Red Road

by Wiltz, Jenni

He scooted his chair back and carried his plate to the kitchen island. He used the red plastic tongs to put two handfuls of salad on his plate. “The girls want to talk about something else.”

  Her mom leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She wouldn’t be any help.

  Emma breathed in deeply. “Dad, do you want my casserole?”

  His dark eyes looked straight into hers. “I’d like that.”

  She scraped her scoop onto his plate and tried to think of something else to say. “We started reading a new book in English class. We’re done with Gatsby.”

  “Oh?”

  “Of Mice and Men.”

  “Where does that one take place?”

  “Here, I think. The books got passed out today. I’ll start reading tomorrow.”

  “What do you have in the meantime?”

  “Lonesome Dove, still.”

  “You’re not done yet?”

  “Dad, it’s like eight hundred pages.”

  “You read fast.”

  “I have other classes.”

  Everything she said was pointless. No one wanted to hear it, including her father. But she couldn’t let him sit there, contemplating a world that had turned ugly in a day. She thought of Scheherazade, who spun beautiful stories because her life depended on it. Those stories saved her life—not a weapon or the ability to flee. It was her brain and her voice. With every word, Scheherazade created a brick. She mortared those bricks into place around her, to the point where no one could hurt her. Knives couldn’t pierce it, and poison couldn’t seep through it.

  I can do that, too, Emma thought.

  She babbled about school as if her father’s life depended on it, until her mom stood up to clear the table. When she took his plate, her dad went straight upstairs and made no noise. Long after the dishes were dry, her mom stood at the kitchen sink, staring at the rose bushes in the backyard, her pale hands pruning in the soapy water.

  Chapter Nine

  Tuesday, April 1

  Emma turned the combination lock slowly, afraid she’d miscount. She’d already washed her hair with body wash instead of shampoo and put on two different socks. Most mornings, her dad sat at the kitchen table and read the paper while she and Mattie poured their cereal. Mattie teased him that nobody got actual papers anymore, and he said he didn’t see how anyone could read anything on a two-inch screen. But that morning the table was empty, except for a note tucked under her placemat:

  Em, everything is going to be fine.

  See you tonite.

  Love, DAD.

  That was how he always signed off, with rounded block capitals, partially eroded like the rocks of Stonehenge.

  Her locker clicked open and she closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against the cool metal. Girls in Afghanistan worried about being murdered on the way to school. This was nothing. You’re lucky, she told herself. You are so goddamn lucky.

  “So,” she heard. “We’re getting our chem tests back today.”

  Emma jumped, banging her head against the locker. “Shit. You scared me.”

  “I always scare you. It’s my thing.” Dan tilted his head. “I think you’re the only person I’ve ever managed to sneak up on. I feel pretty good about that. You aren’t mad, are you?” His hair looked wet at the tips, gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

  “I aim to please.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “It’s better that way.” He pressed one black flip-flop against the locker beneath hers and leaned forward, stretching his calf muscle. There was a freckle on his big toe, just beneath the knuckle fold. It was perfectly circular, like a drop of black ink. “How’d you do on the test?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He peeked into her locker. “Why do you have so much stuff? What is all this?”

  A magnetic pencil holder hung on the inside of the door. She’d tucked a picture of herself and Rachel and Via into the top, and a picture of her family under the bottom. The photos were screened to avoid squinty eyes, red eyes, yellow teeth, double chins, unflattering profile shots, or any pose where her legs looked fat. “Books. I have lots.”

  He pointed at the photo. “Are those your parents?”

  Her fingers tugged it from the pencil holder’s magnetic grip. “We were at the Boardwalk.”

  He took it from her, holding it as close to the edges as possible. She and her family stood in front of the carousel. For the first time ever, she’d successfully completed the ring toss: a precision-timing maneuver that involved grabbing metal rings from a chute and heaving them at a small hole in the wall.

  With her sunglasses low over her sweaty nose, she stood sandwiched between Mattie and her parents. Her knees looked like biscuit dough, but her hair was in a cute ponytail and, for once, she looked happy.

  “You look happy,” Dan said. “Most days you look depressed.”

  “Have you ever been to the Boardwalk?”

  “Once, when I was a kid.”

  “You never went back?”

  Dan shrugged.

  “But they have funnel cake.”

  “You say the weirdest things sometimes.”

  “Who doesn’t want funnel cake?” She snatched the photo from his grasp.

  “Don’t be mad. You still haven’t told me why you’re so set on going to USC.”

  “It’s like funnel cake. You won’t get it.”

  “I swear I’ll get it. If I don’t, I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”

  “Well, that makes for a great conversation.”

  “I’m serious.” He leaned forward, blocking access to her books.

  She looked into his eyes, the same color as her mom’s martini olives. A freshman with an enormous backpack shoved past her, scraping her arm. “I need my books.”

  “We have time.”

  “I like to get to class early.”

  “Only nerds go to class this early.”

  “What do you think I am?”

  “I’m talking pocket protector nerd. Library on a Friday night kind of nerd.”

  “I have to go,” she said, reaching around him.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “Stay.” He put his hand on her arm. Through her thin sweater, she felt an instant rush of warmth radiating from his skin. “Talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because talking to you isn’t like talking to anyone else in the whole world.”

  His hand rested on her forearm. Emma let her fingers slide down the fuzzy spine of her grocery bag book cover. But as her arm fell to her side, so did his. Put it back, she wanted to say.

  “So, are you going to tell me?”

  “What?”

  “USC.”

  Emma sighed. Telling him would only embarrass her more. But maybe if she did, he’d put his hand on her arm again. An arm was almost a hand. If there was some way to parlay an arm-touch into a hand-hold, she’d be in new territory. Rachel territory. What was pride compared to that? “Fine,” she said. “Have you ever heard that ‘80s song, ‘A Little Respect’? They play it on Kool 105 during the all-request lunch hour. My mom requests it, like, every day.”

  “I don’t know.” The right corner of his lip curled toward his cheek. “How does it go?”

  “Nice try. The point is, I heard it years ago in the car, when my mom was taking me to the library. She said it was her favorite when she was younger. But I couldn’t figure out what this one part in the lyrics said. So when I got to the library, I looked up the name of the group. The DJ called them Erasure, but that name didn’t match any CDs the library had. It only matched the title of a book.”

  “What was the book?”

  “Erasure. Do you have any idea how the library works at all?”

 
Dan smiled. “Not really, no.”

  “It was by a guy called Percival Everett. So I read it. And when I did, I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go to school.”

  “Does Percival Everett go there?”

  “He teaches there. I want him to teach me how to write.”

  “You know how to write.”

  She shook her head. “Not stupid essays for class. I want to write something real. I think I could. I just don’t know how.”

  “Have you tried?”

  A tinny bell rang in each of the school’s six hallways. Normally, she’d be in her seat in Mr. Parker’s class by now. Her heart began to pound as she reached for a book. “We’re going to be late.”

  “That’s just the first bell. There’s two, you know.”

  “I know how the bell system works.”

  “I’m teasing you, Em.”

  “Okay, no joke, I really have to go now. See you in chemistry,” she said, slamming her locker and speed-walking down the hall. When she arrived in history class, pink-cheeked and out of breath, she slipped her backpack off her shoulder. It took her at least a minute to realize what had just happened.

  Dan had shortened her name.

  Em.

  No one but her parents ever called her that. She’d never heard what it sounded like from the lips of someone not related to her. It sounded like home.

  • • •

  “The Monroe Doctrine,” Mr. Parker said, writing the words on the chalkboard and underlining them twice, “supported the idea of manifest destiny. President James Monroe, the so-called War Hawks in Congress, and a majority of the American people all believed it was America’s destiny to rule everything between Kentucky and the Pacific. It didn’t matter that there were Native Americans already living there, or Spanish settlements in Florida and the Southwest.” He paused. “In a lot of ways, we’ve never changed.”

  Mr. Parker was tall and thin, with short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His defining characteristic was the big silver buckle on the belt he used to hold up his black jeans. He’d been in the army before becoming a teacher, and on rainy days when he didn’t feel like lecturing, he told them stories about Afghanistan and the desert and how far shrapnel flew when a mortar round detonated in your camp.

  Rachel sat in front of her, long red ponytail coiled onto Emma’s writing surface. She brushed it gently out of the way so she could turn over her paper. Rachel put her right arm to the back of her neck, pretending to scratch an itch, and dropped a folded piece of paper onto Emma’s desk. Her lack of a cell phone forced her friends to go old-school in their methods of intra-class communication. Emma unfolded the note slowly.

  Saw you with Dan at the lockers. Do you think he’s going to ask you to prom?

  Emma bit her lip. As much as she might wish otherwise, it was comic-book improbable, like digging a treasure chest of Spanish gold out of the backyard.

  A second piece of paper flew over her shoulder onto the desk, followed by a sharp poke in the spine from Via’s pen.

  A sophomore? Really?

  Emma shoved both notes beneath her binder. Let them ask her face-to-face. There were more important things to do now, like write down why Monroe, a guy who’d lived through the American Revolution, thought it was okay to bully people who were just trying to survive in a wilderness. She watched the classroom clock tick its way to 9:00 a.m. Her friends would pounce as soon as Mr. Parker set down his chalk—the signal his lecture was over.

  Via struck first, as soon as the chalk hit the silver rail beneath the board. “Hey, you didn’t answer my note.”

  “Mine either,” Rachel said, turning around. “What happened with Dan?”

  “We talked.”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “It’s never just talking when there are prom tickets on sale.”

  “What’s so interesting about that underage beanpole?” Via asked. “And what does he see in you? I’m kind of stumped, to be honest.”

  Emma flung her backpack over her shoulder. “Sometimes I lend him paper. That’s it.”

  “So he’s just using you. I guess that makes sense.”

  “People only date someone in a younger class when they can’t get anyone in their own to notice them. You just need to try harder.” Rachel led the way out of the classroom, pulling her ponytail out from under backpack and draping it across her shoulder. “What about Owen?”

  “What about him?”

  “No,” Via said. “You can’t hook up with someone you met in a church.”

  Rachel sighed. “Why are you so hung up on this? A lot of nice, normal people go to church.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Emma said. “I’m not hooking up with anyone.”

  “But you want to.” Rachel lowered her eyes. A guy wearing a Stanford T-shirt squeezed past her in the hall and she turned sideways to watch him go.

  “I saw Dan touch your arm.” Via wrapped thin fingers around the padded straps of her backpack. “Second base is only a few inches away.”

  “I think I’m still in the batter’s box,” Emma said.

  Via snorted. “You don’t even know what to do with a bat.”

  “Are we still talking about sports?”

  “Never answer a question with a question,” Rachel said. “My dad says lawyers only do that when they need to distract the jury.”

  “Distract them from what?”

  “The truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “You’re not listening.”

  “Look,” Via said. “I’ve gone out with guys and Rachel’s gone out with guys. You’ve never even come close. We’re just trying to figure out what’s different.”

  Emma looked at the fluorescent light hanging above them in the hallway. Two cords suspended it from the grey ceiling. It swayed from side to side when the door at the end of the hallway opened, but the sway didn’t mean it was going to fall down. “Maybe I’m what’s different.”

  She pushed past a JV football player and put a few feet of distance between herself and her friends. If they were going to give her a scarlet “S” for consorting with a sophomore, she at least wanted a chance to earn it.

  • • •

  When she got to chemistry class, she unzipped her backpack and took out her binder and book. Dan had said they were getting their tests back today. How did he know? Was it a bad sign they were coming back so quickly? She crossed her left leg over her right and tapped her toe against the empty seat in front of her.

  A minute later, Dan shuffled into class behind Rena Hao, the shortest girl in the junior class. “Hey,” he said, sliding his long body into a desk built for short people. His left leg sprawled into the aisle and Emma wondered what he’d do if he got stuck in the middle seat on a plane.

  Another boy on the water polo team stepped over Dan’s legs as he marched to the back of the class, punching Dan on the shoulder as he passed. “Dick,” Dan said.

  “Are those guys on the team really your friends?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do they ever say things that sound like a joke, but they actually mean the mean thing that’s underneath the joke?”

  Dan’s eyes flickered across the classroom, to Via and Rachel’s empty desks. “Being friends with a girl is the hardest thing in the world to do.”

  She pictured him hanging out with an ex-girlfriend, going to coffee shops and superhero movies, finishing each other’s sentences and popcorn. “How do you know?”

  “I have sisters.”

  As quickly as it formed, the vision of a popcorn-stealing ex-girlfriend dissolved. She smiled with the relief of not having to compete with the memory of someone who liked coffee and Zack Snyder. Her eyes floated down his leg to the omnipresent black flip-flops. “Has anyone ever told you that you have really hairy toes?”

  “Don’t you?” He le
aned forward and reached for her foot.

  “No!” The thought of him sliding off her black flats and seeing unpolished toenails, dry skin, and monstrous calluses was too mortifying to contemplate. She swung both feet into the aisle on her left, out of his reach.

  “Cheater.”

  “I prefer ‘conscientious adopter of non-traditional rules.’”

  He laughed and shook his head. “You’re gonna kick my ass.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Put your money where your mouth is?” He sat up straight and held out his hand. “If I win, you have to come to my water polo match on Saturday.”

  “Okay. But if I win, you have to come to the library with me on a Friday night.”

  His face froze and so did the blood in her veins.

  “I’m sorry, you don’t have to do that. I take it back.”

  “Why? You’re not gonna win.”

  Emma blinked. “You’re taking the bet?”

  He held out his hand. “Shake n’ bake, West.”

  She placed her palm against his and shook. “Shake n’ bake.”

  As their hands clasped across the aisle, Via and Rachel’s shadows broke the silhouette of light in the doorframe. “Oh please,” Via said. “This is how communicable disease is spread.”

  Emma slipped her hand out of Dan’s grasp and slid down in her seat. Is not, she thought, flashing back to Mr. MacDonald’s seventh-grade science class.

  Dan shook his head. “I’ve heard that tone before. I hope you have a big shovel.”

  “Thanks,” she said as Mr. Lopez barreled into the room. “Thanks a lot.”

  Mr. Lopez clutched a stack of paper under his arm and she wondered if it was possible to get a paper cut through a polo shirt. “Sorry I’m late. There was a glitch in my grading software.”

  Yeah, Emma thought. It gave you an error message when the entire class failed.

  Mr. Lopez drew his bushy brows together and took a breath. He opened his mouth, shaped a word, and then gave up. He shook his head and stared at the floor. “I’m disappointed in you guys. We went over this stuff for weeks. I don’t know if it’s burnout or the prom or what, but you have to do better.” He hefted the stack of paper and walked up and down the narrow aisles, dropping off tests and mouthing each student’s name as he did. “West,” he grunted, floating her four stapled pages back to her.