“What?” my voice comes out like an echo, long and bouncy. My word sounded like a note coming out. That’s weird. Why does my hand look like that? It’s bendy and red.
A thought comes across my brain like Morse code. Am I breathing? And then a big plume of green breath comes out and bounces around the room. It looks funny and I laugh.
I walk a little and trip over something. Am I wearing rubber bands on my legs? They feel rubbery like the Gumby doll my mom let me play with out of her toy box in the garage.
Oh! The saddest thing just hit me. Green Gumby. Gumby legs and rubber melting onto the bottom of the ash pile that was our house. He must have burned up, too. Just like Momma. Like Dad.
Who’s pulling me up? Oh! “Hi, Kenny!” I say, wrapping my arm around his shoulder. It seems like the best place to put it.
“Are you drunk?” he says and his face turns into a big red pig’s face.
“Why are you a pig now?” I ask, reaching out to touch the snout.
“I said I was sorry. I’m just h—h—helping you up,” he says, but his mouth/snout moves all jerky and then spiders are falling from the walls.
“Spiders!” I point. I’m trying to jump away from them. My brain moves around and around. It’s like a slushy. What a word! Slushy.
“No! There’s n—n—no spiders. Those are lights, Mia!” He puts me back on one of those soft purple couches. I have to keep touching the purple velvet. It’s so soft, softer than anything. Ever. Except for my mom’s hands when she’d just put lotion on.
Those were soft, too; her shiny lotion hands. Those burned up, too. Gone, just gone. Ashes blowing away in the wind.
“Oh! Hi Brianna!” I say, when her face comes up to mine really close.
“Something, something, something. Blah, blah, blah.” Her mouth moves but the words aren’t real ones, I think. My hand bends so much. I hadn’t noticed that before tonight. Now I’ve noticed twice.
“Dang! This dress is shiny!” I tell her. I know she’s dying to hear about it. She looks mesmerized by my insight.
“Kolton!” she screams at me. But I don’t want to hang out with him right now. He’s always mad at me. Or sad? Is he sad at me?
“You can call him,” I say, pulling out the phone from my really soft boot. I cross my leg and pull the zipper down. It’s like skin opening up, like a frog being dissected in—Oh! A cage. I want to dance in a cage!
But when I stand, my leg is all floppy. I sit down on a hardwood floor. Pull the zipper back in place and someone takes my hand. I shake them off and walk like a tiger toward a cage painted white with shiny lights on it.
I climb over it. It’s only waist high, but it seems like a great accomplishment. I’m so strong! The girl inside already wears feathers on her head and on her ass.
She likes the way my neck tastes, I think.
I have to dance. She spoons with me and we move like water in a tub when it’s going down the drain.
I laugh and the sound bounces around my head and then the whole room.
“Come down!” Kenny says. I tilt my head to the side. Why so worried, Kenny?
“I’m swirling!” I say, raising my arms. That’s when I see him. He’s a dark figure amongst the lights and glowing arms and necks. The lights go out. He’s coming closer and he looks pissed off. I keep dancing. The lights go off again. He’s closer, still. I push into feather-girl’s lap. He’s coming for me. I lean against the other side of the cage and run my hand along the feathers on the girl’s skirt. Soft.
His eyes are darting around—green like a monster. He takes a jacket off his friend Manny’s back, jumps like lightening over the cage wall and covers me like a secret. I am a secret.
“Kolton. Don’t hide me,” I say, because I want to cry.
“Where’d you get this dress?” he says, like I’m in trouble. Am I?
“She got drugged!” Kenny yells as Kolton leans forward, pointing his finger into Kenny’s chest. He turns toward me. Green eyes with a red fleck. I grab a feather in my hand and pull.
“I got it!” I say.
I’m flying. I touch the feather with light strokes; running my hand along it back and forth. It’s so affected by me.
“Bye Brianna!” I say, as she hands me my phone.
“He was already here,” she says, like a dream into the air. I catch it with my hand and know it’s true. He always knows where I am—unless I don’t have the phone he gave me. Then he’s mad.
The inside of Kolton’s car? How’d I get here so fast?
Kolton’s mouth is moving. “What. Are. You—?” I say. What was I saying?
“Did someone give you something?” he demands. The features of his face are swapping. I reach out to make it right, hold things in place.
“My hand was wet,” I say, touching his arm and then his chin.
“Devon, call Doctor Simon. This needs to be discreet.”
“Discreet. But aren’t we always, unless we aren’t,” I say, as he takes my wrist and moves my hand down. I pull it away.
“Mia, you’ve been drugged. Do you remember anything?” His jaw is tensing up. It worries me so I play with my bottom lip.
“Todd,” I say, noticing that my heart beats very strong now. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. “Am I dying?”
“No. It was probably acid or Ecstasy.” He’s holding a phone to his ear. Those phones, they’re not meant for talking. Too flat and glassy. It makes his cheek glow.
I close my eyes and feel a crackle under my skin. I think it’s because of Kolton and the sandalwood scent coming from his skin and hair and clothes. I want to touch him, rub his scent all over me until I’m covered in him.
“Who let you wear that, Mia? Fuck!”
“It’s pretty. Shiny!” I say, running my hands over the tiny metallic dots.
“I told you not to go. It’s not safe.”
“You can’t hold my hand all my life.” I stare at my thrice pink and bendy hand. “Oh! A chair, for me?” I ask as I sit down and roll along past white walls with ugly pictures of generic beaches and fake sand. My eyes are burning, so I close them tight.
I hear footsteps slapping along the too beige floor.
A needle pokes my arm. I try to pull it out and then the world caves in on me, holds me down. I hear a sound. It’s too loud and screamy. When I close my mouth, the sound finally stops. The people here, they talk in codes and letters. “LSD,” I hear one of them say.
“What can we do?”
“Wait it out,” says the other voice.
“No. She’s scared. Give her something… a light sedative,” Kolton demands. I don’t open my eyes, but lights play tricks on the inside of my eyelids. I’m falling down that hole; the one where sadness grips me by the feet and threatens to pull me under.
Why did he give up? Dad! Why? The housing market would come back around. They’ll need you again—if you just keep trying. Put the fucking batteries in the fire detectors. That’s all he had to do. The beeping, it was bothering him. I remember him taking them out. Sometime around when he spent his 401K.
But Riley, she will be okay. I carried her like I carried myself through those sad years when Dad didn’t get to eat at Ruth’s Chris anymore with all the loan officers who’d made too much money. The mall burned down right around then, just before Christmas one year. And those damn carolers with their flash mob almost collapsed the top floor of The Galleria Mall in Roseville while Mom and I stood in the line for Riley to see Santa. She never did get to see him that year. Only two more years ‘til we’d be on our own, alone. Homeless and no one to save us.
“I’m right here,” he says, like a saving grace. His voice soft and hard, just like his kisses. Where will those kisses land when I’m not enough anymore?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Grass
When my eyes open, I’m unsure of everything. Where I am, why I’m here. Why my brain is banging around inside my skull so hard. I hear the familiar hospital noises and breathe the medicine scents from last year’s
burn ward. It makes my stomach hurt. I look to my left and see Kolton leaning against the back of the chair with a hood over his dark blonde locks.
I’ve got needles stuck and taped to the front of my hand. “Kolton?” I rasp. His eyes open up as if they weren’t really closed in sleep, just in wait.
“Mia,” he says, maneuvering himself onto the edge of the bed in one smooth move. He takes a stray hair out of my face and smiles with his eyes. His jaw stays tight. “It was LSD. Do you remember anything?”
My mind plays back some of last night’s escapades. “Flashes of things, starting with a guy named Todd putting some water thing on my hand.”
“He was arrested,” he informs me, sitting up straight. My eyebrows are the only reaction to the news. “That’s the last time you go out without supervision.”
“I’m a grown woman, Kolton. It was a fluke, I’m sure.”
“You went out wearing something you knew I wouldn’t like. With Kenny there, love-sick. Did he cop a feel?”
“This is ridiculous! You’re acting like my father!”
“You obviously still need one.” I’m knocked back with that one. I can’t even blink.
I purposely slow down my voice, bringing it down to a whisper. “I had a father. He might have fucked shit up and died, but you’re not going to replace him.” It’s like venom, a warning he’s gone too far.
“I know what you need, Mia. And you need to stay with me or have Manny with you from now on.” His tone has calmed down, too, to match mine, but it doesn’t make it sound less like a slap in the face.
“I can’t be with you because I’m a fucking secret!” I scream.
“Lower your voice.” It’s a calm demand. All his anger is hidden under the surface. But the eyes, they tell the tale.
“No!” I say and toss myself to my side to get away from him. “I’m not a child.”
“And that’s the last time you wear something like that out without me. Or ever.” I ignore him and pretend I’m asleep again. I hear my breaths come out like little angry ghosts. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You were already there. Brianna told me.”
“I had a bad feeling.”
“You followed me, didn’t you? You can track the phone. I figured it out last night.” I stare at the half open door as I talk to him. Doors are so symbolic, freedom when it’s open, the opposite when it’s not. He doesn’t answer. He just breathes out, long and winded, like a secret held in for too long. “We need a break, Kolton. You’re smothering me.”
“What kind of break?”
“I’m taking Riley back to Sac. Kaya says I have some shows booked at all my local spots; interviews with KCRA and News 10. The News and Review, Sac Bee. I’ll need to go back or it’ll look suspicious.”
“You want to leave, don’t you? You want to get away from me.” He gets up, making an absence in the spot he’d just been. I hear his boots pacing the floor.
Back and forth.
“Sacramento is like the grass,” I say.
Back and forth.
“What do you mean?”
He stops.
“When I carried Riley out of the house, I felt a lot like this—smothered by the smoke. All consuming fire surrounded me. I couldn’t move; I was so scared. The fire, it was minutes from burning me; my lungs hurt so bad I almost wanted to die. But then I made my move. I ran into Riley’s room and picked her up somehow, like she weighed nothing, and then, the stairs. They were on fire but it was the only way out. I pushed through, felt it burning my bare feet as I ran down them. I ran out to the grass in the front yard.
“I put Riley down and she was frantic—screaming, screaming for her momma. I had to slap the fire out of my pajama pants. The grass, it was covered with dew and it stung the fresh burns on my feet and ankles, but it felt good at the same time. It was peaceful on the grass. More so than inside with all that fire.”
“I’m the fire in this story?” he asks, matter-of-factly. His eyes are glazed over as if reliving the worst moments of my life brings back feelings for him, too. “Aren’t I?” I nod. “You don’t want to see me for three months, Mia?” I blink.
“Maybe it’ll be long enough for you to forget about me,” I say, knowing that a little piece of me will die inside if he does. I think that’s why I don’t submit to him. Why I don’t let myself feel. If I let myself truly become his, give him everything; if I did and he left me, I’d never be the same. He shakes his head ‘no.’
“If that’s what you think, you don’t know me at all.” I close my eyes. His boots move across the floor, the door opens, and he goes away down the too bright hallway. It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s not right to let the fire consume you. Fire is angry and fueled by energy around it. To persist, it overcomes everything around it. It always leaves scars behind.
Sometimes, you just need the grass.
* * *
I’ll never, for the life of me, forget the look on his face as I started to walk past him at the bottom of the stairs for the last time. He took my hand in his and said, “Don’t disrespect me again with this shit about me forgetting you.”
“Kolton,” I try.
“I’m waiting for you to catch up,” he whispered as he pulled me into his chest. I wrapped my arms around his waist and rubbed my nose along his chest ever so lightly. It hurt. Real bad. But rock stars don’t settle down, not really. And he’s smothering me. It’ll never work.
He’d negotiated that Deloris come for the full break and that Manny drives us home. It’s over an eight hour drive and I’m preoccupied with the scent of him still on my skin and on my clothes the entire time.
It’s like some other life when we walk in the door of our old apartment. It’s clean, but the air inside is old. I open the back door to the patio to bring in the cross breeze, just like my mom always did. She said it so often, cross breeze, sometimes I can feel her in the air.
That night, Manny runs to get us Taco Bell before he heads back. I offer to let him stay, but he makes some excuse about Kolton needing him, and then he goes.
I move out of the master bedroom and make a bed for myself on the couch so Deloris can have some privacy. I braid Riley’s hair and we play Jenga on the fold out dining table. In fact, it’s embarrassing how we live. An old thrift store couch, card table that I covered with a pretty tablecloth, and a small TV that sits on a particle board stand from Wal-Mart. Even the plates I picked up at Goodwill seem weird in comparison to those shiny white ones at Kolton’s house.
As I snuggle into the old lumpy brown couch, I take out Kolton’s phone and perk up when I see a message from him. It says,
K-Royce Private
8:02 PM
Did you get home okay?
9:15 PM
It’s weird being home.
9:16 PM
Because home is here with me.
I can’t answer him. It’s a nice thing he said, and he’s right. His house feels more like home than here. I haven’t caught up with him because deep down I don’t believe the things he’s said can be true. I believe he’s ahead of me, on many levels. But, as far as we’re concerned, I don’t think he really knows where he is on the journey.
* * *
I still take Kolton’s phone everywhere with me. I know he has some tracking thing on it so he always knows where I am. It’s reassuring and I feel like he’s with me—like I’m safe, as stupid as that sounds.
Riley, Deloris, Kaya, and I plop down in our modest apartment to watch the premier of The Stage. Really, it’s beautifully done. What I didn’t know was that, during the silhouette auditions, the cameras they used were those green cameras that can see in the dark. It gives the audiences at home the dramatic irony of knowing what we look like, while the judges don’t.
It’s weird watching myself walk out onto the stage, remembering how scared I was to fail. And how little I knew about how much this show would really change my life.
I hold Riley’s hand as they switch to our story and
the interview, edited to include news footage of us on the lawn with our voice-overs talking about our parents’ deaths.
When I hear Riley start to sniff, I hold her tighter. I love her so much. She’s all I have and I want to make the best life for her that I can.
When I looked around, Deloris and Kaya have tears in their eyes, but I have to remind myself, them showing our story is all for ratings. It’s really obvious I’m being painted as the underdog. The music starts, and, as I start to sing, Kolton is the first to push his buzzer for me.
I’d wondered, and now I know.
* * *
After Riley and Deloris go to sleep. Kaya and I are still hanging out when I check Kolton’s phone to see what he thought of the show.
K-Royce Private
11:02 PM
Out of the ashes she rose.
Wings stretched. She’s on her toes
She showed me her scars
Love like the stars
Put your arms up, hands in my hair
So I can feel it when you stare
Those eyes they’ve seen me now
When I look up, Kaya is making popcorn and staring at me from under the cabinet that separates me from the kitchen.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asks. I shrug in the universal signal for not wanting to share.
“Nothing.” I avert my eyes. I don’t want her to try and guess.
“Well. Let’s start with, uh, you have a nanny, a body guard. Like, who’s paying for that? And you’re walking around like a love-sick puppy who’s lost the love her life or something.” The sound of the kernels popping as she says it grates my nerves.
“The show provided Deloris. She felt it was best not to skip out on Riley since she’s lost so many people already. They’re really close.”
“You’re the girl in the car, aren’t you?” And I feel my eyes glare at her from my side of the room.
“Kaya,” I say. “Don’t make me try and lie to you. Just do us both a favor and don’t ask me about it anymore. Okay?”
“But, I’m your best friend.” Her lower lip starts to quiver but I have to stand my ground.
“I don’t want you to have to lie. You can just say you don’t know, because you don’t.”
The Stage (Phoenix Rising #1) Page 16