Mirage(10)

“There’s a joke in there.”

I ignore that. “I need it or I feel numb. Like there’s an on/off switch in me, and adrenaline flips that switch. It’s how I was made. How can that be wrong? You say I scare you, and the truth is, I like your fear. It tells me I’m different from the rest. Special.” That last word falls as a whisper.

Joe twirls his finger in the air around his ear. “Maybe crazy is another word for special.”

“Crazy is something flatliners call people like me,” I say. “It makes them feel better about being boring.”

“I’ll ignore the fact that you just insinuated that I’m a boring flatliner. So, it’s not about getting attention?”

Ouch. The way he asks this, I know he thinks it is. I crawl into his chest. Through his T-shirt, his nipple ring pushes against my cheek as his arms wrap around me. It’s easier to talk real when I don’t have to look in his eyes. “Sometimes, with my dad especially, I feel invisible. I think the worst thing in life is to be invisible,” I admit.

He doesn’t give an answer just to give one. And he never judges. I love that about him. It’s how he gets me to confess things to him I’d hardly admit to myself.

I sigh. “When you knock and no one seems to hear, you knock louder.”

Joe starts to touch my hair and then stops himself like a good and proper best friend. My hair does not like being touched. “Honey, you could never be invisible. Not you. You’re trumpets and neon and hot sauce.”

“You say the sweetest things,” I tell him, rolling up to primp in the mirror, trying to smooth down my wild mane of ringlets. Dizziness overtakes me as if I’ve stood too quickly. I grasp the edge of my dresser, bow my head, and take a deep breath until it passes. Once it does, I inhale at my image in the mirror. A ghostly hand appears to be touching my hair. I look down at my own hands, still clenched on the wood in front of me.

When I look up again, the hazy outline of a face presses forward at me like ice rising from the bottom of a glass. Spectral eyes bore into mine, staring with the curious but grim expression of someone watching a nature show, knowing they’re going to see the death of the brave animal whose panicked run for its life is about to end.





Six


JOE REGARDS ME with narrowed eyes and his head cocked to one side. It’s me he’s watching, not the mirror. Why? Because he can’t see what I’m seeing. I’m seeing things that aren’t there, right?

“I’m buggin’ in this room.” My voice is breathy, struggling to restrain a scream. “I need to get out of here. Let’s go to the hill.”

Mom doesn’t bat an eye when she sees me grab some cranberry juice from the fridge. It’ll go good with the vodka I have stashed in my bag.

“Ah, ah, ah,” she says as I try to slip out the front door with Joe. “Not so speedy, young lady. What you did today,” she says, raising herself from her favorite chair, “was dangerous and reckless. You mustn’t cause undue stress for your father. You know the concerns on his shoulders. You know what he struggles with.”

Eyes say more than words do. For most of my childhood, Mom’s eyes were weighted with worry. The pinched look faded for a while, but it’s back with a vengeance. She’s worried that he’ll start being explosive again, or worse, retreat from us into that dark inner place?—?the shadowy cave of his heart?—?and that there might come a time when he’ll crawl so far in we can’t reach him. The way her eyes narrow at me, I think she’s worried I’ll be the one to push him over his edge.

Funny how she forgets that my father’s not the only one with shadows inside.



At the crest of the hill is a narrow dirt road where Joe parks his car and cuts the engine. California City?—?“the Land of the Sun,” as the sign aptly proclaims?—?glimmers below us to our left. Every other direction is dark but for the string of headlights snaking north and south on Highway 395.

The hill can’t be called a secret place. Too many desert people crave a scenic overlook, and this scrubby dot is the only one for miles. Luckily, it’s rare for anyone to be up here on a weeknight. When you have the hill all to yourself, it feels like you own the world. Harsh, flat wilderness stretches out in every direction. Out here, I’m the center of a compass. When a strong gust of wind kicks up, I feel like I can be lifted off the hill and blown anywhere. I like the randomness of that. The adventure.

I gulp some juice out of the plastic bottle to make room for vodka, add the booze, then replace the cap and give it a good shake. All the while, Joe watches me, chewing on his thick thumb. “You have sausage fingers.” I hold the bottle out to him. “Want some?”

He shakes his head. “Driving.”

“Good answer. One of us has to be the mature one.” My tone’s a bit more sardonic than I meant it to come out.

“Want to tell me what ghost passed through you back in your room?”

My eyes snap up to meet his. Joe has no idea how interesting his choice of words is. I feel like I met a ghost.

“Huh. I was hoping I played that off.”

“Please, I know you better than that. You’ve been my best friend since first grade.”

I smile. Our story will go down in history as the friendship that started because a little boy came to school on Halloween as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz and a little girl kicked some bully booty that day. Ironically, I was dressed as Batman, but you didn’t see anyone jeering at me the way they did at Joe. Even then, the hypocrisy was not lost on me. “You rocked those sparkle shoes.”