The Dark Side of Innocence

by Terri Cheney

  I passed another speed limit sign: sixty-five mph. Bah! I punched the accelerator, and the ’Vette responded instantly. Seventy-five, eighty . . . There was no one to see, and no one to care, and the wind felt like invisible fingers caressing my hair. I reached behind my seat and pulled out a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, which I always kept stashed there for emergencies. I knew it was against the law to drink and drive, but in the mood I was in, that hardly mattered. My contempt for the adult world and its meaningless prohibitions had never felt so deep and profound. I unscrewed the cap and took a long guzzle. The wine was warm and sweet, and I let it flow through my body.

  Eighty-five, ninety . . .

  Suburbia had completely disappeared. It was replaced by miles and miles of barren desert, as far as the eye could see. Just flat land and the occasional Joshua tree, junipers, and sagebrush. I wanted the road to go on forever. I was just the slightest bit woozy—my fingers and toes were tingling—and I was sure that if I could drive far enough, I’d hit the horizon and fall clean off the edge of the world. But the off-ramp for Hesperia was coming up soon, and I reluctantly slowed to take the turn.

  There were no intersection lights back then, just a few isolated stop signs. I whizzed by the truck stop where Daddy and I always had chili; past the general store; and then, with a honk and a wave, past Custom Homes, with its bright and cheery red rock roof. There was little left to Main Street after that. I could see the skeletons of some of my father’s homes emerging in the distance, but for the most part, it was just me, the road, and the occasional tumbleweed.

  I pulled over and stopped, leaning my head back to drink in the zillions of stars and the rest of the Strawberry Hill. Night in the desert always made me feel tiny, like a pinprick in the endless embroidery of sky. Seeing Daddy’s brave red roof had not had the effect I’d intended: it made me feel homesick. But what was there to go home to? And to whom? Was my father still my father now, or a stranger I had never really known?

  The Black Beast, which had enjoyed the ride immensely thus far, grew irritated at the delay. My palms began to itch. “There’s nothing for you back there,” he said. “Keep moving. Faster. There’s no time to lose. The answers are all ahead of you.”

  I threw the empty bottle as hard as I could at a nearby yucca tree. Another rule broken: good. The smash and tinkle were just what I needed to break me out of reverie. I pictured my mother’s self-satisfied smile, and a flash of anger scorched my skin. The Black Beast was right. I couldn’t go home. There was nowhere left for me to go but forward, faster, into the night.

  I revved the engine. God, that growl: it was like an instant hit of adrenaline. Between that and the wine and the Black Beast’s goading, I was feeling pretty high—so high I decided to push the ’Vette as far as it would go. I’d never really opened it up all the way before. I hadn’t “red-lined the tach,” as Zach and his carcrazy friends would say.

  I noticed when I got back on the road that the white line in the middle looked blurry and indistinct. No doubt they’d run out of bright white paint this far into the desert. More likely, no one had cared. I tried to follow the wavy line, but it made me feel dizzy, so I just braced myself against my seat, put my foot on the accelerator and stomped down hard. I roared into second, did a quick power shift up into third, a short yank down to fourth, and I was flying. I left the wavy white line behind me and hydroplaned on the dust.

  Ninety-five, one hundred . . .

  Finally, life was moving almost fast enough to satisfy the Black Beast. My hair was whipping into my eyes, and it stung like the devil’s lash. Without thinking, I took one hand off the wheel to brush it away. The car swerved crazily, and I almost lost control. I panicked for a second, but it righted itself, and I found the little white line again, the only marker of sanity in the blur that used to be the world.

  One hundred and ten, one hundred and fifteen . . .

  Not enough, not nearly enough. Speed was good, but speed without destination felt pointless, like I was simply spinning my wheels. But where was I to go? I’d left the house with only my keys. I had no money, no identification, and worst of all, no liquor left to fuel my journey. Besides, I was too old to run away from home. Over the whine of the engine, I heard a whisper: “You’re never too old to die.”

  Suicide. Ah, suicide. The ultimate destination. I’d romanced it often enough throughout the years, but since my unsuccessful attempt at age seven, I’d never seriously tried it again. Now it wooed me like a long-lost love, insinuating itself inside my veins, infiltrating every pore until it was all that I could think of. Part of me was scared—so scared that I wanted to yank the wheel and pull a U-turn right there in the middle of the road. But a bigger part was exultant, as if I’d just solved an impossible equation in math. Suicide—such a lovely word, like a sweet kiss on the lips—was so clearly the answer.

  But it was a much more difficult proposition now. At seven, I’d had access to my mother’s pills. And far more importantly, I was convinced that when I died I’d go straight to Heaven. Now I wasn’t so sure. Overall, like everyone else, I thought I’d led a pretty good life, especially considering all the temptations to misbehave that the Black Beast had put in my way. But was it good enough? Or did God require an A-plus?

  One hundred and twenty, one hundred and twenty-five . . .

  The steering wheel began to vibrate in my hands, and my thoughts outraced the speedometer. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” So many sins—too many to count. I could try to blame them all on the Black Beast, but I didn’t think even God would understand that the Black Beast wasn’t really me. Sure, he was a part of me, but not the part that I embraced as the essential Terri. He was an interloper, an unwelcome intruder who broke into my mind and forced me to do the strangest things. Like now: it wasn’t me who was driving a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour down a deserted desert road in the middle of the night, with a bottle of booze in my bloodstream. The Black Beast had the wheel.

  One hundred and thirty . . .

  The wind was shouting so loud in my ears, it was hard to think, and even harder to plan. How could I possibly do it? I had no pills, no knife, no gun. I supposed that I could park the car and hitchhike, and maybe get picked up eventually by a homicidal maniac. But that seemed too long a shot, even for Hesperia. I knew there was a lake somewhere nearby, although I wasn’t quite sure where. I could drive the ’Vette at full throttle into the water, but could you drown in a convertible? And besides, even if I was going to die, I didn’t want to hurt my beloved car.

  I had to laugh at the irony of this, and the sound of my laughter startled me back into something resembling sanity. How could I die, when I could still laugh? I was only sixteen, after all: there were many more tragedies and triumphs yet to come. I had friends who cared about me, family who—though deeply flawed—still loved me. No doubt my parents were both worried sick about where I was right now.

  A hundred and thirty felt really good, but it was far too fast, too soon. I eased my foot off the accelerator and closed my eyes for a second to thank God for this brief kiss of clarity. It was the right thing to do, but the wrong time to pray.

  The rock appeared out of nowhere, smack dab in the center of the road. I saw it too late to swerve. The sickening sound of crunching metal and shattering fiberglass filled the air, drowning out even the wind.

  All I remember is spinning, spinning, off the road and onto the sand. I kept trying to scream, but the dust was too thick, and it choked me. I tried to remember my driver’s ed class, which hadn’t been so very long ago. What did it mean, “Steer into the spin”? Was that left or right? It didn’t matter; the wheel wouldn’t respond. Then I must have hit another rock, because the car suddenly lurched forward and I slammed against the wheel. The black desert sky turned even blacker, the stars exploding inside my head.

  When I came to, I was covered with blood. The stars had fled, and the sky was a pure and crystalline blue, the light so bright it hurt my eyes. I lo
oked in the rearview mirror: there was a nasty gash across my chin and a lump on my forehead, but mercifully, the rest of my face had escaped unscathed. Not so the ’Vette. I shakily got out and examined the damage. There was a long, ragged tear along the left side, the front bumper was crumpled, and the left front tire was blown.

  I looked around me. There was nothing but cacti and tumbleweeds stretching from here to eternity. I’d missed the dawn, so I didn’t know which way was east or which was west. In a daze, I walked to the edge of the road and waited to be rescued. “Princess,” my father used to call me. Princesses always got rescued.

  Oddly enough, it was Zach that I wanted. Although we were not the closest of siblings, a big brother is still a big brother, and this was no time for parents. I’d call Rhonda, I thought, and she could call Zach, and Zach would come and save me. I had plenty of time to think and plan in the five or so hours that elapsed before the nice burly truck driver happened by. But it wasn’t until I was in his cab, safe and relatively sound, that I finally started to cry. The two things that I loved best in the world—my perfect father and my shiny car—had been ripped asunder that night.

  The ’Vette, I knew, could be repaired.

  5

  Looking, nowhere inside myself

  Is there the break required

  To admit to, or submit to,

  Or to say their way is chosen.

  For it’s merely what they’ve chosen

  Never knowing choice existed

  Whereas I, who saw both consequence

  And consequence, resisted.

  —Age eighteen

  When I made it back home, I was grounded for life—or at least until my parents’ tempers cooled down. I wouldn’t see the ’Vette again until my junior year; it took that long to fix. By then I’d finally made varsity cheerleader, and I missed out on all the fun I could have had with the car: circling the football stadium with the squad on big game nights, cruising in the homecoming parade.

  I knew that the wreck was partly—mostly—my fault, but for a long time I refused to accept full responsibility for that terrible night in the desert. I blamed my mother and father for forcing me into despair. I blamed God for suckering me into prayer. And I blamed the Black Beast for not missing that rock.

  I forgave my father eventually, but I never saw him in quite the same light again. The myth had been shattered: the lovely bedtime story I’d been told my whole life, where I was the blessed damsel and he was my constant knight, always there to save me. I felt the disillusionment creeping over me like a fungus. Overnight, the things I’d learned to love and trust had turned vulnerable and corruptible.

  And so, at seventeen I discovered the impotent glory of cynicism. Or perhaps I just grew up. I’m not sure whether I actually began to see things more clearly or whether a haze of dissatisfaction clouded my sight. But everything—everything—seemed dull and prosaic to me: my friends, my schoolwork, my writing, my home, my life. I remember our rose beds were in spectacular bloom the year that I turned seventeen. I would sit on the grass and pick them apart, petal by petal, wondering why I used to adore them so. Now they seemed like yet another false front, another lie obscuring the truth of what was really going on inside our house. I felt so jaded by then, I couldn’t even see the simple beauty in a flower.

  I decided to try an experiment. For one whole day, I’d give the Black Beast full rein. Whatever he wanted to do, I’d do it. Whatever he felt like saying, I’d say it. No matter what happened, it had to be better than this slow death from boredom.

  I chose the day of the Big Game: the Citrus Belt League football finals. Just one more win, and we’d be champions. But that night’s game was going to be the hardest. It was against our biggest rival, the San Gorgonio Spartans, and the odds were against us. The Black Beast hated San Gorgonio. I sat on the edge of my bed and let hostility (and its favorite companion, grandiosity) infuse my heart. The Spartans always beat us in basketball, baseball, and water polo. I’d be damned if I was going to let them win tonight.

  Sometimes the Black Beast’s anger was so intense it made my hazel eyes glow green. I stoked it, recalling in vivid detail how the Spartans’ cheerleaders had jeered at us last season. By the time I sat down at breakfast, my skin was flushed and tingly. I felt dangerously pretty.

  “Good morning, baby,” my father said. His voice was hoarse from a lingering cold. “Ready for the pep rally?”

  I was in my orange and black cheerleading uniform, the pleated skirt so perilously short it verged on peekaboo. “You bet. I spent all last night perfecting our cheers. I’m going to make those boys win, whether they’re good enough or not. Like you always told me, words are the most powerful things in the world.”

  “They’d better be,” Zach said. “‘Cause your quarterback’s a wuss.”

  Normally, I tried to ignore Zach’s barbs at breakfast. Not that morning. I grabbed my knife and fork and made a deliberate show of cutting and stabbing my pancakes with vigor. “Look, Zach,” I said. “I’ve got utensils.”

  He blanched but didn’t say anything. I held my fork up in the air and admired it. “You know, a fork is really an amazing thing. Every girl should carry one around with her for protection. It’s simple, portable, and given enough provocation, probably lethal.”

  Zach snatched his book bag off the counter. “I’m late,” he said, and fled. I stabbed another pancake with my fork. It tasted delicious.

  That afternoon, I had lunch with the cheerleading squad. We were seated at the table way in the back, out of the eye line of the cafeteria helpers—the spot normally reserved for shady transactions (pot sales, mostly). Cheerleaders had far more social clout than stoners, so I was able to secure the table for us with a simple “Shoo!” and a wave of my hand. The stoners scattered like cockroaches.

  With the other girls shielding me from sight, I dumped out a wad of money I had stuffed in my megaphone. “Wow!” was the unanimous reaction. There were piles of it: ones, fives, tens, and twenties. I started to count.

  “If the teachers ever catch you at this, you know you’ll be expelled,” Allison, the head cheerleader, scolded me. She was the only one who could authorize collections, so she alone knew something fishy was going on. Allison had great big breasts and enormous cornflower eyes, which were opened even wider than normal at the sight of all that money. I decided right then and there that big breasts were vulgar, and innocence was annoying.

  “Shut up,” I said. “You made me lose count.”

  I’d spent the whole morning working the crowd at the pep rally. I was so convinced that our brilliant cheers were going to spur the Chaffey Tigers on to victory, I’d laid down odds on that night’s game. While the other girls went through the choreographed routines, I’d passed amongst the spectators, handing out buttons and flags and stickers—ostensibly trying to rally school spirit but actually whispering, “I’ll cover all bets on the game.”

  “But Terri—” Allison started to whine. The Black Beast shot her a look of such venom, she put her hand to her throat and was silent.

  “What’s wrong with collecting money for a good cause?” one of the other girls asked. “We do it all the time.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it,” I said. Allison didn’t contradict me.

  Chaffey was a pretty big school: about four thousand students in all, and football was king. So a lot of kids came to the pep rallies, even if it was just to make fun of our cheers or peek up our skirts. Most of the students didn’t have very much cash, but between their lunch and dope money, I’d managed to clear five hundred or so. Five hundred smackers. What was I going to do with it? It never even crossed my mind that we might lose, and I’d have to pay it all back—at two-to-one odds.

  “We could use some new banners,” one of the cheerleaders said. “Ours are getting pretty shabby.”

  “Or how about a deejay for the victory dance?” another asked.

  The other girls started peppering me with their suggestions too, and I fou
nd myself growing increasingly irritable. It was my money, I’d collected it, and I’d do with it as I saw fit. I should have just gone into the girls’ bathroom by myself and counted the money there. That was the problem with interacting with other people, especially stupid people who didn’t know how to mind their own business.

  The tag on the back of my sweater kept itching my skin. I scratched it so hard that my fingernails drew blood. Maybe I’d get a manicure at one of those fancy Beverly Hills salons or a proper haircut at Vidal Sassoon. And my father’s birthday was coming up—I could buy him something extravagant, something he’d never expect. That watch we’d seen in the window of Van Cleef & Arpels: I knew how much he coveted it.

  The girls were still arguing about this cause or that. The Black Beast had no time for such dithering. I swept the money back into my megaphone and got up with a curt “I’ve got to go study now.” I stashed the megaphone in my locker and got out my book for the next class. History. Good. We were studying the Tudors, and Henry VIII’s great lust for power appealed to me at that moment.

  I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on the slide show, even though it was about Henry VIII’s wives, a subject that I usually found fascinating. (I always suspected that Anne Boleyn had a bit of the Black Beast in her too.) A fly kept buzzing around my desk, alighting briefly but never quite long enough for me to kill it. I swatted wildly at the empty air, the students around me giggling. Finally, the fly landed right on top of Alonzo Gonsalez’s head, directly in front of me. I hefted my history textbook and slammed it down on his head. He turned and cursed me loudly. The teacher flicked on the lights.

  “What’s going on back there?”