Stick (30 page)

Okay. We'll come.

Sticker?

What?

I don't think you should bring Dahlia there.

Why?

Just don't. Please?

Why?

See if you could maybe bring me twenty dollars.

*   *   *

I guess Bosten ran out of dimes.
That was the last thing I heard my brother say.

And I called his name three or four times into the dead mouthpiece, but there was nothing on the phone.

When I looked out across the living room, I saw that Dahlia and Evan and Kim were just standing there, outside the door, in the sand of the front yard, like they had to have permission from me to get close to what was happening.

I sat down at the table, holding my chin in my hands, staring at the phone.

I could hear Aunt Dahlia telling Kim and Evan that it was all right for them to come inside, even if they were wet and sandy, but Evan kept saying, “That's okay, we can wait out here.”

She picked up the phone, held it to her ear, then hung it up.

“What did he    say?”

I tried to think.

It was like I couldn't remember what he said.

It was as though everything had been completely pulled apart again.

I swallowed. I was suddenly aware that I was sitting in Aunt Dahlia's kitchen, wearing my wetsuit, dripping sand and seawater everywhere. “He's okay.”

“He wouldn't say     where he was. He asked if you made it here, and then he told me he needed to talk to you. That was it.”

“He ran out of money for the phone.”

“He'll      call back, baby.”

Aunt Dahlia rubbed my neck. I could feel how my wet hair curled over her hand when she did it.

I looked back at Evan and Kim, then got up and went into my room to grab some dry clothes that I wadded up and carried toward the front door.

“I'm going to help my friends take care of the boards and stuff,” I said. “I'll be back for dinner.”

And then I left.

*   *   *

Evan exhaled thin clouds
of pot smoke with every word. “Dude.   Just ask her. You can't         steal your aunt's car.”

I steal cars.

*   *   *

I changed into my clothes
at the twins' house, and the three of us sat out in the sand, sheltered from the afternoon wind by the enormous boulders piled there to create the jetty.

“I don't know what to do. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but my brother has to have a reason why he doesn't want her to come.”

Kim sat so close to me that our knees touched. “What did he      sound like on                     the phone?”

“To be honest, it was all kind of a blur. I was so choked up just knowing he was alive. I can't even tell you how scared I've been that something horrible happened to him.”

Evan sucked at the last bit of his joint, and threw the soggy end at the rocks. “Do you want        me to go with you?”

I shook my head. “Bosten doesn't want anyone there.”

Kim put her hand on my leg. Our eyes met, and I knew we were going to kiss again; and it was going to be that day, too. And I hated myself and felt guilty, like I was letting down my brother, because at times she made it impossible to think about anything else except the taste of her mouth.

But everything was so different now.

My mouth watered.

She said, “You have to be        fair to your brother, and you have to be fair to your aunt. They both      love you.”

I swallowed.

*   *   *

She followed me out
when I went home for dinner. I knew she would, and we hid behind the Corner Store, between two trash cans, for at least fifteen minutes, kissing with our tongues all over in each other's mouths.

She whispered, “I think you're brave.”

I steal cars.

I pushed against her. I was out of breath, and Kim even put her hand down and rubbed between my legs. Nobody ever touched me like that before. I slid my fingers up inside her sweatshirt and felt her breasts. They were cold and hard.

Then I pushed away from her.

“I need to stop this.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm stupid.”

“What      are you talking about?”

“Fuck!”

I turned away and hurried down the street toward Aunt Dahlia's.

I didn't turn around once to look at Kim. I didn't want her to see how stupid I was.

Because I suddenly began thinking about Emily, about Bosten. And Mom and Dad. And I felt horrible and dirty.

I am ugly.

*   *   *

I couldn't look Aunt Dahlia
straight in the face after that. I felt like I was stealing something from everyone I cared about, and I couldn't stand myself for it. I decided to tell the truth.

“I'm sorry, Dahlia.”

“What for?”

“For not telling you the truth.”

“Oh.”

She put down her fork. She'd made spaghetti for dinner. Mom never cooked spaghetti at home. Aunt Dahlia was a good cook. Everything she made tasted perfect.

“Bosten wants me to come see him. He's going to meet me tomorrow at a place in Los Angeles called Angel Street. It's where kids who run away from home go. But he told me to come by myself. He's scared about something.”

Aunt Dahlia waited a long time. Then she said, “You're not     going to leave me, are you?”

“I would never do that.”

“Well.”

“I can drive.”

“You told me that once.”

“I'm big enough.”

“You're bigger than me by a good bit.”

“I promise I will come home.”

“I'll call the school             in the morning. Tell them you're       staying    home,       sick.”

“Thank you.”

“You better get that boy         to come home now, too.”

That was the thing that kept bothering me. I didn't exactly know if Bosten wanted to come home again.

“I'll try.”

*   *   *

The morning came gray and heavy,
like the Strand was wrapped up in a damp wool coat.

I didn't sleep much during the night. I don't think Aunt Dahlia did, either, because her house was never so deathly quiet in all the time I'd been there as it was when we sat together and ate our breakfast of scrambled eggs.

“If you tell me no, I won't go.”

“I'm not going to do that.”

She gave me a map of Southern California.

It looked like one of those painted Visible Man models, with red and blue blood vessels running all over the surface.

The night before, we studied a course for me to drive from the beach in Oxnard to the center of Los Angeles, and I memorized it as much as I could, but my brain was never good for stuff like that.

Of course I was scared.

And she gave me thirty-five dollars, too, which I folded inside Bosten's wallet. I didn't even ask for it, but somehow, Dahlia knew we might need the money.

I guess she did her own math.

I waited inside until all the kids from the Strand had gone past the house and caught their school bus. I saw Evan and Kim leaving, too. I know Aunt Dahlia wondered why I wasn't excited about talking to them, but I just couldn't make myself face either one of them on that morning.

*   *   *

I was convinced
something terrible would happen to me when I left. It was more certain than the feeling of danger I had when I hid inside that floating room and counted off five gunshots.

Ghosts of their noise still rang, at times, inside my head.

Aunt Dahlia squeezed me so tight before I left. Secretly, I hoped she wouldn't let go, or that she'd change her mind and forbid me to do something as foolish and reckless as I was going to do. But I was lying to myself if I thought even for a moment that she'd ever be like that.

So I got in the car and drove away up Ocean Avenue.

Just like that.

*   *   *

By noon I was in Los Angeles.
I was completely lost, too.

I realized that maps can't be read while you're driving, and the one Aunt Dahlia had given me didn't show anything about the one-way streets that trapped me, herding me along in the wrong direction, floating on a nonstop river of cars carrying people who appeared to be going exactly where they wanted to go.

Finally, frustrated that I was aimlessly going to be swept along until I ran out of gas, I pulled the Dodge into a flat, open parking lot that was surrounded in chain-link fencing. I had to pay a man three dollars to leave Aunt Dahlia's car there, but I was glad to be on my feet and out of the pulsing traffic.

I didn't wear the cap Emily gave me anymore. My hair had grown long enough that people didn't immediately zero in on that side of my head. They still noticed, though. When you're born like me, that telltale twitch of the head, the widening of the eyes you see from strangers, become almost like predatory warning signals for a game animal. Anyway, I saw that same startled look when I paid the parking lot owner with a five and waited as he stumbled through counting off my two dollars in change.

I guess it's hard to do math when you're looking at someone like me.

He was short and thick, with very stubby fingers and a bristling gray mustache that rivaled the monstrousness of the one on the cop who took me out of bed in my underwear.

I had torn off the corner of Aunt Dahlia's map and held it in my hand, hoping he'd be able to decode it for me. On the page was a magnified street view of downtown L.A.

“I'm kind of lost,” I said.

The man handed me my change.

He had a strong accent, but I had no idea where he could have been from. He waved away the torn map corner like it smelled bad. “This   is Flower.”

He pointed, and my eyes followed his plump finger. “There      Wilshire.”

I liked the way he said
Wilshire
. It sounded like
Weelshider
.

I looked at the map. I saw the corner of Wilshire and Flower on it.

“Which way to Broadway?”

He swung his arm toward the left. “Broadway. Down there.             Maybe                six block.”

“Oh. Uh, thank you.”

I started off toward the street, spinning the map in my hand so it was going the same way as I was.

“Hey.     Kid.”

I stopped and turned around. The man came and stood directly in front of me, like he thought I couldn't hear.

Or something.

I'd seen that enough times to know what he was thinking.

“I        lock the gate      ten pee-em. Ten pee-em      is closed.”

He clapped the edge of one hand into his palm.

Nice try at sign language.

I nodded and made the same gesture back at the parking lot man. “Okay. Ten p.m.”

He nodded.

*   *   *

Downtown Los Angeles reeked
of piss, vomit, and smoke. I imagined hell wouldn't smell too much different. It was like the entire city was coated with the same filmy goo you try not to step in around the floor of a boys' urinal. The soles of my shoes stuck to the sidewalks. I thought they would probably stick to the ground in hell, too.

The area that lined Broadway was wild and noisy. The buildings there were so tall and close, the streets only got moments of sunlight, even though the sky had totally cleared since the morning. And all along the sidewalks were rows of ground-floor shops that sold stuff I never thought people would want to buy, or at least not shop for in the combinations I saw displayed in storefronts and windows.

One of the markets had a perfectly arranged pyramid of limes that was stacked next to a table with plastic-sealed packages of socks and underwear, all lined up neatly beneath a shelf of transistor radios and batteries.

Most of the shops had signs written in Spanish.

I think a lot of the people I passed didn't even speak English at all.

I had been to Seattle a few times, and I always thought it was a big city. But I never imagined any place could be as intimidating, or buzz with such a constant vibration—movement, sound, smell, light, and shadow—as Los Angeles.

And I must have looked dumb, walking, spinning my head around to see everything as I moved through the crowds of people who shopped and mingled and bumped into one another everywhere on the street.

When I turned the corner onto Broadway, I stepped straight into the path of a little boy who was running down the sidewalk away from his mother.

His forehead hit me square in the balls.

I moaned and clutched my stomach.

I wondered why getting hit in the balls always felt like having your liver and intestines sucked out your navel through a straw.

The boy rolled away from me without breaking stride. He kept running as though nothing happened. His mother, carrying a sleeping infant in her arms, ignored me and brushed past, floating along after the kid with the dangerous head.

I just stood there and waited for the pain to start receding and my guts to migrate back toward their starting points.

This was the corner of Broadway and Sixth.

And I didn't see any place called Angel Street. But there was so much to look at, so many details, all compressed together like some kind of wild painting.

I moved up along Broadway.

In front of one of the stores, a man sat behind a folding card table. He rattled off word after word in Spanish to a small crowd that had gathered around him. A woman at the edge of his table clutched a wad of wrinkled dollar bills in her hand, while the man shuffled walnut shells in overlapping circles in front of her. He lifted one of the shells and dropped a small yellow bead beneath it. Then he went on, talking and talking, his voice like a song, or a poem, making a dance of sounds in my head.