Trigger

by Susan Vaught

  Leza’s face twisted up, then she laughed. “You’re weird, you know that? But funny weird. Good weird, I think. What do you want, Jersey?”

  “Drugs,” I said all happylike, then clamped my hand over my mouth. That absolutely sealed it. I had to start carrying a sock. There was no way I dared to open my mouth again. Who knew what would come out?

  Thankfully, Leza didn’t just slam the door. Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “This has got something to do with that list you and Mama Rush made, doesn’t it?”

  When she looked at me, I nodded.

  “I know you’re supposed to take it to her this afternoon. Want to take a hike to your backyard? I’ve got a little while before I’m supposed to be at the mall, so I could help you with it.”

  “Yes! I mean, thank you. That’s great.”

  This earned me a grin and an arm to help me heaven-hell down the porch steps and make it through our back gate without falling on my already-mashed-up head. I kept my memory book tucked under my bad arm, and I got annoyed with the pen bouncing against my wet shirt. Leza didn’t seem to mind this, either.

  Maybe with her, I didn’t need a sock that badly.

  We headed for the wooden picnic table at the edge of our patio, the one with a full view of our living room through the big back picture window. If I turned my head some, I could see my bedroom window, too, but I didn’t want to look up because I was afraid I’d see J.B. standing there, glaring at us. If he kept hanging around, I’d need to hire an exorcist. But I didn’t want to think about ghosts and exorcists, not with Leza sitting at the picnic table in her green and gold and looking so pretty and planning to help me and all.

  “I don’t need a sock,” I blurted as she sat down. My bad hand curled until I winced.

  “Okay, now you have to explain that sock thing.” She reached across the table and pulled the memory book out from under my arm. With a few graceful movements, she flicked to the last few pages, and put it down on the table with the list showing right side up to me. The pen she placed on the paper, right where I needed to pick it up.

  For some reason, Leza being nice to me and the pain in my hand made me want to cry. No. No! I didn’t want to cry. Crying was for babies and girls and I was a guy with a beautiful girl, out at a picnic table on a beautiful day. No crying. No tears. Absolutely not.

  “You okay?” Leza patted my fingers. “If you don’t want to tell me about the sock, you don’t have to.”

  “No. I—the sock.” A tear slipped down my cheek and I tried to wipe it away real fast before she saw it. She didn’t react, so I got to hoping she didn’t see it, but I worried she did. “Just a second.”

  I counted to ten, used my good hand to uncurl my cramping fingers, and paid attention to the table, the oak leaves moving gently on branches above Leza’s head, and an ant creeping down one of the cracks in the peeling wood. Breathing. Breathing. The tears stayed in my head. When I was sure I could say something not totally bizarre, I gave it a try.

  “The idiot things I say. I thought if I had a sock, I’d stuff it in my mouth.”

  Leza propped her elbows on the table and rested her head on her fists. “What, you mean just chew on it in front of people?”

  My cheeks got a little hot. “Yeah. Chew on it.”

  “Might work.” She shrugged one shoulder. “But you might get fuzz in your mouth, too.”

  “Chew fuzz.” I put my hand on my memory book. “That’s better than some of the stuff I say. Thieves and murderers and blue credit cards and stuff. Oh, and sand and snot, too.” I closed my eyes, took a breath, counted to five. Then I touched the cover of the book. “You read this before, right?”

  It was Leza’s turn to look a little embarrassed. She did this mostly with her eyes, which suddenly seemed like they belonged to a puppy instead of a girl. “A little. I’m sorry. When I picked it up—”

  “No, no sorry.” I slid the book toward her. “I mean, don’t be sorry. It’s okay. You already know I’m stupid.”

  Leza took the book, but she cut her eyes up sharp like Mama Rush did right before she used her tongue as a whip. I leaned back out of reflex.

  “Yeah, you’d better get out of my way. Boy, I’m not going to waste my time with you if you say bad stuff about yourself. Talking trash about yourself makes you—”

  “Trash.” The word popped out of my mouth automatically. Mama Rush had told us that a million times. Talking trash about yourself makes you trash. If you don’t think good things about yourself, nobody else will.

  Leza was still glaring.

  “Okay,” I added in a hurry. Okay was the only thing to say to a mad Rush. Or yes, or sorry. I still had that much pragmatics, or maybe I just wanted to finish this conversation without a black eye.

  “I’ll be nice to you, and I’ll help and be your friend and stuff—but don’t go thinking I’m willing to feel sorry for you, Jersey.” Leza was talking fast, her tone rising and falling like a preacher thumping on a Bible. “That bird won’t fly. Got me?”

  “Got you. I mean, yes.”

  Don’t smile. She’ll hit you with your own memory book. You know she’ll hit you. I covered my mouth but tried not to look like I was covering my mouth. Under my hand, my lips moved upward no matter how hard I tried to keep them still. Leza said she would be my friend. Todd was gone because he hated me and everything changes, but Leza changed, and she got older and beautiful and nice, and she was going to be my friend.

  Something inside me relaxed, and before I knew it, the tears came back.

  “Maybe you do need a sock,” Leza said, tapping on the white cover of my memory book. “If you’re going to blow snot all over the book and stuff.” Her face changed a little, like she was thinking too hard. “Listen—um, how—how’s your mom?”

  I shrugged, fighting with the tears. “Fine, I guess. Sock. She doesn’t talk much.”

  “So she’s okay.” Leza blew out a breath. “I was wondering. Hoping she was.” She opened my memory book. “Okay. Here’s the list.”

  I wiped my eyes and scratched all three of my scars as she read it to herself, then read it out loud.

  1. Maybe on drugs.

  2. Did something awful I felt guilty.

  3. My life sucked.

  4. Heard voices telling me to off myself.

  5. Parents really brother and sister/aliens/abusive.

  6. Elana Arroyo.

  “This first one about drugs, I think that’s out.” Leza picked up the pen and scratched it off, but I couldn’t let it go that easily.

  “Are you sure? There’s, you know, pot and meth and stuff. Maybe I did.” I massaged my curling fingers, trying to pretend the sunlight wasn’t making my head start to hurt.

  “We can’t be totally sure of anything since you can’t remember, but I don’t think drugs were a problem. You were in R.O.T.C. and on two sports teams at the same time, and all of the coaches did random testing.” Leza made some notes on the page opposite the list. “Plus, Todd never said anything, and I never heard any rumors. Believe me, I always hear the rumors.”

  “My parents said no to that one, too, but I figured they might not know. Rumor pens. Random testing. I hadn’t thought about random testing.” Marking off drugs seemed more reasonable after that. No pot, no meth. Well, maybe some—who knows. But drugs weren’t the problem. Drugs weren’t the reason I pulled the trigger. I smiled at Leza but had to stop because my hand was hurting so bad and my head was getting worse, too.

  She didn’t smile back. She was looking at the list, all business. “Parents don’t know stuff lots of times. Because nobody tells them and they don’t know how to look, I guess.”

  “Yours, too?” I felt like somebody was slowly working a screwdriver into my skull, just above my right eye. Never mind the vise squeezing my weak fingers into a tighter and tighter fist.

  “My parents work a lot, but my mom, she’s like Mama Rush, always asking questions and trying to be involved.”

  “My mother
goes to the bank.”

  Leza looked all funny again, almost like she wanted to cry. “Yeah. She does that a lot now.”

  “She didn’t used to so much. At least I don’t think she did. It was Dad who always went to work, but now he makes oatmeal and toast with Kool-Aid glue.”

  “Your mom’s probably not over—you know—what happened. What she saw.” Leza’s gaze shifted back to the pen. “All that blood, and you …”

  I let go of my cramping hand and tried massaging my right temple instead. The headache split my thinking in two, leaving Leza on one side and her words drifting around and making pictures on the other. Pools of blood, tons of it, like red paint flowing all over the table, the patio, the yard.

  “But I wasn’t dead,” I forced out, trying to ignore the paint-blood. “I lived, and I went to hospitals and did therapy, and we had to see shrinks together and stuff.”

  “You really think that makes it all better?” Leza asked this like she didn’t know for sure, not like Mama Rush asked things. Mama Rush usually knew the answers to all of her questions.

  “I—I don’t know. I thought it did. That it should have. Paint-blood. Better.” I stopped rubbing my head and covered my mouth to shut myself up.

  Leza was still looking at the pen. “Have you talked to her about it?”

  The question was simple enough, but it made me tighten up all over. We had tried to talk about it, my mom and me, a bunch of times in therapy. It usually ended with me mad and upset because she was trying to blame me for stuff I didn’t remember. Paint-blood. At first she cried. Later, she stormed out. By the time I went to Carter, she had stopped doing anything at all—including trying to ask me about shooting myself. We just sort of let it drop, since I’d never really be able to tell her what made me pull the trigger.

  “All that blood.” I echoed what Leza had said a few minutes ago, blinking to make the paint-blood disappear. It was fading, but my head was hurting worse. “Paint-blood.”

  Leza cleared her throat. “Is it okay if we talk about something else?” She sounded funny, and when I looked at her, I thought she might have tears in her head, trying to get out.

  “Did you care about it? I—I—more than just, that was gross or that was stupid, or hey, I knew that kid who shot himself?”

  “Why would you ask me that?” Leza straightened up and got that Mama-Rush-about-to-slap look again. “Dang, boy. You can really—yeah. Okay? I cared. I freaked out for a while. Lots of folks did. Like her.”

  She pointed to my list, to the last item. Elana Arroyo.

  “That number has been disconnected,” I muttered.

  “You tried to call her?” Leza’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked part-shocked, part-mad. “She moved away about six months ago, to get a new start and all. If you want to know stuff about her, you’ll have to ask Todd—and if I were you, I wouldn’t. Not now, at least.”

  Her eyes drifted away from me to the windows of my house. Nervous. Ready to go. One thousand questions jammed into my head. Leza might get up and leave any second now, and I might not get more chances to talk to her. What if she started shutting the door on me? She probably should start shutting the door. Ready to go. If I cried, I’d get snot on my face, and she’d definitely shut the door next time I knocked, and I really, really didn’t want her to shut the door.

  “Don’t shut the door. Please.” I reached for her with my good hand, and she let me touch her wrist. Her skin was so soft the sensation tied up my tongue worse than ever.

  “Whatever.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I know you don’t mean to be a jerk, right?”

  “Right,” I repeated. I could usually repeat last words without disasters. “No jerks. No doors.”

  Leza nodded as she slid her wrist out from under my fingers. “You know, I bet you can cross off the fourth and fifth thing on this list. I don’t think you heard any voices. Do you?”

  I shook my head and watched her scratch through that line.

  “And if your folks are aliens, then mine are from their same planet. The brother and sister thing is just gross, and my family has known you since you were little.” Leza was talking really fast like I did sometimes when I was trying to get away from the tears in my head. “I guarantee you if your parents were abusing you, Mama Rush would have just killed them and buried them in the backyard. She didn’t trust Child Protective because she worked for them before she went private. Can you really imagine her leaving a kid in a situation like that?”

  “No.” Did she even take a breath when she said all that? I thought about asking, but figured I’d say idiot things. At least the paint-blood had faded almost away, even though my head and hand were still killing me.

  Leza tapped the pen on the memory book. “So that leaves you doing something awful, your life sucking, and your ex-girlfriend.”

  I didn’t know what else to say but “Yes.” Her words were starting to run together.

  “Okay.” Leza stood up. “Progress. Now you can take this to Mama Rush and work on these three. I’ve got to go to the mall.”

  She left the yard so fast I barely had time to yell “Thank you!” before she was out of the gate and gone.

  chapter 8

  Three o’clock, and all’s well.

  I’ve always wanted to yell something weird like that, but I knew I shouldn’t yell. Yelling would be bad. I’d probably get thrown out or something. Besides, I was sitting with Mama Rush on the patio at The Palace, and if I yelled, Mama Rush would probably bop me with an ashtray.

  Don’t yell.

  Only, she had mended one of my presents—the ashtray, of course—so she didn’t need the stand-up ashtrays anymore, unless she wanted to bop me if I yelled. She had plopped the mended clay ashtray on the table between us and started using it as she read over my notes and the list. She flicked ashes into the ashtray every few seconds, but afternoon sunlight still brightened the web of clear glue holding everything together.

  Don’t yell about glue.

  I liked seeing her use the ashtray. I had shaped that clay and put prints of my fingers into the sides and bottom and top. I had even painted the brown clay green so it would be more colorful. That was probably a mistake. The ashes were burning little black spots into the green. It didn’t smell very good. And the black spots made the green bowl look like some kind of weird upside-down turtle shell.

  Don’t yell about turtles.

  It definitely looked like an ashtray made by a braindamaged guy. A brain-damaged ashtray.

  Don’t yell, don’t yell, don’t yell.

  “Your handwriting’s pretty bad now,” Mama Rush grumbled as she shoved up the sleeve of her oversized purple shirt. It was the same shade as her scooter. “Next time you write, slow down a little bit.”

  “Brain-damaged ashtrays,” I yelled. Then I covered my mouth, took a breath, and said, lots quieter, “A turtle, but it’s upside down.”

  She groaned without taking her eyes off the notebook. “Loosen up a little, at least with me. Quit trying to be perfect when you don’t have to be. If you need to talk nonsense, then do it. Or try … try counting to ten over and over again, or saying the alphabet.”

  I counted to ten while she read. When I’d done that three times, I said the alphabet. The urge to yell it kept popping up my throat, but I wouldn’t let it past my lips.

  Meanwhile, the automatic porch door swung open and out came a great big guy riding a silver scooter with orange racing flames. His legs covered the small part of the flames, so it looked like the fire was flaring out of his calves. Gas gone bad.

  Oh, God. Don’t yell about gas. Harder to think in the real world. One, two, three, four, five—anything but gas. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, A, B, C, D, E—brain-damaged turtles were better than gas.

  I fidgeted with the pen on the string tied to my memory book, which Mama Rush was still reading. She smacked my arm with her cigarette hand until I let the pen go, but she didn’t drop the cigarette. “Be still. Just give me one
more minute.”

  X, Y, Z. One, two, three, don’t yell about gas. Four, five, six. No gas. No brain-damaged turtles. No yelling. Seven, eight, nine, ten.

  The guy on the silver scooter with the gas-flames zoomed around the tables. And around again. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere. No pack of cigarettes poking out of his shirt pocket, either. No smoking. Just looping around. Each loop got faster and he came a little closer to the tables. I squinted at him. The silver was bright in the sun. My headache was gone, but my scars felt sore. The bright silver made them hurt. My bad hand clenched.

  “That’s Big Larry,” Mama Rush said absently, turning a page in my book. Flick, flick, flick went her cigarette into the brain-damaged turtle ashtray with the glue lines. “Don’t mind him. He had a stroke and lost his words.”

  Big Larry. Huge Larry. Linebacker Larry. Don’t yell about Larry. Larry looked like Frankenstein with a blank stare and his mouth hanging open. His right arm hung in a sling pulled tight against his chest. I could see his swollen, curled Frankenstein fingers poking over the sling’s white edge. The right side of his lips drooped, just like his right eye.

  Big Larry the Frankenstein Linebacker on his silver-flame scooter couldn’t talk. He lost his words. He lost the strength on his right side just like I’d lost the strength on my left side, but Big Larry could drive, at least on his scooter. He whizzed past us again. Every time he got closer.

  “Can’t talk.” I watched him wind up for another loop. “One, two, three, four. Larry the Frankenstein Linebacker can’t talk. Five, six, seven. He’s not doing so good. Eight, nine, ten. Frankenstein nutcase. Don’t yell about nutcases.”

  Mama Rush glanced up from the book. “He can’t talk, but he can hear. Quit pissing him off or he’ll run over your toes.”

  She went back to reading.

  I shut my mouth, tried to wiggle my toes down into my tennis shoes and scoot my feet all the way under the table. When would I remember that stupid sock? It was a good idea even if Leza thought it would taste fuzzy.

  Big Larry motored by, no sign of brakes. Did that scooter have brakes? I mean, it had to have brakes or people would snap their legs and arms and heads when they slammed into stuff to stop. They’d all be brain-damaged turtles. And Mama Rush would have used a few people as slamming targets on purpose by now and been arrested. So Big Larry the Linebacker’s brakes had to be broken.