Mirage(28)

There’s something about the names that runs tickling fingers up my back. This neighborhood conjures an intense feeling of déjà vu. A knowing without knowing why. I venture a few feet down one beckoning street in particular, thinking I shouldn’t go anywhere, but I can’t seem to stop. The gentle dips and sways of the aging picket fences pull me along like the handrail of a bridge toward a mysterious destination. I glance back, looking for Joe, but I have to keep going; I have to know where the feeling leads.

Death is still quiet in my head, as if she’s as curious as I.

All I can do is follow my feet, which plod a deliberate path to a vague end. With each step, my agitation builds. I’m simultaneously compelled to search and yet terrified of what I’ll find. I don’t understand this. As if I’ve reached a cliff, my feet scuffle to a halt. Rocks tumble over the edge of my mind as I stop and stare.

In front of me is a house. A modest, blah house on a modest, blah street. It’s dilapidated and looks abandoned. But I can tell it was beautiful once. The grass is dead and sparse like residual hairs on a skeleton. Stapled to the door, the corner flap of an aged notice rustles in the hot afternoon air.

There is no life in this house. It’s a shell of what it once was.

The memory of a death rises up. I recall thinking how a body looks so much smaller when there is no soul to fill the spaces: like a balloon, wrinkled, puckered, half-deflated on the hard, cracked ground. I find it alarming that I can’t recall right now whose dead body I viewed. Do I know anyone who has died? My father has never let me see the bodies of the skydivers who bounced. Have I ever attended a funeral?

Tears drop onto my neck, surprising me, like a chaste peck of rain on the forehead. This house makes me inexplicably sad. I can’t make sense of it.

A blaring honk startles me. I swing around. Joe leaves the car running as he steps out. His face shines with sweat and a frantic expression. “What are you doing over here? Why didn’t you stay on the corner where you told me to go? I’ve been looking all over for you.” He clutches my upper arms, leans forward to kiss my cheek, pauses, and switches to the uninjured cheek. I’m directed to the passenger side of the car, where he opens the door, sits me down, and buckles me in like I’m two years old.

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. I wasn’t thinking, just following an indistinct trail, mindless, like a hound with the barest whiff of something it wants. A terrified thought rushes in: maybe she led me there, somewhere random and empty where people wouldn’t be able to get to me until it was too late. Fear wraps its fingers around my heart and squeezes. That’s why she was so quiet.

It’s not a good sign when Death holds her breath.

“I’m glad you found me. Can we go now?” I say with a quaking voice. I want to be very far from this house, but Joe hasn’t moved the car. He’s busy punching a text into his phone. “What are you doing?”

“Letting your parents know I’ve got you.”

I shake my head. “You’re not going to hand me over. I need a break from them right now, Joe. That’s why I called you.” I curl my fingers over his hand on the gear. “I need you to distract me, take me somewhere where I won’t think so much.”

“I’m letting them know you’re okay, which is what you should have done if you were thinking straight.” He sighs, regret on his face. “Sorry. But everyone is worried about you, sister love.”

“Don’t take me back yet.” I fix him with a hard stare. “I’m not asking.”

He blinks his agreement, and we drive aimlessly for a while with the radio blasting, top down, and warm air filling the space around us. The desert smells like sage leaves brushed with rain, then baked. I’ve held my eyes closed since we left the abandoned house. My fingers catch the wind outside, first cupping and holding it, then flexing against it. The resistance hits my flat palms and I smile?—?muscle memory of dancing in air.

“Been to the drop zone much?” Joe asks, as if he can read my mind.

“Not at all, actually.”

“Might be good for you.” The car comes to a slow stop, and I open my eyes to see he’s pulled up at the airport. We bump down the dirt road adjacent to the landing circle. Out of habit I gauge the windsock, and a memory blows by. “Dom and I wanted to make a skydiving calendar of jumpers wearing only the windsock and maybe some jump gear.”

“I know,” Joe says. “You let him take sexpot pictures of you as a test run.”

“Oh . . . that’s right.” He hands over a bag of pistachios, and we recline our seats to watch for the jumpers. “Why don’t you like him?”

“Why haven’t you asked before? I’ve been wondering why my opinion didn’t matter to you.”

“My opinion mattered more, I guess.”

Joe fights with a pistachio shell that doesn’t want to open, gives up, and tosses it in the dirt. We both squint at the jump plane roaring past us down the runway before it leaps into the air. He is thoughtful but finally answers my question.

“A couple of years ago, my dad showed me how to use jumper cables on the car battery. He was adamant that I follow his instructions to the letter so I wouldn’t blow up the car or myself or be burned by acid or something. I was freaking nervous. I’d be heading toward the battery with these cables and clamps like I was walking to the electric chair, imagining it zapping me and frying me crispy.” He tosses more pistachio shells onto the ground. “You know the feeling when you’re playing that game Operation?”