justification for her wrath. She then spirals back to stage one, and before you know it, she’s throwing things at you and reminding you you’re the worst son ever, especially because she’s done so much for you—and you’ve unknowingly validated her efforts with your apology, thereby proving her dedication, because you gave in and said sorry for shit you really aren’t sorry for and shouldn’t be held responsible for in the first place.

  And overarching all this is that I know there are legitimate reasons she’s like this. She’s been through some shit, and sometimes it’s not a matter of her wanting to act with her best judgment, but not being able to. She freezes up, gets scared, doesn’t seem to know how to help herself. It’s just the way things are.

  I don’t blame her for the reasons she does these things. I take issue with the fact that she does them. Period.

  “So this girl.” It’s all Aiden says. I’m glad to stop thinking about my mother and focus instead on Chatham Claiborne. This girl.

  “Yeah.” I don’t have to say more than that, either.

  After a few beats of silence, he pipes in: “If she’d shown last night, you know I would’ve explained shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, I gotta make some deliveries.” Aiden takes the last hit, then crumbles the charred remains of the rolling paper on the rocks on which we’re sitting. “Nothing too far. All in the neighborhood. You’re welcome to hang, or come along . . .”

  “Think I’ll take a walk.”

  Aiden lets out a laugh. “Okay.”

  He probably knows what I’m really going to do: return to Northgate Beach. It’s ridiculous, I know. She isn’t going to be there.

  But what else am I going to do?

  “Meet you back in an hour or so?”

  I nod, and as I climb down the bluffs to the grassy sand at the shore, I feel the tingle of the maryjane in my fingertips.

  Definitely some good shit.

  I head inland a bit, toward the boardwalk, which, in half a mile or so, after obediently framing the beach, juts out over a stretch of sand, thus morphing into a pier, and extends out over the waves.

  The boardwalk is closed, but I maneuver underneath the weathered and splintered planks, where it’s damp and barren, and cop a squat on the cool sand. Here, I’m at a good vantage point to see the shoreline from north to south, stretching wide open as far as it can go, like a satisfying yawn.

  I like it here. This is where I used to run to . . . before. Back in the days when Rosie was pregnant with the girls and things got out of hand with Damien, I’d hop the gate and ride out the storm beneath this structure.

  Right here, where someone carved Rachel Bachton Was Here into the underside of the planks.

  From a certain point of view, it’s true. She was here, once upon a time. Not under the pier, but on the beach.

  The gorilla haze tingles in my brain.

  And maybe it is the weed, but I see a figure—I swear, I see her—walking down the beach toward me.

  I close my eyes in a hard blink, fully expecting the silhouette to have vanished by the time I open them again.

  But someone’s there.

  I hear the splash of her steps in the water.

  I scramble out from under the boardwalk and meander toward the shoreline. Not toward her, so much, but near enough that if it is Chatham Claiborne, I might say hello and snag some of her time.

  Before I know it, she’s about ten feet away, and the moonlight is just bright enough for me to determine she is who I think she is.

  I keep walking south. She keeps walking north.

  Any second now, we will pass each other by.

  “Miss Claiborne.” I didn’t know I was going to say it—or anything—but I blurt it out half a second before our tracks are about to intersect. It hangs there in the sky for a second or two, like fireworks the moment before they burst.

  She slows, but keeps walking. She’s past me now.

  Then she looks over her shoulder, and sort of pauses there on the sand. Finally: “Fourteen?”

  S ’ m o r e

  We’re perched on the huge rocks near the shore, a ways from the boardwalk, nestled somewhere between Northgate Beach and Aiden’s dad’s place. The scent of his bonfire wafts down the bluff, and I know—because it’s Aiden—that any minute now, he’s going to start roasting some sort of snack over the flames.

  “Can I ask you something?” She’s drawing something in the sand with a stick—a series of connected swirls, almost hearts, like a sort of clover without the stem. The hint of Georgia in her voice . . . it’s so subtle that I wonder if her parents dragged her out there from somewhere else and repotted her.

  I know what that feels like, even though we’ve never left the county. I’ve been dragged to this guy’s place, to that guy’s, to Rosie’s next savior’s. We’ve been living in the house we rent now for almost two years, and it’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere.

  I give her a nod, although it’s pretty dark on this beach—just a wedge of moon in the sky, presently blanketed by drifting clouds, and the lampposts on the boardwalk are a hundred feet behind us—that I wonder if she sees it, if she sees me, if she’s noticed my gaze lingers a little too lon
g when I look at her. “Sure.”

  “What’s with the fourteen?”

  I pause for a second. “It’s my jersey number. In football.” So I simplified, didn’t tell her why I chose to get a tattoo of the number.

  “Yeah, but it’s a tattoo. Permanent. Probably more permanent than a jersey number, I’m guessing.”

  “I really like football.”

  “Ohhhkay.”

  The way she says it makes me feel like she doesn’t believe me, like she can see right through me. I’ve been told I’m pretty transparent like that, though. I’m not good at hiding what I’m thinking.

  “My sister has a tattoo,” she offers. “It’s a shamrock on her ankle.”

  I wonder if that’s what she’s drawing in the sand. And if so, why.

  “I’m thinking I might get the same one.”

  I like tattoos. And the fact that she’s considering one . . . Damn, I like this girl.

  “How old is your sister?” I ask.

  “Sixteen. Same as me.”

  Chatham’s a twin? Maybe that’s why she came up to my sisters and me on the beach. Just as I’m about to speculate, she says, “We’re not biological sisters.”

  “Oh.” There’s a story there, just as there’s a story inked on my chest with the number fourteen. But I don’t want to pry. If she wants me to know, she’ll tell me.

  She doesn’t. Instead, she asks, “So, you live here in Sugar Creek?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Unfortunately? It seems . . . nice. Quaint.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess it could be.” If you pull Damien Wick out of the zip code, if you hit the delete key on my last girlfriend, if you erase all the insane parts of my mother . . . “I suppose it’s just like any small town. Kids growing up here can’t wait to get out, probably because no one ever does. Not much happens here, nothing changes.”

  Then Rachel Bachton skips through my mind. If she’s still out there somewhere, what would she give to come back?

  “Predictability can be comforting,” Chatham says.

  I think of the notation under the boardwalk. Rachel Bachton was here. “Actually, I guess it’s not one-hundred-percent true that nothing happens in Sugar Creek.”

  “Really? What happens?”

  I consider telling her about Rachel. But I want to tone down the crazy, if quaint appeals to her.

  “I mean,” I say, “you showed up here, didn’t you?”

  “I did. Think we might be staying a while.”

  This makes me smile. “You should. We could cut English class together. Come down to the bluffs. Skip stones instead of analyzing Macbeth.”

  “You shouldn’t cut English.”

  “You want me to go to English class?”

  “I liked Macbeth.” She shivers in the night breeze.

  Of course she’s cold. Summer’s officially over now, and she’s still wearing those short shorts. And sure, it was mid-seventies today, but once the sun goes down, the temperature plunges, especially near the shore.

  Aiden’s call echoes over the lake: “C-caw! C-caw!”

  Normally, I’d answer him with my own c-caw—it’s a system we established once after making a break for it out of a kegger with cops in pursuit—so he knows I’m coming back, but the whole thing seems sort of goofy in Chatham’s company. Would the girl who’s a genius with sand sculpture and apparently doesn’t mind Shakespeare think I’m unsophisticated if I let out my own c-caw?

  Better not risk it.

  “You might make this town more interesting,” I say.

  “I doubt that.”

  I can’t help but pry a little now. “What brings you here, anyway?”

  Chatham turns her face to the breeze off the lake, and her hair whips in the wind.

  Aiden’s roasting marshmallows. I smell the hint of charred spun sugar in the air. “C-caw!” His call sounds again.

  She tucks a chunky curl behind her ear. It’s this moment, I know: I’m going to know everything about her, and then I’ll tell her everything about me. I feel that connected to her.

  “You want to know why I’m here?”

  What I really want to know is if she’s going to stay.

  She licks her lips and sort of smiles. “I really like football.”

  J o l t

  My phone hums in my pocket. I pull it out. Text from Rosie.

  I don’t open it. Hey, I’m at school, and it’s only minutes from the beginning of third hour. For all she knows, because she never bothers to write down my schedule, I could be in the middle of a test.

  I meander my way through a crowd of people, and just before I’m about to cut down the math hall, I catch a glimpse of a long, ivory leg.

  I do a double take, but she’s still standing there when I glance again. In the flesh.

  The girl I shared s’mores with at Aiden’s, Chatham Claiborne, is occupying the same building, breathing the same air as me.

  It’s been my experience that when people show up in this town, they’re drawn to the nearest exit ramp and quickly steer their way onto it, but if she’s at school, it can only mean she’s going to stay.

  I walk over. “Chatham.”

  She doesn’t acknowledge me, just stands there, against the brick wall in the commons.

  She’s looking down at the piece of paper in her hand, which I presume to be her class schedule.

  “Chatham Claiborne.”

  This time, she looks up and sort of smiles. “Hey there.”

  My fingertips start to tingle, as if her voice has the power to trigger electrodes in my system.

  I’m close enough to her now that the faint smell of her shampoo—something no-nonsense, not fruity or flowery—meets me.

  “Where’s one-forty-three?”

  “Let’s see.” I take the paper from her hand and give it a look. “Hey, we have English together.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’ll be reading Macbeth together after all.” I show her the seventh-period assigned class.

  She takes the schedule back. Dried clay rims her cuticles. It doesn’t take a genius to realize she’s just come from the art hall. Sculpture. And she’s headed to—geez—physics. I got a D in chemistry last year, so I’m retaking it.

  “Looks like you’ve been playing in the mud.” I give a nod toward her clay-encrusted fingers.

  She looks at her nails. “Oh, no matter how many times you wash your hands, the stuff sticks with you.”

  “So you admit it. First sand, and now mud.”

  “No.” She giggles a little. “Clay. I’m working on a relief.”

  “Sounds interesting.” I have no idea what a relief is, but you can bet I’m going to look it up later. “You’re heading toward the science hall, so you’re going to—” I point in the general direction of the labs. “You know what? I’ll just walk you there.”

  “Thanks.”

  I’m going to be late for class, but I don’t care. For a few feet, we walk in silence. With every step, it grows more and more awkward. I finally speak. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

  “Yeah.”

  What else did I expect her to say? Extremely awkward now.

  But we’re almost to the science hall, and I can’t let this hang there until seventh-hour English class. So I try again: “Hey, what are you doing tomorrow after school? You should come to the game.”

  “Oh.” She hugs the strap of her backpack. “Yeah, maybe. We have to get settled into the new place.”

  I guess that answers my question. She’s seen enough of me to know she’s seen enough of me. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind—”

  “Can I let you know?”

  “Sure.” I point down the next hallway. “One-forty-three will be on your left.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I turn to hustle my ass to geometry, which I’m also repeating this year.

  “Oh, I forgot. Joshua.”


  Joshua. Another jolt sends shockwaves to my every nerve ending. I stop.

  “Wait. I also . . .” Her backpack is on the floor now, and she’s unzipping the front section of it. “I got my phone hooked up, so . . .”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “What’s your number? I’ll text you, so you have mine.”

  “Okay.” I rattle off my digits.

  She inputs them as I say them, then . . . “There.” She hits send.

  My phone buzzes.

  Her message: Hi.

  I look up at her again. “Hi.”

  A hint of a smile appears on her lips and then she turns to walk to her room. She doesn’t see the huge grin that lights up my face.

  I head toward the math hallway, and while my phone is out of my pocket, I flip to Rosie’s message:

  Damien was here.

  An arrow of fear pierces me for a split second.

  He was in our house?

  But then I remember: she did this once before in the middle of one of her freeze-outs. She used Damien to lure me back to her side, and then all hell broke loose between us when I realized the fucker was still in jail and she made it up.

  I text back: call the cops.

  And let it roll off my shoulders.

  Even if he was there, what does she expect me to do about it?

  A l l S h o o k U p

  The ache in my left shoulder is residual, a reminder on cool, damp days of the night Damien Wick slammed me to the concrete patio behind the house we used to live in.

  It was just the three of us back then. Margaret and Caroline weren’t around yet.

  Rosie should’ve left him at that first sign. Instead, when she found him snarling atop me like a rabid dog, she’d wondered what I’d done to provoke him.

  Of course it was my fault. I was eleven. A smartass. Long tired of the random men who’d come into our lives, puff up their chests in oppression, eventually to split, or kick us out of whatever hellhole they’d sucked my mother into . . . but only after they’d run her through the wringer and left her shredded, with a little less substance and a little more shadow in her soul. Imagine being rejected by losers like that. Imagine what it does to you.