Painted Boots (2 page)

4

I WAKE UP
early, since my run-in with Em.  At first I made a habit of staying in bed, thinking, until my alarm rang at six-fifteen.  But it’s been three weeks and all my thinking hasn’t changed anything.  Em still calls me Retro.  Kyle is still her guy.  So today when I wake I give myself a few minutes to dwell on the obvious then roll out at four-forty five.  I shower, scrutinize my naked body in the mirror and comb my hair smooth.  I tell myself
Things are what they are
.

In my room
I drop my damp towel to the floor, swing my closet doors wide, stare at my consignment chic and let my favorite defeat scenario—the one where I beg Dad for access to his VISA—flood over me.  Just last night I spent three hours window shopping the net, browsing Anthropologie and Zappos and Banana Republic.  But I decided not to buy.  I mean to show up at school in things off the rack, now that Em and her murder of friends keep tabs on me to see who can guess whose clothes I’m wearing, would be like blinking first.

T
hat’s how I see it, anyway.

Gwen
told me “Em’s got maturity issues.”  She insisted “I’m lucky Em doesn’t know me.”  She went on to tell me Em can get real personal, that the girl is a beast.  I changed the subject after that.  I didn’t want to admit it already feels real personal from where I’m standing.

T
his week in class I read that during World War II, when London was being bombed to dust, Winston Churchill said if you find yourself in hell, get through it.  So I will.  Come June, I’ll go off to college.  Em’ll probably marry her precious Kyle and settle down, popping out three or four kids before she’s thirty.

But
that’s not what I want.  Swallowing at the tear-fed knot in my throat, I sit on the edge of my bed.  Why is he with that girl?  I can’t figure it out.  He’s so thoughtful in class.  So sweet!  She’s not only mean and rude.  She’s a liar.

N
o way does she recognize every skirt, sweater, shirt and piece of jewelry I wear.  Gillette is small, yeah, but not that small.  Either way though, I guess it doesn’t matter.  Yesterday, just before first bell, she yelled across the crowded hall: “Hey Retro, my cousin Becca lost her virginity in that sweater.”  Everybody turned to stare.

I
f there’s a core to my clothes problem it’s that I’m not my mother.  I try, but my efforts to make my clothes my own are meager compared to what she used to do.  When I was a kid she’d spend weeks turning three old pair of jeans into a jacket, the left-overs of five shirts into a skirt.  People would compliment my outfits and Mom’d say,
Aspen is lovely, isn’t she?
while
tucking my hair behind one of my ears.

I felt so proud, then.

But after Mom’s funeral I couldn’t bring myself to wear the beautiful things she had made for me.  It was like I no longer saw dresses in my closet.  I saw Mom, bent over her sewing machine as she’d stitched them together.  I’d take a jacket from my drawer and there she’d be, busy with her seam ripper, deconstructing skirts and sweaters while she watched TV.  My clothes haunted me, like custom-made ghosts.  So I boxed everything up.

And I don’t know why, but r
ight before Dad announced we were moving to Gillette, I completely lost it.  I deleted my email accounts.  I demanded a new cell number.  I abandoned my friends for fear someone would mention my loss
,
because someone always did.  I piled everything Mom had ever made for me into our Jeep.  Dad just shook his head when I told him I’d driven to Goodwill and given my wardrobe away.

It’s tough
, now, to think that had I known where he’d hidden Mom’s necklace I might have tossed that, too.  But I was lost in Portland, without her.  Emotional pulp. Back then I couldn’t explain my feelings, even to myself.  I still can’t explain things to Dad.

Then
we left Portland, on the second of July, and something in me started to change.  It was the strangest thing.  By the time we hit Idaho, Portland no longer felt like home.  We drove through an endless patchwork of farms, sage-covered range land and towns.  We detoured through Yellowstone and into the Tetons.  Somewhere along the way I abandoned my former world as willingly as snakes shed their skin, because when we rolled into Gillette, Portland was history.  It had become my past: the place where I grew up, with Mom.

And
I’ll never go back.

A part of me needs
to believe she’s still there, nestled in her favorite chair and reading while she sips her afternoon tea.  It’s a dream, I know, but I cling to it.  Dreams are the only place I have left from where Mom glances up, every day, to say,
There’s my girl.  Love you, sweet.

5

I’M EATING BREAKFAST
when Dad wanders downstairs in his polar bear boxers and a plain white tee.  I roll my eyes, say, “Oh, hello,” then turn back to my Chex with bananas.  The local news has just started a story on Devil’s Tower, which lies about an hour northeast of here, and I want to watch.  I’ve never seen the tower but I’d like to, mostly because Mom loved the place.  She loved it so much that as a kid I thought it was weird we never defied Dad’s Wyoming taboo and went there.

Mom’s love for the
tower was pure Hollywood—a by-product of her obsession with the movie “Close Encounters.”  I’d come home from a night out with friends and there she’d be, waiting for me with little tears sparkling in her eyes, chewing her thumbnail as she watched Richard Dryfuss build his mashed-potato Devil’s Tower for the fiftieth time.

“I’m not going to work today,”
Dad announces, stretching.

“
Hmm.”  I don’t really know what to say and anyway, I’m trying to listen.  The news story begins with a reporter, the tower positioned behind her like an upturned pail of sand.  I open my laptop, pull up Google Maps and type in: Devil’s Tower, Wyoming.

From
the satellite shot all I see is the tower’s top and the twisting rock that flanks it like the rugged handles of a sugar bowl.  I’m trying to determine how big the thing is when I realize the black abyss to one side of it is its shadow, lying like a silhouette across the land.  I stare at the shadow, wondering if it’s as dark in real life as it is on Google.  The TV flickers.  A series of old photos flash across the screen as a voice-over tells the story from when, a long time ago, some guy parachuted on a fifty dollar bet to the top of the tower and then couldn’t get down.

“
Why don’t you take the day off school?” Dad asks.

They didn’t even have
helicopters back then, or good climbing gear or anything.

“
Aspen.”

“Huh?”

“Turn that thing off.”  He nods at the TV.  “Stay home from school, okay?  I hardly see you these days.”

“Can we visit the
tower?”

Dad stares at my laptop, the screen still zoomed to a close-up of the
tower’s shadow.  “No,” he says.  “We can’t.”

Dad’s going to work after all, and in the same khakis and white shirt he wore yesterday.  I’m grumpy about the tower, but I’m also tired of being chauffeured. I want to ask Dad if he’ll get a second car, but I don’t dare—his lips are pressed into a tight, uncrossable line.  He stops near the corner of the school parking lot, like he always does.  As I get out of the Jeep I promise him we’ll go for coffee or something.  Saturday, maybe.  Or Sunday.  But I don’t know.

I used to think
Dad and I were close.  Now I know we were close to Mom.  I mean, she was our gravity.  Our family glue.  Without her, it’s like Dad and I don’t know how to talk.

W
alking the lot, with the wind whipping all around me and leaves scattering at my feet, I feel better.  The sky is filled with clouds, at last.  The wind smells like rain and prairie as it snarls my hair into a mess.  It’s a wild feeling, like at any moment I could fly, and as I pull a tangle of hair from my earring I laugh out loud for the first time in months.

Mom loved this kind of weather!  She loved strong wind and heavy clouds and the way the world smells just before a storm. 
Remembering how her eyes would light whenever she heard thunder makes me feel almost happy.  But now I miss her.

I push my
longing for her aside and think instead on my boots: last night I painted the soles pumpkin orange.  I did it to match my orange-plaid skirt, going for the darker shade that runs within the pleats.  But pumpkin makes me think of Mom, too.  Autumn was her favorite time of year.

Moving
between one row of trucks, I start into the next.  A penny catches my eye, the copper so new it almost glows.  I’ve always picked up pennies for luck, so I bend down and grab it.  I’m about to walk on when I notice a girl hunched over the steering wheel of the Subaru hatchback next to me.  Her head rests on the wheel and her shoulders heave.  The first bell rings.  Every other straggling student in the lot bursts into a run.  I don’t know why, but I open her car door.

“
Just go on!” the girl says.  Her arms tighten around the steering column.  Wind rushes over her.  The papers and empty fast-food sacks in the passenger seat sort of explode.

“I can’t,” I say.

The girl pushes a lock of red hair clear of her face.  She looks at me through teary, hazel-brown eyes.  “You can’t what?”

I’ve seen this girl
, with Em.  But I say, “You’re upset,” and shrug my shoulders.  “It feels wrong to leave you alone.”

With the heels of her hands, s
he smears tears and mascara across her temples as she sits straight.  She digs a paper napkin from the passenger seat mess and blows her nose.  “Sorry, Retro,” she says.  “I thought you were them.”

“My name is
Aspen.  Just in case you’re interested.”

The girl
runs her fingers into her hair.  “Everyone notices you, you know?  Is that why you do it?”

“
Do what?”

“
The clothes thing.  Duh.” The words sound like she’s spitting them, like they’re thorns in her mouth.  She swings her legs from the car and stands up, brushing at her Burberry-wannabe jacket.  Her gaze fixes on my chest as her lips draw into a sudden frown.  “That pin belongs to my aunt Carol,” she says.

Without thinking I finger the
ocean-colored brooch I found in the best consignment shop in Gillette, the one on Douglas.  It’s a starburst pattern—a large aqua glass oval surrounded by wave after wave of ever deepening green.  “I love this pin,” I say.

“
So does my aunt.”  The girl scrubs the back of her hand under her nose.  “She eloped with some Harley guy who’d been working oil in the Dakotas.  They took off without saying a word to anybody!  My mom was so angry she sold that pin, and all my aunt’s stuff, to a thrift shop.  But Aunt Carol promised it to me.”

“I bought it
,” I say.  “And it cost a lot.”

The second bell rings.  From habit, I look at my
watch.

T
he girl slams her car door.  “Give it back.”

I tell her
“No,” and she grabs me, pushing me against the mud-splattered hood of her car.  She whispers, “I’m not afraid to fight you for it.”

I
t’s hard to believe this girl will actually punch me, but what do I know?  The only clear thought in my head is that Mom used to tell me
In the face of confrontation, use your words.

So
I fake a smile and say, “I’m sorry about your aunt, but I don’t see this situation your way.  I bought this pin at a store.”

The
girl snorts out a laugh.  She looks sideways, then drops her bag to the ground.  I try to slip past her but she crashes against me, pressing so hard I gasp.  “Give it back,” she says.

A door
slams somewhere as the girl yells, “I swear I’ll hit you!”  I wiggle free of her and stumble, bumping against the car.  Pain blossoms in my hip.  My lucky penny falls from my hand and bounces off the window, landing on a cushion of leaves.  The girl grabs my hair, my head jerks right and I see Kyle coming toward us, skirting between the rows of parked trucks.

Suddenly, it’s really important that I
do something.

I
push from the Subaru, flinging myself and the girl, too, into the truck behind us.  She screams and wraps her arms around my waist.  I try spinning free of her but trip, smashing against the truck’s side mirror.  The air rushes from my lungs.  My bag swings round my body, the strap digging into my neck.  The girl tries to punch me in the stomach, but I shove her.  She bounces against her muddy car.

From one row
over Kyle calls out, “You get on to class, Lindsey.”

“
The hell I won’t!  Retro’s got my aunt Carol’s pin!”

I
wheeze, “My name is Aspen!”

Kyle says, “She bought
it somewhere, right?  Makes it hers.”

Lindsey
whirls away from me—to argue with Kyle, I guess.  I slump against the truck, willing myself to breathe and tugging the strap of my leather bag away from my throat.  Kyle stops near the Subaru’s bumper and stuffs one hand in his pocket.  “Just get on,” he says.

“
But it’s mine!”  Lindsey’s fingers clench.  Her hair billows in the wind, a swarm of furious gnats.  Dried mascara fans from the corners of her eyes.

Kyle kicks at something on the ground. 
My penny.  He says, “You could stand a good washing, Linds.”

Lindsey
touches her temple, drawing her fingernail through the black residue there.  A little “Wha . . . ?”
gurgles up and escapes her mouth.  Her eyes flare with anger, but she stoops for her bag.  Without another word she walks away.

I
breathe in a deep gulp of air and hold it, feeling the tingling coolness seep into my lungs.  My fingers tremble as I smooth the chocolate brown cable of my sweater then pull my hair behind one ear. The second I take my hand away the wind blows my hair into a mess again.

“You okay?”
Kyle asks.

“
I’m fine,” I say, though my voice cracks.  I swallow at the annoying urge to cry.  “We should go, right?  We’re late to class.”

“
Won’t matter if we’re later.”

I watch him as he watches Lindsey
jerk the school’s door open.  The same gusting wind that blows his hair across his forehead in thick, dark dunes catches the school’s door and slams it against the stop.  Once Lindsey is gone Kyle starts walking, back the way he came.  He nods for me to follow.

I
start after him because, really, I don’t know what else to do.

“
So I’m Kyle, you know?”

“I know,” I say.  “I’m
Aspen.”

“That you are, girl.”

I wrap my arms around my body, hugging myself as I trail behind him through three rows of trucks and the occasional car.  He stops at the door of a black Chevy that’s been backed into a stall near the street.  The truck’s old—a pick-up from the sixties, or maybe even the fifties—its cab and wheel wells trimmed in creamy off-white.

I can’t
believe I’ve never noticed this truck before.  It’s flawless and beautiful, restored to mint perfection.  Kyle digs in his pocket and comes up with a key.  The lock makes a dull thud as he turns it, then he pulls the driver’s door wide.

I look at him,
unsure of what to do.

He
raises his eyebrows.  His head tips toward the empty cab.  “After you,” he says.