What Remains of Me (16 page)

And she was right. Before Vee even started up the car, Kelly knew from the way the seat held her, that leather against the back of her neck and knees, so impossibly soft.
The things rich people have in their lives. The things they live with, every day.

Vee's arm brushed Kelly's knee as he placed the gun in the glove compartment and shut it. “This is gonna be fun,” he said. He flipped the air conditioner on and passed a joint around and when he started up the car, she felt happy, teary happy. Happy beyond words.

“Mariposa?” Bellamy said.

Vee nodded.

Kelly said, “Are you guys speaking Spanish?”

“It's where we're going.”

“Mariposa is a tiny little town,” Vee said. “It's way inland near Death Valley . . . I like to go there sometimes.”

“It's where his dad shot that movie,
Defiance,
” Bellamy said. “I think Vee likes going there because he feels like a little kid again, right?”

He shook his head. “I like going there,” he said, “because nobody else goes there.”

Kelly relaxed into the bucket seat's embrace. Hard to believe that someone with Vee's life would want to escape to a place where there
were no other people, or that someone with Bellamy's life would nod at him in such an understanding way, as though she had a life like Kelly's, one that it made sense to escape.

It made her think of something Catherine once said: “
Not everything happens for a reason. But the important things do.
” She couldn't remember exactly when Catherine had said it, but it had been during those last few months before she died. At the time, she'd had no idea what her sister was talking about.

Maybe Catherine was talking about this
, Kelly thought.
Maybe she meant meeting people like these.

THE RIDE TOOK A LITTLE OVER TWO HOURS. THEY LISTENED TO THE
radio—KROQ—until it started to crackle and fade, and then they spoke to each other in hushed library tones, all of them aware of the gun in the glove compartment, deferring to it as though it were another passenger.

“My dad owns this property,” Vee said as they drove through an open gate and down an unpaved road, dust clouds billowing around them. “He bought it when we shot the film and said he was going to build on it. But he's never done a thing with it. I think he forgot he bought it.”

“A whole tract of land?” Kelly said. It was a large tract too. Kelly felt like the road they were on stretched out at least a mile. “How could he forget that?”

Vee shrugged. “My dad forgets things pretty easily.”

“Your mom, for instance,” Bellamy said.

He nodded, but he didn't look at her.

The road turned into a driveway, and Vee stopped at the end of it. There was no house here—no structures. Just a large swath of red-brown dirt with a few palm trees growing out of it, some scraggly cac
tuses and a stream. The sun beat down on them as they got out of the Jaguar—a shock to the system after the air-conditioning.

“I'm going to go stretch my legs,” Bellamy said, and she took off, jogging toward the stream.

It was strange here in Mariposa. Vee had said it meant “butterfly” in Spanish and it really did feel like a cocoon—so weirdly quiet, the silence roaring in your ears. Kelly gazed at the red-tinged sand, the meager stream coursing along without a sound.

“There's fish in there,” said Vee. He'd been watching her.

He leaned back into the Jag, flipped open the glove compartment, and removed the gun. “Can you hold it a sec?” he said to Kelly. “Don't worry. It isn't loaded yet.”

Kelly exhaled. “Wish I knew that in the car.”

“Why?”

“Loaded guns scare me,” she said. “I was afraid you'd hit a bump and it would just . . . go off in there.”

Vee smiled. “It doesn't work that way.”

Kelly held out her hands. Vee placed the gun in them. The weapon was much heavier than it had looked. Warmed by the sun, it felt like an iron on Kelly's opened palms. She wanted to spread her hands out wider because she was scared she'd drop it.
Get control
. She wrapped her hands around the grip, avoiding the trigger at first. But then she pressed it. Couldn't help herself. Even though the gun wasn't loaded, pressing the trigger made her weak in the knees. Kelly pointed the barrel at the ground. The weight of it took her arms straight down and she felt stronger.

Slowly she raised it, aimed the barrel at the horizon, and stared down the length of her arms, the heavy metal thing an extension of her, power coursing out of it and back, into her hands, wrists, through the muscles in her outstretched, straining arms, into her heart.

Vee was standing close. She could feel his gaze on the side of her face, his breath tickling her ear as he spoke. “Who would you want to use it on?”

“Evan Mueller.”

“Who?”

“This jerk from my science class. He calls me names. He throws spitballs.”

Vee snorted. “Spitballs,” he said. “Waste of a bullet.”

“No, Vee. He's mean.”

“A loser who throws spitballs at girls isn't even worth thinking about. Tell him to go fuck himself. Save the bullet for someone who's
important
.”

“I can't . . . I can't just tell him to go fuck himself.”

“Why not?”

“He's popular. He has friends.”

“You have
better
friends.”

Kelly smiled. She never wanted to leave this spot. Never wanted to lower the gun, which was a new drug in a way, the best kind of drug, like cocaine only stronger. “I feel like a different person.”

“What kind of person?”

She turned to him. Looked straight into his beautiful, dangerous blue eyes and, for the first time, didn't blush. “Perfect.”

His cheeks flushed, the tables turned, Vee the one blushing. “What makes you think you aren't perfect already?”

For a few moments, the slice of air between their two faces seemed to hum. Kelly still staring into Vee's eyes, aware of her outstretched arms, the gun in her hands feeding her, making her strong.
Kiss him. Kiss him now or it will never happen . . .

Vee said, “Where did Bellamy go?”

Kelly's shoulders relaxed. That had been the last thing she'd expected him to say. She lowered the gun, the spell broken. Had it all been in her imagination? Had that hum been completely one-sided, Vee's flushed skin the result of desert heat? Kelly nearly asked—that was how close she still felt to him. But then he pointed to the stream, to Bellamy beside it, sitting on the dirt with her back to them. She looked small and fragile, curled up like a pill bug with her knees drawn up to her chin.

For a few seconds, Kelly was mad at Bellamy
. She's doing it on purpose. She wrecked the moment
,
just so she could be the center of attention
. But she felt guilty for the thought as soon as it formed and took it all back once they got closer. Kelly saw Bellamy swatting at her eyes.
Crying?

“What's wrong with her?” Kelly whispered.

“Who knows?”

“Did I say something I shouldn't have?”

He shook his head. “She always gets like this when we come here to Mariposa.”

“Like what?”

“Weird.”

She looked at him.

“Maybe she'll talk to you,” he said.

Kelly jogged up to Bellamy. She knelt down beside her and said her name. She put her hand on her shoulder, said her name again, but Bellamy wouldn't look at her. “Please tell me what's wrong.”

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I . . . I think I'm dehydrated or something.”

“Do you want to drink from the stream?”

She shook her head and took a deep, rattling breath.

“You sure you're all right?”

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and looked up at her. “I swear. I'm fine. I just . . . there's something about this place. The quiet, maybe. It gets to me.”

Kelly pretended not to notice the blotchy skin, the red eyes. “Okay,” she said. “You want me to leave you alone?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Kelly?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever wish you were a little kid again? Like . . . too little to understand how the world works?”

She turned to her, Bellamy's face fading into Catherine's face, Catherine's seven-year-old face, crying over Thumbelina. “All the time,” Kelly said.

“I think that's part of why I hate Shane so much. He climbs trees. He plays with toy soldiers. He trusts our parents. He doesn't get life at all.”

“You don't trust your parents?”

“I don't trust anybody, Kelly. Except you.”

A warm breeze brushed against them. Kelly glanced at Vee, leaning against his father's sapphire blue Jaguar—a silhouette in the distance.

Click.

Kelly turned back to Bellamy, the gun in her hands, barrel pointed at the stream. “Vee better have brought bullets,” she said.

Kelly nodded, marveling at Bellamy, the way she'd aimed and shot without hesitating, without asking first whether or not the gun had been loaded.

VEE LOADED THE GUN AS BELLAMY REAPPLIED HER MAKEUP, USING
the Jag's window as a mirror.

She spun around. “How do I look?” she asked, adjusting the straps on her bright yellow tank top, tucking a lock of raven hair behind an ear.

“Beautiful,” Kelly said. She meant it.

With a type of reverence, Vee placed the loaded gun on top of the car, backed away from it slowly. He turned to Bellamy. “You okay?”

“I'm always okay, Vee. You know that.”

“Good,” he said. He was leaning back into the Jag now, opening the glove compartment. “Because I've got a surprise.”

“Another surprise?”

“Yep.” He produced a Baggie and held it up, sunlight glinting off of it. Bellamy and Kelly moved closer. The Baggie contained three tiny white squares that looked like miniature postage stamps.

“Glory be,” said Bellamy.

Kelly said, “What are they?”

“Tabs,” Vee said.

“Huh?”

“Acid.”

Kelly took a few steps back, her heart fluttering. “Doesn't that last like twelve hours?”

“Give or take.”

There was a story going around—girl who went on an acid trip and never came back. Sixteen, and in a nursing home, shaking and drooling like a sick old woman. Probably wasn't true. None of these stories that went around were, but still. Still.
Where do the stories come from if they aren't at least a little bit true?
“We . . . uh . . . we have a loaded gun.”

“Oh don't be such a worrywart.” Bellamy grinned. “You've got to live life up to its bendy edge, press up against that edge, hard as you can.”

Kelly's heart dropped. “How . . . Where did you hear that?”

“What?”

“That,” Kelly said, breath catching, Catherine's voice in her mind saying those exact words. Catherine, who, during the final months of her life had said them so often they'd become part of her personality, Kelly never asking where those words had come from because at that point, Catherine probably wouldn't have answered anyway. “Where did you get that saying?”

She grinned. “It's a line from one of my dad's movies.”

Kelly shot a glance at Vee, who seemed immersed in the Baggie, the white squares inside. “Cool line,” she said.

Bellamy closed her eyes. “Live a little, Kelly,” she said in a soft, singsongy voice. “Press up against that bendy edge.” She opened her mouth, stuck her tongue out flat.

Kelly watched as Vee placed one of the white squares on her tongue, Bellamy smiling around it, teeth white as the square, her earlier tears gone, brushed away like dust.

“You won't feel it for a little while, but when you do,
whoa
.” He placed a tab on his own tongue and Kelly felt panicky, as though she was blocks away from the bus stop, watching a bus pull up, knowing it was the last one of the day and if she didn't run to catch it, if she didn't jump on now . . . Kelly closed her eyes, opened her mouth. “I'm ready,” she said.

Two 17-year-old girls and one boy, 16, were arrested at 10:00
P.M.
on April 14 and charged with drunk and disorderly conduct and destruction of public property. The three youths had been caught shooting up a Dumpster with a .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol outside the Mobil Station on Euclid. The three were released on $3,000 bail, posted by the boy's father, the legal owner of the gun.

                                                                                
Police Blotter

                                                                                
Mariposa News

                                                                                
April 15, 1980

S
ometime during the ride home, inanimate objects stopped breathing. Kelly couldn't say it out loud, not with her dad driving, air conditioner on high so he could stay awake. But she felt deeply relieved, scared as she had been for so many hours watching everything around her expand and pull back and puff out again—the wheels on the Jag, the haloed streetlamps, the holding cell bars, Bellamy's Louis Vuitton bag. From the time she'd peaked (that's what Vee had said. “
You're peaking.
”) it had been as though every still, dead thing in the world had come alive and gone after her, all of them breathing, watching, closing in . . .

The Dumpster had shivered and bled and the sound of the shot had shattered her ears, her shoulder sockets jamming, her whole body thrown back . . . Shooting a gun on acid. Who'd thought that would be a good idea? It had been awful, like living out a nightmare. “
Like Vietnam
,” Bellamy had said, cackling like a maniac. “
Like
The Deer Hunter . . .”

“Can you put on the radio?” Jimmy said. First time he'd spoken a word since he'd picked Kelly up at the Mariposa Sheriff's Department more than an hour ago, walking out
into the surprisingly cold night to his beat-up Buick Regal in the parking lot, Kelly trailing behind him, rubbing her arms to keep warm while trying to ignore the slithering and hissing of the white lines on the asphalt.

Kelly switched on the radio. Jimmy's car only had AM and it was turned to a country station. Kelly hated the song—some female singer whining about the days turning into years, her guitar making that awful country-guitar sound, like an old woman sighing. She started to switch the station—a survival move—but Jimmy held his hand up. “Leave it,” he said. “Please.”

She watched Jimmy's profile—the rugged face, still handsome despite all the wear and tear he'd put himself through, maybe even because of it. Ever since she'd moved in with him, she couldn't stop looking at her father—spying on him at odd moments when she didn't think he'd notice, searching hard for features similar to her own. In profile, he looked like a tough guy. A hero or a villain, depending on if he smiled. Then, of course, he'd turn and look at you with those sad, fried-egg eyes of his and he'd just be Jimmy again. Poor old Jimmy. Kelly looked nothing like him.

He mouthed the words with the singer, his eyes watering a little. Kelly couldn't tell whether it was the crappy song doing it to him or his constant physical pain or Kelly herself—the situation she'd put him in. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“Hey. Who am I to tell you what to do?” He said it very quietly.

Kelly stared out the window.

“What do you think the population of that Mariposa is? Twenty? Twenty-five?”

She smiled a little.

“The sheriff and the deputy were definitely related.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I thought so too.” It was a lie. The only time
she'd gotten a good look at the sheriff and the deputy, she had to turn away fast because they'd both grown fangs and pig snouts. But she wasn't going to say that to Jimmy.

“Coming down now?”

She nodded. “I'm really sorry.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I get it,” he said. “Guns are fun. My dad used to have this .22 caliber revolver. A Colt. We'd take it out to the desert, shoot cans . . .” His voice trailed off, the thread gone. “She kills me.”

“Who?”

He nodded at the radio. “Barbara Mandrell. That voice . . . Like she's telling you all her secrets.” He ran a hand across his face, brought it back to the wheel. “You don't have to worry,” he said. “I didn't tell your mom.”

“Okay.” Kelly turned to her window, pressed her forehead against the cool glass. In a weird way, she'd wished Jimmy had told Mom. Not so much about what she had done, but who she'd done it with: The People Catherine Met at Parties. That's the part that would hurt her and she wanted Mom to hurt.

Jimmy had been shuffling around in the kitchen, making Kelly's lunch this morning, when the phone had rung. Kelly had picked it up and, when she heard her mother's voice, her heart had leapt. It had been the first time Mom had called her since she'd moved in with Jimmy.
She misses me,
Kelly had thought.
She's sorry for kicking me out
. But Mom hadn't said anything like that. “
I know you stole some things from me. I know you stole my Valentine heart.
”

“What?”

“You can keep the picture of your sister. But I want my Valentine heart back.”

“Are you . . . are you serious? It's been two months.”

“You didn't throw it out, did you?”

“The candy is old. It's disgusting. It was stale two months ago.”

“Kelly. This is important.”

Kelly had wanted to hurl the phone across the room. “
I did. I threw out your stupid Valentine heart,
” Kelly had said. “
I ate all the stale, rock-hard chocolate candy from whatever rich old married boyfriend gave you that. And then I barfed it up and threw the box into the garbage.
” Then she'd slammed down the receiver.

“Bitch,” she whispered.

“Huh?” said Jimmy, who had been talking to her.

“Nothing. What were you saying?”

“I was saying that I heard he put up your bail.”

“He?”

“John McFadden.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Kelly had met him briefly when the three of them had been released, Mr. McFadden introducing himself, asking if she already had a ride, kind and calm and responsible, the way a dad should be. His eyes had been alert, the whites pure. Clearly, he'd never touched a pill in his life. Probably didn't even drink.

“I could have paid,” Jimmy said. “Or worked it out with a bondsman.”

Kelly took a breath, that word swirling in her newly clear head.
Bondsman
. She'd been arrested. She'd spent three hours in a holding cell for women with Bellamy and some crazy prostitute, both of them laughing their heads off over nothing while Kelly tried not to scream about everything coming alive, and now she had a criminal record. That part was real. “Jimmy?”

“Yeah?”

“Will I have to . . . like . . . go to trial?”

“Not if John McFadden can help it.”

She looked at him. “Do you know John McFadden?”

“I worked on a few of his films back in the old days,” he said. “I wasn't in the union yet and he was cheap as all get-out. Still is, I'm sure.”

“But . . . how would he make it so I don't go to trial?”

“People like McFadden can make things go away.” He said it in as certain a way as Kelly had ever heard him say anything. She didn't want to ask why, or how he knew. She wasn't sure she cared. “That's good,” she said.

He stared straight out through the windshield, didn't look at her. “It can be,” he said. “Sometimes.”

KELLY WAS ASLEEP, COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING IN HER DREAMS, WHEN
the car jerked to the right, jolting her into the passenger-side door. Her head smacked the window. “You okay?” Jimmy said it loudly, over a blaring truck horn.

“What happened?”

“I nodded off for a few seconds.”

“Oh my God.”

“It's late.”

Kelly touched her fastened seat belt, her breath quick and shallow.

“It's late,” he said again, hands trembling on the wheel.

“Okay.” Kelly rubbed her eyes. “That's okay.” She looked at the clock on the dashboard. It
was
late—close to 2:00
A.M.
on a school night. And, seeing the way she'd spent her supposed school day, there was no way she'd get away with ditching again tomorrow. She thought of Mr. Hansen's science class, Mrs. Parks's homeroom. She thought of the smirking cheerleaders with their swishy ponytails, the strong, jocky boys with their ski tans and varsity jackets, legs spread wide in their seats. All of them seemed like characters from a dream she'd had a long
time ago, less real even than breathing cell bars or parking lines turned to snakes.

Their off-ramp was coming up. Jimmy flicked on his blinker and swung the car into the right lane. “I wish you wouldn't hang around with those kids,” he said.

Kelly sighed. “You sound like Mom.”

“Yeah, well. She has reasons.”

“Everybody has
reasons
,” Kelly said. “Mass murderers have
reasons
.”

The rest of the way home, Jimmy didn't speak a word. The country station had long ago faded out, but he kept it on, the car filling with the crackle of static. Kelly's head throbbed—a souvenir of her acid trip—and she was so thirsty, her tongue swollen from it. Too thirsty to ask questions. She closed her eyes.

IT TOOK FOREVER TO GET FROM THE OFF-RAMP TO PICO AND, ONCE
Jimmy turned on it, even longer to get home, which was half a duplex with a crispy brown lawn, a roof of crumbling Spanish tile, and plastic flowers in the window box courtesy of the old lady owner who lived in the other, bigger half.

Jimmy pulled into the driveway. He undid his seat belt and winced. He was always wincing. He wore a plaid shirt under his beige vinyl jacket, and as he eased out of the seat, the shirt collar slipped open a little and Kelly saw the scars on his chest.
War wounds,
he called them. Even though he'd gotten them on some cheap horror movie.

“Take a picture—it lasts longer,” Jimmy said, and she realized she'd been staring. He gave her a play punch on the chin.

Kelly's head was still throbbing from thirst, her mouth so dry she could barely form words. She tried to smile. “You're a good dad,” she said, which was kind of a lie. But like most lies, it seemed like the right thing to say.

“That kid—John McFadden's son. I introduced him to your sister.”

She looked at him. “You did?”

“How old was she when she decided she wanted to be famous—thirteen? Fourteen?”

Kelly closed her eyes, tilted her aching head back on the seat rest. “I thought she always wanted to be famous.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anyway, she was about that age. I was working on some horror movie on the same lot as McFadden . . . He was shooting a miniseries, I think. Catherine got wind of it. Showed up on my doorstep one day out of nowhere. I hadn't seen her in years and I was so happy. See, I
wanted
to be a good dad, Kelly. I've always wanted that, more than anything.”

“You are, Jimmy. I told you . . .”

“She begged me to take her to the set. And Vincent . . . Vee, whatever you guys call him. He had a small part in the miniseries. He and your sister hit it off. Started spending lots of time together.”

Kelly opened her eyes. Jimmy wasn't looking at her. He was gazing out the windshield, sad eyes aimed up at the starless sky above their roof. “I let them spend time together,” he said. “I'm not a good dad.”

“What do you mean?”

“If it wasn't for me introducing Catherine to Vincent and his father, she never would have gotten in with that fast Hollywood crowd.”

Kelly put a hand on his shoulder.

“If I wasn't so permissive about that stuff, your mother wouldn't be so mad at me. She'd let me see you guys more often—not just when you run away.”

There was a light on inside their house and Kelly's eyes throbbed from looking at it. There were so many things she wanted to say, but she couldn't get them out. It was hard, arranging her thoughts into words when she felt like this. “Vee is a really nice person,” she said.

“I don't know about that.”

“And also.” She took a breath. “I didn't run away. Mom kicked me out. She gave me your address.” She put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. “She sent me to you.”

He turned, looked at her. “She did?”

“Yep,” she said. “Can we go inside now, Dad? I'm really tired.”

His smile came back. “Oh yeah, right. School day tomorrow.” He said it as though she'd never been arrested. As though it wasn't two in the morning and he was picking her up from band practice or track and field, rather than a police station two hours away. “Do you have a lot of homework?”

Kelly sighed. “I'll be okay.”

He groaned his way out of the car. Kelly followed him up the sidewalk, watched him open the door.

Once they were inside, he hurled himself onto the couch and collapsed. Kelly hurried into the kitchen, poured a glass of water and gulped the whole thing down, the crippling headache finally starting to fade. From the other room, she heard her father's moans, and so she put some ice in the glass along with a few fingers of Jack Daniel's and grabbed the half-empty bottle of pills off the counter, where he had left them. When she got back into the living room, his eyes were closed, his head thrown back. She placed the glass in one hand, bottle in the other. She grabbed the maroon plaid comforter off the couch and draped it over him. “Thanks, kiddo,” he whispered.

She kissed him on the cheek, walked back to her room.

IN KELLY'S DREAM, HER MOTHER CAME AT HER WITH A MEAT CLEAVER.
“Give it back!” Mom shrieked. “It's mine!” Once she got closer, Kelly saw that it wasn't Mom at all but some kind of monster-movie version
of her, with snakes for hair, sharpened teeth, and pinwheeling red eyes. “
Give it back or I will kill you!
”

Kelly stared at her, this creature she'd never known to be her mother but who had apparently been her mother all along, making meals for Kelly and Catherine, driving them to their old school, taking care of them when they got sick and giving them makeovers and cooking popcorn for them on top of the stove in the silver-foil container, the most delicious popcorn she'd ever had, Mom and Kelly and Catherine shoving buttery handfuls into their mouths as they watched the Academy Awards . . .