Red Road

by Wiltz, Jenni

  She scooted out the tiny desk chair, sized for an eight-year-old, and held her fingers over the keyboard. Since second grade, when she won an essay contest about why she loved her parents (they killed spiders), her teachers pushed her to read more and write more. In fourth grade, she won first place in the school book fair, but fell to a disappointing third place in fifth grade. She’d been trying to catch up ever since.

  Words never came to her in casual conversation or on the phone, but when she sat down to type, something happened. All the words she didn’t know she knew formed a cyclone in her head, whirling wide and low and slow. If she pulled out the right ones, the cyclone narrowed and whirled faster, and all she had to do was type fast enough to keep up.

  She took a deep breath. Green light, dream, phantom, bay, curse. Then the landline rang and her cyclone’s nascent whirl flattened into a death spiral.

  A few seconds later, Emma heard a knock on her door. Her dad poked his head into the room and held out the cordless. “Phone’s for you,” he said, eyes red and bleary.

  “Thanks, Dad. You can fall asleep in front of the TV now.”

  “Way ahead of you,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Emma put the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hey,” Via said. “Are you writing your English paper?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “What is yours going to say?”

  “I don’t know. I’m staring at the blank screen of death.”

  “I have five pages about how the American Dream is bullshit. I’m so fucked.”

  “And that made you think of me?”

  “Not in a lesbian way or anything. I just wanted to get your opinion.”

  Emma thought about her dad. Until the census job came through, he was days away from applying to work in fast-food restaurants. Now, he was going door-to-door in hostile territory for minimum wage. “I think you’re right. The American Dream is probably bullshit. But I don’t think that’s what you should turn in.”

  “I knew it. Goddamn. I can’t absorb another B in this class.”

  “Didn’t your dad come here from Ethiopia? That’s the American Dream.”

  “It was until he decided he didn’t want a wife and kid anymore. No one ever told that asshole to be careful what you wish for. My mom wants to have his citizenship revoked.”

  “Can she do that?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. AP Government’s not until next year.” Via sighed. “The last time I turned in a paper with a negative slant, Evans gave me a B-. Our antiquated school system isn’t equipped to handle pessimism as an alternate worldview.”

  “Maybe they should. Look what it did for Nick Carraway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Emma pushed the blinds apart to look out at the dark street below. A busted-ass Corolla sat two feet from the curb across the street. Next door, two of the four solar lights lining the front walkway had gone out. “Look at Nick and then look at Gatsby. The one who floats through the book, all passive and pessimistic, survives. The one who stakes everything on a belief in love ends up dead. Think about what that means.”

  “I’m too tired to think. What does it mean?”

  “If you care too much, this world kills you.”

  “Dibs. I call dibs. That’s my angle.”

  “You can have it. But I’m charging for the next one.”

  “You don’t have the balls. Thanks, Em.”

  When Via hung up, Emma returned to the blank page. The green light, she thought, trying to recapture the serpentine swirl of words that slipped away when the phone rang. But why green? If she combined Mendelian genetics and Ziploc bags, green was the product of yellow and blue: one dominant, one recessive, creating the hybrid child. If the green light symbolized Gatsby’s hope, what two things produced it?

  Before Gatsby could hope, he had to want something. It had to be as big and blue as the sky. It had to pulse like the blood in his veins, also blue, deep and dark beneath the surface of his skin. But if you wanted something that big, you had to realize you might not get it. And if you did get it, you had to fear you might lose it. Yellow was the color of fear—in her dad’s favorite westerns, the cowboys always called the bad guy a “yellow-bellied coward.”

  That was it.

  The blue was desire, and the yellow was fear. Together, they created a hybrid offspring, the phantom green light of hope. Her heart beat faster at the thought. She could make this work.

  The cyclone picked up speed as she began pulling out words. She set her fingers to the keyboard and began to type.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, March 28

  The next morning, Emma tossed her backpack onto the front seat of her mom’s Buick. She liked the car in spite of its age and robust dork factor. The stereo increased or decreased volume at a whim and sometimes the power windows didn’t work, but its smooth ride camouflaged her jerky turns, allowing her to pass her driver’s test on the first try. Every morning, rain or shine, she and her mom piled in for the eight-mile trip to school.

  “Seatbelt,” her mom said, clicking the garage door opener.

  Emma yawned as grey morning light filled the empty garage. Her dad’s truck was already gone. Her mom sighed as she adjusted the side and rearview mirrors. “Your father’s been in the car again,” she muttered. “What time did you go to sleep last night?”

  “One-thirty.” Between the Gatsby paper and the metric buttload of irregular verbs she had to memorize for the French quiz, it was the best she could manage. She leaned her head against the cold window as her mom pulled out of the driveway.

  “Do they sell coffee at school?” her mom asked.

  “Coffee’s gross.”

  “You won’t say that in college.”

  “College won’t change the chemical composition of coffee, Mom. It’ll still be gross.”

  “There’s a dollar in my purse. What can you buy at the cafeteria for a dollar?”

  “Hope.”

  “Price has come down, then.” Stuck behind a slow-moving Subaru in the fast lane, her mom zagged to the right and stepped on the gas. The most frequent words out of her mom’s mouth as she taught Emma to drive were Don’t ever do this, offered as she executed illegal U-turns and passes over the double-yellow line.

  One year younger than Emma’s dad, her mom dropped out of college when he graduated. In their high school prom picture, she had the most elaborate hairdo Emma had ever seen: long golden strands piled on her head in perfect hot-roller curls. Emma thought it was weird what her mom did and did not have patience for.

  “I’ll be at Christy’s this morning,” her mom said, pulling into North Malo Verde High’s drop-off area. Their neighbor ran a daycare out of her home and her mom did the bookkeeping. It didn’t pay much, but Christy gave them a cut of all the thank-you gifts parents dropped off, everything from fruit baskets to homemade soap. “Will you be out at the usual time?”

  “Barring a catastrophe of epic proportions.”

  “Naturally.” Her mom smiled. “Have a good day, sweetie.”

  Emma waved as her mom sped back to Carver Boulevard. High-school students weren’t supposed to wave, but it made her mom happy and Emma was so far off the radar of cool that it really didn’t matter.

  As soon as the Buick rounded the corner, she turned to face her school—the ugliest ever built, in her opinion. The rich kids’ school across town had graceful arches, terra-cotta tiles, and pointed rooflines. They got a flat cement box with a rough-rock exterior.

  She stepped up to the gate, monitored by a yard duty. The district couldn’t afford metal detectors or actual security guards, so volunteer parents staffed the entrances. They wore yellow nylon jackets and patrolled with walkie-talkies. If they spotted anything suspicious, they radioed one of the four assistant principals whose job it w
as to look mean and scare kids straight. Last year, one got fired for smoking weed confiscated from a student.

  Emma hurried to the junior locker bay, which sat perpendicular to the third hallway in the school’s rectangular main building. She dropped her backpack and bent to divest it of three binders, four books, a pencil case, and a sack lunch. I’ll be a hunchback by graduation, she thought. Just like Richard III.

  When she stood up, she saw a broad expanse of green T-shirt that said, I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself. Startled, she banged her hand on the locker door. “Ow. You scared me.”

  Dan smiled at her. Despite his size, he was a year younger, a sophomore who had somehow gotten into AP Chemistry. In seven months, she’d never seen him wear a sweater or long pants. “You’re jumpy,” he said, leaning against the locker bay. “Are you nervous about something?”

  “Usually.”

  “Like what?”

  “Life.”

  “Life?”

  “That about sums it up,” she said.

  “You need to relax.”

  “Tell it to the judge.”

  “How about your PO?”

  Emma blinked. Eudora Welty was no help in deciphering the meaning of PO in this particular context. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Parole officer.”

  “Oh.” Her hand clenched around her combination lock. Rachel would use a well-timed hair flip to pause the conversation and regain control. But Emma’s hair was only shoulder length to start with, and she didn’t trust herself not to bang her own head into the locker door.

  “So,” Dan said, shifting his weight.

  Sweat pooled in the center of her bra. Think of something, she ordered herself. How’s the weather? What about that chemistry test? How shitty are these combination locks? Why doesn’t anyone get the dead bugs out of the fluorescent lights in the hallways?

  “Hey,” Dan said. “Can I borrow some paper?” He bent his head, looking at her through lashes thicker than hers. It made her angry that he probably rolled out of bed with perfectly tousled hair and never washed his face outside of the shower.

  She pulled the pink binder out of her bag, opened the rings, and grabbed a hunk of paper.

  “Dude,” he said. “It’s world history, not War and Peace.”

  “I have a lot of paper.”

  He smiled and she saw his crooked right front tooth, tilted up and over the left one. “What am I going to do when you go to college?”

  “Stop being a cheapskate and spend a dollar to get your own paper?”

  “Do you know where you want to go?”

  “USC.”

  “I can’t picture you in LA.”

  “Why not?” She regretted it as soon as she said it. She’d just invited him to give her a laundry list of her personal failings: She wasn’t ninety-eight pounds, she didn’t have blonde hair, she didn’t have fake boobs, she didn’t have a flashy car, and she’d never been in an episode of The Vampire Diaries. She’d never even seen The Vampire Diaries.

  “You’re too nice for LA.”

  “You don’t know that. Two seconds ago, I was angry at you for having perfect hair.”

  “That’s nothing. My older brother lives there and I can tell you, it’s full of assholes.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, he’s one of them.” Dan shrugged. “So what made you want to go there?”

  She looked at her boots. The two-year-old suede was shiny at the toes. When it wore through, the whole world would know she wore Daffy Duck socks. If she told him the real reason she’d decided on USC, he’d think it was stupid. Just say you don’t know, she thought.

  “Don’t say you don’t know,” he said.

  Just say you like their football team.

  “And don’t say you like their football team.”

  “Goddamn it.” Emma sighed. “I’ll be late for class.”

  He pulled his phone from his pocket and held it out to her. “We have time. See?”

  “I need to study.”

  “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me. But I’m just gonna keep asking.”

  “Do you go ‘in’ the ‘out’ door, too?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Your social skills could use some work.”

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “My PO.”

  “You don’t actually have one of those, do you?”

  He flashed a lopsided smile, the kind only a boy with curly hair could smile. Then he tucked the paper under his arm and walked away. “See you in chemistry,” he called.

  As he walked away, she watched his legs—they turned out slightly—and wondered why he decided to play water polo. She hated the water. The only stroke she could do with any precision was the backstroke because it didn’t involve getting her face wet. Suddenly, he turned around. When he saw her staring, he cupped his hands around his mouth. “I thought you had to study!”

  With burning cheeks, she picked up her backpack and slammed her locker with more force than intended.

  • • •

  “Alors, tout le monde. Etes-vous préparés pour le quiz?”

  “Non,” the class chimed.

  “Une minute?” Monsieur Jordan asked, his finger hovering over the projector’s “on” button.

  “Oui,” the class chimed.

  “Alors, une minute.”

  Emma pulled out her notes for one last cram session. Her third-year French class (with all of twelve kids) was composed of mostly Mexican girls. Native Spanish speakers weren’t allowed to take Spanish for credit, so almost all of them took French instead. Behind her, Juan Sanchez made a hissing noise. “Eh, did you hear what happened last night?”

  She knew he couldn’t be talking to her, so she looked back at her notes for the conditional conjugation of dormir.

  On her right, Griselda Gutierrez snapped the gum she wasn’t supposed to be chewing. “Hector almost got his ass killed is what I heard,” she said. Griselda always wore red lipstick and cut-off T-shirts with Mickey Mouse on them. She looked better with her hair in a ponytail, but she hardly ever wore it that way.

  “Two chingado Sureños. Fucking scraps followed him and waited for him at his sister’s house. Shot up his car and everything. He ran out the back.”

  “Damn, that car was tight. It had rims.”

  “Mi hermano talked to Hector after it happened. He said starting now, no one except the NF crosses Sobrante Street. Fuck those ratas and the eme.”

  Emma held her breath. Sobrante Street was the unofficial border of East Malo Verde, the dividing line between billboards in English and billboards in Spanish. Her father would have to cross it to get to El Camino Rojo. Whatever the NF was, she knew her dad wasn’t a part of it. Who was this Hector, and why did Juan think he could control who went anywhere in East Malo Verde?

  “Alors, tout le monde,” Monsieur Jordan said. He stepped back in front of the overhead projector. “Pas de livres, pas de notes.” After they’d all put their books on the floor, he flicked the projector’s “on” switch and ten questions appeared. Three were easy fill-in-the-blank, and seven were irregular verbs they had to conjugate in the conditionnel.

  Emma jotted down her answers quickly. While she was double-checking them, Griselda leaned over and hissed at her. “Psst. What’s number two?”

  With a quick glance at Monsieur Jordan’s roving eye, Emma shrugged. “Don’t know,” she whispered.

  “What about number three? Is it nous voudriez? Or nous voudrais?”

  Emma glanced down as Monsieur Jordan’s eyes canvassed her side of the room.

  “Hey, did you hear me?”

  “Oui.”

  “So which one? The first or the second?”

  “Secon
d,” she whispered, through clenched teeth.

  Griselda nodded and wrote the answer on her quiz.

  Emma tilted her head to hide a smile. The correct answer was nous voudrions.

  • • •

  The Buick was already waiting at the curb when Emma stepped past the gate. “Hi, Mom,” she said, tossing her backpack onto the floor.

  “Good day?” A smudge darkened her temple, like she’d rubbed her eye and smeared her makeup without realizing it.

  “Average.”

  “Mine, too.”

  Her mom turned onto Carver Boulevard. Two stoplights down, they passed a vacant strip mall. “Used to be an Alpha-Beta,” her mom said, following Emma’s gaze. “Then a Lucky’s, then an Albertsons, then a dollar store.” She shook her head. “How the dollar store goes out of business in this town is beyond me.”

  It wasn’t just the dollar store. The video rental place, dry cleaner’s, insurance agent, and Baker’s Square were gone, too. One of the storefronts had graffiti all over the boarded windows, with XIV norte featured prominently. None of the tags said NF.

  “Where’s Mattie?” Emma asked.

  “Going home with Kayla.”

  “Which one is Kayla?”

  “She lives on Maple, near the fire station.”

  Emma frowned. “I thought that was Kyla.”

  “Which one dyed her hair purple?”

  “That’s Kyla.”

  “I swear,” her mom muttered. “There were three Madisons at daycare today. It’s like there are only five names left in the entire world.”

  When they got home, her mom turned on the TV and made a pitcher of iced tea. She dumped a handful of tortilla chips into a bowl and the two of them leaned over it, foreheads almost touching, dipping chips into a jar of homemade salsa brought back from Christy’s. “This is good,” Emma said, holding a hand over her mouth as she crunched. “What’s the green stuff?”

  “Cilantro.”

  Emma scooped out a sodden leaf with her fingernail and put it on her tongue. It burst to life in her mouth, a combination of sunlight and grass and dew. “This is what a four-leaf clover should taste like,” she said.