Burning (17 page)

“None other.”

He smiled slow and warm, and there was no mystery in his eyes. It was all there, simple for me to read, and so beautiful—his easy gladness that I had come to him, the eagerness that propelled him to reach out and touch my arm, the kindness I had first seen in him, as well.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

There was only one correct answer to that question: No.

But I could not bring myself to shake my head or step away. I had come this far—out the door, across the sidewalk, to Ben Stanley’s side—and I would not stop now.

Later, perhaps I would blame it on the heat of the desert—that oppressive, hellish heat that beat down upon us day after day out there in the wasteland.

Or I could blame it on the pressure of my impending wedding, crashing on me with a weight I could not bear.

I think, though, that it was not either of these things. I think it was simply the way Ben Stanley looked, smiling at me, his face full of hope and promise.

Whatever it was—the heat or the wedding, or Ben Stanley himself—I took the helmet he offered me. I pushed it over my curls, and after Ben Stanley swung his leg over the bike and pounded the kick start with his heel, I bunched up my skirt around my thighs and straddled the seat behind him, wrapping my arms around his chest and turning my face into his back as we roared down the street and through the town, the sound of Hog Boy’s cheer almost as loud as the pounding of my heart.

I headed through town and out onto 447. Lala hung on to my waist, her arms clenching me tight and her thighs, too, tight around my hips. I felt the press of her against the back of me and I tried not to get hard.

As soon as we passed Freesia I opened up a little, picking up speed. I’d given my helmet to Lala and so I took the blast of hot air straight in my face, my hair puffing up like a Brillo pad. The bike had a little shimmy to it once I really got going. The road stretched out in front of us so straight and flat, I imagined for a minute that we’d never stop, that we’d just ride like that, Lala tucked behind me, forever.

I had hardly believed it when they’d all pulled up in front of the store. When the first load of them got there I’d been just hanging out, watching Pete fool around on the bike. He pretty much sucked on it; even James handled it better than Pete, and Hog Boy was getting a kick out of pointing out every time Pete screwed up.

Then a car pulled up in front of the store, blocking my view of Pete, and people started climbing out of it. Even if I
hadn’t recognized the Jeep from when I’d been out at their camp, I’d have known these people were Lala’s family. They were unmistakable.

This thrill of excitement had zinged through me when I first saw the dark-haired girl in the back of the Jeep next to an older lady who must have been her mother. I thought it was Lala, and that maybe I’d get another chance after all.

But when she turned to climb out I saw that even though she had Lala’s same wild mane of hair, she wasn’t Lala. Her hard, round belly was a clue, but even more than that, it was the way she looked at the guy who gave her his hand to help her down.

Adoring. That was the look. She stared up at him with big doe eyes, not even watching where she put her feet, as if she knew he would never let her fall.

I hadn’t seen Lala look at Romeo that way, engaged to be married or not. I hadn’t glimpsed even a fraction of that intense … I don’t know,
connection
, I guess, between her and Romeo.

I wanted her to look at
me
that way.

So when the Jeep pulled up again a little while later and I saw that this time it really
was
Lala in the backseat, with a couple of younger kids, I wanted to do something. Something … 
big
, some gesture that she would be able to interpret.

Then that fucker Romeo kicked my helmet into the gutter, and I guess I got distracted.

I spent the next couple of minutes just breathing, calming myself down.

“Let’s rush the fucker,” said Hog Boy. I wasn’t the only one who appreciated a good fight, and I guess Hog Boy saw this as an opportunity for a little fun.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to make things hard for her.”

And that was when I knew I wouldn’t be making any grand romantic speech outside the Gypsum Store that afternoon. But I’d stay there, right where she could see me, and all she’d have to do was say the word.

I was already hers.

When she finally got out of the Jeep and walked by me, it hit me again like a wall—her scent. I would have given anything just then—hell, even my golden ticket to college—just to be alone with her, to fill myself with the smell of her.

Then she opened the door to the store and went inside.

“Knock, knock,” said Hog Boy.

I heard my voice as if from far away. “Who’s there?”

“Ben Hur.”

“Ben Hur who?”

“Ben Hur over your motor bike and give it to her from behind.”

Basically Hog Boy has one joke with occasional variations. I tried not to let myself channel my frustration into pounding Hog Boy, but it wasn’t easy.

Pete groaned. “Goddamn it. Now Melissa’s gonna take a good look at your Gypsy chick, Ben, and then I’m in a world of shit.”

He yanked open the door to the store and slumped inside.

My Gypsy chick. Yeah, sure, that would be the day. She’d barely looked at me when she walked by. I kicked at the
sidewalk, angry with myself for feeling so lame, so totally helpless.

A few minutes later a group of them headed back out to the Jeep and drove away. Lala wasn’t one of them. But Romeo was.

After the others had climbed into the Jeep he turned to me before getting in.

He narrowed his eyes at me and carefully brushed his hair back from his face. Jesus, if the girls at our high school thought
Pete’s
eyes were smoldering, they’d go into heat if they took one look at this guy.

“Lala knows her place,” he said. “Remember yours.”

I didn’t need Hog Boy’s two cents, that was for sure, but he stepped up anyway, puffing out his chest and pointing his finger in Romeo’s face. “My boy Ben’s place is wherever the fuck he wants to be.”

“All right, Hog Boy, step off,” I said. So much for not causing Lala any trouble.

Romeo hesitated for a minute like he was going to say something else or maybe stick a shiv in Hog Boy’s flank, but then he spat at our feet and hopped into the Jeep.

“What the fuck was up with that guy?” asked Hog Boy as we watched them drive away. “You been holding out on us, Stanley? Have you been dippin’ your stick in his candy?”

“Fuck you, Hog Boy.”

He squealed his laugh and thumped me on the back. “Way to go out with a bang, big man!”

I didn’t bother straightening him out. He wouldn’t believe
me anyway. He sees the world through swine-colored glasses, that’s for sure.

But then there she was—Lala. Her eyes looked wild when she came out of the store, and she looked over her shoulder as if she expected someone to follow her. She looked scared, that was what it was, but defiant, too—and when I handed her my helmet, before her face disappeared behind its mask, she smiled at me. It was brilliant and beautiful and looked more sure just for that second than I’ve ever felt in my entire life, outside of running a race—when I know I’m leading the pack, when I can tell my feet will cross the finish line first.

And now here we were, at last, as if it was the way we were meant to be. That was how right it felt—having her pushed up behind me like that. Like we were a lock and a key, and just by pressing our bodies together in this way we’d managed to swing wide open a door that neither of us could open on our own.

But we couldn’t ride forever on the old 150, so when I saw the turnoff for the mine I downshifted to second and pulled off the highway onto the dirt road. We passed the plant where the gypsum was crushed into dust and formed into sheets, and I saw our half-pipe on the empty shipping dock. I drove past it, farther down the road, all the way into the pit mine, down the road’s long, curved decline, until we were fifty feet below street level, where men had dynamited a hole in the earth.

This was where our entire town’s livelihood had come from—this mine. I used to think it was pretty cool—how in this time of technological advances, when so many people were building their fortunes on
ideas
rather than
actualities
, we in Gypsum still dealt in the basic stuff of the earth.

Rock. Big white hunks of it, torn from the ground, excavated, crushed and then manufactured into something else. You could get your head around it. There it was—a rock. A saleable commodity. It used to feel secure, I guess, and as a kid I thought it was neat how my dad and the other men in the town could just go dig up some rocks and trade them for money.

Of course that was a kid’s oversimplification of a giant industry, and it failed to take into account the possibility of a collapse in the housing market.

I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t considered that possibility. No one in our town had seen it coming, back when our orders kept doubling and then doubling again, when it seemed that our country would just keep growing and building.

Newton said it best: What goes up must come down. That’s why they call it a crash.

So our town was folding, and the mining operations were closed, and in a matter of years the desert would reclaim our houses, our whole town. The good people of Gypsum, Nevada? It would be like we’d never even lived here.

But the scar blasted into the earth out here at the mine? The violent, torn-apart landscape we’d created to get to the gypsum? That wouldn’t heal.

I killed the engine at the bottom of the pit mine. We were hidden from view from the road, and the ledge of the pit cast a long shadow. I’d spent my share of days out here during school breaks and summer vacations, mostly as an errand boy for the guys who ran the big equipment. Every now and then they’d let me operate the excavator.

I was seeing the mine through new eyes, I guess, wondering how it looked to Lala. It was sort of awesome—half in shadow, half in sunlight, the pit was enormous. Above me the walls of the pit rose in a series of steps, designed to slow any dislodged boulders and prevent the quarry workers from being struck. The walls were stratified: bright white down at the base where the gypsum was, then a lighter orange in the middle layers, and a dusty brown where the topsoil was. It was cavernous, really, the enormity of the pit mine. Close to one of the walls the pit had been dug out even deeper so that all the runoff could gather in one place, forming a pond.

We came here to swim sometimes on the hottest days of summer, but even though it had been killer hot, not many of us had felt like hanging out at the mine this summer … too many ghosts, I guess.

But the mustangs were there—about a dozen in this herd, all different colors, black and brown and dun, drinking from the pond and lazily flicking their tails at flies. Protected by congressional law, the horses were free to roam pretty much wherever they liked in Nevada. It was illegal to harass them,
and we weren’t supposed to feed them, either. They lived off the sagebrush and wild grasses.

For a minute after we stopped, neither of us moved. Lala’s arms stayed tight around my waist. I felt the press of the helmet between my shoulder blades.

I wondered what she was thinking. Was she regretting that she’d come with me? How much trouble would this get her in later, when she went home?

Probably this meant that things were off between her and Romeo. I didn’t think that could be a bad thing, but I wondered how pissed off her parents would be that she’d disappeared with me.

There would be plenty of time to think about that later, I decided. We’d deal with all of them when the time came. But right now—alone, finally, with this girl, I wasn’t about to waste any time talking about her maybe-ex-boyfriend or her parents.

I think Lala came to the same conclusion because when she loosened her arms from around my chest and swung off the bike, her skirt billowing down to the ground, and when she pulled the helmet off her head, she wore the same smile I’d seen in front of the store.

“The die is cast,” she said, holding the helmet out to me.