I’ll Meet You There (9 page)

It shouldn’t have been there this late at night.

“I think that’s Bill Easton’s truck,” Josh said. He turned to look at me, his eyebrows
drawn together in a
V
. “He a family friend or something?”

“No,” I said, my voice flat.

Billy Easton was a good-for-nothing loser, one of my dad’s old drinking buddies. He
was the kind of guy that women tried not to make eye contact with, a tall, wiry snake
with a loud, mean mouth. I’d be lying if I said he didn’t scare me. Even when Dad
was alive, I never thought Billy was all right. But after Dad died, he’d latched on
to us, coming over every week to fix the sink or take a look at the stove. Anything
to flirt with my mom a little.

Josh put the truck in park, and I opened the door—I could hear my mother’s laughter
coming out the open window and Billy’s voice smacking the night air. I didn’t know
what was pissing me off more—the fact that
Billy Freaking Easton
had gotten my mom to come out of her cave when I couldn’t, or that he was probably
wasted and I’d have to give him a ride home.

“I gotta go,” I said, sliding out of the truck. “Thanks for…”
The skin on my wrist, singing.
“Tonight. I’ll see you.”

“Skylar, let me walk you—”

“I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

I slammed the door behind me and hurried up the steps. Josh’s truck was still there
when I looked back, and I could see him peering out the window, worried. I waved and
opened the door, gagging as a wall of cigarette smoke hit me.

“Baby!” shrieked Mom. She was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a
pair of my jeans, which were way too tight on her. One of the sleeves of her tank
top had slipped down, and her body glistened with sweat. She was wearing lipstick,
and her mouth was stretched in this huge, manic smile. “Billy’s here!”

A cold, hard knowing settled in my chest and spilled down into my stomach. Of course.
Of course
everything would go to hell just when I was about to get the fuck out of Creek View.

“Hey, honey,” he said.

Honey
, he’d called me.
Honey.

He stood behind her, close, like they’d been in the middle of—I couldn’t even think
about what they might have been in the middle of.

“Hi,” I said. The word sounded like a dropped book, thudding into the center of the
trailer.

“You want a wine cooler? Got some in the fridge,” he said.

I blinked, wanting to think I’d heard wrong, waiting for my brain to process what
wine cooler
meant for me. For my mom. We hadn’t had alcohol in our house since the day Mom quit
cold turkey. I’d promised her I wouldn’t drink either. Not ever. Not one little sip.
I looked around, spotted a wineglass on the table with lipstick on the rim.

I brushed past them and headed toward my room. “I don’t drink.”

“She’s my good girl,” Mom said.

The words stuck together, accented with a slight slur. Tears gathered in the corners
of my eyes, but I kept walking. I’d talk to her about it tomorrow, when Billy was
gone and she had the hangover she deserved. I pictured myself taking whatever he’d
brought over and making her watch me dump it down the drain. I’d bring Dad into it
if I had to.

I paused at the door to my room and turned around. “I have to get up early for work
tomorrow,” I said. “Would you guys mind keeping it down?”

Billy smiled, his yellow teeth wolflike in the dim lighting. “Sure, honey.”

I slammed my bedroom door behind me, trying to ignore my mom’s giggles. I thought
about going over to Dylan’s, but I knew she’d still be out with Jesse, probably parked
in a field somewhere, since they both still lived with their parents. My eyes roved
over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte,
Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling above my bed.
They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little
escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight. Not after Josh and definitely not after
Mom.

I shoved my earbuds in, but the music wasn’t taking over everything I was feeling,
as it had at Leo’s earlier in the night. I heard glass breaking and then more laughter.
I sat up and threw open the door.

“Seriously!” I yelled. “I have to work in, like, five hours.”

Mom gave me an exasperated look. “Oh, Sky, don’t be such a wet blanket.”

Anger, black and cold, swept through me. I turned around and grabbed my backpack,
shoving clothes, a book, and my MP3 player into it. I hooked my keys around my index
finger, then swept past them.

“You’re blocking me in,” I said to Billy.

“Where are you—” my mom started, but I held up my hand.

“I’m going to the motel. I’ll just sleep in one of the rooms, okay?”

I wanted my mom to say,
No, of course not, Billy was just leaving
, and give him a meaningful look, but she didn’t. She shrugged and pushed Billy toward
the door. I hated how her hand lingered on his arm. I suddenly wondered if she’d been
doing more than watching
Judge Judy
for the past week.

Billy lumbered past me, going outside in his bare feet. He didn’t say a word, just
got in his truck and backed out. I threw my stuff into the front seat of the Prizm
and was so angry I stalled twice before I could get the car in reverse. I wouldn’t
look at him as I pulled out, but I could feel his watery eyes on me, goading, amused,
a little triumphant. I tried not to think of his hands, his lips, all over my mom.

“Sorry, Daddy,” I whispered. Dad was rolling in his grave—he had to be.

I sped out of the trailer park, and when I got to the Paradise, I pulled under one
of the oak trees at the far end of the dirt parking lot and just stared into the darkness
for a long time, my mind numb. Then I leaned my seat back, covered my eyes with the
extra tank top in my bag, and cracked the windows. Exhausted, I fell asleep to the
sound of crickets and the hum of the highway.

JOSH

It’s hard driving away from her. I don’t know, man, I just want to, to take care of
the situation. Like, she had this look on her face when we pulled up—it was just for
a second, but she was panicked and I could feel myself go into battle mode, that rush
of
let’s do this
and for a second I remembered what it felt like to have a purpose, a mission. To
wake up and know
this is who I am, this is what I do, this is where I belong.
To have tasks and accomplish them. To have some goddamn pride. And she needed backup,
I could tell, and I wanted to, I don’t know, be her fuckin’ knight in shining armor,
I guess, but I couldn’t get out of the truck fast enough. She was running to the trailer
and I threw off my seat belt but before I could even open the door I jammed my fake
knee against the steering wheel and it hurt like a bitch and then—
snap
—I’m ready to kill someone. That combat switch flipped and I was on, ready to go,
a registered lethal weapon. This anger just pouring through me and I was shaking and
everything turned red then black and so I tried to focus on that Marine Corps mantra
my physical therapist is always shoving down my throat:
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
I gripped the steering wheel and tried to breathe.
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
He tells me,
You can’t roll like you used to, Josh. Gotta find a new way of doing things.
Sky turns around and waves and she has this little smile on her face and suddenly
I’m okay, like she broke through the mess of me. I remember I don’t need to be at
that razor’s edge anymore, so I drive home. I don’t realize I’m smiling until I see
my reflection in the side mirror. Didn’t even recognize myself.

chapter seven

After a night of sleeping in the car, I wasn’t in the best of moods. All I could think
about was that wineglass with lipstick on it. The problem was so much worse than I’d
thought. Getting my mom a job: I could handle that. Getting her back on the wagon …
no way. I’d already done it once, just after Dad died. It had taken almost a year—I
had less than two months.

I’d been short with guests all day and had even given Marge some attitude when she’d
asked me to run to the bank for her. I’d apologized, of course, and it was fine, but
I didn’t want to be one of those girls who brought her personal drama to work. Amy,
the other receptionist, was like that. Nearly every second she was going off about
her boyfriend or her crappy stepmother or how broke she was. I’d asked Marge to cover
the desk so that I wouldn’t have to deal with people, and I’d started cleaning the
rooms, even though we had a lady who came in to do that once a day.

I took my frustration out on the dirty towels and the dust on the nightstands, on
picture frames that weren’t perfectly aligned and on flat pillows that my fist could
punch and shove into their proper place. Seeing my mom like this was pressing Rewind
on my life, taking me right back to those bleak months after Dad died, when the world
turned gray. Not that I needed reminding. I thought about him all the time. But now
it was like I was suddenly twelve again, holding her hair as she puked over the toilet
bowl, trying to keep my tears in so she wouldn’t feel worse than she already did.

I was starting to see each day before August 29th—the day I was moving to San Francisco—like
a hurdle. Run. Jump. Run. Jump. Run.

There was a soft knock on the open door of the room I was cleaning (unicorn theme),
then, “How’s the Sky today?”

Josh.

I turned around, shading my eyes against the bright rectangle of light. He leaned
in the doorway, watching me.

“Hey.” I looked down at the industrial sheets in my hands. I could almost smell the
chlorine from the pool. The feel of his skin under mine as I traced the
Semper Fidelis
on his back.

“A little cloudy?” I finally said.

It was so much easier to turn the past twelve hours into a metaphor.

He nodded. “Thought so. Marge said you were begging her to do manual labor instead
of sit at the desk.”

“The desk gets old after a while.”

“Need some help?”

He walked into the room, limping slightly. I wondered if he would ever be able to
walk with those long, confident strides he’d had before he left.

“Sure.” I handed him one corner of a bottom sheet and scooted around to the other
side of the bed.

He’d left the door open, and sunlight streamed into the stuffy room. We worked quietly
for a few minutes, but it was an easy silence. A couple of kids ran by the door, shooting
at each other with water guns. Their shrieks scattered the silence as though it were
a flock of startled birds. Josh stopped what he was doing and watched them for a second,
a faint smile on his face.

“Kids are the same wherever you go,” he said, turning back to me. “Afghani, American—they’re
all the same.”

“Do the kids in Afghanistan have toy guns? I mean, they see enough real ones, right?”

Josh laughed. “Oh, they have them. Scared the shit out of me the first time I saw
one. I remember one day we were in this village, passing out school supplies to the
kids, and this little guy lifts up what looks like an assault rifle, and I remember
thinking,
fuck, I can’t kill a kid
, you know?” His jaw tightened for a second, but then he shrugged. “It was cool, though.
His mom started going off on him—I mean, I don’t know what she said, but she sounded
like a mom, right? Hit him upside the head and everything. And then he throws the
gun down and kind of waves at me. Swear to God, before his mom said something, I almost
pissed my pants.”

“Wow.” I let that sink in, tried to wrap my head around his reality, but I couldn’t.
It was too big, way beyond anything I had experienced. “I’m sort of not able to imagine
you there. Like, it’s weird, you know? A totally different world.”

“Yeah. Totally different.” He cleared his throat as he balled up the dirty sheets
from the bed. “I had fun last night. Thanks for taking me out.”

I leaned down and started putting a clean top sheet on the bed, letting my hair fall
across my face so he couldn’t see how it betrayed me, all blushing maiden like.

“Yeah, well, Leo’s, you know? It’s always a good time.” I pointed to the sheets, which
he’d tucked super tight and straight on his side. “You’re, like, a master bed maker.”

“Military training,” he said. “You should see how organized my closet is.”

“Were you messy before?”

“Oh, yeah.”

We put new pillowcases on the pillows, and Josh would smile whenever I caught his
eye. I felt clumsy, like I couldn’t figure out how to use my hands anymore.

“I got it,” Josh said, as I reached for the comforter. I let him deal with it while
I busied myself by restocking the bathroom with hard, thin towels and soap that smelled
like plastic.

“Everything okay at home?” he asked when I came out of the bathroom.

“Why?” The word came out sharp, bladelike.

He shrugged. “You seemed upset about Bill Easton being at your place.”

“Oh.” I wanted to tell him about the wineglass and how my mom had borrowed my jeans.
“Um. It’s fine. It’s … whatever.”

“Well, now I understand the situation perfectly.” The side of his mouth snaked up,
and I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

“Okay, that was the world’s vaguest answer. Can I plead the Fifth?”

“Free country.”

He followed me outside, and I shut and locked the door. The sun was pounding on me,
and I gave the pool a longing glance.

“Marge was telling me she wanted to do a lot of renovations this summer,” he said.
“You think I should repaint the rooms?”

Renovations? This was news to me. I wondered if Marge was trying to keep Josh busy.

“Anything would be a vast improvement on what can only be called Dung Brown,” I said.
It was the standard wall paint under the paraphernalia in all the rooms.