Taco’clock really was a thing, and it was magic. It brought my true loves back to me. We sat on lawn chairs provided by the Happies, as the Happies prepared a final parade down Main Street to close out the night. Some of them were collecting sand and loose piñata ribbons as final keepsakes of the theme park land, while others sorted through candy bags, deciding which ones to throw to whoever stayed long enough for their parade.
“I’m sorry I bailed on you guys before we could talk it out more,” I said. “I’m sorry for every single thing I did that made you mad and please let’s not end this night still mad at each other. You guys are everything to me.”
We attached hands in our semicircle, and squeezed. Hard. This would be the last one for a very long time.
“I’m sorry I freaked on both of you about leaving for Africa….” Fletch loosened her hand from mine to look at the time on her phone. “Shit, in just a few hours. I gotta get home.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about my Vegas plans earlier,” said Mercedes.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Genesis said.
Mercedes said, “I’m not sorry about the Jake thing. That was fully reprehensible of both of you.”
“You slept with my brother!” I reminded her.
“But he’s not a jerk,” said Mercedes. She gave us a look of disgust. “I thought you two would have better taste than to go for the obvious, shallow choice. I love Jake, but I would never want to see him dating one of my friends. Because he’s kind of an asshole.”
I gulped. “Um…announcement. I sort of have a thing for your other brother now?”
To my surprise, Mercedes clapped her hands in delight. “Zeke’s had a crush on you since forever. I never said anything because he swore me to secrecy.”
“Zeke? Really?” Fletch scrunched her face in disbelief, and then, as her brain processed the math, her mouth relaxed into a smile and she nodded. “That could work. Yeah. Yeah!”
“You let me think he was gay!” I said to Mercedes.
“No, you let yourself think that,” she said. “He said he wanted you to figure it out yourself and he made me promise not to tell.” She paused, and gave me the evil eye. “By the way, if you hurt him, I will hunt you down and kill you.”
I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. “I know!” I sobbed.
“It’s okay!” said Fletch, tackling me into a hug. “Lots of girls don’t realize a guy is straight.”
“That’s not why I’m crying! I just love you both so much and I can’t believe you’re both going to leave me here all alone.”
“But you’re going to San Francisco,” said Fletch.
“Maybe she’s not anymore?” said Mercedes.
Maybe she was right. I was definitely reconsidering. That girl always knew me best.
“Wow,” said Fletch. She reached into my open bag and pulled out that damned napkin-wrapped food I’d been looking for all night! “Here, have a brownie. You’ve earned it.”
That other girl also knew me best.
I unwrapped the napkin, but before I took a bite into delicious, I thought of all the surprising treats Rancho had to offer. Taco’clock. My weird and sweet brother. Tunics of Virility. My classmates who weren’t skipping town and who’d be fun to hang out with more. Happies—not just the place, which would be gone, but the sash-loving, obsessive, admittedly dear people.
Zeke!
There was a lot to stay for in my nowhere desert town.
It was finally a proper party and not a random collection of craziness.
The majority of Happies and classmates still left in the park—or who hadn’t passed out somewhere in the park—had congregated on the grounds near the Mexican Seoul truck at the entrance to Pinata Village. The truck was officially out of food, so Selena and Jon joined the girls and me as we sat on low-to-the-ground folding beach chairs that the Happies caravans had brought in.
There weren’t extra chairs, so Slick and I gave the parents ours, and we sat on the ground at their feet. Someone had made light fixtures out of tin cans with hammer holes in them, and then placed lit votive candles inside the cans, giving the effect of more starry lights in our dark campgrounds. Those Happies knew how to hack the hell out of basic gear bought in a whirlwind Home Depot expedition. The effect was enchanting. Nobody should kill all Happies. Somebody ought to give them their own damn cable TV show.
“Foot massage, Mommy?” Slick asked Selena.
“Yes, please. God, yes. So tired,” said Selena.
Fletch said to me, “I’m not offering you and your barf feet a massage. Just to be clear.”
“I love you, too,” I told her.
As Slick massaged her mom’s feet, Selena burst into tears. “Did I hurt you?” Slick asked.
“No,” Selena sobbed. “It’s just…two of my babies are leaving the nest.”
“You kicked one of them out tonight,” Slick pointed out. “You could take that back.”
Jon said, “Sorry to say, but it needed to happen. Long overdue.”
“Vic might stay in Rancho a little longer,” Fletch told the Z-K parents.
“Thank God,” said Selena. “She owes me a shit-ton of beer money and I don’t think she should be allowed to leave our block till she’s paid off that debt.”
“Plus, Town Council meetings would be so boring without her,” said Jon.
Selena waved her hand at me like she was the Queen of England. She imitated my overconfident voice as she proclaimed, “So many admirers, I don’t know what to do with all the love.”
Something about that hand wave sparked Mega-Joan, who was sitting close enough not to need to invoke the power of the megaphone. She called out, “Now I know why you look so familiar. You’re Selena Zavala! Third runner-up in the last Miss Happies pageant ever!”
“You were a Miss Happie contestant?” Slick shrieked to her mom. “How did you never tell us that before?” She looked accusingly at her dad. “And why have we never seen photographic evidence?”
“It was a dare,” Selena said. “From that guy.” She pointed at Jon. “The guy who knocked me up and caused me to have the slightly protruding belly that cost me the bikini competition. Then after I had kids, I worried it was a bad feminist message. Mom in an objectifying pageant because a hot guy challenged her to enter the contest. So I never mentioned it.”
“There are pictures though, somewhere?” Fletch asked hopefully.
Mega-Joan said, “I’ll have ’em posted online by tomorrow afternoon.” She tossed an empty water bottle and a black Sharpie pen to Selena. “Sign this for me?”
“Sure,” said Selena, laughing.
Fletch stood up and addressed the group with her regal valedictorian stance. “I have a question for all you guys who remember the old Happies. I know why I loved it. Why did you?”
Delroy Cowpoke seemed to appear out of nowhere, and he sat himself in the middle of our circle like he was Santa Claus addressing the elves.
“Happies was for everybody,” he said.
“A ghetto Disney,” said a biker man wearing a Hawaiian shirt that anyone would recognize from the cover of last year’s Tunics of Virility Christmas catalog, modeled by Jon Z-K. “I came from the barrio. Rough neighborhood. Poor. Looked down on by outsiders. But we were always welcomed here like we were old family friends.”
“It worked because it didn’t,” said Delroy. “Happies was too small, too weird, in an inefficient, hot-as-hell location. But that ice cream!”
“Those piñatas!” said Mega-Joan. “Too much of a good thing made it great!”
The piñata relics—literally thousands of colorful ribbons strewn on the ground everywhere—validated her memory. I wish I’d been there to see it when it was a whole village of piñatas hanging from every tree branch. I wish I’d been there to enjoy so much candy inside the piñatas.
Could the Dunk’s brownie I’d just ingested be that quickly hallucinogenic? Because immediately after swallowing the last bite, I thought I saw a ligh
tning bolt flash in the sky. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “Did I just see what I thought I saw?”
Another white light cracked in the sky. I knew by the surprised gasps in the crowd that it was real and not just the brownie.
But this was nearly summer. In the desert. During a drought. Impossible.
“The ghosts of Rancho Soldado have come calling,” said Selena. “They wouldn’t let the last night at Happies go by without letting us know they were up there partying, too. And mad as hell about what’s going to happen to this sacred land.”
I had utter respect for the ghosts of Rancho Soldado, but I really would have appreciated them holding off on the lightning until after the park grounds were cleared out. I’d been putting out minor fires all night and was finally able to enjoy myself. A lightning strike now would be highly inconvenient, about the worst fire hazard this park could have in its final hours, except for fireworks.
And then there were fireworks.
Pop! Pop! Pop! The sparklers exploded high into the sky from Main Street in bursts of gold, silver, blues, and reds.
“Looks like your new boyfriend is ready to fire up the band!” Slick told me.
“Huh?” I said. I’d had boys but never an actual boyfriend. The thought that Zeke could be my first was crazy. Possibly amazing.
“Zeke never starts a show without fireworks,” said Jon.
“God help us,” said Selena, doing the sign of the cross over her chest.
Zeke and I had only just kissed, and already I wanted to throttle my new maybe boyfriend.
The Chug Bug destruction had been a teaser. This town had an ancient curse hanging over it, and I knew those ghosts wouldn’t let the night end without them giving my party a last epic blaze.
I just hadn’t expected the fires would come from Zeke.
When the fireworks erupted, it was impossible for the party not to shift to where they’d come from.
The crowds gathered by the Mexican Seoul truck made the quick walk over to Main Street. I cursed Zeke under my breath as I charged toward the new party center with everyone else.
“Don’t worry so hard, General Nav,” said Slick as we reached Main. “The guys are experienced firecracker launchers. Except for that one time at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Hispanic Heritage block party.”
“What happened?”
“You don’t want to know,” said Slick, making the sign of the cross over her chest.
Their fireworks preshow complete, the musical sounds of Los Yunkeros commenced. A punk-Mexified version of a very appropriate song opened the show. Trumpet, violin, and Zeke’s voice, singing, “Well we got no choice / All the girls and boys.”
It seemed like everyone in the park (that wasn’t rightfully locked up, sorry Miss Ann Thrope) had found their way to this spot, and they picked up the next battle cry along with Zeke. “Makin’ all that noise / ’Cause they found new toys.”
The girls and I sang along as we reached the “stage” where Los Yunkeros played, on wood shipping pallets stacked three-high that they must have found in the back of the restaurant. Los Yunkeros wore mariachi outfits, but theirs leaned more to late ’70s disco, with purple bell-bottom polyester pants lined with gold brocade on the sides, frilly purple pirate shirts rimmed in gold collars and gold buttons, and purple and gold handkerchiefs around their necks. There was Zeke on vihuela guitar, his buddy Tommy on trumpet, and their other buddy Humberto on violin.
And then there were even more intense lightning bolts, now with added thunder rumbles, to accompany the band. Everyone sang out, “School’s out for summer / School’s out forever!”
I was a little bit baked and so hot, tired, and fired up, that I screamed along with everyone else like Los Yunkeros were the Beatles at Shea Stadium during the Paleolithic rock ‘n’ roll era. The sky demanded the screams. Lightning strikes were acts of God, and God knows there was nothing I could do to stop them anymore.
As Los Yunkeros performed, a group of my classmates hauled a new creation into the middle of the mosh pit that had formed in front of the makeshift stage. From a distance, it looked like it could be a pharaoh’s head on an Egyptian pyramid. Up close, it was a more locally sourced piece of art: an effigy of Miss Ann Thrope, made with materials that could not have been more flammable. The effigy was led forth by the arty and rad contingents of Rancho Soldado’s High School graduating class, who carried her over with the mischievous irony of a Cersei-level walk of shame. The artists must have disassembled the Tiki Hut in the Lovers Lane mini-golf course to make her, because her armless torso was crafted with bamboo sticks that could only have come from there. The sticks were fastened together with pieces of desert creosote bush. Her face was their masterwork. Her ears were the driver’s and passenger’s side mirrors from the Chug Bug, and her eyes were a collection of beer bottle caps formed in circular shapes above her nose, made from the VW bus’s relic gear stick shift. From the smell, I judged her hair to have been made with sagebrush scrub that had been spray-painted yellow; it was the same paint color that was used to graffiti a slogan across her bamboo-and-creosote chest: Not Maybe. Will.
“Should we burn her?” Leticia Johnson called out.
“Not maybe! Will!” my classmates in the crowd shouted.
The Happies, who could not have known Thrope’s catchphrase for detention and failing grade warnings, joined in anyway for the next wave of chanting.
“Burning Wo-man! Burning Wo-man!”
Zeke lifted the mike to his mouth—a mouth I wanted to reconnect with at the first available opportunity—and his eyes found me in the audience. I don’t know how they did it, but Los Yunkeros managed to keep performing, vibing off the crowd’s energy, getting sweatier, louder, more intense with each note. They didn’t pause between songs, but jumped right into the next one, as the crowd cheered the opening notes of a familiar and favorite song, and then Zeke crooned directly at me: “I never meant to cause you any sorrow / I never meant to cause you any pain.”
The crowd roared its approval. Not only did Los Yunkeros not suck, they were on fire! I wanted to add to it.
I only wanted one time to see you laughing.
That meant me, too!
Suddenly, with no forewarning, I was lifted onto the shoulders of Olivier Farkas. I yelped in surprise, and fear, and had to grab onto Olivier’s hair to keep my balance. “What are you doing, Olivier?” I demanded.
He didn’t answer, but walked me right next to the probably ten-foot-high effigy. Troy Ferguson threw a grill lighter up into the air for me to catch. “The class has elected you to do the honors!” Troy shouted over the music and the crowd’s cheers.
Zeke sang, “I only want to see you / Underneath the purple rain,” and it was like he was telling me the fire would be okay. I thought of how many more fires our future kisses would stoke.
I thought of staying in Rancho when Bev and Happies restaurant were no longer here and that unrepentant fuckwad Thrope was mayor. I thought of all the petty detentions, misdemeanors, and bad grades Thrope had foisted on her students—in particular the Navarro kids. I thought of all the Town Council meetings she’d obstructed—particularly the one where I’d laid out my soul into a damn good plan for revitalizing my town instead of driving it to become a wastoid epicenter of scheming corporate profit. I thought of how no matter how hard you try to do the right thing, to be good and fair and decent, it often didn’t matter against so much of the suck in the world. I thought of how dry that brownie had been, but damn had it moistened my ambition for anarchy.
“Catch!” Jason Dunker called to me. “Leftovers! Comped, for you.” With my free hand, I caught a small brown baby ’shroom.
Fuck fire safety.
It was like a movie in slo-mo where my mind warned nooooooo…
But my heart said yesssssssss.
I bit.
I lit.
I was crooned awake. I can’t leave you alone / You got me feenin’! My eyes reluctantly blinked open, and I looked around, but saw no Zeke si
nging to me. My heart fell. His was the face I wanted to see first thing in the morning. But I did see my phone on the ground, next to me, lit up with a call from Zeke, who’d apparently also set a new ringtone for me. I couldn’t reach the phone, being that one of my hands was handcuffed to Miss Ann Thrope, and the other to a jail cell bar. And my head was kinda killing me.
What. The. Fuck?
The call ended, and then a text appeared from Zeke: I’ll swing by to pick you up in an hour. Mercedes sent me to drop off Fletch at her house so she can make her flight. Shake it off, Z
Thrope groaned next to me. Rewind. I was handcuffed to Thrope! High holy hell!
Slowly it was coming back to me. Before the concert had broken out, Jason Dunker had been sent to give the prisoner a slice of magic mushroom pizza. One of the last moments I remembered was him saying Thrope had only eaten a few bites of her prison food—enough to down just part of her magic snack. The Dunk didn’t want to see the magic go to waste, so he salvaged the mushroom bit leftover, and saved it for later, when he tossed it up to me as I was about to light the Thrope effigy on fire. The Dunk thought Thrope and me sharing from the same ’shroom was “poetic justice.”
Now, as my eyes came more into focus in the daylight, I saw Slick and Chester sitting on the ground on Main Street, a few feet away from the UnHappies Jail. They saw me stir. “Good morning, precious,” Slick called to me.
“What the…” I started to say.
Slick came over and held her phone up on the other side of the jail bars for me to see. “It’s too much to explain,” she said. “Here, just watch the supercut.”
“It’s already gotten five hundred eighteen views on YouTube,” said Chester.
Over the song “Purple Rain,” there was me, dancing around the Burning Wo-Man. Topless. Not braless, thankfully.
I reached my free hand to touch my chest and looked down. My red bra was still on. My shirt was not.
“You’re gonna miss the best part!” said Slick.
I returned my gaze to her phone. There was the sudden swell of rain that Zeke’s song, and the ghosts of Rancho Soldado, miraculously provided. There was me, rolling around in the moist, charred embers of the effigy.