by Liz Fichera
I tapped the pocket to my jean jacket that held the four fifties from Dad. He expected me to buy a birthday present for Mom’s party tomorrow night. “Plenty,” I said, staring into the darkness. All I could see was my angry reflection in the passenger window. It glowed an eerie green from the dashboard lights. I opened the window and leaned my arm along the frame, inhaling a gush of fresh air. Warm wind billowed into the front seat, almost knocking off my cap. Black as oil, the Gila River Indian Reservation stretched across the right side of the four-lane road, with Pecos Road the clear dividing line. Even when I squinted, I couldn’t see a single spec of light anywhere—not a porch light, headlight, even a firefly. It was like squinting at the edge of the world. When I was a kid, I’d wondered if anyone lived beyond Pecos Road. Sometimes I still did.
I’d been on the reservation twice in my entire life. One time with Seth to buy beer and cigarettes with our fake IDs at a gas station near Casa Grande, the other time on a school field trip in the fourth grade to spend the day with reservation kids. It had felt like the bus had driven us into the middle of the desert. Tumbleweeds had bounced across the road like lost brown beach balls. Where are all the houses? I remembered wondering. The parks? The malls? The people? When we’d finally arrived at their school, which was one big musty-smelling room with desks pushed to the edges, we’d sat on the floor in a circle, our legs crossed, and listened to an old man. He must have been at least one thousand years old, with braids that stretched down to his knees and skin with more wrinkles and folds than I could count. He’d talked as softly as a whisper, telling us crazy stories about coyotes and stars. I’d sort of half listened, peering around the room at the reservation kids, who’d numbered half as many as the ones in my class. With jet-black hair and eyes to match, they’d all looked alike and fidgeted just as uncomfortably as we had—all except one girl with ponytails high above her ears. She’d sat across from me. When our gazes had met, her eyes had sparkled like marbles. She’d smiled at me, revealing a gap between her two front teeth, but the grin had lasted only an instant. The girl with the shiny ponytails had never given me a chance to smile back.
“Let’s make a stop in Chandler. I hear Grady’s selling,” Seth said.
I blinked. “Cool.” Then I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with more desert air as Seth cranked the stereo to something with plenty of electric guitar. We flew all the way to the Interstate with the reservation right beside us, still and endless. It felt like driving straight into the sky.
When we reached the light before the freeway on-ramp, Seth pulled up alongside a big dude on a motorcycle. The guy was dressed all in black like he was freaking Zorro or something. We were the only vehicles waiting for the green. This light always took forever to change.
“Let’s have some fun,” Seth said, turning down the stereo.
“Don’t—” I said, but I was too late.
With one arm draped over the steering wheel, Seth lowered his head to peer out the passenger window and yelled, “Nice leather!”
The guy turned, the whites of his eyes widening with surprise. Black hair blended with his jacket and hung down to the middle of his back. First he looked at Seth. But then, with his nostrils flaring, he glared at me.
My heart began to hammer against my chest. I spoke through clenched teeth, “Don’t do anything, Seth.”
Seth revved the truck engine anyway.
Biker Guy shook his head like we were both idiots. After a few agonizing seconds, he pulled back on the throttle. The motorcycle roared one hundred times louder than Seth’s engine.
There was only one thing left to do.
The light turned green and Seth and Biker Guy jumped on their accelerators, tires squealing, racing toward the freeway.
Seth let out his maniacal laugh, the one that meant we were headed for nothing but crazy trouble and I would end up regretting it the most.
I braced my arm against the door as the truck picked up speed. “Don’t!” I yelled into the wind. “Don’t race this guy!” The last time we’d road-raced a guy from school, Seth had almost flipped the truck.
Still laughing, Seth replied by cranking the stereo. The bass competed with my pounding temples.
As the lanes merged from two into one, Seth ground the accelerator to the floor. Blue-and-white smoke billowed around our windows in angry circles.
The front of the truck stayed even with the motorcycle. One heartbeat later, Seth flew the truck past Biker Guy, pinching him off. On purpose. Biker Guy had to swerve into the emergency lane to avoid getting clipped, but not before glaring one last time at our truck, his gaze settling squarely on me.
“Dumb Indian!” Seth yelled, even though the wind and the stereo drowned out his voice. “Nothing can beat my truck!” He slapped the steering wheel with both hands.
I turned to Seth, breathing like I’d just run a marathon, and shook my head.
He mouthed, What?
“You’re freakin’ crazy!”
He kept grinning, the green lights from the dashboard glinting in his eyes. “I told you we were gonna rock tonight!” He offered me a fist bump.
I ignored it. But then a smile slowly built across my face when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw Biker Guy stopped on the side of the road, the front tire of his motorcycle still spewing gray smoke. He was giving us the finger. For some reason, I thrust my hand out the window and returned the gesture, maybe because I was mad at him for challenging Seth, mad at the whole world for simply existing or just relieved that we’d never see Biker Guy again.
Mostly I was glad no one had wound up in the hospital.
My head was spinning and my lips were feeling rubbery when someone at Zack Fisher’s party mentioned something about Coach Lannon.
My ears began to function, even though Gwyneth Riordan was sitting in my lap, grinding against my crotch. She had been saying something about renting a houseboat at Lake Havasu for spring break. “We just need your parents’ credit card for the deposit,” she said after getting me so hot that I would have gladly stolen all of Dad’s credit cards and given them to her.
Three of my teammates from the Lone Butte High School golf team and their girlfriends were crashed around a glass table in Zack’s backyard next to the swimming pool. Music blared from hidden speakers in the corners of the patio, and the pool lights cast a wavy glow across everyone’s faces. I had to blink a few times to focus.
“Coach said he was going to make a big change to the team on Monday,” Zack yelled over the music as he chugged from his beer can. The table was littered with gold-and-silver cans and empty bags of potato chips. Zack crushed his can underneath his foot and tossed it with the empties. “Didn’t say what, though. But that’s what I heard.”
Zack was an okay dude, but he was always hearing things; most of the time he got it wrong.
“Who said that? Who said he was making a change?” I leaned forward, pushing Gwyneth’s legs to one side, struggling to stop seeing double. Gwyneth pouted, but golf was one of the few things at school that mattered to me. The team had struggled last year, and this year we expected to do better. We had to. Every varsity team at Lone Butte except ours had won a state championship—football, basketball, wrestling, even fencing. Who fences?! Anyway, we wanted our trophy in the glass case at the front of the school with all the others. And Principal Graser wasn’t exactly shy about pointing out its absence at assemblies.
“Walesa said so. He overheard Coach talking to another teacher during gym class.”
“When?” Seth asked, sitting straighter.
“Friday morning,” Zack said.
“When will he tell us?” My lips sputtered as I tried to release a strand of Gwyneth’s blond hair from the side of my mouth.
“Monday after school, I think,” Zack said. “Maybe he’s made some changes to the schedule. Maybe we’re in more tournaments this year or something.” His shoulders shrugged like it was probably nothing major.
I leaned back against my chair. I turn
ed to Seth, who also gave me a shoulder shrug as if to say, Hey, it’s no big deal. And then he smirked and nodded toward Zack. Consider the source, he mouthed.
Gwyneth turned herself around in my lap, eager for more attention. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her glossy lips against mine. She tasted like candy. Her hair cascaded over my shoulder, invading my nostrils with strawberry.
My nose wrinkled. It felt as if I could suffocate from the sweetness in her hair, but I pulled her closer, searching for her tongue with mine. She wanted me, and I guessed I wanted her, too.
Tomorrow I wouldn’t remember a single thing anyway.
*
Saturday night, all available bussers and waitresses at the Wild Horse Restaurant, along with a gray-haired guy on a sad-sounding wooden flute, sang a Native American birthday song to Mom for her fortieth birthday, even though she’d begged everybody not to. The song seemed better suited to a funeral than a birthday. No one in my family understood the lyrics either, the words sounding more like grunts and heavy exhales.
Dad grinned uncomfortably at the six-person wait team who’d tended our table all evening, clearing dozens of white porcelain plates and soup bowls, filling crystal water goblets whenever they drained only a fraction, scraping crumbs from the linen tablecloth with razor-blade knives. My younger sister, Riley, and I sank lower in our chairs while everyone else in the packed restaurant interrupted their five-course dinners of grilled venison and mackerel salads and turned to stare at our round table smack-dab in the middle of the floor. The only thing missing was a strobe light pulsating above us as we watched the presentation of a six-layer, custom-made mesquite-honey mousse cake. It was pure torture.
I tried to tune out the misery by picturing the cheeseburger and fries that Riley and I would scarf down as soon as we got home and ditched Mom and Dad for the nearest Burger King. The sooner this nightmare dinner was over, the better.
Mom beamed at her cake, pressed her hands against the base of her neck where her birthday present rested, mouthed I love you to Dad and then blew out the half-dozen candles in the middle of the cake. “Thank you for not ruining this gorgeous cake with forty candles,” she told the waitress, a thin woman with black hair and matching eyes. Her twisted bun was pulled back so tightly that it raised her smooth cheekbones. Like the rest of the restaurant staff, she wore black pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. The only color she sported was a teal-blue silk sash threaded through her belt loops. The real colors, the menu boasted, should unfold on your plates and through the restaurant windows where you can see uninterrupted desert all the way to the Estrella Mountains.
Riley had laughed when I’d read it aloud to her with a haughty English accent, and Mom had frowned from across the table, but, you had to admit, it sounded cheesy.
The waitress cut the cake in four equally huge slices and placed each slice on a microscopically small plate even though the only one who’d eat it was Mom. As the waitress cut each piece, she handed the plate to a younger girl, the same one who’d kept dropping things all night—the rolls from the bread basket, the extra soup spoon Dad requested, ice cubes from the water pitcher that crashed down into our glasses whenever she poured. I wondered why our waitress didn’t simply banish her someplace else. She was definitely not waitress material. Even I could see that, hungover or not.
The girl’s eyes remained lowered as she used both hands to deliver a dessert plate to each of us. Everything proceeded smoothly until she delivered the last piece.
Mine.
Her eyes rose and flickered at me as she moved alongside my right elbow, brushing against it.
I was still majorly numb from Zack’s party, so I barely noticed—until the piece of birthday cake that I didn’t want, in a fancy restaurant with my parents where I didn’t want to be, eating weird food that I hated, fell off the edge of my white plate like a brown avalanche and plopped straight into my lap.
“Oh, god!” the girl gasped. The plate dropped to the floor and shattered. Her hands flew to her mouth.
I leaped out of my chair, but it was too late. “Shit!” I said as the gooey mess rolled off me in a solid, heavy lump. In the confusion, my wooden chair crashed backward like a gunshot, reverberating inside my head.
A lady screamed behind me.
I glared down at the girl, angry and more than a little embarrassed. “What is your problem?”
The girl’s black eyes widened. “I am so sorry.” She reached for a linen napkin on the table and tried to blotch out the chocolate stain on my pant leg but succeeded only in spreading it. And making me a million times more uncomfortable as her hands reached dangerously close to my crotch.
My breathing quickened. I could hear it whizzing through my teeth as I continued to glare at the girl.
No doubt every head in the restaurant had turned to watch the entertainment as the room grew silent, except for harps and flutes, playing through hidden speakers, that sounded just like the mind-numbing music played in the girls’ yoga classes at school.
“Settle down, Ryan,” Mom said, her gaze sweeping about the room. “It was an accident, for god’s sake.” She grabbed my arm as Dad watched from across the table with tightly pressed lips, his disappointment as obvious as the wet stain on my pants.
Not a huge surprise.
Riley, meanwhile, tried to stifle nervous laughter by biting down on her linen napkin.
All in all, epic! Why hadn’t I stayed home? Pretended to have the flu or something?
“Can we get some towels over here?” Dad called to the waitress on the other side of the room, the one who seemed to be in charge of our table. He waved his hand over his head. The woman darted over to us.
“Certainly, sir.” She began pointing to other bussers for water, napkins and possibly even another mesquite-honey mousse cake. “My apologies,” she added. “We’ll take care of it.”
I would have told her not to bother, but I was too preoccupied with the wet stain on my pants and the girl who’d caused it. She kept trying to blotch it with a napkin.
My breathing was still pretty heavy. “Just…just leave it alone,” I stammered, sitting back down in the chair, which someone had picked up for me. “You’ve done enough already,” I said as she took a step back, the stained napkin still clutched in one hand, poised and ready.
“Fred?” the waitress called from behind the girl. “We need you in the kitchen. Now.”
I looked around, blinking, waiting for a quarterback with a wide neck to appear with an armful of heavy trays. Instead, I watched as the girl darted for the kitchen, her chin buried in her neck. I blinked again, my gaze finally clearing. The last thing I saw was her braid, swinging across her back like a windshield wiper. It almost reached the teal-blue sash wrapped twice around her waist.
Brighter than the sky, it was the only color I remembered all day.
“I’m disappointed in your behavior, son,” Dad whispered behind his hand.
I swallowed, pulling my eyes away from the blue sash. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Mom’s nostrils flared. “I’m going to make another appointment for you with Dr. Wagner.” But she directed it to Dad, like I wasn’t even there. Done deal.
My head dropped back, and I sighed. “I don’t need to see Dr. Wagner.” My temples began to pound louder. I’d vowed last time that I wasn’t going back to our quack family therapist. It was a complete waste of time. All he did was talk in circles.
“I’ll be the judge of that, Ryan,” Mom said. Mom thought everything could be cured by doctor visits and enough medication.
“Are we done yet?” I snapped. My feet fidgeted like I was readying to run a marathon.
“Yes, we are.” Dad’s lips pressed together again. “And thank you for ruining your mother’s birthday. I hope you’re satisfied.”
I stared back at him, speechless. My life totally sucked.
Chapter 3
Fred
“I TALKED TO a falcon sitting on top of a paloverde tree this
morning.”
“Where?” I asked while Dad tinkered underneath the van. I sat on a towel in the dirt beside him, handing him tools. It was Sunday, but that didn’t mean Dad got a day off. The van leaked again, bluish-black oil as gooey as tree sap. That couldn’t be good.
“The one out by the road. The same one you and Trevor used to climb when you were kids. Remember?” He paused to bang something against the van’s metal frame. “Hand me the silver wrench, will you?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said, handing him a tool that held more rust than silver. I squinted against the morning sun toward the tree, which stood not far from the road that ran alongside our trailer. Trevor had carved our initials into one thick green branch, but the tree had grown so high that I could barely see the letters anymore. “How’d you know it was a falcon? Maybe it was just a crow,” I said as if that would make the sighting less significant.
Dad chuckled. “I think I know a falcon when I see one, Fred. Aren’t many out here, you know.”
I lowered my chin to my knees, considering this. A falcon could mean something. A falcon could be another sign. My life was full of them lately. It was one thing to see a falcon; it was quite another to understand its meaning. “What’d it look like?” I asked, still a little doubtful. The Rez was covered with birds—mourning doves, quail, crows as chubby as cats, even hawks and the occasional horned owl. But falcons? I hadn’t spotted too many, at least not around the trailer.
Dad yanked on the frame as he spoke, and it sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth. “Pretty thing. White breast, notched beak, gold-and-brown feathers that look like a checkerboard.” He stopped to suck back a breath before giving the van another whack. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“How’d you know it was a she?”
He chuckled again. “Thought I heard some of her chicks chirping nearby.”
“Well, what’d she tell you? Did she happen to mention when I’m going to get a new pair of golf shoes?” I said glumly. After last night’s restaurant fiasco, I figured that I was permanently banned from any kitchen within a hundred miles. I wouldn’t be asked back, not unless the chef got desperate. And that meant an end to my source of cash. The Rez wasn’t exactly brimming with teen job opportunities.
