Mirage (6 page)

“Don't give me your smart mouth, Ryan. Jumping isn't the only thing I can take away from you.”

“In less than one month I'll be eighteen, and you won't have a say in what I do!”

He steps forward, gets all up in my face. “That's right. In one month you can move out, support yourself, screw up your own life, and be responsible for the fallout. But for now, your ass belongs to me, and you will obey me. Got it?”

“My ass belongs to no one!” I rage back. “You're so shortsighted, Dad. Take away skydiving​—​go ahead. I'll get my kicks some other way. It's my life!”

He jabs a finger toward my nose. “Don't threaten me, kid. I've dealt with worse punks than my own surly, stubborn daughter.”

“Enough!” Mom yells. It's so rare to hear her raise her voice that it shocks both of us out of our trenches. Her face is a black storm, threatening rain. “What is it about the two of you that rattles each other so? You're like a couple of spitting roosters, dancing around with your chests puffed out. I don't like this fighting, this disharmony in my home. Stop it, now!”

“Hose 'em off like you do the house,” Gran chimes in.

Dad throws up his hands and stalks away, leaving a vapor of anger behind him, but Mom is there to pick up where he left off. “You have a grand sense of timing, don't you? Can't you see that he's under tremendous pressure?” Her voice descends to a whisper. “I told you earlier, someone in his condition shouldn't be under such stress. Why are you adding to it?”

“By standing up for myself?”

“Uh, child of mine! At least call it what it is!”

“A tantrum!” Gran blurts. I wish she could see me roll my eyes at her.

Mom blows out an exasperated breath. “Lay low for a few days. I've got my hands full enough with your daddy and the business.”

“But Mom, he​—”

She turns her back and walks away, mumbling something about how she doesn't need to attend every fight she's invited to.

Gran shuffles across the room and straight to me like a homing beacon. “I used to have to rub your mama's legs when she was a girl, growing pains were so bad.”

“Yeah?” I answer noncommittally. Who knows where Gran's going with this. It'll either be gibberish or a frying pan of hot truth upside the head.

“I suspect
your
growing pains will be the kind I can't rub out.”

“Maybe,” I answer. I know I sound obstinate. I'm so freaking exhausted all of a sudden.

Gran's broken eyes somehow bore into mine. It's unnerving. “When you gonna realize that every threat you make to your parents is really a threat against yourself?”

“I'm tired. Can I just go to bed and have a do-over tomorrow, Gran?”

“Wish it worked that way, sugar. My advice is, don't go doing things you wish you could undo.”

I
THOUGHT SLEEP WOULD
quiet me, but I'm too restless. It's not a physical restlessness; sex and skydiving smoothed that edge. It's a mental itch. My head is my problem. It wants to replay everything that scared me today, everything that stripped the protective coating off my wires. It wants to open doors labeled
fear, vulnerability,
and
self-doubt
.

I don't open those doors.

Not for anyone. Or any
thing
.

Behind what psychological door is the mirage girl hiding?

As soon as the house slips into the quiet hum of night, I slip out the back door. Sneaking out drunk and alone is the potent dose of rebellion I need after the fight with my dad, the lecture from my mom, and Gran's vague warnings. They gang up on me and expect that I'll swallow their bitter medicine without a chaser. Ha. I take another swig of my spiked cranberry juice and march down the road, using the raised road reflectors like braille so I don't veer off into the brush and disappear forever.

The night stills me. The sky is a cap of blue-black with constellations as familiar as Gran's age spots. I'm lost in it until a reflector winks light at me and I realize a car is approaching from behind. The tires make a sticky-wet sound on the asphalt as the car slows. It crawls alongside me as I walk the dusty shoulder. It's not the leering face of the crusty old man that kicks my adrenaline into high gear and sends my heart rocketing. It's her face, rolling up and over, up and over in the chrome rims: a ghost on wheels with eyes that promise to follow me everywhere.

With my heart beating drums in my temples, I turn back and run straight home.

Even in the safety of my room, in the cocoon of my bed, my mind spins like the face in those tires. I lie there and realize . . . every barred door is wide open.

I grit my teeth against the feelings. This haunt is pissing me off.

“See this cowbell?” Mauricio holds up a large copper bell dangling from a thick leather braid and gives it a good shake. It clangs through the motor home so loud that my eyes squint. “If anyone walks out the door, put the bell around your neck. That way we can find your dumb ass if you're wandering around in the desert.”

The motley assortment of people chuckle and shuffle nervously. I imagine it would be terrifying to be lost in the vast desert while trippin' on hallucinogenic drugs. The Mojave Desert will swallow you whole and spit your bleached skeleton in the sand.

I'm glad to be in the safety of a closed hangar, but I have to admit, coming back into this RV makes me feel like I've walked into a meat locker. Not warm and safe like a cocoon in the summer, where humidity hides under the felt leaves of the succulents. In here it's snow and sand: a cold and rough paste against my skin.

Nibbling on chips, trying not to dwell on how boxed in I feel, I blow out a deep breath and look for Joe. He sits in the driver's seat of the RV, reading a book, and occasionally looks up at me through his blond lashes. He jerks his head toward the door with a question on his raised eyebrows. I'm not leaving. He won't either. No matter what I say, he won't let me do this without him being some kind of “trip sitter.”

Dad would kill me if he knew what I'm about to do. But hey, I warned him. Skydiving gives me the rush I need. It makes me special and unique in the regular world. Without jumping out of airplanes, I'm . . . average, and average isn't where I want to be on life's curve. I'd seriously rather be dead than the walking dead. Besides, this is where it started. I figure if I can come in here and face down my fear, it'll stop haunting me.

There is a small group of us trying LSD for the first time. Avery's face is more white than normal, and I wonder why she's here. It's one thing if you're trying to prove something to yourself, a non-thing if you're trying to prove something to everyone else. I avoid her greedy, attention-seeking eyes. Half the time I don't know what Avery wants. Our relationship has never been an easy one. The last time we fought, it devolved into petty insults, the kind sisters sling at each other. I told her she was a phony. She laughed and accused me of being a hypocrite. She said she saw through me​—​that I acted like a big hotshot as a cover-up for feeling really small. She said
I
was the phony. We didn't talk for a spell. Since then we've been peaceful, but I feel prickly as a cactus around her.

The faces of the people in the motor home are not unlike those of a group of first-time jumpers. Masks of excitement overlaid upon fear. Anxiety is exposed by fidgety fingers and increased rates of speech. It shows in the eyes, for sure: a little more rounded than normal, with hollowed pupils that look like newly dug holes.

I've become convinced that no one can truly hide their fear.

I pat my own fear on the head.
Down, boy.

Mauricio hands each of us a tiny, colorful paper square. “The blotter paper goes under your tongue,” Dom whispers. I tilt my head like
duh,
but I had no idea. I slip the square in my mouth, wondering if it will dissolve or what. Dom and I take seats at either end of the couch, facing each other, wiggling our bare toes together. He starts video recording on his phone. Joe sits with his book propped up to his nose and tries to pretend he's not watching me like a bug under glass. I wink and wait to feel abnormal.

Mauricio approaches with a bowl in his hands. It's full of small folded notepapers. I wonder if I'm supposed to put one in my mouth, but we're instructed to put them in a pocket. “Read it when you need something to think about,” he says with a knowing smirk. “Sometimes it's good to have a distraction if you're wandering down a bad street in your brain.”

“Wait, isn't LSD supposed to bliss me out?” I ask, stuffing the paper into my pocket.

“Depends.” Mauricio moves on to the next person.

“That's not an answer. Depends on what?”

Joe leans forward and taps my temple. “Probably on where your head's at to begin with.”

I don't reply, because I'm thinking my head hasn't been Sanity Street and I haven't confided that to anyone but Joe. I'm already up shit creek. I don't need to sink my raft by telling everyone that I'm seeing someone who isn't there.

We're all sitting around talking and clowning, trying to act normal but watching one another closely like there's a booby prize for who will be the first to act tweaked. People are tossing around theories about who might have owned this RV. It's a terrorist plot​—​millions of RVs stored all over America will roll out like a giant bus army and attack us. It was abandoned by a family whose kid was killed by a stranger when they went camping, so they just wanted to walk away from it and the awful memories it holds. Maybe it was owned by a stinking-rich family who just uses stuff, then discards it. Maybe they'll never come get it, and we can raffle it off in a contest . . .

This is a strange phase where we're posturing like we're mellow and lighthearted, yet trying to ignore the zingy bolt of nervous anticipation that's threading around our bodies. How long does this period go on? It's hard to tell. The laws of time are rewritten, and I feel like maybe clocks don't even apply to us right now.

My hand slides over the edge of the couch, and my fingers brush against the Bible I know is there. It's heavy when I slip it free, like God's words are weightier than mere mortals'. I suppose they must be. I let the crisp papers flit by, kicking up dust that wrinkles my nose, allowing the book to come to a place where it wants to be opened. It's always been one of my favorite things to do, let fate decide where to place its finger on a page.

James 5:14–15:
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Well, that seems useless. I'm not sick. Unless my recent head hiccups can be called sick . . . I wonder what being “anointed with oil” entails. It sounds kind of sexy. Glancing up at Dom, I think I'd like to anoint
him
with some oil. My attention bounces back to the book.

Handwritten names are inscribed in precise script in the back of the Bible: Isaiah, John, Mary, Matthew. All biblical names, with birth dates and death dates next to them. The last name, Rachel, has a birth date just a couple of years before mine. She was only seventeen when she died. How sad. Why would they leave their family Bible in their abandoned RV? I quickly slip the Bible back in its place. This strange family's history presses me down like a giant thumbprint.

A faint metallic taste coats my mouth, like I've stuck my tongue on the tip of a battery. I find myself wondering if the heart is our body's battery. If so, what powers the heart? And then, what powers what powers the heart? Suddenly my own beating heart is the only thing I'm aware of. It thrums in the delicate round tips of every finger. It swells like a miniature version of our hill in the middle of my palm, then dissolves back into my lifeline. It surges under the vulnerable spots in my neck. It pulses in my crotch.

I am an enormous beating heart. I am a battery.

One guy starts dancing in the kitchen of the motor home, stomping around like some kind of shaman. I think he's dancing to the beat of my body.

Or maybe . . . maybe he's heard his song.

It occurs to me that my trip may have started in earnest when I realize I've been staring at Dom for what seems like days. His black hair is rippling currents in an ebony sea. I hear waves crash on the beach of his forehead. His eyes are swirling, foamy tide pools. I want to reach in and pluck secrets from little marbled shells. He catches me watching, stops panning the room with his camera, and smiles wide like he's happy I can finally see the truth about him.

Avery sticks her fingers in the current of his black waves, mesmerized by
my
ocean. I slap her hand, and she wanders away, smiling.

Someone is playing a ukulele. I'm pleasantly shocked that I can
taste
the sound. I lean back and let the flavors of the music roll around on my tongue for a while. Major chords are sweet like butterscotch. Minor chords taste like flat gray rocks. We once had a pregnant neighbor who sucked on pieces of terra cotta. What was she hungering for?

I don't know how long I've been here. The motor home is driving down a timeless road.

Time dilates like a giant pupil opening and closing the great eye of time watches our every move I don't know if I've skipped ahead like my grandmother does or if I'm behind some of the other people who look static they pushed pause can we rewind I feel like there's not enough air in here air soup I have to move to circulate the air swirl the colors of it with my fingers painting streaks of life thoughts coming in rhyme and it's about time my soul unwinds beautiful threads of me unravel and I am the colorful scarf God wraps around her braids.