BETH
There’s nothing better than the feeling of floating. Weightless in warmth. Comforter-out-of-the-dryer warmth. The warmth of a strong hand against my face, running through my hair. If only life could be like this…forever.
I could do forever here, in the basement of my aunt’s house. All walls. No windows. The outside kept outside. The people I love inside.
Noah—his hair hiding his eyes, keeping the world from seeing his soul.
Isaiah—a sleeve of beautiful tattoos that frightens the normal and entices the free.
Me—the poet in my mind when I’m high.
I came to this house for safety. They came because the foster care system ran out of homes. We stayed because we were stray pieces of other puzzles, tired of never fitting.
One year ago, Isaiah and Noah bought the couch, the king-size mattress, and the TV from the Goodwill. Shit thrown away by somebody else. By yanking it down a flight of stairs into the depths of the earth, they made us a home. They gave me a family.
“I wore ribbons,” I say. My own voice sounds bizarre. Echoing. Far away. And I speak again so I can hear the strangeness. “Lots of them.”
“I love it when she does this,” Isaiah says to Noah. The three of us relax on the bed. Finishing another beer, Noah sits at the end with his back propped against the wall. Isaiah and I touch. We only touch when we’re high or drunk or both. We can because it doesn’t count then. Nothing counts when you feel weightless.
Isaiah runs his hand through my hair again. The gentle tug urges me to close my eyes and sleep forever. Bliss. This is bliss.
“What colors?” The normal rough edges of Isaiah’s tone disappear, leaving smooth deepness.
“Pink.”
“And?”
“Dresses. I loved dresses.”
It feels as if I’m turning my head through sand in order to look at him. My head rests on his stomach and I smile when the heat of his skin radiates past his T-shirt onto my cheek. Or maybe I’m smiling because it’s Isaiah and only he can make me smile.
I love his dark hair, shaved close to his scalp. I love his kind gray eyes. I love the earrings in both ears. I love…that he’s hot. Hot when he’s high. I giggle. He’s tragically hot when he’s sober. I should write that down.
“Do you want a dress, Beth?” Isaiah asks. He never teases me when I remember my childhood. In fact, it’s one of the few times he asks endless questions.
“Would you buy me one?” I don’t know why, but the thought lightens my heart. The teeny sober part of my brain reminds me I don’t wear dresses, that I spurned ribbons. The rest of my mind, lost in a haze of pot, enjoys the game—the prospect of a life with dresses and ribbons and someone willing to make my wildest dreams come true.
“Yes,” he answers without hesitating.
The muscles around my mouth become heavy and the rest of my body, including my heart, follows suit. No. I’m not ready for the comedown. I close my eyes and will it to go away.
“She’s baked.” Noah’s not baked and part of me resents him for it. He quit pot and being carefree when he graduated, and he’s taking Isaiah with him. “We waited too long.”
“No, it’s perfect.” Isaiah moves and places my head on something soft and fluffy. He gave me a pillow. Isaiah always takes care of me.
“Beth?” His warm breath drifts near my ear.
“Yes.” It’s a groggy whisper.
“Move in with us.”
Last spring, Noah graduated from high school and the foster system. He’s moving out and Isaiah’s going with him, even though Isaiah can’t officially leave foster care until he graduates next year and turns eighteen. My aunt doesn’t care where Isaiah lives as long as she keeps receiving the checks from the state.
I try to shake my head no, but it doesn’t work too well in sand.
“The two of us talked and you can have a bedroom and we’ll share the other one.”
They’ve been at this for weeks, trying to convince me to leave with them. But ha! Even stoned I can foil their plans. I flutter my eyes open. “Won’t work. You need privacy for sex.”
Noah chuckles. “We have a couch.”
“I’m still in high school.”
“So’s Isaiah. In case you didn’t notice, you’re both seniors this year.”
Smart-ass. I glare at Noah. He merely sips his beer.
Isaiah continues, “How else are you going to get to school? You gonna ride the bus?”
Hell no. “You’re going to get your sorry ass up early to pick me up.”
“You know I will,” he murmurs, and I find a hint of my bliss again.
“Why won’t you move in with us?” Noah asks.
His direct question sobers me up. Because, I scream in my mind. I flip onto my side and curl into a ball. Seconds later something soft covers my body. The blanket tucked right underneath my chin.
“Now, she’s done,” says Isaiah.
* * *
My ass vibrates. I stretch before reaching into my back pocket for my cell.
For a second, I wonder if pretty boy from Taco Bell somehow managed to score my number. I dreamed of him—Taco Bell Boy. He stood close to me, looking all arrogant and gorgeous with his mop of sandy-blond hair and light brown eyes. This time he wasn’t trying to play me by getting my number. He was smiling at me like I actually mattered.
As I said—just a dream.
The image fades when I check the time and the caller ID on my cell: 3:00 a.m. and The Last Stop bar. Fuck. Wishing I never sobered up, I accept the call. “Hold on.”
Isaiah’s asleep beside me, his arm haphazardly thrown over my stomach. Gently lifting it, I squeeze out from underneath. Noah’s passed out on the couch, with his girlfriend, Echo, pulled tight against him. Shit, when did she get back in town?
Quietly, I climb the stairs, enter the kitchen, and shut the door to the basement. “Yeah.”
“Your mother’s causing problems again,” says a pissed-off male voice. Unfortunately, I know this voice: Denny. Bartender/owner of The Last Stop.
“Have you cut her off?”
“I can’t stop guys from buying her drinks. Look, kid, you pay me to call you before I call the police or bounce her out to the curb. You’ve got fifteen minutes to drag her ass out.”
He hangs up. Denny really needs to work on his conversational skills.
I walk the two blocks to the strip mall, which boasts all the conveniences white trash can desire: a Laundromat, Dollar Store, liquor store, piss-ass market that accepts WIC and food stamps and sells stale bread and week-old meat, cigarette store, pawn shop, and biker bar. Oh, and a dilapidated lawyer’s office in case you get caught shoplifting or holding up any of the above.
The other stores closed hours ago, placing the bars over their windows. Groups of men and women huddle around the scores of motorcycles that fill the parking lot. The stale stench of cigarettes and the sweet scent of cloves and pot mingle together in the hot summer air.
Denny and I both know he won’t call the cops, but I can’t risk it. Mom’s been arrested twice and is on probation. And even if he doesn’t call the cops, he’ll kick her out. A burst of male laughter reminds me why that’s not a good thing. It’s not happy laughter or joyous or even sane. It’s mean, has an edge, and craves someone’s pain.
Mom thrives on sick men. I don’t get it. Don’t have to. I just clean up the mess.
The dull bulbs hanging over the pool tables, the running red-neon lights over the bar, and the two televisions hanging on the wall create the bar’s only light. The sign on the door states two things: no one under the age of twenty-one and no gang colors. Even in the dimness, I can see neither rule applies. Most of the men wear jackets with their motorcycle gang emblem clearly in sight, and half the girls hanging on those men are underage.
I push between two men to where Denny serves drinks at the bar. “Where is she?”
Denny, in his typical red flannel, has his back to me and pours vodka into shot glasses. He won’t talk and pour at the same time—at least to me.
I force my body to stay stoically still when a hand squeezes my ass and a guy reeking with BO leans into me. “Wanna drink?”
“Fuck off, dickhead.”
He laughs and squeezes again. I focus on the rainbow of liquor bottles lined up behind the bar, pretending I’m someplace else. Someone else. “Hand off my ass or I’ll rip off your balls.”
Denny blocks my view of the bottles and slides a beer to the guy seconds away from losing his manhood. “Jailbait.”
Dickhead wanders from the bar as Denny nods toward the back. “Where she’s always at.”
“Thanks.”
I draw stares and snickers as I walk past. Most of the laughter belongs to regulars. They know why I’m here. I see the judgment in their eyes. The amusement. The pity. Damn hypocrites.
I walk with my head high, shoulders squared. I’m better than them. No matter the whispers and taunts they throw out. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
Most everyone in the back room hovers over a poker game near the front, leaving the rest of the room empty. The door to the alley hangs wide-open. I can see Mom’s apartment complex and her front door from here. Convenient.
Mom sits at a small round table in the corner. Two bottles of whiskey and a shot glass sit beside her. She rubs her cheek, then pulls her hand away. Inside of me, anger erupts.
He hit her. Again. Her cheek is red. Blotchy. The skin underneath the eye already swelling. This is the reason why I can’t move in with Noah and Isaiah. The reason I can’t leave. I need to be two blocks from Mom.
“Elisabeth.” Mom slurs the s and drunkenly waves me over. She picks up a whiskey bottle and tips it over the general area of the shot glass, but nothing comes out. Which is good because she’d miss the glass by an inch.
I go to her, take the bottle, and set it on the table beside us. “It’s empty.”
“Oh.” She blinks her hollow blue eyes. “Be a good girl and go get me another.”
“I’m seventeen.”
“Then get you something too.”
“Let’s go, Mom.”
Mom smoothes her blond hair with a shaky hand and glances around as if she just woke from a dream. “He hit me.”
“I know.”
“I hit him back.”
Don’t doubt she hit him first. “We’ve gotta go.”
“I don’t blame you.”
That statement hits me in ways a man can’t. I release a long breath and search for a way to ease the sting of her words, but I fail. I pick up the other bottle, grateful for the pitiful amount remaining, pour a shot, and swig it down. Then pour another, pushing it toward her. “Yes, you do.”
Mom stares at the drink before letting her middle-aged fingers trace the rim of the shot glass. Her nails are bitten to the quick. The cuticles grown over. The skin surrounding the nails is dry and cracked. I wonder if my mom was ever pretty.
She throws her head back as she drinks. “You’re right. I do. Your father would never have left if it wasn’t for you.”
“I know.” The burn from the whiskey suppresses the pain of the memory. “Let’s go.”
“He loved me.”
“I know.”
“What you did…it forced him to leave.”
“I know.”
“You ruined my life.”
“I know.”
She begins to cry. It’s the drunk cry. The type where it all comes out—the tears, the snot, the spit, the horrible truth you should never tell another soul. “I hate you.”
I flinch. Swallow. And remind myself to inhale. “I know.”
Mom grabs my hand. I don’t pull away. I don’t grab her in return. I let her do what she must. We’ve been down this road several times.
“I’m sorry, baby.” Mom wipes her nose with the bare skin of her forearm. “I didn’t mean it. I love you. You know I do. Don’t leave me alone. Okay?”
“Okay.” What else can I say? She’s my mom. My mom.
Her fingers draw circles on the back of my hand and she refuses eye contact. “Stay with me tonight?”
This is where Isaiah drew the line. Actually, he drew the line further back, forcing me to promise I’d stay away from her altogether after her boyfriend beat the shit out of me. I’ve kind of kept the promise by moving in with my aunt. But someone has to take care of my mom—make sure she eats, has food, pays her bills. It is, after all, my fault Dad left. “Let’s get you home.”
Mom smiles, not noticing I haven’t answered. Sometimes, at night, I dream of her smiling. She was happy when Dad lived with us. Then I ruined her happiness.
Her knees wobble when she stands, but Mom can walk. It’s a good night.
“Where are you going?” I ask when she steps in the direction of the bar.
“To pay my tab.”
Impressive. She has money. “I’ll do it. Stay right here and I’ll walk you home.”
Instead of handing me cash, Mom leans against the back door. Great. Now I’m left with the tab. At least Taco Bell Boy bought me food and I have something to give Denny.
I push people in my quest to reach the bar, and Denny grimaces when he spots me. “Get her out, kid.”
“She’s out. What’s her tab?”
“Already paid.”
Ice runs in my veins. “When?”
“Just now.”
No. “By who?”
He won’t meet my eyes. “Who do you think?”
Shit. I’m falling over myself, stumbling over people, yanking them out of my way. He hit her once. He’ll do it again. I run full force out the back door into the alley and see nothing. Nothing in the dark shadows. Nothing in the streetlights. Crickets chirp in surround sound. “Mom?”
Glass breaks. Glass breaks again. Horrible shrieks echo from the front of Mom’s apartment complex. God, he’s killing her. I know it.
My heart pounds against my rib cage, making it difficult to breathe. Everything shakes—my hands, my legs. The vision of what I’ll see when I reach the parking lot eats at my soul: Mom in a bloody pulp and her asshole boyfriend standing over her. Tears burn my eyes and I trip as I round the corner of the building, scraping my palms on the blacktop. I don’t care. I need to find her. My mom…
My mom swings a baseball bat and shatters the back window of a shitty El Camino.
“What…what are you doing?” And where did she score a baseball bat?
“He.” She swings the bat and breaks more glass. “Cheated.”
I blink, unsure if I want to hug her or kill her. “Then break up with him.”
“You crazy ass bitch!” From the gap between the two apartment buildings, Mom’s boyfriend flies toward her and smacks her face with an open palm. The slap of his hand across her cheek vibrates against my skin. The baseball bat falls from her hands and bounces three times, tip to bottom, against the blacktop. Each hollow crack of the wood heightens my senses. It settles on the ground and rolls toward my feet.
He yells at her. All curses, but his words blend into a buzzing noise in my head. He hit me last year. He hits Mom. He won’t hit either one of us again.
He raises his hand. Mom throws out her arms to protect her face as she kneels in front of him. I grab the bat. Take two steps. Swing it behind my shoulder and…
“Police! Drop the bat! Get on the ground!” Three uniformed officers surround us. Damn. My heart pounds hard against my chest. I should have thought of this, but I didn’t, and the mistake will cost me. The cops patrol the complex regularly.
The asshole points at me. “She did it. That crazy ass girl took out my car. Her mom and I, we tried to stop it, but then she went nuts!”
“Drop the bat! Hands on your head.”
Dazed from his blatant lie, I forgot I still held it. The wooden grip feels rough against my hands. I drop it and listen to the same hollow thumping as it once again bounces on the ground. Placing my hands behind my head, I stare down at my mom. Waiting. Waiting for her to explain. Waiting for her to defend us.
Mom stays on her knees in front of the asshole. She subtly shakes her head and mouths the word please to me.
Please? Please what? I widen my eyes, begging for her to explain.
She mouths one more word: probation.
An officer kicks the bat from us and pats me down. “What happened?”
“I did it,” I tell him. “I destroyed the car.”