Madre de Dios.
I stand in front of her for a few seconds, my arms held up, like in surrender, like someone is pointing a gun at me. Eventually she looks up. I put my hands on her shoulders, and she blinks. Her hand opens and she drops the drink. Coke splatters across the floor and a bunch of people step back. She stares at the floor, puzzled, like she can’t figure out why there’s a big brown puddle spreading at our feet. Then she looks into my eyes, and that crazy beautiful girl, she throws her arms around me.
I hug her as she shoves her face into my chest. I pull her in tight, trying not to worry about all the strangers staring at us. There’s an old white lady with silver hair digging through her purse. She pulls out her phone and starts to fumble with it, like she’s ready to call the police or something. I’m starting to worry that all these people think I’m trying to hurt Gretchen, not help her.
They know I’m not from here. They think I don’t belong. I can see it in the way they’re looking at us. We’ve gotta get out of here.
I lean back a little and whisper, “Let’s go outside. You need fresh air.”
The insane drums are still going, and my heart is beating out of my chest, but I think Gretchen still hears me through it all. She lets me take her hand, still cool and soft. I pull her around the spilled drink and through the crowds. I want to yell at everyone who is staring at her to mind their own fucking business, but I look down at the ground and watch our feet move forward, one step at a time. Because if I do what I want to do, if I shove them all away, if I take a swing at the stupid kid in a hoodie who is pointing at her and laughing, I’ll probably get arrested. And then it will all be shot to hell.
All of it pretty much is shot to hell already, but at least there is still some tiny sliver of hope that things can work out, that Gretchen will be okay, that I can really be meant to be here.
* * *
When we’re alone outside, she shoves her face back into my chest. “I need you closer,” she says.
She actually says that to me. I let myself hold her closer, even though I know I shouldn’t. Because my heart is beating like crazy, and I know she can hear it. And then, after I don’t know how long, we’re sitting together on the curb and I have my arm around her shoulders. She’s finally breathing normally.
“So, yeah,” she says, smiling weakly at me. “That was a panic attack.”
I laugh. I mean I really laugh, doubled over and all.
“Thanks for making that clear,” I say.
She leans her head on my shoulder and I squeeze her a little. “Do you feel better?”
“I guess,” she says. She turns those blue-green eyes away from me and starts to cry, really soft. Christ, I hate the sound of it. “I just need to get out of my head, you know?”
Yeah. I know.
“Wanna hear a funny story?” I nudge her.
“Sure,” she says.
“Okay. So I’m afraid of heights—like, terrified.”
“Really?” she asks, turning to face me.
“Yeah, really,” I tell her.
“Have you always been scared of heights?”
“Nah. When I was a kid, some asshole used to pick me up by my feet and hold me out over the roof of a building. You know, to scare me. I pissed in my pants—no joke. And ever since then—”
“That’s horrible, Phoenix.”
“It wasn’t all that bad,” I say. “Well, I mean, pissing myself—that was bad.”
She laughs. Which is awesome.
“Yeah, so the first time I flew in a plane, it was to come here, and there were all these guys sitting near me. The plane was packed.”
I don’t tell her that we were all handcuffed—like criminals, even though none of us were. I know she’d freak out about that—in her present condition.
“And when the plane took off, I couldn’t breathe. Honest to Christ, I thought I was gonna die.”
“Seriously?” she asks.
“Yeah. I stood up and started screaming, like at the top of my lungs. I was all, like, ‘Let me off! Get me off this thing!’ and all the guys around me were laughing their asses off.”
“Oh my God.” She pulls away and looks up at me. “What happened?”
“I shoved my way into the aisle and started sprinting toward that door at the front of the plane, and everybody on the plane was going crazy, laughing.” I shake my head, remembering how bad it was. “And there were these, like, guards, and they came and tackled me.”
“That’s insane,” she tells me. “You could have been arrested.”
I shrug, because I have no idea how to respond to that. There’s more I should say. I know that—I’m not a total idiot. But I don’t want Gretchen to be afraid of me. Because there’s nothing for her to be afraid of. I’m pretty sure she will be, if she hears any more of my story. So I leave it alone, at least for now.
“You know,” she says, with a crooked smile, “you probably should have eaten some pupusas before you got on that plane. It might have calmed you down.”
“Yeah,” I say. “A couple of pupusas de loroco would have done the trick.”
“Are those, like, the super-special-calming variety?” She leans back into me and I wrap my arm around her again.
“Nah,” I tell her, squeezing her shoulder. “They’re just my favorite kind. They’re stuffed with cheese and these tiny flowers, called loroco. I’m pretty sure you don’t have those flowers around here.”
Damn. I’m dying for one of those things, hot off the comal. I can almost taste it, sitting out here freezing my ass off in a parking lot in Georgia.
People start pouring out of the gym, so I guess the game is over. We watch them going out to their cars for a while, and then Amanda and Sally find us sitting there on the curb. I try to introduce them to Gretchen, but it turns out they already know her. Something about Gretchen’s mom working at their wedding. They’re hugging like old friends and talking and I’m not really paying that much attention, because I’m starting to get pissed about all the people walking by, pointing and staring at Gretchen. I can tell she’s trying to ignore them, but it’s not easy.
Sally and Amanda head off to get the car, and Gretchen leans in toward me.
“So how long have you lived with Sally and Amanda?” she asks.
“About a month, I think.” I’m starting to worry about what they told her, and how I’ll explain it all. I really don’t want to explain any of it—not to Gretchen.
“They said they’re like your guardians for a while, until you get permanent residency?”
“Yeah.” Something like that, I guess. “They’ve been great.”
The kid with the hoodie—the one who watched Gretchen drop the Coke—walks by with a bunch of his friends. He shoves his friend and then points right at her, laughing again.
“God, I feel so embarrassed,” she whispers. “I can’t believe I melted down in front of all those people.”
“Fuck ’em,” I say, finding that brown freckle in her eye. “They don’t know what you know.”
And it’s true. All of those people—they don’t know what we know.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GRETCHEN
“I’VE MISSED YOU, mon chou.”
Adam lets himself in, like always. That’s the first thing he says to me when he comes through the front door. Mom and Dad have gone out with friends. I’m relieved they’re gone. I don’t have to pretend anymore—I don’t have to lie to them.
When I came home last night, my dad asked me, point blank: “Gretchen, did you see that boy die?” I answered that part honestly. I told my parents that I didn’t see him die, but I did see someone shoot at him. My father rubbed my back and explained that we needed to let Karen, the nice prosecutor, know what I saw. I told him okay.
My mom, though, she paced the living room and said maybe it was time for me to “talk to someone.” I told her that I was talking to someone. I was talking to her and dad, and that was enough.
I guess that’s the pa
rt where I wasn’t 100 percent honest.
I didn’t tell them anything about Phoenix, and how easy it was to talk to him. I obviously didn’t tell them how I felt a constant urge to touch his skin last night, how I even felt that little flutter in my chest when he put his arm around me. Maybe I’m supposed to think that’s bad, that I wanted to feel his skin against mine. But honestly, I don’t feel bad about it at all. It’s been so long since I’ve craved anyone’s touch.
So it made me hopeful—like maybe I could feel that way with Adam again. That would be so great, to want Adam’s touch.
* * *
Now I’m standing in the kitchen, studying Adam. He’s lanky, with creamy white skin and black hair. His eyes are piercing blue, made even more striking by his thick eyelashes and dark eyebrows. He’s handsome, in a sort of alt-rocker-that-never-sees-the-sun way. But something is different about him tonight. Maybe his hair?
Adam walks up to me and touches my face. Then he kisses me gently on the lips.
“You taste like strawberries,” he tells me, stepping away. “Or maybe vanilla.”
“It’s the lip gloss,” I whisper.
I was fifteen the first time we kissed. Adam and I were hanging out with a bunch of his friends at this weird playground in Inman Park with enormous seesaws and big metal arches that you could climb to the top of and then catapult off. I think some of his friends might have been high, but we weren’t. We were just falling for each other. He followed me up a ladder to the top of one of those huge jungle gyms. When he got to the top, I sat down on his lap, wrapped my arms around him, and kissed him.
After that, we just were. We were always Adam and Gretch—everyone’s favorite couple.
“Where are Dan and Lisa?” Adam asks.
He’s called my parents by their first names since the very beginning.
“Out,” I tell him, grabbing my wallet from the basket by the door. “They wanted me to tell you to stick around till they’re back. They want to see you.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
Adam looks out toward the living room. He glances at the wool Kilim rug, my mom’s best bargain find from the antique market downtown. He looks at my dad’s favorite leather chair. Nothing has changed about this place, not in years. Nothing but us.
“Little Bangkok?” he asks, suggesting our favorite restaurant.
“Sounds good,” I say.
“Do you need to change or something?”
He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s dressed to go out—in black skinny jeans and a fitted jacket. He looks great; he looks like Adam. And we both know I do not look like Gretch.
“No,” I say. “I’m ready.”
But I’m not really sure I’m ready.
* * *
On the drive to the restaurant, Adam and I barely talk. We snake our way through the back roads to get to Midtown. Adam prides himself on knowing how to avoid Atlanta traffic. He’s the kind of person who has the inside scoop on everything—back roads, dive restaurants, new bands. Winding through neighborhood streets I don’t recognize, Adam talks about a band he discovered in Athens. He plays a couple of songs for me. They’re not bad, but I don’t love them.
When we get to Little Bangkok, we park in front of the body shop across the street. We walk over to the run-down strip mall where the restaurant is located and step under the ornate gold arch that frames the otherwise nondescript door. There’s a wait, which is not unusual. There’s always a wait on Saturday night. We decide to hold out for our favorite table, the one under the photos of the owners with a bunch of really random famous people. We used to laugh about that, coming up with ideas for the next photo they would put on the wall: Kris Kross, maybe, or some obscure winner of American Idol from 2003. Tonight we don’t even try any of that.
When we sit down, Adam orders for us both. Nua num tok for an appetizer, shrimp lad-na, pad kee mao with tofu. As always, he says the Thai words, not referring to the dishes by the numbers beside them. I usually like that about Adam. But tonight, honestly, it annoys me. He casually orders a beer, and the waiter doesn’t card him. I order sweet tea.
Adam loves spicy food—I mean insanely spicy. The food arrives, and it only takes a few bites to set my mouth on fire. He scoops rice noodles into his mouth and tells me more about the bands he’s seeing in Athens, about his classes, and his new friends. I can barely focus on what he’s saying, though, because of the burn. I use my spoon to pick out chunks of tofu, hoping that they, at least, will taste bland. They don’t. Those squares of tofu are covered in little red flecks of pure fire. I give in and ask the waiter for a glass of milk to cut the heat. Adam continues to talk, describing his creative writing class and how great the professor is, how he’s been encouraging Adam to do more writing—song lyrics, maybe. As I gulp down the milk, I hear him talk about writing songs, but I’m only half listening because my mouth is still burning and all I can think about is this:
I wonder if pupusas are spicy.
* * *
The next morning I decide that Luke and Anna need to dig in the dirt.
Their mom is completely in agreement with me. When I tell Aunt Lauren about my plan to take them to volunteer in the community garden after school, she says that’s a fabulous idea—that maybe Luke and Anna finally will understand where their food comes from. (The two of them subsist almost entirely on Goldfish, and I’m not sure Goldfish really come from gardens, but I think I’ll leave that one alone.)
I meet the kids at the bus stop, their snacks packed in a cooler. They tumble out of the bus, sucking in the fresh air. There’s something great about watching the kids get off the bus. They look so alive, or ready to live, or something.
Typical afternoon, except it isn’t, because fifteen minutes later, the kids are shedding their jackets and rushing toward the garden, where Phoenix stands watching us, a shovel slung over his shoulder. The sleeves of his T-shirt are pushed up, and his arms are glistening in the sun.
I try to look away, but I can’t.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I tell him. Suddenly I’m feeling sort of shy—a little out of place. Maybe showing up here wasn’t the best idea.
“We thought maybe we’d come see if you need any help.” I’m tripping over my words, and I think I might be blushing, too.
“That’s great.” He smiles. Then he wipes his forehead slowly, sending a streak of dirt across it. He turns toward the kids, who already are inside a flower bed, knee-deep in dirt. “Thanks for coming to help!” he calls out.
“Don’t thank us!” Anna replies. “Gretchen made us do it.”
Phoenix looks down at the ground, like he’s trying to conceal a smile. I guess maybe I’m not the only one feeling awkward.
Phoenix tells Luke and Anna to follow him to the shed. He gives them each a shovel and tells them they need to dig a really big hole. Remarkably, they do it. They keep digging until the sun starts to set, and we finish the day filthy and exhausted, but happy, too.
For the rest of the week, as soon as they tumble off the bus, Luke and Anna beg me to take them to work in the garden. Honestly, I want to go too. It’s peaceful there.
By Friday, though, our hands are blistered and we have all grown tired of digging holes. When we arrive at the garden, Phoenix greets us with the same big smile as always.
“Guess what, guys!” he calls out as we approach.
“What?” Luke and Anna ask in unison.
“We finally have some trees to put in all those holes you’ve been digging!”
Phoenix calls us over to a tree and starts unwrapping burlap from the root ball. “Get in there and shake the dirt from the roots.”
They follow his directions. How does he get them to do that?
I help him lift the tree and place it in the hole. We hold it steady, while the kids dump loose dirt back into the hole. When we’ve finished, Phoenix waters the tree, and the kids wander off to play. I sit on the grass, watching Luke chase Anna with mud on his hands.
They’re laughing and screaming—having a great time.
“I owe you,” I tell Phoenix. “You’ve been so good with the kids.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Gretchen,” he responds, looking down at his feet. “It’s fun having you and the kids around.”
“Still,” I say. “I’ll find a way to pay you back.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PHOENIX
THE DOORBELL IS RINGING. At least, I think that’s what it is.
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m alone because Sally and Amanda are running errands. I’m thinking maybe I should pretend not to be here, because there’s this really nosy neighbor lady who has been coming around and asking Sally and Amanda a lot of questions about me. She’s, like, the unofficial neighborhood watchdog or something. Amanda told me she has a surveillance camera on her mailbox, and that she’s always telling people they’re not “abiding by the neighborhood covenant.” Then Sally and Amanda laughed about that lady—they said she would go crazy any time she saw “violations,” like dry patches in the grass, trash cans left on the street for a few extra hours, stuff like that. I laughed too when they told me about her. But I was really thinking about how great it would be to live in a neighborhood where the big worry is whether a trash can is blocking the sidewalk.
The doorbell rings again, and I hear a voice calling my name. It’s a girl’s voice. Gretchen?
Nel. No way.
“Phoenix! It’s me.”
Maybe I’m losing my mind, but I decide I’m gonna have to open the door and find out. So I do, and—honest to Christ—she’s standing there. Gretchen. Alone on the stairs, smiling a big, beautiful smile.
“I have a surprise for you,” she says.
Madre de Dios.
I’m completely unable to produce any sound. I remember I’m wearing my pajamas—not really my pajamas. Every piece of clothing I have here was donated by charity, so I’m standing in some other guy’s flannel pajama pants and a white undershirt—at least the undershirt came to me new, in a three-pack.
“Let’s go,” she says. “I mean, you should probably get dressed first.”
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