Cinderland

by Amy Jo Burns

  I ran up the hill to where he waited at the fence. Shielded by a pair of sunglasses and his roofing hat, I couldn’t gauge his expression.

  “Why won’t you jump?” he asked.

  I slouched. “I’m afraid.”

  “Ah,” he said, scratching his forehead with the bill of his hat. “So this is a test.”

  “A test?”

  “A test. Is fear going to rule you?”

  I didn’t answer. My father had a way of cutting to the heart of things.

  “Amy,” he said. “You can do this.”

  “I can’t.”

  He crouched, leveling his eyes with mine. “If you jump off that diving board, I’ll give you fifty dollars.”

  “Fifty dollars?”

  He nodded. My back straightened. I’d never seen a fifty-dollar bill before. The thought enticed me, but not as much as my father did. He had more faith in me than I had in myself, and that was worth more than all the fortune I could imagine.

  I turned and ran back to the diving board. My hands shook as I grasped the ladder. Again, I paused at the board’s edge, fear fastening me to it. Is fear going to rule you?, my father had asked me. No, I told myself. No. Closing my eyes, I pried one foot from the board. Then I stepped off the edge and fell, splitting open the surface of the water below. When I resurfaced, the sound of my father clapping echoed against the barren hill.

  A few days later, my father presented me with a smooth fifty-dollar bill. I couldn’t bring myself to spend it. I kept it safe in the back left corner of the desk drawer in the room I shared with my sister. I took it out once every few weeks to look at it before returning the bill to its hiding spot. With time, it crumpled and folded in on itself.

  It remained in the drawer for years as Julia and Seth grew bored with going to the pool, and then a few years later, it was still in the drawer when I outgrew my regular trips to the pool as well. It had become a talisman, worth more to me as a possession than a payment. Just a few months after I jumped off the diving board for the first time, I’d lie to the police to save myself from being shunned by the town I loved. There it was—my bravest accomplishment palm-to-palm with what would become my deepest regret.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon, the Silver Pulley pool teemed with people. A few boys had plopped their towels around us before tearing down the hill to jump into the water. I watched them splash each other. They cast an occasional glance our way, and we answered with intermittent nods. A few other boys had passed the concrete line, trolling the grassy incline and pawning back rubs. The girls on the hill popped their knees to the side and tossed their hair. They’d circled my troop a few times because we’d scored the prime part of the hill right by the fence. With brown hair and a petite build, I might not have been much of a threat, but I made up for what I lacked in sex appeal with shrewdness: I knew enough to arrive early and claim my territory. One of the blonds eyed us as she ran her fingers beneath the elastic of her bikini bottom: a ceremonial flare of her starting gun. The games were about to begin.

  Becca and Jill lay on their stomachs, absently flipping through fashion magazines to disguise their whispers about a few prospects gathered by the high dive. The hopeful back-rubber arrived at our camp, looking optimistic about his chances. Nora decided to bite, and he sidled up behind her. From the concrete, a few female lifeguards eyed us as they played their own standard move—a reproachful headshake chased with a whisper. I could almost make out the words on their lips: w-h-o-r-e-h-i-l-l.

  Primed to maintain appearances, we pretended to play for thrill, but much more was at stake. It was our version of the “prisoner’s dilemma,” that story economists use to explain how people are prone to operate in self-interest. Two conspiratorial criminals are kept in separate interrogation rooms, and each is provided an incentive to rat the other out. Silence is the only way to ensure mutual protection, but in the end, the police usually convince them to betray each other. The game becomes about winning, and the path to freedom is blocked by those you call friends. If you want out, you’ll have to railroad your accomplices on your way out the door.

  This wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about sex. It was about fear. We had time to burn, yet a subversive sensation warned us that time had already expired. In this town, bad boys were quick to become young fathers, and good boys, soldiers. We were aging fast, and we knew it.

  At the edge of the pool, a lean, tanned boy in orange swim trunks hoisted himself out of the water. I knew who he was. His name was Pete. Athlete. Italian. Smart. A challenge—one year older and a bit out of my league. He caught my eye and puffed out his chest. Chlorinated water dripped from the hem of his trunks. I slipped him a half smile, then yawned. He smiled wide. My cheeks felt hot. He turned, getting a running start before jackknifing into the water.

  I preferred this kind of performance over conversation. The fewer words the better. Too much talking and one of us would betray ourselves. I didn’t dare divulge how afraid I was that I’d never get out of this town. That I’d never get to ride in a limousine. That I’d never get any farther west than Cleveland, Ohio. That I’d never do anything but listen to the merciless sound of time passing away. Tock tock tock tock.

  Once I started talking, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. So come on, I’d say to him. Tell me what you know. Show me something. Teach me something. Please. I don’t want to end up pissing my life away. You think we can get out of this town? You got what it takes? Prove it. ’Cause if I end up working the night shift at Rip’s Sunrise Market when I’m thirty-five and got three kids and a mortgage on a trailer, I swear to God, I will kill myself. So you got what it takes? Prove it. I ain’t got all day, so prove it, Stallion. Prove it.

  Allow us—Mercury’s unknown legion of liars—to introduce you to another kind of prisoner’s dilemma. It’s the summer of 1991, Monday, 6:25 p.m. Or maybe it’s Thursday afternoon at a quarter to five. No one knows Mr. Lotte’s master schedule apart from his wife. We wait our turn for our lessons in the dark of his garage, hearing only the faint tap of piano keys signaling to us from the other side of the basement door. If we press our ears against it, we can hear the metronome tick.

  On the other side of the wall, one of us sits on the bench in front of the piano with Mr. Lotte to our left. Before each lesson begins, his first task is to separate us from our sisters, if we have them. Upstairs with his wife, each sister will wait her turn, and then we’ll switch. Sometimes, Mrs. Lotte lets us pick what television show we’d like to watch while we wait.

  Mr. Lotte sits while we play. He never stands. He turns pages, he keeps the beat, and some days like today, we play together. We follow the sheet music by the feeble glow of the single lamp on top of the piano. We play the right hand; he plays the left. We lag, urging our fingers to find the right notes. His thick thumb is more than twice the size of ours.

  Soon, this man will divide the town in two: those who believe in his innocence, and those who do not. Soon, he’ll claim conspiracy. Defamation. Lies. He’ll claim girls like Carly, Layne, and Aria are liars who want to make a criminal of him. Soon we’ll have to make a choice to lie or tell the truth. If we are prisoners who want out of our own jail cells, should we pledge allegiance to a fellow girl or the man who has seized the heart of Mercury?

  For now, Mr. Lotte forgives our erratic rhythms, and patiently he waits for us to catch up. Two rhythms, off-kilter, the treble a half step behind the bass. One of us plays with spastic, dissonant tones, the other with low, practiced hums of constant echo. An uneven whole, yet still we play.

  This is the antecedent from which all else stems, the moment before any wrong has been done. It’s almost pretty in a naïve sort of way, which is the only way a girl can be pretty around here. Everything in our small-town world has a metronomic rhythm to it, as if we’re listening to our own lives from the other side of a thick door. Tock tock tock tock. The biggest thing we have to worry about is our monthly appointment at Dr. Shaffer’s office to get our braces tightened. Even
from the orthodontist’s waiting room we can hear it, the blissful metronomia of our own existence, pausing there like we must pause in Mr. Lotte’s garage before our lessons. We spend so much of our short, little lives waiting for something to happen. Time eats away at itself as we listen to the orthodontist drilling in an unseen room while Pam the receptionist answers the phone.

  “Good morning, Dr. Shaffer’s office, Pam speaking.”

  Drill buzz drill

  “Good morning, Dr. Shaffer’s office, Pam speaking.”

  Drill buzz drill

  All we can think while we listen is how Pam’s vertical bangs look like they’re running away from the rest of her face. We think it’s funny as we turn the pages of the Highlights magazine Pam thinks we still enjoy reading.

  When we’re not at the orthodontist’s office or piano lessons, we can be found down at Silver Pulley Park until sunset. During the first pitch of a crowded little league game when the umpire, “Low Ball Bill,” calls yet another strike and the fans boo, there we are, nursing our Blow Pops, scouting out our crushes, and popping tar bubbles with our toes. Or maybe we’re down the hill at the pool, leaping off the diving board for the very first time. We’re just girls, for now, and we have no need to hide. We have no reason to suspect that soon we’ll have to armor our hearts with plates of steel.

  Hide and Seek

  EVEN THE MOST STEEL-HEARTED GIRLS can find themselves falling in love once in a while, especially in the fooling dark. The first time Pete and I spoke, we played hide-and-seek at nightfall. We called it Spotlight, and we let ourselves pretend danger awaited us under a sheath of bright stars hanging in a threadbare sky.

  Our town looked its best in shades of blue, the dark mending our daytime ailments—rust spots, for-sale signs, empty gravel lots. Streets and houses were swept with shadow; one bled into the next. The point of the game was not finding or being found. It was about getting lost with someone, rediscovering a landscape so familiar in daylight. We only needed one flashlight to play, a sole, thin blade of light to slice through the dark. The game itself a welcome deceiver, Spotlight ransomed the mythic from the mundane.

  A few nights after the rain had cleared, the pool rats met up at the house of a kid named Foss, not far from the elementary school. Foss was one of Pete’s best friends; Pete had many. His friendships seemed sturdier than my own, long-lasting without threat of jealousy or betrayal. I wondered how he’d managed to come by them in a town like ours.

  Foss had a good neighborhood to play in, a quiet street lined with old trees. Though I hadn’t played Spotlight with the pool rats before, I was well practiced. I played it every year at Pure Heart Presbyterian’s church camp. I’d played it in the woods. I’d even played it in winter. I knew how to capture myself inside the darkest of spaces and wait there with my eyes closed tight.

  Nobody who played Spotlight ever wanted to be found. Someone waiting alone in the dark was a culprit or a goner, but when a boy—a strapping boy—said to a girl under the cover of night, Come on, I know a place, she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath for the romance of it. Romance was knowing you were alive in a town everyone else thought was dead, knowing no one would come looking for you, knowing they’d stopped looking long ago.

  Becca and Jill had already entangled themselves romantically for the summer, and they wouldn’t dare leave the partner-selection process to chance. After snatching up two of Pete’s other friends named Sam and Kev, Nora paired up with Foss, both of them preferring the “are they or aren’t they” status over an affirmative attachment to someone of the opposite sex. So that left me and Pete—and Charlie, tall and forlorn, who was “it” for the first round and went by himself.

  The best Spotlight games occurred in pitch black, so in the moments before dusk shifted to darkness, we waited. See us before we became what we’d always be known as in Mercury: Becca and Sam, eventual cheerleader and star quarterback, respectively, sitting on the curb, fingers entwined. Sam still with braces. Jill and Kev, both lanky and auburn-haired, future small-town basketball marvels. A snapshot of Pete, just before his own athletic prowess arrived—his feet skittered against the dark asphalt as he waited next to me. I tried to dampen my own excitement, my green eyes recently unveiled from a pair of glasses. Here, as daylight lingered, we all thought only of consummating our infatuation.

  On either side of the street, old houses stood over us, filled with people who were still known by what they used to be. That quarterback from the year we made it all the way to the state championship. The girl who always flew at the top of the cheerleader’s pyramid. If they watched us from their darkened windows, we didn’t see them. They might as well have been ghosts peering at us through the opposite side of the same mirror.

  Once we were alone, I found the danger I thought I was seeking: the pull of a boy’s body to a girl’s, the friction when they touch for the first time. I led the way through the dark in search of a place to hide. I could feel Pete right behind me—the chill of late evening, the heat of another body closing in. I said nothing. I had been primed long ago for silent performances.

  Danger. What a rare thing to behold in this sleeping-beauty town. That’s what I told myself, at least. Danger, I thought, was its most thrilling when moonlighting as innocence. But Pete was about to invite me into a new kind of thrill I hadn’t known I wanted. We had reached the stretch of power lines by the farthest boundary point when he first spoke.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “I know a place.”

  He led me back toward Foss’s lawn to a house right next door where the blur of the family room television flashed like distant lightning on the grass.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. “We’ll get caught here for sure.”

  “Shh.”

  I followed Pete to the corner of the lot where a large pine tree stood. He lifted the bottom-most branch before disappearing beneath it.

  “No one will find us here,” he said.

  Once I climbed in after him, an old, familiar Mercury silence set in. This silence had been a shape-shifter as long as I’d known it; the quiet that lulled me to sleep was the same force that had seized my voice so long ago. Just a prick of the finger, someone’s hand at your throat—those invisible wounds that never make a sound, and yet their silence spins at the heart of the universe.

  “Hey,” Pete said.

  “Hey.”

  “You know Trent Reznor, right?”

  “Come on,” I said. “Everyone knows Trent Reznor.”

  Trent Reznor, the lead musician of the rock band Nine Inch Nails, had grown up in Mercury. About fifteen years older than we were, he left town after he graduated. He’d actually done what all of us dreamed of. He got out.

  “Amy.” Pete said my name. “You have to listen to their music. It’ll change your life.”

  “I will.” My heart stirred as the night’s stillness hung above us. “I promise.”

  Pete shifted in the dark. “I want to get out of here. Like Trent did.”

  The words pierced me. “Me, too.”

  In saying three small words—I want out—it was as if Pete and I had just grabbed hands and leapt off a cliff. The secret to survival in Mercury was never admitting you wanted to leave so that if you never did, you could claim you never wanted out in the first place. Not forgetting where you came from, people called it. Those words hung like an anvil around my neck. I didn’t want to want to leave, just like I didn’t want to want Pete. The risk of disappointment was far too great, the promise of sacrifice too firm. And yet, a fire still burned deep down inside me. It was the wanting itself that revealed signs of life.

  Pete’s confession made me want to see him again and again—tonight, tomorrow night, and every night after. I had the strange sensation that somehow Pete knew me the best out of anyone, and he didn’t really know me at all.

  For the rest of the summer, I couldn’t wait for sunset. I loved the feeling of lying next to someone underneath a sky of stars, whispering b
ut not touching. I didn’t care if other girls were baring their bodies in empty baseball dugouts and pickup trucks. I was getting high on the quiet risk of secret truths, even while I kept my darkest secret hidden.

  The dark would always draw the young in Mercury, and the young would always long to slice it open with a naked flame. In August, one of my friends, Sidney, threw a housewarming party that gave us the chance to play with fire. Sid’s parents had just purchased a new mass-manufactured house that arrived one day on the bed of a truck, pre-built. Their old trailer had been pushed to the edge of their property where it sat in the shadow of an old swing set and a riding lawn mower, now another Mercury relic that remained long after its expiration date.

  It was a cool evening, a dark blue sky with a cord of velvet smoke curling through it. Sid was an expert at stoking fires, and this party’s bonfire was one to remember. Like a fat little kid, the bigger it got, the more we fed it. My friends and I sat dangerously close to the flames, but fire wasn’t something we feared. If a sleeve or a shoelace ignited, it would burn in the open air until someone put it out. And then it would be a story to tell.

  Pete had first kissed me on a night like this one. We’d slipped outside the Spotlight boundary lines and walked through the woods to a clearing that met up with the back part of a shopping plaza where Rip’s Sunrise Market and Coyote’s Pizza set up shop. At that time of night, the lot was deserted. Dirty pennies littered the ground.

  In the distant light from the lampposts, I could see Pete in muted colors, the crimson of his shiny basketball shorts, the bright ivory of his teeth, the deep black of his hair. His tan hand grabbed hold of my pale wrist.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  My hand tingled beneath his fingers. The sensation Pete gave me was like a roller coaster mounting its first hill, the kind that inspires a rush of bravery on its quicksilver descent toward the earth.