by Paula Jolin
TWENTY-TWO
MIYA SETTLED into position on the bench outside Gold’s Gym. Three times a week, seven to eight a.m., said her source. (Aliya.) Miya checked her watch. Give Luke ten minutes for a shower, another minute to stuff everything into a bag, and—
Here he was, coming down the steps two at a time.
Miya pushed her hair out of her eyes and started across the street, sprinting when she realized that she just might miss him. Man, he was fast. He’d reached the bottom step and turned toward the corner before she jumped the curb. “Hey,” she said.
He kept walking. A little more speed, and she grabbed the back of his jacket. “Hey,” she said again.
He stopped, even turned around. “Miya.” Was he pleased to see her? Angry? Remembering their conversation down at the lake when he stormed away? She stared down at her hands and watched herself twist the strap of her pocketbook around her wrist.
“Hey,” she said, for the third time. She swallowed, looked back up. “How’s it going?”
“You taking up kickboxing?” he asked. “I think you can still make the eight fifteen class.”
She pulled the strap tighter, felt her fingers go a little numb. “No,” she said. “Not kickboxing.”
“You seem like a kickboxing kind of girl.” His brown hair hadn’t been cut in a while, and it curled up on his neck. Shone in the early-morning sun. “Fiery, ready to take on the world.”
What was she supposed to ask him? Right, the redhead. “I’m so glad I ran into you,” she said. Inject some warmth, Miya. Sound real. But all she could see in his face was Trevor. Behind his glasses, Luke’s green eyes went gray; his brows arched a little higher, his cheeks filled out. She blinked once, twice, three times. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about . . .”
He’d been staring over her head. She took it in only now, that distance in his eyes, as he brought her into focus.
“You know, Miya,” said Luke, “you might be just the person I need.” Need. Not a word you used lightly. “Can you do something for me? I need you to talk to this guy who won’t give me a straight answer. Pretend you’re a reporter or something? You’re good at that, right—projecting one thing but staying yourself inside?”
Staying yourself inside. It was like he saw the Miya she wanted to be, not the Miya that she was. The Trevor-like parts of his face faded, full-on Luke emerged.
“Miya?” Luke waved a hand toward the parking lot. She recognized that green Mercedes parked in the end space, the one that used to belong to his father. “What do you say? The clerk at the Handi Mart swears he never saw Trevor that last night, but I got a ride with Trevor to Mal’s party—the tank was practically empty then. He had to fill up somewhere.”
THEY WALKED into the Handi Mart together, her shoulder inches from the elbow of his jacket. A tinny bing-bing-bing heralded their arrival. The store was not the cleanest: it smelled a little like sour milk, and the floors were streaked with dried mud, although the rain had cleared up two days ago.
“Gas?” asked the clerk behind the counter, not lifting his shaggy head from his crossword puzzle.
Luke took a sharp turn and headed straight to the drink machines at the back of the store. One coffee for her, no cream, no sugar; one enormous slushie for him. “We’re from the high school paper,” said Miya. “Fillmore High. We’re doing a story on Trevor Sanders, the boy who died in the state forest a couple of weeks ago.” Her lines came out all hesitant, like an actress on her first big break.
The guy didn’t seem to care, as he filled in half a dozen boxes. He looked up. Midthirties, dark eyes, pockmarked face. “You knew him?”
“No,” said Miya. “That’s why they assigned us the story.”
“Sad,” he said. “Kids today, they have everything. That boy tossed it all away. Should have been careful—the night was too foggy, and he’d been drinking.”
In the back of the store, the slushie machine wheezed. “You saw him that night? You were working?”
“Never saw him.” Shaggy’s head shook. “The police came by after the crash and showed me his photo, though. Nicelooking boy.”
Luke came up behind her, touching her elbow as he placed two cups on the counter, one Styrofoam, one plastic. Was that touch on purpose? Miya bit her lip and went on with her job. “Who else came in? Was there a girl with red hair?”
“How would I remember that?”
Inspiration struck. She reached into her purse and thumbed through her wallet until she found the picture she’d stolen from Trevor’s bulletin board. “What about her? Was she here?”
Luke took a breath so fast he whistled. Catastrophe. Trevor’s bulletin board, Luke’s house—of course he knew the girl. Miya refused to look up at him. “Was it her?”
The clerk shrugged. “Two hundred people in here a night—I can’t be expected to remember every one, can I?”
Nothing left to do but leave.
The door opened and closed behind them, automatic of course, but it felt like magic. How to distract him? Miya reached for the sexy look, the arched back, the three open buttons on her blouse.
None of it worked. Less than three steps and he was saying, “What the hell were you doing in my house, Miya? You completely freaked out my mom—she’s convinced that it was Trevor’s ghost.”
Miya stepped up on the platform with the gas tanks and leaned back against the nearest one. Say something. Except that she couldn’t.
“She thinks he’s all pissed at her for letting his room get trashed. The woman can barely hold her life together as is. She’s late to work three days a week, spends every night crying on the phone, can’t even pay the bills on time. Why would you want to make her more miserable? Why do something like that?”
Like what? Break in? Repair the model ships? Steal the photo?
“Can I have my cousin’s picture back, please? What did you want with it anyway? Jeez, Miya. Don’t you think the police would have asked Katelin first thing? She wasn’t there, she was taking her boyfriend to the bus station.”
His cousin. At least Aliya would cheer up.
Miya mustered an apology. “Look, I’m sorry, I have this friend who was in love with Trevor—they were together and she’s so afraid he was cheating on her. . . .”
“Uh-huh.” Even with the six inch advantage she got from the platform, he looked down at her. “Your friend.”
“Are you saying I’m lying? You think I’m making her up?” And Miya, the liar, poised herself on the brink of truth.
Luke punched the gas tank with his right fist, hard, direct, like the steel tank would go down for the count. Not the smartest move, but who was interested in smart these days?
Miya tugged the ends of her hair. Make a boy who hasn’t spoken to you tell you he loves you. Maybe the charlatan kitoshi knew Miya better than she knew herself. If that kitoshi had real power, what would Miya be asking her now? Raise Trevor from his watery grave, but then give Miya the will to demand what she might want the most: Ignore my warts. Love me—yes, love me—even if I break into your house and steal family photos.
“I’m not calling you a liar,” said Luke. He turned his back on the tank. “I mean, the whole thing, it’s so unfair. It should be Trevor alive, cheating on girls, if that’s what he was doing, taking their shit himself, and having all the pleasure of convincing her she’s wrong. I mean—”
He was crying. His face was a mess, tears spilling out beneath the glasses, mouth crumpled up with something painful. In a rage maybe, or shock. Miya had never been much good at reading faces. Books, that’s what she knew and loved; texts from horny boys, she could read those.
“It was me who trashed the room, you know,” he said, voice shaking. “The morning of his memorial service—God, I was so angry, so unbearably angry. I don’t know why I went into Trevor’s room in the first place, but I was standing there, my whole life laid into a freaking waste. I threw every damn thing I touched, which was almost every damn thing in the room.” He turn
ed his head away. “I ended up standing in a pile of trash.”
It was the easiest thing to round the gas tank, close the distance between them. To reach up and wrap her arms around Luke, squeeze. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. The stiffness of his shirt crushed her cheek; she inhaled the fresh, clean scent of soap. “I shouldn’t have taken the photo, shouldn’t be playing Lulu Dark, so, so stupid. And it’s not what you think, I swear, not just curiosity or even a girl with hurt feelings, it’s more than that, it’s . . .”
She shut her mouth just in time, so he wouldn’t look for the men in white coats over her shoulder. Where she went very wrong was to let her fingers trace a sexy curve up Luke’s back, to twist her head around, let her mouth taste the salty tears on his face, to kiss him.
He shrugged her away. “No, Miya, I can’t, I’ve got to think.”
“You mean, not me.”
He had his back to her now, but she saw his hand move, wipe his face. Then he hurled the slushie against the gas pump. “We’re so different, Miya. You’re all about fun, about the next guy on the list, and me, I’m finding it hard to think about fun these days.” He stared at the green liquid and ice trickling down the side of the pump, pooling on the ground. “I’m finding it hard to think about anything except Trevor.”
She too. She’d dreamed about Trevor’s flailing arms, his sinking head; replayed go drown yourself, do you think I’d care? like a song stuck on infinite loop. She’d even abandoned reason for Trevor. But all she said was, “So you think I’m that shallow?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the car keys. “I’m not calling you shallow, Miya, just because you thrive on the chase. And think of it that way; it’s not me you want, it’s the satisfaction of a race well run.” One raised hand cut off her protest. “You used to chase prizes and grades, now you chase guys. All it says is you’re a person with goals and ambitions. You’re a winner.”
“Isn’t everyone all about the chase?” Her voice wobbled, but not so much that she couldn’t get away with it. “Whether you’re chasing love, or identity, or an end to global warming? Whether you want a million dollars or a date for the prom?” Or the truth about why a seventeen-year-old ran his car off a cliff one night?
“You could put it that way.” Luke was striding across the parking lot, heading for the car. Miya had to scramble to catch up. It wasn’t until he pulled his seat belt across his chest and started the engine that he spoke again. “But I don’t want to be a goal.”
He pulled out of the parking lot, took the first right and hit the highway full speed. They ripped past the break in the road that marked the secret entrance to the state forest. Was it really less than a week ago that she’d peeled out of there, wet clothes sticking her fast to the seat, hands barely touching the steering wheel as she raced to the bottom of the hill? Unable to get the memory of floating out of her head as she ran a red light, went the wrong way down a one-way street. There had been something to that night, hadn’t there? Maybe there was even something to the kitoshi, something more than greed.
She snuck a glance at Luke, his face grim, his head bent over the steering wheel. So close she could feel the warmth coming off his skin, so close that if she moved half an inch, she’d brush his elbow. But she didn’t dare. Tension seeped off of him, filled the air of the car with weight. If she touched him, they’d both sizzle.
Her mouth set in a straight line. Time to do away with the feminine wiles, once and for all. Bury them, the way she’d dumped her college bowl trophies in the back of the closet and piled clothes on top. There were other paths to the Miya she wanted.
Her voice under full control, she said, “I see your point.” She did. And very soon, he’d see hers.
TWENTY-THREE
STUPID EXPEDIA.COM. Did it have to take all day to call up a new page? Finally: Boston to Columbia, Columbia to Caracas, Caracas to Curacao, Curacao to Port of Spain . . . $619, one way.
Vol-ca-no. Gillian’s ringtone, courtesy of soca king Red Plastic Bag. She swept up her cell, looked at the Caller ID— out of area—and snapped it open. “Good night,” she said.
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Mums. “Good night. How yuh doing in the land of the free and the brave?”
“Mums! How goes my sweet TnT?” Something sharp and uncomfortable shot through Gillian’s side. A pang of guilt? What had she been thinking, giving free reign to all those negative thoughts at the séance? She’d swept all her textbooks off the bed and made herself comfy with a couple of pillows up against the headboard before she realized Mums wasn’t talking. “Mums?” she said. “Everything okay?”
A scary sniffle came from the other end of the line, then two. “I all right, gyul.”
“Mums? What’s wrong?” She’d been after Mums to go to the doctor for a long time—those headaches, that loss of appetite. Had she finally gone?
“I ready to cuss,” said Mums. “Worst day of meh life today. Yesterday too. Bad things piling on, gyul. This place, things ain’t like they used to be.”
“What are you talking about?” Gillian pinned the phone to her ear.
“People. Used to be, yuh could trust people. Trinidad was full of good people, honest people.”
Gillian was on the edge of the bed now, bare legs dangling. “What happened?”
“I telling yuh,” said Mums. She sighed so deep, Gillian’s cell phone almost shook. “I told yuh about meh new job?”
“At the roti shop?”
“Two days ago, lunchtime, three of us working, crowds pushing through the door. Money went missing from the till. For some reason, Sebastian—he the boss—decided I the culprit. Outrageous. Sent meh home then, and didn’t pay meh for meh time, the whole week.”
“But Mums.” Gillian crossed her legs, then dragged the comforter back to cover them. “Didn’t he search you? Couldn’t you prove you didn’t have the money?”
“Sebastian, he doesn’t think like that.”
There was some silence. “Well,” said Gillian, to cheer her up, “you still have your job in the zoo gift shop. This parttime thing was just to help Dunstan, right? He’ll have to—”
“Dunstan.” Mums laughed, or maybe she was crying. “That cheating rat’s ass?”
Gillian didn’t like Dunstan, but she’d thought he knew a good thing when he hooked up with Mums. “Cheating?”
“He been bullin’ meh for weeks, telling meh Nancy stories, then he cut a night here, cut a night there. I know there’s another girl he talking to at work. I don’t go for drama, but I went to see she, let her know she boy a blasted rat. Well, she didn’t like that—”
“Is Dunstan gone?”
“He gone,” said Mums. “And meh TV gone wit him, and the iPod yuh sent meh last summer, and all meh U.S. dollars. I having bad luck like Christmas. Someone out there put maljo on meh, and when I find out—”
Maljo. The evil eye. Underneath her warm covers, Gillian froze. A phrase, that’s all, one Trinis used all the time.
Nothing to do with her ham-fisted attempts at obeah, with three girls in the forest calling up spirits they couldn’t control. With her thinking harsh thoughts about Mums as she danced around the fire. Wasn’t enough that she’d abandoned the woman, she had to bad talk her to the jumbies too?
Mums was still going on, talking about a bake and shark stand that might take her on, run by the friend of a cousin, but the pay, not enough to live on, so maybe she should take up private cooking?
“But what about your job at the zoo? You’re still working there, right?”
“Didn’t I tell yuh about meh bad luck?” said Mums. “We on strike at the zoo. Big boys think it’s okay to cut we salaries, so that they can keep their fancy cars. We said no, we want we money, and we out. That was, let’s see, the thirtieth.”
The thirtieth. Gillian scrambled over to the desk, clawed through some papers and found the calendar. Please let her be wrong—
Just as she thought. The thirtieth. Saturday, the day after the séance.
/> “. . . so yuh know I hate to ask. But the rent money, I don’t have, and the landlord, he telling meh, yuh got a daughter up in the Stars and Stripes, why not go on up? With this crazy weather coming—”
“You want to come here? That’s loca, you’ve got no idea what it’s like . . .”
“That’s why I said, I hate to ask, but this is no time to be out on the street.” She was proud, Mums, she’d eat stale porridge for breakfast and nothing for lunch rather than ask for a bite of sandwich. “If yuh got a bit of spare change, well, more than a bit, I’d need at least two hundred dollars. Three, I mean. US.”
Good Lord. How could Gillian be such a chupidee? She hadn’t been paying enough attention to the malevolent force, or at least not the right kind of attention. Out to get her, she’d assumed. But the obeah man had seemed to think she was the malevolent force, or was aligned with it, or some such—wasn’t that why he kicked her out? And then she’d piled on with all those negative thoughts in the forest. She winced. Anything was possible. Maybe she’d sent the malevolent force after Mums, all inadvertent.
What had the obeah man said to her that first day? Don’t interfere with what you know nothing about.
There was still a chance she could snitch a credit card, buy that ticket on Expedia, make it to the gate before someone called, Stop thief. “Maybe I could come down, help out—”
Look ting! Finally, meh daughter coming home. But instead, she heard: “Gwan wit yuh. Come down here to what, call out for change in the street?”
“I want to come home, Mums, I really hate it here—so cold, the weather, the food, the people. I want to swim in Maracas Bay, jump up at Carnival—”
“Life isn’t Carnival every night, Daughter.” Another sigh, a tired voice. “What’s that man been telling yuh? I let yuh go away so I could party? I let yuh fly up there so yuh could learn something, and live in a house with heat and AC.” A sudden noise crashed in the background, like someone was carrying a roomful of steel drums past the phone, then it vanished. “I know yuh ended up only half a Trini, wit that Yankee accent, and that hardass cheapness, and that American sense of superiority. But that’s the price we had to pay. Both of us, meh and yuh. Yuh think I’m gonna lose out on everything, and get nothing back for it but missing yuh? Yuh keep that black ass freezing in the cold, where it belongs.”
