Mosquitoland

  So eff it.

  I’m going to sit. Right here, and only for a minute.

  I pull my knees up, rest my forehead between them, and stare at the ground. The cracks on the pavement come together in the shape of a rabbit. The twitchy nose, the long feet, the fluffy tail, it’s all there.

  How strange.

  16

  White Rabbit

  “MIM, WHY DON’T you have a seat?”

  “Why don’t you drop dead?”

  “Mary, sit. Your mothe—Kathy and I have something to tell you.”

  “Oh my shit, Dad. Really?”

  “God, Mim, language.”

  “That woman is not my mother. And I’m not Mary, not to you.”

  “We have news, would you like to hear it, or not?”

  “Hey, hey, I’m Walt.”

  I jolt awake.

  The rabbit is still there, but a different shade. I rub my eyes as a blurry pair of green Converse comes into focus.

  “Hey, hey, I’m Walt.”

  On either side of the highway, the shadows of the trees are longer; traffic is heavier, slower. Rush hour. I curse, stand up, and brush the street off my jeans. My bandaged leg is throbbing from the awkward position of my impromptu nap.

  “Hey, hey, I’m Walt.”

  The owner of the Chucks is about my height, my age, and for all I know, he’s been standing here introducing himself all afternoon. His hair, poking out beneath an old Chicago Cubs baseball cap, isn’t so much long as it is scraggly and stringy, like a stray mutt’s. He’s holding a Rubik’s Cube in one hand and an almost-empty twenty-ounce Mountain Dew in the other. Before I can introduce myself, he throws his head back and chugs the last of the soda. With authority.

  My smile takes on a life of its own. “Hey, Walt. I’m Mim.”

  Nodding, he holds out a dewy hand. I shake it—and suddenly, space and time shift. It’s the summer before third grade. A new family has just moved in across the street. They have a boy, Ricky, about my age. We have the same bike, a kick-ass neon Schwinn—qualification enough to become fast friends. His speech is slurred and his mind slow, but he walks fast. Every step is intentional, quick-footed, as if he’s always late for something. We hang out that whole summer. And things are good. And then school starts. Ty Zarnstorff, in front of everyone on the playground, says, “Hey, Mim, if you love Ricky the Retard so much, why don’t you marry him?” Everyone laughs. I’m not sure why, but I know enough to know it’s not nice. So I punch Ty, breaking his nose and earning a one-day suspension. That night at dinner, I ask Mom what retarded means, and if Ricky is a retard. She says, “Retard is a mean word used by mean people. Ricky has what is called Down syndrome, and all it means is that he’s a little slower than most.” A few minutes later, Dad goes to the bathroom. Mom takes a bite, clears her throat. “There are worse fates than being slow-witted,” she says. “You broke that other kid’s nose, right? The one who made fun of Ricky?” I say, “Yes ma’am, I did.” “Good,” she says, taking another bite.

  “Hey, hey, you okay?”

  I am pulled back to reality by a kid currently stuffing the pocket of his jeans with an empty Mountain Dew bottle. Exactly the sort of thing Ricky might do.

  “You do the Dew, Walt?”

  He laughs a laugh for the ages, and my young heart damn near melts all over the side of the road.

  “What are you doing?” he asks, shifting focus to his Rubik’s Cube.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean—what. Are. You. Doing?”

  I might just never stop smiling. “Well, I’m . . . taking an accidental nap under a highway overpass, I guess.”

  “No,” he says, hell-bent on solving the cube. “I mean as a part of big things.”

  Walt’s statement is vague at best, gibberish at worst. But here’s the thing: I understand exactly what he means.

  “I’m trying to get to Cleveland,” I say. It’s not a lie, but it certainly doesn’t answer the spirit of the question. “By Labor Day, if possible.”

  “Why?”

  Traffic is pretty much at a standstill under this bridge. If I’m gonna do this, now’s the time. I begin sizing up drivers for the best prospective ride, by which I mean, someone who doesn’t look like an ax murderer.

  “Reasons are hard, man.”

  “Why?” he asks again.

  I hate leaving this kid by the side of the road, but surely he has someone with him. “Walt, are you with a friend, or . . . your mom, or something?”

  “No. She’s with the white pillows. In the casket.”

  I turn toward him. He looks serious enough.

  “Hey, look,” he says, holding up his Rubik’s Cube, now complete. “All done. Done good. Good and done.”

  “Walt—where do you live?”

  He throws his head back, messes up the cube, as if he doesn’t trust himself not to peek. “New Chicago,” he says. “Do you like shiny things? I have lots of shiny there. And a pool.” He looks me up and down. “You’re a pretty dirty person right now. You could use a pool. Also, there’s ham.”

  I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am 100 percent intrigued.

  “You wanna come with me?” asks Walt.

  I push my bangs out of my eyes and slide my backpack on. Mere feet away, traffic inches along, luring me with a steady hum of engines. “I don’t think I can, buddy. I’d like to, but—”

  Without a word, the kid tears up, turns, and walks away.

  Watching him go, I can’t explain the why, but I know the what—I feel like a sack of shit.

  A Subaru (with a plastic bubble attached to the top like a giant fanny pack) rolls to a stop in the traffic; its passenger-side window rolls down.

  “You need a ride?”

  Inside, a nice-looking woman checks her rearview mirror, then smiles at me. Her son, presumably, sits in the back seat, engrossed in some handheld video game.

  “Traffic’s starting to move, hon,” she says. “In or out.”

  I open the passenger door and hop in. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.” She lets her foot off the brake, and creeps slowly through the heavy traffic.

  We pass a derelict white building on the right. Off-white, really. The offest white there ever was.

  “You traveling for Labor Day?” she asks.

  I set my JanSport between my feet. “Something like that.”

  “You and everybody else.” She points through the windshield. “Long weekends, people really come out of the woodwork, you know?”

  I nod politely. From the back seat, her kid grunts, mutters something about how dying is lame. I’ll assume he means a video-game death.

  “So,” she says, “where’re you from?”

  “Cleveland,” I answer, wondering how many questions this ride is going to cost. I reach into my pocket for the comfort of my war paint.

  “Nice town. We love Cleveland, don’t we, Charles?” She continues talking, but I’m no longer listening.

  I am no longer anything at all.

  The lipstick is gone.

  “. . . to an Indians game for his father’s birthday. Didn’t you, Charles?”

  I reach down, unzip my bag—the box, the coffee can, a water bottle, shirts and socks . . . no lipstick. “Pull over,” I mutter.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Where did I see it last? I definitely had it when I left the bus. I had it when that stupid girl offered me cigarettes. I had it . . . in my hands when I fell asleep. “Can you pull over, please? I have to get out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Let it be under the bridge. “Yes, I’m sure. Pull over.”

  The woman, forever nameless, pulls the Subaru to the side of the highway. I grab my bag, give a halfhearted “Thanks,” and hoof it back to the bridge.

  Please let it be th
ere.

  Due to the crawling traffic, we’d only gone about a hundred yards or so. I arrive under the bridge breathless and search every square inch near the spot where I’d fallen asleep. To make up for my lack of vision, I quadruple-check, but it’s no use. The lipstick isn’t here. I stare at the ground, unable to move, unable to think, just . . . thoroughly not able. And just as this reality sets in—of arriving at my mother’s sickbed without one of my primary Reasons—I see it.

  Not the lipstick.

  Kneeling, I rub the cracks in the pavement: the nose, the tail, the feet . . . such a specific shape, my Pavement Rabbit.

  Do you like shiny things? I have lots of shiny there.

  I see an image on the horizon: every step is intentional, quick-footed, as if it’s late for something.

  I put my head down and sprint.

  “DO YOU LIKE the Cubs?” asks Walt.

  All inquiries related to the lost lipstick have been stonewalled with questions like this. Do I like the color yellow? Do I like sausage? Do I like dinosaurs? It’s a preference marathon, and I’m slowly wearing down.

  “I don’t know, Walt. Sure.”

  Sports is a thing, and I recognize that—but it is not my thing. Football, basketball, soccer, and yes, hockey, all seem beyond pointless. Baseball, however, I get. Or at least, I don’t not get. Back before the BREAKING NEWS, it was one of the few things Mom and Dad and I all enjoyed. Something about the narrative of the sport, I think, is what we found appealing: the unique personality of each player and team; the intricate strategies based on who’s at bat, who’s on base, and who’s pitching; the minutiae, the inches, the history. Plus, it’s relaxing. Three hours a day on a well-manicured field—I guess my family idealized that kind of idle recreation, as we rarely encountered anything like it within our own home. I never had a favorite team, but I know enough about baseball to know that the Cubs have pretty much the worst luck of any team in all of professional sports. Like, in the history of History, no team has ever been as unlucky as the Chicago Cubs.

  “You wanna go to a game?” asks Walt, a look of pure excitement on his face. “We should eat first, but then we could go to a game. If we can get tickets.” He raises his index finger in the air like he’s had a profound idea. “We have to have tickets, though. Tickets.”

  As the hour passes, traffic thins to an occasional car or semi careening into the sinking sun. We follow in kind, on the margins of the highway, the oddest of couples.

  “So, Walt—I wouldn’t be mad or anything, you know? If you took the lipstick. I just need it back. It’s really important.”

  “The shiny lipstick?” he says.

  I glance sideways at him, wondering if he knows he just gave himself away. “Yeah, Walt. It’s got some shiny on it.”

  He nods. “No, I don’t have it.”

  Just as I wonder what it would take to physically search the kid, he hops over the nearby guardrail and disappears into the adjacent woods. “This way, Mim!”

  Back under the bridge, for just a moment, the option to continue my trip sans war paint had been just that—an option. But no longer. The thought of moving on without it, when I know exactly where it is . . .

  Ahead, the pink sun becomes a dingy crimson, and soon, it will fade entirely. I sigh and turn back toward the shadowy woods. “Curiouser and curiouser,” I whisper. And with the daring temperament of Alice herself, I climb the guardrail and follow my white rabbit into the trees.

  17

  Firework Thoughts

  A DIALOGUE OF dead leaves underfoot; our social cues, like twiggy trees kaput. This conversation of a wood at night; so different from a highway during light.

  Stop thinking in fucking iambic pentameter, Malone.

  I follow Walt, the peculiar wayfarer, uphill. After twenty minutes or so, the ground begins to level a bit. Five minutes later, the trees diminish, and I suddenly understand a lot more about the kid’s situation.

  In the middle of a circular clearing, a ragged blue tent stands like an emphysema patient; its withering canvas is bent, torn, faded, and ripped. Beside a dead campfire, a cornucopia of pots and pans pours out of an overturned milk crate. Wet T-shirts dangle from bony branches around the edges of the clearing advertising roofing companies, church soccer leagues, and obscure rock bands.

  A shallow pit full of feces permeates the clearing from ten yards away. I don’t know whether I’m relieved or terrified by the box of toilet paper next to it.

  Never, I think, raising my shirt collar up over my nose. Not in a million years. Literally, one million. I would hold it for a million years.

  “It’s my land, New Chicago,” says Walt, disappearing inside his tent.

  Putting some distance between the shit pit and myself, I climb atop a boulder the size of a Smart Car. What with my depth perception, it takes a few tries, but I manage eventually. Far below, the occasional flickering headlight is the only sign of human life. It certainly feels isolated up here, like some post-apocalyptic zombie movie. Through the thinning fall trees, I squint my good eye until the headlights blur into luminous stars, cosmic proof of the outside world; it spins and spins, ignorant of more than just this kid’s mountaintop campsite—it’s ignorant of the kid himself. I know this is true, because the Subaru lady didn’t stop for Walt. She stopped for me.

  “Ready to swim?”

  Walt looks up at me with wide-eyed enthusiasm. He’s shirtless now, holding a flashlight and sporting a pair of cutoff daisy dukes. The Cubs hat and the green Chucks he’s still wearing, as well as that infectious smile that sets my heart aflame. It’s the same smile my dad and I used when we made waffles, only Walt’s is magnified somehow, like I-don’t-know-what . . . the Belgian waffle version or something.

  “Here,” he says, offering a wad of denim. “My backup pair.”

  Hopping down from the boulder, I take the shorts and hold them out in front of me. They’re a little wide in the waist, and far shorter than any shorts I’ve ever worn.

  Walt throws his finger in the air, spins on his heels. “This way to my pool!”

  He stomps through the woods, bare-chested, peach-fuzzed, and pale-thighed, laughing his ass off, throwing that index finger in the air, and I have to give it to him—this kid has absolutely nothing in the world to call his own, and look how happy he is. No family? No friends? No home? No sweat. Hey, hey, he’s Walt, and he’s alive, and that’s enough. In light of his situation, my problems suddenly seem brazenly adolescent. Like a spoiled child crossing her arms and demanding some expensive new toy.

  I follow him to the other side of the shit pit, where a murky lake awaits. Walt props the flashlight against a rock, then throws his arms open, as if—ta-da!—presenting a vaudeville show. The water is beyond brown. It reminds me of the rusty-shat fluids that poured from my old Greyhound like a hose. Dysenteric concerns aside, I wonder who actually owns this land. If some deadly Amazonian bacterial disease doesn’t get me, a bullet courtesy of the land’s proper owner might.

  I open my mouth to say, Sorry, buddy, you’re on your own. Yet somehow, the words that come out are “Gimme a minute.”

  I step behind a tree and quickly pull off my hoodie, shoes, socks, and jeans. WT-fucking-F, Malone. This is nuts, and I know that, but for some reason, I can’t stop laughing. I don’t know what it is, but slipping on the hoochie-mama shorts, I almost fall over due to uncontrollable laughter. I step out from behind the tree to find Walt in the middle of the lake, splashing himself in the face, acting like a goofball.

  “What happened to your leg?” he asks, suddenly looking very concerned.

  “I was in a bus accident,” I say, still giggling. “But I’m okay.”

  “The bus had an accident?” he asks, climbing up onto the opposite bank.

  “It flipped on the highway. But I’m fine, really. Just a scratch.”

  Walt, apparently satisfied, backs
up a few paces and throws his finger in the air. “This is how you do it, okay, Mim? Like this, watch.” He charges the lake with the ferocity of a Civil War captain leading his men into combat. But also—and if possible, more so—like a lanky five-year-old who just discovered what his arms and legs are for. It’s awkward, fumbly, and beyond beautiful. A few yards from the water’s edge, he trips over his own feet and rolls haphazardly into the lake. His head pops up out of the water like an apple. “Ha-ha! Did you see that, Mim? That was pretty good, huh? Okay. Your turn.”

  I take a few steps back—wondering if there’s anything I wouldn’t do for this kid right now, even if he did steal my war paint—and hurl myself into the murky depths. The water is surprisingly refreshing, inside and out; after all that smiling and laughing, my mouth hurts, but I don’t care, because I’m here with Walt, enjoying the Young Fun Now.

  Mom would love this kid.

  After a brief splash-fight with Walt (because duh), I float on my back, letting the lake seep between my fingers and toes. The moon is young, but bright, and for a moment, I stare at it with my good eye.

  “You’re going to help your mom,” Walt whispers. It’s not a question. He’s floating about ten feet away, looking right at me through the dusky light—it’s not creepy or anything, just intense. Ricky used to do the same thing.

  “How do you know that, Walt?”

  He dips his head under the water, leaving me in complete suspense. After resurfacing, he wipes his eyes and smiles at me. “I heard you. While you were asleep. Under the bridge.”

  Great.

  “What else did I say?”