by Amy Reed
The beach is empty, desolate, streaked with the icy stripes of frozen freshwater streams trying to make their way to the ocean. I remember exploring these beaches as a kid, how they seemed to go on forever, how they were full of endless treasures—shells, sand dollars, old barnacle-crusted buoys. I remember imagining all the faraway places the weathered driftwood could have come from, places where these logs were once trees with roots. I wondered if any of them came from the island across the ocean where my mother was born, an island in the Philippines whose name I never learned, a place where maybe I had uncles and aunts and cousins, maybe even a grandma and a grandpa. But Mom never wanted to talk about that. I learned it was better to keep those fantasies in my imagination, where they were safe.
We scarf down our food in silence and watch the world in grayish blue slow motion. Seagulls tease the waves out of habit, but it’s obvious their hearts aren’t in it.
“Do you feel ready for the big show next weekend?” Natalie finally says.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I reply. “It’s cool you have your own car.”
“Yeah. It’s good for my parents, too, so they don’t have to drive me to dance all the time.”
“Yeah,” I say.
Jesus. We might as well be talking about the weather.
Natalie turns her head and looks at me. Our eyes meet, and I feel part of me grow, the part that wants to do things like look Natalie in the eye and talk about stuff that matters.
She bites her lip and looks away for a moment, then looks back, like she wants to say something but she’s not quite sure she has permission. “What?” I say. I force my voice to be gentle.
Natalie takes a deep breath. “Honestly,” she says, looking at her lap, “I think more than anything, my mom was relieved I could finally drive myself to get my hair relaxed in Olympia every month and a half.” She exhales what seems like five breaths’ worth of air, like she had been holding those words in for a very long time. “I’ve been going there since I was eleven, right? And the appointments are, like, four hours long. And my mom’s this little white church lady who’s probably never really known a Black person her entire life except me.”
I smile even though my heart is suddenly outside my body, beating between us.
“I remember her sitting there in the salon trying to look at her phone or whatever,” Natalie continues. “But she’s got this look on her face like she’s being tortured, because she’s never once been somewhere where she’s the minority, you know? After two times like that, I was like, ‘Mom, you should go run errands or something while I’m in here,’ and she looked so relieved to get off the hook.” Natalie pauses. “But do you know what she said? She was like, ‘Honey, I don’t know if you’re safe here by yourself.’ ”
I can’t think of anything to say except “I’m sorry.” What’s the deal with daughters being so responsible for their mothers’ feelings? What’s the deal with mothers constantly letting their daughters down?
Natalie smiles, but she also kind of looks like she’s going to throw up.
“You want to hear something else sad?” I say. “I’ve never even met a Filipino person besides my mom. Not one. She never told me anything about where she came from. No stories, nothing about her family or growing up there. Like she erased it. She just decided it didn’t exist as soon as she moved here. Like becoming American meant starting over from scratch and forgetting everything she used to be. Anything I know about the Philippines, I learned on my own online. I don’t even know what island she came from. There’s, like, over seven thousand of them.”
“Maybe something bad happened back there,” Natalie says. “Maybe she really needed to forget.”
“Yeah, probably,” I say. “But whatever happened, isn’t it mine, too? Don’t I have some sort of right to her history? And maybe forgetting isn’t the best way to get over something. Because you never really can, you know? You can’t force yourself to forget. I think that’s part of why she was so depressed and miserable all the time. She ran halfway across the world, but whatever she was running from was still inside her, and she refused to look at it.”
“Maybe we’re all running from something,” Natalie says.
I wonder where Billy is right now. I wonder if he knows what he’s running from.
Do I know what I’m running from?
That’s when I notice the little girl on the beach, chasing seagulls, as if it were a rare sunny day and not wet and cold. She reaches out her tiny hands, and the birds go flying. Why is she so happy all of a sudden? Why is she so free when my heart feels like it’s breaking?
“Moms,” Natalie says.
“Yeah, moms,” I say.
“I love my mom,” Natalie says, tears in her eyes. “But sometimes she breaks my heart.”
I just nod, because I know if I speak, my words will turn into sobs. There’s nothing I can say that will explain the feeling of my heart wanting to be inside hers, the feeling of wanting her heart inside mine, nothing to explain that these tears falling down my face are for both of us, that I want my tears to wash Natalie’s away, that I want to cry so she will never have to cry again. But my lips are sealed. There are no words for any of this.
“Thank you for listening,” Natalie says softly, sniffling.
“Anytime,” I say.
“I’m kind of embarrassed.”
“Don’t be.”
“You’re crying.”
“So are you.”
And then Natalie laughs. And I laugh too. And our laughter calls all the birds back that the little girl chased away, and the deer hiding in the dune grass trot out to see what’s going on, and a half dozen seals slide onto shore, and a pod of orcas jump in the distance, and a bald eagle screeches overhead into the infinite sky, and the little girl sits on the hood of Natalie’s car, the afternoon wind whipping her hair around like flying snakes, while Natalie and I sit beside each other inside the car, laugh-crying like our lives depend on it.
BILLY
THE HOARDER HEAVEN CREW FINALLY closed up shop and did their exit interviews with Grandma this morning. She wouldn’t let them interview me. I want to tell myself it’s because she’s protecting me from the toxic effects of fame, but most likely it’s because she doesn’t want to share the limelight.
School’s out for four days for the King’s birthday holiday weekend, and so far I’ve pretty much spent the whole time in the attic. At first I came down to use the bathroom and get food, but by the second night I stopped doing even that because I found a large bowl to use as a toilet and I decided eating wasn’t really worth the trouble anymore. Without Caleb to shop for, I’ve lost the will to buy groceries, and Grandma usually forgets to get me anything when she brings home takeout.
I’m pretty sure loss of appetite is a sign of clinical depression.
I know this isn’t good. I’m way too young to become a hermit, especially a clinically depressed one. But I honestly can’t think of any other options. Until just a few hours ago, the house had been crawling with Hoarder Heaven people and that pink lady yelling at everyone, and tours keep going in and out, and all I want is some peace and quiet and the attic is the only place no one ever goes.
It’s the first day in forever that it’s not freezing cold, so I did manage to come outside and sit on the front stoop this afternoon, which hopefully means I’m not a total lost cause. The couple who’s been camped outside the house for weeks is enjoying the nice weather too. The guy is looking in his side mirror shaving his beard, while the girl is sitting on a foldable chair painting her toenails. They offer me some soup they have warming on a camping stove, but I say no because it’s important to have boundaries with these people.
I’ve been sitting here for a long time watching a crow pick at something dead and sticky on the pavement, trying not to wonder what Lydia and Caleb are doing without me. For someone who’s supposedly taking space to be away from those two, I sure spend a lot of time with them in my head.
The stilln
ess abruptly ends as a police car turns onto my street, and I’m too depressed to even be scared. I close my eyes and take a deep breath to prepare myself. If I don’t fight, they’ll hopefully be gentle with me. Maybe they’ll have some mercy because I’m a kid. Maybe they’ll place their hands on top of my head so I don’t bump it when they put me in the back of the cop car. But when I open my eyes, they’re pulling up in front of Cult Girl’s house, not mine. Two police officers get out and walk to the front door. The stern-looking lady who must be Cult Girl’s mom opens it. They tell her something. Her face is blank as she lets them in.
I watch the house as if it will give me some kind of clue about what’s happening inside, but houses in general have stopped talking to me lately. But then all of a sudden, the door opens and Cult Girl walks out and sits on the stoop directly across from mine and looks right at me. I wave, and she waves back and then she actually says, “Hi,” like, with her actual voice, and I can barely hear it because she’s all the way across the street and she said it really quiet, like she’s still practicing speaking and hasn’t quite gotten the hang of it yet, and I’m so excited I can’t help but shout, “HI!” really loud back, and it’s so loud the crow flies away without finishing his dead thing, and Cult Girl smiles like maybe she’s even thinking about laughing, but then she changes her mind and gets a scared look on her face and turns around like she expects someone to be there, and I guess I probably shouldn’t have shouted so loud.
Then the door opens and Cult Mom comes out and gives me a dirty look while squeezing Cult Girl’s shoulder what seems like way too hard, and then she flinches and looks down and follows her mom back into the house. But before the door closes behind her, Cult Girl turns around to smile at me one last time, and it’s a smile like we’re in on something together, just me and her, and for a split second I forget to miss Lydia and Caleb.
It’s weird, but I swear the smell of old man breath is suddenly gone from the air. It’s like a breeze blew in from the ocean and washed all the funk away.
What I see when I go back in is not the familiar mess of my home, but its professionally tidied-up evil twin. It feels wrong, like I don’t belong here anymore. Why can’t everything just go back to the way it used to be? I was fine before all this madness started, when it was just me and Grandma in our broken house in our broken town, before Lydia and Caleb arrived and mucked things up. I think I’d even be okay with being shoved in a locker again once or twice if it meant I’d get to walk through the door and see all the old Thrift Town bags and Grandma on the couch with nothing to do but watch TV and yell at me occasionally. Even her constant complaining and ordering me around sound better than this, whatever this is. I want to watch my old therapy talk shows and AA TV and believe I am actually learning something useful about life. I want to go back to the time I was not so aware of my own misery, back when the world was small, back to the time I didn’t think I had the option of anything different, back before I had anything to lose.
People talk about hope like it’s this great thing, but they’re wrong. Because once you start hoping, you can’t stop. It’s like an addiction. Hope is as bad as heroin.
“Something’s happening across the street,” I tell Grandma, who’s sitting on the couch with the TV on, glaring at the laptop balanced on her belly. “A cop car just pulled up to that weird family’s house.”
“That nutjob lost it at work,” she explains, squinting her eyes at the screen. “Shaylene said the prison had to go on lockdown and he got hauled away in a straitjacket. He’s going away for a long time. Guess that means the wife and kid won’t be around much longer either. Not sure how that woman’s going to pay a mortgage if she’s not allowed to work and her husband’s in the loony bin.”
Cult Girl can’t leave. We just started getting to know each other. I don’t think I can handle losing anyone else right now.
“That’s mean, Grandma,” I say, but what I really want to say is, “I think you have narcissistic personality disorder.” I watched a therapy talk show about it once. They had a checklist of symptoms, and Grandma got a perfect score.
Then Grandma says, “Your girlfriend’s dad is bugging me,” and it takes me a while to figure out who she’s talking about, and when I do, it feels like someone punched me in the gut because it reminds me how much I miss Lydia. “He keeps e-mailing and calling me with some nonsense about partnering with him for some tour next weekend. Who in their right mind would want to tour Carthage? Something about unicorns and dinosaurs.”
“Dragons,” I say. “You know about the festival, don’t you?”
Grandma just grunts. Of course she knows about it. But she’s one of those stubborn old Romans who refuse to acknowledge the series because it’s more Carthage’s than Rome’s.
I wonder if Larry knows Lydia’s big dance show is at the same time as the festival. Knowing Lydia, she probably hasn’t told him about it.
I haven’t gotten my ticket yet. I don’t know if I’m still invited. But I want to go. Of course I want to go. The show feels like it’s part mine, too.
“Whatever,” Grandma snorts, shaking the computer on her lap. “You know what this is, Billy? Subterfuge. He’s going to be nice and try to win my trust so I tell him all my trade secrets, and then he’s going to steal them.”
“Maybe he just wants to be friends.”
Grandma looks at me like I’m the stupidest piece of shit she’s ever seen, and I feel a strange relief spread through me. For a moment, things feel normal again.
“Nobody just wants to be friends, Billy. Everyone wants something.”
She’s right. Everyone wants something. And when they stop wanting what you have to offer, they stop wanting you.
A sound like a creepy out-of-tune carnival song rings through the house like it’s coming out of the walls, and it takes me a while to remember it’s the sound of our doorbell. A chunk of ceiling the size of a baby’s hand falls from above and smashes onto the coffee table. Even Hoarder Heaven can’t fix everything.
“Goddamned tourists,” Grandma says.
“I thought you loved tourists,” I say.
“Not when I’m off the clock. Are you going to get the door or what?”
It’s probably a weird fan. There’s been a steady stream of them, especially since the ATM news broke. None of them had much to say when I opened the door. One of them simply asked, “Is Caleb here?” like she was a friend stopping by for a casual visit.
But that is not who is at the door this time. Standing before me, the gray sky softly glowing behind them, are two very large men in full police regalia, the same ones who were just across the street at Cult Girl’s house.
“Hello, young man,” one of the cops says.
“Uh, hello?” I say, staring at the gun on his belt. I am as tall as him but only about one-third his width. The shorter one is even wider. I feel myself shrink. Can they tell I’ve been harboring a fugitive just by looking at me?
“May I speak to Tammy Sloat, please?” says the shorter cop.
“Uh, Grandma,” I say, my voice shaking. I am such a wuss. “Grandma!”
“What?” Grandma yells from the living room.
“Cops are here!” I yell back. Then I hear her stomping.
“What’s this about?” she says as she approaches the door. The entryway is not big enough for both of us, especially with the board sticking out of the wall, so I fall back and plop down on the stairway. It’s over, I think. I’m going to jail. They’re going to eat me alive.
“We’d like to ask you some questions about the whereabouts of Caleb Sloat,” the taller cop says.
“I already told those other detectives I don’t know where he is,” Grandma says. Is that fear I detect in her voice? “I haven’t talked to him in years.” Is that sadness?
“Mind if we come inside and look around?” says the wider cop.
Grandma is silent. From behind, all I can see is a glimpse of each cheek as she looks from cop to cop. I don’t know what to
feel if I can’t read her face.
“Is this an official investigation?” Grandma says. “Do you have a warrant?” She’s watched enough detective shows to know how this works.
The cops look at each other. “Well, um,” says the tall one, looking at his shoes. “Not exactly.”
“We just have a few questions, ma’am,” says the wide cop, almost whining. “It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Are you even assigned to this case?” Grandma says.
The cops just look at each other. The wide one’s face turns bright red.
“You need to leave,” Grandma says. “Or do I need to call the cops and have you written up for trespassing and harassment?”
Sometimes Grandma can be a badass.
But her face does not match her voice. Her voice was angry and strong, but when she turns around, her forehead’s all wrinkled and her lips are quivering. She takes a big gasp of air and clutches her neck as she scuttles away without closing the front door, and I see a big tear drip down her face as she turns the corner into the living room.
“Um, bye?” I say to the cops from my seat on the stairs.
The tall cop sighs.
“Yeah, okay,” says the wide one, deflated.
“Dammit, Gene,” the tall cop grumbles to his partner as they walk away.
“It was worth a try,” whines the wide cop as I close the door behind them.
I find Grandma sitting on the couch with her face in her hands, her back heaving with sobs.
Grandma doesn’t cry. I don’t know what to do. I only know what to do with her anger, her hunger. Not this.
“Grandma?” I say. “Are you okay?”
She doesn’t say anything.