My Tiki Girl (28 page)

I’m in the middle of the backseat between Joey, who still won’t look at me, and Dahlia, who’s holding my hand so tight her nails are almost drawing blood in my palm.

“Joey wants to go to New Hampshire,” Dahlia says. “To Dartmouth.”

I jab my elbow into her ribs. Giving Leah a real destination is not a good idea.

“Hanover,” Joey says. “Hanover.”

Now I jab Joey in the ribs, which was kind of dumb because he just yells, “Oww!”

“New Hampshire it is!” shouts Leah, taking a slug of rum. “North, Zamboni. We’ve got to go north.”

And so we’re off. The snow has really picked up, and Gertrude’s tires are spinning as we fishtail our way out of the parking lot and off on our gypsy wagon adventure.

28

“Are you sure
you don’t want to call your sister?” I ask Joey. “You know, just to tell her you’re coming and all? We could stop off at the mall to call her. Get some hot chocolate. Maybe a map.”

We’re coming up on the exit for the mall soon, and I think if I can just get Leah to stop, this crazy journey will be over. She’ll get distracted and come up with some other wild idea.

“A surprise,” Joey says. “Surprise.” He’s drumming his fingers on his thigh, rocking back and forth a little. He smells like wet wood and smoke.

“A map would be good,” I say. No one answers. “There are maps at the mall. And hot chocolate.”

Dead silence. We pass the exit that would take us to the mall. I slump down in my seat.

We aren’t seriously going to try to make it to New Hampshire, are we?

The windows are all steamed up and the defroster doesn’t seem to be working. Jonah’s trying to clean the windshield with napkins he found in the glove compartment.

“It’s the end of the world, lovies,” Leah says. “Don’t you doubt it. But don’t worry, we can outrun them.”

“Who, Mom?” Dahlia asks.

“Who what?”

“Who exactly are we supposed to be outrunning?”

“The trolls,” Leah says. “Trolls, trolls, trolls.”

Leah keeps checking the rearview mirror.

“Is he behind us?” she asks.

“Who?” Dahlia wants to know.

“The goddamned whoring landlord, that’s who!”

“Jesus,” Dahlia says.

“Surprise,” Joey says.

Headlights come up behind us quickly, and only when their light fills the car do I realize how slow we’re going. We’re practically at a crawl.

“Speed up, Ma,” Dahlia says.

“What?” Leah asks.

“I said they’re behind us. Go faster.”

I give Dahlia a disgusted look.

Leah puts the pedal to the floor, and we lurch forward.

“Where the hell are we?” Leah asks.

“Just go straight,” Jonah says.

“There is no straight,” Leah says.

“Sure there is, just follow the road. Don’t turn off.”

“Gotta lose them,” Leah says, taking the next exit, which she races down, making a quick left turn onto a small country road. The car skids sideways and we nearly go off the road.

Now I’m squeezing the life out of Dahlia’s hand. My heart is racing and my leg gives a warning ache. Everything feels too dangerous. I have that sense again of time looping back around, a big figure eight. Part of me is back in the car with my mother.

“I think we should go back,” I say.
Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

“The dolls, Zamboni!” Leah cries. “We need the dolls. They’ll tell us which way to go. North. We need to know which way is north.”

Jonah leans over the rabbit on his lap, rummages around in his backpack. He keeps shoving things around, then starts to take everything out, one item at a time. When the pack is empty, he stares into it in disbelief.

“Where are the dolls?” Leah asks.

Jonah shuffles through his belongings again: rabbit pellets, jar of peanut butter, hooded sweatshirt, pouch of salt.

“They’re not here!” he cries.

“But I gave them to you,” Leah whines. She takes her eyes off the road and looks down at the pile of stuff on the floor by Jonah’s feet.

“Mom! The road!” Dahlia yells.

Leah looks up, jerks the wheel, keeps us from going off the road into a tree.

“I gave them to you. I
entrusted
them to you.”

“I must have forgotten them.” Jonah’s chin is quivering now. “Back at the apartment. I set them down to give Mr. Twister a carrot. I set them down.”

“How could you?” Leah screams. “Of all the irresponsible, idiotic things! You’re just looking for ways to ruin us, aren’t you?”

Jonah is sobbing now, his whole body shaking as he cradles his rabbit.

“I’m invisible,” he’s sobbing. “I’m supposed to be
invisible
.”

Dahlia leans forward, rubs her brother’s shoulder.

“Easy, Mom. They’re just dolls,” she says.

“Just dolls!”
Leah screams.

“Yes,
dolls
—and Jonah’s just a kid, for God’s sake!”

“Surprise,” Joey murmurs, tapping faster on his thigh.

“Mother Mary!” Leah cries. “Birdwoman! We’re coming!”

Then she slams on the brakes and does a U-turn.

Oh shit. I forgot Toto.

The car goes into a skid and I’m screaming like it’s the end of the world. I’m back in the car with my mother white-knuckling the wheel, her face filled with horror, the lights of the truck blinding me, the shrieking, crushing sound of metal on metal. The pain of impact, the entire dashboard and engine pushing forward, the car turning into an accordion that we’re trapped inside, our breath fresh from mints from my mother’s purse. I’m screaming and screaming, my eyes clamped tight. From somewhere beside me, somewhere in that backward loop of time, I hear my mother’s voice. One last word, spoken as a scream:
Maggie
.

And now I’m calling back to her through time and space. “Mom!”

When I open my eyes, I’m sure I’ll wake up in heaven. Or hell maybe, because, as I’m sure Leah believes, that is where girls like me belong.

29

“Maggie!” Dahlia’s yelling.

She slaps my face, like I’m some hysterical girl in an old movie. Someone with white gloves and a pillbox hat who’s just had the shock of her innocent little life.

The slap does the trick.

I stop screaming, open my eyes, and look around.

Not heaven. Not hell. Not even Oz.

Connecticut. In a ditch on a little two-lane highway off Interstate 91.

“See?” Dahlia says. “We’re okay.”

But I’m not so sure.

Jonah’s tearfully clutching Mr. Twister to his chest, and doing this frantic rocking in his seat. Leah’s taking a sip of rum. Joey’s rubbing steam off the window, trying to look out. I smell puke and see he’s thrown up down the front of his shirt. The windshield wipers are clacking and squeaking, the engine making its usual put-put-put sound.

I get my bearings enough to see we seem to be resting at the bottom of a not-so-small ditch.

“Everybody out!” Leah shouts, and one by one, we pile out of the little bug like clowns in the circus.

We walk in circles around the car, all of us assessing the scene.

We are good and stuck. It’s a deep culvert we’ve landed in, and the only way we’re going to get out is with a tow truck with a winch.

“I don’t suppose you have triple A?” I ask Leah, who totally ignores me.

Dumb question.

Dahlia’s lighting a clove cigarette. Jonah’s wrapped his robe around the rabbit to keep the snow off him.

“We’ll just have to push,” Leah says.

We all look at her, but no one tells her that it’s not gonna work. Even if we could get it rolling, there is no way to get it back up that hill. Everyone gets behind the little yellow bug and starts to rock it there at the bottom of the ditch.

Everyone but me, that is.

“Harder,” Leah’s shouting from the driver’s seat. She’s gunning the engine, spinning tires, making deep ruts in the mud and slush. “Push harder, birdlings! Let’s get this show on the road!”

I turn my back to them and climb the hill, make my way to the road, then limp-jog the half-mile or so through the snow to the closed convenience store I noticed when we passed it a few minutes ago.

The blue phone light glows at the top of the booth like a dream beacon, like the word memory that calls Tiki and me to our imaginary beach.

But this is real life, not some fantasy world. And I am no doll, but a girl in trouble.

I drop in all the change in my pocket and push the numbers.

“Hi, Dad? It’s me, Maggie. I need help. Things are all messed up. Can you come get us?”

30

The hallways are
full of eccentric-looking kids. Kids wearing black, carrying instruments, wearing leotards and ballet slippers. There are no football players. No cheerleaders with big, fluffy hair. A girl in a top hat and cowboy boots is playing a trombone on the stairs.

My dad is taking it all in, asking our tour guide all kinds of questions about academics, GPAs, and student-to-faculty ratio.

“What do you think, Mags?” he asks after we’ve toured the building and sat in on a jazz improv class.

He’s been trying so hard with me lately. Doing over-the-top stuff like giving me books by Dorothy Allison and Rita Mae Brown, and tuning into this god-awful women’s-music hour on our local college station, where chicks with acoustic guitars and warbling voices sing all about how proud they are to be dykes. My face burns with embarrassment for them—not for being lesbians, but for being so cheesy about it.

I look around the hallway at all the artsy kids, then back to my dad, who is wearing this totally embarrassing tie with piano keys that I gave him for Christmas.

“I think it’s great,” I say, giving him a smile.

“I think so, too. Now you’ve just gotta dazzle the admissions committee.”

It’s the week after Easter. If all goes well, I’ll be accepted by Cedar Brook and start eleventh grade here in the fall. To be honest, I wish I could start right now, today. Then I wouldn’t have to live through two more months of Sutterville High.

Dahlia thinks me going to Cedar Brook is a great idea.

She said so when I talked to her on the phone the other day.

“It’s perfect, Maggie. You keep working on your clarinet and I’ll take guitar lessons. That way, we’ll be ready when the band gets back together.”

But that won’t be anytime soon.

Sure, Dahlia has all kinds of plans. She says she’s going to emancipate herself, get a job and an apartment for her and Jonah with space for the band to practice. She’ll have a room all set for Leah when she gets out of the hospital.

“This living with Aunt Elsbeth totally sucks,” she says. But then, in the next breath, she’s telling me all the cool things about her aunt. How Elsbeth’s set up a purple bedroom for Dahlia with her own stereo and computer. Elsbeth has a study full of poetry books and a piano in her living room.

“It’s not such a bad thing,” she says. “Getting three meals a day that I don’t have to scrounge for. And Jonah actually likes this therapist guy he sees. Elsbeth’s been his own personal hero, too, after she went out and got a special hutch for Mr. Twister. And did I tell you she’s got goats? Jonah’s totally in love with the goats.”

“I can’t wait to see it all,” I say.

But I doubt I will.

I mean, Elsbeth lives all the way in Ithaca, which is about four hours away.

At first, Dahlia and I talked every day on the phone, and most of the conversation consisted of her making mad plans to escape and run away together. We were gonna bust Leah out of the state hospital and jump a train like hoboes.

Then Dahlia called every couple of days and gradually stopped mentioning her escape plans. Now she calls once a week and mostly talks about all the cool things Elsbeth has done. Dahlia says Elsbeth’s friend Mark is giving her guitar lessons and that she’s hooked up with a drummer and they’re trying to start a band. Last week there was no call.

If this had happened back in the beginning, when she first moved away, I would have sat by the phone waiting. But now I guess I’m getting used to being apart from her. At first, it was physically painful to have her so far away. These days, it’s just a dull ache.

I’ve still got my mood ring and I wear it every day, even though it’s leaving a faint green line around my finger. And it doesn’t change colors anymore. It just stays black.

When Dahlia and I do talk, I fill her in on how things are going at Sutterville High. The big news is that Troy and Sukie are back together, which was totally predictable.

And then, last week, Albert actually asked me out again. This in spite of the fact that I have become a pariah, and the only kid at school who’ll even talk to me these days is Joey. Goes to show how desperate poor Albert is.

“Is it because I’m not a girl?” he asked after I said no.

I shook my head.

“Are you going out with Joey or something?” Albert asked. “I’m just asking because that’s what everyone is saying.”

“You know what, Albert? I am sick and tired of what everyone is saying,” I told him, shaking my head and walking away.