Burro Hills Read online

  “These are the real deal, my man,” he said, flexing what little muscle he had.

  “Yeah, I doubt that,” Connor said. He shook his head and smacked his carton of cigarettes against his palm. I watched the motion, transfixed by the repetition, my head starting to feel fuzzy, all of the colors in the room giving off a warm glow.

  Toby hopped from foot to foot, getting that look, that look that meant he wanted to fuck around. “You wanna try me?” he asked Connor. He put up his fists and punched the air, whistling enticingly. Max and I cackled.

  “Love to,” Connor said.

  “Then come try me, you little bitch!” He looked so ridiculous, with his uncombed hair and pupils bulging, like a little boxer man in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

  Connor got up from the couch and tossed his pack of cigarettes to me. When the carton hit my palms, electricity surged through my fingers. It was then I knew just how high I was.

  Connor stared Toby down for a moment before shoving him. Toby lost his balance and hit the ground hard, but quickly recovered, sitting up and pulling Connor down on top of him. They wrestled around, Max practically in tears from laughter, until Connor pinned Toby’s hands behind his back and gave a triumphant laugh. Toby grunted and struggled, trying to break free of his hold. Max snorted and took a swig of beer, handing me the bottle to finish it off. I pressed it to my lips, realizing I was smiling like crazy, the booze tasting radiant in my mouth. The plastic bass gaped at us from the wall with his glassy, knowing eyes. I swear I saw its mouth move.

  Connor punched Toby’s arm once, then freed him, standing and throwing his arms up in the air. “And the true Iron Maiden remains triumphant!” he declared. Max whooped and clapped for him.

  Toby pounced on him from behind, trying to yank him back down, but Connor easily pushed him off. Max was practically collapsing with laughter even as he ducked Toby’s sucker punch. It all happened in a blur of hands and bodies and sweat, but Connor got over to me and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the dog pile.

  I tried to remember seventh grade wrestling camp, tried to get Connor in a headlock like I’d learned when I was just a kid, but he was too quick. After a good scuffle—his hands, his chest, his body—he flipped me on my back and pinned my arms to the ground, palms pressed into mine. We were breathing hard from the exertion, my shirt up to my chin. I felt the muscles in his palms fire before they released mine and slid back to his sides. His smooth biceps, the way his tank top cinched around his taut shoulders…I forgot how to inhale. His eyes wandered down the bared skin of my chest, down my thigh. He raised an eyebrow, his lips curling into a grin.

  Shit, shit. I rolled him off me and stood up quickly, adjusting my pants with fumbling fingers. My face burned red hot.

  As I walked quickly to the bathroom around the corner I could feel him watching me. Max and Toby were feeling the high, I could tell from their laughs. They were—thankfully, hopefully—oblivious.

  I flipped on the lights and splashed freezing water on my face, trying to breathe. I tried to visualize something soothing, tried to stop shaking.

  The door opened. The lights went out.

  The lock clicked.

  And suddenly he was everywhere.

  His chest up against mine, hands all over. The smell of his shirt, cologne that set my senses on fire. I opened my mouth, his kisses hungry and rough, nothing like a girl’s. Hot tongue, hands down my back, up my shirt, blazing trails across my skin. I let it burn right through me, like the heat of the sun. I just let go.

  15.

  The house was dead by the time I got home, save for the porch lights Mom always left on for me. Still high from the acid, the mosquitos looked like little raindrops dripping onto my skin. I swatted them away and opened the door.

  It was dark and quiet, so I kicked off my shoes and started upstairs, assuming everyone had gone to bed. I’d smoked enough weed to calm down my trip, but the staircase felt unstable and the silence was all too loud.

  “Jack?”

  I stopped and looked over the banister at the TV room. A lamp was on, softly illuminating the face of my father. He was reclined in his EZ chair, head slumped forward.

  I walked into the room and saw them right away, about a dozen empty beer bottles scattered all over the floor. Old Gunther snored beneath his feet.

  “Dad?” I asked cautiously. I was scared to move, as if one misstep would set him off into a drunken rage.

  It took him a little while to look up at me. His eyes were empty and faraway, like I was merely a flicker on the TV screen. He smacked his lips and mumbled something.

  I crept over slowly and kneeled down beside him. I felt five years old again, looking up at Daddy for attention, a game, or even a smile.

  “Dad?”

  “Your mother…” he slurred. “She’s at it again. She’s hiding something from me, some big plan. I can feel it.”

  “Can I get you something, Dad? You want some water?”

  “She’s been squirrely lately. Won’t answer my questions directly. She thinks I’m so damn dumb. They all do. Everyone thinks old Jim’s just a dummy, just a piece of white trash from a Scottsdale trailer park. But I see it all.” He turned to me, eyes narrowing, pinning me to the floor.

  “You hiding something from me, Jack?”

  “No, sir.”

  He clamped his arms down on my shoulders and pulled me close to his face. His voice had gone hard and dark. “If there’s something you need to tell me, something you been hiding from me, you tell me right now, you understand? Because whatever it is, I will know. I will find the truth.”

  The stench of his hot beer breath made me nauseous.

  He’s just drunk, he’s just drunk…

  “You think you’re so clever, huh? Running around with your little friends like hoodlums, stirring up trouble all over town? And now you think you’ve got it all figured out, just picking up and going whenever you damn well please.”

  “Dad, I’m not—”

  “You tell me right now, Jack. You tell me right now if there’s something I need to know. Is there, Jack? Should I know something about you and your mom that I don’t already? You two planning something?” His voice was like bullets raining down on me. His face was strained, gaze flickering back and forth across my own.

  “No,” I said quietly. I couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  He dug his fingers into my shoulder blades until I winced before freeing me from his grip. He nodded once, fell back into his chair, and passed out.

  Now I know, I thought as I crept upstairs, retreating into the sanctuary of my bedroom. It stung, but it was better to admit it to myself now. Now I know I can never talk to him about anything.

  16.

  Things went back to normal on Monday, or as normal as things could be. Dad and I didn’t speak of what had happened that night, or what he’d said to me in a drunken stupor. I’d spent the rest of the weekend in my room, listening to music, smoking up the rest of my weed and even watching a few bad shows with Mom while she chain-smoked and ate peanut butter ice cream out of a tub and lied to me about all of the jobs she’d been applying to.

  It was like it had never happened at all. All part of some big, bad trip down the rabbit hole.

  I’d had weird dreams that weekend too, vivid and strange. It could have been the after-effects of the acid. But the dreams were tinged with anxiety. I knew partly why I’d been waking up in cold sweats from so many murky nightmares, and why the dreams grew worse as the weekend came to an end, but I tried not to think about it.

  Part of me was still sure I had dreamed it.

  Mom made me toast and coffee Monday morning and sat with me at the table while I ate, still shaken from the last night’s sleep.

  “You know, I’m thinking, if no one in this town will hire me, I might as well do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’ll finally write that book, you know the one, right Jack?” She tapped the ashes of h
er cigarette right on the table. “Of course you do, I’ve been telling you about it since you were four years old and could barely understand me. You know you learned to read so early on, you were always such a bright little guy, full of ideas. Well I think it’s genetic, Jack, and I’ve got ideas of my own. I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, stories your father hasn’t even heard, stories that’ll have the big shots in New York banging down my door for a finished manuscript…”

  She sipped her morning screwdriver and spoke mostly to herself, bouncing around ideas in her head that seemed to fluctuate without rhyme or reason. I nodded passively, my leg jiggling under the table, half-anticipating a text or a call as an excuse to get away from her.

  I biked to school by myself, not bothering to ask Max or Toby to join me or give me a ride. I needed to feel the quiet around me. I sat outside under the shade of an oak tree in the courtyard before the morning bell, watching kids laugh and talk and smoke. It all seemed so exhausting, all of the energy that went into every conversation, every turn of the head, every gesture and expression.

  My mind wandered back to Dad.

  His own dad, my Grandpa Jack, was a Gulf War vet who flew an F-14 Tomcat during Desert Storm, spraying the caked earth with missiles. Shrapnel was still lodged in the crevice of his elbow, right up until he died. As a kid, I’d sit on his back porch on hot summer nights, Grandpa Jack telling me stories about Vietnam and World War II by the light of the fireflies. I cupped the little bugs in my hand and pretended to listen, holding them gently in the cocoon of my palms. They felt so safe there, the way their tiny legs tickled my skin as I silently told them I loved them.

  I knew Dad would never understand something like that. He liked to trap them in mason jars for hours. They would suffocate in their glass prison as their mini-engines leaked their chemical lifeblood until they shriveled and died. I’d cry and Dad would always tell me to stop being a pussy about some goddamned bugs in a cup.

  That summer I turned eight, I played outside, scraping my knees and collecting insect specimens for study. After dinner, when everyone was settling down for the night, I’d go out and lay in the grass, watching the stars. Back then they seemed to burn so big and bright in the black sky.

  I like to tell myself I went out there almost every night because it soothed me, because outside the air was clean and free of cigarette smoke and the stars intoxicated my budding imagination. I’d pretend those memories were clean and pure, just a little boy’s fascination with the galaxy outside his warm California home, while inside Daddy smoked his pipe and watched the evening news and Mama knit by the fireside.

  I used to lay out there in the cool lawn, letting the universe roll over me and swallow me whole, pretending that I didn’t hear the television blaring and the sound of my daddy’s garbled words underneath like static, the sharp pops of aluminum cans opening and the clanking of bottles in the fridge. The expanse of sky would drown out my mother’s screaming, her lungs scratched raw from ash and tar, our TV turned up so loud the whole house shivered. Things being broken over and over again.

  One evening I just up and ran away. It was around the time Dad lost his job, the big one at the company two hours north of town. That one that bought us fancy dinners at the steakhouse and weeks of Mom acting close to happy. I was young, but even I understood: those days were gone.

  I slipped through the fence and headed up the street, watching the insides of people’s houses, the glow of domestic tranquility playing out behind painted shutters and flowered curtains. The air smelled like evening barbecues and the eucalyptus trees that dotted the sidewalks. As I got closer to the Strip, the lush green lawns faded to brown, the concrete littered with cigarette butts. I passed late-night bottle shops and express markets with their big fluorescent signs, teenagers huddled at street corners smoking and shrieking with drunken laughter. A bum spat on the street and kicked pieces of broken asphalt at the sides of parked cars, muttering to himself. He scared me.

  I was getting tired and my feet hurt. I wondered if my parents were worried, if I should have left a note or something. But then I remembered I was running away and picked up the pace. I couldn’t give up now. I ended up in front of Grandpa Jack’s apartment building and hit the buzzer.

  “Hello? Who—who the hell’s out there? What you want?”

  “It’s me, Grandpa.”

  “Who? Who is this?”

  “Grandpa, it’s me. Jack.”

  I could hear him wheezing over the intercom, some sports game on in the background. “Jack? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Grandpa.”

  “Well, what the hell are you doing out there? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Grandpa, can I please come in?”

  “Does your father know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  A pause.

  “He with you?”

  “Nope.”

  A few moments passed, then the door gave a sharp buzz and I went inside to the smell of mold and cats. Someone was playing the radio too loud down the hall, the noise bouncing through the paper-thin walls like a boomerang.

  Grandpa was in his old checkered bathrobe, his wrinkled face unshaven. He shook his head and let me in.

  Inside, the TV was blaring and it smelled like mold and pipe smoke, a comforting and familiar scent. I took a seat in his EZ boy and propped my feet up, watching the poker game.

  He turned off the TV and took a seat across from me, lighting his big, funny pipe. We sat like that for a while, me getting sleepy in that big comfy chair, him puffing away. We didn’t say anything. Nothing needed to be said.

  Our silence was broken by the ringing of his landline. He’d never quite figured out how to use a cell phone.

  Grandpa got up to answer it, and I closed my eyes tight and clenched my fists, praying it wasn’t who I thought it was.

  “Yeah…yeah, Jim he’s with me. Don’t you worry. Huh? What was that? Oh, I invited him over. I told him to visit me tonight…in my letter!…well, how you would know that, you don’t read his damn mail! Uh-huh. Mmhm.”

  I imagined Mom pacing in the kitchen, screeching questions at my father about where I was, what had happened. My stomach did a somersault.

  “Oh, well okay…I know, you had a long day, Jim, I hear ya…mhm. Maybe you should think about heading off to bed, hmm? No, I didn’t see that one, I was watching the poker game. Alright, well I’ll tell him. You tell Ellie to calm herself down, alright?”

  He hung up and turned to me, studying me carefully.

  “You just stay here tonight, alright Jack?”

  Early the next morning he drove me home, but didn’t even walk me to the door. I knew he wouldn’t go in with me, even though I had hoped with all my might he would, and when we reached my driveway he just gave me a sad little shrug and a smile and said “You know how your daddy is,” before driving off.

  I felt my teeth chattering as I softly knocked on the front door. No answer. I waited a while before trying the knob and found the door was unlocked. Inside, it was dead silent, not even a peep from our noisy puppy in his crate. Then I noticed the mess.

  Shreds of paper were scattered all over the living room floor. Mom’s favorite lamp was sideways on the ground, the beautiful lavender globe cracked open. As I passed the kitchen, I spotted the broken bottles and something shiny and red on the cheap linoleum. I took a few steps over, feeling hot and shaky. There was broken glass and a trail of dried blood.

  I tiptoed upstairs and climbed into bed, the blue-tinted darkness of the cloudy morning pouring through my blinds.

  I lay awake, unable to sleep for what felt like hours. Then I flinched at the creaking sound of my door opening, but in a moment, there was only the sound of it closing softly.

  When I woke up, the house was empty of my parents, the living room now eerily pristine and tidy, as if last night had never happened. Our puppy had been let out and was lying on the sofa, wagging his tail at the sight of me. I found a packed lunch on the table—Mom�
��s work, no doubt—and a note in Dad’s jerky handwriting: “You can walk yourself to school from now on.” They’d left without me.

  I took the lunch bag and our puppy Gunther and headed down to the creek a few blocks away, a little forgotten stream that fed into the storm drains. I folded up the contents of the lunch bag and skipped them across the water, letting Gunther lick the wetness from my face.

  17.

  Connor texted me during Spanish, right around the time Mrs. Banks started droning on about verb conjugations. The difference between I have, I had. What the fuck did it matter, anyway?

  Willow Park on 3rd after school?

  Not the usual half-assed jumble of acronyms the boys sent me. I wrote back quickly, holding the phone down between my legs so Banks couldn’t see.

  Sure.

  I checked to make sure I was in the clear. The last thing I needed right now was to get my phone confiscated. Thankfully, Banks was busy scrawling something across the board, starting up her daily speech on the importance of bilingualism in the U.S.

  “English may be our first language, but that doesn’t make it the most important. It’s important not only to recognize but to celebrate diversity in this country. I mean, whether or not the conservatives like it, we minorities do exist.” That got a chuckle from about half the class.

  I waited for the familiar buzz of my sound-dampened cell.

  “Besides,” she said. “It would be boring if only one kind of person existed. More than one type of person makes life more interesting, gives us more to appreciate. You guys following me?”

  A vibration in my lap like a jolt made me jump. I pressed unlock to read my phone and then the air felt denser, harder to breathe.

  I miss you already.

  The park was nearly empty when I got there, save for a few kids laughing and chasing each other across the jungle gym. Their parents leaned back on the benches, reading their books and finishing work assignments on their laptops, enjoying the nanosecond of freedom from parenting in the warmth of the sun.