Frank’s Suburban rounded the corner and came to a halt directly in front of me. He left the engine running and hopped out before I could get up.
“We’re going back to the dance. I’m going to kill that little turd. I don’t care if he’s blind.” Frank stood fuming, red-faced, ready to pummel a teenager half his size.
“God, no! Cody didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did you feel you had to walk home from the dance in the dark?”
“It’s complicated,” I said.
“I’m an educated man. I can follow.”
“Let’s just go back to the trailer. We can talk there.”
Frank hesitated but finally got back into the truck. He alternately gripped the steering wheel and hit it with his palms.
“Holy hell. I can’t believe you were walking alone. Something could have happened. What if—”
“What if what?”
“Nothing. It’s just that someone could’ve grabbed you and you’d never be heard from again. You said you’d stay safe.”
His wild eyes made him look like a crazy person.
“You’re being a little melodramatic. I used to walk alone at night all the time. No big deal.”
“It’s a big deal. A very big deal.”
I stared straight ahead, worried that he wasn’t being melodramatic after all and that I’d been stupid to risk walking alone at night.
I changed into sweatpants and a hoodie before joining Frank outside. He’d lit a small fire in the chiminea to ward off the night’s chill. He’d brought the thing from Corpus. He said lots of people in the south used the earthenware urns as outdoor fireplaces.
I pulled my chair back several feet from the crackling flames.
“I’m sorry about the fire,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking. Do you want to go inside?”
“No, I’m fine. I’ll just stay back here.” I wasn’t fine, but there was only so much I could deal with in one night. Fire seemed less dangerous than talking about Cody.
Frank pulled his chair next to mine.
“I’m still furious you walked to that gas station in the dark, but first I want to hear what happened with Blondie.”
“Don’t call him that.”
My breath quickened as I thought about Cody’s thumb on the small of my back and his lips so close to my neck before I essentially rejected him.
“Fine. What happened with Cody?” he asked.
I exhaled. “He tried to touch—”
“I knew it. I’m going to kill him.”
“Calm yourself. He tried to touch my face, Frank. My face.”
Frank relaxed back into his canvas camping chair. He rubbed his bearded chin. “Oh man. I get it.”
My uncle did understand. We’d only known each other a short time, but he respected the rules that kept my world upright. One was that no one touches me, at least not without my permission, and definitely not my scar.
“So, he was going to kiss you then, huh.”
“Are we really going to talk about this?” I slumped down in my chair, grateful the darkness of night hid my embarrassment.
“I know this is between you and Cody, but it seems you really like this guy. And he’s probably completely clueless about what went down between you tonight.”
“Clueless?”
“How much have you told him about the accident?”
“Well … I … It hasn’t come up like that. I mean, he has to know about my face, right?”
Frank stood and poked at the tiny fire. His stocky frame blocked most of its light and heat. “He may know about the physical scars, but not the most important ones.”
A retort caught in my throat. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what he was talking about. I wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but he did know what he was talking about. And Mom’s death made me his business now.
“If he’s important to you, then you need to tell him how you feel. And that means sharing what you’re going through.”
“But I don’t want to tell him about Mom.”
“He probably already knows a lot of the story because of the way people talk, but you can correct any rumors. You’re your own person. You’re not a reflection of your mom and the way she lived.”
Cody rejecting me outright wouldn’t hurt any more than the pain I felt right now. Pain was pain, no matter what the cause. Tonight I’d shut things down before even trying.
“So, when did you become an expert on relationships?” I hoped he heard the joking in my voice.
“That’s a long story for another night. I do know there’s a point of no return and regret is a bitch,” he said, not turning from the fire. “Now get some sleep. And don’t you ever walk alone at night.”
I waited for him to turn around. When he didn’t, I went to my room, but I doubted sleep would come.
CHAPTER 17
SIX YEARS AGO—UNMASKED
I stood very still while Kiki, my foster mom, removed my compression mask. She screwed up her face, but then her normal blank expression returned. I looked straight into the bathroom mirror and tried to remember what my face had looked like before the accident.
“Does that hurt, Arlene?” She called all six of us foster kids by our given names: Theodore, Ignacio, Joanne, Elizabeth, Corrine, and Arlene. She said nicknames weren’t dignified.
“No, ma’am. It don’t hurt,” I lied. We were only allowed to call her “ma’am,” not “Mom” or “Kiki” or even “Mrs. Campbell.”
“Doesn’t hurt. Use proper English.”
As she dabbed medicine on my bright red skin, Theodore, who was eleven and the oldest of us kids, rushed into the bathroom and snapped a photo of me without my mask on. Kiki ran after him, screaming for him to stop or the punishment would be much worse. I hoped he’d get the whooping of his life.
He’d taken my picture once before, the first night I’d arrived at the foster home. I had just gone to bed and covered my head with my blanket because Corey—I mean, Corrine—talked so loudly in her sleep. I didn’t even hear Theodore sneak into the room. He pulled back the blanket and blinded me with the camera flash. I didn’t stop screaming for an hour.
Tonight, it was Theodore who screamed somewhere on the first floor. Kiki must have caught him. The crack of her special belt was loud enough to hear throughout the house, which usually ensured the rest of us behaved.
I didn’t wait for Kiki to return to pull on my mask. I was old enough to take care of myself. The mask was the same color as skin and had holes where my eyes, nose, and ears were. “You look like a bald alien or a bank robber,” I said to my reflection, then made my hand into a gun and started shooting into the mirror. “Bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang.”
Later, as I walked down the hall, I opened the door to the first room and peeked inside. “Good night, Joanie and Lizzy,” I whispered.
“Good night, Arlie,” they called back.
When Kiki wasn’t around, we used our nicknames because they felt like real names to us, and we didn’t care about seeming dignified.
Next, I peeked into the den that served as Ted’s and Iggy’s bedroom. While Ted was downstairs getting an ass-whooping, Iggy snored like a fat pig on the sofa that unfolded into a bed at night. I walked over to the desk the boys shared and fumbled around for a Magic Marker. I uncapped it and breathed in, but I could no longer smell one of my favorite smells.
As quiet as a mouse, I walked over to Iggy and drew a mustache on his upper lip. It must have tickled because he swiped his hand across his face, smearing the wet ink into an even larger mustache. I put the cap back on the marker and placed it on Ted’s pillow.
As I left the room, I changed my mind and grabbed the marker. I rushed back into the bathroom. I drew hair over my compression mask including some bangs. I resisted the urge to give myself a mustache.
I heard Ted climbing the stairs slowly, whining like a baby the whole way. I made a beeline for my room and shut the door behind me.
Corrine was fast as
leep in her twin bed, talking nonsense that involved kick ball, butterflies, and creamed corn. Her dream talk always gave me the shivers, and I sometimes wished she’d just dream about regular old monsters. Scary I could take. Weird I could not.
The room was very dark, but I didn’t turn on the light. She was outside again and I didn’t want her to see me. She was out there every night, sitting on the curb, smoking smelly cigarettes—not that I could smell them anymore. I could almost feel her staring up at my window.
I knelt on the floor and raised my head to the windowsill so that just one eye looked outside. There was no moon and someone had knocked out the streetlight again, but a tiny orange dot glowed every once in a while, giving away her location.
She never came to see me in the hospital during all those months when the pain made me forget who I was and where I came from. She didn’t hold my hand and tell me Rosa was still alive, that everything would be all right, that she was going to leave Lloyd and take us somewhere new.
I imagined the nurses whispering those things behind the white paper masks that protected me from their germs. I imagined the doctors telling me the police had found Lloyd and locked him up in a jail and thrown away the key.
Watching Mom hide in the dark was boring so I crawled into my bed, covering my ears against Corey’s one-sided conversations. The rest of the house was quiet. Even Ted had stopped his crying.
I ran my hand over my head, feeling the fine, mesh-like fabric. I couldn’t feel the fake hair I’d drawn, but I imagined it there anyway.
Tomorrow, I would think about packing my little suitcase. When Kiki was finally asleep, I would creep through the house on tippy-toes, whispering good-byes to my foster brothers and sisters. I’d walk across the street toward the little orange point of light. If Mom held out her arms, I’d hug her and tell her I forgave her because that’s what a daughter was supposed to do. And then we would run away together.
CHAPTER 18
I dressed as quietly as I could and slipped from the trailer before Frank woke up. He slept in on Sundays so my stealth wasn’t that impressive. My note said I was meeting Mo for breakfast and that he shouldn’t worry. She’d texted me after the dance, threatening to give up on our friendship if I didn’t meet her at Denny’s by eight. While she was joking, she had every reason to be angry. I should’ve confided in her about Cody, but I’d run. As I’d done time and time again.
My cruiser bike carried me down a mostly deserted Main Avenue. The sun warmed my face even though my breath escaped in white puffs. I made a point to detour off Main and into the neighborhoods so I wouldn’t have to pass the Animas View Motel. I didn’t want to risk Dora spotting me. I hadn’t talked to her since before Mom’s funeral. I felt horrible that I’d cut her out of my life so completely, but maybe Mo had been right. Contact with Dora kept me chained to a past I needed to bury.
Mo beat me to the restaurant. Sherri, the hostess, hugged me and said she’d given us our favorite booth at the back. Mo saw me enter and waved me over. The scolding I expected didn’t come, but neither did a warm hello.
“Here’s your sweater, Cinderella. You left it behind at the dance.” Mo tossed me the sweater without giving me a hug.
“I shouldn’t have left last night without explaining,” I admitted.
“You’re damn right about that,” she said. “Now drink this. Then you can apologize a few hundred times and I’ll think about forgiving you.”
Mo handed me an iced latte. Her standard way of making sure I got enough calories was ordering smoothies, lattes, and shakes with cream instead of milk.
“And you’re going to eat, right?” She wasn’t asking. She was insisting.
“Sure. Maybe pancakes? Something soft.” Choking down a stack of pancakes wouldn’t kill me. And I’d do anything to make up with Mo.
“I talked to Cody last night,” she said. “I know what happened.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of her interrogating him. “Well, you have Cody’s version of what happened. Do you want to hear mine?”
“I can guess. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear Mo’s assessment or to learn that she was taking it upon herself to fix something she thought was broken.
“So you freaked, huh,” she said.
“Essentially.”
“Cody said he just tried to touch your face and you suddenly didn’t want to be around him. He thought he’d read your feelings all wrong. So I set him straight.”
I closed my eyes, too scared to even ask what she meant.
“Don’t freak out again,” she said. “But he deserved to know a little more about your accident. I told him you’re self-conscious about the scar, that you were probably afraid it would gross him out and he wouldn’t like you anymore.”
“Oh shit, Mo. You didn’t.”
“That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes, but you didn’t have to put it that way.” I slumped down in the vinyl booth. “Did you have to use the word ‘gross’?”
“There’s no other way to put it. You don’t see how beautiful you are, inside and out. Your scar is part of you. If he loves you, he has to love your scar.”
“Love me? Where did you get that idea?”
“It’s obvious, if you’d open your eyes,” she said. “I’m going to order breakfast at the counter since our waitress seems to be missing in action. Be right back.”
I had just gotten used to the idea that I liked Cody. Now, Mo was talking love. And what did that even mean? Kids declared their love for each other from third grade on—yet I had somehow missed out on feeling even the one-sided version.
“Lookie-loos at the far table.” Mo sat back down in the booth. “Want me to have a chat with them? Teach them some manners?”
While Mo was away, several customers having breakfast tried to sneak looks in my direction without being noticed. I always seemed to catch their eye. Mo used to say I had radar that could pick up curiosity at a hundred yards.
That’s exactly what I chalked it up to: curiosity. Deep down I knew my facial scar wasn’t grotesque, but a person would have to be dead not to notice it. People had always stared. And that would never change.
“They don’t matter, Mo.”
“No, but Cody does.”
“Is this whole breakfast going to be about Cody?”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she said. “Just tell me you’ll talk to him.”
Ignoring Mo, I made a funny face at a toddler who stared at me. She giggled and hid her face, prompting me into a game of hide-and-seek. Children were always curious, but the smallest ones were never cruel.
“Well? Will you talk to him today?” she persisted.
“He was dancing with Brittany—last night when I left,” I said, wincing at the memory of his hands on her hips.
“It was a dance. They’re friends, although I don’t know why. Brittany stopped being interesting a long time ago. Now she’s just mean.”
The dance might not have meant anything to Cody, but it would have meant something to Brittany. I hated that I let her push my buttons like no one else could. It had felt personal ever since the day I met Mo and she told me Brittany had warned her away from being friends with “white trash.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll talk to him,” I said, hoping Mo would drop the conversation.
If I let her continue to be a go-between, I’d be engaged by midweek or Cody would be running for the hills. Our relationship—or whatever it was—couldn’t go forward or end without a conversation. And limbo sucked. I had no choice but to explain my actions to him.
The waitress arrived with more food than two people could eat. Mo had ordered me a full stack of pancakes, scrambled eggs, grits, and juice. At least the conversation would stop while we filled ourselves with carbs.
“What happened to the idea of a little food?” I asked.
“I’m glad I ordered so much,” she said. “Here comes your uncle
. He can eat your eggs if you like.”
Dressed in plaid shorts and a contradictory plaid shirt, Frank marched purposefully around the tables to reach us. His hair was plastered down on one side and his eyes wet with fury.
“Why in the hell did you go out on your own? Weren’t you listening to me last night at all? Jesus Christ.” His hoarse whisper went beyond our booth. Diners turned in our direction.
“Sit down. You look and sound like a crazy person.” I slid over and patted the booth seat.
He sat and shook his head as if in a private conversation.
“I left you a note,” I said. “Why are you so wigged out?”
“I’m supposed to be your guardian. That means you listen when I ask you to do something.”
Mo arched her eyebrows at Frank’s over-the-top agitation. I shrugged my shoulders in answer. I’d never seen him like this.
“I ride my bike all the time,” I said. “And before I lived with you, I took care of myself and my mother all on my own. I think I can manage to get across town without falling off my bicycle.”
“I’m going to get a coffee refill and let you guys talk.” Mo left me alone with Frank, but I wished she hadn’t. He scared me.
“This isn’t like you, or at least the ‘you’ I’ve come to know,” I said. “What’s up?”
I wanted to be the type of person who could reach out and smooth down his crazy wiry hair, or hug him to take away the fear on his face, but I just sat there unable to process his mood.
“I don’t want to scare you … but your dad showed up,” Frank said. “Day before yesterday.”
“My dad?”
“I mean your stepdad. He must have figured out where you live.”
“Lloyd’s in Durango.” Saying it out loud didn’t help dissipate the fear taking over me.
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