Mirage

by Tracy Clark

  “I used to say that about you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Nah. Don’t be. I’m glad we’re talking again, like we used to.”

  I turn the tiger over in my hand. He worked so hard on it, even painted it with minuscule strokes of color for the stripes and face.

  “It’s got a message for you,” he says with a sly grin, but places his finger over my lips when I begin to ask what. “You’ll discover the message when you’re ready. Keep it somewhere safe. Now let’s go back to the hangar.”

  He doesn’t grab my hand or put his arm around me, which I’m grateful for. I’m happy to have had the quiet moment talking with him. He didn’t make me feel bad for being different. Acceptance is a lovely thing when you know you don’t belong.

  I’m surprised to see the hangar doors closed when we approach. It’s too early in the day to close. There were too many people around earlier to turn them away. This can’t be good for business. Dom takes one side of the sliding metal door and heaves it open.

  A single reckless white balloon escapes through the crack of the door and out into the daylight, floating up into the sky. Free.

  I squint and watch it bob and soar on the currents until it becomes one with the sky, disappearing from view.

  “Surprise!”

  Music kicks in, people are blowing on kazoos, and the hangar is filled with balloons and streamers and people with happy faces. I look to Dom. “Happy birthday!” they all yell.

  “It’s . . . it’s your birthday?”

  With a perplexed tilt of his head he replies, “It’s your birthday.”

  I don’t know what to say. My parents walk toward me with satisfied grins that they pulled off the surprise.

  “You didn’t remember your own birthday?” my mom says with a hearty hug and a laugh that doesn’t cover the consternation in her eyes. Her brows cinch. “That’s something coming from the girl who surprised us last year by throwing her own surprise party.”

  My grandmother is perched in a lawn chair in the middle of the hangar, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar. My mom lied about her being home alone. Fatigue draws at the wrinkled skin around Gran’s mouth, but she’s smiling and nodding her head to the music. Apparently, her not feeling well was all a ruse.

  Avery leans against the wall under the flags in the back of the hangar. Her eyes find Dom before they turn to me, and then she smiles big and waves. I frown, not trusting a smile that looks like an afterthought.

  Numerous skydiving friends and friends from school approach to wish me happy birthday. Too many faces and names compete for space. Too many jumbled memories. My eyes scan the room for a familiar comfort to anchor me. Joe’s absence is a hole in my chest.

  I have random conversations with friends who feel like strangers. Some have red cups of I‑don’t‑even‑know‑what sloshing around inside. Word has obviously gotten around about my incident with the LSD, because people safely stick to benign topics like their jobs, what they’ve been doing over summer vacation, and how bad they don’t want school to start again. Their mouths are moving and smiling, but their eyes are asking if I’m okay.

  More than once, I catch people staring at the pink slash across my brown cheek.

  “Attention!” The sergeant has everyone’s eyes on him with that one word through the megaphone. “I’ve got a couple of announcements to make.” The music volume decreases. “For anyone who’s doing tomorrow’s Sierra Golf demo jump, take it easy tonight.” There’s a chorus of good-natured mumblings and laughter. My dad quiets them with one raised hand. “The weather’s spotty, but it looks like we’re still a go. And I know you’ve all been anxious for news about the big-way. It’ll be next weekend. Practice jumps have been ongoing and will continue tomorrow after the demo jump. Even if you are not participating in the big-way, come out and show support. The larger the crowd, the better we look, and I’m pretty sure you’d like them to pick us for the X Games.”

  Everyone cheers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Avery and Dom having an intense discussion by the bathrooms. He turns to walk away, but she fists his T-shirt and tugs him back toward her. The rage that shakes my body is enough for two people. I know I’ve been confused and conflicted, but no one likes to be easy to replace. And what kind of cousin moves in at all, let alone so quickly? Her pout makes me wonder what’s gone on between them.

  Dom looks up and catches me watching them. I spin around and head out the door to the lawn area. I want to be alone, but there are a few people out here ignoring the approaching summer storm, which has turned the sky over the mountains from blue to gray. It’s still sunny overhead, though. A few people are swimming in the pool, partying on the lawn, and playing Frisbee. The wind kicks up, lifting the orange Frisbee and tossing it aside.

  Dom calls my name. I don’t want to talk to him. I’m chaotic. She is screaming inside my head once more, and I can’t take it. I hear my name called again. I hear his name in my own head. I feel trapped from without and within.

  There’s a hand on my shoulder that I know is Dom’s. I dive away from him into the sun-warmed water. Air bubbles tickle my bare scalp and skin. Muffled voices and the warble of water fill my ears. I wish I could stay under forever. I look up at the magnified feet dangling into the water, but then they rise up and disappear. I’m blissfully alone in a cocoon of peace.

  A big splash sends the water shifting. I turn. Dom swims toward me underwater, his black hair undulating like burned grass in wind. His dark eyes are fixed on me. A memory flashes from the night in the trailer when his hair looked like waves, then flashes to our kissing in the mirror. I shove the memory away.

  I push up from the scratchy bottom of the pool and kick upward, but Dom’s anticipated that, and we bob to the surface at the same time, just inches apart. “This is a fun game,” he pants. His face is anything but amused.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  Hear me! she screams within me.

  His eyes squint in confusion. “You just said you don’t want to talk.”

  “That wasn’t me!” I clamp my hand over my mouth. I can’t believe I spoke her words. I’m possessed. She’s controlled me, and I’m terrified and mortified. My body trembles so hard with fear that my teeth chatter and my head shakes. I’m out of control.

  Dom’s eyes narrow. Drops of water glisten on his brown shoulders, and I look away, try to focus on the glaring yellow T-shirt he dropped on the concrete. Too soon, my gaze falls back on him.

  “If this is about that conversation you saw with Avery, you got the wrong idea.”

  “You don’t know what my ideas are. You don’t know what’s in my head. I said I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

  He slaps the water with his hand. “Then what the hell do you want?”

  We stare at each other, waiting, challenging. It’s a dance I have many memories of, and it usually ended in . . . makeup sex. My heart picks up speed like it has its own mind. Will my body ever belong to me?

  I watch the water drip from the points of his wet eyelashes and, beneath them, clouds reflect in the depths of his eyes. His lips are wet, slightly open. He’s waiting with suffering eyes for me to tell him what I want.

  He’s waiting for me to tell him it’s still him.

  Thunder rolls over the mountains and through me.

  “Tell me,” Dom says, his voice quivering, “that you’re still my girl.” His fingers tighten on the ridge of muscle at the small of my back.

  “Why? So you can run to Avery if I’m not?”

  He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move or even blink. He doesn’t even look like he can breathe until I answer him.

  “B-But,” I stutter, the truth fighting a tug of war within me, “I​—​I’m not the same girl.”

  “I’m still yours, Ryan. Always. That’s not gonna change no matter how much you do. I love you.”

  I start to reply, but he swoops his arm around my waist and pulls me against his body. Bubbles rush up my sides and back, d
elighting my skin. My hands find their way to the slant where his collarbone meets his smooth chest. Part of me wants to push away. Part of me wants to feel the escalation of sensations: my blood pounding thicker through my body, my heart dancing against my ribs, this thirst I didn’t even know I had.

  Dom’s other hand wraps behind my neck, and he pulls our heads together. His lips on mine feel like the crush of ripe summer berries, his tongue like wet velvet as we taste each other. Any resistance in my body has slipped away. Our breaths merge, mingling particles of ourselves. This kiss is a linking of some vital, beautiful essence of each of us. I melt into his cool skin, forgetting where I end and he begins.

  Familiar yet foreign, this kiss is like a first kiss.

  And a last.

  “Ryan.”

  Nolan’s voice. I don’t have to look up to know he’s staring at us with displeasure glinting in his eyes. Dom and I have an entire silent conversation before we turn to look at my father.

  “Gran’s not feeling well. We need to take her home now.” I notice my dad’s words are a bit slurred. This can’t be good.

  It’s cold where my body separates from Dom’s. I kick through the water and pull myself out of the pool. I’ll have to drive home like this. My dad doesn’t seem to think it’s odd that I jumped into the pool with all my clothes on. In fact, as far as they’re all concerned, it’s probably the most normal, spontaneously Ryan thing I’ve done since before the LSD trip.

  “Let me go to the bathroom real quick and squeeze the water out of my clothes?”

  My dad nods. “Okay, but make it quick. Your mom wants to get your grandma home ASAP.” Dom sloshes out of the pool, and my dad says to him, “Watch things for me here, would you? I’m going in case the girls need my help with Gran. I’ll be back in a bit to close up and get things ready for the demo jump.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dom nods. “Hope Gran feels better,” he says to me.

  My sneakers squeak as I jog past the rows of rental jumpsuits and helmets hanging on a rack in the hallway on the way to the women’s bathroom. Following an inexplicable impulse, I look over my shoulder to see if anyone’s watching me, then grab someone’s stray duffel bag and stuff a jump helmet, goggles, and a black jumpsuit inside.

  I skid to a guilty halt in the bathroom. Avery is applying lipstick in the mirror and glances through it at me. I tuck the duffel against my belly and go into a shower stall to remove my sopping clothes, wringing them out as much as I can before slipping them back on.

  “So.” Avery’s voice is higher pitched than normal. “Things are back on with you and Dom, huh? That’s great.” She’s sitting on the sink counter when I come out.

  “I’m so glad I have you, cousin, to keep an eye on the people who are trying to comfort him.” The words are out before I can think to push them away. I was ready to let him go. I think . . . I don’t know. But I do know the world is made up of circles of people, and in most circles, it’s totally uncool for other girls in yours to pick up on the guy you were with.

  “Is this all an act?” Avery asks, her blue eyes accusatory. “I mean, sure, you were always more flamboyant than everyone else. But I knew it was just to get attention. You could be doing that now, for all anyone knows, planting your flag on cray-cray mountain so we’ll all look at you.”

  I want to hit her so badly, my fisted hands ache. “And what about you?” I ask. “You think hanging around exceptional people makes you exceptional?”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need to be exceptionally screwed up just to get noticed. What’s the matter? Afraid if you act normal, you’ll be invisible?”

  Twenty-One

  GRAN DOESN’T LOOK very well. There’s a grayish cast to her wrinkled skin, like it’s been wrung of its color the way I wrung the pool water from my clothes. I squeeze her hand as we drive home.

  “I feel as wispy as those clouds out there,” she says.

  “How did you know it was cloudy?”

  “I can smell them.” She yawns like a sleepy toddler. “And the quality of the light. It’s not as bright on my skin.”

  I love the way she talks. I’m struck with a panicked sadness. I don’t want to lose her gentleness and wisdom. I don’t want to think of her in a dark place. But then, maybe that only happens to some people. People like me.

  “I feel like I should pray.”

  “But you’ve never prayed,” she tells me over another yawn. Through the rearview mirror, my father squints his eyes at me, and my mother begins biting her nails but doesn’t look back.

  “Yes​—​yes, I pray.” Maybe it’s Gran’s dementia. She has to be wrong. There’ve been prayers. I’ve drowned in prayers. Though I can’t conjure a specific memory of doing it alone or with them. Only an inner knowing that my knees have been worn red from praying, praying so hard for something that my soul ached with the void of not getting it. “I’ve been angry at God.”

  This time my mom does whip her head sideways, and she pierces me with a black look. Unease creeps through me. I’ve said something wrong. Still, I can’t help but stubbornly think that maybe if I pray for Gran, she’ll feel the brightness of heaven on her skin. Gran pats my hand like she knows I’m thinking blue thoughts. She probably does. I’m sweating anger and emanating bitterness from my fight with Avery.

  “Avery accused me of faking everything,” I whisper to Gran. “For attention.”

  “Psht. Don’t think on her and her sour words. Treat the bad ones like the vinegar they rolled in and the sweet ones like they were dipped in honey.”

  Once home, everyone works together to get Gran into the house and to her room. She seems more disoriented than usual and keeps asking me to sing for her again. My mom and I share confused looks as we help Gran into nightclothes and get her into bed.

  “She doesn’t want dinner.” My mom sighs as she shuts Gran’s bedroom door. “That’s not a good sign.”

  Her attention is soon diverted to my dad, who rummages loudly in the kitchen, pulling a snack from the fridge. His car keys jangle in his pocket. My mother insisted on driving us home from the drop zone. Her eyes narrow as he walks toward the door.

  “You don’t really need to go back, do you?” she asks. “Dom said he’ll keep an eye on things.”

  He glances my way.

  She grabs his hand. “Please, no more to drink tonight, Nolan.”

  He sucks the inside of his cheek with a defiant look and says, “I’ll see you later.” And he’s gone.

  Later, as soon as I’m sure my mom is asleep, I pull the jump helmet from the bag and sit on my desk with two rolls of decorative duct tape. Dom’s origami tiger stares at me from the black surface of the desk. What is the tiger’s message? I’ve been thinking about it and have an idea. The conversation with my father in the B-17 sparked it. Jumping is the thing that makes me feel truly alive. My father and I are alike. It’s true for him. Once upon a time, it was true for me.

  When I wake in the predawn, I smile at the helmet, a darn good representation of a tiger head if I do say so myself. I worked on it nearly all night. It’s not inconspicuous, but it’s not the recognizable Red Baron, either. I stuff it in my bag and jog down to catch my dad, hoping he hasn’t already left. A dented pillow and tousled blanket lie on the couch.

  I find him leaning on his forearms at the new kitchen table, wooden this time. When he looks up at me, I see the dark circles that rim his eyes, and his hair looks darker because it’s greasy. He’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

  “You okay?”

  One huge swig of coffee later, he nods. “Affirmative. What’re you doing up so early?”

  Forcing my feet not to shuffle, I say, “I enjoyed being at the DZ yesterday.”

  “So you were surprised?”

  “You have no idea. I was wondering if I can go again today? Just to hang around, maybe help if I can?”

  There’s an awkward beat of silence before he shrugs and answers. “You take your meds?”

  I nod.

&nb
sp; “Sure.”

  On the way there, my dad turns his head away from me when he yawns. He needn’t try to hide it. I’m yawning too. The car drifts over the center line of the highway. He casually corrects course, then ducks his head to look up through the windshield. Bulbous gray clouds obscure the sky, making it look as if we’re trapped underneath the tops of jellyfish in a vast ocean. Scattered raindrops patter on the windshield.

  No one else has arrived yet. The hangar looks cold and shuttered. Because of the chill of the morning, we enter through a side door and leave the main doors closed. It takes my eyes a moment to register that some of the lumps on the packing pads are actually people curled up in sleeping bags. The place is an after-party disaster. Red plastic cups and wrinkled balloons litter the countertops. Someone’s bra is strewn over a picture of the Golden Knights, the Army skydiving team. The place smells like old nacho cheese and dirty feet.

  “Get on that. Christ, it’s like having twenty goddamn kids.” While my father gets to the business of readying for the demo jump, I busy myself with cleanup, tossing cups into a large black trash bag and wiping the check-in counter clean. Yvon, one of our pilots, shows up. She has a slight limp​—​I’ve no idea why she limps, but feel like I should know. She also has pretty caramel hair that sparks with silver threads when the light hits it just right.

  As I’m pondering why my memory is like the shallow end of an ocean, she elbows me in the side. “Glad to see you here, little miss.” Yvon has the ready smile of someone who knows that no matter what steaming pile of crap life hands you, you can always mold it into something better than what it was. She doesn’t say these things with words, but I see it in her eyes. She’s been around and back around. “Place isn’t the same without you.”

  “I’m not the same without it.”

  She nods. “Roger that.” She pulls a hair tie off her wrist and tugs her hair into a ponytail before pulling it through the back of a baseball cap. “When do you suppose you’ll get back up there?”

  I like that it’s when and not if. She’s more sure of the idea than I am.