by Wendy Heard
He cracked up, laughing so hard he fell back onto the bed. “I knew you would hate it,” he gasped.
“It’s disgusting!” I cried, smacking his leg. “You’re so creepy!”
“It’s just a chicken! You ate chicken with me yesterday.”
“That’s different from using a dead chicken to create this serial killer art project! You’re like those weirdos who taxidermy roadkill!”
He curled into the fetal position, laughing and crying and holding his stomach. I said, “Don’t even think about bringing that thing with us tonight. Worst conversation starter ever.”
“But, darling, I made it as a gift for you.”
“I don’t want it! Get it out of here!”
His laughter rose an octave, and he almost fell off the bed rolling around, emitting a loud snorting sound that made me giggle along.
He sat up, wiping his eyes. “Can I take a shower and get ready here?”
“Of course. Go ahead.” His living arrangements did not include a shower, so it was my house or the gym.
He grabbed his backpack and let himself out. I picked up the photo of Mick and considered what I was going to do. I had to show it to her. It was too good not to.
She was going to be pissed that I’d taken her photo without telling her. Maybe I could lie and pretend I didn’t know there was film in the camera? That didn’t feel right.
No. I’d tell her the truth.
I imported the print into my iMac and uploaded it to Photoshop. I killed a few glares in her eyes and upped the highlights on her cheeks and hair. Then I exported the photo to PNG and messaged it to myself.
I opened the photo on my phone and looked at her face.
Wow.
If a photographer saw her, they’d immediately think high fashion. Her sharp cheekbones were prominent, her brows straight and strong. The geometry of her bones set against the softness of her skin and wispy brown-blond hair was breathtaking. She was living, breath art.
I remembered how self-conscious she was. Maybe this photo could be a gift for her, something she could hold on to and refer back to, like an anchor to remind her that she was beautiful.
There was still a chance she’d be mad at me. But I didn’t have a choice.
The photo already had its hooks in me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MICK
A gray sedan with an Uber sticker on the windshield pulls up to the curb in front of the public pool. I’m not sure it’s Veronica until she rolls down the passenger’s side window. Her eyes are hidden behind large cat-eye sunglasses. “Hey, miss. You want a ride?”
“I’m not supposed to take rides from strangers.” The words sound flirtatious and bolder than anything I’d normally say.
She grins. “Get in, Jagger.”
I let myself into the coconut-scented interior and pull the door shut behind me. Veronica says, “This is Nico. Nico, this is Mick. Don’t be weird around her.”
Nico is a tall, lanky guy a little older than us. He’s handsome, with olive skin and a shock of dark hair that flops over one of his eyes. He turns to look at me, a brief but intense scan that makes my cheeks hot. “Hi, Mick.”
“Hi,” I reply shyly.
To Veronica, he says, “She’s too good for you. I can already tell.”
“I will cut your face off.”
He hisses out a little mocking laugh, and she smacks his deltoid. The way they are with each other reminds me of siblings.
I busy myself putting on my seat belt, and then I remember my manners. “Thank you for picking me up.”
“No problem.” He pulls out onto the street.
“What are you doing in La Mesa?” Veronica asks me.
“I just got off work. I lifeguard at a few different public pools.”
“Nice,” Nico says, and Veronica hits him again.
“So tell me about this art show,” I say, to get the conversation off me.
Veronica says, “It’s the opening of an exhibit by a group of installation artists. It should be super weird.”
“Eclectic,” Nico corrects her. “Avant-garde. Experimental.”
Veronica rolls her eyes at me. “The main artist suffers from delusions of grandeur.”
Nico snorts.
“Will it be … crowded?” I ask. “Like a party?”
“Yeah, but not like the party we were at. Much more fun.”
Oh God. I shouldn’t have come. I should have said no. I lace my fingers together and squeeze hard. The street is flying by out the window, headlights and lampposts and neon signs.
“Mick?” Veronica is turned around in her seat, face concerned. “You okay?”
Embarrassment. I force a smile that has to look like a grimace. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry. You hate parties. We can have Nico drop us off somewhere else.”
“No you can’t, you’re taking pictures, remember?” Nico says. He looks at me in the rearview mirror. “You don’t like parties, Mick?”
“I’m fine,” I protest, my face hot.
“She hates them,” Veronica says.
“It’s fine, please, honestly,” I say, desperate to get them talking about something else.
“I think hating parties is a sign of a healthy aversion to people,” Nico muses, eyes on the road again.
“Truth,” Veronica agrees. “People are terrible.”
“That’s why I married you.” Nico reaches out and messes with Veronica’s hair, and she ducks out from under his hand with a cry of protest.
“Wait,” I say. “You’re kidding, right? Married?”
Nico turns right onto a dark industrial street; we’re east of downtown, in an area I don’t know well.
Veronica grins over her shoulder. “No, we actually got married. In Vegas, by an Elvis impersonator, with Marilyn Monroe as my maid of honor, while my mom was out of town. It was magical.”
Are they … are they a couple? Wait.
Like Nico is reading my mind, he says, “We’re platonic. It was just something to do. We had a couple of fake IDs and wanted to do something more interesting with them than get drunk. Carpe diem and all that.”
“We did also get drunk, though,” Veronica says, and they laugh in unison.
Nico says, “You lost a hundred bucks on the slot machine in, like, five minutes! How is that even possible?”
“They manipulate you!” she cries. “It’s like you enter a fugue state!”
I interrupt them. “But wait, did your parents ever find out?”
They glance at each other. “I live on my own,” Nico says.
Veronica turns her body so she can sit sideways more comfortably. “I told my mom. I mean, she yelled at me about the dangers of driving to Las Vegas with all the drunk people. But we got married with fake IDs, so it’s not legal or anything.” She plays with my fingertips absentmindedly. It gives me chills. “I think I want a divorce,” she murmurs.
“My heart is broken,” Nico says.
“Whatever.” To me, Veronica says, “So you’re a lifeguard.” She gives me a grin and a lecherous eyebrow wiggle. “I want to come watch you guard lives. Can I?”
I can’t help but smile back. “You can watch me yell at children for peeing in the pool. I’m lifeguarding for a summer camp event tomorrow.”
“Wait. Back up. I’m stuck on the pee in the pool.”
“Urine is sterile,” Nico says helpfully.
“And there’s a lot of chlorine,” I add, which only etches Veronica’s comically exaggerated grimace deeper onto her face.
“We’ll be there,” Nico says.
“We?” Veronica wheels on him. “God, you’re such a—”
“I want to go swimming!”
“Ugh.” She folds her arms across her chest.
I laugh. “Nico can come.”
“She says I can come,” Nico tells Veronica, who replies, “I will smother you in your sleep.”
I feel relaxed now, their banter a current on which I’m drifti
ng. I smile out the window, and for once, my reflection looks happy.
And then I remember the fight with my mom, and the smile falls away. When I got home last night, she was asleep, and this morning I left for swim practice while she was still in her room. What am I going to tell her? I have no idea if she really is planning to empty out my savings account to get revenge for my not doing this modeling thing. If so, am I willing to throw all that money away just to make a point?
It’s completely dark when we pull into a parking lot across from a giant abandoned warehouse. I hesitate outside the car, not sure what kind of art show or party might be happening in a neighborhood like this. Even the streetlights are scary, flickering like they’re about to go out. Somewhere far away, sirens wail, echoing and then dying.
Veronica slams her door and turns to me. She’s wearing a tight black tank top, high-waisted jeans, and her camera around her neck. She points across the narrow, poorly lit street to the warehouse. “That’s where the show is.”
I don’t want to sound negative, but … “I don’t get it. It looks abandoned.”
“You’ll see.”
Nico waves at us. “You coming? Or did you want to stay out here and see if someone comes along to murder you?” To Veronica, he says, “Don’t get distracted and forget to take pictures.”
“I won’t.” She shows him her camera, clearly annoyed.
He pulls a bandanna out of his back pocket and ties it across his face, hiding his nose and mouth. Veronica takes my arm and leads me across the street.
I hesitate. She shoots me a questioning look, and I whisper, “Why did he cover his face?”
She smiles, waves it off, and pulls me along without answering. I feel like there’s some secret I’m not a part of, and it makes me even more nervous.
Nico knocks on a corrugated metal door that appears to have been rusted shut since before I was born. With great difficulty, it slides partway open, and a large man with long, stringy blond hair peers out. This man also wears a bandanna over the lower part of his face. A shaggy beard pokes out the bottom.
“To the ends of the earth and back,” Nico tells him, the words muffled through the bandanna.
These words must be a code, because the door opens all the way, squealing in protest. A wave of electronic music hits me, and the man ushers us in and closes the door behind us with a massive screech. Once we’re inside, Nico claps palms with him, a gesture of greeting, and Veronica lifts her camera to take a picture of the interior.
The warehouse has been transformed into a man-made forest, with a cloud of dry ice fog hovering over rolling, mossy earth. Trees are scattered around organically. It’s lit with black light, and everyone is a shadowy blue-and-black silhouette. Dance music pounds from unseen speakers.
I stand shocked. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. I feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate dimension.
“It’s an urban forest!” Veronica yells over the music. “They stole all of this.”
“They stole it? The trees? The rocks?”
She nods. Her eyes are wide and excited.
“How do you steal a tree?”
“Developers have been destroying this wildlife sanctuary, just leveling everything, so these artists stole the trees before they were demoed.” She slips her hand into mine. It’s warm and soft.
“So why are you, like, the designated photographer?”
“Oh.” She hesitates. “Nico’s a fan of these artists. I said I’d document this for him.” I feel like she’s hiding something, but we don’t know each other well enough for me to dig deeper.
We walk around, Veronica stopping to take photos. Some of the trees have fake flowers and fruit hanging from the branches, larger-than-life apples and lemons and oranges. Hundreds of people mingle around, dancing, smoking, drinking, making out. One group brought picnic blankets and is eating pizza while the music booms all around us.
The trees creep me out. I feel like they’re watching me. It’s sad, actually, this transplanted nature, these trees dying slowly in this forgotten warehouse. I tell Veronica, “I thought we were going to an art show. Are there sculptures or something in here?”
“It’s an installation. The forest is the artwork. They do what they call disruptive installation art. They’re super pretentious about it, but their work is actually really cool. They always do something with vandalism.”
“Who is they?”
A dark shadow bursts from the tree behind Veronica. Arms reach out and grab her. She screams. A hand claps to her mouth. I jump back, a scream clenched between my teeth. The hand drops from her mouth, and the shadow steps out from behind her. It’s Nico, laughing, white teeth gleaming in the black light. “Are you taking pictures? Or are you flirting with your pretty lifeguard?”
“Jesus, you dick, what the hell?” she cries, punching him in the stomach. My heart pounds, and I press a hand to my chest.
He cackles. “You’re so easy. It’s not even fun.” To me, he says, “What do you think, now that you’ve had a chance to look around?”
Heart still beating ferociously, I say, “Honestly? The trees make me sad.”
He cocks his head. “Interesting!” He steps closer to me. “The congressman who’s allowing them to destroy this wildlife sanctuary—have you heard of him? Greg Osgood?”
“I don’t really follow politics.”
“He’s a piece of shit. He—”
Veronica interrupts him. “Go away! Unless you want me to take pictures of your face right now.”
He covers his face with his hands. From behind them, he says, “Don’t forget to get shots of Lily. She’s doing a piece on the back wall.”
“Fine! Go!” Veronica shoves at him. He gives me one last searching look, like he’s trying to read my mind, and then he vanishes into the shadows. “Come on, let’s just do this before he comes back,” she says.
We walk through the trees into a clearing. The back wall of the warehouse looms above, reminding me how big a space this is. The girl in front of it is dwarfed by the wall she’s spray painting. She’s wearing jean shorts and a white tank top, and her clothes and skin are streaked with colored paint that glows bright in the black light. Her long dark hair is tied up in a high ponytail, and the lower half of her face is covered in a gas mask, the kind painters wear, with vents on the sides.
She’s creating a large mural on the metal wall. It’s an ocean scene, with a bridge stretching from an island to a mainland. It looks pixelated, like it’s made of dots. I puzzle over that until I see the round stencil in her gloved hands; she’s using it to create the entire image with sprayed-on circles in different colors.
One large stretch of wall is unpainted. A projector set up in front of it is flashing stylized words and images onto the metal.
Tomorrow we commence a four-part series, it says, followed by pictures of what must be the wildlife sanctuary, a peacefullooking stretch of swampland and woods.
Part One: Shame.
The world will know your name and avert its eyes.
An image of a man in his fifties, dressed in a suit and tie, waving to a crowd.
Part Two: Ring of Fire.
The forest will rise up and march against you.
An image of a sweeping grove of eucalyptus trees.
Part Three: Buried Alive.
The earth itself is your judge and jury.
An image of a mud-soaked marsh, the kind that occupies large expanses of land on the coastline north of San Diego.
Part Four: Fishing for People.
The ocean takes back what is hers.
An image of Coronado Island.
A flash of black and white, and the slideshow starts over. Tomorrow we commence a four-part series …
“Whoa,” I hear myself say.
Veronica’s camera is clicking away. She moves around Lily, getting different angles. Lily notices her and waves. Her eyes crinkle above the mask, and they exchange words I can’t hear. Veronica waves me over, and I tear my
eyes away from the words and images flashing on the wall to join them.
“This is Mick,” Veronica tells the girl. “She loves this piece you’re working on.”
Lily pulls the mask off and looks me up and down. She’s Asian, with high cheekbones and a wide, expressive mouth. “You seem wholesome.”
“Oh.” I’m not sure how to respond to that.
She says to Veronica, “Play nice with this one,” and returns the mask to her face. She resumes painting. I’m hurt. It’s like she read the insecurities in my mind and said them out loud.
Veronica returns to me. “I’m sorry. Lily is … She’s just like that. You okay?”
I nod, not wanting to let on how uncomfortable I feel.
“Want to go sit down?”
“Sure.”
We wind back through the forest, away from Lily’s painting, and Veronica points to a tree on a little hill. I follow her and sit down on the soft, cool, mossy ground beside her. I ask, “Is this illegal? The whole setup, the installation, the party? The series they’re talking about?” I point to the wall, where the images and words continue to rotate, an endless loop.
“Uh, yeah. If these guys ever got caught, they’d do jail time.” She lounges beside me. “Are you okay? You want to leave?”
“I’m fine.” Trying to forget Lily’s words, I reach out and take her hand. “Thanks for inviting me out tonight. I wasn’t sure if it was too soon to call you.”
She grins. “I was supposed to wait a few days, wasn’t I?”
“No.” My eyes fix on the warehouse ceiling high above, and I point at it. “They put stars on the ceiling.”
She throws her head back to look. Pinpoint constellations glitter across the fake night sky, which is just the inside of the warehouse roof, painted black.
She turns so she’s facing me. “I have a confession to make.”
“What?”
She laces her fingers through mine and squeezes. “So … the train photo.”
My face burns remembering it. The feeling of the camera on me, knowing there was no film in it, had been scary but exciting, and there was something edgy and sexy about Veronica studying me through the lens.
“Um…” She hesitates, like she doesn’t know how to continue.