What is Real (24 page)

I put my head down and I cry hard and suddenly, like a summer squall. Just for a few minutes. Not long enough that anyone sees me—at least I don't think that they do.

chapter 29
september 30, this year.

I am up early enough to cook, so I do. I am in the kitchen making an omelet. Omelets are my specialty. I probably haven't mentioned that.

I slice the garlic as thin as paper, and it turns sweet in the pool of melted butter in the hot pan. I am very precise when I cook. With everything else, I'm a slob. Ask anyone. My writing is awful. I never do my work. The house is a mess, most of the time. The toilets are disgusting.

I add some tiny tomatoes, so miniature they are the size of peas. They steam open and burst. I stir in the eggs. Salt and pepper.

Gary wanders in and sniffs the air. “Smells good,” he says. I grunt. I guess I have to feed him too, but I resent it. It's all I can do not to spit in the pan.

“Gary,” I say. “Gary, I've been wondering about…your processing. You know? I've been…”

He gives me his patented Gary look. The one that says, “Shut the fuck up.”

“It's not for you to smoke, you little prick,” he says. But he says it so casually, it takes me a minute to register his words. He leans so close that I can smell a mint on his breath. “It's for the
clients
.” He grins. “Paying clients. Should I charge you? How much do you think you owe me?” One of his teeth is entirely gold.

The omelet cooks up fluffy and perfect. I flip it in the air and it lands in the pan with a satisfying plop. “Nothing,” I say, quietly so he can't hear me.

I plate it and put the egg in front of dad. He's at his usual place at the table, just looking at the new yellow house. Not moving. Not touching anything. He's too still. Something is going on.

“What's on your mind?” I say. “Dad?”

“I'm tired,” he says abruptly. “Don't know how much of this I can eat.”

I shrug like I don't care, but the truth is that I do. I want him to eat it. I want him to fucking
love
it. I want a lot of things. That's how this all started. And why.

We 'd take the money, me and Tanis. And go. To New York. Somewhere. There's enough money. She 'd go with me. All along she's been the kind of girl who wants to leave. Mexico. That's the other part of the plan. The part. I don't.

I do.

I did.

“Dad,” I say quietly. “I saw something in the field that day that wasn't…I can't explain.” Even as I'm saying it, it tastes like a lie, bitter and blue.

He nods. Squints at me. “Were you smoking?”

I nod.

“Well,” he says, “maybe it just didn't seem real. Could have been a machine or something.”

“A machine?” I say. “What kind of machine makes
that
?” I jerk my head toward the window so vehemently that it feels like I pull a muscle in my neck.

“I don't know,” he says. “Our Joe is…well, he's making a bunch of money, isn't he? He has something to do with it. Those T-shirts were printed up before the thing even happened, right? They had to have been. That's what I'm thinking.”

And then there is Tanis again, her voice, in my head, in my head, in my head, saying, “I'll have the T-shirts printed up, and it will look like he…”

“Dad,” I say, “Our Joe is too…” I stop. I think. I think about me and Tanis on a bus or a goddamn plane or something, and New York is a big city. I close my eyes and think about an apartment. Cockroaches. The sounds of a city that never is so quiet that you have to hear yourself think. How would we cross the border though? We are underage and there are laws. Why didn't we think of that?

“I don't know if Our Joe…,” I start again. Then I say, “The T-shirts make him seem pretty guilty, huh? But who cares anyway? It's not like he's…killing someone. He won't even go to jail. Or…But…”

“He could,” says Dad. “Mischief, maybe.”

It feels like a thousand years since I was lying out there, being dwarfed by all that sky and all that pot and feeling like my problems were the biggest in the world. Now, suddenly, everything feels impossible. Everything is impossible. Our plan is so stupid and full of holes and sinking in the middle of a turquoise ocean in the fog, the thick fog. What was I thinking?

“I'm going to go out,” I say. “I think there's somewhere I have to go.” I am almost remembering. I am close to remembering all the pieces of the puzzle; I think I remember. I close my eyes and there it is again: the tightly packed gray-brown earth that we called the “beach”; the trees with the tiny green leaves that didn't give enough shade; and the way the water had pulled away so the raft was only a few feet from the shore. And the sun. It was so hot. I am remembering like it's a film, but the soundtrack isn't on and it's a silent movie and I'm in it and I can see myself, my mouth moving and Tanis leaning into me and saying, “Yes.” Nodding. “Yes.” Her pink lips saying, “Yes.” And New York tasting so brave.

“Live,” said Kate. “So we do this thing, right? We do this thing and then he pays and you get your life back? Like that? And maybe we double it up, right? And Dex gets his back too.”

I remember nodding. “Yeah,” I said. “Fuck them all.”

I remember Tanis saying something, like, “It's different, but whatever.”

I remember T-dot saying, “I don't know, man, but it's up to you guys, it's your thing. We 're just helping. But, you know, it could go wrong anywhere along the line.”

I remember. I don't remember.

I am making this up. It's a story. I am telling myself a story. I don't remember anything. I am making something fit that doesn't fit. A sweater that isn't mine. This town. My life. Tanis.

I am sweating. It's dripping off my nose like I've been running. I have been running. I am tired of running. I want to live in a split-level in the suburbs. I want my dad to grow
tomatoes
. I want Our Joe to pay for something, even if I don't want to know what it is. I want everyone to pay, I want Gary to pay, I want my dad to pay and everyone, and maybe this was my idea.

I am going to be sick.

Was it my idea?

I don't have ideas.

I have movies that play out in my head. It's a movie. It's just a movie and none of this matters or is real or will matter in a hundred years or…

It's a low-budget movie. A romance, an adventure, something old-fashioned where, at the end, the hero and his girl get out of town. And the other stuff is slow motion and implied. And then they are in New York, the jumble of it, implying happily ever after, implying everything.

“Happily ever after,” I say out loud to myself, to no one, and out of my mouth the smoke keeps coming and coming and coming.

I am close to knowing something I don't want to know. And there is smoke in my eyes, the smoke alarm going off, my eyes burning, the smell of pot everywhere. I can't breathe in this room, and I go to open the screen door and…

“Where are you going?” Dad says. “You're pretty late for school, aren't you? Don't get abducted on your way.”

“Hilarious,” I say. “Funny, Dad. You need anything before I go?”

“Nah,” he says, then adds, “Gary's here.”

I head out the door. I'm not going to school. School seems like something I've never done. Why do I need school? I turn north and just walk. I scratch my legs raw on the blackberries, just plunging through them like I don't care, because I don't. I like it. The scratching of my skin, the way my skin so easily opens and bleeds, crisscrossed with bloody x's. The foothills are low and rocky. I walk with no plan. I walk. I just keep going. I start to climb.

I walk and climb until I get to the wall of the valley. Our valley. It's sheer and slippery, but I avoid the road, the easy path. I need to do something hard. Something impossible. I need to hurt. I need to fucking crawl in gravel and
feel
it.

I need to feel it.

I start to climb for real. The rock is as cold as the stone bench outside our house and as smooth as ice. It stops me from having to think about much else. All there is is me and the rock, and my hands, bleeding and raw, just barely holding me up, and the sound of my heavy breathing and grunting from the effort and the wind, just enough you can hear it, and birds. There are always birds.

About halfway up there's a ledge, and I haul myself up on it, gasping.

I sit there for a long time. I have a bottle of water in my pocket and I drink it. It tastes like stale plastic. I can't get enough of it all the same. I flip open my phone and scroll through my contacts. I could call Feral. I could call Mom. I could call anyone. Look at all these people who I never call. Phil Stars? Give me a fucking break. Like I'll ever call him to just shoot the shit. As if.

I call Tanis. It takes her ages to pick up.

“Dex,” she says.

“Tanis,” I say. “I don't know. I just think New York might never have worked anyway.”

“What?” she asks. “What are you talking about, Dex?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I just…I don't feel well.”

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Why aren't you here? Mrs. D is pissed.”

“Tell her I'm researching my paper,” I say. I hear paper rustling.

“I've got to go, Dex,” she says. “I'll call you later, okay? Don't freak out, Dex. We 're so close.”

“Okay,” I say. “Tanis?”

She doesn't answer. I don't know if she's still there or not. “Tan?” I say. “I love you.”

I hang up.

Tanis is real, I remind myself.

I want to call her back. I want to say, “Not my dad.” Or “No.” Or something so she knows I've changed my mind. I can't.

But it's probably too late.

Glass came to town last March. I wasn't expecting her. Ever. Having Glass in this town was nothing but totally impossible. She roared into town in her Mercedes, and everyone stared. It was like the whole place shrank as she approached it.

I was in Wing's, or the shithole that everyone calls Wing's even though it's been called the Purple Garden for years. Tanis and I were holding hands, but when Glass screeched to a stop outside, I dropped Tanis's hands like they were something disgusting, like a cockroach in the noodles, and I couldn't get far enough away from them. I watched through the window as Glass adjusted her hair and lip gloss and gave a little bounce as she got out of the car. Somehow she saw me through the window and came tearing in.

“DEX, you fucking HOT STUD!” she screamed.

Tanis got up and left. Just like that.

Glass hadn't called me in months by then. I moved in winter. It was spring. There was some kind of goddamn blossom tree opening up in the parking lot, and the flowers made the whole place look nicer than it ever really was. I'd forgotten the exact shade of her purple hair, the way she waved her hand in front of her all the time like she was wiping away cobwebs when she talked. The way her tongue crept out of her mouth when she paused for the next word and tapped her top lip. That used to make me crazy.

“What are you doing here?” I said. I couldn't decide if I was happy or sad or just pissed off. And I wanted to know where Tanis was. I was always looking after girls who were walking away, and there was always another one standing in front of me.

Then I saw, in Glass's car, someone else.

Feral.

Frank.

I walked out of the restaurant and he was just sitting there. Sunglasses on the back of his head like a douche bag. It was cloudy but bright. He looked smaller. He probably was. More cheekbones, less cheek. He smiled but it didn't make it up as far as his eyes or really anywhere past his mouth.

He looked like shit.

He looked like an addict.

He looked high.

I was so pissed with him. For wrecking it. For taking the whole glam-boy prep-school drug-dabbler rock-band BULLSHIT and turning it from something that was a fucking lark into a serious death wish and a head that was one step away from skeletal.