Little Miss Strange

by Joanna Rose

  “That one guy has a car,” she said. “One of them. Want to go riding around?”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t go riding around with them. Are you drunk?”

  “I got to go,” Elle said, heading out through the front room. She went around the far side of the couch, going toward the door, then toward the wall, and when she got to the door she grabbed at the doorknob. She left the door open behind her and went down the stairs, stopping twice, and then going on, out the front door.

  I said, “Elle.”

  I said, “Lalena.”

  IN THE morning she was in front of the shop, sitting on the edge of the flower box, the early sun shining on her hair, and on the red zinnias. She sat still, looking down at the sidewalk, her hair hanging down around her face, her arms bare and pink and skinny, leaning with her elbows on her knees. She looked small, and she didn’t look up when I got close.

  I said, “Hi.”

  She jumped.

  “God,” she said. “Hi.”

  She squinted up at me. There were two pimples, one right next to the other, on her chin.

  “I don’t feel very good,” she said.

  I said, “Do you have a hangover?”

  “No,” she said. “Maybe.”

  I pinched a brown shriveled flower off a petunia, poked it into the dirt. Sat down next to her.

  “Did you take some aspirin?” I said.

  “I tried but it made me puke,” she said.

  “I thought you said that cured a hangover,” I said. “You said you don’t get a hangover if you throw up. Puke. ‘Puke’ is a stupid word.”

  Elle burped and she went, “Oh.”

  Seventeenth Avenue was quiet and empty. The air smelled cool, like it was going to be hot again later.

  I said, “Were you hanging out with those guys all night?”

  Elle went, “Huh?”

  “Them,” I said.

  The two boys walked slow on the other side of the street. They crossed a block down, and up the sidewalk toward us.

  Elle said, “Shit.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Just maintain,” she said.

  The boys came closer, walking easy, opening a pack of cigarettes, knocking into each other, laughing.

  “They don’t look like they feel as bad as you do,” I said.

  Elle pushed her hair back from her face, sat up straight, smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt. There was a hickey down low on the side of her neck.

  “God,” I said. “A hickey. Did one of those guys give you a hickey?”

  “Sh,” she said.

  “Why do you do that?” I said.

  “I told you,” she said. “It’s just kind of an accident. Shut up.”

  The two boys got to us.

  “Hi,” said one of them, the one with darker hair, longer.

  The other boy had light hair, almost blond, pulled back in a little pony-tail. He smiled, looking away and then back, standing on one foot. Then standing on the other foot.

  Elle said, “Hi.”

  “I got to go in and open the shop,” I said.

  Elle grabbed at my arm when I stood up, her fingers pinching at my elbow skin.

  She said, “So what are you guys doing today?”

  She didn’t let go of my arm.

  She said, “Did you find a place to crash?”

  “In the alley,” the dark-haired boy said, putting his hands in his pockets, bouncing. “Just up there, around the corner.”

  “I got to go in,” I said.

  “Sarajean works here,” Elle said.

  I jerked my arm out of Elle’s fingers, and she gave me a look.

  “’Bye,” I said to those guys.

  “Come by later,” I said to Elle.

  I walked to the end of the block to go around to the back door of the shop, and all their eyes behind me.

  The sun hadn’t reached into the alley yet. Erico sat on a box by the back door, leaning against the brick of the wall, looking up, into a leafy vine covered with red flowers. He held his coffee cup in his hands, and the sleeves of his light blue shirt were folded back, his dark arms resting. His eyes moved to me and smiled, and he stood up and went in, and he came back with another cup of coffee, for me, and he sat back down on the box. Bees buzzed around the flowers of the vine in heavy swoops, and thin bits of clouds crisscrossed the long blue sky above the alley.

  When I went in, through the striped blanket, turned the sign around, Elle and the two boys were gone. Cigarette butts were stuck in the dirt under the zinnias, and I picked them out. I filled the bucket from the kitchen with water and took it back out, and soaked the dirt under the flowers.

  Elle came back late in the afternoon. She had a smear of skin-colored makeup, somebody else’s skin color, pale whitish cream, covering the pimples on her chin.

  “Are you better?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I took a painkiller. Billy had some codeine painkillers.”

  “You hanging out with those guys?” I said.

  “They’re from Kansas,” she said. “They’re just passing through. Except they might hang around since their car is a kind of piece of junk. It might not make it up over the pass.”

  “How old are they?” I said.

  She said, “There’s a concert tonight, at Cheeseman Park. Want to go? It starts at seven.”

  “What concert?” I said.

  “Outside, on the grass,” Elle said. “At the pavilion. Come on, it won’t be so hot out then.”

  I said, “Are those guys going?”

  “I don’t know,” Elle said. “They took off. I don’t know where they went.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Come by at six, when I’m done.”

  “We can go by your house on the way,” Elle said. “You can change your clothes.”

  “Change my clothes?” I said. “To go to the park?”

  “Well,” Elle said. “I just thought you might want to.”

  ELLE CAME at ten minutes after six. She had on a black halter top with little stars, tied with strings. Her eyes were painted with dark lines and bright copper, beautiful witch eyes.

  “Let’s go get high at your house,” she said.

  Lady Jane’s door was closed, no music, and my house was empty and quiet.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Want to just hang out here?”

  “No,” Elle said. “We’re going to a rock concert.”

  She sat down at the kitchen table and put a little bit of marijuana into a flat Zig Zag paper. She picked the paper up carefully and twisted the ends together in a joint that looked like a piece of candy. She lit the joint with her silver lighter. Seeds popped, and joint sparks landed on the table.

  “It’s going to be cold out, on the grass, when the sun is gone,” I said. “Want to take a shirt?”

  “No,” Elle said. “I won’t be cold.”

  I smoked, and handed the joint back to her. The joint was burning at the side, instead of at the end, falling apart. Elle licked her finger and wet the side of the joint.

  My truckers hung on the back of my bedroom door. I put them on over my T-shirt, and then I looked at the ivory leaves shirt, hanging from the closet doorknob. I slipped the straps down and changed my T-shirt for the ivory leaves shirt, tucked the long shirt tails down into the loose trucker legs. Did up the straps, and the front of the truckers covered up the front of me.

  “Good outfit,” Elle said. “Now let’s put some eye makeup on your eyes.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Just some eyeliner maybe,” I said.

  “No,” I said.

  We walked outside, up to the corner, and up Eleventh Avenue. When we got to the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Corona Street, I looked back. The mountains were dusty blue outlines, the sun low over them, a smear of orange across their tops.

  “Mountains,” I said. “Look at them.”

  Elle said, “I wonder if there’ll be lots of people there.”

  �
��No,” I said. “Listen. If you look at the mountains, your eyes will remember how to see far away. It’s practice for your eyes.”

  “You’re high,” Elle said. “Come on.”

  “There’s your old house,” I said.

  “Which one is it?” Elle said. “They painted it and now I can never tell which one it was.”

  “The second one,” I said. “The blue one.”

  We went on up Eleventh Avenue. The big houses set back in gardens. At the last corner before the park, a dark, dented station wagon stopped at the curb.

  “Hey, Elle.”

  “God damn it,” I said.

  “Hi, you guys,” Elle said. “Are you going to the concert?”

  They turned off the engine, and got out. The light-haired boy was driving, and he got out, and came around, and the other boy got out and leaned there, on the car.

  “We might head out tonight,” the light-haired boy said. “South, so we don’t have to go over the pass.”

  The other boy said, “What’s this concert?”

  “In the park,” Elle said. “Want to go? Want to get high?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Hop in.”

  “No,” I said.

  Elle looked at me right in the face. Witch eyes.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go. Come on.”

  I said, “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?” Elle said.

  Her face in the dark light was so beautiful, her witch eyes dark and beautiful. I tucked my arms inside my truckers.

  “I think I’ll just go home,” I said. “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Well,” she said. “Maybe I’ll come by later. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  They all got in the car. Elle in the middle. I stood on the corner, and the car drove up to the next corner, and turned away gone.

  I went back. Toward Ogden Street, down the hill of the sidewalk, through cool air under bushes. The sky over the outline of the mountains was spread with orange light. At Corona Street I turned up to Elle’s old house. It was blue now, light blue, and white on the windows and doors, and white porch steps. Elle’s old bedroom window was a bright gold square of sunset. The front door opened and three people came out, talking, hurrying, down the steps, and I went past the house up the sidewalk.

  Colfax Street was busy with people, their talking going past me and around me, and me just walking under the lit-up signs. The sky was orange all the way down Colfax Street to the black outline of the capitol dome. At Ogden Street I turned toward my house. The Safeway store lit up the corner, and my house, dark red, like black, behind the holly bushes.

  The porch was dark around me. The sky was dark when Blackbird drove up to the curb. Jimmy Henry got out and slammed the door shut, came around the front of the truck, up the walk, his shirt hooked on his finger over his shoulder. He sat down next to me, laying his shirt across his knees, finding the pocket, getting out cigarettes, matches. He flipped the match, still lit, out to the sidewalk, and it went out and disappeared in the dark. We sat there, Jimmy Henry smoking. Me just sitting there.

  IT WAS two days before Margo came into Someone’s Beloved Threads.

  “Sarajean,” she said. “Is Lalena staying with you?”

  “Elle,” I said.

  “No,” I said.

  Heading out. South. Not over the pass.

  CASSANDRA WIGGINS said, “Have you heard from her?”

  “No,” I said.

  She said, “Did you two have a falling out?”

  “No,” I said.

  She said, “I thought you were best friends.”

  “We were,” I said. “We are. Best friends.”

  JIMMY HENRY said, “Do you know where she went?”

  “Maybe California,” I said. “Her friend Talia went to California.”

  He said, “Why?”

  “Why did Talia go to California?” I said.

  He said, “Why would Lalena go there?”

  “Elle,” I said. “You’re supposed to say Elle.”

  ELLE’S DADDY said, “Was that girl in trouble?”

  “In trouble?” I said.

  “You know,” he said. “In trouble.”

  “No,” I said.

  My cheeks went all hot.

  “Who did she go with?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe some boys from Kansas.”

  THERE WAS another red-haired girl on Seventeenth Avenue. I saw her through the window of the shop, across the street, and I went to the door, ran to the door. It wasn’t Elle. The next time I saw the other red-haired girl, same thing. I ran to the door, and it wasn’t Elle.

  LADY JANE and Nancy were out on the back porch. Lady Jane’s long hair was wet and combed down straight, and she was sitting up cross-legged on the table. Nancy sat in the chair behind her, trimming the long ends of Lady Jane’s hair.

  “Just maybe a quarter of an inch or like that,” Lady Jane said.

  The air was cooling into dusty, weedy backyard evening, marigolds, shampoo, marijuana. I watched from the end of the skinny sidewalk, Lady Jane sitting perfectly still, her eyes closed, and every time Nancy’s scissors went snip, Lady Jane’s nose wrinkled. The shoulders of her T-shirt were wet from her wet hair, and wet down the front, her breasts showing through her wet white T-shirt.

  Nancy sat back in her chair.

  “Okay,” she said. “Enough torture.”

  I stepped back, went to the front porch, top step. The laughing came out to me, and then quiet, only the traffic sounds, and bits of voices without words. Doors closing, and then the front door opened behind me.

  “Hey,” Lady Jane said.

  Nancy said, “Sarajean, want to go with us? Downtown to the Greyhound station? To meet JFK?”

  “Yeah, walk downtown with us,” Lady Jane said.

  She had on a different T-shirt, dark blue, with old white letters that said FAMILY ZOO.”

  “Why is JFK coming home?” I said.

  “Just for the weekend,” Nancy said. “Hold on a second. My scissors.”

  She went back inside, and Lady Jane sat down next to me on the top step.

  “Nancy’s a little freaked out,” she said, low voiced. “About Lalena taking off.”

  Nancy came back out, her haircutting scissors in her hand, and she put them in her leather pouch that dangled from her belt loop.

  “Okay,” I said.

  They walked together on the sidewalk, me behind. Lady Jane’s hair was drying, the thick, even, new cut ends of it down to where her back pockets curved across her butt.

  Nancy was shorter, and her shape was no shape next to Lady Jane. Nancy’s cutoffs hung straight off her hips, and the only part of her that looked like a girl was her dangly earrings, long loops of blue and purple beads. Her neck was thin and white up to her short hair, and the curved pink edge of her ears poked out of dark curls.

  She stepped away from Lady Jane and turned around to me.

  “Come on,” she said. “Don’t walk behind.”

  She took my wrist and pulled me into the space between them.

  THE GREYHOUND station was one whole block, and the lit-up greyhound dog turned in a slow circle over the wide glass doors that cut across the very corner of the building. Down the corner one way there was no sidewalk, just driveways, all oil spotted, and huge doorways, and the running rumble of buses in there.

  Inside, Nancy went up to a high wooden counter and looked behind it, at a signboard on the wall under a big clock. A long list of city names, and numbers, under ARRIVING FROM and DEPARTING TO. The sign didn’t say Estes Park.

  “Boulder,” Nancy said. “The bus goes through Boulder and then comes here.”

  The fuzzy voice from the loudspeaker said, “Now boarding for Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, and points west.”

  The bus wasn’t supposed to arrive from Boulder for fifteen minutes. Nancy went over to the guy behind the counter.

  She said, “Is the bus f
rom Boulder going to be on time?”

  The guy looked around at all his papers, and he looked at his watch, and he looked at the signboard. He looked at the big clock on the wall.

  “About fifteen minutes late probably,” he said.

  Lady Jane said, “Let’s go eat French fries.”

  She got in line at a counter in front of a glass case. There were sandwiches wrapped in plastic, and pieces of pie wrapped in plastic, the plastic pulled tight, squishing out the red cherries of the cherry pie, the apples of the apple pie.

  “. . . Sterling, North Platte, Omaha, and points east.”

  Nancy and Lady Jane ate all the French fries, even the crispy nubs soaking in ketchup and oil and salt at the bottom of the little cardboard dish.

  Finally Nancy said, “Come on.”

  We went back out to the main part, by the long rows of chairs, and people sitting with backpacks and suitcases and boxes, and other people standing around, watching the people coming into the bus station through the big doors from the buses.

  JFK was tan, and his hair was lighter. Bigger than Nancy. Taller. Just as skinny as her. We went outside and JFK kept looking around, looking at the people, looking at the buildings. Nancy laughed.

  She said, “Did you sleep on the bus?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

  She said, “Did you eat?” Laughing.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But let’s eat again.”

  Nancy kept laughing, no matter what he said.

  LADY JANE lit candles on her back porch, and she and Nancy started spaghetti, talking noisy in the kitchen corner of the apartment, and laughing. The backyard was dark, and JFK sat on the edge of the porch looking up at the sky.

  “No stars,” he said.

  He said, “So, how come Lalena ran away?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He said, “You think she’ll come back? For school, maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He said, “Where do you think she went?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “California, maybe. Maybe points south.”

  He said, “She didn’t hitchhike did she?”

  “I think she went with some guys in a car,” I said.

  He leaned close to me.

  “Got any marijuana?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Well,” he said. “Let’s smoke some.”

  “I’ll load up the pipe,” I said. “I’ll bring it down here. We can smoke out there, by the garage.”