His bed still smells like him, honey and sweat. I crawl between the covers, put my head on the dirty pillow. His shirt, his bed, his house. His absence is so strong it has a texture. You asshole, I think. You weren’t supposed to leave me behind. But in my head Aurora’s face overlaps his, the edges blurring, until I can’t tell which one of them is standing in front of me, waiting for me to follow. I am at the edge of the river again, the bone trees all around me. I see the flash of her white hair on the far bank, hear the passing music of a single chord, and then nothing. I am standing, barefoot and bloody, knowing Aurora and Jack are ahead of me somewhere in the dark. They have gone on together and I am lost on this, the opposite side.
I wake up a few hours later with a start, not sure where I am for long moments. I don’t remember crying, but my face is tracked with salt. The room has the spare, washed-thin feel of very early morning. Outside, a misty rain is falling. I take Jack’s shirt and leave everything else as it is. Dirty dishes, books with cracked spines, unmade bed, silence. I ride home in the damp night, in and out of the pooled light of streetlamps.
I let myself into the apartment as quietly as I can. Cass’s door is closed. No bar of light seeps out the bottom, but there’s a plate of muffins in the kitchen that still carry a trace of the oven’s heat. I eat one standing over the sink, tearing it apart with my fingers into smaller and smaller pieces, soft chunks of apple tangy-sweet in my mouth. If I keep doing nothing I will lose my mind. In my room I take off all my clothes, shivering, and then put Jack’s flannel on again. The fabric is soft against my skin, the smell of him somehow stronger. I put my hand between my legs. No matter how hard I try I cannot quite picture his face.
OCTOBER
It’s the week before Halloween when I see the poster. I bike a roundabout way to school that morning, wanting to put off the inevitable as long as possible despite the gentle, half-hearted rain that mists down in a chilly cloud. I’m listening to the same Earth album I’ve been playing for weeks, the sludgy wall of guitar soothing me as I pedal, like a metalhead version of those tapes of whale songs and crashing waves that are supposed to help you fall asleep. I smoke a joint in the morning now, on the days I go to school, and another one at lunch, until I’m so stoned I’m moving around in my own impermeable bubble, my thoughts stilled into silence.
Aurora and I love Halloween best of all the holidays. I always pretend to be lazy and disinclined to find a costume, and she makes a great fuss about it and berates me for my indifference; but of course secretly I love the ritual of her convincing me every year, and she knows it. Aurora’s a magnificent scavenger, a holy terror in thrift stores and secondhand shops, with a magpie’s eye for glitter and an unerring instinct for hidden treasure buried among the detritus of molting down jackets and dog-eared paperbacks. What I lack in thrifting skills I make up for in the kind of single-minded, tenacious patience that allowed me to sew hundreds of white feathers to a set of leotards the year Aurora decided we should be owls, or stud a pair of denim jackets with so many fake gemstones they were as heavy as armor the year we went as Jem and a singular Hologram. Aurora smokes out my window while I work, drinking coffee and nattering at me and pretending to help. She throws glorious parties every year, legendary parties—ice sculptures of monsters dotting the yard, the whole house done up like a haunted mansion with cobwebs and people leaping at you out of darkened hallways, dressed as mummies or vampires or corpses with their flesh peeling away. This year, without her, it’s like the color has gone out of the world, and the growing tribe of jack-o’-lanterns grinning from front porches and windows only serves to remind me of what I’ve lost.
I’m waiting at an intersection when I see the poster out of the corner of my eye. I swing a leg off my bike and walk it over. The paper is faded and stained, one corner missing, but there’s no mistaking Jack’s name, or the name of the club, or the date. Halloween. Four days away.
I stand there for a long time, as the light changes and then changes again. A man leans out his car window. “Hey kid, you okay? You got a flat?” I turn, and he sees my face. “You okay?” he says again.
“I’m fine.” Forever pestered by earnest middle-aged men longing to help and destined to be spurned. He’s driving a minivan; he’s probably used to it. The car behind him honks, and he shrugs and drives away. I tear the poster off the telephone pole, fold it into smaller and smaller squares. Stuff it in my pocket. I have three days to decide what I’m going to do about it.
That night, Cass makes us curry. I chop vegetables while she sautés tofu, puts a pot of brown rice on the stove to simmer. “I saw a poster for a show Jack’s playing,” I say. Casual. No big deal.
“Where?”
“Los Angeles. I’m going to find a way to go. I’m sure Aurora is there.”
She raises an eyebrow at me, incredulous. “Oh you are, are you? This event taking place over my dead body?”
“What do you care?” I’m traveling fast from pouty to fully porcupined, the hot fire of rage taking me by surprise. Get on this roller coaster, see where it flies off the track.
“What do I care? I’m your mother.”
“That’s never stopped you from letting me do whatever I wanted before.”
“We’re not having this conversation now.”
“Oh yeah? Were we going to have this conversation, like, ever? I’m not like you.” I’m shouting now, the words coming out of the ragged hole in my chest I’ve been filling with strangers and too many drinks, but now that I’m reaching into the mess there’s no stopping me. “I’m not like you,” I snarl again. “I’m not going to write Aurora off. Everyone else in her fucking life has abandoned her. She’s down there on her own and she needs me and I’m going to get her.”
Cass is staring at me like I’ve hit her. “I love Aurora. You know that.”
“Not enough to pay attention! Not enough to stop her from practically killing herself! You left her in that house with Maia, you never even tried to take her with us—”
Cass cuts me off. Her voice is deadly. “I left that house because if I stayed there I knew I would be a junkie for the rest of my goddamn life. I left that house for you. To be a parent. To be the closest thing to a parent I knew how to be. I have always done everything I could for Aurora, but you were the first person I had to take care of. You. It’s bad enough that you’re out every night now, that I have no idea where you are half the time, that you spent this summer running around with a grown man on my watch. You are a child, do you understand? No matter what you think you are, you are still a child. You are not going to Los Angeles, and that’s final.”
“You’re supposed to be the adult here! You’re supposed to help her!”
“Listen. I was nineteen when I gave birth to you, and I knew I would have to look my own child in the face someday and tell her I wasn’t strong enough to stay sober while I was pregnant, that I couldn’t tell her who her father was because I didn’t even know. I am doing the best I goddamn can, all right? And I might have made some mistakes with you, and god knows I made some mistakes with Maia, but if you think I am going to let you relearn every basic lesson I already have committed to memory you have got another think coming. You are not going to Los Angeles, you are not going after some musician” —she says musician like it’s a bad word— “and you are not going to follow Aurora into whatever drugged-out hell she’s headed for. You can’t save her, baby. You can’t. It’s not your job.” The muscles in her cheeks twitch. There’s something she’s not telling me. I think of what Maia said when I saw her after Aurora’s party. You tell Cass I said she can go to hell.
“Why did we really leave Maia’s?”
“I just told you.”
“You didn’t tell me the whole story. Why did you leave Aurora there? Why haven’t you ever gone back? Why don’t you and Maia talk?”
Cass actually flinches. “What did Maia tell you?”
“Nothing. She didn’t tell me anything, because no one tells me a fucking thing. Yo
u’re both supposed to be adults, and you act like fucking teenagers. You threw Aurora to the wolves and you won’t even tell me why.”
She looks out the window. Fat raindrops spatter against the glass. The sky is a dull, sullen grey. “I almost killed you,” she says quietly. Her eyes have a bright shimmer of unshed tears. “I almost killed you both. It was after Aurora’s dad died. Things were … bad. I was loaded all the time. There were always people around with more drugs. This scary old guy.”
“Minos.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t remember his name. He was always telling us things. We would see a world we didn’t even know existed. We would be rich. We would be famous. He was right. Aurora’s dad did get famous. And then everything went to shit. I can’t explain to you what it was like. We were so sad, and it was impossible to say no to something that felt that good. You and Aurora didn’t always—we didn’t always—” She’s crying for real now. “We didn’t always take care of you. I don’t know how much you remember. There was one day when I wanted to give the two of you a bath. You know how big that bathtub is in Aurora’s room. Maia came in when I was—I was out. Passed out. You were both in the water. Aurora was under—” She makes a low, awful noise and stops, her shoulders heaving. I wait. “She would have drowned if Maia hadn’t found us. Maia said a lot of things to me that I deserved. That no matter how fucked up she got she would never put either of you in danger. That she always made sure someone was around who could take care of you. It was true back then. You had a nanny. Aurora’s dad’s bandmates. There were a few people who were sober most of the time.” She laughs, bitter. “I mean, there was a fucking bodyguard for a while. It was crazy. We were kids. It was so much money. We had no idea what we were doing. Maia told me to get out of her house before I killed her daughter, so I took you and I left. I knew I had to get sober. It took everything I had. By the time I was clean and realized how bad things had gotten over there, it was too late.”
“What do you mean, it was too late? Why didn’t you do something?”
“I told Aurora she could come live with us. She said she didn’t want to.”
“When was this?”
“Five or six years ago.”
“Jesus, Cass! She was twelve. Of course she didn’t want to come stay with us!”
“I don’t always know what to do,” Cass whispers. “I don’t always do the right thing.”
“Yeah,” I say. “No shit.”
“I loved Maia,” she says. “I loved her. You can’t imagine how much I loved her.”
I think of Cass, reading her tarot cards every morning. I’m asking about Maia. It never changes much. Not asking if Maia would ever get better. Asking if Maia would ever forgive her. So like Cass to leave it up to a deck of cards instead of going up to Maia’s house and asking herself.
“You have no idea what it was like,” Cass says. “All of those people. When I got sober, they acted like I had died. They stopped talking to me. Like I’d been erased. Maia was my best friend, and she wouldn’t even let me in her house.”
We’re silent after that. I put the knife down. “Dinner’s ready,” she says finally. “Why don’t you set the table?”
“I don’t think I’m hungry.” Before she can answer, I go into my room and shut the door.
That night I dream about the forest again. The bare trees clack as if a breeze has caught them, but the air is still. I stand in the same place I always stand, the black river inches from my bare feet, its surface sheened with a nacreous glow. I am looking for something, but I don’t know what it is. I try to turn away from the river and run back down the path, but my feet are rooted to the earth. In this dream I can see the far bank.
On the other side of the river, Jack steps out of the trees. I can’t make out the details of his face. His naked body is gaunt. Even from here I can see the stark lines of his ribs. “You came,” he says, and then he repeats it, and this time it’s Aurora’s voice coming out of his mouth. I try to answer, but my mouth will not move. “You came,” he says a third time, and his hair grows longer and turns white, his body changing, softening into Aurora’s, and they are moving toward me, toward the river, and I want to warn them not to cross the water, tell them to stop, to stay there where it’s safe, but I cannot speak. Blood pools beneath my bare feet. Jack takes one more step toward me, puts one foot in the river, and vanishes without a sound.
I wake up in the dark, gasping, touching my face, putting my fingers in my mouth and working my jaw. I whisper their names aloud in the dark, then reach over and turn on the light. Something in the room has changed, but I don’t know what it is. I sit up in my bed, pulling the blanket tight around my shoulders. The curtains stir slightly and then still, as though a breeze has moved across them, but the window’s shut tight. My closet door is open, my clothes hanging tidily. The slanted top of my drafting table is clean and bare. Crate of records, stereo, candles, lamp. Everything is where it should be. And then I see it. Aurora’s and my map has changed.
It’s not possible, but it’s true. I get out of bed and walk over to the wall. There, tiny but perfectly rendered, is a tall clean-lined house at the edge of a river, with a forest at its back. The river is as black as it is in my dreams, and I think I can see the shiver of a current running through it. Aurora and Jack are standing in front of the house, their backs to the water and to me, their hands clasped. I touch the drawing. Nothing happens. The wall is cool and smooth. “Aurora,” I whisper, and I think for one unreal second that I see the penciled lines of her head move, as though she’s tilting one ear to listen. I look for a long time, but the drawing does not change again.
In the morning I dump my textbooks out of my old army backpack and throw in a clean pair of jeans. Socks, underwear. A T-shirt. My toothbrush. My sketchbook. Brushes and ink and pens. My tarot deck. I add my running shoes and then take them out again. Probably won’t be jogging much where I’m going. Too bad. I hear they’re big on fitness in LA. I tuck one of Cass’s crystals in the front pocket of my jeans for luck. Cass is gone, but she’s made coffee and left me a note. I’m sorry. I love you. Mom. I fold it and put it in my other pocket, next to the poster. I take down the biscuit tin from the shelf in the kitchen where she keeps a baggie of dried-out, ancient weed and a stash of emergency cash. I count the bills. Fifty-six dollars in tens and ones. Enough for a bus ticket. I won’t have to hitch. I pick up the phone and dial Raoul, blowing on my coffee to cool it, poking through the refrigerator for something that looks like breakfast. When he answers, his voice is sleepy, and I can hear someone talking in the room behind him.
“Raoul? I need a favor. I was wondering if you could give me a ride to the bus station.” He clears his throat, says something to the person who’s with him. It’s muffled, as though he’s put one hand over the receiver. Then I hear him sigh.
“Where are you?” he asks.
I wait outside for Raoul’s Volvo, smoking cigarettes on the front stoop of my building until he pulls up and I climb in. Rosaries dangle from the rearview mirror and there’s a plastic statue of Jesus glued to the dashboard. The Jesus has a head that bobs as you drive and a slight walleye. The car smells like incense and pot, Raoul smells. He’s wearing fingerless leather gloves with studs at the knuckles. “Nice,” I say, petting them. I sit in his passenger seat while the engine idles, backpack in my lap, heater blasting in my face, and hand Raoul the poster. He unfolds it and smoothes it against the steering wheel. “Aha. And your mother cannot give you a ride to the bus station because?”
“Because she doesn’t know.”
“I had a feeling.” He steeples his slender fingers and rests his forehead on them. “Will you tell her?”
“When I’m there.”
“You’re supposed to be in school?”
“Technically, yeah.”
“Do you want a ride?”
“To Los Angeles?”
“Isn’t that where you’re going?” I look at him, his jet fall of hair, his generous mout
h, his brown eyes smiling, and think that there is probably no one else in the world who is as blessed as I am. He’s totally serious, unblinking. He would do it. He would do it, for me, because he’s my friend.
“Oh, Raoul. I think that’s technically, like, kidnapping. Transporting a minor across state lines. Like if we got pulled over you would be arrested.” He shrugs. “No,” I say. “I can take the bus. But thank you.”
“Where will you stay? How are you getting them back here?”
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
His sigh comes from somewhere in his toes. He rubs his forehead with the side of his thumb. “Okay,” he says. “You know what? Don’t tell me anything else.” I take the poster from him and put it back in my pocket.
I try to memorize the streets as they flash by, the broad expanse of the bay, the exact shade of Doug firs in the changing light of late fall, the salt tang of the air. Heavy clouds edged in gold where the sun’s creeping through. The far curtain of rain falling over the peninsula. Like if I can carry home with me it will keep me safe. We wind through the damp streets. Mia Zapata’s scratchy, gorgeous voice howls from the speakers but it’s too early for punk. I pop out the tape without asking, put in another one labeled “Nighttime” in sloppy Sharpied letters. It’s Jeff Buckley. Sending me straight back to that night at Jack’s when I read his tarot cards. The memory is so strong I push my hands through my hair, look out the window. Not now. “Who was at your apartment?” I ask, and Raoul smiles.
“Those fish-stall boys. Not as straight as you’d think.”
“Oh my god. Which one?”
But he draws two fingers across his mouth like a zipper and shakes his head. “A gentleman never tells.”
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