by Heidi Ayarbe
“I can’t be there”—she points to Reno—“anymore. And I can’t be on the streets. I’ve done that.” Nicole takes out a cigarette and lights up. “Shelly’s been in the system for four years; Jess, six.”
“And you?” I ask.
“Nine.”
“So?”
“Have you ever just thought if you could start all over again, things would be okay?”
Who could argue with that? That was the story of my life. “Yeah.”
“I just need a clean slate. And you’re it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nicole hands me some jelly and I slurp it down. I’m glad she swiped it. And she starts to talk. And talk. And talk. Another hour goes by when she says, “We’ve gotta lay down a few ground rules.”
“Fine.” Maybe if we get her ground rules out of the way, she’ll shut up for a while. I need time to think.
Now the method has to include Nicole. She’s not a variable anymore. She’s a constant. But maybe the purpose and my hypothesis can stay the same. Aunt Sarah and me as a family and Nicole doing whatever she wants to do.
But part of me doesn’t think so.
“Are you listening?” she asks.
“Do I have a choice?” I say.
“These are the ground rules. They’re important, so listen up. One: We never give anyone our real names.”
“Since you don’t even know my real name, I hardly think that’ll be a problem.”
Nicole glares. “Two: We never fall asleep in anyone’s car. Or if we’re real tired, we take turns sleeping. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Nicole sits down on the shoulder of the road. “Let’s take a break. You got any rules?”
I think about it. “Not really.”
She nods. “Fair enough. And three: Loyalty. Like Cosa Nostra.”
“Cosa Nostra? The mob?”
“Listen, Jeops. We just stick together. However you want to call it.”
I’ve heard that one before.
We both lean back on our packs. Comfy enough for a rest. “How’s your stomach feeling?” she asks.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She inhales. “Shit.” She brushes off her pants. “There’s so much fucking dust in this dump.”
“Could be from Chad,” I say. “The Bodele Depression. You know billions of grains of sand are moved by the wind all around the world, blown across the Atlantic on trade winds—and most come from there. It’s like a hub—you know. A place where all travel begins.” I like that, thinking that the dust that lands on me isn’t just Reno dust. I just hope these dust particles haven’t given any unwanted microbes or bacteria a free transatlantic ride. “It’s kind of like hitchhiking—what we’re doing.”
“The only time you talk is when you’re vomiting science facts and shit.” She takes a drag. “Jesus, Jeopardy, can you turn off the Discovery Channel and be a person for once?”
I shrug. It’s better not to talk at all, I remind myself.
“Total academic diarrhea,” she mutters. “You might want to keep that science shit down to a minimum out here. People on the streets don’t like that, you know, being talked down to all the time like they’re stupid or something.”
“Sure,” I say, “and you’re real different with all of your Mafia stuff and nonstop talking. At least I do turn it off.” I close my eyes. I can’t believe I thought I wanted her along. Theory is always different from practice.
“I talk that much?” she asks.
“Nonstop.”
She offers me a drag.
“No thanks.”
She stares at the cigarette and flicks the butt on the road.
“Can you not do that?” I ask.
“What?”
“Throw your garbage out like that. Here,” I hold out a plastic bag. “Go pick it up and we’ll throw it away when we find a garbage can.”
Nicole glares.
“Go on.”
“Jesus, Jeops. It’s just one cigarette butt.”
“Well, cigarette butts account for twenty percent of all litter items found. And there are a hundred and seventy-six million pounds of cigarette butts thrown out each year in the States. You are contributing to that.”
Nicole goes and picks up the butt and flicks it in the plastic bag. “Happy?”
“No.”
“Je-sus,” Nicole mopes. We sit quietly until she says, “This is my first time out of Reno. It’s like breathing for the first time.”
“You’ve never been anywhere besides Reno?”
“Yerington. But Yerington doesn’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever been?”
“No.”
“Well if you had, you’d know that Yerington is a pit. Shithole, Nevada.”
“So why’d you go there?”
“You can’t help where you’re born. I’d bet half the people in Africa wish they weren’t born in some mucky desert with no water, either.”
“Well, I hardly think Yerington can be compared to the most impoverished continent in the world.”
Nicole glares at me. “Have you been to Africa?”
“No.”
“Seen some kind of Discovery special about Yerington or Africa?”
I shake my head. “Not that I remember.”
“Well, then, how would you know? Sometimes it’s not about a book or sci channel documentary. Sometimes just living it is good enough to know, okay?”
I shake my head. There’s no reasoning with someone like Nicole.
“It’s good to leave, you know. Start over,” Nicole says. “Breathe.”
“Yeah. It is, I guess.” It feels really familiar, in a weird way. This is the only thing I really know how to do. Leave. Reinvent. But it leaves me more tired than happy. Maybe Nicole has a lot more to run away from.
“Hippie van!” Nicole jumps up. “It’s a sure thing.”
This rattletrap of a van chugs down the highway, other cars racing past it. I can practically see the cloud of marijuana smoke encircling it. Nicole and I stick out our thumbs, and it pulls over to the side of the road just as she predicted.
“Where’re you heading?” The guy is major retro: long hair, Lennon glasses, flip-flops, and a McShit T-shirt.
“That way.” I point down Highway 80 east.
He laughs. He looks harmless enough. A bit like he walked off the timeline about forty years too late, but that works, too. “Hop in. I’m going to Winnemucca.”
Nicole and I jump in. “Logan,” he says, holding his hand out.
“Capone.” Nicole shakes it and motions at me. “That’s Jeopardy.”
“Capone and Jeopardy?” I mouth.
She nods.
“That’s cool. I don’t need to know your names,” he says. “Doing the Kerouac thing?” he asks.
Nicole and I exchange a look. Whatever that means.
“Never mind.” He laughs and pulls back onto the highway. I’m smooshed between the two of them. He hands Nicole a piece of paper. “I’ve got satellite radio. What do you want to listen to?” He looks at her. “That’s the programming.”
“That’s obvious.” She clears her throat and squints at the paper, finally passing it to me. “You pick. I get first sleep shift, okay?” she whispers.
“Okay.” I look at the list. Everything is blurry and I realize how tired I am. “Anything,” I say.
“Right on,” Logan says. He turns on NPR. Talk radio. That’s all I need. More talk. Blah blah blah blah. He finally turns to a station that’s playing the Velvet Underground’s “Run Run Run.” It’s a nice change and I lean my head against the back of the seat, humming along.
“Groovy that you’re into the music.” He’s the encapsulation of the 1970s.
He rests his hand on my thigh and I squirm closer to Nicole, who appears unconscious. I kind of want to flick it off—like a fly or something. God, I bet he’s totally into free love and stuff. I mentally tick off the diseases he probably has—chlamydia,
herpes, hepatitis B, HIV—when he pulls his hand away and stares at me. I feel like a specimen stuck under a microscope. Figures the only guys I’d attract were ones who forgot the century had changed. My face feels hot.
“Just trying to go with the vibe. Boomshanka, right?”
I glare at him. The only vibe going on is the one in his pants. I pull my leg away. Creep.
“We’re cool, Jeopardy,” he says, “You look like you’re smart—like you come from a nice home. Is it worth running from?”
“I’m not running from anything,” I say. Not technically. I’m actually running to a place. It seems to make it okay that way.
“Groovy. Just trying to keep it real.”
“Can I turn up the radio?” My hand accidentally brushes his arm when I do and I jerk it back.
“It’s cool,” he says. He turns the radio up and keeps his hands on the wheel.
When we get to Winnemucca, it’s late afternoon. The sky looks gloomy—threatening to snow. Logan pulls over. “Peace.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Nicole. “Peace. Love. Boomshanka. Whatever. Thanks for the ride.”
We tumble out of the van and watch it chug down the highway.
“What a piece of work,” Nicole says.
“Boom-what?” I ask.
“Beats me. Boomshanka. Must be some rock band or something.”
“Or something is more like it.” And the two of us laugh. It’s fun. Laughing.
We walk down a side street. Some of the houses are empty; one has a FORECLOSURE, BANK OWNED sign up.
“Wanna sleep inside tonight?” Nicole asks.
I nod. I stare at the black house. It’s a pretty shabby neighborhood, so the likelihood of tripping an alarm is nil. We find an open window, pull off the screen, and slip in.
We use the bathroom—though it has no running water. It just feels good to sit on a semi-clean toilet. Though it can’t be any later than six or six-thirty, we fall asleep, curled in the living room. My last thought is that the carpet smells like smoke and cat pee.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Nicole says, “Are you finally awake?”
“Yeah. What time is it?”
“It’s after three A.M.”
“Have you been up long?”
“No. Just since the house next door started their own nightclub. They’re smoking enough fatties to get the entire state high.” Nicole and I peer out the window at the people gathered outside. “Fuck. Figures we’d have to crash next to a party house.”
I inhale and cough. My eyes burn and I cough some more. “It’s like they’re right here. In the house.”
Nicole moves toward a door and puts her ear to it. “Shit. They are in the house. In the garage. No wonder it’s so fucking loud.”
I sigh. It’s like we’re doomed to share our sleeping arrangements with druggies. From the smell of things, we might as well have been lying on a bed of smoldering pot. I clear my throat, peering out the window. “It looks like some more people are on their way to party. Probably already stoned.”
“Why?”
“They don’t even have their headlights on.”
“That’s weird,” Nicole says.
Weird is becoming a new normal for me. My stomach growls. “I’m hungry.”
“That’s because you puked up your breakfast.” Nicole pulls away from the window. “You probably just have secondhand munchies, anyway.”
Just as she says that, there’s a heavy bang on the garage door. It sounds like metal clanging against metal. “Police!”
Nicole and I freeze.
There’s a moment of silence, then the sound of a door crashing in. “Everybody down. Nobody move. You move, you die!”
I hear scrambling, glass shattering. “Fuck! Oh fuck!” somebody shouts.
Nicole and I run to the back bedroom. I manage to get the window open and rip off the screen. A blast of icy air hits me. It smells like snow.
Heavy boots clomp down the hallway; doors are being kicked open; “Clear! Clear!” the police holler.
“Move!” Nicole throws our backpacks out the window and we climb into the black night, landing on the new-fallen snow. The cold bites through our clothes and snow reaches past our ankles. We run, scrambling over two neighboring fences, lucky there aren’t any dogs, and run some more, heading toward the highway.
My throat and ears burn. But we keep running until we see the sporadic glow of headlights from the highway, blinking like fireflies in the night. Then we walk in silence, not stopping, not until the first rays of light shine down on the glistening asphalt—drifts of snow sweeping across the wet pavement.
“What are the odds we’d crash at a house used by mobsters?”
“Mobsters? More like second-rate dealers, I’d say.”
Nicole hugs her arms to her sides. “True. I mean, it wasn’t even a Joey Lombardo–worthy arrest. Did you hear some of those guys? They cried like babies. Today’s dealers have no style.”
All I could hear was the thrum of my heartbeat in my ears, so I wasn’t too concerned about whether it was a what’s-his-name–worthy arrest. Sometimes I have no idea what Nicole is talking about. “Yeah,” I finally say, and start to recite the periodic table to unravel the gnarl of anxiety in my stomach. When I get through it twice, I exhale. “This isn’t going as planned,” I mutter.
“Jesus, Jeops, it’s not like all of life has a plan. Today I didn’t wake up and say, ‘Oh. I think I’m going to crash in the house where there’s going to be a huge police raid.’ You can’t plan life. Shit happens.”
“Yeah. And your Plan B?” I ask.
Nicole shrugs. “That’s Plan B. Plan A is the way life goes.”
She makes no sense. There’s always Plan A. At least for me. I always know what I’m doing every day. I realize I’ve made a mistake in my other write-ups because they were too global. I need to do micro-experiments—just take it one day at a time to work toward the big happily-ever-after purpose.
So today my purpose is to find another library. Do more research, because I’m tired of the runaway part of looking for Aunt Sarah. Maybe I can get some phone numbers to the restaurants or something instead. Risk it with the waitress. See if they’ll put a manager on the line.
I look at Nicole. Now she has to be part of the purpose, too. That bugs me. I watch Nicole and wonder again if I have to worry about pills and suicide. She drums her fingers on her thighs and peels the dried skin off her lower lip until it bleeds.
Snow dusts my shoes. “You, um, okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just cold.” She claps her hands on her arms. “What? Why are you looking at me so weird?” She wipes off the blood. “Habit.”
“Yeah. Habit.” I’m just not wanting her to do the forever-escape thing Mom-style. “Just wondering if you’re okay. That’s all, I guess.”
“I guess.” Nicole sighs. “Goddamn, it’s cold for November. Your lips are blue. Let’s get some coffee,” Nicole says. She points to a clump of restaurants on the freeway exit. “Wherever they’ll have free refills.”
“Yeah.”
We walk toward the neon signs blinking in generic restaurant windows to start off day three.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I think from now on, we might have to steer clear of empty houses. No more Motel 6 stuff.” Nicole slurps down her fourth cup of coffee. “Goddamn, my feet are cold.”
I swirl my spoon around the thick cup. It feels good to hold it in my hands and warm up even though everything in my intestines is screaming, “No! No!” I stare at the black liquid. “You know that caffeine is the most widely used psychostimulant in the world? It enters the body and is absorbed by the stomach and small intestine within forty-five minutes.”
“No shit. So as we speak we’re getting high.” Nicole stares at her coffee for a while. “Yippeeee,” she says.
“Kind of.”
The waitress comes back. “You sure you only want coffee.”
Nicole holds her cup out. “We’re sure. Gimme a
nother hit.” I think she thinks she’s being funny.
Nicole and I take turns going to the bathroom to clean up. I forgot to pack a toothbrush and toothpaste, and my teeth feel way past fuzzy. I look in the mirror and realize I look as bad as I smell.
When I get back to the table, our coffee cups are full. My head spins, but I slurp it down. It’s like this weird take-it-when-you-can-get-it instinct has set in. “Next round, let’s ask for decaf,” I say. “Maybe it won’t make me feel so sick.”
Nicole nods. I pretend not to notice that all the baskets of jams and butters are conspicuously empty. In a way I’m glad Nicole takes care of the pseudodelinquency stuff. I go to pay for the coffee when the waitress says, “This one’s on me, sweetie.”
“Thanks.” I shove the crumpled bills back in my pocket.
“Go home,” she says, and slips me some saltines.
That’s what I’m doing. I’m going home. At least that’s what this whole plan is about. I rub the locket between my thumb and forefinger. Nicole and I grab our backpacks and leave the restaurant, heading down the highway.
“Well, we can at least talk to pass the time,” Nicole says. Saltine crumbs gather in the corners of her mouth. Another hour has passed without us getting picked up. “Are you peeing again?”
I squat behind some shrubs. “It’s a diuretic.”
“It’s a what?”
“Caffeine. It makes you pee.”
“Well you don’t see me peeing every ten minutes.”
“I dunno. Maybe I’m more sensitive.”
“Yeah. I’m sure I’ve built up a high tolerance to caffeine.” Nicole sighs.
“I hate drip drying.”
“Well, it’s not like we can afford three-ply Charmin. Just shake a little.”
I air dry as long as I can stand the cold down there and join her on the side of the road.
“So?” Nicole asks. “Let’s talk.”
“I’m listening.”
Nicole stops. “Jesus, Jeopardy. We have a billion miles plus to go and I’m not going to do it in silence. The days are long enough as is.” She glares at me. “If you’re not spouting science facts, you don’t say anything. At all. Fuck, it’s annoying.”