“You are a cruel mistress.”
There were more stars in the Little Desert than I’d ever seen before. They twinkled in the sky and on the lake, and the more I looked, the more I found. The sky was expanding. It made me feel loose, loquacious. With Dylan, my thoughts rolled out, easy as breathing.
“I used to think whenever someone died they became a star.”
“What do you think now?”
“Now I don’t think.” I gnawed on a Monte Carlo. “Now you can buy stars on the Internet.”
“I believe in heaven,” Dylan said.
“I want to. I don’t like to think of everything just stopping.” I ate another cookie. And another one. I was working my way through the pack with all the grace of a wildebeest. “But also, I feel like if I go along with the idea of heaven, I have to go along with everything else.”
Dylan was quiet, so I went on.
“I used to see this homeless guy every day on the way to school. He’d camp out in the park near the train station. He had signs: The End of the World Is Nigh! Repent! Repent! He had a tape recorder blasting out sermons—and he always wore earmuffs. We called him the Muffman. I know, very original. The story went that he used to be okay but then his wife and child died in a car accident. He was the one driving. So, he finds God, relinquishes his worldly goods, sleeps in a cardboard box under the Back Creek Bridge, and tries to spread the Good Word. One morning he wasn’t at the park. It turned out some city kids had followed him and set his cardboard box on fire—while he was in it. You think this kind of thing doesn’t happen, but it does. I remember thinking the Muffman was for God, and God can see everything, so it was like God sanctioned it.”
“I don’t think of it like that, like ‘sanctioning,’ “ Dylan said, slow and serious. “Your number’s up when your number’s up. I was under a tractor. I was that close to having my vitals crushed beyond repair. Makes you know what your vitals are, that’s all.”
“When Mom—” I stopped. I’d only just heard what he’d said. “My mom was vital.”
I suddenly felt exhausted. I had so many questions. I could almost see them. They were sharp picks puncturing my brain. “Wish I could bring her back,” I said.
We were quiet. We didn’t have any answers. But at least we had the stars.
Dylan found the champagne bottle, and sent the cork sky high.
He raised the bottle. “To you.”
“Do you think I’m fat?” I asked him.
He swallowed and wiped his mouth and said, “I think you’re beautiful.”
51
Trust Games
The candle was citronella. It smelled awful but it burned bright and kept the mosquitoes at bay. According to Neville’s watch it was ten p.m. and so far neither of us had mentioned where we were, or what we’d done, or why we’d done it. I felt like this was our place and the world didn’t really exist outside it. Maybe that’s what Fraser had felt—maybe that’s why he came to the desert to die. An owl hooted, but it sounded too deep to be the Boobook. I made a mental note to ask Bird. The night had cooled. Dylan and I lay on the sand with the army blanket and Fraser’s jacket draped across us. Our hands were dancing under there. We were playing a new trust game. The rules were we had to be touching at all times.
Finally I broached the subject. “What do you think they’ll do to us?”
“I don’t know,” Dylan said. “Neville’s not that big on confrontation . . . you may have noticed that he likes to keep things nice.”
“But . . . what about him and Trevor?”
Dylan grinned and shook his head. “Ah, Nev-and Trev.”
And there I was thinking I had some hot gossip. “What, is it like some open secret?”
“Sort of. Well, the older kids know, and some of the parents . . . but this camp is like relief to them—a cheapo week without little Johnny and Mary, you know?”
“I thought you weren’t allowed to have gay Christians.” Dylan squeezed my knees. “These are modern times.” I put on my professor voice. “Or is it that we are living in a post-God society?”
“Do you really think these things, or do you just recite them?”
“I don’t know. The second one.” I smiled. “I know what my mom would say. Jay-sus!”
Dylan was concentrating, gathering bunches of tulle and letting them spring back down. “They’ll probably just tell us we can’t come back. My mother will cry. She’s good at that. She cried on and off the whole way up here. She won’t look at my legs anymore. When Craig was showing us my cabin, Mom kept looking at his legs and going, ‘When did you get so tall? Was he always this tall?’ And then when he left she cried again.”
I grimaced. “I’m sure Dad and Norma just want to put me in a shipping container until I turn eighteen.”
“I’d rather that,” Dylan said. “I get too much input. Special needs.” He sighed. “Parents suck.”
“Ass and dick.” I said it like Chloe would: stoic, fateful.
Dylan was impressed. “That’s filthy.”
“How are your legs?” I asked.
“The same.” Dylan lit two cigarettes and passed me one. “I don’t mind. I didn’t think it was going to work.”
“Me neither,” I lied. “I was only hoping.” Hope is not belief, either.
Dylan barked a short laugh. “Really. I mean, imagine if it had worked. It would have been a circus. I would have had to go on Today Tonight—I’d be the Salt Lake Miracle Boy. Still. It’d be cool not to have to hear about stem cell research and advanced physio.”
“Do you do much physio?”
Dylan didn’t answer. I wondered if I was pushing it, pursuing a line that he didn’t want brought into any kind of relief. But then he answered with a slight shrug. “I used to do more, but I’ve backed off it. I used to be eager and positive and do all the exercises, but nothing ever changed.”
“But isn’t it supposed to take ages?”
“Yeah, but it makes me angry. I don’t like getting angry. I like to keep in control. I like knowing what’s around the corner.”
“We’re the opposite. I like surprises and I have no control.”
Dylan looked at me.
I looked at him.
He put his right arm across me and we kissed. I kept my eyes closed the whole time. I could hear the salt lake lapping against the shore. After a while, Dylan drew his head back. His body was pressed against mine. “Can you feel that?” he whispered.
I could feel lots of things, but one thing in particular.
“Do you mean what I think you mean?”
Dylan giggled.
I giggled.
“On my leg,” I whispered.
“No, no!” Dylan coughed. “I was referring to the change in temperature.”
“You were not!”
He laughed and we went back under the blanket. “It’s still there,” I whispered again.
Dylan said, “Mmm.”
“We can’t leave it like that.” I wriggled out from under him. Then I started to act. I pouted and let my fingers flutter around my breasts—all those moves you see in videos on MTV.
Dylan suddenly stopped responding. He didn’t exactly push me away, but it had the same effect. I sat up. “I can’t work under these conditions.”
“You don’t have to do all that,” he said. “We don’t have to do anything.”
“Don’t you want to?”
Dylan didn’t answer. I scanned from his face to his boxers. I made a sad face. “It’s gone.”
“See?” Dylan folded his arms under his head, looking proud. “I can control some things. Not a lot of seventeen-year-old guys can say that.”
“I’m insulted.” I sniffed. “Sex is supposed to be fun, you know.”
Dylan looked out to the lake. “We had sex counseling at the hospital—complete with a video of a paraplegic guy ‘in the act.’ The stress is on being ‘creative.’ It’s like you want to know, but you don’t want to know . . . you know?”
�
��We could do other things.”
Dylan shrugged. “I’m not an experiment.”
“That’s a shitty thing to say.” I snatched up the bottle of champagne and took an angry swig. I felt drunk and unlovely. Why couldn’t we have stayed kissing? I hadn’t thought about the chair once while we were kissing.
Dylan drew circles in the dirt. He found his cigarettes and lit one. But he only took one puff before putting it out. I took another swig of champagne. I burped out, “Dy-lan,” and passed him the bottle. He burped, “Ril-ey.” We went back and forth until the bottle was drained. I lay back down. I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. Dylan lay down, too, and his hand found its way into my backless dress. He was drawing stars and planets on my skin. It felt dreamy. Suddenly I felt him press right up against me. I felt the shock of his skin on mine. He kissed me, and I shivered, even though I was feeling hot all over. He whispered, “I think I changed my mind.”
Later I would remember Dance with a Difference. The way the dancers would freeze in certain poses, and how my heart clenched in suspense. How long could they hold out? I could see them sweating, see their chests rise and fall. I searched their faces for a sign of surrender. I held my breath and trembled. When Dylan and I began we were deathly serious, like we were arranging ourselves. But there was slippage and stoppage, and that pesky condom business and silly sound effects. I’m glad it was Dylan who laughed first. Once he did I felt myself unravel. I giggled and he giggled. We were the experiment. And then there came a time when we weren’t laughing. When we locked eyes and breathed each other’s breath. Oh my stars! The firmament shakes and then everything settles. In the end everything settles.
On the Sixth Day
52
Everything Beautiful
I woke up in the desert with a dry mouth and Dylan’s arm hooked around my waist. The air felt cool and every few seconds I’d hear a sound—a kind of plink-plink that could have been a dripping faucet, or Bird’s fabled Crimson Chat. I thought I didn’t want to wake up. Dylan smelled like the lake. He was salt-stained. He had crystals in his eyelashes and stubble on his chin. I thought I didn’t want to wake up, but when I turned around I almost swooned. The lake was impossibly red and still, like a brilliant spill of paint. I disentangled myself and stared. This could not be real. It was too much. It was like an elaborate stage set. Any minute now the lid on the sky would close, and the roof of the mini-mall with all its dirty ducts and rigging would be revealed. And we, the mutard mall-heads would go wow-wow-wow! And go back to shopping.
What was it about the desert that left me stumbling for words? Words were human tools, but this . . . this vision had nothing to do with us; it had occurred in spite of us. I felt like I was trespassing. I was a rude speck on an ancient tapestry. Then I felt grateful. I wasn’t sure to whom—God or Buddha or the Big Bang—but while I stared, while there was no past or future, just the sky and the lake, I felt that I had been let in on some kind of utopia. In a matter of minutes, as the sun continued to rise, the brilliance died—like everything beautiful had to.
I gathered some stones and bark and an iridescent green feather and arranged them in a pile at the foot of the monster gum tree like a poem. Dylan woke up, checked his breath in his cupped hands, and said, “I don’t suppose you brought toothpaste?”
Morning had broken.
53
Suckingfish
“I think you should stay here,” I decided. “It’ll be quicker.”
“That’s very chivalrous of you.” Dylan’s voice had some sulk in it.
I sighed. “What are you going to do—drag yourself?”
Dylan’s face went red. He folded his arms and faced me. “I could.”
“Don’t be stupid.” I was trying to pretend the prospect of chafing my way solo through the scrub was the realization of a lifelong dream, but I was generating sweat beads. I kept throwing hopeful glances at Delilah’s tire despite the fact that we couldn’t have changed it if we tried. We had no tools, no jack, no clue.
“I’m hungry,” Dylan announced. He went through the supply bag pulling things out: the empty pack of cookies, the water, my lighter, Utopia, my notebook, Neville’s Jesus badge, toilet paper. Dylan held up two apples. He threw one to me and crunched into the other. He chewed noisily. “Someone will come. Bird knows we’re here. Olive knows we’re here.”
I shook my head. “They won’t say anything. They’re weird like that.”
“What about Sarita?”
“I didn’t tell her.”
Dylan pointed his apple at me and recited, “The first thing you do before you go into the wild is tell a friend.”
“So who did you tell?”
“No one.” He sighed and twirled his apple by its stem. “Someone will figure it out . . . won’t they?”
“You want to wait and find out?”
Dylan pushed his hands on his wheels, forward and back, forward and back. “How long do you think it would take to walk to the Nhill road?”
“I don’t know. At least an hour.”
“Do you know which way to go?”
“Well, it’s the fire road . . . there are markers.”
“Is it sandy loam?”
“Not all of it.”
Dylan took a big drink of water. He stretched his arms above his head, then brought them down and swung his elbows left and right. He rolled his shoulders, watching me all the while, and finally said, “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” I teased him. “I know how much you like to sit.”
“When I get tired, you can push.”
Dylan started off. “You know, you can get wheelchairs for the beach. They have fatter tires, better traction.”
“If you can walk with the crutches, why do you use the chair?”
“Have you ever had crutches?”
I shook my head. Dylan reached behind the chair for his crutches. I put them under my arms. I swung, landing with both feet on the dirt. “It’s not completely uncomfortable.”
“Okay, next time you do that keep your feet up.”
I tried. I couldn’t. I felt it in my arms, and stomach. “Oof! Ouch!”
Dylan held his arms out. I gave the crutches back.
Sometimes the ground was hard, and Dylan would mad-man it, ramming his hands down on his wheels, whooping as he went. When we faced another wide tract of sand, he’d go on the crutches and I’d push his empty chair. It was like taking one step forward and two steps back, and it was fun.
We’d been on the road for about half an hour when Dylan suddenly started laughing.
“What?”
He stopped, and wiped his eyes. “I was just thinking this is like that footprints poem.”
I waited.
“You have to know the footprints poem—it’s on a million hand towels and fridge magnets. It’s an industry in itself.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know it.”
Dylan said, “Okay, it’s like this person has died and he gets to meet God and he looks back over the steps of his life—like footprints on a beach—and there are two sets of footprints to show that God is with him. But then the guy notices that during the worst times of his life, there’s only one set and he’s like, ‘Oh God, why did you abandon me?’ “
“No, wait.” I stopped him. “I do know this. God says ‘I didn’t abandon you—that was when I carried you.’”
“Right.” Dylan looked at me. “You’re carrying me, Riley. This is pretty special.”
He had a glint in his eye, like he knew he’d said something corny. But I decided this was a defense mechanism. It was like he was giving the truth some padding. The moment was special. I knew it, he knew it.
“Here.” I gave him some water. “You’ve got scurvy.”
This was the beginning of our olde-worlde mini play. It was 1700. Australia hadn’t even been discovered. We were sailing from England on the Excelsior when a tempest sent our vessel crashing on the rocks. I was Miranda Biggerbottom, a fine lady; Dylan
was Jack Filthy, a common sailor. We were the sole survivors. We couldn’t stand each other and yet . . . we needed each other if we were going to make it in the real world. “Oh, fiddlesticks!” I dabbed at my eyes with a dainty handkerchief. “How odious it is without my snuff.”
Dylan lurched and growled and spat. “Curses, woman! I’ll give ye snuff!”
After Miranda Biggerbottom and Jack Filthy had reduced us to a state of incoherence and random collapsibility, Dylan used the rest stops to read aloud from Utopia. He made Thomas More’s voice camp and reedy, while Raphael’s voice started out ESL and ended stiff-upper-lippy like Winston Churchill.
“Pride,” he orated. “ Like a hellish serpent gliding through human hearts—or shall we say like a suckingfish that clings to the ship of state?—is always dragging us back and obstructing our progress . . .”
He stopped reading and spoke normally. “Actually, that’s pretty cool.” He read some more to himself, then asked me, “Do you think pride is the ‘beastly root of all evil’?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I joked. “I don’t have any.”
“You do. Pride is what makes you different. You’re full of it. When I first saw you I thought, she doesn’t give a shit. She’s like a wild girl. Your clothes and your hair . . .”
“At orientation?”
“You were gorgeous in your boredom,” Dylan said.
“I just thought you were weird,” I told him.
“Aye! Blasted wench!” Dylan reverted to Jack Filthy and I collapsed in laughter again.
We were adapting to our landscape. Our clothes became customized. I’d detached Rose’s wedding train and draped it over a grass tree. Maybe a mallee could use it for its mound. Likewise, Dylan had discarded Fraser’s bow tie. He’d unbuttoned the jacket, vest, and shirt so his pale chest was getting some rays. I liked seeing his cross glinting in the sun.
At noon—when the sun was so high we couldn’t stand it and had to take shelter under a tree—Dylan pointed a crutch to the sky. “This is the longest I’ve been outdoors since February second. I have taken more steps today than I have in all the days since February second put together. I have heard the Boobook’s call. And I’ve had sex.”
Everything Beautiful Page 15
