by Carrie Arcos
“Shit,” Dillon said, when we were quite a distance away. He laughed nervously. “Well, kids, I think we’ll call it a night.” He took a long drag and blew the smoke out of the small opening in the window. “Shit.”
I suddenly felt claustrophobic. Dillon stopped at a red light, and I saw a small park in the distance. I reached for the door.
“What are you doing?” Tyler asked.
“I’ve got to get out of here.” I opened the door and climbed out; Tyler followed me. Since it was so late, we were the only ones stopped at the intersection. I turned back to Dillon. “Thank you.”
“You sure? You guys could crash at my house.” Dillon said the words, but I could tell he wanted to be cut free.
“I know.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear anything about Micah.” The light turned green, and Dillon waved and drove off. I watched the car’s taillights for a moment with my hands in the pockets of my hoodie.
Tyler followed me across the street to the park. The swings hung limply in front of us.
“You were pretty amazing back there,” Tyler said. “That guy—most people wouldn’t have touched him.”
“No one deserves that, not even drug dealers.”
I walked over and sat in one of the swings. Tyler came up behind me and began to push, just a little, just enough to glide me back and forth. I didn’t help him by pumping my legs, but I picked them up so my feet wouldn’t drag across the dirt. I shook as if I were cold, so I held the chain with both hands and tried to ignore the moaning of rusty hinges.
Tyler gave me a big push, and I leaned back so I could go as high as I could. He pushed me again and again, his hands a steady constant on the middle of my back. With each new height, I closed my eyes and pictured myself flying away, like I used to as a kid. I wished I could go back, be a kid again, when everything was simple and the bad guys existed only in movies. Where there were no ex-boyfriends, no drugs. Where Micah and I were innocent and pure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
After sitting on the swings for a while, we started walking, not saying anything to each other. Tyler seemed to know where he was going, so I followed him without question. I didn’t look around the streets anymore. I didn’t look into the eyes of any late-night stragglers we passed. I didn’t do a double take every time I saw a guy with brown hair and tattoos. I had given up. We would not find him today; maybe we’d never find him.
At a bus stop, Tyler read the map showing the times and locations.
“Well, we can wait for the next one,” he said.
“When’s that?” I sat down on the bench, tired, more from the emotion of the day than the walking.
“Six thirty. Actually, that’s probably in only a couple of hours.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head against the tagged Plexiglas.
“We can take the bus to the train station, which will at least get us to Escondido. Someone could easily pick us up there.”
I lay down on the bench. An image of a homeless person covering himself in a blanket appeared in my mind. “All we need is some newspaper.”
“We are not sleeping out here. Your brother would kill me.”
“Hmm. Good thing he isn’t here, then.”
“I’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will,” I said, and stretched out on my back and looked up at the sky. The stars had all but disappeared with all the light pollution in this part of the city.
Tyler smashed his hands into his front pockets. He looked up and down the street. He seemed very nervous. I probably should have tried to reassure him, tell him that everything was going to be all right, that I didn’t blame him for not finding Micah. Instead, I traced the distant skyline with a finger. The buildings were industrial and square. Where the neighborhoods gathered together, the shapes became more distinct, though still similar. My finger veered up to a point and then dropped sharply.
“Come on,” I said, sitting up, grabbing my backpack, and slinging it over my shoulder.
“Where?”
I pointed. “Someplace that can maybe help.”
He studied my face for a few moments and then, resigned, said, “Lead the way.”
I led us as well as I could, though it was the middle of the night in a city I didn’t know. We crossed a busy intersection with a gas station and food mart. I turned onto a side road, where we walked past homes lit with porch lights.
In front of one home, water trickled from a small fall into a little pond. Small animal-shaped shrubs dotted the lawn. It seemed so peaceful, yet I had no idea what was going on inside. I stopped and held up my hand.
“You sure you know where you’re going?” Tyler asked.
I retraced the tip of the building in the air. It guided me like a star in the night.
“Yes.”
The neighborhood homes morphed into multistory apartment buildings, which cropped up between run-down shacks that passed themselves off as duplexes. Tyler walked closer to me. If the day had proven anything, he was awfully protective. But I didn’t mind.
We passed under a broken streetlight. One block over, the neighborhood changed again, becoming a little nicer. It was strange how just one block could alter everything.
I stopped again, this time in front of a small white building with a tall steeple. No lights shone, inside or outside. I walked up to the large, solid wooden doors and touched them. They were simple, without carvings or markings. Two huge black rings acted as doorknobs. I tried pulling on one of them, but the door was locked.
“What are you doing?” Tyler whispered.
I sank to the ground and leaned my body against the cold wooden door. Across the street stood a twenty-four-hour liquor store. I smiled, imagining how both organizations must fight for people’s souls as they confessed one night and sinned another. Both places probably did good business.
I didn’t know what kind of a church it was or if it had a pastor or priest. It didn’t matter what religion met there on Sundays. I knew that I had a better chance of talking to God inside that building than anywhere else.
Tyler knelt down next to me. “This is the place?” he asked softly.
“This is the place,” I repeated.
His hand held one of the thick knockers. Over Tyler’s shoulder, I watched an older man leave the liquor store with a large paper bag in his hands.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
Tyler stood up and held his free hand out to me. “Come on.”
I didn’t move.
“Come on! Let’s find another way in.” I grabbed his outstretched hand. It was cold, but it warmed my skin.
Large bushes grew alongside the church, so we practically had to hug the walls. There were a couple of tall, rounded windows on the side. Tyler tried a window. Locked. He tried another one. Also locked. We walked around to the other side of the church, and he pulled on the latch of another set. This time it gave. With a bit of a tug, he pulled open a window.
He climbed in first and pulled me up after him. I held on to Tyler with both hands and stumbled when he set me down.
“Sorry,” I said, thankful that he couldn’t see me blushing in the dark.
Almost instantly, a feeling of calm came over me. A group of unlit candles in tall glass jars stood together on a table next to me. I picked up a match, struck it, and lit all of them. The candlelight glowed to the corners of the room. Simple wooden pews lined both sides of a red-carpeted aisle in the small church. At the front, Jesus’s dying body hung ominously from a large cross above a pulpit where the priest would speak. It was definitely a Catholic church. The Jesus on the cross was a giveaway. Protestant churches, like Michelle’s, had Jesus too. He just wasn’t usually on the cross. Tyler closed the window behind us.
“You think we’ll get in trouble if someone finds us?” I whispered.
“You mean like, could they charge us with breaking and entering? That depends. We’re not going to steal anything, right?”
>
“No.”
“Maybe trespassing, then. But it’s a church. They’re supposed to help people in need. If someone comes, we’ll just tell them that we didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Tyler’s reasoning helped me relax. In a way, he was right. We didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was still hours before we could catch the bus.
On the wall underneath the candles was a picture of Jesus carrying a cross. “It’s the second image of the Via Dolorosa,” I said.
“What’s that?” Tyler asked, as if he’d never seen it before.
“The Way of Sorrows.”
“I didn’t know you went to church.”
“I only go on Easter. It’s something my mom makes us do. Let’s just say I’ve heard the same message a few times now and some of it stuck. It’s like a picture book. See?” I pointed to the other paintings. “You can follow the story around the room.” In the one Tyler stood in front of, Jesus already looked tired. I felt sorry for Him. He didn’t know how far He’d still have to go.
“Why are we whispering?”
I shook my head. Tyler held his arms up in the air as if to say, “What?” Of course you whispered in a church. I didn’t really know why, but everyone did, so it didn’t matter why.
I moved across the aisle to the other side of the room, where other Stations of the Cross paintings hung above tables with the same tall glass jars. I lit a couple more candles. I couldn’t remember the significance behind lighting candles, but at the moment, the significance was that we needed more light. I hoped what I was doing wasn’t offensive. But I had heard somewhere that it was better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. I figured I’d ask for forgiveness later, if need be.
Illuminated by candlelight, the church felt medieval, as if at any moment a monk could walk by.
Tyler stood at the pulpit. He spread his arms wide and looked up at the Jesus staring down at him.
I followed the Way of Sorrows for a bit. Jesus carried His cross. Jesus fell. Jesus faced His mother. He fell again. I stopped in front of Jesus being nailed to the cross. This Jesus was more familiar—skinny, almost emaciated, and naked except for a small white cloth tied around His waist. His chest stuck out awkwardly from the wooden beam. His stomach caved in on itself. His legs hung like frail bone.
But it was His face that contained the harshest truth. His eyes were sunk into their sockets and turned upward toward heaven. His cheekbones were drawn in severe lines, making His agony more pronounced. The truth was, I knew this face. I had seen that pain a few times that day. I had also seen it on my brother. Who would have thought? Jesus Christ had something in common with a meth addict.
I walked to the center of a pew and sat down on the hard bench. No cushions. Maybe the priest wanted the people to feel uncomfortable and be reminded of Christ’s suffering.
We had once visited some old cathedrals in Montreal on a family vacation. I had felt a little funny walking in on such an intimate moment as people praying, but our tour guide said it was okay, if we were quiet. The people sat with their heads bowed, their hands in their laps. Some of them kneeled.
Under the bench in front of me, I saw the kneeling bar. I pulled it down and slid onto it. I brought my hands in front of me and folded them as I had seen others do.
I closed my eyes and waited. I heard Tyler walk quietly to a row of seats behind me, the keys on his belt loop jangling, then scraping the wood as he sat down. My breathing slowed. The back of my eyelids turned black and yellow, then black with orangey red spots. I tried to remain completely still and give in to the silence around me. It was so quiet. I thought I could hear the flame moving on the wicks of the candles. It sounded like a breath.
I tried to clear my mind, to think of nothing. But I couldn’t just imagine nothing, so I pictured an empty space, wide open like a field of dry yellow grass. Then I envisioned the field that surrounded our home when I was little. In the late summer, when the winds picked up, giant tumbleweeds pulled themselves off the ground and chased Micah and me down our street. We’d run screaming and laughing into the house. He’d always beat me to the door, then hold it open, yelling for me to hurry up. I’d get there just in time and he’d shut the door right before they caught us. A couple seconds later, we’d hear the sound of the monster weeds slamming against the door. The next morning, the whole street would be covered with broken yellow sticks and twigs.
I cleared the street from my mind and focused instead on the field before the tumbleweeds. The lemony grass, like stalks of wheat, swayed along with a light breeze.
I learned how to meditate from my freshman English teacher, a small woman with short, wispy white hair and a nose ring. She always looked like she needed the exercise more than we did. She started off every class playing instrumental music from India or something as we walked in.
At first, we all fought her. She sounded crazy, closing her eyes, talking about picturing a safe place. Some of the guys would laugh and make fun of her. But eventually we got used to it, even the ones who resisted. I looked forward to it, and after the thing with Keith, it actually helped me through many of the tough days.
On days when we had a sub, at the start of class one of us would press play on the stereo system and begin the breathing exercise. It always freaked out the subs. They weren’t used to seeing thirty-five fourteen-year-olds sitting quietly with their eyes closed, opening them all at once when the music ended.
In the dark of the church, I waited for something to come to me. I cleared the field from my thoughts and began again. Keith’s face appeared, along with the words he’d written about me. This time I didn’t try to push him aside.
“Keith was my first.” I got off my knees and sat on the bench. “Great choice, huh?”
Tyler moved to sit next to me.
I put my feet up on the bench in front of me. Tyler did the same, as if we were sitting in a movie theater and staring at a big screen, instead of the big dying Jesus. “When I broke up with him and he wrote all those things, I thought I would die. The truth is that he was the one cheating. I never said anything.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“Yeah, maybe. It wouldn’t have changed anything. I bet you’re wondering why I stayed with him.” I was embarrassed by the reason, but I kept going, in a way eager to let the truth out. “I liked the idea of Keith, if that makes sense. It sounds so cliché, but that’s the thing about clichés, they have some truth in them, right? Really, I didn’t want to be alone. So maybe I deserved it.”
“You know that’s not true,” Tyler said.
The problem was, there was a small part of me that believed I had deserved it, that God was punishing me for not helping Micah when I could have.
Tyler was quiet for a few moments.
“So if it’s confession time, I guess it’s my turn, right?” Tyler sat up and turned to face me on the bench, sitting cross-legged.
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing. “What do you mean?” I asked warily.
“You think you’re the only one with secrets?” he whispered.
I smiled. “Probably not.”
Tyler took a deep breath and then said very quickly, “I used to wet the bed. My mom had to buy me diapers until I was ten.”
“No!” I was shocked.
“Totally true. I never went to sleepovers. The shrink said it had something to do with my father and him being an alcoholic.”
My mouth hung open, but I closed it and asked, “You went to a shrink?”
“For three years. Okay, number two—no the shrink is two, secret number three: I didn’t kiss a girl until I was fourteen.” The tone of his voice changed, as if he were remembering a dream. “Yvette Lopez. I met her one summer in Mexico. She couldn’t speak much English, so that was in my favor.” He chuckled at his memory.
I sat up, pulling my legs onto the bench and wrapping my arms around them.
“I cheated on a math test once,” I said. “I just wanted to see if I could do it a
nd not get caught.” I shuddered. I’d been so scared, thinking I would get in trouble and the teacher would give me an F. But nothing happened, except that I felt like crap about it for a couple of weeks.
“I tried to steal a CD from Target, but a clerk caught me.”
“And?” I asked.
“They called my parents and threatened to call the cops, but the manager let me go with a warning. I was grounded for a week.”
“What CD was it?”
He smiled and turned away.
“Come on. It’s confession time.” I jabbed him in the ribs.
“Shania Twain.”
“No way!”
Defending himself, Tyler said, “I like all kinds of music.”
I blurted out, “I used to hit Micah to make him cry, and then deny it to my parents and say that he had hit me. I was a terrible sister.”
“Again, another benefit of being an only child.” He smiled, becoming quiet. His hands played with the frays at the end of his jeans. “Not really. As an only child, you also have to keep secrets between parents. There’s more of a buffer if there are other kids. Last year I walked in on my mom and this other guy. I’d left school early for some reason, and there she was, and there he was, doing it in the living room.”
I was stunned.
“Believe me, that is one thing you never want to see.” He smiled again, but I saw the pain behind it.
“Does your dad know?”
Tyler shook his head. “No. I never talked about it to my mom, either. That night she made my dad’s favorite meal and we moved on.”
“That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
“No family is perfect.”
Accepting truth was like removing a Band-Aid: at first it was painful, then it left a red mark and some of that gray sticky gunk that you had to scrape off.
“I never told my parents where Micah kept his stash or when he was high or that I knew that he was using all along. I should have told them,” I said. “It could have helped.”
Tyler started to interrupt me, but I held up my hand.