“Well, good. Because I’m crazy about you, too.”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement on this issue,” he says, grinning.
I look out the window and finally realize where we are—in West Oakland, by the bridge. We drive past liquor stores and the BART station and into the part of town where no people live, where the streets are empty except for a few parked semi-truck cabs without trailers. We pass a busted RV that looks like it’s being held together with duct tape, light peeking through the cardboard covering the windows, hinting at life inside. Besides that, there are no people anywhere.
“God, it’s creepy down here at night,” I say.
“I like it,” Marcus says. “It’s peaceful.”
“It’s scary,” I say. “Wait, why are you slowing down?”
“We’re here,” he says. We’re the only car parked on the street except for a burned-out skeleton without wheels several yards away.
“Where? This is nowhere.”
“It doesn’t look familiar?”
“Well, yeah, it looks familiar. We’re by the bridge.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m confused.”
“Just trust me.” He pecks me on the cheek, then gets out and pulls a big hiking backpack out of the back of the car. He opens my door and offers me his hand. “Madam?”
“Are we going hiking?”
“Yep,” he says, and starts walking. I lock my door and follow him toward the bridge.
After a few minutes, we turn left down the road that goes to the parking lot for the Bay Bridge Trail. A gate has been lowered to keep cars from entering, but we walk around it.
“Look familiar now?” Marcus says. He takes my hand and we walk in silence to the tunnel where we first met.
Luckily the lights inside the tunnel are working now. Otherwise, I don’t think I’d be brave enough to follow Marcus down the stairs, even with the big swig I take from the bottle of vodka he shares with me. The tunnel is illuminated with the sickly blue glow of fluorescent bulbs; I can hear them buzzing in the concrete silence.
“It’s weird there’s no homeless people here,” I say, hoping the sound of my own voice will make me less scared. “This would be a perfect place to sleep.”
“There are cameras everywhere,” Marcus says. “And cops come through here several times a night. If anyone tried to stay here, they’d get kicked out right away.”
“What’s keeping us from getting caught?”
He turns around and smiles. “Luck.”
After a few hundred yards, a set of stairs leads up to the administration building that sits on its own little island between the east- and westbound lanes of the freeway. We walk around the building as the late-night traffic buzzes by us. On the other side is another set of stairs that go down under the other half of the freeway. We enter another long white tunnel, but this one has a much lower ceiling and is lined by several small staircases going up. “That’s how the toll booth workers get to work,” Marcus says. The first staircase is labeled with a stenciled sign: lanes 1 & 2; the next is lanes 3 & 4, and so on. The sound of the freeway is much louder here than in the other tunnel. I hear the boom of a car stereo playing something in Spanish. It’s so weird to think people have to walk through here to get to work, then climb a set of stairs to pop out of the ground in the middle of a freeway and sit in a box breathing traffic fumes all day. But how different is any other life, really? Most people’s lives are spent in some kind of box. Most people’s lives are some kind of toxic.
I don’t know why, but it seems appropriate to stay silent, as if this is someplace worthy of reverence. It is so empty, so still. Unlike the rest of Oakland, which seems perpetually covered in a layer of crumpled brown paper bags and cigarette butts, it is strangely clean down here. It’s as if we discovered it, as if no other eye has seen it but ours.
We pass several sets of stairs until we get to the end of the tunnel and the very last staircase. The sign says bus stop. We climb the stairs to a tiny isolated platform on the edge of the freeway, overlooking all the tollbooths and lanes of traffic. An out of service sticker covers a faded ac transit sign.
“This is so weird,” I say. “Who would catch a bus here?”
“No one, apparently.”
“Now what?” I say. A short metal fence separates us from a darkness that I’m guessing is the Emeryville salt marsh. Radio or cell towers blink in the near distance. Unless we climb the fence, there’s nowhere to go but back.
“You know what to do,” Marcus says with a grin, setting his backpack down.
“What are you talking about?” But just as I say it, I know the answer. “Oh, hell no,” I say. “Are you crazy?”
“It’s a little fence. You don’t even have to climb. Just throw your leg over.”
“Yeah, but then it’s, like, eight feet to the ground.”
“That’s nothing. Aren’t you dying to know what’s on the other side?”
Whatever it is, it’s probably better than turning around and admitting defeat. It’s definitely better than going home.
“What is it with you and fences?” I say as my hand wraps around cold metal.
“I like to go places I’m not allowed.” He throws his backpack over the fence, then leaps after it, landing perfectly on two feet on the ground beneath me.
I take a deep breath and jump. I feel the foot of my good leg hit the ground, and for a second I think I made it, as gracefully as Marcus, but my other foot gets the timing wrong and I stumble. I lose my balance and fall to my hands and knees.
“Oh, shit!” Marcus yells. “Are you okay?”
I think for a second. I don’t know yet. There is something like pain, but I can’t quite locate it. It could be a scrape. It could be something worse.
Marcus’s hands are on me, checking, searching. “Evie, oh, Evie,” he says, his voice thick with worry.
“Ow,” I say, then I roll onto my ass and start laughing.
“Can you move your legs?” Marcus says.
I do a few slow kicks and nothing terrible happens, though my knees are sore from the landing and I will have bruises tomorrow for sure. My palms are coated in blood and gravel, but it looks way worse than it really is.
“Fuck,” Marcus says, holding my hands in his. “I’m such an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not that bad,” I say. “Nothing a little vodka can’t fix.” I wipe my hands off on my pants and stand up. Marcus pulls the bottle out of his bag and hands it to me. I take a big swig, then pour a little on my hands to disinfect, and the sting tells me I’m going to be okay.
“Will you ever forgive me?” Marcus says as he brushes me off. I pull him close and kiss him as my answer.
“I didn’t break you?” he says softly when we come up for air.
“Do I look broken to you?”
“You look beautiful.”
“So now what?”
“We’re almost there.” He hoists the backpack onto his shoulders and takes my hand. “Can you walk?” The ground feels stable; paved, even.
“Is this a road?” I say.
“Something like that, yeah.”
We start walking, the freeway raised on our left side. Then Marcus leads me to the right, and the road is replaced by a mixture of sand and rocks. The farther we get from the freeway, the more my eyes adjust to the darkness and I see the murky shapes of water lapping against a sandy beach, a border of driftwood and beach grass, then darkness over the marshlands for probably a mile until it reaches the solid ground of the city.
“What is this place?” I say.
“It’s our own private beach.”
He leads me to a spot at the other end of the beach, past where the light from the freeway ends. I turn around and see it sparkling in the distance, the fast lights of traffic and the majestic span of the Bay Bridge leading to the famous San Francisco skyline.
Marcus opens his backpack, takes out some blankets, and lays them over the rocky sand. He pulls some snac
ks out of a crumpled grocery bag.
“Have a seat, my love.” He hands me the vodka bottle. “Want to go camping with me?”
“What else did you bring?” is what comes out of my mouth. Not “Thank you.” Not “Wow.” Because the first thing I think is, What if the vodka is not enough?
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind,” I say. “This is wonderful. This is so romantic.” Then, “Did you bring your pipe? Want to smoke a bowl?”
“Sure,” he says, and I think I hear some sadness in his voice.
“Did you bring any of those mushrooms?”
“You shouldn’t do them too often. It can make you crazy.”
“But do you have any left?”
“No. We ate them all the other night.”
“We should do them again soon,” I say. “Hey, can you get some Ecstasy? I really want to try that.” What is wrong with me?
We sit in silence for a while. From here, the brightly lit bridge looks almost festive, like a carnival. A digital billboard switches advertisements every ten seconds. Our eyes are glued to it, like we’re in a living room, sitting on a couch and watching TV.
This night should be magical, but I haven’t let it.
Marcus hands me the pipe and lighter, and I take a huge toke. I hand it to him and make a silent promise to myself to be nicer. We pass the pipe back and forth a couple more times, then I take Marcus’s hand. We sit there like that for a while, watching the traffic on the bridge. Where are these people going so late on a Sunday night?
I wonder what my family is doing right now. They must have realized I’m gone by now. I could check my phone for messages. I could at least text them to let them know I’m okay. But I won’t. Let them worry. Let them know what it feels like to have me gone.
“Why don’t you ever talk about your life?” Marcus says, slicing the thick silence between us. “Tell me more about the cancer.”
“No,” I say. I hear the sharpness in my voice and I know he did too. I grab the vodka bottle and take a huge gulp, feel it burn down my throat and into my chest, erasing my fear of his question.
“But the other night. In the graveyard. I know it was a big deal for you to tell me. I want to understand what you went through.”
I don’t want to talk. I don’t want Marcus to understand. I don’t want to bring him into that history. He is supposed to only exist now, here, in my present. He is supposed to take up so much space that it crowds the past out.
“I don’t know anything about your friends or school or family,” he says.
“They’re not interesting.”
“They’re interesting to me.”
“My parents are boring. My sister’s annoying. School is boring and annoying.”
“Come on,” he pleads. “Tell me something real.”
There’s something in his voice that melts me, that makes me let down my guard. Something real. He wants something real. Isn’t that what I want too? Isn’t that one of the reasons I love him, because I don’t have to hide, because I can let him see me? He’s the one I’m supposed to be letting in. He’s the only one.
“Okay,” I say. “You’re the only person left in the world who doesn’t hate me. I’m letting everyone down. That’s what’s real.”
“Why do you think you’re letting everyone down?”
“I’m not who they want me to be. Ever since I got home from the hospital, all I seem to do is screw up.” I notice the slur in my voice. The vodka is doing its work. “But that’s the thing,” I say. “That’s what happens when you love people, right? You find out they’re not who you thought they were. Either that, or they leave you. Same difference.”
“That’s what people have done to you?”
“I guess.”
“So that’s what you’re doing to them?”
“I don’t have a choice. I’m not the person they love anymore.” The sadness snuck back in. I feel on the verge of tears. The vodka didn’t fix anything.
“But why can’t they love who you are now?”
“I don’t know.” If anything, the vodka is making the sadness worse.
“Well, I know you. I know you’re amazing. And I’m pretty sure they’d think so too if you gave them a chance.”
“But what if they don’t?” And this is when I start crying. Big, fat, pathetic tears stream down my face. What happened to tough Evie? What happened to the Evie who didn’t care what anyone thought? “What if they get to know me and they still hate me?” I cry.
“Why would they hate you?” The kindness in Marcus’s eyes makes me cry even harder.
“I hate me,” I say, and I am full of so much disgust, I don’t understand why Marcus is wrapping his arms around me, I don’t know how he can stand to be near me, how he can stand to touch me.
“You have to let people love you,” he says. “You have to at least give them a chance.”
This was supposed to be romantic. But I ruined it by bringing this shit up and turning into this crying, whiny drunk.
“That’s the past,” I say, smiling big enough to wipe the slate clean. I will my tears to stop. “I want to focus on right now. Right here, with you.”
I lean into him so his face is all I can see. I kiss him until I am sure he no longer wants to talk, until his body takes over and we have avoided the conversation. Our kisses make the past go away. I put my hand on his belt and we both forget.
I keep my eyes open as we make love. I look into the night sky, saturated and dull with all the lights of the city. There is a smattering of bright stars, but not many; only the strongest and brightest shine through. I know there are so many more up there, infinite, but we can’t see them. They’re light-years away, burning their hearts out, but we’re so crowded down here, too busy to notice. I almost feel sad about this, but then Marcus moves against me in a way that makes me close my eyes and forget the sky. Finally, I am truly here, truly with him, and my mind stops wandering, stops wanting other things, and I only want him, I only want now, and my body finally feels everything it wants to feel.
When we are done, wrapped up and warm in Marcus’s blankets, I say, “Let’s run away together.”
“Okay,” he says sleepily. He doesn’t know I’m serious.
The white noise of traffic lulls us to sleep. We are tangled in each other’s arms, cradled in this sea-smelling womb we have created. Maybe this is what freedom feels like: making a bed between two pieces of driftwood, being hidden from every direction except up. The sky is the only one who can see us and no one knows where we are. We can forget. We can be forgotten. Maybe this is what it feels like to win a tiny battle against the world.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
thirty-one.
I WAKE UP WITH A DOG’S NOSE IN MY FACE. I SWAT HIM away, and he sniffs around us and pees just a few inches from my feet. My head is cloudy after a night of shallow, troubled sleep brought on by too much alcohol and sleeping on the ground.
Whatever magic we managed last night is most definitely gone.
The sun is too bright. The air is thick with the salty decay of a dirty beach. I look at the sand around us and it is filthy with rotting seaweed, flies, cigarette butts, beer cans, plastic bottles, broken glass, and unidentifiable other trash, none of which I noticed in the darkness of last night. I hear voices and look up to see a group of men in wet suits just a few yards away, getting kite boards ready. The dog runs up and down the beach, barking, rattling my fragile head in its second consecutive day of hangover. The stillness of last night has been replaced by howling wind.
This isn’t a romantic private beach. This is the kind of place gangsters dump dead bodies.
“Hi,” Marcus says as he sits up next to me.
“We have visitors,” I say.
“Oops,” he says, and leans over to kiss me. His morning breath makes my stomach turn.
The beach ends at a road that goes alongside the freeway. I see two trucks parked near the abandoned bus stop where we climbed over the fence and I skinned my hands.
“We could have driven here,” I say. My body burns with the surprise of feeling so furious so soon after waking. “We could have slept in Bubbles. Why didn’t we do that?”
“A car parked overnight would have given us away. We would have been caught.” He puts his arm around me. “Plus, wasn’t it way more fun to go the way we did? Wasn’t it cool to go back to where we first met?”
“It was stupid, Marcus. You made me sleep on the ground like a fucking homeless person.”
Marcus pulls away, as if I hit him. The hurt shock on his face makes me want to eat glass. “Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. That was really mean. I’m just really hungover. It’s making me an asshole.”
“You’re right,” he says, looking away. “It is.”
“Hey,” I say, pulling him close. “I’m sorry. Last night was wonderful. Thank you. And sorry I got so emo. Alcohol seems to have a pretty unpredictable effect on me.”
He meets my eye and smiles with one side of his mouth, as if he is only thinking about forgiving me. “Should I drop you off at school?” he says. “It’s a little after nine. I hope you didn’t miss too much.”
“Ha-ha,” I say, because I assume he’s joking. But when I look at him, there’s no humor on his face.
“I need to go home and take a shower so I can make it to school in time for my afternoon classes,” he says, completely serious.
“You’re going to school today?”
“My morning classes on Monday are throwaways, but I have calculus and AP American History later and I can’t miss those.”
AP American History? Who is this guy?
“Hello?” he says, staring at me. “Evie? Is anybody there?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. Don’t drop me off at school.”
“At home, then?”
Those are my only two options, aren’t they? Where else am I going to go? I’m sick and exhausted and I need to sleep and the only place that’s free and mine is my bed in my room in the house of my parents. I can’t be done with them yet. As much as they hate me, as much as I’m sick of them, I’m still theirs. They still own me.