Mirage(22)

Something rustles behind me, and I spin around.

A tangle of sagebrush rolls past like it’s running from something. Each tumbling scrape on the dusty road is a whisper.

How could you?

My legs twitch with the urge to run, but the brush and the phantom voice are rolling toward my house. So I stand stone still, barely breathing, and wonder if I’m imagining the things I’ve seen and heard.

How could you?

I remain motionless, frozen with fear as the desert breathes, unfazed, around me, until the sagebrush and the voice fade to nothing in the distance.



When I finally arrive at my driveway, lightheaded and jumpy, Dom is walking out the door with a miserable expression. His face is like a fierce angel from a painting?—?powerful, unyielding, but soft, too. He throws his leg over the bike seat. His tortured dark eyes smolder with cinders of a sad truth.

“Your grandmother told me that if I really loved you, I’d be gone before your parents show up.”

Gran’s right, of course. I’m already in enough trouble. It wouldn’t help for them to find him here. He sits on his bike, waiting for me to say or do something. I’m not sure what he wants from me until he softly clasps my hand and pulls me to him, burying his face in my hair. He inhales, breathes me in. “Real love doesn’t leave. It stays put.”

My face stings where it’s pressed against his T-shirt. I feel a fight in me: my promise to my father versus the familiarity between Dom and me. Passion is there, like a coal buried deep in my stomach that refuses to burn to ash. But I don’t feel the pull to him that I should. Every memory I see of us together taunts me like a book I wish I could live in but know I can’t. There’s that drumming heart again, but it’s a melody I can’t appreciate the way I’m supposed to. I’m not crazy. I’m not. But I don’t understand why my emotions don’t match my memories.

Why don’t I feel anything?

Resigned not to hurt him any more, I decide I must tell him that we need a break. I need a break, until things are clear.

Still resting against his chest, I open my eyes and yelp. It’s impossible that I will ever get used to her appearing. She shocks me, rippling mirage-like from the motorcycle’s round handlebar mirror. Electric currents of fear rove over my skin. Her eyes, my eyes, are full of pain, watching our embrace. I stumble out of his grasp. “You?—?you can’t love me anymore.”

Dom holds up his arms in supplication. “What? You don’t get to tell me I can’t love you. I do. You know I do. More than anything, Ry. Besides my brother, you’re all I’ve got. We screwed up, made a colossal mistake. Don’t let it break us.” He pierces me with his astute gaze, perhaps seeing for the first time how altered I am. “Don’t let it break you.”





Thirteen


DON’T LET IT BREAK ME?

I’m already broken. Mashed up, like I’ve been pushed through a steel strainer. The cuts aren’t just on the outside. I’m cut on the inside, too. I’m afraid of my own reflection. I’m afraid I don’t know what’s real. I’m afraid to touch the shiny brass knob on the front door for fear the surface will become a face. I close my eyes and turn the knob, envying Gran’s blindness. I can’t tiptoe through life wondering when my ghost will appear.

But you will.

The words ring out loud, spoken as a bitter promise, but I don’t know if they’ve come from me or her. I will myself to stay calm. If I react, if I stumble every time I hear her voice or see her face, people will feel like they have to follow me around with their arms outstretched.

Gran is slumped in a large chair in the living room with the sun on her back. Tufts of hair escaped her loose bun during the motorcycle ride and hang like streamers around her face. I move behind her, gently pull the soft strands back and tuck them in, hoping she doesn’t feel my hands shaking. I need to touch something real. It’s a few moments before I trust my voice to speak. “You want me to make pancakes, Gran?”

“No need. We just ate breakfast,” she says, as if I’m silly to offer. It’s late afternoon, with the sun baking the desert into a hard crust outside, but I don’t correct her. All the excitement has probably worn her out, created a swirling dust devil of thoughts in her head.

“Did he go?” she asks, and I think I’ll never know how her brain slides so quickly from muddled to lucid, though more and more I know how she feels. Honestly, I was hoping she’d forget the whole episode so my parents would never have to know I lost her for a while. Wouldn’t have to know they can’t trust me.

“Yeah. He left.”

“What’s troubling you? Speak on it.”

Besides almost losing her to the desert, hearing whispers on the road, and seeing the face of a ghost? I tell her the only thing I can. “I’m not sure about anything anymore. Even Dom. He’s . . . intense.” I haven’t moved from behind Gran. Seems easier to talk freely from behind her.

“Mmm-hmm.” She chuckles. “Like a certain girl we all know.”

She pats my hand, which is now resting on her shoulder. “Only boy a girl like you is safe with is Joe.” This makes her erupt into laughter, bobbing forward, slapping her knee. Laughter is pushy, tickling you from all sides, until you’re infected with it. It feels good to laugh. Yet the thought that burrows in my brain, waiting for the laughter to subside is: A girl like me?