by Cora Brent
Ebbie Crack was behind the register in Dino Mart. That was her real name. Once I asked her if she was ever going to change it and she’d stared at me all puzzled and bewildered as if I’d started serenading her in Russian. She was somewhere in her mid twenties and was probably born to be an Emblem lifer, not that there was a thing wrong with that. Emblem was full of more good people than shit people, even if it was easy to forget sometimes.
I nodded a greeting as I set the water bottles on the counter and handed over my money.
“You know the Gentry triplets?” she asked as she painfully counted out my change, all in nickels. “Saw you hanging around with them last night.”
“Sure,” I smiled proudly. “They’re my cousins.”
Ebbie frowned. She dropped the nickels into my palm. They felt sticky. “Thought they were fucking kings in high school,” she muttered as her lazy eye roamed the potato chip display.
“Oh,” I said. It was a rather useless syllable but there was really nowhere else to go from there. I started to pocket the nickels, then changed my mind and dropped them into one of those plastic collection boxes that promise to cure childhood diseases. Then I grabbed my water bottles and left as Ebbie Crack stared in several directions at once and flared her nostrils.
Once I was outside I downed a bottle of water in about six seconds. A pair of girls, babyish freshman types, passed me and tittered.
“Hi, Conway,” one of them giggled.
“Hi,” I answered. I was pretty sure I’d never noticed either of them in my life.
The Emblem pool was right next to the high school, which was one of the few good looking buildings in Emblem. It was all brick with white trim, an architecture utterly mismatched to the southwestern stucco and adobe of the rest of the town. I could get to the pool in five minutes by crossing to the other side of Main Street right here and cutting through the back parking lots. But in order to do that I’d have to pass by Earnshaw’s Drugstore, where my mother worked. It wasn’t like I thought she’d coming running out to screech at me on the street, but the idea that she would be glaring at me from somewhere within as I passed the wall of glass windows was just too much to take. Instead I stayed on this side of Main Street and waited to cross at the single traffic light.
There’s nothing worse than what you come from.
My fists clenched. I wished there was a way to safely remove certain moments from your memory. That one would haunt me, of that I had no doubt. Still, it was the closest Tracy Gentry had ever come to admitting out loud that the question of my paternity, and Stone’s, was up for grabs. I wondered if my cousins had ever heard the rumors that we might be more than cousins. Maybe one day I would get around to asking them about it.
The pool was crowded already. Somewhere along the way I’d kind of lost my enthusiasm for swimming. Plus now that my head was cooler I regretted snapping at Erin. She’d apologized for her comments about Stone and when Erin said she was sorry she meant it. I shouldn’t have gotten all irritated that she didn’t want to tag along to the pool today. The girl had a right to keep some time to herself without explaining it to me.
Anyway, at this point I didn’t much feel like hanging out with the belly floppers and the doggie paddlers and the sun bathing attention seekers, but hell, I’d walked all the way down here. And it was hot. Might was well take a dip and cool off.
I quickly shed my shirt and shoes and dove into the deep end, shooting like a torpedo beneath kicking legs and flailing arms as I traveled near the floor of the pool. By the time I reached the concrete wall on the other side my lungs were bursting so I moved to a shallow area to catch my breath. I relaxed and closed my eyes. I liked being here. The pool was in need of a lot of expensive repairs but I felt happy here. This was almost the exact spot I’d been hanging out in two years ago when the girl next door strode casually into the water and got my attention. She’d kept it ever since.
Thinking of Erin and about the pool led to thoughts of Erin in the pool. That led to thoughts of Erin in a bikini. Which led to thoughts of Erin without a bikini. Which of course led straight to a stiff boner.
I flattened my back against the concrete wall of the pool and crouched in the water, trying to tame my own mind and body. Some little kid in green goggles and a duck-shaped donut float paddled by and I felt like a high-ranking pervert, cowering in the Emblem public pool with my dick at full salute.
I managed to shove away thoughts of my naked girlfriend. It wasn’t hard, mostly because I’d never actually seen her naked. Erin was shy. To me, it was part of her charm. In fact I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her in a bikini. Generally if she came swimming she kept her t-shirt on, complaining that the sun was too strong.
I had just managed to tamp down the fire in my shorts and was hanging out there minding my own business when Kasey Kean sidled up to me.
“Hi, Con-man,” she said with a head tilt and a brilliant smile that she probably practiced in front of a mirror at least four hundred times a day.
“Hey, Kase,” I said, friendly but not overly enthusiastic, careful to keep my eyes away from the bobbing boobs that were barely contained by her American flag string bikini top. I’d known Kasey since kindergarten. She was okay but since I’d also hooked up with her in a major way before I got together with Erin I made a habit of keeping my distance from her.
Kasey, on the other hand, seemed determined to close that distance. Right now.
“Erin not here today?” she asked with fake honeyed sweetness as she glanced around and floated to my side.
“Nope,” I shook my head, staring at the water, at my own feet, anywhere but at the display of supple, suntanned skin that was only inches away. “Not today.”
“You guys have a fight?”
Goddamn, girls were fucking supernatural sometimes. I felt myself flinch at the question. No, Erin and I hadn’t fought. Not exactly. But I didn’t like how we’d left things. We weren’t one of those couples, the ones who barked at each other and sulked and endured epic break up soap operas. We weren’t one of them because what we had was better than what the rest of them had.
“No fight,” I said, keeping my voice even. “She was tired and I had some time to kill.”
I could feel Kasey nodding. “That’s good.” She tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “God, it’s so hot.”
“It’s Arizona. In the summer.”
“Yeah.” Kasey started doing something with her top. She was fussing with the straps and had gotten close enough that her arm brushed mine as she examined herself.
“I hate tan lines,” she pouted as she pulled the strap over her left breast away and left it barely (BARELY!) covered.
I tried not to look. I tried.
Fuck.
Failure.
I looked. And just like that there was a party in my shorts once more.
“I hate them too,” I said even though tan lines were one of the last things I gave a shit about, right down there in the bowels of my concern list with stuff like knitting. And cat memes.
Kasey smiled at me, all dimples and sex. Mostly I wanted to jump right out of that pool and run like hell away from the hot girl. But from somewhere deep and primal another part of me ordered me to stay where I was.
That part liked looking at the hot girl with all the nice skin.
It liked the dirty ideas that Kasey’s smile promised.
It liked the hand that was touching my-
Wait a fucking minute.
There was a hand on my dick.
There was a hand on my dick that didn’t belong to me.
The hand on my dick certainly didn’t belong to my girlfriend either, the girlfriend I loved and who wouldn’t appreciate someone else’s hand doing what it was currently doing.
“Remember this?” Kasey purred.
“I gotta go,” I said, shoving away the hand with a splash and hauling myself up and out of the pool. I didn’t look back, grabbing my pile of shirt and shoes on the way ou
t. I didn’t even pause to put my flip-flops on until I stepped on a sharp rock in the parking lot and cursed in pain.
“Nice going, asshole,” I said to myself and it could have applied to anything I’d done in the last twenty-four hours. A nearby old lady who was power walking down the sidewalk in purple active wear gave me a stern look.
There’s nothing worse than what you come from.
As I pulled my cotton t-shirt over my head I had a bad taste in my mouth. For the rest of my life I would remember those words. I would remember that my own mother had said them and meant them.
I needed to go home. Now. I didn’t mean home to my mother’s house, where it was clear I was only grudgingly welcome at this point. But Erin was home to me. Stone was home to me. I needed to be where they were.
In the thickest heat of a summer afternoon in these parts it’s possible to fry an egg on the ground. It’s also possible for the rubber soles of thin shoes to melt. I didn’t hang around in one spot long enough to test out if this was that kind of day. I hurried past the streets and landmarks at full speed.
Maybe I could still salvage something out of the day before I had to be at work at Carson’s Garage. I was sure I could at least get Stone interested in digging up some spare change and getting lunch somewhere. If I went to Erin with my arms out I knew we could get past our earlier argument. And one of these days the two of them would learn to stop rolling their eyes every time the name of the other came up and put aside their differences. They’d do it for my sake. Now that it was on my mind, the idea of spending a few peaceful hours in the company of the two people I loved best made me feel more cheerful.
It even made me sort of forget about the Mystery of Kasey Kean and the Groping Hand.
When I banged on my front door Stone didn’t come out to answer. I’d forgotten to bring a key earlier but the spare had been returned to its rightful place beneath the flat rock in the front yard. The house smelled of cigarettes so Stone must have been lighting up a few earlier as an act of defiance.
As for Stone himself, there was no sign of him. I reached for my phone to text him but then remembered something. As I was being fingerprinted at the Emblem police station last night I had realized my phone was not in my pocket. Instead, it had almost certainly had gone to a watery grave with the Gnome’s Cadillac. So far I’d managed to avoid mentioning that to my mother. Anyway, all it meant was that I was phone free for the foreseeable future.
Since I didn’t have any idea when Stone would return I didn’t see any point in hanging around an empty house. I was smiling on my way out the door. Erin would be glad to see me. I was sure of that, even though we’d ended on tense terms this morning.
As I jogged through her front yard I paused over a sound. It was laughter, high and sweet. It was Erin’s laugh, although I knew from years of practice that it took a lot to get her to laugh like that, with such joyful abandon. It never stopped me from trying though.
I felt a stab of irrational jealousy that someone, somehow, had made her laugh like that today when earlier she’d seemed like the last thing she was about to do was laugh. Probably one of her sisters had done something funny. I was ready to laugh along with whatever the joke was by the time I reached the side door that opened right into the Rielos’ kitchen. I opened it without knocking because it was exactly what I’d done countless other times.
The sun’s brilliance contrasted with the dull green color of Erin’s kitchen and my eyes couldn’t adjust right away. I blinked. Several times. I saw them.
My girlfriend and my brother - two people who mostly didn’t even bother to fake politeness to each other - were sitting at the kitchen table, laughing at some private joke like they were brand new BFF’s.
They stopped laughing when I walked in. Just like that. As if someone had flipped a switch.
“Hey,” I said, casually leaning against the counter like it was totally natural to find the two of them gossiping over glasses of lemonade. I felt their eyes on me.
There are certain snaps of time that seem much longer than they are. One of them happened yesterday, during a slow eternity when I lost control of a stolen car.
This was another one.
It was probably only a split second that passed as the three of us looked at each other, as I noticed how Erin’s smile fell from her face as soon as she saw me, how for the first time ever it seemed like they were a team and I was the outsider. I didn’t like any of it. I didn’t like it at all.
“Hey,” my brother finally answered. He tipped his half empty glass of lemonade in my direction. He kept his eyes on me as he gulped it down.
CHAPTER NINE
ERIN
Two things I really didn’t like were walking and heat.
Yet because my head was all cluttered from the fight with Conway (and because I was a little afraid of what I would do if I just sat in my bedroom alone) I decided to go for a walk in this wretched, skin-searing heat.
I had a break from summer babysitting for the next few weeks because my dad had signed Penny and Katie up for some day camp thing that was going on at the library. The camp had been organized by my English teacher, Mrs. Consuelo, and she’d tried to get me to sign on as a counselor. Even though I could have used the money I turned her down because I wanted some relief from looking after other people more than I wanted extra cash. But now that the empty hours stretched ahead I wished I had a way to fill them. Roe was busy packing for the Caribbean cruise her father and stepmother were dragging her to. She’d sent me a picture of the tiny crystal prism I’d given her, which had already been hung carefully in her bedroom window. It made me smile.
Beyond the cinder block fences of my street was a narrow alley and beyond that was a wide wash filled with rocks and sand and the debris of the desert. During the summer storms the wash often overflowed and all the local backyards would be miniature lakes for a day or two. I was glad I’d thought to wear sturdy tennis shoes because the ground was rough and the threat of scorpions always loomed.
Just as I made my way beyond the alley, a startled quail family ran for cover on the other side of the wash. I watched them, a panicked line of birds that quickly disappeared into a greasewood bush. Then there was silence. I knew that despite the barren look of the desert there was life everywhere; lizards and birds and tiny pinch-faced rodents who made their homes underground. I’d learned their names and their habits from my mother.
I walked west along the dry bank of the wash. It stretched for miles. If I walked for long enough I would eventually find myself in the next county. When I was little my dad used to caution me against strolling close to the wash. Even now he wouldn’t be thrilled that I was wandering around beside it.
“Bad people hang around out there,” he would always warn. “Drug dealers, perverts, men just looking for a quiet place to commit violence. Not to mention how thick the rattlesnake population becomes the farther you go from the road. Stay away.”
I kept a wary eye out for perverts and drug dealers. I figured if I saw one I would sprint back toward home. I was a fast runner when I wanted to be.
But the strong arms that grabbed me out of nowhere did not give me time to do anything. My upper body was pinned from behind by an iron grip and I was too shocked to even cry out. In that instant every terrible story I’d ever heard that featured a careless young girl galloped through my mind.
Stranger. Danger. STRANGER. DANGER.
I opened my mouth to scream and only yelped like a kitten.
“Erin! It’s me. It’s Stone.”
“Stone!” Relief flooded through me. Then annoyance. “Let me go for god’s sake.”
“Okay, but don’t take one step. There’s a monster diamondback hanging out just underneath that mesquite tree.”
Stone eased his hold on me and took my right elbow, very slowly leading me backward. I squinted at the sprawling mesquite that was a mere fifteen feet away. Sure enough, coiled at the shady base like a conquering king, was the longest, thickest rattle
snake I’d ever seen. I gulped, unable to take my eyes off of it. The snake lifted its head and moved it from side to side, flicking a tongue out briefly.
“Easy,” Stone whispered, continuing to lead me backward. I stumbled over his foot and he circled an arm around my waist, steadying me.
“You can let go now,” I said when we were safely out of range and the rattler had relaxed once more.
Stone took his hands away. “You should be more careful,” he scolded, glaring. “Don’t you know where we live, Erin?”
“Well, you didn’t have to grab me. You could have just acted like a normal person and said something like, ‘Hey, look out!’”
He sighed. “You would have ignored me.”
“I would not.”
“You would if you’d seen it was me. Then you would have kept right on stomping through the brush without a care because somehow you never learned that it’s not a good idea to parade through rattlesnake territory like you own it.”
I tossed my hair and crossed my arms. “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop mansplaining to me like I’m five.”
Stone crossed his arms, mimicking my posture. “Then stop acting like you’re five.” He looked me up and down, frowning over what he saw. “Why the hell are you all bundled up in a black sweatshirt when it’s over a hundred degrees out?”
“I thought it might snow,” I grumbled. “Anyway, look at you. You’re running around out here half naked. Who do you think you are? Some kind of Sonoran desert version of Tarzan?”
Stone glanced down at his bare chest and cutoff shorts. “You’ve really got to get out of the habit of checking me out.”
“I’m not!”
Stone smiled. I wanted to slap him. My fists clenched at my sides, fingernails digging into my palms so hard it hurt.
Stone casually ran a hand through his hair. Like his brother, his dark sandy hair turned lighter in the summertime. “Erin, can’t you just say ‘Thank you’?” Like ‘Gosh, thank you Stone for saving my life.’”