by Tara Brown
My uncle had tried it too. He tried desperately to get me to attend something—anything. I didn’t want to go. I enjoyed the small town where nothing happened because nothing changed. I was scared of leaving home and being alone in the world. My family might not have been traditional, but they were everything to me.
Having just graduated, I didn’t know why everyone was in such a hurry for me to leave. Secretly I’d wondered if they wanted me gone for some reason. Had I been burdensome to my uncle?
After the breakfast and lunch rush, I changed into shorts and a tee shirt. I pulled on my sneakers and smiled at Brent—the cook I always called Cookie. “Okay, Cookie, tell Vince I went early.”
“You have a death wish, kid.” He shook his bandana-covered, sweat-soaked head. His mat of curly, sandy-colored hair was always covered by something—bandana, Stetson, ball cap, anything. Underneath was a shaggy and unkempt mess. Somehow the look suited Cookie. At thirty-eight his face was weathered from his twelve years in the army. He’d spent a lot of time in the Middle East. He was still in amazing shape even though he didn’t run anymore. His left lung wasn’t what it used to be after it was crushed by a piece of a Humvee. “One of these days I’m gonna have to come find your ass on the side of the road. You’ll be nothing but a hunk of dried leather.”
“Whatever, old man. You’re just jealous you can’t keep up.”
“You know it.” He laughed bitterly. “In my younger years I woulda wiped the concrete with your ass, kid.”
“Operative word is younger.” I winked at him and bolted out the door like a shot.
The temperature had to have hit its average of eighty-eight degrees. In the desert early October was still quite warm, while the sun was out anyway. Nighttime was a whole other ball of wax.
My runners hit the pavement with a frightening silence. I ran with a technique most had never seen. I landed toe first. My legs pumped hard from the start. I’d trained myself to never need a warm-up. I loved the adrenaline too much to worry about warm-ups.
The desert blew by me as I raced along the empty highway. The wind had picked up but the air was still dry, making the wind a friend on a hot run. I pulled the hair tie from around my grease-soaked dark ponytail and let my long locks spill down my back. I got a waft of the diner’s scent as it surfed along the waves of air like a cape behind me.
Mid run, I noticed my fingers felt funny. I squeezed them, contemplating how much sodium I’d eaten in the last couple of days. But they didn’t feel as if they were swelling, they felt hot. Weirdly hot. Maybe I’d put them in something that had caused a chemical reaction. Sniffing the tips as I sprinted, I frowned when all I got was the same old zesty-orange hand cleaner. Could it be a citrus allergy was starting? Uncle Vince had a ton of allergies and citrus was one of them. I’d never considered I might have any, but something had to explain the burning. It had come on suddenly and was cooking my hands.
Again, I squeezed my fingers together, but the heat was so intense each finger burned the one next to it as it spread to my palms. I gazed up to see the highway marker where I always turned around. It was an old sign with a picture of wild horses running about through the desert that read, “Nothing for forty miles, nothing.”
I smiled every time I saw it, agreeing there really was nothing but dirt for forty miles.
When I flexed my fingers again, a fire burned under my skin, as though it needed somewhere to go. I half expected steam to come bursting from my pores.
The afternoon sun was intense, more than it ever had been. Was I coming down with some kind of flu? I’d never had a flu bug before but knew Cookie had gotten sick once and passed out in the kitchen. I cringed, recalling how sweaty and pale he’d been.
When I turned around at the sign, all the heat from my hands shot up my arms and into my face. My feet stopped as the desert spun and I bent over, throwing up on the steaming asphalt.
The smell of my cooked vomit hit and everything went dark.
When I blinked next it was a struggle as my lids were stuck together. Voices filled the fluttering darkness around me. My uncle and a man argued, but I couldn’t move my lips to tell them I was awake. Everything was dusty. I gripped the ground around me with my searing fingertips to see if I was still in the desert. Everything was hot enough to make me think I was.
“She’s probably just under the weather or dehydrated, Vince. Honestly, it’s over eighty degrees out there.” The voice belonged to the doctor. I would know it anywhere.
“Yeah, I know that, Doc, but she runs every day, even in the summer. She’s an elite athlete. She’s done Ironman competitions in warmer weather than this and been fine. Ari doesn’t get dehydrated and she’s never been sick a day in her life.”
“Look, bring her in for some tests on Monday, Vince, but I’m telling you it’s probably that time of the month or something very uneventful. Her pulse is strong, temperature is perfect, and skin is very elastic and plump. She’s stirred twice and just seems weak. I don’t think it merits the hour drive to the hospital, unless you really want to.”
“I’ll bring her in on Monday, Doc. She’ll kill me if I drag her all the way there and she has a monthly situation.” My uncle’s voice cracked awkwardly when he said monthly.
“Oh yeah, she will.” Doc chuckled his deep throaty laugh. “I don’t want to imagine. We all know Ari isn’t fond of being girlie.”
“No.” My uncle sighed. “That she isn’t.”
“What took her mother again?” Doc’s voice changed as if the death were a secret that could only be whispered about.
“Uh well, it was a car accident in Portland, uh—Maine. Why?” My uncle’s voice stayed weird.
“Well, it’s good to have a starting-off point when doing tests of any sort. Medical history is pretty important. Monday morning, I’ll get Dolores to schedule her in, say ten?”
“Yup, thanks for stopping in.”
Cracking my eyelids, I felt as if the whole desert was inside them, but I tried to see the room around me.
“Rise and shine there, Sleeping Beauty. How you feeling?”
“Not good.” I groaned at my uncle. “Think I have the flu.”
“I think so too.” He smiled, reminding me of my mother. Same dark-brown, almost black, hair. His white skin was the same as hers as well. My whole life I wondered why he chose to move to the desert with his albino-like skin. I tanned so well compared to him. But then again, I didn’t have a single trait of my mother’s except my hair.
He had her dark-blue eyes too, the ones I always wished I was born with instead of my black ones. His thick brows lightened in the same arch as my mother’s, and his chubby cheeks rose up into cheekbones almost. His moody-looking face changed in every way possible when he smiled, making him handsome. My mother had been incredibly beautiful in the same way.
My uncle hadn’t shown me many pictures of my mom, but I cherished the ones I had seen. She looked like the sort of girl who took your cares away simply by being in the same room as you. I imagined a carefree spirit who smiled because the air smelled sweet or the sea looked magical in the rain.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re probably fine—just sick?” My uncle’s face showed relief and yet annoyance at the same time. “Well then, I’d say enough is enough with the friggin’ running in the goddamned heat. No more. You go in the morning or the evening. No more midday. It’s too damned hot. You could’ve cooked out there on that cement. Your mother made me promise on her deathbed that I would raise you like my own, take care of you, and love you, and I’ll be damned if I’m made a liar.”
“Drama queen.” I laughed, feeling worse from the effort it took.
“It runs in the family.” He smiled again. “Want some water?” He poured a glass and then lifted it to my lips. As his hand drew close, my hands burned like someone was sticking them to the grill.
“No!” I screamed out in pain, reaching for his hands, spilling all the cool water down over me.
The water washed
over me, but the burning worsened as I screamed. It lasted one exhale before a frosty sensation enveloped me from the feet up, cooling like I was being iced.
As the last bit of pressure flew from my fingertips, clearing my head, I sighed in relief. It was as if someone just flicked a switch. The burning stopped. The pressure ended. The release was overwhelming.
After my mind cleared, my body switched back to strong, and I healed one-hundred percent.
The air around me became still, smelling like grapes and honey. My uncle’s smiling face became like a ghost’s. Not whiter but see-through. Behind him—or rather through him—I could see the light switch on the wall.
A picture grew between us, sparkling air everywhere.
I blinked as a vision of my uncle, a much younger version of him, cleared in the picture. In the middle of the sparkling air my uncle sat beside my pregnant mother.
She gripped his hands, begging him to care for me.
He nodded as she spoke.
Her face was full of terror as her mouth moved, telling him something impossible.
He nodded, telling his sister we would be fine.
Tears poured down his face as the machines surrounding my dying mother went crazy and doctors filled the room.
My uncle was shoved outside to wait on the bench.
He cried, sitting frightened and alone as a nurse brought him a bundle in a pink blanket. He held the bundle to his chest, rocking it. He kissed the bundle repeatedly, whispering it promises.
Tears filled my eyes, watching the hallucination taking place in the air between my uncle and me.
But then, as if the picture had rewound, my uncle stood again at my mother’s bedside. My mother begged him but there was a difference in his face this time. He appeared shut off as she spoke. The machines surrounding her went nuts and he was shoved into the hallway again. This time when the bundle was placed in his arms, he peered down at it with anger and fear. When the nurse came to speak to him, he started to cry and walked away.
The picture faded but the air between my uncle and me still sparkled.
Behind the sparkles he whispered, “I loved you always.”
Everything changed. I didn’t see it but I felt it.
I fought the urge to pass out and forced my eyes to focus on his vanishing face.
He faded completely. My hands no longer held on to his. They lingered, stretched out, as if they were holding the air.
A gold pinky ring floated in the frozen air in front of my face.
With a trembling hand, I reached a fingertip out, barely making contact with the small gold band before it dropped to the floor. It landed with a sound that resonated around me, echoing everywhere. Once the ring hit, other noises rushed in.
I shivered, staring down at the gold band.
My eyes fuzzed as if straining to see the floor, but I realized it wasn’t there.
I was on a street, on concrete.
My clothes weren’t my running clothes.
The dark of the room became the dark of a street I didn’t recognize.
It resembled something I had seen on TV. Balconies and buildings enclosed me.
It was an alley in a city I didn’t know.
The glint coming off the gold ring on the ground caught the muted orange light from a streetlamp. I bent down, reaching with my long thin fingers to grasp the warm gold—still warm from his skin.
He had existed. My uncle existed.
The ring proved it.
I clutched it as if it were my only link to sanity as blinding light filled my mind. The light burned as if it were in the back of my eyes, searing my brain.
Pictures replaced my uncle.
Horrors replaced my home.
The café became an orphanage.
My loving uncle became a cold man in a suit. He never smiled at me.
I became a girl with buzzed dark-brown hair, fighting in combat boots and military pants.
Laughing and joy turned into pain and hate. A pencil in hand in a classroom became a razor cutting skin in a gas station bathroom under flickering lights. As the pain of the razor became fresh a scar grew where the cut was made.
I screamed out into the dark, cold alley as the pain of seventeen years caught up with me. All the beauty of seventeen years in New Mexico was replaced with something I couldn’t understand. I lost and gained a lifetime, all of that taking a couple of heartbeats.
Memories, images, and pain built a story in my head, a story of lies.
Lies proven by the scars and cold cement.
And as if a light switch had been flipped, I knew where I was and what street I was on. I knew whose apartment was three stories up and why I was there. I was going to steal something—something that belonged to me.
I was a real orphan.
My uncle was in the very back of my mind with a feeling I couldn’t comprehend.
I hated him.
I hated his stupid prissy wife and their three horrid, spoiled-brat kids.
I wasn’t even fond of his dog.
When did he get a dog, a wife, and kids?
When did we live in New Mexico?
When did he leave me?
Everything in my life was at war.
The sunlight of New Mexico, the warmth of the wind, the laughter of Cookie—they were gone. They were no longer memories, but rather, dreams. In their place was the cold reality of the Pacific Northwest—Portland, Oregon.
One version of me had once upon a time lived in New Mexico.
This version standing in the cold alley had grown up alone in Portland.
I could see both lives. I could sense them inside me.
My eyes lowered to the tattoos running down my arms and onto my hands. I hated and loved them simultaneously.
I screamed in pain and anger as my nose, lip, and eyebrow stung. Gingerly, I touched my fingers to my face to find a ring in the middle of my nose.
I had gotten it in a filthy shop that frightened the other side of me but thrilled the person standing in the mirror.
Tears filled my eyes as I lifted my hands, running them over my fuzzy head to discover a buzz cut. My hair, the one thing I had of her, the one thing I’d always loved, was gone.
My heart broke as the new part of me saw my mother’s face for the first time. Portland me had never seen our reflection before. As the old memories caught up with the new, I became a ball of emotions. Tears trickled their way down my cold cheeks.
I ran my hands down my jean jacket, shivering.
The cold soothed one part of me, while the other part felt similar to a flower wilting in the damp darkness. Pieces of me just fell to the cold concrete and died.
My mind struggled to find new memories where I had found anything cheery. But everything was darkness.
Dreary, dark images of an orphanage where I had learned to survive.
Tears formed in my eyes as the old me was taught a lesson on exactly the horrors small children could suffer.
My brain was full of shady alleys where money was made.
Shadowy places where souls were lost and sold, traded as a commodity.
The young and innocent chose a full belly or vein, depending on age and preference, over remaining innocent. I had lived like a savage on the streets for six years. I remembered every one of them. The old me and new me melded into one person and everything changed. The world was different.
“You’re certain you won’t come home with me, child?”
“What?” I spun, finding an old woman smiling at me.
“You look cold, honey. It can be just a night, if you like. I can’t leave you out here to freeze.” The old lady’s voice bothered me considerably, but the hunger in my guts and cold on my desert skin won over. Old me was terrified. Not of the nice old lady or what was in the alley, but of me. The new me terrified the old me.
The old woman stepped toward me as I held myself in a way no one had seen before. No one had ever met me, not the new me. Not the version standing here with two l
ives behind her.
In a vague memory I recalled the old lady trying to talk to me, but I’d ignored her. I had figured she was a social worker of some kind. The good me, the one from New Mexico who liked the sun and trusted people, was comforted by the idea of a social worker.
“My name is Lydia Crane,” she spoke softly, smiling in a curious way. “And you are Ari. What’s your last name?”
“My name is just Ari.” It wasn’t the right response, but the scary me seemed incredibly defensive about privacy.
“Just Ari, no last name?”
“No.” I sneered. “No family, so no family name.” My tone was biting. I nearly winced, thinking about how I’d spoken to the older woman.
“You can fight it. You know that, right?”
“What?” I was truly lost; both versions of me were lost, but I didn’t say anything else. My mind screamed so many nasty things that I thought it best not to let them escape through my mouth.
“The other Ari, she doesn’t have to be there with you if you don’t want her to be. The Ari before, from New Mexico, is the better one anyway.”
“How?” I raised an eyebrow. “How do you know me?”
“I’ve watched you for a long time. I’ve seen you both ways, and the sunny girl is the better way to live.” She pointed down a dark road. “We live down there.”
“Where?” I turned around, confused at how quickly we had appeared across town. The road we were on, though I didn’t recall walking, turned onto what looked to be a haunted old lane.
It took a moment for me to recognize it as the scary part of the city. The other me, the scary one, had never been out there before. Apparently, an evil witch and a weird cult lived nearby. Even the pushers didn’t venture out that far to the east.
I shivered as we stepped on Old Oak Way, the street the old lady pointed to. I glanced behind me, wondering about the breeze I noticed, although it was gone as quickly as it had come up.
“It’s the guards,” Lydia spoke quietly. “They keep the bad out and the good in.”
“What’s a guard?” I whispered back, wondering what the bad was if the old lady was letting me in—especially in my current state.