His eyes went dark for a second, and I worried that my teasing had hit a nerve, but then he sort of laughed.
“Half the time, yeah. Basically, when we weren’t patrolling, we were stuck on base. And by base I mean this shitty-ass camp we set up in the middle of nowhere. The military is, like, ninety-six percent boredom, four percent action. All hurry up and wait. So, it was chess or trying to get online or, you know, jerking off to—” He saw the look on my face and stopped himself. “Anyway, I can kick your ass on the board, Evans, so watch out.”
I handed him the napkin I’d folded into a crane. He held it up, looking at the wings, the beak.
“A bird?”
“Crane. It means peace. It’s better with paper, but this was the best I could do.”
He looked at it for a long moment. “Peace, huh?”
“Josh. Eat that before it tastes worse than it already is,” Dylan said, sidling up to our table. Her face was still flushed from her shift, and I could tell how exhausted she was by the fact that she hadn’t even bothered to fix her hair or reapply her makeup.
He pushed the plate away. “I think it’s reached that point already.”
“Well, next time, take my advice.” She turned to me. “I told him the cheeseburger was the way to go.”
“Should have listened to you,” he said. “I thought the stuff in the corps was bad, but Ray can’t cook for shit.”
Dylan agreed with him about her boss’s inability to make edible food, then told us her Worst Customer of the Day story. Josh asked to see a picture of Sean, and he looked at me like what? when I glared at him. A few minutes later, we were waving good-bye, leaving Josh to stare out the window and crunch on the ice in his glass. As we got in the car and headed down the highway, I couldn’t concentrate on whatever Dylan was talking about. I just kept seeing Josh by that dirty window. Looking out, but not seeing anything. And then I thought of how the first thing he’d said to me was that I looked good.
“—and I was all, no, Jesse, you can’t give a baby gum. Right?”
“Huh?” I looked over at Dylan.
“You weren’t listening, were you?” She was practically shouting above the funky sounds my car was making, and I gripped the steering wheel, praying we wouldn’t break down.
I shook my head. “Sorry. It’s just … Josh. You know?”
“Yeah.” She rolled down the window and spit out her gum. “It’s weird. I mean, Josh has always been kind of a bastard, but now I feel, like, so bad for him. I mean, he lost his leg. Like, his leg. Plus, he saw some serious craziness. It might have been all Saving Private Ryan over there, you know?” Dylan looked at me. “Maybe he’s different now—like the war changed him or something.”
I wasn’t naïve. It was obvious Josh could never be the same kid who used to spend his nights driving around in his souped-up truck, throwing beer bottles at abandoned buildings on the highway—way too much had happened for that to be enough for him.
“He’s still a sexist pig,” I muttered. “He, like, talks to my boobs more than me.”
Dylan pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror as she dabbed lip gloss on her lips. “Yeah, but he’s probably extra horny right now, with all of us walking around in shorts and tanks. I mean, the women in Afghanistan are covered up in, like, sheets and stuff. Don’t they wear those things where you can’t even see their faces?”
I rolled my eyes. “Dylan. They do not wear sheets. Jesus.”
“Anyway, he’s still hot. I wonder what it would be like to … you know. I mean, he’s still got what matters.”
“Oh my God, Dylan, shut up. I don’t need that image in my head.”
“It’s totally in your head, isn’t it?”
“No.” Except, yes.
Dylan laughed and turned up the music. We had an hour of driving just to get to the nearest Walmart, but it wasn’t too bad if you had some company and a working radio.
I stared out the window, at the unbearable flatness of the Central Valley with its endless fields where workers bobbed up and down over the plants, their straw hats and bandannas swaying like dancing flowers. Somewhere, in one of those fields, Chris’s dad was supervising the picking, reminding himself that the crappy wage was worth it because his son was going to college. And miles behind us, my mother was just getting to Taco Bell, ready to spend another day in fast-food hell. And Josh was sitting alone in a diner, thinking about whatever horrible stuff was going down thousands of miles away.
I pressed my foot against the accelerator.
* * *
I’d splurged on new bedding for my dorm, and I couldn’t wait to show it to my mom. It was the first thing I’d bought for school—having it made college feel more real than my acceptance letter. I’d also bought a bunch of paper for a collage I was making as a going-away present for Marge: thin-as-tissue Japanese rice paper, thick construction paper, Canford papers to sculpt objects that burst from the collage, and the shimmery, expensive sanded pastel paper that I hadn’t been able to resist. I hugged the bags to my chest, thinking about roommates and being an art major. I hoped the stuff for my dorm looked appropriately arty. It was hard to know, being in a town like Creek View.
The birch trees planted around our little lot stood like friendly sentinels that welcomed me home, and I could hear the distant shrieks of the neighborhood kids as they ran through sprinklers and gunned each other down with water hoses. I looked at the forlorn trailers and beat-up cars. The sky was still a bright cornflower blue, and the sun shoved against everything it touched. The heat, the dust, the disrepair—it didn’t bother me so much, knowing that I’d be leaving soon. Even our sea-green trailer wasn’t too bad, though it could definitely use a paint job and a couple of the shutters were about to fall off. I almost felt nostalgic.
I put the key in the lock, but at my touch, the door swung open and bright shafts of light streamed into our darkened living room. For a second, I just stood on our tiny front porch, my key still raised, heart beating fast. Mom was supposed to be at Taco Bell until late tonight, and she was just as paranoid as I was about locking the door. It wasn’t uncommon to have burglaries in the trailer park, so my mom and I were borderline obsessive-compulsive about locking up, especially since my dad had died. Not having a man in the house was something I didn’t think Mom would ever get used to. Which was why she put up with skeezy Billy Easton, who came around to “help” with repairs but really just wanted to ask my mom out for the thousandth time. Five years, and he still didn’t understand the word no.
I stood on the front porch, paralyzed, until I heard my mother’s familiar cough coming from her bedroom. I stepped inside and wrinkled my nose against the stench of cigarette smoke that hung in the stale air.
“Mom?” I called, setting my things down on the floor and shutting the door behind me.
No answer.
The trailer was dark, all the blinds closed and curtains drawn. I opened the kitchen window to kill the sour smell. The darkness, the smoke, the heaviness that blanketed everything—I knew what it meant.
Mom was having one of her bad days.
At her room, I took a breath before I pushed open the door, cheap plywood that made it easy to hear her when she cried at night. She was lying in the middle of her bed, wrapped in my dad’s bathrobe, and the room was thick with smoke. Judge Judy was on the tiny TV on top of her dresser, but it was muted, its light the only color in the room.
“Hi, baby,” she whispered.
I moved close to her, then gently took the cigarette from between her fingers and put it in the Coke can she was using as an ashtray. Stray pieces of ash from her cigarettes dusted her nightstand and covered the collage I’d recently made for her of the Golden Gate Bridge, a little reminder of me when I was away at school.
“Hey.” I smoothed back her hair, then planted a kiss on her forehead. “Wanna take a shower?”
She shook her head.
“You sure? It always makes you feel better.”
“No.?
?? Her voice was far away.
I pushed down the fear that I wouldn’t be able to bring her back this time, that she’d never leave that dark place she went to on her bad days. Her eyes slid back to the TV, and I concentrated on picking up her room. Work clothes were piled on the floor, and crumpled packages of Little Debbie snacks littered the carpet beside her bed. The shade on her lamp was cockeyed, as though she’d stumbled into it.
“You need me to give the Bell a call? Tell them you can’t go in tomorrow?”
Mom cackled, and I turned away to throw the clothes in her overflowing hamper so I wouldn’t have to see the bitterness stamped on her face. I’d have to go to the Laundromat soon—it looked like half her wardrobe was in there.
“Oh, sure,” she said. “Call them. I’d love to hear what Brian has to say.”
Brian was her manager, a smarmy zit-faced kid just a year or two older than me.
“What are you—”
“They fired me,” she said. Her voice had turned dull, flat.
“What?”
She stared at the TV, as if she couldn’t bear to miss one second of Judge Judy’s court proceedings. “Yep,” she said. “After eighteen years, it was like, Fuck you, Denise!” She reached for her pack of cigarettes, and I leaned in close, grabbing her arms.
“Mom. Look at me. Are you serious right now?”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she nodded. “I screwed up. I screwed up bad.”
My stomach turned, like I’d put bad milk in my coffee. “Okay. What happened?”
She looked down, playing with a loose thread on her robe. “I was closing and … I … I left one of the tills on the front counter. I was tired … just forgot it was there. Some punks broke in after I closed up. I came in this morning, and Brian showed me the tape. Little bastard. I could tell how happy it made him.”
“But it was an accident!” I said. How could some teenage manager fire her, after all those years?
“Doesn’t matter—that kid hates me, always has. If it wasn’t this, it’d be something else. Says he has ‘cause’ to fire me. Can you believe it? He says I left the cash drawer out on purpose.”
“That’s insane. Why would he say that?”
She grabbed the cigarettes and fished one out of the pack. “Because I was upset that he wrote me up at the beginning of my shift last night. I was late—just a couple minutes, but you know how he always rides my ass. I called him a prick.”
“He can’t fire you for calling him a prick.” Besides, it was true.
The flame from the lighter flickered, then caught the cigarette. She sucked in the smoke. “He’s saying I left the till out to get back at him. Says he has witnesses.”
“Mom, we can totally fight this.”
“No one’s gonna be on my side. Whatever. I’m out.”
She started chewing on her lip like she always did when she got anxious, and I knew she’d be bleeding in a minute.
I squeezed her hand, but she pulled away and took another shaky drag of her cigarette. “What are we gonna do?” she whispered.
Mom started crying for real now, big sobs that seemed to grate against her insides. I pulled her to me and let her cry, her tiny body shuddering in my arms. I hadn’t seen her like this since Dad had died. Her bad days could usually be taken care of with a shower, some good food, a night in watching movies. After a day or so, she’d come back to herself. But without a job to return to, how could I pull her out of this?
“Sky.” Her voice broke, and I patted her hair, her back.
“Shhh,” I whispered. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s gonna be okay.”
“No it’s not,” she said.
She cried for a long time, and I held her while I watched the cold shadows that the TV cast on the walls of her room lengthen and bleed across the bed. As I sat there trying to hold my mother together, I realized that the thing I’d been fearing for most of my life was finally happening: that I’d be so close to getting out, then just at the last moment, something would happen that would keep me in Creek View indefinitely. I always thought it would be a freakish thing, like a natural disaster or getting a brain tumor. Not this.
JOSH
I’m walking across the field. Everything’s brown: brown huts, brown mountains, brown dirt. Harrison is handing out soccer balls and candy to the kids. He’s laughing because they keep screaming “I LOVE AMERICA I WANNA CANDY,” and Sharpe is lighting up another Marlboro and my gun’s in my hand and my gear is fucking heavy and I’m so hot. Davis is leaning against the Humvee, talking to Abdul. You’re shooting the shit with the village elders. As-salaam alaikum. As-salaam alaikum. You call me over when you’re done and I say, Let’s go to that wall, man. I need to take a fuckin’ knee. The sky is blue blue and all I can smell is dust and the smoke from Sharpe’s cigarette, and we’re going toward the wall but then I say, Hold up, I’m gonna check behind that hut. I raise my gun. Five steps to the hut. Four. Three. Two. Then I wake up. Sweating, fucking sobbing like a little bitch. Just like every night. Looking for my rifle, but it’s not there—shit, where is it?—and then I remember I don’t have one anymore. And my leg that isn’t there is burning—I can feel it but it’s not there—and I look at the clock and fuckshitfuck it’s only one in the morning and it won’t be light for hours. So I lie back down and stare at the ceiling and run through every cadence my drill instructor taught me at Camp Pendleton and then I repeat the Rules of Engagement and I think of all my favorite quotes from Three Kings and I play imaginary games of chess with you in my head and you always win because I forget about the queen again. I’m so tired, so goddamn tired, but sleep isn’t happening. It’s just me, the ceiling, and the night becoming morning.
chapter three
There were only two reasons the Paradise Motel stayed in business: we rented rooms by the hour, and there wasn’t any competition for seventy miles in either direction. All you could see from the highway were a bunch of scraggly trees and our old-school sign at the beginning of a long dirt drive. Once the sun went down, the freaky-looking angel sitting on top of the sign became neon pink and green, winking at drivers as they passed on the highway. The motel itself squatted behind the trees—it was one story with an inner courtyard in typical Cali style, with ten rooms and a pool, bordered on three sides by Gil Portman’s orchard.
The Paradise needed a paint job bad—Marge said it looked like a kid had vomited an orange Slurpee all over her walls—and the TVs didn’t have cable. But it wasn’t creepy in that Psycho kind of way. In fact, we’d recently been featured on a blog called Quirky California because of our themed rooms. You’d be surprised how many people were into the unicorn room.
Everything was falling apart at home and school was out, so I was happy to spend more time than usual at the Paradise. There was something kind of cozy about the broken stool I sat on behind the front desk and the way people would pop in at all hours of the day and night. And I didn’t know how I would have gotten through Creek View summers without the pool.
Working at the Paradise was fine when it was an after-school job, but I couldn’t imagine myself sitting behind the counter in September, when I should be in San Francisco feeling all chic and intellectual. But as the days rolled by, Mom got worse, not better. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t applying for jobs—she wouldn’t leave the house. Whenever I got home, she was always sitting on the couch, staring at nothing. For the first time, I realized that maybe my mom wasn’t just depressed about Dad. Maybe she was like me and felt the hopelessness of Creek View in her bones, but unlike me, she didn’t have a ticket out. There had to be a way to help my mom and still move to San Fran. I had eight weeks. At the beginning of the summer, I’d thought the days couldn’t go by fast enough, but now all I wanted was time.
It was a Friday afternoon, and my shift was almost over. I tipped my stool back, leaning my damp head against the wall behind me. There was a heat advisory, and the air settled over me like a lead blanket, sapping all my energy. The only sound in the Paradise
lobby was the distant roar of cars and the whiny creaking of the overhead fan. Every now and then, a big rig would sound its horn out on the highway, jolting me awake. I swatted at the fly that kept tiptoeing down my neck and put the can of Coke I’d just gotten out of the vending machine against my cheeks. I was in that dazed limbo of overcaffeinated drowsiness, coming off another graveyard shift and trying to stay awake until Amy showed up. I set my Coke down and let my head fall forward, not even caring that I was lying on one of my collages. It was a crappy one, anyway.
“I need a room.”
My eyes snapped open. I didn’t know how long I’d been out. A woman about my mom’s age was standing at the counter, drumming her long fingernails on the scratched wood surface. I sat up, tried to look welcoming.
“Sure. We have a few vacancies.” A lot, but who was counting? I peeled myself off the stool, the back of my legs sticking painfully to the leather seat.
“Single or double?” I asked. I used my professional voice, the one that the girls who worked at the Hilton had. I knew because sometimes I would call the fancy LA or San Francisco hotels, just to listen to the way they answered. Marge said my talents were wasted here, and honestly, I had to agree.
“Single.”
The woman frowned as she looked around at the decorations. The lamps and artwork were straight out of 1970—all creams and bright orange and brown. My favorite thing was the tangerine-colored vase with yellow ceramic bees attached to it. It used to be in the David Bowie room, but I’d found a vase shaped like an electric guitar at Goodwill, so the bee one ended up in the lobby. Marge had owned the place for two years by the time I came on, but the rooms didn’t turn into themed extravaganzas until my love of art and her worship of all things kitsch came together.
I opened the registry to see what we had available. “One night or—”