Kristy pulled away from Damien. She stumbled around in a little circle. “Keep away from me, you fool!” she shouted. She leaned over and put her hands on her knees like she was about to be sick.
Kurt King would have done a U-turn. In a minute, he’d pull into the parking lot.
Jason Coulter walked over. Corinne tipped back her head and smiled up at him. He sat down on the hood next to her with his huge hands hanging between his knees. He was wearing new yellow work boots with orange laces. Corinne shook out her bangles. “Jason, what’s going on?” I slid off the car.
Damien and his five friends were still surrounding Kristy. One of the boys snorted like a pig as I walked up, and the basketball player grinned.
Damien wrapped his arms around Kristy. He pulled her up off the ground against his body. Kristy had a strand of hair caught in her mouth and hair caught in her diamond earring. She pretended to struggle, then leaned back against Damien’s chest and stared at me.
With a bored expression, Damien Rogers looked me up and down. His mouth was open a little as if he was astounded that I would approach such royalty as himself. He was so ugly and so handsome at the same time. He held Kristy against his chest. His chin was buried in her hair. Damien Rogers had his arms around Kristy Baker. Two feet away from me, and I was still breathing. My heart was still beating. The other boys snickered and shuffled their feet as they waited to see what I would do.
“I just wanted to say . . .”
I was kind of drunk and had no idea what I wanted to say. Kristy looked like a blond child as she hung there in Damien Rogers’s arms. She kicked his shin, and he let her down.
I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet. I hated Kristy — and I now hated Damien Rogers and his friends. My Damien Rogers had died an instant death. But if you kept breathing, you could see they were just dumb boys, the basketball player had tiny gray teeth and a really small head the size of a mango, and Mr. Baker and Mrs. Baker in her fuzzy pink pajamas would want me to see that. And I thought of my mom, always hoping for a Yahtzee, getting hammered downtown at the Stoplight Lounge while fat middle-aged people clapped in a line dance, and I thought about Paul Lobermeir, the poor dumb bastard, and how people make mistakes over and over.
“I just wanted to say that . . . you guys make a great couple. It’s cool — one of the most popular girls from West going out with the most popular guy from Arapahoe.”
Kristy blinked. She smiled.
Damien glared as if he thought he was possibly being messed with. Then he must have thought, Why would this fat chick have the balls to mess with Damien Rogers? He took hold of Kristy’s waist with his big hands. Kristy squawked. He dug his thumbs into her sides, and she screamed.
“Take care of her. Her ride’s over there.” I pointed at Corinne. She was nuzzling Jason Coulter’s neck.
Damien Rogers stopped laughing. He looked at his friends’ faces, then back at me. “OK. Whatever. Mind your own shit, bitch.”
Kurt King’s Mustang pulled into the lot, and he did a slow half circle at the entrance. His tires sprayed gravel as he tore out.
Someone who looked exactly like Carl floated in a silvery blue minivan down the other side of Torrance Avenue, but I headed in the opposite direction. I had to meet Kurt King at Burger King. I knew it was getting close to eleven because they were on number two of the Top 11 Countdown on K103. Everyone had the same station playing.
Walking alone down Torrance Avenue was like walking through a movie. A few cars shot past. The road was empty and dark with utility wires overhead and lonely pools of light from the streetlamps. The sidewalk seemed to sink beneath my feet. I tripped on a broken chunk of concrete.
The Burger King was next to a closed lumberyard and was lit up like a spaceship. I walked toward the its light, its big plastic sign, the huge windows that separated me from the people inside.
The parking lot was wet and shiny as if it had been hosed off. Napkins melted in puddles of spilled pop. A girl wearing a paper hat hunched at the drive-thru window. A carload of guys pulled up. One of them barked.
I didn’t see his car and thought, He probably left. Oh, well, at least I tried. But I walked around the side of the building, and there it was. The Mustang was parked in a square of dark space between the Dumpster and a cement wall and a chain-link fence. A security light shone onto the hood of the car. I stopped ten feet back. Kurt King sat in the driver’s seat and leaned against the door. He reached out and adjusted the side mirror.
Crrreeeeaaak. His car door opened. First one cowboy boot, then the other. He pushed himself up out of the car like he was really tired. He was wearing the corduroy jacket and had sunglasses shoved into his streaky hair even though it was nighttime. He looked down at the cracked asphalt, shook his head, and carefully shut the door.
He turned around, threw back his shoulders, shoved out his hips. He tipped back his head and stared at me, not smiling, not friendly. “What are you doin’ here?”
The garbage hadn’t been picked up and it stank. A stack of waxed boxes leaned against the cement wall.
“Sorry. I didn’t hear you.” With every word, he took a step toward me. “No Ashley again, huh?” He was there, a foot from me, real and not real, a hologram.
“No.”
“I saw her back there.” He worked his mouth over his teeth. “I could knock those little bastards from here to there in two seconds flat.” His breath was thick and hot, stinking with alcohol. I turned my head.
He took hold of my chin and brought my face back around. “What are you doin’ here? I don’t like being dicked with.”
My chin was numb from the vodka, but I could smell cigarettes on his hand and something else, rancid, like old cheese. His lower lip was fat and wet with spit. My eyes felt stuck to his wet lip.
“No one’s dicking with you. I’m sorry.” My words came out slowly, like the air was too thick. I coughed onto his hand. I was lying. I had been dicking with him. Flares exploded in the back of my mind. But it was my responsibility. I had to fix it.
He let go of my face. “Shit. I cannot believe this. What the hell is going on here?” He moved back, sat on the car, spread his legs. He rubbed his neck, looked up at the sky. His leg bounced like a tweaker’s.
I took a step toward him. “I’m sorry.”
“What the hell are you sorry about? I can’t even hear a word of what you’re saying.” He crooked his finger at me. “I don’t bite. I’m the one who’s being dicked with here.”
He stretched his mouth and showed his teeth. Not a smile. His teeth, slick and cracked with tiny lines, and his hot vodka breath. I could smell it a foot away. He rolled his lower lip up over his bottom teeth and licked it.
He laughed as he looked over my shoulder. I turned to see — the empty parking lot, the lonely yellow back of the Burger King with its little light and its mirror and the lit-up menu board, a broken camera dangling by a wire. No one was going through the drive-thru.
He said, “Girl, you got to tell me what the hell is going on.”
He nodded as if keeping time to a song that was playing in his head. I almost laughed. Then I felt so sleepy, I could hardly keep my eyes open and focused. I wanted to close my eyes and fall asleep and stop existing. I could barely say it, I was so tired. But I had to.
“You never talked to the girl with blond hair. You were talking to me.”
He stared at me with dull eyes. “I don’t get it.”
How alone in the world can you be? Not much more alone. Pretending to be Ashley had made me so happy. I could feel her there in the shadows, whispering to me.
The air felt cold as I breathed it in. “That girl with blond hair isn’t named Ashley. There is no Ashley. You were talking to me. You need to delete that girl’s picture from your phone.”
He went still. I looked into the face of a man with pores and whiskers and little scars, the face of a stranger. And I was a stranger, a nothing, to him. I couldn’t recognize anything in his flat green eyes.
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“You’ve been dicking with me for a long time,” he said. The skin under his left eye twitched. He hopped off the car and paced around the passenger side. He lifted the sunglasses and raked his fingers through his hair. “I can’t believe this, man.”
“I’m real sorry.” I coughed and took a step back. “OK, so just erase her. She doesn’t —”
“Where you think you’re going?” He rubbed his nose on his wrist and circled me. I backed toward the car.
Strings of spit stretched between his lips. His face looked greasy. “Who the hell do you think you are? You think you can just mess with me and get away with it? You think that’s OK?”
“No. I don’t think it’s OK. I’m sorry. I need to go.” I was barely breathing.
“Girl, you got some explaining to do.” He took hold of my arm, opened the car door, and jerked his head. “Get in.”
“No.” I pulled away. He grabbed my arm again, twisted it behind my back. I watched it happen to someone else. He opened the door and shoved me into the seat. He locked the door and slammed it. Through the glass, he said, “Bitch, don’t move.”
The streetlamp shone into the car. I was drunk but wide awake. My heart and brain hummed like a bird’s. Everything was sharp and clear. I’d been inside the car before, but it was different. It was smaller and tighter this time, the dash was shiny and smelled like chemicals, there was a big blue comb in the cup holder between the seats — the comb hadn’t been there before, and the comb was dirty; there were brown streaks on the tines — and a horse, stretched out running for its life, was in a circle in the center of the steering wheel, and a bottle of vodka was wedged between the driver’s seat and the console, in the middle of the red cap was a tiny eagle with outspread wings. The bottom of the gearshift was covered with squishy black leather that almost made me vomit.
“Bitch, don’t move.” I watched him say it. He was walking around the front of the car with his fingertips touching the hood.
Just as he reached for his door, I unlocked the door on my side, pulled the handle, and pushed out of the car. He lunged across the seats. I landed on my elbow; my foot was pinched in the door. My blue purse that Cindy bought at Marshalls spilled — keys, strawberry lip gloss, tampons, breath mints, and my turquoise wallet with a hummingbird stitched on the front scattered across the asphalt. My phone slid under the car. I yanked my foot out, lost my shoe, and crawled backward like a crab.
He got out and came around and looked down at me with his face tilted and blank. I rolled over and pushed off the ground. His hand closed over my arm like a clamp. He grabbed my hair and dragged me back to the car. I fell and scrambled to stay on my feet, trying to keep my hair from tearing out in his fingers.
He shoved me back into the passanger seat like I was a bag of garbage. He got in and slammed his door.
“Cut the shit,” he said.
He was breathing hard. I couldn’t look at him. My teeth clicked against each other. I was choking on his smells, vodka and rotten sweat. His heavy, cold hand curled around the back of my neck. I wanted to scream, but my lungs were punched through with holes.
“Take off your shirt,” he said.
“No. I’m sick.”
“Take off your shirt.” He fingers tightened on my neck. “Take off your shirt or I’ll tear your head off. Quit shaking, bitch.”
In five seconds, I had a thousand thoughts. Pictures. Cindy curled on the couch in her pink quilted robe with the tiny pink ribbon at the throat, the way she’d laugh hysterically when she got a Yahtzee. The big blue mountain moving closer. And Corinne and her sad mouth and her long nails going click-click-click, and Anita with her choppy bangs over her eyes that shone as if there was something lit inside of them. Mr. Calvino smiling at something I said in class. And Carl, the way Carl looked at me with his whole body as if I was real. How blue and clear the sky was some mornings like it went straight up to the top of the universe.
I swallowed under Kurt King’s thumb. I told myself that Carl and Anita were looking for me. I unzipped the hoodie and got it off with his hand on my neck. He squeezed. I put my fingers under the bottom of my tank and began to lift. I felt air on my stomach. In the background, someone ordered a Whopper and supersize Coke.
His hand tightened; I started crying. He grunted and was on top of me. He jerked down my tank and bra, grabbed me, and twisted like he was trying to tear me apart. I screamed. One of his hands went over my mouth, the other tried to work down the top of my jeans, his fingers like strong hard worms, foreign and cold and scratching.
“Shut up, bitch,” he whispered into my hair.
The back door of Burger King slammed shut. He went still.
Voices and soft footsteps came toward us across the parking lot. The clammy stench of his hand filled my nose; I couldn’t get any air. I was jammed against the door. Over Kurt King’s shoulder, a guy in a Burger King shirt lifted the lid of the Dumpster, and another guy threw white bags of garbage into it. Puft, puft, puft, puft.
The lid clanked down.
“Not a sound,” he said. He slowly turned his head to look. I curled my hand into a fist and socked him in the balls.
He jackknifed over; his sunglasses flew onto the dash. I got the door open, grabbed my shoe, and dropped onto the ground. I kicked the door shut. I yanked up my bra and tank and launched up through the air to my feet.
The Burger King guys were lighting a pipe. “What the hell,” the shorter one said.
The first thing they asked me was “What is your name?”
I sat in the little brightly lit room for hours. I listened to myself breathing and tried to breathe as quietly as possible. I listened to the clock ticking on the wall. I looked at the drawer handles and the counters and the computer and the clock and the file cabinets and the dingy blinds that covered the window. The buttons on the big square phone blinked and blinked. They made me look at pictures in a big book, but Kurt King wasn’t in it.
Kurt King almost ran over one of the Burger King guys. He was gone long before the cops came. The cop asked if “he’d done anything.” I said no. I didn’t have to go to the hospital. The police took pictures of bruises on my arm, the scrapes on my elbow and on the palms of my hands.
I felt strange sitting in that tiny, brightly lit room, like I was there and not there. I felt like I had left my life and then come back to it, and I was looking at it. I kept swallowing, and every time a door slammed somewhere inside the police station, my arms flew out.
A chubby, bald officer with gray shadows around his eyes talked to me for what felt like hours but was only fifteen minutes. He kept his eyes on the computer and typed. I saw when he left the computer screen open and went into the hall to talk to someone. He made a note about the “odor” of alcohol and described me as “an overweight fifteen-year-old female.”
The cop who had driven me to the station came to the door. Sergeant Romero. He filled the room like a giant. He was so blue and big and clunky with his belly and boots, his belt and gun, his hat just like on TV. His breathing sounded like a roar. The backs of his hands and fingers were covered with black hair.
He shook his head, two tiny shakes. “So, you knew this guy? You talked to him on the phone a number of times? How many times would you estimate?”
“I don’t know. Like twenty times. . . . He has my friend’s picture on his phone.”
“OK, we’ll check into it.”
When Sergeant Romero turned to go, he stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He didn’t look at me. “I have a girl just your age. I’ll be waiting out here until we find your mom.”
I could still feel his hand on my mouth. I had scrubbed my mouth with wet paper towels until it was red and raw, but I could smell it.
About three thirty a.m., there was a tiny knock on the door. The door slowly opened and there was Cindy. I’d never realized how small she was. Her hair was funky. She hung on to the door knob, swaying, like she was about to pass out. She smiled and said, “Hey, munchkin.”
She ran her thumb back and forth above a bloody scrape full of dirt and gravel. “On the way home, we’ll pick up some hydrogen peroxide at the twenty-four-hour Walgreens,” she said with a tiny smile. She blinked her wet lashes.
“Sure, Mom,” I said, even though that stuff stung.
Cindy took sick days on Monday and Tuesday. I stayed in bed listening to Bruno Mars. She used a cookie sheet as a tray to bring me cereal and frozen French toast and teacups of orange juice and milk. She gave me Popsicles and graham crackers. I didn’t eat much. I was finally losing weight. Hooray.
I didn’t think or dream. I lay under the covers and let Bruno Mars trickle through my brain. I listened to the sound of my own breathing and watched the bars of afternoon light move across the green wall. I was trying to make sure that I was still alive, still me. I kept completely covered up in long sleeves, sweats, and socks. I had bruises on my arm, knees, the back of my thigh, even on my stomach and back. The bruises felt like Kurt King’s fingerprints, and I didn’t want to see them.
Tuesday afternoon, Cindy made me go for a checkup at the Aspen Community Clinic. We sat in the lobby paging through ancient fashion magazines. When the nurse called my name, Cindy stood up. “Mom, I’ll go alone.” She looked so small and worried as she sat back down. She picked up another magazine and stared at the cover.
Someone I Wanted to Be Page 19