We talk about Ari for a while. They ask me a bunch of questions about what he looks like and what kinds of things he likes to do. I explain that Ari’s not talking because of what happened to him.
“Y’all come through the desert?” Bo asked.
“Yeah, but it wasn’t bad. Nothing compared to coming up through Mexico.”
“You walked all the way from El Salvador?”
“Nah, we walked some, but we caught rides, mostly on trains.”
“Oh, baby!” Barbie says. “Were you and your brother riding up on top of those freight trains like I seen on TV?”
I nod. “Some of the time. It scared the crap out of me the first time we had to go up there, but I got used to it pretty quick.”
What I didn’t get used to were the bodies—the ones we passed by, torn apart. And when the pinche bandits came to steal from all those poor idiots, and Ari and I had to flash gang signs to keep them from taking the clothes right off our backs. It kept us safe, but I mean it when I say that seeing Ari flash those gang signs made me puke, right over the side of the train. No joke.
“How long did it take you, baby?”
“Too long—like a couple of months. We ran into some assholes that made us work for a while before we could keep going.”
I thought slavery was a thing of the past—until Mexico. A bunch of thugs gathered us up and made us work for nothing. Could’ve been worse, though. All they made us do was harvest their crops. Pretty little flowers. I don’t even wanna know what that stuff was. Probably to make heroin. They didn’t bother us, though. As long as we did our work. The girls—they had it bad. When Ari and I busted out of there, we made sure to take a couple of those girls with us. We lost them getting on the train a week later. They were from Honduras, sweet kids from the country. And the stuff Ari saw down there …
Christ, I hope those girls made it out alive.
“You all right, Phoenix?” Bo asks.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding slowly. “Just thinking and—you know—wondering if I did the right thing, putting my little brother through all that shit that happened in Mexico.”
“I’ll tell you what, Phoenix,” Bo says. “I’m thirty-two years old, and I made enough mistakes in my first twenty-five years to last about a hundred lifetimes. Ain’t that right, Barbie?’
“That’s right, sugar.”
“But if I’ve learned one thing, I’ve learned this: No lookin’ back. It’s not gonna do nobody any good, boy. You just do the right thing now.”
If only I knew what the right thing was. If only I weren’t such a candy-ass wuss.
“And don’t punish yourself, baby.” Barbie says. “The world’s gonna do that for you. You ain’t gotta add to it.”
I nod. She’s got a point, I guess—about the world punishing us enough.
“I know they’re probably sending you back,” she says. “And Bo told me it’s probably gonna be real bad for you over there.”
I nod again, not really wanting to think about what real bad means.
“Phoenix, baby, I just wanna tell you that while you’re here, you ought to just go on and let yourself live, you know?”
I guess she does remember my name.
“And don’t you worry about the past, sugar. What’s done is done.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I won’t—I mean, I’ll try. And thanks so much for dinner.”
“You come on back over on Sunday and I’ll make you a pot roast,” Barbie tells me. “I make it up good, don’t I, honey?”
“Yes, you do.” Bo leans in and gives Barbie a big kiss right on the lips.
“And you can bring that girl, if you want—what’s her name?”
“Gretchen.” It hurts to say her name.
“Go on and tell her you’re sorry, baby. And then bring her over here to meet us.”
Barbie stands up and wraps her arms around Bo, as far as she can get them, and she squeezes tight. I’m starting to have a feeling that it might be time for me to leave, with them getting all up into each other. I carry my paper plate to the trash can.
“I’m gonna take you home,” Bo says.
“Nah, man. You’ve done enough already,” I tell him. “I’m good with the bus.”
“You try and ride the bus this time of night, you’ll be waitin’ till mornin’.”
He has a point. The bus system around here isn’t exactly efficient. It’s better than San Salvador, though. Over there, nobody can even ride the bus after dark. That’s when the maras take over. You gotta have a death wish to get on a bus after six.
“Plus, I need to treat my volunteers with respect, you know?”
Barbie comes up and gives me a big hug. Then Bo and I get into his little car, and he drives me back to Ivywood Estates, without us hardly saying a word to each other.
I explain how to get to the house, and he pulls up in front of it and lets out a long, low whistle.
“Nice digs,” he says. “That lady couple must be loaded.”
“You mean rich?” I ask. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they are.”
“You gonna report for duty tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “I’ve gotta do some work in the garden in the morning, but I can come out to the shop after lunch. What do you need me to do?”
“I’m gonna get some shelves from the Home Depot. You can set them up over on the empty wall across from the sink, for me to display my photos. It’ll be like my own art studio, you know?”
“No need to buy shelves, man,” I say. “That shit’s expensive. Just get me some wood and some paint. I’ll make you some nice floating shelves. You got a sander and a jigsaw?”
“Nope. But I can borrow them from my buddy.”
“Do that,” I say, opening the car door. “And I’ll get to work on that art studio.”
I get out of the car and watch Bo drive away. I head toward the door, but before I open it, I decide to sit on the front porch for a while. It’s a nice night, not too cold. I sit there on the steps for a long time, and I’m thinking about the shelves I wanna build, and what shape I’m gonna make the brackets on each end. I think maybe I don’t want to go back into Sally and Amanda’s house. I’m not ready to face Sally and Amanda yet. Maybe I’m thinking that if I just wait out here a little longer, they’ll be in bed when I go inside.
But then I’m thinking about Gretchen, and the mess I made with her. I pull out my phone and text her.
Can I have a do-over?
Her reply comes back immediately.
Only if I can too.
Before I can lose my nerve, I text:
Meet me at the garden in five?
Okay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
GRETCHEN
THE PLACE WITHOUT A SOUL is like a ghost town this late at night. There’s not a single car on the streets. I guess they’re all tucked into their three-car-garages until morning.
When I pull up to the garden, Phoenix is sitting under the fig tree, legs stretched out in front of him. The headlights of my car sweep across his face, and he lifts his arm to cover his eyes. He’s wearing a sweat shirt, the hood pulled over his head. I cut the lights and sit there, watching as he hops to his feet and starts to walk toward me. He pushes the hood from his head and studies me carefully.
I step out of the car, and a siren goes off, far away. Phoenix looks in the direction of the sound. I move closer to him. I want to touch him, to feel him—solid and real. I think he wants to touch me too.
“I’m sorry,” he says, still looking away. “I shouldn’t have—”
Another siren starts up. I put my hand on his cheek and turn his face toward mine. His chin feels rough under my fingers, like sandpaper. But the soft skin of his neck is under my thumb, and I can’t help but stroke it lightly.
“You don’t need to apologize. We get a do-over, remember?”
He nods. My face is so near that I can feel his breath on my cheek. We stand like that, and we listen to the ambulance or fire truck or whatever,
the sound fading.
“Me first.” I say. “When I told you that Adam and I broke up, I should have said this: it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was you.”
He rests his hand lightly on my waist and leans in toward my ear. “My turn,” he says. “When I said I didn’t want to be with you, I was lying.”
I move my hand around to the back of his neck, letting my fingers slide through his short hair. I’ve watched that place on his neck so many times, always wondering how it would feel to touch him here. I try to lean in closer, but his hand pushes softly against my waist.
“I feel like the whole neighborhood is watching.” He glances quickly around and then looks toward the shed. “They probably think I’m gonna attack you or something.”
Heat rises to my cheeks—not the good kind. And not because I’m thinking about that boy, but because I hate that people might see Phoenix in that way. “You shouldn’t care what these stupid misplaced suburbanites think.”
He shrugs. “I have no idea what those words mean,” he says, “but I do care. I guess I feel like I owe it to Amanda and Sally to—”
“What? Behave yourself?”
He looks down at the ground. “Yeah, something like that.”
Oh God. It kills me that he feels that way, that he has to feel that way. But I can’t change it—not now, at least.
“Okay, let’s go in there,” I say, gesturing toward the shed.
The shed is new, and it has this incredible clean smell of freshly shaved plywood mixed with soil. As soon as we walk in, the room fills with that inexplicable gravity that always pulls me toward him. I feel it tugging us together, in this space that’s barely big enough for two people. I lean against the wall of the shed, trying to steady myself. Shovels hang on a row of nails across from me, arranged in perfect order, from small to large. Several green hoses are stacked neatly in the corner. Seeing them reminds me of all the afternoons I’ve spent here with Phoenix and the kids, of the times I watched him coil those hoses, so careful, pushing up his sleeves to wrap the end around one shoulder. And how I watched his arms, his bare skin. He knew I was watching, and he let me.
In the garden, Phoenix always seems somehow more himself—more relaxed than anywhere else I’ve been with him. But he’s not relaxed tonight. He’s something else. I don’t really know this part of Phoenix. I think he’s been careful not to let me sense it, except on the trolley (Oh, God. The trolley). I want to know this part of him—so much.
He stands by the door, like he can’t gather the courage to come any closer to me.
“Are you planning to stay out there forever?” I ask, teasing.
I know he’s nervous, because I am too.
He shakes his head, pulls the door shut, and unzips his sweatshirt. He takes it off and spreads it on the floor of the shed, using it to cover bits of soil and mulch.
“For you,” he says. “I mean, if you want to sit.”
I sit down on his jacket and draw my knees into my chest. He’s standing by the door in a plain V-neck T-shirt and jeans, shifting from one foot to the other, as far away from me as he can possibly be in this small space.
The whole room is buzzing with it—the urge, the energy, our wanting to be closer.
“Oh,” I say, jumping back to my feet. “I need to get something from the car. It’s for you.”
I was so distracted, watching him there under the fig tree, that I forgot to bring his map. I reach around him and grab the doorknob. I’m so close that I can see the veins on his neck. And for the first time I notice the edge of a dark scar, just above his collarbone. I have this overwhelming urge to touch it, with my finger—or maybe even my lips.
My heart is pounding and my hands shake. He looks down at them, wrapped around the doorknob, and sees me tremble.
“Will you come with me?” I ask. My voice is trembling too.
He steps away from me. “Oh Christ, Gretchen. I’m so sorry.” He’s shaking his head. “I should never have asked you to come out alone at night. I wasn’t thinking—”
“I’m not scared,” I tell him. “It’s not that.”
And I’m not—not even a little bit. He’s misreading me. I drag my teeth over my lower lip and close my eyes, knowing that he’s studying my face, seeing what I really feel now.
“Oh,” he whispers. “Good—I mean, good that you’re not scared.”
I grasp the knob tightly and turn. When the door opens, I feel grateful for the cool air and open space. Clearly, Phoenix wants to take things slow, which would be fine, except that my body seems to have different plans.
He walks beside me to the car. I pull the map from the glove compartment and lead him back to the shed. Once inside, he closes the door and we sit across from each other, careful not to touch. I spread the map out on the floor between us and trace the red circle with my finger.
“It’s your circumference,” I tell him. “I marked the twenty-mile radius of where you can travel.” I take his hand and put it on one of the places I’ve marked. “There are woods here, and trails.” Touching his hand is almost too much—like all that energy pulsing through this little shed has converged on this one place, where my skin meets his.
“You did this for me?” He’s not looking at the map anymore. He’s looking at me.
“For us,” I tell him, meeting his gaze. “I want to take you to these places.”
He smiles. “Tell me about them.” Then he moves my hand over the Sope Creek Trail.
“That one’s on the Chattahoochee.”
“The what-a-what-chee?” He laughs. “What’s a Chata-w-woochie?”
“It’s a river,” I tell him. “It’s a Native American name, I think. Probably Cherokee.”
“And it’s nice?”
“Yeah, the river is really pretty, unless there are a bunch of drunk rednecks floating down it on inner tubes and singing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs.”
He laughs again. God, I love hearing him laugh. “You really know how to sell a place.”
I tell him about Stone Mountain Park, and the long hiking trail around the base of the mountain, the one most people don’t know about, about the waterfall at the old mill, and the covered bridge. I try to convince him that he’ll love the botanical garden—my favorite tourist attraction in Atlanta. When I describe rooms filled with orchids and a garden of cacti, he’s skeptical, but I convince him to give it a chance.
“When do we start?” he asks.
“Tomorrow?” I say. I would start this very moment, truth be told. I would leave this shed with him and go to every place inside this red circle, not even stopping to sleep.
“Tomorrow’s no good,” he says. “I have a thousand plants to get into the ground and zero volunteers, thanks to that nosy neighbor and her chat post.”
“Okay,” I tell him. “Then the next day.”
“We might not have much time,” he says. “I should have told you—”
“Told me what?” I ask. I’m not sure I want to know.
“My asylum case was denied yesterday—I got a deport order.”
I feel the blood drain from my face—I feel it rushing down toward my toes, creating the sensation that the floor of the shed is opening up and I will drop through the earth.
“You’re leaving?” I hear myself ask. “For sure?”
“I don’t know.” He’s running his finger along the edge of the red circle. “They want me to appeal, but it’s really expensive, and I don’t have any money.”
“Who wants you to appeal?” I’m grasping onto him, gripping his forearm. I think maybe I’m trying to hold him down, keep him here.
“Sally and Amanda, and my lawyer, too. But—”
“Then you’ll appeal,” I break in, squeezing his arm tightly between my fingers. “And we’ll use the time we have.”
He lifts his hand from the map, and I let go of his arm. He touches my face. It’s such a relief, feeling his hand against me. We both shift onto our knees, the paper map crinkling below us. Our bodi
es are close, finally. He runs his hand along my cheek, my neck behind my ear, and then pulls his fingers through my hair.
“You’re so amazing,” he says, breathing into my ear.
“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper.
And, God, he is. His amber eyes are shining and his skin is glowing from the inside. I study his lips, his throat, the place above his collarbone where the skin is darker.
“A scar?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter,” he says.
I run my finger along the scar, pushing his shirt aside, and he pulls in a deep breath. I can feel his chest rising.
“Wait,” he says, squeezing his eyes shut. “It does matter, Gretchen. There’s more that you should know.”
“I want to know everything,” I tell him. “But right now what I want more than anything is for you to open your eyes and kiss me.”
“I can do that,” he says.
He tugs lightly on my hair, bringing my face to meet his. He leans in to kiss me, the touch of his lips soft at first. He keeps looking at me. I watch him, too. And then we close our eyes and tumble back onto the map, falling into each other, searching with our hands and our mouths, wanting to feel still and safe and whole.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PHOENIX
I SLEPT LIKE A BABY, or maybe I slept like the dead. Honest to Christ, I haven’t slept that well in years. I wake up, sun already high in the sky. Gretchen’s map is folded on the bed beside me. It’s a little wrinkled, and torn in one of the corners, but damn, it feels good to remember why—to think about kissing her last night on the floor of that shed.
I unfold the map and look at it for a while, running my fingers across the words she wrote, trying to remember what she told me about all the places she marked. I’m feeling so good that I decide to face it—the thing I’ve been putting off for way too long.
I grab a big envelope from the desk. Inside it is a bunch of papers I need to read before Ari’s case goes in front of a judge. I had to write a letter explaining how we were “abandoned” by our mom, telling the judge all the reasons they shouldn’t send that kid back to El Salvador. So now it’s here—this account of our pathetic lives, in black and white for random strangers to read. Ari’s lawyer wants me to read through it one more time, just to be sure all the “facts” about our lives are “accurate.”
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