Nightcrawling(34)

When I make it, Alé is in the air, returning back to the slope, doing it again; her hand gripping the front of the board as her torso twists before she comes down. I sit on the edge of the slope, feet hanging, and she slides backward on the board when she sees me, flying off onto her back and skidding. She groans at the bottom and stands, shaking her arms out before climbing back up to me.

When Alé started high school and I was in eighth grade, she began dating a girl with this violently blond hair, the kind of blond that didn’t match her skin or her face and just made her look majestic, in this artificial kind of way I couldn’t understand. The girl and I would sit together on the edge of the slopes watching Alé and I remember trying to stare harder, make my gaze so concrete and powerful that Alé would know I saw her more than her girlfriend ever could. After a couple months, the blond girl stopped coming around and when I asked Alé why they broke up, she just shrugged.

Alé places her skateboard down on the concrete and sits beside me, dangling her legs into the slope.

“You scared me,” she says. “What’s up? Why you ain’t working?”

“Ruth’s dead,” I say. Seems wrong to complicate it with any extra words, to make death more than it is. I picture Ruth’s photo etched into cardboard in the lobby of some funeral home, her body coated in powder, but cold. The scent of cheese nobody wanna eat.

Alé looks out at the skaters and then back at me. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

“She knew you loved her.”

Alé pulls me into her, but I shake my head and move back out of the side hug. I wish I could tell Alé how fucked this whole thing is, how I’m sitting here thinking about money when this woman’s dead, when Alé just wants to hold me.

We sit like this, not touching, for a while. Watching the couple other skaters out here flipping and falling, rubbing their shoulders, and beginning again.

We’re facing the street, close enough to see everyone slinking by, but the faces are hard to distinguish from a distance. That’s why, when I see her, I try to convince myself it ain’t her. That someone else is out here walking in that blue, sparkling like her, hair adorned in what looks like the hottest part of the fire. But, as she comes closer, her face solidifies, and I know it’s her. Camila walking toward me, seeing me, lifting her hand up in the air, shouting the only name she knows me by. Kia. The slope stands between us, and Camila takes these giant heeled steps all the way around its perimeter until she’s standing above Alé and me.

“You gonna stand up and give me a hug, girl?” Camila reaches her hands down to help pull me up and I take them, but she doesn’t put any effort into pulling me, just stands there, so I lift myself up. She wraps her arms around me loosely, careful not to mess up her eye shadow on my cheek, and then releases. She cups her talon hands around my face and takes a thorough survey of me, like she’s looking for scars. “How you doing?”

Her hands on my face make it difficult to speak, but I try anyway, my words getting swallowed. I’m acutely aware of Alé sitting and watching us, staring right at my back. “Good, you know.”

“Uh-uh, don’t you try to fool me.” Camila clicks her tongue at me. “Tell me what really going on behind that pretty little face.”

Part of me wonders if Camila knows about the cops, if she’s been at their parties too, but it still feels like a secret I’m not supposed to tell, so I give her an answer close enough to the truth to satisfy her, one that won’t give much away to Alé. “Ain’t been getting much work lately, that’s all.”

“I told you, honey, you need you a daddy. Listen, I been telling my man about you and he’s interested. Name’s Demond. He’s throwing a party next weekend and he wants to meet you, get you set up so you don’t gotta be out here worrying about nothing. How that sound?”

“I don’t know—”

“Oh, c’mon, Kia, just come to the party. Next Saturday night, 120 Thirty-Eighth Avenue.”

“I—”

Camila lets go of my face and waves her fingers. “I ain’t hearing it. I’ll see you next weekend.” And, just like that, Camila has twirled back around and is walking the outline of the slope like she owns it, back to the street, fading into a blue form that could be her or could be fire or something in between.

I stand still, facing the empty space that used to be Camila, and I know Alé’s teeth are grinding, her jaw locked. I can almost feel it boiling in her: all the questions, her eyes on my back. Maybe, if I’m still for long enough, I will fade into the sky and she will forget I ever existed, that I ever walked into La Casa Taquería today. Maybe she’ll forget how she fell from that board at the sight of me, how she skidded onto her back, how she’ll ache tomorrow morning.

I shut my eyes and still don’t disappear. A couple minutes pass and she speaks.

“Guess I shoulda known you got into some shit.” Her voice comes straight from the throat, like she’s holding so much more that she’s not letting out.

I turn around and look down at her.

“Were you gonna tell me?” she asks, her jaw moving side to side now, like if she moves it enough it will release all the hurt that I can see coming up out of her.