Fade In:
SLIP INTO DANIEL’S SKIN
You write the poem in your head:
She is a rainbow.
A whisper of prismatic light
promising the broken storm
has run its course.
Auspicious.
She is an early blush
of violets against a lingering
patch of shadowed snow.
Unexpected.
She is a dance of summer
leaves in a tepid rush
of sunset breeze.
Delicious.
She is a masterpiece,
sculpted by angels.
Grace.
You are a poet, and Grace is poetry in exquisite motion. It seems impossible that you belong to her. You think of it that way, not that she, instead, is yours. Possessing her would be wrong, like caging a butterfly.
You want to be hers. Need to be hers. She is the one real hint of love you’ve experienced since your mami was rounded up, locked up, and ultimately sent back to Honduras, eight years ago.
All you have of your mother now are a few photographs and letters that have come, along with the years, farther and farther apart. You can barely recall her face. But, oh, how you remember those afternoons, tarrying in the kitchen where she bustled to and fro, humming as she prepared baleadas with homemade tortillas or sopa de frijoles—spicy delicious black bean soup. Your mouth waters suddenly. And so do your eyes.
As always, the memory of your mami throws you off balance, and to right yourself again, you coax Grace deeper into the fold of your arms. She tilts her cheek against your chest, and you rest your chin atop the crown of her head. “I love you, birthday girl.”
Her mouth tips upward, lips tracing the stubble along your jaw, a surprisingly sensuous gesture. “I double-heart you, too. But you need a shave.”
That draws a grin. “You telling me you’re really not into the rugged he-man type?”
More like the couch-surfing type, where razors can be hard to come by. This, of course, she’s aware of. What she isn’t privy to is the truth of why.
“You could borrow my stepdad’s shaver. Not like he’d know.”
Her folks are on a ski trip, despite it being her eighteenth birthday. It’s the Presidents’ Day long weekend, giving them two whole days on the slopes. Grace was invited along, but she had other plans. Plans that include you. You’re a lucky guy.
“You’ve already fed me, let me wash my clothes and use your shower. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
She pouts, feigning hurt. “And here I thought that’s exactly what you had in mind.” Now she smiles. “Shave. Then we can go.”
You feel strange in her parents’ bedroom, which seems ridiculously large, compared to most of the dives you’ve been crashing in. It takes a half-dozen strides to cross the room to the master bath, which is jaw-dropping. On one long wall a huge vanity sports double sinks with copper waterfall faucets. The two sides have obvious gender leans. On the right, a row of perfumed lotions flanks a lighted makeup mirror. On the left are a nailbrush, a bottle of Brut cologne, and an electric razor on a stand.
You pick up the Norelco, examine the rotating heads, which appear spotless. When your eyes draw even with those belonging to the guy in the mirror, it’s a stranger staring back at you. Dark disks underline your eyes and your perceived stubble approaches beard length. Grace was right. You can definitely use a shave. Also an entire night or two in a decent bed, which just so happens to be in the weekend’s plans. And then there are smaller details.
Funny, how when all you believe you’re in need of is a place to sleep and a toilet that flushes you lose track of the minutiae—details like chin debris or fingernails that could really use clipping.
Thank God you can mostly stay clean using the locker room showers at school. Homeless or not, you’re determined not only to graduate, but to maintain a GPA that will net a scholarship to a decent college. You will be somebody the world must reckon with.
Meanwhile, to keep your beautiful Grace happy, you power on the shaver, lift it to your face, run it purposefully over your upper lip and the hollows of your cheeks.
Splinters of hair fall into the sink, and as the contours of your face reappear, it’s no longer a stranger you see in the mirror. It’s an apparition. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?” Grace wanders in, checking on your progress.
“I look like my dad.” Except for your complexion, which is two shades darker. But, comparing features, the kinship is obvious.
when he died,
left you to the wolves.
“Does that surprise you?” She nudges against you from behind, circles your waist with slender arms, peeks around you to ascertain what you’ve found in the mirror.
“Not sure why, but it does.” You wish it was a good surprise, but it makes you heartsick and hungry for belonging. If it wasn’t for Grace . . . You tap the shaver against the sink, dislodging fibers of skin and whisker, chase the residue down the drain with hot water. “There. Is that better?”
You turn and Grace lifts one hand to explore the newly shorn landscape. Her index finger circles your lips and you suck it into your mouth. “Tastes like chicken,” you mutter around it.
“You like chicken, don’t you?”
“Love it. And you.”
“And I adore you, Daniel.”
Now your lips meet, and the kiss transports you into the realm of serious heat almost immediately. Lord, this girl is everything. If you didn’t have somewhere to be . . .
But you do. Pressed together, heartbeat to heartbeat, your bodies insist you shouldn’t stop, and you’d prefer to listen to the demand. Grace, however, takes a step back. “Later, okay?” Her voice is husky. “I told Cami we’d meet them at eight.”
“Okay,” you agree reluctantly. You’d never push her beyond her self-imposed limits. Luckily, she tends toward generosity, not to mention curiosity, so patience comes relatively easily. Anyway, you’ll have three nights in her bed. That’s a whole lot of heaven.
It’s a warmish evening for February in Tucson, maybe fifty-five degrees, no jacket required when you step outside. As you start toward Grace’s car, you scan your surroundings, as you’ve trained yourself to do ever since you got jumped. A glint of metal catches your eye. There, lurking beneath the streetlight. Good thing you were diligent tonight.
“Look, but don’t be obvious,” you say, without pointing or otherwise giving away that you know you’re being observed. “That truck across the street. It’s familiar, isn’t it?”
Grace glances in the general direction of Lolita, leering against the curb. “Silas. Jesus. Is he watching me?”
“I’d say that’s obvious.” A combination of anger and anxiety prickles. You can’t be certain what’s on Silas’s mind, but it can’t be anything good. The guy is a conniving dick, not to mention a skinhead.
You know because not long after you chose life on the street seven months ago the dude teamed up with your half brother, Tim, who’s also immersed in white supremacist bullshit. The two beat you like you see in movies, coldcocking you till you went down, then kicking you into oblivion. You swam back up into consciousness in a bleach-smelling hospital bed, which proved fortuitous for a couple of reasons.
One, when you healed up, you found a job working in the hospital cafeteria, even though you haven’t earned a diploma yet. The nurses all put in a collective good word. And, two, that’s how you and Grace got together. She’d witnessed Silas and Tim’s vicious assault, and it was the last straw.
Grace brought you flowers, and you ended up talking for hours. You confided much, discovered many things in common, including the pain of losing a father without warning—yours to a sudden heart attack, Grace’s in a road rage incident, the same one that left her best friend with a head trauma resulting in epileptic seizures.
But Silas didn’t know any of that. He was lying low, expecting the cops to come knocking and bring him in for questioning on an assault-and-battery allegation. You never even pressed charges, though, afraid of retaliation. By Silas.
By Tim. Most of all, by Shailene, who has both the will and financial resources to bury you in a heaping pile of lies.
Fear and you are not strangers. You’ve been semi-constant companions for as long as you can recall. But you’d believed you’d put some distance between the two of you ever since you ran away from home and Shailene’s fury. Grace knows some of that tale, but there are parts you can barely confess to yourself.
Like the fact that once your dad was gone, Shailene’s resentment of your very existence blossomed into out-and-out wrath. The few times she actually talked to you, contempt branded her words. She made you eat in the kitchen, rather than joining Tim and her at the table. And often she locked you in your second-floor bedroom for hours at a time. More than once you were forced to relieve yourself out the window.
With no money of your own, and no place to go, you put up with her mistreatment for as long as you could, but eventually decided life on the streets would be better than living like an indentured servant. You were seventeen when you finally escaped out the very same window you used to piss from. As far as you’ve been able to tell, Shailene was happy to enough to see you go.
The only time you saw Tim after that was when he and his racist buddy pulped you, so it’s more than a little disconcerting to discover Silas parked across the street.
“I had no idea he knew about us,” you tell Grace. You and she go to different schools, so it’s not like you walk around campus together.
“Pretty sure he didn’t, at least until now. He would’ve said something. Maybe I should go say something to him!”
Encourage her to confront him.
Think of the fun
we could have.
She takes a step in that direction, but you stop her with a tentative hand. “Stalkers thrive on attention. Don’t let him ruin your day.”
Grace chooses to avoid confrontation, but is obvious as she removes her phone from her purse and snaps a pic of Lolita, parked in front of her neighbor’s house. The gesture encourages the ignition of a 302 engine and the swift departure of a ’72 Ford pickup ahead of your own exodus, something you’re extremely grateful for. It sucks being a wuss, but it’s preferable to a hospital stay. You hope Grace sees things the same way.
It’s her car, but she lets you drive, and you’re glad your father had the chance to teach you before he died. If only you could afford a vehicle of your own! The insurance alone would kill one of your paychecks, which are reserved for food and your phone, neither of which you can do without. So for now you’ll make do with public transportation. And Grace.
You drive cautiously, but then, caution is your middle name. It’s Friday night kicking off a long weekend and Tucson is ready to party. Traffic snarls the streets, and people crowd the sidewalks. “Looks like the whole city has somewhere to go tonight.”
Grace nods. “Makes me a little nervous. You never know who might get pissed over nothing and . . .”
The rest vanishes, unvoiced. But you know she’d finish with . . . pull a gun and shoot. “Where did it happen?” The words slip out, unbidden. You’ve only talked about her father’s death in general terms, more detailed memory difficult for her to resurrect. “I mean, if you want to tell me about it. You don’t—”
“It’s okay. My shrink says it’s good to talk about it. You should know anyway. Dad . . .” She chokes on the word, but continues, “He’d just picked Noelle and me up from the mall. We’d been Christmas shopping and had our picture taken with Santa . . .” She pauses again to collect herself.
“Noelle and I were in the backseat, laughing about that silly pic. It fell onto the floor and Noelle undid her seat belt so she could retrieve it. I remember that clearly, but then things get sketchy. Dad yelled and hit the brakes hard. I didn’t notice the guy behind us swerve beside us. Didn’t see the gun. But I’ll never forget the sound of bullets ripping through glass, the squeal of metal as we crashed. Blood sprayed everywhere, and bits of bone and flesh and hair. It was . . .”
It sounds like a scene from a horror movie, only not scripted.
Horror flicks are the best.
Smash ’em. Slash ’em.
Revel in the blood.
“I’m sorry, Grace, really I am. You okay?”
“Fine,” she snaps. “But let me just tell you this. That guy was high when he went off, and he had a long history of domestic violence. He should never in a million years have had a gun. But Arizona doesn’t really care. Even someone like him can legally own a gun, as long as he’s not on probation. And he can carry it without a license. Can you believe it?”
You can. You’ve researched Arizona gun laws, in fact. But Grace doesn’t have to know about that, and shouldn’t. Nor should she know that you have had access to a very large collection of firearms.
It only takes one.
Fade Out