Fade In:
SLIP BACK INTO ASHLYN’S SKIN
No one’s ever accused you of having an overabundance of patience, and this evening seems determined to test it. First, after spending the day with Silas, trolling for wetbacks, you stop by his father’s place. When you arrive, an actual Mexican warmly greets you, but she calls you by the wrong name.
What’s awful about that, Ashlyn,
is that it outs your boyfriend.
His heart belongs to another girl.
You’re nothing but a piece of tail.
One night of sex, even after a few weeks of demonstrated interest on Silas’s part, doesn’t exactly mean a dedicated relationship has formed. So why do you consider him worth hanging on to, and maybe even fighting to keep, especially after his admission that he has forgiven Grace for breaking up with him? Forgiven.
He’s still talking about her now, every word weighted with undeniable affection, as you wait for Zia to call you to the table. “So, yeah, I mean, watching her dad get blown away was really rough on her.”
“Hmm,” you muse. “I wouldn’t mind seeing my father get blown away.”
That shuts his mouth for several long seconds. “Do you mean that?”
Floppy lips sink ocean liners, you dunce. You’ve said far too much. Now you’ve got only a couple of moves. You can divert. Or explain. Silas is waiting.
“Actually, yes, I do. A firing squad would be too good for him, in fact. Way too quick.”
“Because he killed your mom.”
“Yeah.”
He starts to say something. Thinks better. But finally can’t stop himself. “How did it happen? I mean, will you tell me?”
A long sigh escapes your mouth. You haven’t talked about it in a long time and prefer to keep it bottled inside, so you offer the CliffsNotes version, omitting all but the basic details. Any outside observer might comment on your obviously subdued affect and monotone recital of facts. Emotionless reporting, as if you weren’t really there. But you were.
He’s sitting beside you on the small sofa, and he slides an arm around your shoulder, draws you in. “Jeez, man, that totally sucks. I’m sorry.”
Auto-response: I’m sorry.
It pisses you off.
“Well, duh. I’m sorry because it hurt you, I guess.”
Sympathy isn’t something you asked for, and empathy is rare. Nonexistent in your life up to this point, in fact. The ice dam you’ve constructed around your heart softens just a little. “Thanks.” One hoarse utterance is all you’ve got.
He rewards it with a gentle kiss. Probably a pity kiss, but you like it anyway. It almost feels like he cares about you, and as you sink deeper into it, resentment at Grace fades.
“Oye, chicos. Ven a cenar.” Zia’s chirp from the kitchen interrupts the pleasant moment.
You feel warmed, thawed by spicy tacos or this sudden insane blast of attraction to a guy you barely know. Up until last night, you weren’t even sure you liked him. You definitely do, but you know that attachment to any living human being is simply the highway to heartbreak. Which is why for the past seven years you’ve avoided it.
“What did you do today?” asks Zia, who’s clearing the table so she can end the meal with tres leches cake, also her own concoction. “From scratch” at Aunt Lou’s means opening a can.
Silas doesn’t hesitate. “We put up Tim’s drone. It’s pretty cool.”
He and his dad do not exchange knowing glances, so you assume Mr. Wells is unaware of his son’s hunting proclivities. Which totally makes sense, considering the company.
“What did you see?” Zia looks at you, so you’re on.
“Oh, uh, lots of desert. Some rabbits and quail . . .” None of which sounds “pretty cool.” Quick. Make something up. “And . . . I probably shouldn’t admit this, but it happened to fly over a couple doing . . . you know . . .”
“Doesn’t surprise me,” says Mr. Wells. “We come across them all the time. It’s kind of fun to give ’em a scare.”
Silas is all in. “Scaring them with a badge is one thing. Imagine an eye-in-the-sky taking a low pass over!”
Everyone laughs. Score one for the well-seasoned liar.
After one of the most delicious desserts you’ve ever tasted, Mr. Wells asks, “Are you spending the night? We didn’t expect an extra guest, but we can work something out.”
“Didn’t plan on it,” answers Silas. “Ashlyn needs to get back before midnight.”
“But thank you for the invitation,” you add.
“Por supuesto,” says Zia. “Nuestra casa es su casa. Oh. ¿Hablas español? Do you speak Spanish?”
“No.” Nothing beyond “tacos,” “salsa,” and “tres leches,” which, as you learned tonight, means “three milks.”
“I said, of course. Our home is your home. And you are always welcome here.”
Her English is almost as good as her Spanish. She’s definitely been in this country for a while. Probably second generation, not that it’s any of your business. One thing’s for sure. It’s hard not to like her. How would she feel if she knew how Silas spends his Saturdays? How would his father feel?
Are you worried about other people’s feelings now?
Honestly, that has rarely been a concern, at least since your mom died. You chew on this notion for a long while on the way back to Tucson: very few people have ever cared about how you feel. Two, you reckon. And they’re both (cremated) ashes, blowing in the wind.
The thing about a girl like Grace, who admittedly lost her father in a terrible way, is she had support to help her deal with that. A solid mother. Friends. No doubt, a great deal of therapy.
You have nothing.
No one.
Yes, you had your grandmother for a while. She gave you a couple of short satisfied years, but those could not assuage the omnipresent ache of losing your mother. While you lived with her, you tried hard to fit in at school, make friends, excel in the classroom. But your past kept creeping up to bite your ass. In the books you loved and the gossip you hated, history cast a wide shadow.
The result, as hard as it is to admit it, is having lost faith in the concept of love. Some girls in your position might search for it in any person pretending to offer it, and do anything to keep the small semblance they found. You, on the other hand, have no desire to hunt for it because you know you’d just get burned if you did. And if it happened into your life by accident, accepting the truth of it would be almost impossible.
Two huge questions keep dangling in front of you, like proverbial carrots in front of the donkey. One: Do you want love? And two: Are you able to give it? Either you’re terrified of the emotion or you’re a sociopath.
Not such a bad thing to be.
Silas could also match the description. You don’t know him well enough yet to say for sure. A lot of people might believe just being involved with TradYouth qualifies a person as a psychiatric deviant. The jury’s still out on that.
“Nickel for your thoughts. I’d offer a quarter, but I dumped them all in the keg offering plate.”
“Probably not worth five cents, but I was thinking about love.”
“Oh. What about it?”
You veer into the realm of the possible. “It seems like your dad and Zia are in love.”
He tenses noticeably. “Yeah.”
“Does it bother you?”
His face puffs crimson, and blood visibly throbs in his temples, but his voice remains level. “It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Have you told him?”
“Sure. He’s still there. Not like my feelings matter. C’est la vie.”
“You know French?”
“Only as it applies to fries. Oh, I know another one. Chérie.”
He’s actually funny. More depth here than you expected. It’s too bad you can’t read him better. Other than the obvious, you can’t quite ferret out what he wants from you.
Nothing. Nothing but the obvious.
“You’re still in love with Grace.” The words shoot from your mouth, totally unintended.
“What? Wait? Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know. Just the way you talked about her, like you dream about her every night.”
One beat.
Two.
Three.
He’s aiming to lie to you.
“Listen, Ash . . . Hey, I like that. I’m going to call you Ash, okay?”
You want to tell him no damn way, that nicknames are plain damn lazy, but he doesn’t give you the chance.
“I fell in love with Grace just like you see in the movies: wrong guy connects with totally the wrong girl. It was cliff diving, a crazy huge rush that can’t be described unless you’ve been there, shooting speed or cocaine. Not that I’ve done those. I haven’t. Too easy to lose control.
“We aren’t the same kind of people. I still worry about her, but she’s out of my life. So, unlike the movies, there’s no happy ending for Grace and me.”
“No such thing as happy endings. Everyone winds up the same way.”
“Dead, you mean? Guess you’ve got a point. Which is why you should live in the moment, right?”
He’s angling for sex
before he takes you home.
Might as well indulge him, not to mention you. A need for physical union crackles inside. That, and a wicked desire to scrub Grace from his heart, make her not only inaccessible, but all the way gone. You don’t even know this girl, but there’s a good possibility that she could become an unpleasant obsession.
So when Silas pulls off the highway, you don’t tell him to turn around. And when he parks Lolita in a quiet, unlit patch of desert, you open the window to admit the song of the night and a shimmer of moonlight. He turns toward you, but before he can say a word, you yank off your T-shirt, unclasp your bra, the act a silent demand.
He takes it more as invitation, but that’s okay. Winning the game means things going your way. “Here or in back?” he asks.
“Not enough room in here for what I’ve got in mind.”
He moves swiftly, indulging your request, and to a soundtrack of crickets and distant coyote yips, you do your very best to eradicate Grace from the night’s memory.
Afterward, lying side by side on an old sleeping bag beneath a starscape, he says, “Girl, you are something.” He props himself up on one arm, leans over to kiss you.
It’s short, because you keep it that way. “We should probably go. Uncle Frank gets pissed when I’m home late.”
“What about your aunt?”
“She couldn’t care less. She hardly even knows I’m there, except when she has to feed me. Not that she does very often. The microwave is my personal chef. She’s going to hate it when I turn eighteen and that foster-care money dries up.”
As you straighten your clothes, you realize just how true those sentiments are. Better to be ignored than hyper-observed.
Uncle Frank, of course, is a different story. He watches you, though he’s not as yet tried to push things beyond the realm of visual stimulation. You let him have his jollies, at least when Aunt Lou isn’t around. Hey, what does it hurt if he watches you walk naked from the shower to your room, or sunbathe nude on the patio?
Should he ever try to push beyond your boundaries, you’ll have a choice. Allow it, because it accomplishes something you need. Or defend yourself. You’ve got the means and the knowledge to thwart physical assault. And goddamn if you don’t have the willpower, emphasis on the “power.”
Thinking about power, the rally comes to mind. “So what’s the plan for Monday, other than showing up?”
“It’s not just TradYouth. There will be other groups gathering, too. Once we’re all there—strength in numbers—we march.”
“Peacefully?”
Silas shrugs. “Who knows? It will be a pretty big crowd. Us, the pro-immigration people, and a whole lot of law enforcement. It’ll be tense. But we’re there to make a huge statement.”
“Which is?”
“That white America is taking this country back. We are telling the world in no uncertain terms that we’re sick of being pushed aside in favor of random ‘others.’ To help people remember that America was founded as a white Christian nation, and make them understand that we plan to keep it that way.”
His forcefulness makes you shiver. You break out in a rash of goose bumps. “I can’t wait.”
“You’re a strange girl, know that?”
“I’ve been called worse. Anyway, I kind of own ‘weird.’ ”
“Cool.” He pushes you down, slips off your shirt, and settles his bulk gently over you. “Let’s get weird.”
You worm out from underneath him, coax him onto his back.
Weird is okay.
As long as you stay on top.
Fade Out