Garden Lakes

by Jaime Clarke

  After spelling her name for us, she admitted it was not her real name. “I read it in a book,” she said. Her given name was Virginia Dare, and she had been born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, eighteen years earlier, but had been raised outside of Lincoln, Nebraska (“in a place that doesn’t exist for me anymore”), by a couple who adopted her at age two, after her birth parents were killed when their car collided with a cement embankment. The couple that brought Axia to Nebraska, and renamed her Lisa Grayson, as her adoptive mother had a bedeviling aunt named Virginia that she loathed.

  Life in Nebraska was grim, and Axia was not permitted to watch television, or play with friends after school, or any of the other activities that we presumed all other kids enjoyed. The household sounded overtly religious, but Axia did not allude to any particular church.

  “I didn’t find out I was adopted until I was fourteen,” she said.

  Warren howled. “Can you believe that?” he asked us. We helped ourselves to seconds of hash brown casserole, listening all the while.

  “The idea that I was adopted set everything in motion,” Axia said. Some of us stared at her snaggled tooth, which we thought made her even cuter. “I looked at my adoptive parents like strangers from then on. Every worry that I had about turning out like them vanished.”

  Her surroundings suddenly felt fake, a movie set against which her life had played out for the last fourteen years. A turbulent two years followed in which Axia disobeyed every word her parents and teachers said. She suffered through a series of groundings, detentions, and suspensions with a smile.

  “Did you try to find your real family?” Assburn asked, having come in after the part about how her parents had been killed. Someone threw a crumpled napkin at him.

  “What?” he asked defensively.

  Axia repeated the information, and Assburn covered with, “I meant your parents’ family. You know, like aunts and uncles.”

  Axia shook her head. “I could’ve,” she said, “but any life back in Fort Wayne would’ve been as strange to me as the one in Nebraska. None of it belonged to me.”

  She counted the months and weeks and days and hours and minutes until her eighteenth birthday. Axia asked the Graysons (which is how she referred to them) if she could invite a friend from school over—the only friend Axia had made in four years of high school—but they said no. That simple, one-word, two-letter answer germinated the resentment and bitterness that Axia had been nurturing since she was fourteen, and rather than eat the fried chicken and mashed potato dinner the Graysons had prepared (fried foods being forbidden in the Grayson residence except on special occasions), Axia scooped up as many of her meager possessions as she could fit into a bag. She walked out to the highway and had a ride south within the hour.

  Twelve hours later she was stranded southeast of Denver, tired from the amphetaminic blather of her first chauffeur, who had taken her as far as Branson, Colorado. “The end of the line for me,” the driver said, grinning under his greasy baseball hat stitched with the word GAMECOCK in camouflage lettering. The second leg of her journey—she was flirting with an idea that she was bound for Mexico—took her as far as Albuquerque, a good test to judge what life in the desert would be like. She did not have a driver’s license, and it would be difficult to reenter the United States once she committed to leaving. She took a job at Five Points Bakery, near the Rio Grande. “I would eat my lunch on the riverbank,” she said. “It was actually an ugly spot, but I liked to watch the river.” She took a furnished room in downtown Albuquerque, then two months later agreed to move in with a coworker who wanted someone to share the rent and utilities.

  But the morning after she’d verbally agreed to move, Axia took the money she’d been able to save by eating popcorn for lunch and dinner—something like two hundred dollars—and cushioned the soles of her shoes with the bills. She packed her belongings—fewer in number than at the start—and hit the highway, rolling into Phoenix as the sun set across the valley.

  “You came down the I-17,” Warren gushed. His subservience around Axia was beginning to grate on all of us, and we started to intuit how it was she had come to Garden Lakes.

  The sophomores busied themselves around our tables to hear Axia’s story, collecting the dirty dishes with an alacrity only curiosity could incite.

  Axia told of catching a ride with a carload of Arizona State students on their way to Mexico for spring break. The students treated Axia to so much beef jerky and Miller Lite that she became sick, vomiting out the window to the loud applause from inside the car.

  The spring breakers invited Axia to tour the Mexican side of Nogales with them—they were paying a quick visit to someone named Spanky before speeding off to Rocky Point—but she declined, though she accepted their parting gift of a maroon and gold T-shirt depicting a devil with a pitchfork, the school’s mascot. She changed into the T-shirt in the bathroom of the McDonald’s on the American side, where she said good-bye to the students, the restaurant overflowing with tourists too afraid to eat across the border.

  To quell her stomach, Axia removed a five-dollar bill from her shoe and ordered a large Sprite and a small french fries, finding a seat by the window where she could rest while she ate the skimpy dinner. She spent a few nights wandering the busy streets of Nogales, tempted to cross the border but dubious about what awaited her there. Every experience she’d had—good or bad—was American in nature. The lark of living in Mexico faded as Axia began searching for a way back north, finally grabbing a ride back to Phoenix with an elderly couple who had crossed the border to fill their prescriptions.

  “Same as my grandparents,” Warren chimed in.

  “Woo-woo,” Roger said, drawing circles in the air with his finger. He pushed back noisily from the table, and we heard the front doors close behind him.

  We watched Roger pass in front of the dining-hall windows while Axia finished her story. “I got as far as Casa Grande, and that’s where I went into the fields”—which we took to mean her stint as an olive farmer—“and then I met Warren,” she said.

  “You’ve been living with the Indians for four months?” Sprocket asked.

  Axia shrugged. Hands fidgeted in his chair as others lobbed questions. Figs sensed confrontation and hoped to deflate it. “Give me a hand in the kitchen?” he asked Hands.

  Hands frowned. “What for?” he asked.

  “I’ll go,” Warren volunteered before Figs could answer. Irked, Figs traipsed off to the kitchen with Warren at his heels.

  Warren took Figs’s arm and pulled him into the hallway.

  “I’m on your side,” he said.

  “What?” Figs asked.

  “About Axia staying,” Warren said. “She should be allowed to stay. What if you and I go to Mr. Malagon and ask? Maybe we could take her to meet him. I’ll bet if he could meet her, he would change his mind.”

  Figs contemplated Warren’s plan. He cared less about Axia than he did about Hands’s and Smurf’s burgeoning importance with Mr. Malagon. Why should they be the only conduits? Figs understood that if he and Warren took the issue to Mr. Malagon, and Mr. Malagon’s decision held, he would be at an even greater disadvantage. An alternative plan—one that Figs had been working on overnight—was to reverse his stance on Axia, hoping the recompense for his support for her expulsion would be access to Mr. Malagon. The likelihood that Mr. Malagon would let Axia stay was slight, Figs knew. His inclination was to play the percentages, but if he fought for Axia and won, he would be elevated and not simply part of a triumvirate.

  Warren pressed the case for approaching Mr. Malagon on Axia’s behalf, but his words were muted by Hands’s voice floating into the hallway from the dining hall. “We have to get to work,” he said. A bustling followed as we took the cue to stand and collect our dirty dishes. Axia stayed seated, looking passively for Warren, who pushed through us as we filed out of the community center. A shoving match erupted between Smurf and Warren but was quickly broken up by Figs and Hands, each taking their res
pective fighters to their corners.

  “Don’t worry,” Warren said to Axia. “We’re going to Mr. Malagon ourselves.”

  Hands let go of Smurf. “What?”

  “You heard me,” Warren said. A wild, chaotic look possessed him.

  “Maybe I don’t want to stay,” Axia said.

  “The choice should at least be yours,” Warren said, breaking free of Figs’s hold. “If you want to leave, fine. But I’m not going to let them”—he pointed a finger at Hands and Smurf—“throw you out. That’s not fair.”

  Warren walked with purpose out of the dining hall. Hands clambered after him, leaving Figs and Smurf in his wake. Smurf had barely spoken—something about Mr. Malagon not being home—when a loud crash rang out. We rushed to the window, expecting to find Hands and Warren engaged in hand-to-hand combat, wondering what had broken. The view from the window, however, was remarkably serene: Roger standing on the lip of the lake bed, shading his eyes; Assburn and Lindy huddled together on the sidewalk, their conversation interrupted; Hands outside the community center doors, lurking in the shadow of the roof; Warren and Lindy gathered around Sprocket in front of Mr. Malagon’s house, their sunlit faces searching Mr. Malagon’s bedroom window, which had been smashed out when Roger’s kick sent the soccer ball over everyone’s head, the faintest trail of the ball’s trajectory lingering in the air.

  We stood breathless, waiting.

  Warren lifted a wedge of decorative concrete from the walkway and heaved it through Mr. Malagon’s living-room window. Those inside the dining hall couldn’t see the window but heard a pop and then a shower of glass. Warren turned to face the others, but everyone looked past him, staring in horror at the two broken windows.

  In testimony before the administration, the amount of time that lapsed between the shattering of Mr. Malagon’s windows and the confirmation that Mr. Malagon was not in the house varied widely. Some claimed to know right away, which was the truth for all of us, while others said they were shocked to learn later that Mr. Malagon was not laid up in bed, as had been advertised, but had abandoned us. The discrepancy of who knew it and when was due to our reaction to the broken windows, a reaction the administration found incredulous, calling fellows in individually to substantiate what they deemed an outlandish lie: that everyone reported for work at 1959 Regis Street, honoring the teams we’d drawn up before Warren reappeared, working with urgency to compensate for the time we’d lost owing to the search for Warren.

  Our focus was acute, driven by the fear of what we suspected about Mr. Malagon, that he had forsaken us for some unexplained reason. We pored over our job journals, comparing notes. Inside corners called out to us to be taped off; we affixed J-trims to the shower stalls and window jambs; outside corners were fitted with bullnose corner beads. We worked with an expertise that had, for any number of reasons, previously eluded us. We worked through lunch. We worked through class time. We worked through sports.

  Some of us lagged behind the rest, joining our teams late; and of course Smurf did not reunite with his team at all, though we did not realize he had left Garden Lakes—this time of his own volition—until dinner, when it was the marquee gossip. Intelligence about the events leading up to Smurf’s departure, as well as the whereabouts of those who reached the jobsite late, was not clear to us until the administration made its official report. We knew generally about Figs and Hands and Assburn’s tardiness; their lateness was noted by Roger, who commented when the three walked onto the job without offering an excuse or even a flippant response, then reported to Sprocket for their equipment and jumped in.

  According to the account put out by the administration, the reason for Figs and Hands and Assburn’s tardiness involved two distinct and simultaneous events, both put into play as the rest of us set upon 1959 Regis Street.

  First, Smurf demanded to use Assburn’s mobile phone. Assburn, stricken with the realization that Mr. Malagon had deserted Garden Lakes, agreed. Smurf must’ve believed he could salvage the situation with one phone call to Randolph, though as I look back, this plan seems impossibly naive. Smurf’s testimony after the fact left open for interpretation why he’d wanted Assburn’s mobile phone, largely because of the evidence that Assburn’s phone had met the same fate as Mr. Hancock’s (though it was a sure bet that Mr. Hancock hadn’t squandered valuable battery life calling 900 numbers as Assburn had) and Smurf himself said he wasn’t sure whom he was going to call—Randolph or Katie Sullivan. Smurf’s failure to contact Randolph after leaving Garden Lakes threw a spotlight of suspicion on him, and the administration was never completely convinced that Smurf wasn’t working in harmony with Mr. Malagon or covering for him in some way.

  Mr. Malagon’s own testimony on the matter was sealed, forever unknown.

  The second event was unfolding a few houses down, as Figs followed Hands into their residence. “Did you ever see him?” he asked as Hands started to ascend the stairs.

  Hands pivoted on the bottom step. He eyed Figs coldly, assessing whether Figs was reaching out or digging his finger into the wound. Figs began pacing the living room, signaling the latter. “It was all Smurf,” Hands said in a rush of inspiration. “He called me up to Mr. Malagon’s room. I wanted to tell everyone, but Smurf thought we’d all hang him. So I went along with it.”

  “I don’t get what the plan was,” Figs said, bouncing between the living room and the kitchen. “What was Smurf up to?”

  Hands shrugged. “He never said.”

  Figs stopped pacing. “Where is Smurf?”

  Figs became the next to know that Smurf had become the fourth deserter after Quinn and Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon, climbing into his car, which he’d kept hidden outside the main gates. Figs brought his hand to his mouth as Hands related Smurf’s getaway.

  “What will you say?” Figs asked pointedly.

  Hands stepped down and took a seat on the love seat. He knew it would be his word against Smurf’s, and even though Smurf was not present to give his side, his silence was as good as him disputing Hands’s story, the room for doubt too great to be overcome by repeating that it was all Smurf’s idea. Hands knew he needed an ally. He wondered if he could recruit someone cold. Roger? Not likely. Assburn? Possibly. He knew from Smurf that Assburn’s famous cry of innocence over the theft of Senator Quinn’s pen was phony, but Assburn had probably disposed of the pen for good by now, and leaning on Assburn might have negative results. He needed someone who was weak minded or, at the very least, weak willed, someone who could be promised something in return for verifying Hands’s version of events. He considered Sprocket but could not think of anything he could promise Sprocket for an alibi.

  Hands ran through the possibilities. Warren was the best candidate—he possessed an indefinable credibility that others respected—but Warren was too distracted by Axia to be of any use, witnessed by the fact that Warren had stayed behind to help Axia, who had begun cleaning the kitchen and dining hall as the rest of us rushed out to the sound of breaking glass.

  Lindy had a workableness to him, but Lindy wouldn’t be as strong an ally as Figs, a fact Hands had known from the start.

  “I’ll tell them that it was all Smurf,” Hands said defiantly.

  Figs gave a look of surprise, knowing what Hands had figured out for himself, that he needed Figs. “No one will believe you.”

  “Everyone believed you when you lied about Warren and the grocery truck driver,” Hands said matter-of-factly, regretting the barb immediately.

  Figs winced. Hands’s alliance with Smurf still smarted, and while Figs wanted to help Hands, wanted to realign Hands’s loyalties, he wasn’t going to offer. Hands would have to ask.

  Figs suffered through another round of haranguing about Warren before Hands asked. Figs accepted, seizing the moment to secure Axia’s place at Garden Lakes.

  “You’re crazy,” Hands said. “Can you imagine what will happen if the school finds out, either now—if Smurf goes and tells them—or at Open House, when all our parent
s show up?”

  “She’ll leave the day before Open House,” Figs submitted, an olive branch he’d worked out in advance, knowing Hands would raise this particular objection, and further knowing the objection was legitimate. The school couldn’t know about Axia; that would be rule number one.

  Hands continued to object, though his position was considerably weakened. Finally he acquiesced. “I’m not responsible, though,” Hands said. “If something happens, it’ll be all you.”

  “Fine,” Figs said, “but if I’m going to be a hundred percent behind your story, you have to be a hundred percent behind Axia staying. That’s the deal.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Hands said.

  By the time they joined us for construction, they’d worked out all the details, though we heard the story for the first time that night at dinner, Smurf’s tire tracks still fresh in the dirt along the shoulder outside the gates. We heard about how Smurf had roped Hands in, how Hands had gotten all his information secondhand, through Smurf. We ate in shock; we’d never known Smurf to pull something so devious. We marveled at his duplicity, impressed by it, but our admiration slowly wore away as we realized the gravity of our new situation.

  We had only to look to Figs and Hands for guidance, though. As the sophomores cleared the tables, they made their pitch to keep Garden Lakes afloat until Open House, interspersing their speech with “It’s a good opportunity” and “What better way to test ourselves?”

  It was agreed that, in order to argue successfully for full credit for our fellowship, the schedule would remain intact, as would all the rules and regulations—including the reinstatement of curfew. We frittered away an hour on a scheme put forward by Hands, who wanted to break us up into pods, each pod rotating duties every day. “That would work,” Figs said, “but what if the administration declared us ineligible because we didn’t all have a hand in construction?” (The sophomores would quickly see that the emphasis of the coming days would be on the fellowship; anything pertaining to kitchen work or laundry would become background noise.) “We’ve got nineteen days until Open House. We’re pretty much on schedule at 1959. We’re a bit behind in our classwork”—Figs and Hands had located the two boxes in Mr. Malagon’s closet filled with the handouts and tests Mr. Malagon had planned to use for class—“but it’s nothing we can’t catch up on.”