I’ll Meet You There (11 page)

“Why?” I said, the words spilling out. “So you can get drunk off your ass and drive
into an eighteen-wheeler like Dad did?”

It was like knocking over a glass and watching it fall to the floor, knowing you won’t
be able to catch it before it shatters. She stared at me, her mouth open in a perfect
O
. The words had felt poisonous sliding off my tongue, but it felt a little good too,
that burst of pissed-off adrenaline. Her eyes dimmed, and I saw her actually leave
for a minute and go somewhere else while her body stood there rigid, shocked. That
wasn’t what I’d wanted. Not that. Not ever.

“Mom,” I whispered.

God, how could I be so stupid? I’d pushed her too far. Guilt prickled my skin and
whispered that it was my fault if she drank too much tonight.

There was a hard knock on the cheap metal door.

“Mom.”

She blinked, then moved past me to let Billy Easton in.

JOSH

I line my pills up in formation, like they’re about to be inspected. It’s time for
roll call, motherfuckers: Zoloft for depression (Here!), Abilify for depression (Here!),
Klonopin for anxiety (Here!), Oleptro and Lunesta for sleep (Here! Here!), Neurontin
for phantom limb pain (Here!), ibuprofen for TBI headaches (Here!). If I stare at
the pills long enough, they start floating like tiny stars in the sky. Creek View
fades away and now I’m on post, sitting near a canal, eyes peeled. The stars cover
the sky, thousands of them. Never seen stars like that before. Made me wish I knew
the constellations.
When you wish upon a star,
I joke-sing. I can’t sing for shit, and we all know it. You laugh and say,
Dude, stars are for pussies. I wish on the moon.
Gomez shakes his head.
You can’t wish on the moon.
You raise your eyebrows.
Why not?
Gomez shrugs.
Ask fuckin’ Disney why not. They wrote the song.
I laugh and say,
You can’t wish on anything.
You look over at me:
If you could wish on the moon for something, what would it be?
I think about everything that’s gone down since we deployed—Sharpe dying, Panelli
losing his arms, that IED blowing up in Harrison’s face so now he looks like Freddy
Krueger. The Afghanis that got wiped out by that drone strike the week before and
the ones I see on the side of the road sometimes, Taliban roadkill. Before we shipped
out, I thought it was so cool that I was going to war. Felt like a bad motherfucker.
Then I saw our first guy go down and it wasn’t so cool anymore.
I’d wish them back, man,
I say. You nod as you pack some more chew.
I’d wish all of them back.
Now I look at the pills lined up on my desk and my empty room and my metal leg. The
moon’s not big enough to wish on. Nothing is.

chapter nine

I looked at the clipboard in my hand, making sure that I’d written down everything
we needed to order: prepackaged soaps, mini bottles of shampoo, more industrial towels,
thin plastic cups. Satisfied, I closed the storage closet door and walked over to
the window beside the lobby couch. The sickly sweet scent of cat pee hovered in the
air above the cushions, a present from a guest’s feline companion. My stomach turned
a little—the combination of urine and stifling heat was too much.

Josh’s truck still wasn’t in the driveway, but I told myself that wasn’t what I’d
been looking for. I’d wanted to see … No, I couldn’t pretend. I wanted to see Josh.
It didn’t make any sense, but I kept finding myself thinking about him, hoping we’d
run into each other. I’d spent the past few nights lying awake in bed, listening to
the sound of Mom’s TV through the thin walls, unable to sleep. Worrying, yes, but
what bothered me almost as much as our dire straits was Josh and how I couldn’t escape
him in the dark. At night I’d lie awake with these crazy fantasies of him showing
up at my window, and I’d wonder if he was awake too, and if he was, was he thinking
about me? Then I’d tell myself he probably wasn’t alone. Josh Mitchell wasn’t known
for sleeping by himself, and I was an idiot, imagining doing things with him that
made me blush when he was probably doing those things to some other girl with absolutely
no thought of me whatsoever. Then I’d get jealous and feel stupid and punch my pillow
and try to push him out of my mind. What was happening to me? I’d become tidal, the
current of my want pushing me toward him, pulling me away from him. Toward him, away
from him.

A crush. I had a silly crush because he’d suddenly become exotic, an enigmatic hero.
He’d been in a land full of mysteriously clothed women and men in long tunics and
turbans. He’d seen the kind of stuff Picasso painted
Guernica
for. He had stories to tell, unlike anyone else in this town.

But I’d had crushes before, and this … this was no crush.
The pact,
I reminded myself. I was convinced that the reason Chris and I were the only ones
from our graduating class to get out of Creek View was because of our self-imposed
celibacy. Something about falling in love (or lust) seemed to anchor people to this
place.

I turned my back on the window and stood in front of the box fan to let the cool air
dry some of the sweat that was dripping down my neck. All I wanted to do was sit in
a refrigerator. After a few minutes, I gave up on the fan and went back to the counter.
I ran my hands over the part of Marge’s collage I’d been working on for most of the
morning. The plan was to connect these smaller collages by collaging them into one
big piece. Right now, I was trying to get the angel on the Paradise sign just right.
I’d taken to going out and studying her at night, to make sure I was capturing all
the details, like the way the neon wasn’t working on all the feathers on her wings.
I’d chosen some pretty metallic paper to create the neon glow of the sign. I’d already
fashioned 3-D wings for the angel—pipe cleaners covered with papier-mâché, so now
I grabbed a sheet of shimmering gold sanded pastel paper and began slicing it into
tiny strips with my razor blade—the angel’s hair.

As I worked, the lobby fell away, my world whittled down to the feel of the paper
under my fingers and the creature straining to burst from the collage. My sound track:
the whir of the fan and the soft sounds of cutting and arranging. I wasn’t in Creek
View anymore—or, rather, I was in a Creek View of my own making, where all that mattered
were angles and colors and the steady beat of my heart as the angel slowly came to
life. Nothing—and no one—could touch me here.

The sliding glass door opened, and Marge walked in, fanning her thick face and startling
me from my cocoon. I looked up, dazed. I’d forgotten the heat, the time—everything.

She crushed the can of Diet Dr Pepper in her hand and frowned. “Hey, sweet pea. Still
no Josh?”

I shook my head. “Want me to try calling him again?”

“I think his cell’s off. He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”

She threw the can in the wastebasket next to the candy dispenser and looked over my
notes on the clipboard, muttering to herself. As she got closer to the counter, I
shooed her away.

She narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing over there—snorting cocaine?”

“Very funny,” I said. “It’s your collage, and you know it. Don’t think I can’t tell
when you’re trying to be sneaky!”

She huffed in mock offense. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me patience is a virtue?”

“I hate when my own wisdom bites me in the ass.”

I laughed and gathered up the scraps of paper I wasn’t using, then dumped them into
a plastic bag for later, in this collage or another. Nothing ever goes to waste with
collaging. It was the perfect medium for a broke-ass person like myself. Besides,
if it was good enough for Picasso, it was good enough for me. It was his collages
that had made me want to work with paper in the first place. In my essay for San Fran,
I’d written about how I’d always felt like there was something magical about taking
bits and pieces of the world around me and creating something whole. It gave me hope:
if you could make a beautiful piece of art from discarded newspapers and old matchbooks,
then it meant that everything had potential. And maybe people were like collages—no
matter how broken or useless we felt, we were an essential part of the whole. We mattered.

I gave my collage one last, loving glance, then put it in the large portfolio folder
I’d bought for myself when I got into San Fran. Marge still stood near the window,
frowning. I glanced at the clock. It wasn’t like Josh to blow off a shift like this.

“The electrician’s here, and Josh has my keys,” Marge said. “The guy needs to get
into that back room where the generator and electrical panels are. Would you mind
running over to Josh’s house and seeing if he’s there? If he’s not home, you can check
the garage.”

I got that fluttery feeling that seemed to attack me every time Josh was around: in
my chest and the pit of my stomach and in a place it’s not polite to mention in mixed
company. What was I supposed to tell her?
No, Marge, I’m sorry, but I can’t go to Josh’s house. You see, I’m experiencing a
fluttering sensation.

I leaned over the counter and grabbed my keys and wallet. “I think I’m gonna need
a raise for this.”

She handed me twenty bucks from her pocket. “Subway. You fly, I’ll buy.”

I pushed her hand away. “Kidding, Marge. Of course I’ll go over there.”

She stuffed the bill into the front pocket of my jean shorts. “Get out of here, and
don’t come back without a six-inch roast beef, no—”

“—mayo and extra pickles. I know, I know.”

It only took me six minutes to drive to Josh’s house. I hadn’t been there since the
night of the party. It seemed different in the daylight—smaller. Josh’s truck was
in the driveway, but the house seemed deserted. Maybe it was just the malaise of Creek
View at noon, when the sun was at its most sadistic.

I got out of my car and headed up the concrete front walkway. The grass was brown,
and the house sort of sagged in on itself, like a toothless old man. I knocked on
the screen door, the sound echoing in the silence that had wrapped around me. I shaded
my eyes and looked around the neighborhood, eerie in its emptiness. I half expected
a tumbleweed to roll by. I pictured Afghanistan like this, but scarier and with mosques
sounding out the call to prayer five times a day. Moon dust. A film over everything.
Desolate.

I knocked again, and this time the door opened into a darkened living room. The girl
standing in the doorway looked at me without saying anything, and I tried to smile,
but she didn’t smile back. Her dirty blond hair hung in limp strands around her shoulders,
and her skin was pale, like she never went outside. But there was a certain Mitchellness
about her—those Van Gogh eyes and thin lips twisted into a smirk.

“Hey, Tara.”

She looked back at the living room for a second, probably checking the TV, bored with
me already. It was annoying that a thirteen-year-old had the power to make me feel
like an intruder. You’d think I was one of those people from the Evangelical church
fifty miles away that came to Creek View a couple of times a year to save our miserable
souls.

She turned back to me. “Blake’s not here.”

I could feel the blush smearing my cheeks. Damn. I wished I’d never said yes to Blake’s
offer to give me a ride home that Friday before spring break. That
yes
was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

“Actually, um, I’m looking for Josh. Is he home?”

She crossed her arms over the little halter top she was wearing and jutted her hip
out to the side in an almost comical mean-girl pose. “Why?”

The sun was burning the back of my calves, where it shot across the covered front
porch. I shifted my feet, wiped the sweat pooling on my upper lip. She still hadn’t
opened the door to invite me in, but the cool air sneaked past her and teased me.
Farther in, it sounded like there was a soap opera on TV, and I thought I could hear
faint music—the heavy bass and reggae beats of Sublime—coming from deeper inside the
house.

My eyes started to adjust to the dark room in front of me. Tara’s face was pinched,
and her eyes were already jaded. Another Creek View kid bites the dust.

“Marge needs her keys, and Josh took them home by accident.”

Tara finally nodded and pushed open the screen door. “J’s in his room. End of the
hall.”

I stepped inside. She was already on her way back to the TV.

“Thanks,” I called. She did a backward wave and then plopped onto a sunken couch.

I shut the door behind me and let my skin soak up the cool air while I looked around.
The house was a mess: old newspapers piled on a battered sofa, cans of beer and soda
on the tables. It smelled like old dinners and too-strong air freshener that didn’t
do much to cover up the scent of pot. I passed a low bookshelf that had a cheap frame
with a picture of Josh in his dress blues sitting next to a few chipped curios. There
was just something about people in uniform: a quiet dignity about them that made you
feel proud, even though it had nothing to do with you. Josh’s eyes were serious, and
he wasn’t smiling, though there was a faint hint of one in the corners of his mouth.
He looked so much older now. Josh must have gotten this taken right after he enlisted.
He’d only been seventeen then. I wondered what he’d been thinking when they took that
photo. It was the one the military would use if he died. He had to know how many guys
were going home in coffins or wheelchairs. But he didn’t look afraid. Not one bit.

I felt that tidal pull again, dragging me closer and closer to the shore that was
Josh. I wanted to know more. About him. The war. I had to make sense of this need
that was pulsing through me.

I passed the bookshelf and went down the hallway, the music getting louder as I got
to the end. Definitely Sublime. The door was ajar, but I knocked instead of just walking
in, suddenly nervous.