Her mother offered a weak smile.
“By the way,” Arianna continued. “How did you make out with the job search yesterday?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” her mother brightened. “I got a job at Super Mart! I start on Monday.”
“That’s great, mom. You see, things are already getting better.”
“Yeah, and let me tell you, the assistant manager is a hottie, as you say,” her mother said and winked. “And I didn’t notice a wedding band, not that that ever stopped me.”
“Oh jeez,” Arianna muttered.
“Did you find a job after school yesterday?”
Arianna arched an eyebrow at her mother, shocked that she’d even remembered that she’d planned to look for a job, let alone directed the conversation from herself to her daughter. She was tempted to look outside to see if pigs had begun flying as well.
“Well don’t look so shocked, baby. I listen to you when you talk,” her mother said and beamed with pride.
Arianna leveled a gaze at her and she quickly qualified her statement, “Okay, most of the time I listen when you talk,” her mother said and rolled her eyes like a child who’d been caught by his mother with his hand in the cookie jar.
“No,” Arianna answered honestly. “I didn’t.”
“How come? That little savings you got stashed in the toilet tank is not going to last you much longer,” her mother warned.
“I know,” she said then added, “But I had an accident with the bike and it’s totaled.”
“What!”
“Yesterday morning, I was on my way to school and I thought I saw something on the side of the road. I turned after I’d passed and lost control of my bike. The bike is totaled.”
Her mother’s face was aghast, horror etched her every feature. Arianna’s chest tightened immediately as worry marked her mother’s face. It wasn’t until her mother began to speak that she understood the horrified look she wore. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me! Why didn’t you call me? Why am I the last person to know? I’m always the last person to know everything!”
“I’m fine, mom, by the way. Thanks for asking,” Arianna mumbled.
“Well of course you’re fine. You’re sitting right here talking to me! I, on the other hand, think I lost a few years of my life just now,” her mother said and placed her hand over her heart dramatically. “My chest is hurting all of a sudden. I hope I’m not having a heart attack.”
“Should I call an ambulance?” Arianna said and called her mother’s bluff with syrupy concern in her voice.
“No, no,” her mother panted. “I think I’m okay, for someone who was just told that her daughter had an accident and she wasn’t told about it until the day after.”
“Sorry for leaving you out of the loop, mom, but as you said, I’m fine and sitting right here.”
“Thank God for that,” her mother sighed and Arianna felt herself soften slightly. But her softening was short-lived. “I mean really, baby, you need to be more careful. What would I do without you? I need you. So don’t go killing yourself on me.”
And like that, her touching mother-daughter almost-moment had vanished. “And you love me and all that stuff, right?” Arianna said sarcastically.
“Well of course I love you!” her mother snapped indignantly. “How could you even say that to me? After all I’ve been through you’d think I wouldn’t need to prove myself to my own daughter.”
“No, no. No one’s asking you to do anything like that,” Arianna added and did not bother trying to conceal the edge in her voice.
“Good, because I won’t. I gave you life and that was proof enough. And I’ve sacrificed a lot, too. My breasts have never been the same since. Do you know how tough dating was with a baby?”
“No mom, I don’t. Enlighten me,” Arianna said flatly.
“Really tough, that’s how. Most men didn’t even want a woman with that kind of baggage. Fortunately, I look like I do, or I would have been home with you every day and night,” her mother added in expectation of sympathy.
“Yeah I know, who would want to do something crazy like, I don’t know, raising their child, when there’s a whole sea of men out there waiting to be Cathy Rose-ized,” Arianna spat and did not temper the acid in her voice.
“You make fun, baby, but you don’t know what you were like.”
Arianna thought her head would pop off her shoulders, anger welling and brimming dangerously.
“Oh, so it was my fault you weren’t interested in being a parent?”
She thought for sure her inflammatory remark would draw some sort of rebuttal, an “I loved being your parent, baby,” comment, or something close to it. But her mother, absorbed in her own recollections, was not the least bit interested in comforting her daughter.
“You used to get into all sorts of trouble, always climbing trees and cabinets. One time, when you were about seven or eight, you and the neighbor’s kid climbed up onto the roof of the trailer we’d been living in and,”
“Hold on a sec,” Arianna interrupted. “I was always climbing things, and clearly you were not around to stop me, didn’t I fall and get hurt all the time?”
“Well if you’d let me finish my story instead of being rude and interrupting, you’d find out. So anyway, there you were, up on the roof of our trailer, and I came home from the neighbor’s house after enjoying a card game and cocktails only to find you up there. You and that little girl with the buck teeth, oh, what was her name, Emily, Amy, Mary? Oh I wish I could remember! You remember her, right? She had frizzy, red hair and big ole buck teeth like a beaver,” her mother rambled.
“Mom, focus please!”
“Oh, yeah, so you and the frizzy-haired girl were up on the roof holding hands and, I don’t know how it happened, but you both slipped, together. Both of you fell from the roof down to the gravel below. And I was sure you’d have to be taken to the hospital. Of course, I looked a fright from a few too many drinks, so I wanted no part of that. Me and the neighbor ran over to you girls. Frizzy was a mess, you know, howling bloody murder in pain and all. She’d ended up breaking her leg, both wrists and had a concussion. But not you. You had not a scratch on you.”
Arianna could not believe what she had heard. She knew she ought to say something, to tell her mother how severe the accident had been and how she should have been seriously injured, but reasoned it would be pointless.
“Not a scratch on me?” Arianna asked to be certain her ears had heard correctly.
“Not a scratch,” her mother confirmed. “You never got hurt. After all your shenanigans, all your dangerous stunts, you never broke a bone or needed stitches. Guess you were born under a lucky sign or something. That’s why when you wanted to buy that bike of yours when you turned sixteen, I didn’t argue. With all the luck you’d had through the years, I figured you’d be safe. Guess your luck ran out, huh, baby.”
She nearly bit her fist to stop herself from screaming at her mother that she was wrong, dead wrong, that she was not merely lucky, that she had survived a series of childhood accidents as well as what would have been a fatal motorcycle accident a day earlier, and that she’d possibly moved a chair with her mind. No, lucky signs had nothing to do with what she had experienced. Something else entirely had been going on. She just didn’t know what.
“I guess it did,” Arianna said absently.
“Now you’ll have to be extra careful once the bike gets fixed,” her mother said solemnly.
Watching her mother’s grave expression made Arianna wonder how exactly her mother had lived to be in her forties believing that luck and luck alone, had prevented her daughter from death over and over again. She guessed that most other parents would have, at the very least, marveled at their child’s ability to cheat death once before shielding them from it in the future. Not her mother, though. Her mother had watched her fall from the roof of trailer with a friend who’d sustained serious injuries that had included a broken leg and two broken arms as w
ell as a concussion and chalked her lack of injuries up to being born under a lucky sign. In all fairness, most other parents wouldn’t have allowed their eight-year-old to roam free unsupervised in a trailer park and end up on the roof of one of those trailers in the first place. Most parents would have questioned the fact that she had remained unharmed a little further, would have sought answers from a spiritual source perhaps. But most parents were not like Cathy Rose. Most parents did not view their child as a burden preventing them from having a more active dating life. Arianna felt her blood pressure rise. Her fingertips began to tingle as they had in class when Cheryl’s chair had shot out from beneath her. She tuned back in and listened to more of her mother’s ramblings and felt the tingling strengthen.
“And then there was the time I let you cook for me and a friend,” she said with a laugh. “You were maybe five and I was with, I think his name was John or Joe, something with a J, and we had you make us some fried chicken. You were doing all right until you started frying the breaded pieces. You pulled a chair up and started tossing drumsticks and wings into the frying pan and scalding hot oil splashed all in your face. I thought for sure you’d disfigured your face, that not only would I have a daughter no man wanted around, but an ugly one at that.” Her mother paused to laugh again, as if the story she told were somehow a funny or cherished memory. “Luckily, your face was fine. I have no idea how that happened because when I touched that pot, I burned my hand, see?” she pointed to a minute scar on her left thumb.
“Yeah, I see it, mom,” Arianna replied. The tingling had spread and grown. She felt as though a current of electricity had charged every part of her. Suddenly, she felt as though she needed physical distance between her mother and herself. “Look, we can stroll down memory lane some other time. Right now, I have to get ready to go out.”
“Oh, okay,” her mother said. “I guess I’m just so lonely and starved for companionship, I didn’t realize I was holding you up. I’ll let you finish getting ready.”
Arianna felt her body begin to tremble. Her mother was actually attempting to guilt her into taking her along on her first night out in months on the heels of bragging about being a negligent parent.
“Shut the door behind you,” Arianna said coolly.
“Think of me while you’re out having a good time,” her mother added pitifully and Arianna wanted to shut the door in her face.
“Okay, mom,” was all she could manage.
The door shut finally and her mother was safely on the other side of it. Arianna blew out a breath of air then inhaled deeply again. After several deep breaths, the trembling had subsided and her hands felt steady enough to handle a mascara wand without poking her eye out. That is, if her lucky sign had not, in fact, failed her. The thought of such nonsense riled her again slightly. She quickly pushed it to the back of her mind and tried to concentrate on the task at hand, and the night ahead of her.
She applied two coats of mascara and some eyeliner before grabbing an empty purse from her drawer, stuffing some cash, her cigarettes and her fake identification in it and leaving. She passed her mother sitting on the couch in the living room as she headed toward the front door. Her mother sat with a blanket draped across her shoulder sipping a large glass of wine. Her intention had surely been to guilt her further, a final look-at-me-I’m-so-depressed effort. But Arianna would not bite. Instead, she called a quick “See you later!” to her mother and closed the door behind her.
Outside, the air was crisp and cool. The distinct autumn chill promised an even colder night. She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it while she waited for Luke to arrive. As she smoked, she tilted her chin upward and looked to the sky above. Constellations ornamented the navy expanses like innumerable diamonds affixed to a velvet backdrop. The sky was so stunning, the stars so bright and numerous, she felt dizzied slightly, but smiled regardless. She’d see a great many things in her short life, had experienced far too much even, but none of it had etched away at her appreciation of nature, at her sense wonder. She’d wanted to be an astronaut when she was a little girl. That was why she had been atop the trailer when she was eight. And the little girl had not been Amy, Emily or Mary. Her name was Avery. She had been Arianna’s best friend. Her conversation with her mother prompted her to remember an event she’d blocked from her mind for many years. Her best friend Avery’s serious injuries, and the trailer climbing that had caused it, had been the reason Avery’s parents had forbidden her from playing with Arianna ever again. They had blamed Arianna. After all, Arianna had not been harmed. But their daughter had been. The only eyewitness to the fall had been Arianna’s drunken mother.
Arianna’s heart raced wildly in her chest, her memory suddenly vivid. She was about to turn and walk back in to the house and forget about going altogether, feeling that her mood had been irreparably soured when the rumble of a truck engine stopped her. Headlights sliced through the darkness and approached slowly then stopped in front of her trailer. The door opened and the overhead interior light illuminated Luke’s face. And he wasn’t alone.
Stephanie occupied the passenger seat looking impossibly beautiful despite the unflattering lighting and the sour expression she wore.
“Hey,” Luke said as he rounded the front of his truck. “You look nice.”
“Thanks,” Arianna replied and wondered why he didn’t kiss her on the cheek or anything. A day earlier they’d shared an intense and passionate kiss, but since then, there hadn’t been any hand-holding, hugging, nothing. Now, with his sister perched in the front seat and her relegated the back seat, there was no chance of even an accidental brush of hands. Between her mother’s reminiscing and attempted guilt trip and Luke doing nothing short of pretending like what happened between them in his garage had never happened, Arianna found herself missing her bike more than ever. If she had her bike, she would have canceled with Luke in favor of a nice long ride to clear her head. But she did not have it. Instead, she bumped along in Luke’s pickup truck for twenty minutes until they reached Blue Ivy nightclub in Shadow Hills, a seedy town in an even seedier neighborhood that straddled the border between theirs and the next.
Two cars had followed them the entire trip. Ryan and Christa had trailed in his Honda CRX with Bulldog, Beth, Mike and Carrie not far behind. Stephanie had planned to meet friends there and had hitched a ride with Luke. After parking in a small lot just past the entrance to the club, everybody jumped out their cars, eager to get inside. Bass rumbled deeply, growling like thunder from beyond the walls of the club, pulsing like an immense heart issuing its rhythmic beat.
“Let’s do this!” Ryan said enthusiastically and Christa rolled her eyes at him.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get my drink on!” Mike said.
Everyone started moving toward the club slowly. Stephanie hung back and pulled at Arianna’s arm to stay.
“Hold on a sec,” she hissed. “I got something.”
Arianna couldn’t imagine what, and was afraid to ask. She waited as Stephanie searched her purse then finally produced two white tablets in a plastic bag. “Thought you might want to do a little ex before we go in,” she said and offered a tablet to Arianna.
Ecstasy was not a drug Arianna was interested in trying. She’d smoked pot before, but that had been the extent of her experience with drugs.
“No thanks,” Arianna said and handed Stephanie’s bag back.
Stephanie studied her for a moment and Arianna anticipated a snide comment or pressure, but none came. Instead, Stephanie shrugged, popped the tablet into her mouth and caught up with the rest of their group.
The line to get into Blue Ivy was long, but moved quickly. Within ten minutes, they were inside wading through a sea of people grinding and writhing to the roll of booming bass. Bulldog led the pack, and much like a bulldozer, pushed his way past people until a path had been cleared for them that led straight to the bar. His intimidating size and appearance, complete with a square jaw, deep-set eyes and countl
ess scars, discouraged anybody from protesting their prime position. Pressing his luck further, as well as his substantial form, Bulldog managed to secure a small table for them to stand around close to the bar.
In the far corner of the club, they had a view of the dance floor. Packed with scantily clad girls gyrating and rubbing up against eager guys, the dance floor was crowded. Arianna was not known to dance and she doubted Luke was much of a dancer either. She preferred drinking at clubs and watching others dance.
“What’re you drinking tonight?” Luke shouted in her ear over the loud music.
“Beer,” she answered.
Luke smiled then shouted, “You’re a cheap date. I like you more and more every time I see you!” and smiled.
Arianna smiled too, but not because of his joke. She smiled at his use of the word date. Luke disappeared toward the bar with Bulldog. Though the bar was just a few feet away, they were immediately swept away on a wave of people and carried in the current. They returned several minutes later with a round of drinks for everyone. Luke sidled up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. His body moved to the music faintly and rocked hers pleasantly. She enjoyed the feel of him pressed against her, feeling his heartbeat against her back, his hard body.
After the second round of drinks had been finished, Luke left her with Stephanie to go get another. She watched him as he left then allowed her eyes to scan the crowd. As she did, her breath caught in her chest. In the distance, near the wall farthest from her, she spotted a familiar face. The man she’d seen on the side of the road not once, but twice, in the last three days watched her. She wondered what the hell he was doing there, why he was following her, so she grabbed Stephanie by the elbow and urged her forward.
“Come on Stephanie,” she said and tugged her arm.
“What the fuck!” Stephanie protested.
“Come on! I think I see someone I know,” Arianna said.
Planet Urth Boxed Set Page 25
