Almost Home

by Jessica Blank

  When we’re back out on the sidewalk she hands me a jelly donut and goes “So how does it feel to be playing hooky?” and grins at me totally different than the smile she gave the donut guy, showing all her ugly teeth. Inside the donut is raspberry and as soon as I swallow I say “Pretty good, I guess,” and that’s all we ever say about it.

  After that she takes me to Rite Aid. On the way in she puts her hand on my back and pushes me in front of her. I don’t know where she wants me to go or what we’re even in here for, but she leans in over my shoulder and smiles and I can feel her breath on my face as she pushes me forward.

  The lights are bright and there’s almost no one in the aisles, just bottles of things lined up and stacked to the ceiling. She pokes me in the back to point us toward the hair-dye section, where the boxes are white and all have girls on them that look the same except for different shades of hair. I wonder if they dye each girl’s hair with the actual stuff that’s in the box or if it’s just an imitation. Tracy wanders up the aisle a little with her hands out of her pockets and I stay where I am, reading the words Herbal Essences over and over till the H and the E look weird. Then Tracy comes back and stands really close to me and I feel a weight in my front hoodie pocket; when I turn around she looks at me hard. She goes “I’m thirsty, let’s go get some water” and then starts walking. All I know is I probably shouldn’t drop anything so I keep my hands cupped below my stomach.

  Tracy gets the biggest size of Poland Spring from the refrigerator case and then heads toward the front. I follow her and my heart is beating again because she hasn’t told me to take the stuff out of my hoodie and we’re about to get to the register. When we’re there she still doesn’t say anything; I read the whole front of People about Drew Barrymore’s amazing new weight loss and move on to In Style while Tracy buys the water.

  The register ka-chings and the lady goes “Have a nice day” in the boredest voice ever and Tracy takes the water jug and starts walking toward the door, which is a long way away. On the way there my heart weirdly slows down and I realize Tracy’s never messed up since I’ve known her. Maybe she just knows some stuff I don’t, I think, and all of a sudden that weird blurry nervous feeling goes away and it’s like I just leaned back in a big soft chair except I’m still moving. My breathing sinks down into my stomach as the automatic doors slide open and Tracy and I walk right through.

  As soon as we’re away from the Rite Aid, the laughing starts. It all comes out in an explosive burst and then keeps itself going in my head and mouth and it feels so good I don’t want it to stop. Tracy kind of smirks at me. “Not bad,” she goes and then she reaches into my pocket and pulls out what she put in there. She holds up a blue plastic box with no pictures on it that says Lightening Power; in the other hand she has a box of Afro Sheen hair dye on it with a black lady’s picture that looks like it’s really old, like from the ’80s. Her bangs are kind of sculpted into curves and her hair is magenta. “I thought this color would look good on you,” Tracy says, and I start laughing again.

  We run around the corner to a Laundromat that’s about from 1950; nobody’s in it except for an old guy sleeping in one of the yellow plastic chairs. We both sit down on the sidewalk in front of it and Tracy starts ripping open the Lightening Power package. There’s a piece of paper inside with teeny tiny directions. Tracy turns the box over and pulls two plastic gloves off the back and puts them on, and then she opens the blue box and mixes a powder into a little bottle that came inside. She says “Close your eyes” and squirts the bottle all over my head. It smells like floor chemicals and my scalp feels cold and then starts stinging but I stay there with my eyes closed while Tracy covers my head with the bleach. She says “Sit there for a while” and the sting turns to burning and my eyes feel hot, but then I remember how I felt on the way out of Rite Aid and it almost makes me laugh again.

  After about forever Tracy goes “Okay” and tells me to bend over forward and keep my eyes shut tight. She rinses the bleach out with the water jug she bought, running her fingers through my hair; her plastic gloves on my scalp come in where the burn was. When she’s done she dries me off with the bottom of her T-shirt and says “Open your eyes and stand up.” In the reflection of the Laundromat window my hair is yellow just like hers.

  I feel like a kid in a Halloween wig, but then I touch my hair and it’s mine. Tracy starts opening the Afro Sheen package with the magenta dye and I almost stop her. I kind of want to stay blond. But the reason why is so we’ll have the same color hair and I know how dumb that is so I don’t say anything, I just keep looking at myself in the window for as long as I can.

  After that I have purple hair. I look awesome. It makes me feel like one of the JV guys walking down the street, or even bigger, and I stick out my chest and sway my shoulders like a football player when I walk and this time Tracy doesn’t say I look stupid. Every time we pass a window I stare at myself: my eyes lock on my reflection like they locked on Jenny Kirchner that day she looked so perfect and I can’t stop watching the girl I see, except now she’s me.

  Tracy and I spend a bunch more nights outside by Whole Foods; it gets easier and easier to sleep through rush hour and the third or fourth morning I realize I sleep better out here than at home because there’s no door for Brian to open halfway through the night. There’s only Tracy, and as long as I’m next to her I’m safe.

  After about a week my allowance runs out. I get twenty-five a week for cleaning my room and we’ve made it last pretty good: Tracy taught me how to Dumpster-dive plus she’s really good at that trick with the donut guy so he gives us lots of stuff cheap. Once a day we get tacos or something else salty and the rest of the time it’s apple fritters, day-old glazed or whatever we can Dumpster. But then one morning I reach for the wad of ones and fives in my pocket and it’s not a wad anymore, it’s just a dollar. I’m not sure how to tell Tracy; I’m a little afraid she’ll get mad.

  She takes care of everything except for money; that’s my job. Once she pulled a hair band out of her pocket and I saw a little corner of green come out too but she stuffed it back down fast and didn’t mention it. The next time we went for donuts I waited for a second to see if she’d pull it out but she didn’t. It was fine with me.

  But now I’m almost out and it’s only morning and I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do. I want to tell her before breakfast so she can plan ahead: I wait till she rubs her eyes and spits and sits up and then I say “Um, Tracy?” and she says “Yeah?” and I tell her. My heart is beating super fast like I did something wrong and I’m about to get caught. She doesn’t look at me or talk, which makes it beat faster because I can’t tell if she hates me now or not. After a long long time she turns to me and says “Okay. So where’s your house?”

  We wait until the clock at Winchell’s says ten because some days my dad goes in late to work, and then start walking up toward Beachwood Canyon. Of course it sounds easy: I know where the key is under the fake plastic rock by the doormat, and I know where the food is in the pantry, and I know where Linda keeps spare twenties in her bra drawer and that she won’t miss a few. But as the hill starts getting steeper and we get closer to the 101 I’m feeling more and more like throwing up.

  Tracy can tell, I guess, because under the highway she turns to me and says “You’re fucking green. What’s wrong with you?” I chew on my tongue. Number one, I’m scared of getting caught, which I obviously can’t tell Tracy. But more than that I’m scared of being in the house, by Brian’s room, the walls and the doors and the carpet and who I am inside them clamping down around me like a snake and squeezing tight. This past week has turned me different: now I’m a girl I like to watch in windows, purple-haired and dirty, and from the way that Tracy looks at me, I can tell I know so many more things than they would ever let me. But I feel like as soon as I’m in that house I’ll go back to how I was before, even if nobody’s home. I don’t know how to explain it to Tracy: I’m sure she’s never felt anything remotely that dumb.
But she just keeps staring at me, and then goes “What?” and I know I have to answer.

  I can’t let her think I’m backing out of going. The money is my one and only job; I can’t not come through. If I try to explain that I’m scared the walls and carpet in my house will turn me into someone else, she’ll look at me hard and like a stranger, the way she did that first night when I asked her if we were going home. Just imagining it makes me want to die. But she’s making me talk so I have to say something, and for some weird reason the only thing I can figure out to explain to her is Brian.

  I have never breathed a word of him to anyone and the words feel bizarre in my mouth: they’ve been coiled up somewhere so much farther down than that forever and now they’re stretching out and up and I can feel them behind my teeth and it surprises me, like some weird food I’ve never tasted. I have no idea why I’m telling Tracy this or why I’d even think she’d understand. But for some reason I’m not scared. And after I get the first few sentences out from my mouth into the air she looks over at me with this kind of recognition I’ve never seen before in anyone, and she says “I know” and takes my hand. She holds it all the way to my house and she doesn’t let me go, even when my palm starts sweating.

  At the house we take showers first. I stand guard for her outside of Dad and Linda’s bathroom and when she’s finally done and the mirrors are all steamy, we trade off. In the shower I can’t hear anything besides the water and it kind of freaks me out: I imagine someone showing up and seeing Tracy sitting on their bed; they’d call the cops. But the shower feels so good cutting through a week of dirt and grease that soon I mostly don’t think of anything but that.

  When I come out of the bathroom Tracy isn’t there. For a second I freeze and listen: if someone came home there’d be voices. I think about crawling out the window if I need to. But all I hear is Tracy walking around below me. I call out her name but she doesn’t answer so I walk down the stairs, still drying my hair.

  The door to Brian’s room is cracked. I say Tracy’s name again, secretly hoping she’ll come out so I don’t have to go in there, but she doesn’t. I push open the door and walk onto his ugly beige carpet.

  Tracy doesn’t even turn around when I walk in. She just stands there, staring at his bed with her eyes slitted and her nostrils flared and this look on her face that’s really really far away. Brian’s bed is unmade, you can see his imprint in it, and the carpet suddenly feels itchy and gross under my bare feet. I keep walking toward Tracy. When I get up close I can see her cheeks are wet and it’s not from the shower because the rest of her is dry. She’s breathing hard like some kind of little animal and I say her name again, this time super soft like a whisper almost, and she snaps her head up and around to look at me and her whole face rearranges. She inhales hard, then closes her eyes and shakes her head. When she opens her eyes again she grabs my arm. “Come on” she says. “Let’s go raid the fridge.”

  We leave with both our backpacks full of chips and cereal and peanut butter, bread and carrots, plus a jug of water and two sleeping bags. Tracy went through the drawers too and when she found this little knife small enough to fit in a pocket she told me to take it; I wrapped it in a paper towel and slipped it into my jeans. I keep feeling it. I took some twenties too from Linda’s room, memorizing how the bras were stacked and putting them back exactly perfect. I gave the money to Tracy right away; I thought she’d want to carry it. I cleaned everything up better than I’ve ever cleaned before, threw our towels in the hamper and rearranged the fridge so they wouldn’t see the empty parts. I didn’t even go into my room.

  I lock the door behind us; Tracy watches while I put the key back down beneath the plastic rock. As soon as it’s out of my hands I realize the thing I was scared of didn’t happen: I went back in the house without it changing me back to how I was. I even went in Brian’s room and the only thing I thought about in there was Tracy. All of a sudden I feel really light even though my backpack’s ten pounds heavier.

  After that I decide I don’t really want to go back. Or actually it’s not a decision exactly, it’s more of a realization. The whole last week I was procrastinating on going home like it was a math worksheet and every once in a while I’d hear Linda’s annoying voice in my head yelling at me for putting things off and my heart would get all poundy knowing I’d have to do it eventually and the longer I waited the worse it would get. But now all of a sudden it’s like my math teacher canceled the assignment and I just don’t have to do it. Coming down the hill and back toward Hollywood I’m someone different from Elly who goes to school and eats in the cafeteria and sits in class and comes home at night and tells Dad and Linda how my day was. I’m so much bigger now and beautiful and I can go back to the house and just take what I want when they’re gone and I even have a different name. I’m never going back.

  Tracy’s got a ring through her left nostril which I think looks really pretty, even though the metal’s sort of greenish. I told her I wanted one too and she said that was lame but how about my lip. So we went back to Rite Aid to steal some safety pins, peroxide and a ring and now we’re on the sidewalk across from Del Taco. I can taste the peroxide bubbling on my gums and I wonder if it’s poisonous. It tastes like eggs and rust.

  She’s making me hold my lower lip out while she gets the pin ready; it makes it hard to talk so when I ask her about the guys sitting in the parking lot in front of 7-Eleven right across the street it comes out sounding like some retarded other language. She laughs and says “Hang on” and stabs the safety pin through the middle of my lip, fast. My head fills all the way up with the pain of it and my whole mouth tastes like liquid iron. I blink my eyes really hard so it won’t look like I’m crying while she screws the pin around trying to close it. Finally she does and it squinches my lip but only a little because we got the big kind. The bottom of it knocks against my chin. “Leave that in for a day or two and then we’ll put the ring in,” she says, and wipes her hands off on her jeans. “Now what were you trying to say?”

  “I was just wondering if you knew those guys” I say, swallowing blood, and point over to the 7-Eleven lot. There’s two of them with a pit bull there, both dressed like Tracy, patches and black pants and splotchy dirty brown T-shirts, which is why I think she might know them. The dog’s got two collars, one with rhinestones, one with spikes, and you can see its ribs.

  She looks over at them for a second and goes “Nah.” Sometimes Tracy lies about stuff like that but I can tell it’s true she doesn’t know them, and it’s obvious she doesn’t really want to. Which I think is kind of weird, in the same way as the smoking kids behind the auditorium: if you’re a person that looks different from everyone and you see someone who looks like you, to me that means you’d want to be friends or at least talk. But not Tracy.

  I’m curious about the guys, though, so I watch them. They’re both around Tracy’s age, and the really tall and skinny one with the stocking cap has this perfect face like someone in the movies, green-eyed and almost pretty like a girl’s. The dog is sitting down and so’s the other guy; he’s short and strong and he looks sort of jocky even though he’s got freckles and tattoos and dirty patches on his hoodie. The dog belongs to him, I can tell.

  I never saw anyone else who looked like Tracy and I can’t stop watching them.

  I’m still staring across the street when Tracy reaches over and flicks the safety pin in my lip, which hurts like shit. “Come on,” she says. “Come buy me a donut,” and even though there’s food left in her backpack from my house I follow her.

  That night and the next day and the next I keep trying to get Tracy to go to Del Taco instead of Benito’s hoping we’ll see those guys again across the street, but they don’t show up and after a couple days I forget. Something in me is different, though, just knowing they exist. To me it means there’s a whole bunch of people like her, which means the world is bigger than I knew. It means there’s something out there that’s not school or home or Brian but not Tracy either
. It’s like Tracy, but it’s not exactly her. For some reason, that makes me feel a little more equal, like I could ask her questions without being scared that she’ll get mad. I don’t know why.

  Also I keep thinking about Brian’s room, how I found Tracy in there staring at his bed and crying, the way she held my hand beneath the 101 after I told her and looked at me like I was someone she’d known forever but hadn’t seen since we were little kids. The rest of the time she never holds my hand or even touches me but it felt really good that time she did and I keep wanting it again.

  One morning after rush hour when Tang’s Donut is empty and we’ve had two apple fritters plus leftover Boston cremes from yesterday, I bring it up. I keep picking at my nails and my jeans which are getting pretty brown. There’s a hole starting in one knee; I make it bigger thread by thread. What I really want to ask is: was she crying inside Brian’s room and why, but I think that she might kill me if I do. So I just say “How come you were so nice to me before?” which doesn’t make any sense, and of course she asks me what the fuck I’m talking about and I have to explain I mean on the way to my house when I told her about Brian. Personally I think it’s kind of obvious after that, but she looks at me and goes “What do you mean? I wasn’t nice to you.”

  I rip the rest of the apple fritter up into little tiny pieces; it looks like donut turds. Then I try to explain: I mean when I told her about Brian and looking at the ceiling, how it started in fourth grade and at first it was nice having him in bed with me and then it started getting scary and by the end of that year I’d start throwing up the closer it got to bedtime. I mean when I explained how I could never tell Linda because all she cares about is her stupid job and Brian, and I can’t tell my dad either, even though I kind of wish I could, because if he ever believed me it would mean he’d have to kick Brian out, which might make Linda leave, and I’d mess everything up and everyone would hate me. I feel like a major asshole going through it all again, especially when the donut pieces get too small to rip up anymore. I start back in on the hole in my jeans but she’s still not talking so finally I look up at her and she’s crying again, not like normal where you can hear it and the person moves their face, but in this weird way where her eyes are like a statue and she’s hardly even breathing.