My shift at the gas station was almost over. Chris would be coming in soon, and I was sort of dreading talking to him for the first time since our fight. The whole argument seemed so stupid now. He’d been right about Josh. I still didn’t understand what happened the night before, but Chris had seen it coming. I should have listened to him. Everything was upside down now.
The door opened, and the store filled with an electronic ding-ding-ding-ding. The Swensons walked in, laughing hysterically about something. When they saw me behind the counter, their jaws dropped a little. Maybe I was imagining that last part.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” said one of them. I could never remember which was which, but this one had the pointier nose.
I knew everyone had seen Josh and me leaving the party together last night. I remember how stupidly giddy I’d felt when he took my hand and walked me over to his truck, in front of everybody, and helped me inside. He’d kissed my forehead before he shut the door.
The memory gutted me, and I wrapped my arms around my stomach, protective, like the Swensons could somehow know what had happened in my room. But how could they? It was Josh’s and my terrible little secret.
I ignored them while they went up and down the aisles looking at all the food like they’d never seen overly processed carbs before. It took me a minute, but I finally realized they were high as kites. This was one of the reasons why working at the motel was the perfect job for me—I only ever saw strangers who were passing through town. I didn’t have to interact with my peers or wear oversized, bright orange shirts under fluorescent lighting that made me look like a fat ghost.
“Shut up,” one of them whispered.
I looked over to where they were standing by the chips. One of them was covering her mouth with her hand, squirming like she had to pee.
“Shut. Up,” the nonsquirmy one said again.
They started giggling, and I rolled my eyes and started restocking the cigarettes. Then I heard one of them say Josh. I gripped the pack of American Spirits in my hand.
“So he just took you out there last night and—” More whispering. I heard my name, some shushing noises. I turned around.
Took her out where? My body went cold, imagining him leaving the motel, finding that Swenson … and … no. Just no. He wouldn’t do that. He was a bastard, but he wouldn’t …
“Jenna, you are so bad,” said the squirmy one. She looked at me, and I lifted my chin.
“Why don’t you just tell me?” I said. “Because you obviously want me to hear.”
The pointy-nosed one—Jenna, I guessed—gave me a cat-eats-mouse grin. “I don’t really think my sex life is your business.”
Sex life. Sex.
It was like walking into a glass door. It’s shocking and hurts, and you’re the biggest idiot on the planet.
“You’re right,” I whispered. “Not my business at all.”
She’d won. I could tell by the surprised look on her face that she’d expected some kind of nail-scratching girl fight over it. But she could have him.
She laughed. “Obviously.”
They turned their backs on me and stumbled over to the freezer. I stared at the counter, weightless.
The door ding-ding-ding-dinged again, and I jerked around, half expecting it to be Josh, a sick part of me wanting him to have to deal with both of us at the same time. But it was Chris, looking sheepish as he walked up to the counter.
“Dude, I’m a jerk. I’m sorry I went off like that in the car yesterday.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out except a slight croak.
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head and bit my tongue as hard as I could. The tears stayed in as Chris made his way around the counter. He looked over at the Swensons and then pushed open the door behind the register marked Employees Only. I followed him inside, barely seeing the shelves of extra candy bars and warm bottles of soda. His brown eyes filled with worry, and I wished, not for the first time, that my heart could love him in a different way. It would have been so easy. So nice.
“What happened?”
I shook my head. “You were right. I’m sorry I screwed up the pact.”
My voice broke on the last word, and Chris immediately pulled me into one of his bear hugs. The familiar smell of him made me realize how much I’d pushed him away this summer, and the tears started to fall, hard.
“Did something … I mean, did he—” I could hear the panic in his voice, and I shook my head.
“I’m fine. It’s just that Josh is … Josh,” I said into his chest. “I was dumb to think he’d changed.”
“Want me to send a couple of my cholo cousins over to his house to castrate him?”
I cry-laughed into his chest. “Maybe.”
He looked down at my bleary face. “I’m half serious, you know.”
“Nothing happened. I mean, nothing worth castration. Besides, he already lost a leg.”
Chris snorted. “Don’t care. Doesn’t give him the right to do whatever he did to you.”
How was I going to get through life without Chris and Dylan right there, whenever I needed them?
I stepped away and nodded toward the little window in the door. The twins were still in the back of the store, gazing in awe at the freezer section.
“You mind dealing with them? I just want to go home, and they’re wasted.”
“Dumbass Swensons,” he muttered. “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
I turned to go, but he held my arm. “Sky. Seriously. Are you okay?”
I shook my head. “No. But I will be. Just another day in Creek View, right?”
“Dude, fuck this place.”
“Yeah. For real.”
I grabbed my bag and practically ran to my car. My phone buzzed—a text from Dylan.
Hey. I heard something at Ray’s about Josh and Jenna Swenson.
My fingers flew across the keyboard, possessed.
I know. Did he have sex with her?
No, but … just come over. Can’t text this.
That bad?
Yeah.
* * *
A blow job.
Was that worse than sex? I couldn’t decide. There was something so intimate about it. Or maybe it made him a worse kind of guy, for letting some girl do that to him without … unless he … oh, God, I couldn’t even go there. I’d started to think he left because he was embarrassed about his leg, and maybe that was forgivable on some level, but that hadn’t kept him away from Jenna Swenson. To be ditched for someone like her just added to the humiliation.
Chris and Dylan acted like they were on suicide watch, which was both comforting and super obnoxious. Dylan had already promised Jesse she’d go watch one of his pickup basketball games, but she’d insisted that I shouldn’t be alone. Chris suggested Leo’s, but I was not in a dancing mood. Clearly. Then he suggested Inception, which was playing at the drive-in. I agreed to go, but only to avoid being at the Paradise. I needed a break from the constant reminder of Josh.
I sat in the passenger seat of Chris’s dad’s truck, my legs tucked underneath me, a tub of popcorn and a half-eaten box of Junior Mints lying between us. I loved the drive-in—getting there early with fast food and tons of candy, hanging out with Chris and Dylan in the back of the truck until the movie started. The El Diablo was a ramshackle collection of screens and outbuildings, but it still had a weird kind of magic. It was one of the few things that I knew I’d miss when I was gone. We hadn’t been since before graduation; this summer had been too hard with my jobs and dealing with Mom and Dylan taking care of Sean. I already felt nostalgic—who knew if we’d ever be here again, just the three of us?
The movie hadn’t started yet, so Chris and I were listening to a mix I’d made him back in freshman year. He was frowning at the dark screen, absently tapping out the rhythm to a Muse song on the steering wheel.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He looked over at me, then shook his head.
“I was just thinking about how I want to kill that hijo de puta.”
I rested my head on his shoulder. “Then you’d go to prison and have to kiss BU good-bye.”
“True. Might be worth it, though.”
I looked up at him. “Thank you for not saying ‘I told you so.’”
He put an arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. “Honestly, I wish he’d proved me wrong. Sucks to see you get treated like this.”
“It’s my own damn fault.”
“Um. No. It’s not, actually.”
I sat up. “I don’t mean it’s my fault that he did what he did. It’s my fault for thinking he wasn’t a man-whore, you know?”
“The leg distracted you. Could have happened to anyone.”
I thought of that night at the gas station, Josh holding my hand as we waited for the sun to rise. It didn’t make sense. He didn’t make sense.
I covered my face and shook my head. “Subject change?”
“Okay. Um … what kind of dream would you have someone architect for you?”
He’d already explained the whole plot of Inception to me, since I hadn’t seen it before—a group of people who could create custom-made dream worlds that people paid to get into.
“A manless lesbian colony in the Bermuda Triangle.”
“You going gay after one boy problem?”
“Two boy problems.”
“And what lesson have we learned, young Skywalker?”
Chris gave me his Jedi face, and I threw a piece of popcorn at him. “I’ve learned,” I said, popping a buttery kernel into my mouth, “to avoid anyone with the last name Mitchell.”
He nodded sagely. “Yes, you will go far.”
The movie started, and we settled back. I didn’t really care about Leonardo DiCaprio’s problems, couldn’t concentrate on anything but the deep ache that had infiltrated my bones, eating away at the marrow. Was this what it had felt like when Frida Kahlo found out that the love of her life, Diego Rivera, was cheating on her? With her sister? If I felt like this over a boy I’d only kissed for one night, I couldn’t even imagine the pain. No wonder her paintings were so bleak and violent. I wanted to do something drastic like she did—cut off all my hair, start dressing like a man. But I didn’t think I could handle any more changes in my life.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” I said.
Chris looked over. “Want me to come with?”
“I think I can handle it on my own.”
He rolled his eyes. “I meant, like, walk over there with you. You know, so you don’t get attacked or something.”
“No, I’m cool. I’ll be right back.”
“’Kay.”
I opened the door and quietly shut it behind me. The lot was full, mostly with teenagers making out in trucks or hanging around, drinking beer. Only a small percentage of people ever actually watched the movie. It was more about the experience—like tailgating, but without the football game.
I weaved through the cars, catching snatches of the film through open windows. Behind me, the screen loomed, giant and glowing. A plane flew overhead, the red lights on the ends of its wings winking at the clouds. I wondered if the people up there could see the movie.
I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my jeans and kept my head down. I didn’t know who’d heard about last night—probably everyone, because it was Creek View. It was humiliating, just imagining people talking about how Josh and I left together and then he and Jenna—
My eyes pricked, and I pinched my arm, hard. It was my own stupid fault, falling for someone like Josh.
I passed the little snack bar crowded with people and was almost to the cinder-block restrooms when I heard my name.
“Skylar.”
I froze. Fuck him, I thought. Fuck him for going to a movie after what he did.
I took a breath and kept walking, but I heard him behind me, catching up. “Sky, please. Wait.”
I turned around, my breath catching a little when I saw his face. His eyes were red, and there were dark circles under them, like purple bruises. He looked miserable—and drunk.
“I don’t want to talk to you, Josh.” I could feel the tears try to force themselves up my throat, and I pushed them down.
He swayed a little, and I noticed that he was gripping a bottle of whiskey. “Let me just … I’ve gotta explain to you. I didn’t want—”
I stepped up, close to him. I pictured myself, face red, eyes daggers. I had to be strong now; I could fall apart later.
“I’m actually kind of impressed,” I said. “Here I was, thinking you cared about me, when you were probably just trying to prove something. Maybe even had a bet going. Like, Yeah I lost my leg but watch me get the only virgin in Creek View. And then … what? You felt guilty about it? Because we’d become friends or something? I don’t even know what we—” My voice started to shake, and I bit off my sentence.
“No. Sky … I just freaked, okay? And I wasn’t thinking straight, and I wanted to come back, but I was all fucked up—”
“Was that before or after your field trip with Jenna Swenson?”
Josh opened his mouth, closed it again. Something like defeat settled around his eyes. Then he hung his head, like a schoolboy who’d gotten caught.
“Did you tell her you loved her too?” I whispered.
My voice caught, and when he looked up, I had to take a step back because he was so amazingly good at looking like he gave a shit.
“Just let me try to explain. Please. Sky, I—”
“You know what the worst part is?” I said, anger trumping hurt. “It’s not last night. I don’t care that you saw me naked or that we messed around—that sucks, but whatever. It’s that a tiny part of me … I mean there were moments when I thought about giving up everything I’d ever worked for, just so I could be around you a little longer.”
I’d never forgive either of us for that.
He drew a sharp breath, and I couldn’t stand to see the pain in his face because if I fell for it again, I wouldn’t be able to say what I needed to. I had to be able to look at myself in the mirror again.
I took a breath. “And that’s why I want you to go fuck yourself.”
I turned around and walked into the women’s restroom, went into an empty stall, and stuck my fist in my mouth. I bit down hard, tasting sweat and blood and wanting my dad so bad. I wanted him to not be dead so he could be the dad with the shotgun and run Josh out of town and then tell me that it didn’t matter that Josh Mitchell had decided he didn’t want me the way I wanted him. I leaned my forehead against the cool metal of the stall.
Ten deep breaths.
One prayer: uncertain and desperate.
Five recitations of FUCK, FUCK, OH GOD, FUCK.
Two tears.
Then I flushed the toilet because people would be wondering what the hell I’d been doing in the stall for five minutes, opened the door, and walked back to the truck.
“What’d I miss?” I asked Chris.
“Dude’s dream is turning into a nightmare.”
JOSH
When it’s light, I get out of bed. I put lotion on my stump and roll the cotton guard over it, then put it into my prosthesis. I walk across the hall to the bathroom. Piss. Brush my teeth. Throw water on my face. Make sure my hair is regulation, high and tight. Go into the kitchen. My brother’s there, and he doesn’t know what to say except, Morning. And I say, Morning. I can feel him watching me, just like the Afghanis used to when we raided their houses or walked through their fields. So many eyes, watching us. Like we’re bombs that are about to go off. Sometimes we were. Blake says, You okay, man? I heard … I mean, last night I thought I heard … But he can’t say it. Used to be he heard a girl in there, but now it’s just me and the fucking spiders in my head. I go, Yeah, dude, I’m cool, and he nods, says, Cool. Sometimes I drink coffee and eat Entenmann’s with him, but if it’s been a really bad night, I do like my mom and get a cold beer and go sit on the back porch and stare at the day
and wish that fucking IED had killed me. Then I go back in the house, change into something clean, get in my truck, and drive in the middle of the road until I remember that there aren’t any IEDs on the side of Highway 99, and so I get back in the right lane, but not before I think maybe I should just stay right there in the middle.
* * *
Just to see what happens.
AUGUST
chapter twenty-seven
This choreographer named Twyla Tharp once said, “Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.”
So I ran. As far and as fast as I could.
I decided to redo the collage for Marge, this time making it from Creek View itself. I got rid of the one I’d spent the summer working on. I didn’t just throw it out—I burned it. I cried as the flames licked the angel wings, the strawberries, the orchard. Hours and hours of work and love. But I didn’t want anything that represented me losing myself. I dragged a flaming log over the part of the collage with the creek—Josh had helped me cut the scraps of blue paper for it. I could still picture him leaning over the table in the lobby, eyes intent on the job. I’d thought it was so cute, how serious he was. The collage was of Creek View, but, to me, he was all over it.
I needed something clean, new. And I wanted to face Creek View head-on, not hide from it or try to make it bearable. The old collage became a pyre, a smoldering end to a part of myself I never wanted to see again.
I borrowed the digital camera Chris’s parents had gotten him as a graduation present and spent my afternoons taking pictures of Creek View: close-ups of the creek’s muddy water, the leaves in the orchard behind the Paradise, cows in the fields, an orange sky after the sun had finally gone down, the trailer park. I’d drive the hour to Bakersfield to get prints made up at Walmart. At night, I’d spread out my poster board in the lobby and cut into the photos with my trusty razor blade, rearranging them so that the trees were made up of dozens of little jagged slivers of leaves on glossy photo paper or creating waves in the photographs of the creek, until the water jumped off the page. As my hands moved, I tried to keep my mind still, giving all my attention to the details of the collage. For two weeks, I didn’t stop running away.