Sovereign Ground (Breaking Bonds)

by Hilarey Johnson

  “Exactly.” Cori looks a little smug. “Simple economics: the buying and selling of goods.” Here it comes. “And Baby, I am good.” She flips her hair for me.

  Our laughing ushers in a few minutes of silence and it takes courage to break it. “You still didn’t answer my question, Cori. Does it ever get easier?” Maybe I should tell her that I heard her crying in the bathroom stall last week. The dressing room toilet was busy, so I snuck in there to wash in-between dances. I know the scrubbing is pointless, I just can’t stop. The fact that Ms. “It’s okay if it’s consensual” cries on the toilet at work scares me.

  It scares me even more than the thought of meeting my grandfather.

  Cori loops her painted fingernails through the metal slats on my shopping cart. She smiles and takes a deep, preparatory breath. When she holds her finger out, I interrupt her.

  “The truth.”

  She deflates and looks away. I’m not moving until she answers.

  “Yes, and no.”

  “Good enough.” I push the cart past her. “And I’m buying both of these books.”

  Cori lets me drive her car to my place. I’m one week away from going and getting my license and a car. In a way, I wish I would get pulled over without a license. That’s stupid though—we’re nowhere near the reservation. Hayden wouldn’t be the one who walked up to the car. Anyway, he’d probably give me the ticket. With my luck it would probably be Clint who pulled me over and I’d have to give him a few free dances to get out of it.

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight.” Even though I didn’t mean to say it, I’m glad after the words slip out.

  “Come stay the night with me.” Cori continues to stare out the window of her car. Sometimes it seems the lights and music in the TorchLight leach all the party from us, and we go home empty.

  “Okay.” I turn to get on the freeway.

  Chapter 19

  I try to synchronize the echo of my high heels to Cori’s as we click our way past the pool. “Wanna go for a swim tonight?”

  “Sure,” Cori says. “Wait, is it the weekend?” She wrinkles her nose in disgust.

  “Oh yeah, never mind.” I forgot it’s Saturday.

  “I’m done with work tonight, Baby.”

  “No kidding.” Last time we snuck in to swim on a Saturday, the weekend night guard caught us. He said we could swim anytime as long as we didn’t wake anyone up, but he watched us from the edge of the pool. Everything costs.

  Cori stops at a rectangle of locked mailboxes. She holds her hand out and I give her back her key chain. I sleep at her place at least once a week. We never stay at my house, though. She can’t stand my arranged chaos. It’s okay, I keep a change of clothes and a swimsuit in my backpack now.

  Cori grabs a handful of envelopes and junk mail, then tucks them under her arm.

  “Anything good?” When I get mail, I go through it at my lock box.

  “Never is.”

  “I’ll go through it.” I don’t get personal mail, so the most fun I have is looking at coupons. Maybe I should call Thom and let him know that I have my own place. I could take them out to dinner. Yeah. My heart drums in excitement. Why wait? I’ll call Thom tomorrow and take him for a Sunday brunch. He’ll probably think I’m calling to ask for money. I’ll show him.

  “Why are you smiling?” She hands me the stack of letters.

  “I just decided to do something.”

  “Illegal?” She mounts the first step.

  “I’ll ignore that.” But I giggle with her. “The last month and a half has flown by. I just decided to take my brother out to brunch tomorrow.”

  “I haven’t seen either of my brothers in years.” She stops on the stairwell and looks up at the stars.

  What a beautiful night; summer’s merely days away. And since it’s been such a cold spring, summer couldn’t come soon enough. “How many brothers do you have?”

  “Two, but one left when I was a teenager. As far as I know, no one’s spoken to him since.”

  “And you haven’t seen the other in how many years?”

  “Five.” She starts to climb the stairs again. “Or five and a half years.”

  I wish we could stay out in the cool night. Maybe I can sleep on her deck.

  “But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t seen me.”

  “What?” I can’t help but laugh at her whimsical tone.

  “I took some, um, pictures a few years back. Before I even left Utah.” She pauses with a lusty look. “I always wondered if he would tell me, or my parents first when he stumbled across them.” She starts to look through her key ring. “And he will stumble across them. He looked at porn often enough.”

  I don’t have a reply for her. Thom will see my billboard, any day in fact. But it’s tasteful—not porn. Although Rodrigo’s offer pops in my mind once in awhile—I mean, I want to get a car soon. Plus, I won’t be able to dance forever. I need to start thinking about the future. But the thought of an immediate family member looking at pornography of me—I start to shuffle through her mail for distraction.

  I’ve seen this handwriting before. The return address is Utah, the envelope similar to the unopened one I found in the Steinbeck I borrowed. I lift the letter without speaking and hold it in front of me.

  Cori drops her keys. We both bend quickly to recover them, but she’s faster. I lose my balance and step back. She stands with the keys in her hand, looks at the letter again. Clink. The keys are at her feet. This time I inspect the return address myself. Lehi Brower. It has to be her fiancé, uh…ex-fiancé.

  Cori takes the letter, and I wonder if I imagine that her hand trembles. I pick up her keys and unlock the door.

  “Make yourself a drink.” She leaves me and closes the door to her bedroom.

  I drop my backpack on the couch and walk to the kitchen. I’m hungry, but I don’t know what sounds good, so I just look through the fridge and cupboards. In a way, I’m working up my courage to look into the drawer where I last saw Lehi’s other letter. I hear my pulse in my ears as I snoop. The letter sits right on top, next to a few pens and pencils. I flip it over. It’s still sealed.

  Cori sniffs loudly. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, um,” I’ve been caught, but I won’t admit it, “Looking for something to eat.”

  She sniffs again.

  “I can’t believe he found me.” She says the words so rapid that I feel like I’m a step behind in processing it. Cori strides to the window and lifts one slat in the blinds. I step up behind her and she gasps, spinning. “Oh, scared me.”

  I try to smile, but I’m sure she’ll notice it’s fake. She doesn’t. Should I offer her a tissue?

  “I need a drink. Let’s get a drink.” She’s back in the kitchen before I’ve taken a step.

  “What were you looking for?” I glance back at the window before following Cori into her kitchen area. She opens a cupboard, slams it and looks in another.

  “What?” She faces me and I watch her chest rise and fall. “I was looking…” Her eyebrows bunch in confusion. “…for a cup.”

  “Out the window?”

  A tiny line of dark red trickles from her right nostril. She sniffs again. I step into the bathroom and grab a handful of toilet paper. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  “Oh, allergies. I always get allergies this time of the year. Allergy time.”

  I grab her upper arms. They feel so tiny in my hands. “Cori. What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, why are you asking?” She twists and pulls free. “You won’t believe me.”

  “Try me.” I’m about to demand to see the letter or go to the drawer and find out for myself why Lehi’s contact would freak her out so much.

  “Shadow people.” Her voice is deep, a creepy forced-calm.

  If my heart jumped in agitation before—it pummels me now, rivaling the climax of the men’s fancy dance my dad did.

  “Are you sure?” I demand. Cori pants like she’s stolen my breath, for none comes
to me. The shadows that follow me hunt Cori as well, or have I brought them to her?

  “I see them everywhere.” A drop of her eyeliner flows down her cheek. Her eyes focus behind me. She looks like a lab I once saw on a Humane Society commercial.

  Fear-chiggers burrow into my skin and I turn. I don’t see any shadow people, but I keep looking. Sometimes when I see them, I try to tell myself it’s a chimera. But since Cori sees them too, I cannot pretend any longer.

  “Cori, they’re following me. I brought them.”

  She steps back as though I have leprosy and I rush to explain. “My grandfather put a curse on me, when I was…” Cori spins, pulls a glass from the cupboard and hurls it at me.

  “Get away from me.”

  I duck in time. “Cori, I’m sorry.” The glass didn’t break, and I step over it onto the carpet. Once I have my backpack she reaches for another. “Please don’t.” I dread her ostracization as much as I fear my grandfather’s spirits.

  A shrill, horrible scream slices through her lips. The second glass whooshes by my ear. “Take them with you and go back where you came from!” She opens a drawer and a glint of metal flashes. Her burgundy fingernails twine around the wooden handle of a kitchen knife. Almost as if in a time warp, I feel like I watch from outside my body as she lifts it slowly.

  “I’m going to call the cops.”

  “You haven’t figured out that they’re on his side?”

  I want to ask what happened to the Cori I know, but if I have ever seen terror, I see it now.

  “And I have no other choice but to be on his side too.”

  I fear whatever she is afraid of more than I fear her even though I sense she will kill me if she can.

  She lifts the knife. “This will be a mercy to you.”

  When she reaches me, I swing my backpack to knock her away. Cori falls back and the knife drops. Before she has a chance to retrieve it, I grab her keys and leap through the door, barely closing it behind me before I hear her grasp for the handle. I don’t take the stairs to my left, where we always come up. Without questioning where my feet will take me, I run to the right around the face of her apartment complex. As I approach a decorative light illuminating the walkway, I swing my backpack again and break it.

  A shroud of darkness drops and I crouch at the sound of her voice. “Stay in the shadows with the demons.”

  A window between us brightens. Then a second. A neighbor fumbles at a front door. Cori moves like a wraith, slipping inside her apartment. Her door closes silently.

  “Are you okay?” A man wearing only lounge pants stands two doors down from the broken light. “I heard a scream.”

  “The light shattered on me.” I stand. You would think I lied all the time the way that slipped out.

  “Oh my gosh. Are you okay?”

  “It scared me.” I step backward without looking.

  “Let me call the night guard.”

  “Thanks.” He steps inside after I answer and leaves his door wide, as though I’m to follow him. Instead, I run to Cori’s car.

  At home, I don’t even try to sleep. I have no one. I’m too afraid to shower, to close my eyes. I can’t even play my flute—and that always sends the fear away. I could drive to Thom. No. Even if Lorna would let him help, what could he do? I slide down, between my crammed bookshelf and the stack of books waiting for another shelf. Normally I find solace in this spot, but now I can’t stop shaking. If I weren’t cursed then—I wouldn’t be so alone, tainting everything I go near. Someday I’ll have to go to the source. A sob escapes. I would rather die than meet my grandfather. If he could command spirits to cause this much trouble, what will he be like?

  My hands massage each other without lotion. I grab my wrist. I never wear Hayden’s watch at work, but it’s an extra appendage the rest of the time. I even wear it to shower. I turn over my arm and trace the iridescent swirls in the abalone face. The second hand turns a full revolution.

  I have wished I could call Hayden a dozen times, but never more than right now. I stand and reach to the top of the bookshelf where I hid his box. With the white rectangle in my grasp, I slide down against the wall into a crouch again. The paper is almost fuzzy from the caresses of my fingers. I know what it says, though the letters have faded to vague. I rub the note to my cheek again.

  “There is always time,” Hayden promised.

  How wrong he is.

  My back is uncooperative and my joints seem soldered together when I wake. Hayden’s note sits next to me on the floor, an autumn leaf—discarded after the season has passed. I return it to the box and hide everything back on the top of the bookshelf. Even though I only slept a few hours, sitting up against the wall and without a blanket, I’m fine once I get moving.

  Cori.

  Her name enters my mind like it belongs there.

  “Go away,” I tell it.

  A mixture of dread for her and panic for me infiltrates like the exhale of a cigarette. It surrounds her name, burning in my lungs.

  Hunger, or the need for purposeful distraction, propels me into the kitchen. Eat instead of worry. Red and black squares layer the sink. All of my plates are dirty, and I’d rather use a bowl than wash something. My bowl matches my plates and I rub the corners. The “Asian flair” contrasts with the southwest pastels that Lorna preferred. Cori was with me when I bought these, she helped me choose. Plus, if Cori and I ever eat out—we go to sushi. Even my dishes say her name.

  I add a handful of Cheez-Its to the bowl. Usually a few crackers are all my stomach can tolerate the morning after I work. The sound of crunching keeps me company.

  Cori.

  She’s all I have. Any interaction at work is conniving, drunk girls, Brody—trying to get me upstairs, Clint—asking for a free dance, or strangers who I can’t seem to wash off. Cori, my only sister.

  I don’t know if I can trust her, I don’t know if I can make it right, if she will help me—forgive me. The only thing I know is that I need someone bigger than me. I can’t fight the curse on my own. I need her.

  I’ll take a shower, then go to Cori’s and convince her we’re safer in numbers. She talked about the shadow people in the very beginning. She has her own to deal with, so I don’t even blame her for sending me away. Hopefully, I’ll be able to show her how much we need each other, before she starts throwing the knives.

  The hot water nearly puts me to sleep. One thing I love about living on my own is taking showers for forty or fifty minutes. Cool air encircles me when I finally push the curtain aside. Blood throbs in my temples and I drop to sit on the edge of the tub. Sitting prevents the dingy white walls from spinning too fast. Little vapors of steam lift from my arms and legs. I inhale a slow purposeful breath…

  Clank.

  Dishes settling in the sink? I exhale.

  Chink. Clank.

  Shivering, I reach for my towel. It’s tedious opening a door without sound. I scan the entire studio. Only a putrid smell waits—something rotting. The dishes again? I lift a comfy pair of jeans from a pile on the floor. Dressing isn’t as quick when water droplets cling to quivering legs. Oh, the smell: it makes me nauseous.

  I let Brita die.

  The weight of this truth isn’t diminished by the randomness. I did let her die.

  Cori will die too, because of me.

  The putrid smell reaches my brain. I feel it in there and sob from the weight of death. The cold metal of Cori’s keys pinch in my grip while I pull a T-shirt over my head. I don’t bother to look for a bra.

  I’ll never see this apartment again.

  Dread vices around my chest. Empty eyes search me through a tunnel of memories. Eyes barreling toward me like a freight train. Nowhere to turn.

  I’ll die.

  Another twist of the clamp. I wipe the tears with the back of my hand. I won’t leave without my backpack. The keys drop to the floor.

  Cori’s already dead.

  How do I know this? My fingers are too deadened to grip my backpack.
It seems magnetized to the floor, because after three unsuccessful attempts to lift it—it still sits by my feet.

  The sensation…a wave…a tsunami. Only two steps to the door—wait, I don’t have shoes. My ECCO sneakers are closer to the dishes than the door. My flute is still on the table. How will I breach the barrier of decay between me and what I need? I fall to my knees, too weak to contemplate passing whatever is there. Since my fingers are uncooperative, I hook my hand through the loop on my backpack and keep my arm bent.

  “I let Brita die.” The words pull from me like vomit.

  Almost in the middle of my sob, I feel pathetic. A bulge, in the space between the kitchenette and my weak body, quivers with ridicule and…laughter.

  I’m an idiot.

  These thoughts aren’t mine. I stand and stare at my shoes. A spirit, the curse. How dare...

  Thu-thump. The bulge visibly pulses with a heartbeat of darkness.

  I turn and bolt out the door, shoeless.

  Running to the car with wet hair plastered against my T-shirt raises a few glances. I don’t try to hide my emotions and I notice people look behind me, searching for a pursuer. I welcome pricks from stones on my bare feet because it means I’m alive, not dreaming, and I can move my legs.

  The ignition receives the key. A grinding moan responds when I crank the key a second time, trying to start a running car. I wipe my hands on my jeans and breathe deeply. I’m in control. Of course, I left my flute with my shoes.

  “I’m in control.” It’s a little more convincing when I hear myself say it.

  “I’M IN CONTROL.” That was even better. Breathe again. Release break. Put gear in drive. Look. Breathe. I’m in control.

  At the first stop sign I rub my feet against the gas pedal to dislodge the pebbles that stuck to my soles like barnacles. The clock in Cori’s Miata reads 6:27. She keeps her clocks ten minutes fast, so she isn’t late, and she doesn’t adhere to daylight savings. I thought it was funny, but now that I’m not sure if it’s 5:17, or 7:17—I wish I had something to kick. Instead: I tailgate, rev the engine and take corners tight. After a few minutes, I remember to look at my watch. 7:20. Ahh, that’s better.