by Nikki Roman
I stare at him, like I am this crying machine that feels nothing and was invented only to lie here and weep.
“I can’t stop-p-p,” I say, coughing on a sob. “She’s gone. Just like that, she’s gone.”
And none of my memories mean anything now. All the inside jokes we shared and secret handshakes. Everything overshadowed by one horrific event, everything dashed with her death.
Dad leaves the wicker chair he’s sitting in, pulls back my covers, and sets me on his lap. Tucking my head under his chin, he lets me cry against his chest. “The world can be so cruel, Bailey, and we all must bear witness to this truth at some point in life.”
He rocks me back and forth, until I’m quiet and my mind starts to drift, looking out the broken window at the clear night sky. My nightgown churns out old memories like it’s a portal in which I can gaze into the past.
I see Alana as a six year old, with a mop of red curls and gapped teeth. We are having a sleepover at my house; Mom is passed out on the couch while we are wide-awake in my bedroom.
Alana and I are playing house in a cardboard refrigerator box, and somehow, the game turns to angels. I think it’s because my nightgown dragged on the floor and the sleeves billowed from my arms, like an angel’s wings.
We tear apart our house and cut into the thick cardboard with poultry shears. Alana crafts wings while I fashion halos out of golden pipe cleaners, all in the dead of night. By the time we are done it is early morning, the sun peeking through the window blinds and making our pipe cleaner halos glitter, but stripping our wings of all their beauty, the jagged lines where Alana cut them out visible in the morning light.
Later in the day, Mom, in her hung-over like state, takes us to the beach, dressed in our makeshift angel costumes. So the game continues. We skip in the sand with the sun beating down on us, making our halos glitter the same way they did in my bedroom, our wings nothing more than shoddily cut, dull cardboard.
Mom tries to get us to go swimming but we will only go into the water up to our ankles, afraid of melting our cardboard wings. She sits in a fold out chair, buried in the sand at the front of the white-peaked waves, a cold beer in her hand, laughing at us. She is the only one laughing, though. Onlookers stop and stare, some take pictures. We are beautiful. Two angels dancing in the sun and frolicking in the ocean.
•••
I lift my dad’s strong arms off of me. My gown doesn’t drag like it used to, as I leave the bedroom and step out of the apartment.
The sun is put away, like tools in a shed, waiting to be picked up and put to use.
I sit on Harley, lie my head on the handle bars, and feel the dewy plastic with my fingertips. I inhale the smell of freshly tilled earth. The tenant has planted palm trees where the grass meets the street while I was away.
I put the keys in the ignition, starting Harley up like my hands are controlled by some outward force. I pull out of the driveway and ride down the road a little way.
I stop.
Setting my feet on the asphalt, I think of where I should go.
The beach. Where else can one go without shoes?
The darkness is everywhere, on the streets and in the sky, behind the windows of unlit homes. As I continue forward, it is like I’m driving through a tunnel; the further I drive, the closer I am to reaching light. Soon, the sun will rise and settle in the clouds.
My front tire crunches down on a shell, a flaking of pink and tan burnished pieces. With my gown gathered in my hands, I cross a small wooden bridge to the sandy shore, speckled with yet even more shells left by the tide.
Sand breaks apart between my toes as I near the shoreline. I make out a person, standing and looking out over the thin waves that lap against the strip of sand.
“The sun won’t rise if you keep staring at the moon,” I say.
“What, is the sun jealous?” Holden says.
“If you don’t want the day to come, then why would the sun rise?” I lean my head on his shoulder, my temple aches.
“I want it, Bailey. I want a new day so bad that I had to come here and see the sun rise for myself and confirm that yesterday is gone.”
“It’s not gone.” I touch his arm and we come away from the shore. He sits in the damp sand with me, our knees up and shoulders touching. “It’s never going to be gone.”
“Yes, but yesterday is never going to happen again,” he says.
“Alana may have only died once… but I have a feeling I’m going to be seeing her die many times over.”
“I’m sorry…” Holden says, touching his hand to my temple. “I tried to stop you…maybe I didn’t try hard enough…I kind of wanted you to have the chance to say goodbye. And I wanted her to have a friend by her side as she passed away. I was making choices that weren’t mine to make and I am truly sorry for it.”
I push my head into my knees, and suck the soft cotton of my nightgown in and out in an attempt to steady my breathing. “I’m not angry with you,” I say. “You didn’t kill her…the Allie did. Cairen did. You tried to make the situation better…but honestly, nothing was going to make it right.”
The sun peeps over the horizon and there is just enough light to see the outline of Holden’s hair and face. He looks like a little boy and very little like a thug. “Well,” he says, shaking a Morton Salt container. “I saved some of her ashes for you…I wish there was a better way to say that… but I’m a little gone right now…”
“We both are,” I say, taking the salt can in my hands. “Do you think she felt it?”
“She could’ve…but she’s not feeling anything anymore. She doesn’t have to suffer, ever again.”
Gathering itself, like a woman gathering up her skirts, the sun comes together. It forms a ball, picking itself off the horizon, suspended in the sky as golden as if it were woven by the hands of Rumplestiltskin.
I sweep the sand off my gown and rise with it, realizing that a new day has come and yesterday is finally over. But the hardest part has yet to begin—living without Alana.
I drift into the water and waves crash against my ankles like they are the pillars of the pier, holding me up. I let my gown down; it clings to my legs, soaked and heavy.
I go out until the water reaches my waist. Holden stays on shore, folded in on himself, watching silently.
“Alana,” I say, looking down at her ashes and then up at the sun. “I know you shine brighter in heaven than you ever could on Earth. But I’m going to miss you…” My voice catches. “I already miss you…”
I shake her ashes into an oncoming wave. They could be misconstrued as cigarette ashes, except they are lighter and float on top of the water like flakes of fish food.
I turn to Holden. “Can I have your shirt?”
He nods, takes his shirt off, crumples it into a ball, and throws it to me.
“You’re not afraid to get your wings wet anymore,” I say, unbuttoning my gown. It falls off my body and floats with Alana’s ashes out to sea. I yank Holden’s shirt over my head. “Because you’ve traded your cardboard wings for real ones. God bless you, my angel.”
“All little girls go to heaven,” Holden says.
“Amen,” we say in unison.
I slosh through the waves that no longer break around me; fight against the current the same way I fight against the pull of life. I keep kicking, because I think someday I will reach the shore; either that, or the current will take me to the sun.
And I will drift to nowhere.
When I get back on the sand, Holden puts an arm around my shoulders. We stand together, quietly grieving.
“What do we do now?”
“Now,” I say, “we kill time.”
I am finally going to tell him about the first life I saw taken and the first that I saw given. A continuation on our lesson of give and take.
Chapter 37
When I was young, young enough that I still believed in the Tooth Fairy, Santa, the Easter Bunny and that my dad would magically return someday, my mo
ther told me a story about a little man who resided in our refrigerator.
I used to open the refrigerator very slowly so that the light inside would not click on, and I could catch a peek of the little man, who supposedly hid behind containers of butter and jars of jam. I couldn’t see him though, he hid too well.
Eventually, I gave up on the story altogether, just like I gave up on all the other fantasies Mom had drilled into my head and I had once believed.
But Mom never said anything about the girl in the refrigerator.
•••
Every morning my father prepares a canteen of milk and a canteen of orange juice for me and places it in a cooler full of ice. Weeks passed, and still I could not bring myself to open the refrigerator.
I drank water from the tap and ate only dry goods, unless Mom came home and cooked something for me. I couldn’t bear to see Alana’s blood smeared body and green eyes, curled up in the freezer next to trays of ice-cubes and tubs of Hagen-Dazs ice cream.
My parents must have written it off as just one more crazy thing I did, along with all my other nonsensical habits. But no matter how mentally insane Dad thought I was, he tried to make me feel normal; He played along, like one does with a child who says they have an imaginary friend you are sitting on. My dad jumped from that chair like a fire had been lit underneath him.
This morning, next to the cooler is a package addressed to me. It’s from the prison, from Clad. I carefully tear it open and slide out a painting. I smile, because Clad understands me so well. There is no letter attached, just his painting of two indigo eyes, suspended in space, their pupils staring straight ahead like they are seeing something.
•••
My dad had been writing back and forth to Clad over the summer.
“Clad is worried about you,” Dad told me one day.
“I’m worried about myself, too,” I said.
“We’re all worried about you, Bailey; maybe you could write him a letter? Let him know you’re all right? He loves you,” he said.
“But I’m not all right and I don’t love him—at least not the way he wants me to.”
“Well, you should,” Dad said snippily. He thrust a pencil in my hand and pushed a piece of paper in front of me.
“I don’t have room for him in my life, anymore,” I said, pushing the paper off the kitchen table and watching the pencil roll after it.
“Make room. I bet if Clad had any more life to give, he would. Bailey, he’s a distraught, scared little boy, alone in prison. All he wants is a little love from you; don’t you think he’s earned it?”
“Fine,” I said.
I picked the paper and pencil off the floor.
Send me paintings.
Love, Tinker Toy.
Dad looked angry enough to hit me, but he put the letter in an envelope and took it to the post office anyway.
Now, Clad has responded to my letter with this painting.
I hang it up where Dad tacked up the previous one I had destroyed. I step back and take a look at it, chewing on my nails.
“That’s where you belong, Indigo,” I say to myself. “On the wall and not inside of me.”
•••
Mom dyed my hair back to black. Some hair dye and a painting…Indigo was the easiest person to let go of. And after I let her go, I realized that she and Bailey were linked in a terrifying way—in the worst way imaginable—The Bullet List.
The people I had meant to kill but never got the chance to. I hadn’t put Alana on the list, but I had considered it. Seems like Indigo wanted her gone. And then there was Miemah’s death to contend with, most shocking of all. I thought the damn girl was immortal, like a vampire from Twilight, only the Volturi could kill that bloodsucker. But now I’m starting to think that the people who hurt me will destroy themselves—with or without the help of my bullets.
Why did Alana have sex with the rival leader? I asked myself this question many times, following her death. She hadn’t been that way when we were friends, not before the Allie, and certainly not before Indigo. I wondered if she thought pretending to be someone else would help her make it through the Allie, too. Well, it had gotten her out, at least.
Sometimes I envy her for getting away. Wish I could fall into an eternal sleep too, wish there was room for me in her trees, and enough fruit to sustain us both. Wish I would have found my wings before her.
•••
Something taps against the window; I’m in the bedroom admiring Clad’s painting, when I hear it. I open the window to a plump little bird with scarred wings and belly.
I whistle for him to stay. Running into the kitchen, I get bits of bread to feed him. When I come back into the room, Angel is barking at the window sill and the bird is hopping around, antagonizing him.
“Shoo, Angel,” I say. “He’s my friend. If you can’t be nice then you’ll have to go in the crate.”
Angel lets out a throaty growl and paws out of the room, his back end swinging in defiance.
I push pieces of crust at the bird’s bent down beak. He gobbles it up greedily and chirps for more. I sprinkle the rest on the sill; he pecks about, chirping and snapping up the bread like worms from the ground.
“I’m not going to turn you loose,” I say, stroking the birds’ feathers. “You are always welcome at this window.”
When I say he’s always welcome, I mean it. I didn’t know that someone could say so and not mean it. Not until I fell in love with Spencer.
He’d welcomed me into his home—repeatedly—his whole family had. Fed me their bread, and then, like Indian-givers, turned me away, shut their windows and kept their bread to themselves. So when B.B. called me, a couple of days ago, leaving a tearful voicemail on our home phone, asking me to come back into her and Spencer’s life, I promptly deleted it.
I had done no wrong; wasn’t Spencer supposed to be the one person who could see that? Was he not supposed to understand that I would never betray him? That I only kept the Allie secret to protect us both?
Yet, he was the only person who couldn’t see why I joined the Allie. Even Alana understood; surely Clad would’ve. I guess it’s hard to understand when you’ve yet to leave your front porch and have only gone as far as the neighborhood park. What does he know about being forced into a gang and having to hold your best friend in your arms as she dies?
The bird flies away, having had his fill. Angel returns and sniffs at the window. “He’s gone, boy. Sorry, looks like it’s dog food for dinner again,” I say, ruffling his fur.
Dad’s truck pulls up the drive; I hear it stall and the engine cut off. I pat the side of my thigh for Angel to follow me out the door. Dad is just getting out of his truck when I run up and jump into his arms. He swings me in a circle and puts me down.
“How was work today, Daddy?” I ask, laughing, breathless from the spin.
“Really good. Actually sweltering, but good. You mind getting the cooler out of the back for me? I’m beat. Oh, and it’s nice to see you so happy, sweetie, how was your day?”
I climb on one of the back tires and heave the cooler over the side of the truck. It crashes on the pebbled drive and drinks bang against each other in the melted ice. “It was okay,” I say, dragging the cooler inside.
“Your mom wants to go to the beach tomorrow… I’ve got to put more ice in the cooler. You’d like going to the beach, wouldn’t you? Ya know, normal family stuff,” Dad says.
“Yeah, sure, Dad.”
I don’t say that normal and our family don’t belong together in the same sentence.
•••
I’m setting the table for dinner when Mom asks me to grab her juice box out of the fridge. I gape at her, dropping the plate I’m holding and retreat to the bedroom.
“Sydney, what the hell were you thinking?” Dad berates her.
“She’s sixteen. She shouldn’t be afraid of the refrigerator. Christ! There’s something wrong with her, maybe brain damage. I hit her too hard, it’s my fault.”<
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She rips open a new box of Marlboros and her words become stifled as she talks with a cigarette in her mouth. “You shouldn’t have made me have her so young… there was always something off about her… now that she’s older, it’s starting to show more. I can’t just pretend she’s a little kid with an imagination that runs too wild.”
“Listen to yourself speak!” Dad says. “You beat her since she was five. I was gone from her life and after seeing Jack die…just… No. If anyone’s off, it’s you.”
“Need I remind you of Indigo? She was stripping!” Mom says. She knows I am listening, because the bedroom door is wide open.
She takes out another cigarette and flicks her lighter. I imagine it is the little flame that was able to consume Alana in minutes and turn her to ash. “Nooo!” I scream out, throwing my hands in front of me- I reach for the lighter before it can touch Alana’s clothes and ignite her.
My parents stop talking.
I breathe heavily.
“Bailey?”
“Damnit, Sydney, see what you’ve done? She was just fine until you came home!”
I open the top drawer of my dad’s dresser and find the tenant’s video camera and my two tapes. I close the drawer and bring the camera with me.
“Bailey, your mom is sorry. She didn’t mean the things she said,” Dad says when I emerge from the bedroom.
“Then, she should say what she means,” I say. “It sounded pretty clear to me. She thinks I’m clinically insane. Well, I am, and I don’t give a damn!”
I point a finger at her. “It takes a village to raise a child, but only a single person to fuck one up. Remember that, Mom, you made me this way. Fuck, if I’m crazy, then what the hell are you? Smoking your cigarettes and sitting there with a bastard in your stomach. You make sure your hands are clean next time you want to accuse me of being unstable. You don’t know what I’ve been through…hell, sometimes I don’t even know what I’ve been through!”
“Bailey! Don’t talk like that!” Dad says.
