by Emma Scott
But it had a shower. A toilet. A sink. It had rooms. It had a stove and even a tiny little patio off the shoebox living area. I had a bed and so did Mom. She cried when we moved in.
I wanted to cry too but reminded myself of the truth: nothing good lasted and everything could be taken away at any second.
Or it could turn to shit at the drop of a hat.
I turned the key into our place and found my mother sitting on the couch when she wasn’t due to be home from her second job at the diner until midnight. Instead of her yellow uniform shirt, she was in sweats, and her dark hair was tied up in a loose ponytail. Her house uniform. I suspected she hadn’t gone to work at all. The yellow light of our shabby floor lamp cast a warm, homey glow over the beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and fast food wrappers on the coffee table.
A middle-aged guy I’d never seen before sat next to her. Warily, I shut the door, set my guitar case down.
“Hey,” I said flatly. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Jesus, Miller,” Mom said with a tired laugh. She was only forty-one—she and Dad had me young—but she looked a decade older and was always tired. “This is Chet Hyland. Chet, this is my son, Miller.”
Chet stared me down from across the small room, a meaty hand holding a beer, resting on the belly of his mostly white wife-beater. I’d stopped thinking of the tank as a “wife-beater” but it fit Chet. Unshaven, dark hair unwashed, and jeans stained with grease or dirt, he watched me with beady eyes. He set off every internal alarm I had; the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
Then a friendly smile burst over his face. “Good to meet you, Miller. Beer?”
“No, thanks.”
My hands were shaking again, and my watch was showing a 70. Still too low. I went to the kitchen, my skin breaking out in a cold sweat.
“You’re home late,” Mom called from the couch.
“I went to Vi’s after work.”
“Miller works at the Boardwalk,” Mom said, and I heard the flick of a lighter and an inhale off a cigarette.
“Ah, a carny, eh?” Chet chuckled.
“He works at one of the biggest arcades down there,” Mom said, managing a smile for me. “Just promoted to assistant manager.”
I opened the fridge, my trembling hands reaching for an orange juice. My meal plan required I keep a stockpile of certain foods and drinks at all times, and we had to do it on a threadbare budget. I wasn’t as good as Vi about keeping my shit in order, but there were five bottles of juice this morning before work and now there were only three.
I plucked one from the shelf and shut the door. “What the hell?”
Mom frowned. “What the hell, what?”
I held up the juice “I’m short two.”
“I might’ve had a couple today,” Chet said, his eyes never leaving mine. “Didn’t know you were keeping count.”
I gave Mom a What the fuck? glare.
“Miller has to count everything,” she explained. “He has diabetes.”
“Yeah, I do. I’d have thought she might’ve mentioned that to you, Chet.”
Like, immediately, so you don’t eat and drink all the shit I need to live.
“My bad, buddy. Won’t happen again.”
He smiled at Mom, and she smiled back. It’d been a long time since I’d seen that smile—almost happy. The kind of happy that comes from not being alone anymore and no other reason.
I swigged my juice, one hand planted on the fridge door to keep me steady.
“Feeling okay? Your CGM went off a while ago.” Mom tapped her fingers on a smartphone—an old model, several generations behind the newest—from amid the crap on the coffee table.
“I’m aware,” I said, trying—and failing—to take the bite out of my words.
Before I had the CGM, I needed to fingerstick every two hours, twenty-four hours a day. Mom being my mom was supposed to set her alarm and check on me at night. Two trips to the ER in three months, I learned to set my own alarm. Mom was sleeping through hers and shutting them off in a half-sleep.
I couldn’t blame her. She worked two jobs to keep us afloat, and my diagnosis required more time and energy than she had to spare since my pancreas had decided to close up shop: Out of insulin. Come back never.
I’d learned pretty damn quick that when it came to taking care of my diabetes, I was on my own.
Except for Violet. The hospital could’ve sent her to me…
But they didn’t and that’s life.
I drank half of the juice and tucked the bottle in my backpack and slung it and my guitar case over my shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Mom called as I headed for the door.
“Out.”
“It’s late, and you have school tomorrow.”
“Does he give you trouble?” Chet asked Mom in a low, warning voice.
“No, he—”
“Hey. Boy.”
I froze with my hand on the doorknob. My head turned on a stiff neck to meet Chet’s dark, hard gaze.
“You give your mom a hard time, son?”
His words, casually threatening, slid icily down my spine. I tilted my chin and somehow managed not to blink. “I’m not your son.”
A short silence fell where I could only hear the beat of my heart crashing against my chest.
Mom waved the smoke away as if she could dissipate the tension between us. “Nah, he’s good. He’s a good kid.”
Chet’s eyes never moved from mine as he said to me and only me, “He’d better be.”
“Fucking hell,” I muttered, hands jammed in my pockets as I walked down the silent, darkened streets that wound down toward the beach. Over the last four years, Mom had guys come and go in various shades of loser-ness, but Chet felt like King Loser and permanently fixed to our couch.
That day was a shit day, and I wanted nothing more but to sleep. But now that Mom was having a sleepover with Chet fucking Hyland, I took a walk instead.
Even after Mom and I moved out of the car and to the apartment, I didn’t stop roaming at night. Walking to be alone. To escape. Sometimes I had the urge to walk all night and not stop. But without my meds, I’d wind up dead somewhere, and they wouldn’t find me until the seagulls had picked my bones clean.
“Cheery thought,” I muttered, the wind whipping my words away.
That night, I wandered the remote stretch of rocky beach fronted by high cliffs. I hunched deeper into my jacket. It was technically summer, but the Northern California coast didn’t get the memo.
Black waves, bearded in white foam, crashed against the rocky sand, clawing at it and then retreating, over and over. To the west, the glittering colored lights of the Boardwalk looked garish and wild. Even a mile away, I could hear the last roller coaster of the night rattle up the track, followed by the happy screams of the riders as it plummeted. The Ferris Wheel turned silently and slowly behind it.
I turned my back on the color and light and trudged deeper amid the craggy, porous rocks that were black and jagged under the meager moonlight. The high tide forced me to stay close to the boulders, and soon enough, I was climbing more than walking. To my right, the cliffs loomed. On my left, the ocean reached for me in angry grabs, spraying me with cold water with every attempt. I’d never come this far before.
Only when I stumbled, scraping my palm on a rough, salt-beaten rock to catch my balance, did I surrender. The water was starting to squelch around my boots, and if this stupid foray damaged my guitar, I’d never forgive myself.
I’d started to turn around and pick a path back amid the rocks and dampening sand, when I heard it. Distant but clear, between the roar of the waves. A creak followed by a slam. Like a wooden door on a busted hinge, opening and shutting with every gust of wind.
Against all good sense, I kept going, and my curiosity paid off when the boulders thinned slightly. I was able to pick a precarious path over smaller, rounded stones. The shoreline curved up, away from the water, and the waves couldn’t touch me any l
onger. The way grew easier. The sound—creak-slam!—grew louder.
Finally, I came around a huge cluster of boulders. Ahead, the cliffs had slid toward the ocean, and there was no more beach.
Dead end.
Then I heard it again. Behind me.
I turned and there was the door. It hung on loose hinges, and every time the wind blew it open, it revealed a rectangle of pitch black. It took me a second in the dark of the night to make it out, but I realized I was staring at a square wooden shack built against a collection of high boulders.
I should have left it alone and gone home: first day of school and all. But what was at home? A stranger in our small space. And school was nothing but another year of being bullied for the unforgiveable crime of being poor. And thanks to my colossal failure tonight with Vi, I’d spend it watching her get closer and closer to River until I lost her forever.
I fished my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans and flipped on the flashlight function.
“This is how teenagers die in horror movies,” I muttered into the wind. The creaking door slammed, making me flinch.
I held up the meager light and peered in, using my guitar case to prop open the door.
“Hello?”
Jesus, I sounded like a scared dope. But if someone—or two or ten someones—lived here, I didn’t want to be rude.
Or murdered.
The shack was empty. And bigger than I thought. My light wasn’t strong enough; I had to illuminate parts of it at a time. Moonlight filtered in through cracks in the roof and through the one glass-less window cut into the side, drifts of sand piled against it.
I guessed the shack was about two hundred square feet. Rickety, uneven wood planks made up the flooring. A tangle of poles still wound with fishing line—like white witch’s hair—stood in one corner. A bucket. A bench. Even a small table with a rusted scaling knife resting on it.
I’d found a fisherman’s shack, weather-beaten, salt-rusted. Out of sight and forgotten and unused in months, if not years. It had its own small stretch of beach, and the ocean crashed a few hundred yards away, too far away to threaten.
Mine.
I sank down on the splintered but sturdy wooden bench. Suddenly, I was so fucking tired. I pillowed my head on my arm on the table, smelling wood and salt. My eyes fell shut at once.
When my CGM’s alarm went off, dawn’s first light was filtering in the shack’s lone window and streaming in from gaps in the planks like slivers of gold. I knew immediately where I was, as if I’d been coming here for years.
Treasure. I found buried treasure.
Just as I had four years ago, the night I’d stumbled out of the forest to see Violet McNamara’s face peering down at me from her bedroom window.
I popped a few gummies and finished off the bottle of orange juice. When I felt steadier, I stretched the cricks out of my bones for sleeping hunched over a table and grabbed my guitar case.
Outside, the sun was just cresting the horizon to the east. My eyes stung with tears—probably just the cold wind—as I watched the light spill over the ocean that was no longer angry but calm. Serene.
In front of my shack, I found a flat rock and sat facing the water. I took my guitar from its case, looped the strap around my neck. The fingers of my right hand found their home on the frets, and the left went to the strings.
The sun rose, and I played Violet’s song. My voice—rough and scratchy, like old wood—sang the words that had been trapped in my heart for years. I sang them louder, strummed the guitar harder. Fueled by fruitless, hopeless longing, the words rose up and up…
Until they were caught by the wind and torn to shreds.
All I’ll Ever Want
Pretend I’m doing fine on my own
a lost soul with nowhere to go
I got holes in my shoes walking away from you
there’s living and then there’s life
don’t tell me it’ll be all right
this nomad needs a home a home
So maybe fall in love with me tonight
You’re right there but so far away
A thousand words in my mouth
And I got nothing to say
put you in my love song, hiding in plain sight
Don’t make me say it again
Guess I’ll have to play it again
And make you fall in love with me tonight
Feels so good and feels so weak
This love cuts until I bleed
Don’t touch me, baby, don’t look at my scars,
Until you want to know which ones are yours
All I’ll ever want
All I’ll ever want
Is you and me
Don’t know how lost you are
Until you’re found
you can’t see the road, when the rain’s comin’ down
You call me home
I’ll take you to bed
Turn off the light and I’ll pretend that you said
I fell in love with you tonight
Feels so good and feels so weak
This love cuts until I bleed
Don’t touch me, baby, don’t look at my scars,
Until you want to know which ones are yours
All I’ll ever want
All I’ll ever want
Is you to fall in love with me tonight
Chapter Three
The first day of senior year. I’d have plenty of first days of classes to come—years’ worth in undergrad and med school—but this was the last year of high school. Shiloh was fond of pointing out how ridiculously excited I got about the first day of school when everyone else was bemoaning the end of summer.
“Like a rite of passage,” I murmured, as I dressed in skinny jeans and an off-the-shoulder, waist-length sweatshirt.
I studied myself in the mirror. The jeans highlighted my curves more than I was used to but otherwise seemed plain. But in choosing my outfit for the day, Evelyn had warned me not to make it look like I was trying too hard.
“You’re naturally stunning, you bitch,” she’d told me, laughing, while we shopped at the King’s Village Shopping Center the week before. “Just show off that ass of yours, and no one will give a crap what else you’re wearing.”
I turned in front of the mirror that morning in my bedroom, lips pursed. Two years ago, Evelyn Gonzalez and her crew of popular friends hadn’t paid me a second glance. But a friend from my soccer team took me to a beach party last year. Somehow, I ended up in the sandy-floored bathroom, comforting a crying Evelyn who’d just broken up with Chance Blaylock, her boyfriend of six months.
“You’re really sweet,” she’d said, dabbing her eyes. “Most girls at school would be thrilled to see me like this. Weak and pathetic.”
“You’re not either,” I said gently. “You’re human.”
Something in those words must’ve touched the Queen Bee because suddenly she was looping her arm in mine and introducing me to her friends. Which included River Whitmore. I still hadn’t the guts to talk to him, but whenever I hung out with them that summer, we exchanged smiles and once he bought me a shake at the Burger Barn. True, he’d been buying everyone a shake, but it felt nice to be included. A high school experience a bookish girl like me would never have imagined.
But then River stopped hanging out with us and now I knew why.
I grabbed the envelope that held my Patient Care Volunteer assignment from the UCSC Medical Center and tucked it into my backpack, then headed downstairs.
My parents were having breakfast in the spacious, sunlit kitchen, sitting as far apart from each other as possible—Dad at the gray marble counter, sipping coffee and reading the paper. Mom at the table, spreading jelly on a slice of wheat toast.
No fighting. No tension. Yet. I felt like I was in one of those movies where the spy has to cross a room without tripping the red lasers that crisscrossed all over. I had to move carefully, slowly, not to set them off.
“Morning,” I said brightl
y.
Mom didn’t look up from her toast. “Good morning, honey.”
“Morning, pumpkin,” Dad said with a tired smile.
Shiloh liked to say the universe took my parents’ best features and gave them to me. I got Mom’s thick, almost black hair and Dad’s dark blue eyes. After that, I looked nothing like them. Mom was tall, slender, with pale blue eyes, while Dad was sandy-haired and stockier.
“Are you excited for your first day of senior year?” Dad asked.
“Definitely. I’m going to be pretty busy, what with soccer, debate, and now this.” I sat next to Mom and pulled out my Patient Care Volunteer acceptance letter and placed it on the table.
“You got in?” Mom beamed and reached to give my arm a squeeze. “I knew you would.”
Dad brought his coffee over and pecked me on the top of the head. “Proud of you, pumpkin.” He sat down so that I was between him and Mom. “And do you know who your assignment is?”
“Is it that Miller?” Mom said, focusing on her toast and being careful to keep her tone casual.
Four years later and my best friend was still that Miller to her: the boy who’d lived in a car and nearly died in her backyard.
“No, not Miller,” I said tightly, clinging to my smile. “Nancy Whitmore.”
Glances were exchanged between my parents.
Dad shifted in his chair. “I visited the Whitmore Auto Body last week.”
“I know. It’s cancer, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. Liver cancer. And it doesn’t look good.”
“She’s terminal,” Mom cut in, her voice stiff. “Let’s be honest with Violet, for a change.”
Dad’s lips made a thin line, but he turned to me. “You going to be okay with that, sweetheart?”
“I’m going to be a doctor. Like I told Miller, the hard stuff is part of the deal.”
Mom set down her toast. “You told Miller before you told us? When? Last night?”
“Lynn…”
“Yes,” I said. “Last night.”
