Trashed

by Alison Gaylin

  “Randi,” she said, “you don’t need to tell me . . .”

  “I do,” she said. “It’s important.”

  “Okay.”

  “After . . . it happened,” she said, “I took Nathaniel to Paris. We traveled around the world, we got whole new identities. Every night, I would tell him, ‘I am not Dolores. I am Randi. You are not my son. You are Nathaniel Cannell.’ ”

  Simone frowned. She didn’t get that part. She never had. “I can see why you wanted to change your identity,” she said. “And I can see why you wanted to change Nathaniel’s. But why did you want him to act as if he wasn’t your son, Randi? Why did you want to change both of your identities to that degree?”

  Randi leaned forward. “Most scandals are no big deal,” she said. “You reinvent yourself. Look at Blake. People do it all the time.” She looked into Simone’s eyes. “But some things, you can’t reinvent. A little boy . . . a ten-year-old boy. . . .”

  Simone held Randi’s gaze and took it in—the shock, the sadness, the deep, unstoppable pain. “I understand,” she said. Because she did. She finally did.

  “Good. Then we don’t need to say any more.”

  Nothing more was said, other than good-bye, but as she left the house Simone knew the truth. Reginald King had not cut his own throat with the hunting knife. Nathaniel had murdered his father. Dolores had changed her identity, changed Nathaniel’s—all to protect her son. But this was what destroyed Randi, this was what she needed to confess: If she had turned Nathaniel in to the police, if she had gotten him the help he needed, then all five of those women would still be alive.

  Randi had killed those girls. And she would always carry the weight of that shame.

  She walked out to the car, and got in the front seat. “How did it go?” said Walker.

  “It went,” said Simone. “It went.”

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  “You want to?” Jordan asked.

  Jordan had this sultry, slurry way of speaking that made it sound less like a question and more like an exotic name—Yawanna. And that mouth ... God. It made Naomi blush a little, watching it move around the words.

  It had to be the beer and the pot, because Naomi never thought like this. Sometimes the girls at Santa Beatriz would look at pictures of Justin Timberlake or Enrique Iglesias or maybe some guy from a telenovela, and they’d say, lo quiero—I want him—and yeah, Naomi would nod and all, but she wouldn’t get it. Not really.

  At seventeen, she’d been with a guy just once. It was horrible. She wasn’t big on dating either, and Justin, Enrique, all those two-dimensional boys in magazines, on TV screens, they did nothing for her at all. For a while now, Naomi had been secretly thinking there might be something wrong with her because she couldn’t even understand what it meant to want another person.

  But now . . . now she understood.

  “I promise,” said Jordan. “You’ll love it.”

  Naomi’s skin heated up. Her face flushed a deep red that she was certain he noticed, even from across the bonfire and with the desert sky darkening into that end-of-day color, that melony pink. She could blame it on the beer or the heat from the fire, but still he would know. The way he was looking at her, he just would. . . .

  But then Corinne said, “Doesn’t it make you puke?” And suddenly it was as if the other two people around the fire—Naomi’s American friends, down in San Esteban for summer break—had materialized out of nowhere.

  Corinne’s boyfriend, Sean, handed Jordan the joint, and he took a hit. “Puking is part of the experience,” Jordan said. He was half holding his breath to keep the smoke in, so the words kind of snuck out of his throat. God help Naomi, he even inhaled sexy. She flashed on the baggie he held in his other hand, at the shriveled gray disks inside, and she thought, Right. He’s talking about peyote. That’s what he means by “the experience. ”

  “I’ll try it,” she heard herself say, shocking everyone around the fire, especially herself. Naomi was a lightweight. One beer, three hits of pot, and already she was a red-faced, trembling basket case with an embarrassing crush on Corinne’s cousin. The last thing she needed was hallucinogenic cactus buttons.

  “Are you sure, Naomi?” said Sean, as if he were reading her mind.

  But when she looked at Jordan, when she saw the way he smiled at her, the way his eyes glittered under those half-closed lids . . . Oh, she was sure. So sure that she’d say it again, over and over, and then eat everything in the baggie without taking a breath, even if it made her puke her guts out and go completely insane. She’d do it all if she could just get Jordan alone for a few minutes, if she could get close enough to touch the side of his face, to feel those soft lips against her neck, to explore these brand-new feelings. . . .

  “You won’t be sorry,” Jordan said. And Naomi knew he was right.

  Naomi stared at the two peyote buttons in her hand. They looked like slices of two-hundred-year-old squash, with little purple hairs poking out the sides.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to eat that,” said Corinne.

  Naomi ignored her, which was easy to do, seeing as less than twenty feet away Sean was making sounds like a dying yak. He’d eaten his buttons around half an hour ago, and the fact he was now violently puking—a six-foot-five-inch football player with a neck the size of a Christmas ham—was not what you’d call good advertising for the peyote experience.

  “Don’t worry,” said Jordan.

  Naomi looked at him. His face was serene. “If there’s nothing to worry about,” she said, “why don’t you take it?”

  He smiled. “Already did.”

  “But you’re not . . .”

  “Throwing up? You don’t always.” His mouth tilted into a half smile. “If you eat yours now, we can still peak at the same time.”

  That pretty much sealed the deal.

  Naomi held her nose, then popped both buttons into her mouth and chewed them up as fast as she could. As it turned out, peyote tasted the way cat crap smelled, only worse. She gagged instantly. I will not throw up in front of him. Naomi thought of a framed concert photo in her aunt Vanessa’s bedroom—Ozzy Osbourne, taken just after he’d bitten the head off a live bat.

  At least peyote didn’t bleed.

  “There’s something about you, Naomi,” said Jordan.

  The vaguest compliment she’d ever received, and yet at this moment the most wonderful . . . Don’t throw up, don’t throw up. She swallowed the last awful bit and took a swig from Corinne’s bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” Naomi said, but she couldn’t look at him. What if she looked at him and puked and he took it personally? What if he got so grossed out that he never spoke to her again? She closed her eyes tight, rubbed the lids with the palms of her hands. This had always calmed her down, ever since she was a little girl, and after a time (Ten minutes? Twenty? Forty-five?) the nausea passed, and she was safe.

  She opened her eyes, gazed across the fire at Jordan.

  “Whew. Thought I lost you there for a second.” He grinned—but in his eyes, deep, mysterious sorrow. The combination was close to overwhelming. Naomi’s heart swelled so big, her ribs could barely contain it. She inhaled the sweet smell of burning mesquite as the dried cactus worked into her system, and the sun melted away, the sky turning a deep soft purple, the air starting to cool and swirl. . . . Please get up and sit next to me, please, please, please. . . .

  “I’m cold,” Naomi said. But the voice she heard was not her own. It was the voice of a ghost.

  “Oh man,” Sean was saying. “I can see. . . . Right here, in the dirt, it’s like . . . some kind of latticework structure leading down into the center of the earth, like a secret civilization or . . .”

  “Hitting you yet?” His voice was warm against the side
of her neck. His hand stroked her arm, and when she looked down at it, she saw thousands of shimmering fish scales.

  “Uh, I think so.”

  Jordan said, “You are really cute.”

  Naomi turned to see his face much closer than she expected—about two inches away from her own, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. She ignored all the scales, gazing only at the eyes, those sad golden eyes. He gave her the lightest, softest kiss imaginable, and then he leaned back and just looked at her, saying nothing, the heat of him lingering on her lips.

  “Wow,” she said. Like a gargantuan dork.

  The scales glistened in the firelight—kind of gorgeous, really, in an exotic, god-of-the-sea way—and Naomi wanted to melt into Jordan right there. She wanted to lose her own shape and turn to liquid, soak into those scales and become a part of him forever and ever as he moved through the ocean waves and, oh, was Naomi ever glad she wasn’t saying this out loud. Seriously, wow was bad enough, but this . . .

  Naomi caught a sudden chill up her back, as if someone was watching her, someone in the darkness, and when she glanced around the fire, she saw that Corinne and Sean were gone. When did they leave? A minute ago? An hour? Time wasn’t moving the way it was supposed to. It half rushed, half oozed, like those clocks in Salvador Dalí paintings.

  “Are you okay?” Jordan asked.

  “Yeah.” She closed her eyes, started rubbing them again. “I’m . . . I’m fine, I’m just . . . I . . .” Naomi’s heart was doing this weird jumping thing. It felt like a chubby little robot, hopping around inside her chest, only scary-fast. She started to think, What if my heart exploded? Because that really did happen to some people, didn’t it? They could be doing something perfectly normal—shopping for groceries or whatever—and one of their organs would up and explode.

  “Naomi?” Jordan said. “It can hit you hard the first time.”

  “I’m . . . I feel like . . .”

  “Just try and go with it.” Jordan took one of her wrists, gently moved her hands from her eyes. Her vision was blurry from all the rubbing, so she blinked a few times. Her hands and arms were glowing pink, like they were made from neon. “Take a deep breath,” Jordan said, “in and out. . . .”

  Naomi did. Her heart slowed a little. She looked at the fire and saw . . . just a fire. No scales or neon or tentacles.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.” And for a long time, they sat there, just breathing.

  “Jordan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you . . . do you have to leave tomorrow? I mean . . . could you maybe stay a couple more—”

  “Listen, Naomi,” said Jordan. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but . . .” His words trailed into the smoke.

  “What?” You can tell me, and whatever it is . . .

  Jordan sighed. It was a labored sigh, the way a sick person would breathe. When he finally spoke, his voice trembled. “This town. San Esteban. I know it’s beautiful on the surface, but it is really fucked up. There’s . . . weird stuff going on, stuff I’m guessing you don’t know about.”

  That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say at all. “What kind of stuff?” Her heart started to jump again. With each word, it wedged further into her throat.

  “I never should have come back here. And you . . .” he said. “You’re young. You need to be careful.”

  She could now feel her heartbeat in her shoulders, her ears, her mouth. She swallowed hard to tamp it down. “You’re trying to mess with my head, aren’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. Forget I ever said anything. I’m just . . . I’m tripping is all.”

  She turned, looked at Jordan’s face. She started to tell him it was okay, just don’t do it again. But then two long white fangs emerged from his mouth, a forked snake’s tongue darting out between them. “Sssssssorry,” he hissed.

  Without thinking, she was up on her feet, running away from the fire, away from Jordan hissing her name. Scrubby plants scratched at her legs and loose dirt flew into her face, rocks pushing through the thin soles of her sandals. It was as if the whole desert was trying to hurt her, and then there were those footsteps nearing, Jordan howling, “Come back!” Jordan the Fanged Snake.

  Naomi kept running, but her heart . . . It started slamming into her ribs, slamming hard, as if it wanted out now. Naomi thought, It’s about to explode.

  It was the last thought she had, before everything went black.

  Naomi dreamed of a spotlight aimed at her face. When she cracked her eyelids, she saw it was the hot sun, and she was thirstier than she’d ever been in her life. Her tongue felt like a wad of dried clay, too big for her mouth. Her eyes stung terribly, and her skin throbbed—her face, her neck, the tops of her legs. She had no idea about the time, but from where the sun was in the sky, she figured it had to be at least ten in the morning. And Naomi was lying on her back with a third-degree sunburn in the middle of an agave patch, somewhere in the desert that bordered San Esteban.

  She struggled to her feet as last night flew back at her—some of it, anyway. That whole exploding-organ thing . . . What had she been thinking, doing peyote with a college student? What had made her think she could handle that?

  “Great,” Naomi said to no one. Her lips stuck to her teeth. She ran her tongue over them. They were cracked and crusty and tasted like salt. She recalled, for a moment, what Jordan had said, about weird stuff going on in San Esteban. She thought about his sad, knowing eyes, how he had called after her as she’d run away . . .

  Best not to think about Jordan anymore.

  She stumbled between the cactuses and through a sparse area, dusted with tumbleweed and prickle bushes, Bimbo Bread wrappers and empty Pepsi cans. She tried to remember landmarks around the bonfire. She and Corinne always made their bonfires in areas that were easy to distinguish—near something tall like a jacaranda tree or a century plant—so they’d be able to find their way back to it should they wander. But this time they’d let the boys choose the place. Dumb idea.

  She kept walking, trying to ignore the vicious headache, that swimmy feeling, like she might pass out all over again.

  Finally she saw something that might have been the bonfire. It was about thirty feet away, near a blooming century plant, even though she hadn’t remembered one of them being there last night. But then again there was a lot about last night she didn’t remember. She moved closer, hoping with her whole body for the bonfire. Before she realized it, she was in a desperate, stumbling run.

  Ten feet away, though, she knew it wasn’t the bonfire. Could be a pile of old clothes, she thought. Until the smell socked her in the face.

  She heard the hum of flies first. Then she saw the splayed legs, the outstretched arms, the blood, so much of it, so dark it was close to black. . . . He was still wearing his flip-flops, but the rest of him was . . .

  “Jordan!” It came out a scream—an animal scream that ripped open her raw throat and tore at her insides and used all the breath in her body. . . . A scream that made her think she might lose her mind right here in this spot—because it couldn’t get worse, nothing could ever be worse than what she was looking at. . . .

  And then she saw Jordan’s heart.