Authors: Heidi Ayarbe
“There’s an all-night free spa for thugs, thieves, felons?” I say. “Wow. That could’ve saved me lots of tension headaches had I only known.”
“Shhh.” Josh puts his finger to his lips. “We’re more than
that.
We are Babylonia.” He says it like it means something and pulls me out of the house, the screen door banging against the frame. “C’mon. Trust me.”
I follow him to his car. He opens my door with a flourish. The heat is blasting. Colin Hay is on the radio, singing: “I tried talking to Jesus, he just put me on hold; said he’d been swamped by calls this week and he couldn’t shake his cold.”
“‘My my my, it’s a beautiful world,’” I sing along.
Josh smiles. “Indeed, it is.”
We drive around the deserted streets of Carson. No one is out tonight. Probably because they’re sleeping like normal people.
“We’re here,” Josh says, parking on a no-streetlight street. Josh gets out of the car. “Let’s go.”
I follow him across the street, waiting in the shadows. I press my back against a wooden fence and wonder how everything got so complicated. I’m standing in some perfect stranger’s front yard, the ground covered with prickly pinecones and needles, waiting for Josh to find a way into the back. He opens the gate with a quiet click and waves me in.
Josh already has his shirt off and is pulling down his pants. “Michal, I give you our very own private spa.” Josh slips the cover off the hot tub and eases into the water. “This is amazing,” he says.
“No way,” I whisper. “There’s no way I’m stripping down. Like, ever in a bazillion years.”
Josh looks up at me. “Why not?”
“I just won’t, okay?” I take off my shoes. “I’ll just soak my feet. And I probably can’t get my knee wet, anyway. It’d get invaded by aggressive skin bacteria. I don’t want to be one of those weird cases on Discovery Home and Health.”
Josh scoots toward me and grabs my hand. “Just come in. Just
be
. And leave one foot out, like this. You’ve earned this.” He drapes one of his feet over the side of the Jacuzzi.
“Turn around, then.”
He closes his eyes.
“I said turn around.”
“Fine. Fine.”
I take off my sweats and T-shirt and slip into the bubbling water, keeping my knee out, practically yelping from the heat. A motion detector goes off and floods the backyard with light. We slip down, dipping our heads underwater, the tips of our noses out, my leg hanging over the edge of the Jacuzzi. The lights turn off. We sit up again. The moon is almost full, so pretty soon I can see more than blackness and shadows.
I look down at my drab bra and wish, for the first time ever, that I had cute underwear. I wonder what color goes with blotchy skin prone to acne breakouts. That’s probably not covered in
Teen Throb’s Tips on Summer Beauty
.
“This is the life,” Josh says. “Hey.” He jabs my shoulder. “Relax, will you? You must learn to live.”
I’m vaguely aware of the fact that moments like these are the ones we’ll talk about together in twenty years, laughing, saying, “Remember that time . . . ?” This entire week has filled me with that gift.
Remember that time . . . ?
Josh has his eyes closed. I can’t seem to enjoy the moment because I can’t breathe, since I’m trying to keep my stomach sucked in.
As if he reads my mind, Josh says, “Every moment like this erases a bad one—but to do so, you have to purge yourself of the bad memory forever.” Josh stands up, beads of water dripping off him. “I’ll go first.” He clears his throat. “When I was twelve, I was about four feet tall. Not really. But you get the idea. Anyway, before school one day—I used to go early to get homework done and stuff—a group of freshmen jumped me and Saran-wrapped me to a tree in the school entrance. They forced me to drink about a Super Big Gulp–sized water laced with crushed Lasix pills. By the time school started, I had pissed myself. Kids showed up to a nice welcome with me there. I was called Enuresis the entire school year.”
How can somebody say those things so openly? It’s like he doesn’t know how to hide anything, hold anything back. He’s fearless.
“That sucks,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“This is one advantage of moving schools so much.”
“Yeah. You can reinvent yourself every place you go.”
“Not reinvent. Geography doesn’t change a person; I guess I have the advantage of arriving without a past,” he says. “Mysterious.”
“Mysterious?”
“C’mon. A little mysterious, anyway.”
“It’s hard to tell. Carson High is so big, it’s like we all get swallowed up.”
“You don’t,” Josh says. “Everybody notices you.”
How can he not realize I’ve been a shadow for the past nine years?
Passing cars’ lights stream through the fence, casting shadows across Josh’s face. His eyes are closed. I lean my head against the back of the Jacuzzi. I like the idea—the systematic replacement of bad memories with good memories. “Okay. My turn?” I ask.
He nods. “If you choose to purge.”
I should have a card catalog for all of those bad moments I’ve always been ashamed about. I hesitate, move to stand up, then sit down.
I inhale and stand up, keeping my knee as dry as possible. “It was my thirteenth birthday. Lillian doesn’t remember birthdays, usually. Nobody had remembered. So, basically, it was a total cow-dung day until I was called to the office fifth period and was handed this gift. It had store-quality wrapping. You know, the kind of wrapping that uses double-sided tape—so you only see the shiny paper. And there was this lime-green bow on top. Perfect, really. The secretary wished me happy birthday and sent me back to class. They all started chanting, ‘Open it! Open it! Open it!’
“It felt so good to rip open the paper in front of everybody, like I mattered, you know. There was a gold box with a beautiful lid. I opened the lid and pulled out four cans of dog food.”
I sit back in the water and don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I exhale.
Josh rubs my cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s gone now,” he says. “These memories, this afternoon and tonight, take its place.”
I nod and swallow, a little piece of hurt breaking away and dissolving.
It’s gone
.
“To the exiled,” Josh says.
“To the exiled.”
We lean our heads back, staring up at the stars, my bad leg ice-cold in the air, but it’s worth it—worth every second.
We hear a voice. “Anybody out there?”
Josh and I slip lower into the hot tub.
“Hey! Anybody there? I’m calling the police!” A heavy door slams.
“Move move move move move!” Josh jumps out and grabs my hand, half pulling me out of the water.
We snatch our stuff and scramble through the gate, across pinecones and needles, my feet screaming as they slap on the pavement; we jump into Josh’s car as he peels out onto the black streets, turning off his headlights until we’re down Timberline past Western Nevada College. I pull on my sweats, thankful I didn’t bring anything that could be left behind. I touch my glasses. Still on my face. I nurse my knee. It’s bigger than it was yesterday and an awful blue-green color. I think I might have to show Lillian.
Josh drives into a construction site, parking in front of the skeleton of a house. “I think, Michal, the spa is closed,” Josh says.
We sit with the windows ajar, listening to music. My heart stops racing and thumps in time to a quiet song. I mutter, “R and R? You consider that R and R?”
Josh and I exchange a glance, then burst into laughter. We fog the windows with what is as close to tangible happiness as I’ve ever seen. The pit in my stomach is dissolving. Happiness.
Josh turns on the car. “C’mon. I’d better get you home for your beauty sleep.” We pull up in front of my place. His car slips into silent, electric mode. I search for any lights and exhale, seeing that the place is dark. Luckily, Lillian took off after dinner. She’s got the night shift at the clinic today. It’s hard to remember which day is which; they’re all spilling over into each other. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow. Eleven thirty.”
I nod and step out into the dry cold. Before I shut the door, I say, “Why me?” and immediately regret asking.
“Why you what?”
“Me? There are nearly three thousand kids at school—”
“You’re different,” he interrupts. Josh looks at me, not a trace of irony or silliness on his face. “They’re jealous of you because you’re different.”
“Well, now that we’ve committed larceny together, I guess you don’t have much of a choice.”
“Apparently you haven’t figured it out yet. Michal, you are my choice.”
I can feel the heat rise to my cheeks. I try to control the quavering in my voice. “Thanks for today, yesterday . . . just thanks.”
Just when I think I’m safe, he says something like that, making me believe I’m not a second-generation glitch, the result of faulty judgment, bad timing, a broken condom; that I matter. I close the car door and carry his words with me into the house, wanting to trap them in a jar and keep them forever.
I stare at the memoir notebook and write:
Pro-choice. His choice. Life has meaning
.
“MIKE, MIKE, I’M DISAPPOINTED.
What’s this dabbling all about? You’ve got a good thing going.” Leonard has a nasal voice; I think he’s got a deviated septum. He’s a skinny, bald, thirty-something, carton-a-day smoker who has this nasty tic of sucking the food in from the back of his teeth, making weird smacking sounds in his mouth.
I don’t have time to argue with him today, though. I slept in way too late and need to place the bet and get ready.
“Leonard, I don’t need the fine print-speech. Give me a little credit. Three hundred dollars’ credit, to be exact.” I just need to cover one hundred and fifty, which is easy enough since Nim paid me back and I will have enough to cover most bets and winners this weekend. The problem with the online sites I use is that they only deposit once a month into my account, and if I do an early transfer, there’s a fee; when there’s a fee, the bank calls Lillian because she’s technically the “adult” on the account; and Lillian wonders why in God’s name somebody wants to transfer $789.43 to me from a place called Bodog.
I can’t afford to have Lillian get involved after all these years.
Leonard makes an awful whistling sound with his nose like pan-flute background music. I wait. I don’t beg. I don’t have to because favors will always end up being paid off in one way or another. Just a matter of time.
“Yeah. All right. You’ve got until the end of next week, no interest. But Mike, this is the last time. You’re gonna have to start banking some of your vig, set up your own accounts, and get off the sites. They’re tying you up.”
Yeah. But I can’t bank my vig because of credit-card debt. I’ve got to stop buying crap.
“Thanks, Leonard.” I hang up the phone and stare at it, wondering what’s happening to me. I get that old feeling like I’m being set up—like this is some elaborate plan to turn me into the school joke. I need a jar of words—proof that things were said, that I’m not inventing all of this.
I shower, blow dry my hair, and get dressed. I inhale and turn around, staring at myself in the mirror. If my goal was to look like a cashmere eggplant, mission accomplished.
A pile of new clothes lies on the bed next to five fashion mags, all with articles that claim to find the
just right look for your body shape
.
None of the articles addresses eggplants.
I try to give my hair “body”—and have even shampooed with one of those special European deals that’s supposed to make my hair look like a TV commercial model’s. Unfortunately, though, the perma-limp wins out, and I still look like the “before” picture on the bottle. And kind of smoky-mesquite smelling.
I should cancel. This is stupid, a stupid football party. Plus I don’t think I can face Josh and everybody else he’s invited looking like an eggplant. Nobody should ever have to look like an eggplant. Yesterday’s Babylonia victory is blotched out by my hideous purple sweater.
I can just order pizza and watch the game from here. I dial Josh’s number and hang up. I look at the time. Eleven fifteen. Kickoff’s at one thirty.
Why did he say eleven thirty?
I dial again, then hang up.
Again.
He insisted on picking me up. It’s like a trap. If I could just go in my own car . . . I wouldn’t go.
I peek from behind the curtain. Lillian drives up. She walks in the door balancing grocery bags in her arms. I grab one and take it to the kitchen, digging into the day-old raisin bagels that go gummy in my mouth.
“You’re dressed up,” she says. “Plans?”
I swallow. “Divisional playoffs. There’s a party at a friend’s house.”
She raises her eyebrow. “New sweater?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I stare at my reflection in the window, tugging on the sweater. If Lillian’s geraniums were in bloom, I could stick a couple in my hair and pass for an Anne Geddes Where Are They Now? poster child.
“It looks nice.” She touches the soft cashmere.
So I buy expensive clothes and cut out the tags at home so Lillian won’t see them, because she’d go through the roof.
But it’s something I do for me and only me. I get the grades. I got a full ride to the University of Washington. Lillian has never once had to do
anything
extra for me and has made a point of making sure I know that room and board is burden enough. All her “extras” go to her causes—Planned Parenthood, Clinica Olé, Oppressed Person of the Month. It’s like playing Name That Cause.
Admirable. Sure.
I know I sound petty.
But when you’re nine years old and want a cake for your birthday—even a Hostess Cupcake would do—and your grandma, who refuses to be called “Grandma,” thinks your birthday is better spent handing out brochures in front of the legislature building and holding a picket sign that says
I WAS A CHOICE
, you can get a little jaded.
It sucks being a leftover from Lillian’s big mistake—my mom. And it sucks feeling guilty that Lillian doesn’t have clothes as nice as I do.