Obscura Burning (9 page)

“So…” Shira says.

“No, not another Danny joke, please.”

“Actually, I was thinking we should include a couple at the memorial. You wanna tell them or should I?”

“I think…”
That’s incredibly lame. “That’s a great idea. Maybe we can each tell a couple.”

“Sounds good.” She straps her feet into sandals and locks the trailer.

“Listen.” I slip my hand into hers and squeeze her fingers. “I’m sorry about being such an ass about everything.”

“It’s OK, Kyle. We’re both dealing.” She won’t meet my gaze.

“No, I mean about being with you…you know?” I have to say something, can’t let her keep thinking that’s all she means to me.

Her lips quirk up into a grin, but her eyes aren’t smiling. “Well, at least you know you’re gay for sure now. So something good came of it. It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

“Shira, if I was ever going to screw a girl, I’d totally do you.” I don’t add
because you look like a boy and remind me of being with Danny.

“How sweet.” She stands on tiptoes and kisses my cheek. I can feel it, the warm brush of her lips across my skin. She’s still holding my hand as we wind our way along a trail through creosote and yucca, headed for the center.

The heat shimmers, a rippling mirage that swells and flows toward us. Shira’s talking, but her words are garbled as if she’s underwater. Instinctively, I hold my breath and close my eyes as the wave crashes over me. Another waking shift.

Chapter Eight

Shira’s dead

“You were a dick to her.” Danny hands me a bag of peas from the freezer. I’m slouched at his kitchen table, feeling miserable. The wave of nausea subsides in the cool of the adobe as I’m deposited in the different reality by whatever arcane force is giving me my time-jumping superpower. Thank God it didn’t come with a spandex suit in red, white, and blue. The house is quiet; everyone else must be out.

Saturday. June 30.

A thin stream of blood snakes out of my nose as the pain in my head recedes to a dull ache. Danny hands me a napkin. It takes me a couple of moments to adjust to this reality, to process his words.

“So you’re saying I deserved this?” My face is a mess. Torn lip, bruised cheek, black eye. My ribs are the worst. Even shallow breaths feel like hot pokers stabbing through my lungs. I’d rather be with Shira post-parent fight, off to see a head doctor.

“A little, maybe.” He grins, and when I try to return it I taste fresh blood welling from the crack in my lip.

“I would’ve paid, you know.”

“You’re not going to now?”

“Hell no, now I have medical bills.” Chuckling brings tears to my eyes.

“You should get those ribs checked out.”

“My mom’ll strap them up for me.”

“Too bad Shira’s not around with her smelly ointments. I think they actually worked.”

We’re both quiet, thinking about Shira.

“Anyway, I liked your idea about the memorial,” Danny says.

“Yeah, and which one was that?”

“The one we’ve been discussing the past hour.”

Another lapse. Any more of these and even my friends will want to stick me in a padded cell and throw away the key.

“Um…”

“Jeez, about the flowers? Dead roses instead of living ones?”

“Ah…”

“You sure you don’t have a concussion?”

“Maybe.” I lick my lips and shift the peas from left cheek to right eye. “As long as we make it about Shira. We make it uniquely her, then maybe it’ll have more meaning.”

“Dead flowers not enough? You want wind chimes and heavy metal too?” Danny chuckles.

“Did you know her favorite poem was by this Muskogee writer?”

“Who?”

I start reciting the words etched on the postcard still vivid in my mind, but trail off.

Danny’s giving me this strange look. “I didn’t know you and Shira were off to poetry readings. Guess I missed it.”

Blood rushes to my face, probably not visible thanks to the peas against my cheek.

“I knew there was something going on between you two.” Danny folds his arms and stares at me. “You were both acting weird that night. Is that why you got so drunk? Couldn’t tell me you’d rather be screwing my best friend?” His bottom lip juts out in a pout as his dark eyes narrow into arrowheads.

“It wasn’t like that, Danny.”

“What was it like then?”

“Shira’s dead, so what does it matter?” This is the last conversation I want to be having. Everything’s just going to shit.

“It matters to me.” He regards me with a peculiar expression on his face. “Did you sleep with her?”

I can’t meet his gaze, and it’s a stronger admission of guilt than if I’d said yes out loud.

“You
cabrón.
” He adds a few more Spanish expletives. “Was this before or after I asked you to marry me?”

“After.” I manage through a clenched jaw. “You want specifics?”

He grips the arms of his wheelchair, turning his knuckles white. “Just tell me why.”

“Because…” I look up, and the hurt in Danny’s eyes makes being honest a hell of a lot harder. “Because I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“I didn’t know anything. It was too much, man. Marriage? You just dropped that one on me like it was nothing. That’s serious, Dan.”

His full lips are pressed into a razor-thin line. “Well, how about now? Did screwing my best friend help clear things up for you?”

“It wasn’t easy for me.”

“Not easy getting it up for a girl, or what?”

“Jesus, Daniel. It’s so much more complicated than that.” I run a hand through my hair. “I wasn’t thinking, OK? We were stupid. It was my fault; don’t be pissed with her. I shouldn’t have done it, but I was confused, and things are so complicated.” I don’t even know where to start.

“Less confused now?” His eyes are wet.

“I’m gay, Danny. I know that for sure. But…” I stare at the kitchen counter. “But I still don’t know if I want to marry you. We’re eighteen! I don’t want to think about marriage till I’m thirty.”

“I thought you loved me?”

“I do, but…”

“Obviously not enough to marry me.”

“Obviously not.” The words leave my lips before I have time to think and word it differently.

“Get out.”

“Come on, man.” I slide off the chair and approach him, crouching at his feet. “I do love you; I want to be with you. But I can’t think about marriage, OK?”

“It’s your fault I’m in this chair. You’re a cheat and a liar, Kyle.”

“I’m sorry, Danny.”

“Get the hell out of my house.” He rams me with his wheelchair, knocking me onto the tiles. Stars explode behind my eyes from the pain ripping through my left side. He slams into my legs again, and I have to scrabble on hands and knees to get out from under his chair.

“Get the hell out and don’t come back!” Danny screams after me as I stagger out of the house, clutching my side. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the world to tilt, willing that other reality to overwhelm this one. But when I open my eyes, I’m still standing in his yard, bleeding. Moments like these, I really wish I’d died.

People stare as I limp past, all bloody and beat up in yesterday’s stained clothes. I’m a mess. Shira seemed to think the counselor was helpful, and I’m out of options.

It’s a long walk through midday heat from Danny’s to the community center, made longer still by the fire in my ribs. There’s an ice-cream van parked in the lot overlooking the basketball courts. Mya leans out, smiling as she hands some kids their cones.

I don’t have anything more to lose, so I swagger toward her as best I can given the condition of my body.

“Can I get a Coke float?”

“They sure got you good,” she says, not budging from where she’s resting her elbows on a book.

“Four against one’s hardly fair.” I lean on the counter. “What you reading?”

“None of your damn business.” She swipes the book out of view, releasing a flutter of leaflets. They tumble off the counter, caught by the breeze. I slam my fist on the remaining pile.

Repent, sinner
—burning crosses and saving white light. Could the world just end already?

“You believe this crap?” I ask.

“Some guy asked if he could leave them on the counter, that’s all.” She gathers them up, tugging at the ones beneath my fist, before dumping them in a trash can full of broken ice-cream cones.

“You know, Mya, in another life, I think you and I could’ve been friends.”

“How you figure that?” She flicks her hair off her shoulder. This Mya covers up her freckles with makeup that leaves her face streaky under a sheen of sweat.

“Same way I figure that in another life maybe you’d have pushed Benny into Briar’s and he’d have cracked his head open like a watermelon.”

Mya frowns, then her mouth hangs open and her eyes grow wide. “How could you…”

“Am I gonna get that Coke float?”

She turns away and busies herself with soda and soft serve. “That’ll be fifteen hundred and three dollars, thanks.”

“Fifteen hundred?” Now my mouth hangs open. “There’s no way repairs’ll cost that much.” Please let the world end before I have to tell Dad about this.

“That’s what the insurance company says. So you gonna pay, or do I have to get the cops involved?” She doesn’t let go of the glass as I reach for it.

Where the hell am I going to get that kind of money? That’s four months’ worth of daily shifts. And it’s not like my folks have cash to spare.

Eventually she releases the glass and holds out her hand. “You can start with the three bucks right now.”

I pass her the money in coins and take a generous slurp of ice-cold Coke.

“My medical bills come to around fifteen hundred too.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Yeah?”

“Busted nose, broken ribs, broken teeth.” I exaggerate a little.

“Wanna toss in some burn wounds while you’re at it?” She smirks, and I fold my arms, self-conscious of the new scar I don’t remember putting there.

“I could press assault charges, but I thought we could end this amicably.”

“You got a receipt for that bill?”

“Do you?” I scoop ice cream out of the glass with a finger.

Mya glares at me, her hazel eyes hard and calculating. She’s like the evil twin of that other girl with the lovely, laughing eyes, or maybe just the shadow version. Maybe killing her brother was a good thing if it’d saved her from whatever crap had made her into this bitchy, bitter girl.

“I’ll get my dad to send yours a receipt for the damages. You can be sure of that.”

“And you can expect a visit from the sheriff.” I slam the empty glass down on the counter. Only I’m the one who’s bluffing. The sheriff’s no friend of mine, not with my history in this small town.

I head down the embankment toward the center, and steal a single glance over my shoulder. She’s texting furiously on her phone, so maybe I put at least a little fear into her. Perhaps going to see the sheriff wouldn’t be such a bad thing; getting in first might be for the best. Especially since Danny hates me right now and will probably inflate the bumper bashing to make me seem more of an asshole.

* * *

There’s a clock on the wall in the waiting room: orange plastic decorated with tiny chili peppers around the circumference. The second hand ticks an irregular rhythm and then the minute hand clunks. Twelve clunks and I’m still waiting. I’m expecting the thirteenth clunk, but it doesn’t happen. The clock’s stopped. More Obscura meddling or just an old battery?

There’s nothing worse than a doctor’s waiting room, than that dread anticipation liquefying your insides. Spent enough time around shrinks as a kid. They always asked why. Why did you set the fire?
Because I like it.
But why? I didn’t know then, but maybe I do now.
Because there’s real power in controlling something that beautiful and that destructive.

When the counselor emerges, she’s younger than I expected. Tan and petite, blonde hair cut short, framing kind eyes. I squirm in my seat, the backs of my shorts slick with sweat on the plastic seat.

“Hello, Kyle. Want to come in?”

No, I want to disappear out the door, find some shade to fall asleep in, and never wake up again. I wince as I get to my feet and shuffle into her office.

“I’m Amy.” She shakes my hand. “What happened, Kyle?”

I sink into a threadbare armchair and run a hand through my hair.

“Some kids roughed me up.”

“Why?”

I shrug as she settles behind her desk. There’s a neat little row of miniature cacti along the window ledge and a framed photo of Shiprock. There’s not much more to the room. Nothing to reveal anything about Amy the psychologist.

“Why did you come today, Kyle?”

“A friend recommended you.”

“Oh, which friend?”

Now’s my chance to spill, to describe my fractured reality. It’s harder than I thought to find the right words.

“Shira,” I say. “But she’s dead.”

“I’m sorry, Kyle. Do you want to tell me about it?”

This woman keeps saying my name, like it’ll create some magical bond between us. It’s just annoying.

“Well, Amy. Not really.”

“What do you want to talk about, Kyle?” She settles back in her chair, folds her hands in her lap. She seems more like a school principal than head doctor.

“You know, this was a mistake.” I can’t tell this lady that I just had a fight with my boyfriend, and that on the recommendation of my dead girlfriend, I’m here seeking her counsel.

“Kyle, you can tell me anything. What we discuss here stays here. You obviously have a reason for coming to see me.” Her gaze drops to my arm. There’s a momentary narrowing of her plucked brows. Judgment has been passed. She thinks she knows all about me now just because of some cigarette burns in my skin.

“You know all about me, don’t you?”

“Know what about you, Kyle?”

This woman’s wearing my name out.

“I asked you first.” I lean back, shifting my weight to ease the pressure on my side.

“I know what’s on this form. Kyle Wolfe, eighteen years old, your address and phone number. What else should I know?”