Spin the Sky

by MacKenzie, Jill;

  I grab my bike off the road and do the same. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You’re going to talk about it.” He rides next to me, his tires inches from mine, like he always does. Except that now it’s like there’s this wall between us, separating us, keeping me from him, or vice versa. “I know what you were going to do back there,” he says.

  Shame isn’t a pretty color on anyone, and I’m no exception.

  I turn away so he can’t see the heat creeping up my neck. I pull ahead of him, studying the salt-washed beach shacks that line the street on either side of us. “He was going to ruin everything.”

  George slams on his breaks. “What about the show? You would have ruined everything if you—”

  “I wouldn’t have.”

  “You got in his car.”

  “He was a cop.”

  George sighs. “Cops can be assholes too, you know. You think your reputation is bad now? If they found out, they’d eat you alive. And just so you know, doing what you almost did is the fastest way to actually become your mother.”

  His words stab my insides, hard, but I’m the one who handed him the knife. I rub my forearms with my one free hand, suddenly cold.

  George is right. I hate that he’s right. I’m not her, but I could have been. My mind wanders to Rose and her boss. Things have been so bad around our house for so long now. The power gets shut off and the water gets shut off and sometimes both are shut off at the same time. But lately it’s been better. We’ve had a bit of money for extras, new tights when mine have too many holes, new buckets when ours crack so bad they won’t hold the clams. These little things. It’s made it all bearable. Rose has never really admitted it, but she’s made it clear that what she does isn’t wrong. What she does is just surviving. Isn’t it the same as what I almost did?

  “Look, can we just drop it?”

  He does, but at the stop sign, he glances back at me. I can see my reflection bouncing off his pupils, staring back at me, judging me. But I don’t blame him. He lives in Summerland too, after all. He can’t help himself.

  I push off hard to stay in line with him. Swerve my bike, so my tire’s almost hitting his in this in-and-out motion. He hates it when I do it. But, like, love-hates it. Finally he breaks, and laughs. The sound of it is like music, moving through my ears.

  “By the way,” I say. “That note was for your mom, not you.”

  “You’re not quitting the shop. There’s no way I’m letting that poor excuse for an apology reach her.” He shrugs. “And anyway, she supports us going to the competition. Quinn’s going to fill in at Deelish until we get back. She was psyched to have all the hours. I told you I’d take care of everything.”

  “You gave her all my shifts for the next six weeks? You don’t even know if we’ll make it past tryouts.” My foot slips from my pedal, causing my bike to waver.

  George grabs my handlebar to steady me. He’s looking at me so hard. It’s not the way I want him looking at me at all. “What were you doing in the cliffs?”

  “I just wanted to talk to him. I told you that.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything. You have to know that.”

  “It was your idea.”

  George throws his hands in the air. “I never told you to go there alone! It’s a stupid idea!”

  “I meant the show. Proving it to the whole town, the whole world. Showing everyone that being a Woodson isn’t what they think. I just—” I close my eyes, let them stay that way for three seconds until I feel my bike swerve. “I shouldn’t have gone there. You’re right. Okay?”

  George rests his feet on the middle bar of his bike, his toes—tanned and peppered by soft blond hairs—level with his chest. “People think what they want to think. Sooner or later, you just have to stop caring.”

  He lets go of my bike and pushes down on his pedals, so I do, too. I wish I could live like that. Unbothered by what they thought of me, of me and Rose. But I can’t. Getting on the show is the only way to change things for us. The only way to prove to them who we really are. Not whores. Not murderers.

  Not like her. No, never like her.

  Outside George’s house, we ditch our bikes next to the shed. George ducks behind it and grabs the backpack he’s stashed there. I clop up his front steps two at a time.

  “What are you doing?” he says.

  “Going in. I want to see your mom.”

  “No way. If we go in there now, she’ll never let us go.”

  “You said she was on board with us going.”

  George stammers, “She is. Or she will be. But we’ve got to get down there. My mom will only slow us down.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Why am I getting the feeling you haven’t told her we’re going yet?”

  “I did tell her. Sort of.” He shifts from one foot to the other. “I almost told her.”

  “George? Magnolia? Is that you?” Mrs. Moutsous’s voice floats out the upstairs window.

  “Shit!” George whispers. “She knows we’re here.” He grabs my hand and pulls me down the steps and around the back of the shed. “Run!” he yells and doesn’t let go of my hand until we’re halfway across town.

  I slog up the steps of the overpass bridge after George, our feet making loud clanking noises under the metal walkway. I’m out of breath and steaming. George pulls a stick across the bars, which magnifies the noise by a million. It’s like he doesn’t even feel the magnitude of what we’ve just done.

  “You never told her we were going. You lied to me. You lied to us both.”

  “Get over it already. You’re acting like we just committed murder or something.”

  “Exactly. What do you think will happen when you don’t come home tonight? Your mom will murder both our asses.”

  “She’ll be fine.” George shrugs. “She always is.”

  I place one hand over my stomach and groan. “I think I’m going to throw up all over those cars below us.”

  George hands me a stick of gum. “Chew up. You don’t want ralph breath for tryouts.” He bounces up and down on his toes. “I can’t believe we’re actually going to meet Camilla Sky. Like, in person. I wonder if she’s really as tall. I mean, how can one person be that tall, toned, tanned, and hot?” He turns to me. “You should only get one of those things in life. Don’t you think?”

  Hot. There’s that word again.

  My brain flashes to the sultry Australian host of Live to Dance. Hot? Yeah, well, pretty much everyone on the planet thinks she’s hot. I guess I just never knew that George did, too. Glamorous? Maybe. Stylish? That goes without saying. But hot? This is definitely something new.

  I press my palms against the sides of my head. “Your mom’s never gonna forgive me for leaving without telling her.”

  “You know she will. Rose will too. Eventually.”

  Shit shit shit shit. The fact that George and I are both total assholes for lying to our loved ones comes flooding back to my brain, like a tsunami. A tsunami made of lies.

  “If we make it on the show, no one will even care about the little white lies we told.” He looks at me with shimmery eyes. “We’re going to be famous. In six short weeks.” He grabs my arm. “If we win, I bet we’ll get movie offers and everything, don’t you think?”

  I flick his hand away and rest my hand on my collarbone, feeling for the place where my pillowcase piece is still tucked under by bra. “This isn’t about being on TV. Not for me, it’s not. You know that.”

  He waves me away. “Well, I want to see my face on that screen.” He runs his fingers along the handrail of the overpass like he’s playing a piano. “I want to see what I look like as George Moutsous, superstar, not George Moutsous—”

  “Summerland heartthrob that every single person in town loves? Yeah, I can see why you’d want to shake that.”

  George’s face clouds. “I’m going to win. I’m going to win it all and then never look back at this place.”

  I blink twice, letting the magnit
ude of my best friend’s words sink in.

  Win the show. Win. It’s the first time I’ve really thought about the fact that I need to actually win for my plan to work. Runner-up won’t work. Nothing will work if I get kicked off during tryouts. And if I lose … fact is, if I lose I’m still nothing more than a loser.

  “They’ll change their minds,” George says, wrapping one arm around my waist. I don’t know how he does it, but somehow, he always knows when my thoughts are going down that very dark road. “They’ll see how awesome you are. Plus they’re going to announce our hometowns like a million times on TV. Everyone around here will treat you like a goddamn hero. You and Rosie both. All of us.”

  “We should have told Katina about it.”

  “She’ll hear about it anyway. Everyone will.”

  “She should have heard about it from us. You know she’d want us there.” I think of Mark and his offer to come with us. Even if it was just small talk, it was still pretty sweet of him. “Maybe Katina would have come with us to cheer us on. And your mom would have been so proud. Even if we don’t make it on the show, they’d at least be happy we tried.”

  “We will make it on the show,” George says again. But this time, he’s not smiling. “And yeah, Mom would have been proud all right. So proud, she would have blabbed about it all over town. Hell, it probably would have made the Summerland Sun.” He cocks his head. “Is that really what you wanted?”

  He’s right. I hate it when he’s right, which is more often than I’d like to admit. If news got out, it’d be over for me before I even started.

  I let George pull me to the side of the highway, Route 26, which goes all the way to Portland and away from Summerland. It’s about eighty miles to the city from here—eighty miles and a world away from clamming, Katina’s studio, Deelish, my life. I’ve been to Portland before with Rose and George and Mrs. Moutsous for errands and shopping and fish and chips at the wharf. And once she even took us to see the Oregon Ballet’s rendition of Giselle, which was so awesome that I held my breath from the second the curtain went up to the second it fell back on the stage, because no matter how good Katina’s studio is, it’ll never be that. Portland’s not that far in distance, but it’s practically another planet.

  Once we’re on the highway, three cars zoom past us. I keep my head low, careful not to make eye contact with any of the drivers in case one’s a Summerland local. But almost no one from town goes into Portland these days. Not since we got a full-sized Safeway and Home Depot just outside of town.

  Two more cars pass, but no one seems to notice us. “So now what? We’re just going to wait here for someone to give us a lift?”

  “I thought about borrowing Mom’s car. It probably would have been easier.”

  “It definitely would have been easier.”

  “But less of an adventure.” He stares down at the road like it’s the road to salvation. “Nope. The only way we’re going to get this done is to put a little elbow grease into it. You think the universe is gonna hand us our dreams on a silver platter?” He grins, his smile taking up most of the space on his face. “We’ve got to take steps to make that happen.”

  At first I think he means steps, like in a figurative way. Hoops we have to jump through to make our dreams come true. But when George actually steps onto the road, stretches his arm out, and extends his thumb, I burst out laughing. “There aren’t even any cars coming!”

  George waves his thumb at me. “But there will be. And when they come, you and I will be ready.”

  “When they come? Seriously? You’re quoting Field of Dreams?”

  “You got it, babe. I’m your Kevin Costner. This is our field of dreams. If we get a ride now, we’ll make it there by noon.”

  As soon as the words leave his lips, three cars round the corner and speed their way toward us. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, because George does stuff like this—makes stuff like this happen—all the time, but I still am.

  The last vehicle of the three, a rusty old pickup, idles up to George and me. I try to peer into the truck at the driver but his front windows are tinted and really dirty. George saunters over to the truck’s cab, leaving me standing on the edge of the road. Although neither of us have done this before, George leans into the truck and says something to the driver that I can’t even hear. He’s so calm, casual. It’s like he’s been doing it all his life.

  “Where you two headed?”

  I hear a woman’s voice. Although this little fact should theoretically make me feel better, it doesn’t. At least, not much. She’s still a stranger. A stranger with smoky-sounding lungs. A stranger with smoky lungs, driving a really unsafe-looking vehicle. I take two steps back toward the safety of the ditch, hoping it hides me away.

  “Portland. You got room for two of us in there?” He points toward me. “We’re a package deal.”

  The woman chuckles, which sounds more like a truck wheezing—her truck wheezing—than a laugh. “I kind of figured that by the way you two were standing, glued together. Not like I’m gonna leave your friend out here. No telling what could happen to a sweet little thing like her.” She strains to look at me, still edging backward toward that damn ditch.

  Even though I’m pretty sure she’s not at all joking, George laughs, and the woman laughs, which pisses me off, because I know they’re both laughing at me. Sweet little thing. She doesn’t even know me.

  “Climb on in,” the woman says.

  George jogs back toward me.

  “I’m not getting in with her.”

  He glances back over his shoulder at the driver. “She seems okay. Anyway, you can’t back out now. This is our chance.”

  “You don’t even know if she’s got a gun in there.”

  George folds his arms across his white polo shirt. “You sat in a car with Officer Awful, but you’re scared of her? He had a gun, you know.”

  “He was a cop. He has to carry a gun.”

  “Some cop.”

  “That was in the cliffs. This is the highway. This is no-man’s-land. This is—”

  “Hey, girlie,” the driver calls. “I ain’t got all day for you to mull it over. You in or what?”

  I gulp, my mind stuck on the image of that cop. His miserable car and his miserable words. His mouth, moving, forming sounds about me being exactly what everyone thinks I am.

  I scan the highway. There aren’t any other cars in sight, but there will be. If anyone sees me here, alongside the highway alone, I know what they’ll think. Mom and her johns. Most of the time, she found takers right here in Summerland. But when Season ended and the tourists packed their shovels and pails to reclaim city life, Mom had no choice but to take her business to Portland, too.

  A car zooms by with a couple of kids around Rose’s age inside. I’m pretty sure they’re locals, and if they are, Rose will hear about my being here before another car—safer, cleaner, driven by someone who doesn’t look like this—will come along to pick us up. I nod to George and let him take my hand and let him lead me to the passenger side of the pickup. He opens the door and motions for me to slide on in, next to the woman.

  Up close, she’s even dirtier than she looked from afar, but it doesn’t matter. She starts the ignition, and I do up my belt and then slide down in the seat so no one will see me in here, so no one will see me leaving.

  EIGHT

  I wish I could say that we ride in this comfortable silence that’s both peaceful and thought provoking, but we don’t. So I can’t. My head feels like it might ignite from the endless stream of pointless noise emitting from this woman. It’s outrageous.

  While occasionally checking the road to make sure she’s still on it, the woman blabbers on about her truck needing a new transmission, the fact that we’ve had one of the rainiest summers in Oregon history, and about the president’s new plan for whatever, which is apparently not working.

  I zone out.

  G makes a few obligatory uh-huhs and oh yeahs, but I don’t bother. I close my e
yes and pretend to sleep. My eyelids get heavy and for a second I think I might actually drop off, but when the woman elbows me in the ribs, I wake up and fast.

  “Here,” she says. “You want these?”

  I stare down at her calloused open palm. Resting there is a roll of butterscotch Life Savers. I stare at the familiar caramel wrapper, already torn open. “Where did you get these?”

  The woman shrugs. “The general store in Astoria. I meant to get the butter rum ones. Guess my old eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. You like ’em?”

  “Yeah. Almost no one carries them anymore. I don’t even remember the last time I had one.”

  I stare down at her hand, the roll in her palm. I just told her a total freaking lie. I know the exact date of the last time I had butterscotch Life Savers. Two Christmases ago.

  There it was. The gigantic box wrapped up in sparkly red paper with a delicate gold bow, leaning against the wall in the living room next to the elephant palm that nobody ever watered. That’s where I found it on Christmas morning. I rushed over to it and unwrapped that box, only to find another smaller box inside. So I tore the paper off that one, and again there was a smaller box inside of it. And then another, and then another, until finally I came to a last tiny box, and in it, the Life Savers. I remember staring down at the mess of glittery paper sitting at my feet and thinking that the wrap job must have been expensive. Way more expensive than the actual candy. But like I said, not many stores sold butterscotch Life Savers anymore, so this present was special. Mom worked hard to get me something I’d really love.

  Funnily enough, Mrs. Moutsous gave me a roll of butterscotch Life Savers too that year. But not in a million boxes all made out to look like something bigger than it was. Mrs. M. just nestled them between the other little presents in my stocking, which I always opened at her house, with her family, like it was no big deal at all.

  “Well, they’re yours.” The woman smiles big, exposing the two or three gaps in her mouth where teeth should be. “Hell of a lot better than finding them under my seat a month from now.”