Burro Hills Page 2

  I hated this. Her bad mood was my bad mood. I had to snap her out of it before I lost it.

  Jess and I walked past my house, then two blocks past hers, where her dad was probably smoking a cigar and trying to tune out the sounds of his sister’s baby wailing day and night. I don’t know how Jess got any sleep in there with her little cousin keeping her up at odd hours. I was about to ask her, but then I remembered she was giving me the silent treatment.

  We went on these walks every Sunday. She’d come over to my house, knock on the door, listen to Mom’s mumbo-jumbo for a few minutes, and then we’d be off without a word. Sometimes I’d fish around in Mom’s purse for cash and bring her back a donut or a latte. I really wished she’d get out more.

  We passed the Shop N’ Save where I’d snubbed Jess the other day, past the yogurt store where we’d worked last summer—or barely worked—blasting the dirtiest rap music imaginable when the manager wasn’t there and lobbing chunks of fro-yo at each other while the customers gave us the stink eye. We lasted a month. I was happy to get fired. I hated the hats they made us wear, but Toby thought it was fucking hilarious, thought it made me look like a “professional fag.” He always made a point to tell me so when he came in with Max or a group of bimbos from school. They laughed at me, wind-up doll hyenas with sharp fangs.

  Worst of all, they laughed at Jess. Her cheeks burned the color of the raspberry sorbet and she threw her hat in the trash.

  We passed the liquor store where a bum sat outside hustling for change. I dropped a quarter in his cup and he nodded at me. He was pretty young. I wondered where his parents were, if he had any. How he’d ended up without a place to crash in this dying town. Jess stopped in front of the tattoo place and stared inside the window. Since it was Sunday, closing time was soon, but we watched the work going on inside for a little while. A woman with long gray hair and wrinkles was getting a big black heart tattooed on her arm. A heart and the name CHARLES, written above it in thorny letters.

  “Thinking of getting one?” I tried.

  She put her hands in her shorts pockets. They were shorter than anything I’d ever seen her wear before. “Mmm,” she said.

  “Think she’s a little old to be getting inked?” I asked. “Charles must be really special.”

  Jess popped her bubblegum.

  Alrighty then.

  I stared at our reflection in the shop window. You might have thought we were a couple, or maybe even brother and sister. We were about the same height, around the same build: lean, tall, with long torsos and heart-shaped faces. I’d read something in Mom’s Cosmo about how you could determine your destiny from the shape of your face. I wondered what ours would be.

  I was mumbling my thoughts to myself out loud. I quickly realized and cleared my throat, embarrassed even though I did this accidentally around Jess all the time.

  “Who’re you talking to, weirdo?” she asked. She was smiling.

  “No one.”

  We stood like that for a while. I bumped her shoulder. She bumped me back.

  The world righted itself in an instant.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I was a jerk for telling you and the girls to get lost. We were doing a deal, and I didn’t want you involved. I—”

  “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s my mom. My dad wants me to stay with her this month while he helps with his sister with her new baby and everything. They’re staying in my room until she gets her own place.”

  I knew that Jess’s aunt was only nineteen. She had just given birth to a baby boy and had nowhere else to go. It was really nice of her dad, I thought. But Jess wasn’t finished. She kicked at a stray bottle cap on the ground and it skittered across the pavement. “My mom’s just been so irritated with me lately, like I can’t do anything right,” she went on. “Like I can’t even breathe correctly. She actually criticized me for sighing too loudly, if you can believe it. She said, ‘Jessica, who sighs like that? Knock it off!’”

  I pictured Jess’s hoity-toity mother, all decked out in cashmere and pearls and ironed slacks, even in the California heat. She wanted sunlit verandas to sit on and sip iced tea, country clubs with green, rolling hills, and a beach house on the “right” side of the country. She’d always shown way more interest in moving back to Massachusetts than spending time with her daughter. Except, she had loved Kellie, her favorite daughter.

  Kellie Velez. The name was poison. Danger. Don’t think about it. Don’t go there.

  I didn’t. Instead, I put my hand on Jess’s shoulder. “You want to get fro-yo and talk about it?”

  She pressed her lips together. She desperately needed some Chapstick. Inside the tattoo parlor, the gray-haired lady was admiring her new ink. When she smiled, it was all gummy and pink because she had no teeth. I turned us both away from the window.

  Jess let out a breath. “Fuck that yogurt place,” she said, and we both laughed. “No, it’s just…now I’m basically moving in with my mother. For a month.”

  “You mean in that gaudy hotel she lives in?”

  “It’s a condominium building,” Jess said, making the word sound super, super hoity-toity. “And yeah, it’s ugly. But Dad keeps telling me I have to try. He just keeps saying she’s my mom and blah blah blah, custody agreement. Whatever. Legality is probably the only reason she agreed to it.”

  Living with Jess’s mom would probably suck in some ways, but it couldn’t be worse than my house. Growing up, I’d spent so much time at the Velez residence that sometimes I thought I lived there. I used to lay in bed at night and pray I was a girl so I could sleep over there, or move in and become Jess’s sister, but I never told her that.

  Some secrets are best kept in that deep, dark corner of yourself.

  We turned and started walking back into our neighborhood, all the one-story houses with dilapidated roofs and crumbling driveways, old people watching you from their porches, rocking back and forth in their chairs like time had stopped on this street. That was really the only thing left to do.

  “Maybe it would be nice to get away from here for a while,” I said. “She doesn’t live that far.”

  “I’d have to take the county bus to school,” Jess groaned. “I’m so used to Dad driving me. The bus is full of creepy homeless people and drug dealers.”

  I moved my tongue around my mouth so I wouldn’t say anything. I hated when she said stuff like that.

  “Maybe you should give her a chance,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure why I was saying it. “Maybe she really does love you and wants to show you that. The thing is, adults don’t like to tell you stuff upfront, so you’ll have to go there in person either way to find out. But isn’t it better to know the truth?”

  She stared at me for a while, frowning like I had just spoken some Martian language, like she couldn’t quite figure me out. Then she broke into a grin and punched my arm.

  “I was mad at you for yesterday, you punk,” she said. “But now that you gave me some decent advice, I’ll let it slide.”

  I shrugged. “I do what I can. You want to smoke?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have to study, Jack. I have a big test tomorrow.”

  “But it’s Sunday. Sundays are smoking days.”

  “Every day is a smoking day for you. You are such a stoner.”

  I laughed off her little jab like it didn’t hurt.

  “Shall we go to the Spot?” I asked.

  The corner of her mouth turned up into a smile. “When have I ever said no the Spot, Jack?”

  “The Spot solves everything.”

  She looped her arm through mine. “All of life’s greatest quandaries are mysteriously solved the moment one sets foot in The Spot.”

  The Spot—our Spot—was just a patch of grassy bluff. It was overlooking the freeway—a strip of concrete glittering in the harsh sun—with the broad shoulders of those ever-looming mountains towering over it all. I loved it. We’d been going there since we’d first discovered it back in sev
enth grade, before the new housing developments and shopping center, back when it felt like this secret little retreat from the rest of Burro Hills.

  Jess rested her head on my shoulder.

  “What should we do now?” she asked. Her voice had that dreamy quality to it, and I knew we were about to play the game we always played whenever we sat at the Spot—the game where we dreamed of where we’d go and what we’d do when we finally got out of here. When we were younger, it was Disney World or Six Flags or the world’s biggest indoor splash park. When we got a little older, it got a little vaguer, a little more out of reach.

  What should we do now? The question fell from her mouth and rolled out across the land below us, into the sounds of honking horns and revving engines, and the air that was always thick with exhaust fumes. “Let’s just get a car and get out of here,” she said. “We’ll drive down the Pacific Highway and never look back. What do you think?”

  “That sounds sick,” I said. “But I don’t know. Are you paying for gas? I’m dead broke.”

  She laughed. “Don’t think about the money. The money doesn’t exist in the fantasy. We can go anywhere we want. We could run from here, just run away and do whatever we liked. We could see the country, maybe see the world. There’s so much more outside this town. So much more besides high school and college and some boring nine-to-five job we’ll get someday and totally hate.”

  We. She’d go to college. She’d get the nine-to-five. I wouldn’t go anywhere.

  But I closed my eyes and imagined it anyway, just for a moment. The fantasy of us she’d created. Us away from everywhere. All of this. Together.

  “But you’ll leave anyway,” I said. Behind my eyelids, the vision popped and deflated like a sad balloon. “You’re going to college for sure. And you’re probably going out-of-state.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” she said, but she said it quietly, and we both knew that it was. Jess had always dreamed of attending an Ivy—or even a Little Ivy, if they’d have her. She had the grades, the family connections, the money. She could do it. She could make it.

  What the hell did I have?

  I would stay here, and I would probably die here. But at least for another year, we’d be together in this broken, crumbling town, rotting and burning to death in the baking sun.

  Or, we could just say “fuck it” and make that fantasy real. We could go out there now, drive a thousand miles before crashing into the stars…like we were alive, like we were invincible, laughing until we wanted to cry.

  We would open our eyes and it would be beautiful, all of it, and the world would crack open and arms would reach out for us and we’d finally be home. We’d strip our skins and run right into the light, into a future of possibility and fresh air and freedom, real freedom, the freeway flayed by our tires as we drove over this place and never looked back. All of it would be gone, Toby, his cousins, Mom, Dad, the boys, the girls, Burro Hills…all those watchful mountains looming in our rearview mirrors.

  I clung to this vision as we watched the sunlight catch on the tires of the hundreds of cars on the freeway, going somewhere, anywhere, someplace better than this.

  And I thought, if only for a moment: She’s getting out. I’m not. Maybe there’s nothing left for me to do but run.

  5.

  I was only thirteen.

  I told myself that over and over whenever the memory would spring into my mind and attack me, in an otherwise peaceful moment, when I was going about my day, minding my own business.

  It was a very Velez Christmas party. Their modest little ranch house had been transformed, dolled up with tinsel, blow-up Santa Clauses, and snowmen. A big plastic Christmas tree was planted in the middle of the living room, shedding cheap ornaments. Jess played with her cousins, chasing them around the house while her mom poured glass after glass of champagne and complained to her husband about how her youngest daughter was getting too old to act like a boy.

  The way she said it made me feel sick inside my stomach.

  I sat on their gold-and-green striped couch in the living room, busying myself with my Gameboy, the murmur and laughter of adults drunk on wine and Christmas spirit creating a peaceful white noise barrier. Any minute now, Jess would tire of her games and come find me, and we’d crawl upstairs to her room and whisper our thoughts about all the grown-ups around us.

  Any minute now.

  But the minutes lingered on and turned to hours, and soon I was wandering the house, bored, bumping past adults and sneaking flutes of champagne and handfuls of frosted sugar cookies until my stomach ached. The noise and the food and the clatter of silverware were starting to give me a headache too, so I climbed upstairs and lay down in Jess’s bedroom, snuggling up in her big purple comforter.

  The door opened with a creak. It was dark in the room and in the hallway, and for a moment, relief flooded through me.

  “Jess!” I said. “Thank God, I was so bored down there. Do you—”

  But it wasn’t Jess. It was her big sister Kellie, her big sister about to go off to the University of Southern California and join a sorority and get a job that would make her rich and even more popular. Her big sister with the long, platinum blonde hair, the too-tight sweater, the giant fake boobs, the crispy orange tan. I stiffened.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  She laughed, a little musical laugh that made me want to pull the covers up over my head. “Oh Jack, why are you always so upset to see me?”

  She stumbled over to me, the way Dad always did after he’d had too many beers. She sat down on the bed and yanked the comforter off me, revealing my scrawny body engulfed by a hoodie. I said nothing.

  “You’re such a cute little guy,” she slurred, reaching over and tracing my cheek with her fingertip. “You’re gonna be a looker someday. Trust me, all the girls will want you.”

  I shrugged. Kellie groaned, mumbled something about it being “so hot in here,” then moved to take off her sweater.

  “Don’t!” I said, but she’d already lifted it over her head, revealing her big, bulging watermelon boobs. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

  She cocked her head at me and squeezed at her tits, at the pink, pointed nipples. “What’s wrong?” Her voice was all weird and husky. “You haven’t seen my new breasts yet, have you?”

  I couldn’t speak. My mouth was sewn shut and my stomach had turned to ice. I tried to avert my eyes, to look anywhere but directly at her chest. She’d shown me them before, when I’d hung out at Jess’s house one night and she’d been all tipsy and handsy. But that time, I’d managed to get away, make up some excuse about how Jess was calling for me in another room. I’d managed to evade her.

  “These were real expensive, you know,” Kellie said. Her breath smelled sour and strong, like Daddy’s before he got angry. I started shaking. “What’s wrong? Don’t like boobs? What, are you a little faggot or something? You must be a little faggot.” I’d never seen her like this, so cruel and detached from her body. “Everybody loves me. All of you want me. You just don’t know it yet, you’re so young and…”

  And Kellie reached forward and pulled my face to hers. The shaking got worse, so bad I thought I might collapse into myself. She touched her lips gently to mine—sweet, sticky, lip gloss-covered lips—then pressed them hard against my mouth, hungry, angry.

  She pushed me against the bed and tugged at the seams of my pants. No, I thought. I tried to say it, but her mouth was crushing mine. My arms had gone limp at my sides. My body refused to move. My heart was two fists pumping at my chest, screaming for help.

  She reached down into my pants, under my boxers, and touched my dick. It remained limp in her cold hand. She tried to awaken it, tried to get it to move, but it was frozen solid like the rest of me. She stopped kissing and frowned at me like I was defective, like I had deeply insulted her.

  “Kellie? You up here, honey?” It was Mrs. Velez’s voice, climbing up through the shadows and into the room. My chest loosened a little. Kelli
e cursed and pushed me away, scrambling to get her sweater back on, then wiped her mouth and spit right onto Jess’s clean carpet. She didn’t even look at me as she left.

  “Little faggot,” was all I heard her say.

  I curled into a ball and waited for my mom to come and get me. I curled up inside of myself and went somewhere very far away, somewhere where no one could ever touch me again.

  6.

  It was hot, so hot that you could smell the tar burning on the streets, that smoldering rubber tire smell. We stripped off our sweat-soaked shirts and sneakers and sat beneath the shade of an aging sycamore.

  “Not even a fucking breeze and it’s only April,” Max grumbled. “Con, hand me that, man.”

  Connor tossed him the big water bottle. Max drained it over his head, cool water streaming down his neck and back. My skin itched with envy.

  Connor lit a joint, passed it around. He seemed perfectly content even in this sweltering haze, lying against the tree, one hand behind his head, legs stretched out. He took a long drag and blew smoke rings into the air. I sat by him and tried to simulate his body language, to let my head just rest against the trunk. It scratched at my neck but felt better this way, not fighting the heat, just letting it burn through me, letting go.

  He passed me the joint and exhaled. I felt the smoke hit my cheek.

  “Look at those fucking fags,” Toby said. He spat into the street, gesturing at a group of kids popping open a fire hydrant, squealing with joy and running in circles as a torrent of water spurted up and splashed down on them, turning the street into a splash park.

  Connor’s lips twitched into a smile. “I don’t know, man, I like the way they think.”

  “Yeah, but look at ’em,” Toby said. “Look at those pansy-ass BMXs. Probably cost Mommy and Daddy a good grand. Bet they can’t even do a fire hydrant.” He grabbed the joint out of my hand.

  Connor laughed, shook his hair out of his eyes. “They’re like twelve, dude. Besides, they’re fucking with the right kind of fire hydrant.”