The View From Who I Was (12 page)

“You shouldn't have come,” Kenny said.

Angel shrugged.

A shout made the cousins look back, toward the combusting man. Their faces turned grim.

“Things good?” Kenny said.

“They're okay. I miss home.”

They fell silent against the fire's roar.

“You know that guy?” Angel said.

Kenny shook his head, but his eyes held pain. He reached out a filthy hand and petted Angel's cheek. “We've got to go.”

Angel nodded. “Be careful,” she said to their backs.

“Always,” Sherman called over his shoulder.

A smudge from Kenny's touch marked Angel's cheek, but she wore a serene expression. She walked to where we'd emerged on the highway, scaled the hill halfway, and sat down. Corpse stood for a minute, then settled beside her.

Angel stared into the flames. “Just being close helps.”

We hiked back in silence. Corpse felt the burning guy under the tree press around them, and the guy on the stretcher scorched her vision. Had Gabe and Dad run ahead of or behind our stretcher as it moved along the trail? When the ambulance slammed closed its rectangle of light, did they stand grieving in the dark? Knowing we were dead?

Guilt and smoke churned so hard in Corpse that she stopped and puked. I hovered near her, wishing I could puke too. When she turned, Angel stood a few feet away, still gazing at the fire like it was a lifeline.

She seemed to sense when Corpse was ready, and they moved on. Corpse cleaned her mouth on the back of her sleeve, realizing too late the coat wasn't hers. We seemed to trudge out of a nightmare.

Corpse pictured the water falling from the helicopter, the burning body returning to the clouds. “There's no water here. I keep listening for it, but there's no water. It makes me thirsty. For months I've been fascinated with water.” She spoke loudly so her words would reach Angel. “I don't know why. It just seems to be whispering an answer. I can't figure it out. It's driving me crazy.”

“There's water,” Angel said over her shoulder. “Beneath our feet.” She scanned the sky. “In Navajo tradition, there's a water god. He's responsible for rain, sleet, snow. Thunder and lightning. Maybe he's been speaking to you, trying to heal you.”

Corpse thought of Circle, and I squirmed. “Maybe,” she said. “Sherman and Kenny. Are they brothers?”

“Nah,” Angel said. “They're the sons of my mom's
sisters. They live together in Albuquerque, but they're fighting another fire near here.”

“How many cousins do you have?”

Angel seemed to count. “Seventeen.”

“I can't imagine it. That sense of family.”

They walked in silence again.

“Those guys were dead.” Corpse said. “It'll kill their families.” She took a shuddering breath, coughed, and surveyed the stars. “Things are so wrong at home. My family is dying. I think my Dad's the key. When he was ten, his family died. I don't know how. He won't talk about it. That was in Portugal. He was sent to live in America. I think it screwed him up. And money.”

“Money?” Angel said.

“Yes. Money's like a drug for him. He's addicted. God, it's such bullshit. You wouldn't believe how rich we are. We live in a freaking castle. I have my own car. A Range Rover, and not a used one. No, one right off the lot. I figured out that Mom spends the annual income of most of the families here just going to spas. We have a maid. Yet in every other way, in the important ways, we're so poor. That's what I figured out at the conference during William's reading. That's why I bolted. Does that sound crazy?”

“A little.”

“Your cousins are great. You're so lucky.”

“Lucky.” Angel seemed to weigh the word. “Maybe your dad just needs to go back to his people.”

“Huh?” Corpse said.

“Like my roommate. Maybe your dad just needs to visit home. Remember who he is.”

“Oh.” Corpse started to dismiss her words, but then remembered Dad in that recliner searching the stars, or on the beach when we were nine as he peered across the sea. She considered that new nodding, how he seemed two places at once. “His people,” she said. She stopped and gazed at the flames, again the height of her thumb. “That's it, Angel! You're brilliant!”

“It's just common sense.”

One flame flared high as Corpse thought about spring break. She ticked through ideas, and each shadowy rise of the moonlit hills before her evolved to steely gray waves that merged with the horizon. Beyond that horizon lay another continent. I kept silent, nervous as hell about what she was considering. Yet maybe I didn't know so much after all.

They returned to their journey back. A few points of light from the school appeared through the trees.

“I hope the fire doesn't reach up here. I like this place,” Corpse said.

“Me too.”

They came to the dorms. They went into Corpse's room and back out to the patio. Wrapping themselves in the bedspreads, they settled into the chairs. Corpse's legs ached. Her lungs burned. Her scabbed palms pulsed. So did her head.

“Thanks for taking me down there,” she said.

Angel was asleep.

As Corpse gazed at that smudge on Angel's cheek, I couldn't get rid of the terrible image of Gabe and Dad staring after that ambulance. Corpse clicked through how she'd make spring break happen. Pictured Portugal and Dad and healing. After a long time her mind turned gooey, and she yawned. In the distance, the coyotes howled, a thread on the air that raised goose bumps on her skin.

She saw again the bond in Angel's and Kenny's gaze. I thought about the years our family had spent avoiding each others' eyes. Thought of our nocturnal prowling in Chateau Antunes. How the scariest dangers stemmed from love.

Corpse woke to sprinkles against her face. Her head was cocked over the chair's back and drops tickled her throat like intimacy. When she finally moved, her neck was rebellious and sore. Angel was gone. Corpse massaged her neck. The fire's width had shrunk to the length of her finger.

“Good job,” she whispered to the firefighters and police. “Good job,” she whispered to the clouds. She willed her words to travel to the paramedics and the doctors who'd saved her. Wished for the guts to tell them in person.

She shuffled inside and closed the sliding glass door. Angel slept on one bed. Corpse settled on the other and drifted off to the rhythm of Angel's breathing.

Nineteen

From Oona's journal:

Schauberger's view of the world contradicted the accepted rules of science.

—Oona

Angel returned from bussing her breakfast dishes. Her eyes were puffy like Corpse's, and she rubbed them. Otherwise she seemed refreshed. At peace. I envied her.

“Do you want to see the Oasis House?” she said.

“Don't you have class?” Corpse rolled her head, trying work out her neck's soreness.

“I'm taking the morning off. Dr. Yazzie gave me permission.”

Dr. Yazzie and Mr. Handler were deep in conversation at a table across the room. Corpse could see Dr. Yazzie's hand in his pocket. He wore a faint smile as he watched her, and she wondered if that rock had tattled about last night. How had he ended up with that rock anyway? Did he pick it out? Was it a gift? And how could a person know if a rock was wise? Maybe he was just pulling her leg. She hoped not; she liked what that rock had said.

They strolled across the common area and onto the road. Corpse wore her fleece against the chill. Angel wore a jean jacket, and her hair riffled on the breeze. Corpse looked around and thought how this place reversed ordinary things.

“Angel,” she said, “who was scared by witches, maybe had a ghost in her room at the beginning of the year?”

“How do you know about that?”

Smoke hung in the air. That morning, when Corpse had looked out her room's sliding doors, the fire had become just rising gray scarves.

“I heard two teachers talking. White ones.” Corpse slid her hands into her fleece's pockets, pressed her fingers together to blot the missing ones' wails.

“The girl's not here anymore. Her father died. She had to go home.”

“He froze to death?”

Angel looked at her funny. “Yes.”

“What room was it?”

“Yours.”

Corpse stumbled, and Angel caught her arm.

At the road's fork they followed its right side. It des-cended more than the road to the dorms, and they walked in long strides. With each step Corpse tried to push forward off the balls of her feet to eliminate that bob. Over her shoulder, the climb back up taunted. Her sore legs were already arguing with the downhill. Since she and Angel had slept in, they hadn't greeted the sun.

“A medicine man cleansed my room?”

Angel didn't respond.

“Does that stuff linger? Like, could his power cleanse me?”

Corpse had my attention.

Angel seemed to sort out her thoughts on the road ahead of them. “When you first came here, you scared me.”

“What exactly is a ghost in your culture?”

Angel shook her head. “It's not good to talk about these things.”

“What do you mean?”

Angel just shook her head.

“Could a medicine man cure me? My hands and feet have been tingling since Circle.”

Angel gave her a serious once-over and then broke into a sly smile. “Seems like you're healing yourself.”

“Really?” Corpse smiled, but I swore myself to silence. At least for a while.

The road descended a half mile, till a hillside curved before them and the Oasis House appeared, a sprawling porched building nestled in the valley floor. Leafless trees towered overhead, but lush vegetation quilted the ground.

Corpse followed Angel up three front steps onto the porch and around the building's side to the back, where a huge deck reached out to the green shore of a pond. She descended steps to the pond's bank, and her reflection stared back at us from the water.

Pretty was coming back to her. Something in her eyes had changed. I looked closer. Recognized courage. She reached out to trace that reflected nose, sending waves across that girl.

“How can this be here?” she said.

“There's a spring,” Angel said.

Corpse returned to the deck and peered through glass doors into an open room with a wood floor, leather couches and chairs. A regal painting of a Native American chief in a headdress, whose name she couldn't remember, hung on the wall opposite her. She recognized a corner of the gilt frame from the background of the photo on Angel's roommate's desk, and she imagined the people in that photo posing in there, laughing.

She turned to the pond, lined on the far side with cattails and bud-laden bushes. “This is like a different world.”

“I like that about the desert,” Angel said. “How it holds hidden worlds. Sometimes I hike that way along the valley floor.” She pointed beyond the pond. “Hawks live in a tree down there. Sometimes they leave these on the ground.” Angel held out a feather. “This is for all the things you've survived. And for our friendship.”

The feather's reddish-brown tip was followed by a thick dark-brown stripe, then thirteen stripes below that, reminding Corpse of a tiger. At its end, a fluffy white tuft abruptly became the shaft held by Angel. Corpse's hand covered her mouth.

“You have to treat it with respect,” Angel said.

“No problem.” Corpse took the feather, ran her two fingers up one side and down the other. “Thank you.” She leaned her elbows on the deck railing and admired it.

Angel joined her at the rail.

One stripe had a break in the middle. Corpse decided that was ours. She traced its break and mentally thanked the emergency room doctor.

“William wants to be a doctor,” she said.

“Yes,” Angel said. “He always has.”

“You've known him a long time?”

She shrugged. “My grandfather and his grandmother are old friends. We've been hanging out at powwows since we were in diapers.”

“Oh,” Corpse said. “What do you want to be?”

Angel shrugged. “A writer maybe. Someone who helps my people somehow.”

My people
. I pictured Sherman and Kenny. All we had was our screwed-up family. I pictured Ash glaring at us. Tanesha scowling at us. Manny shouting, “
Chingado
!
” All those eyes in the halls.

“How about you?” Angel said. “What do you want to be?”

Corpse twirled her feather, head tilted, and thought, Happy, loved, a scientist. “No clue.”

On the pond were lily pads. The breeze gently textured its surface, rocking the pads.

“I wonder how charred it is down there by the highway,” Corpse said. “I keep thinking about those guys' families.” Her voice broke, and before I knew it, I hovered over her shoulders.

Angel pressed her lips and leaned on the rail.

“That was lucky. The rain. To lose all this would be a shame,” Corpse said.

“I didn't want to know you.” Angel smiled in the way that transformed her face. “I didn't like that dream I had, and I only remembered you from the conference. When you got here, I tried to keep my distance, but I kept running into you. I finally decided to stop fighting it. I'm glad I did.”

“Me too,” Corpse said.

“My dream,” Angel said, “was that you were my roommate at Yale.”

Corpse stiffened.

“I think I'll listen to that dream. I've decided to go to Yale.”

“Even knowing how screwed-up I am?

“You seem okay. And my dreams are never wrong.”

Corpse looked at her sneakers. Gabe at Harvard, Angel, probably, at Yale. I didn't know what to think. Maybe after spring break we could consider college. Maybe then we'd feel worthy of these people who risked themselves on us.

“I can't commit to anything until my family is better.”

“And if they heal apart?” Angel said.

“Then they heal apart,” Corpse said. “Right now things are not okay. It would be like abandoning that guy under the fire last night.”

Their eyes met.

Angel: He was already dead.

Corpse looked down.

Angel shrugged.

They leaned on the rail, taking in the scenery. Down the valley, a hawk appeared above the cottonwoods. It rose in a sleek, soaring curve.

“Maybe your feather came from that one,” Angel said.

Its wings adjusted in slight movements against the currents.

William, Angel, and a few other students stood at the back of Mr. Handler's Prius. Louise came out of the counseling office, the screen door clapping behind her.

“Well,” she said, “go if you must. Thanks for everything.” She hugged Mr. Handler.

“No, thank you. I gain far more than you do when I come here.” He turned to the rest of the kids. “From all of you.” He looked worn-out but content.

Roberta marched up. She and Mr. Handler regarded each other.

Angel stepped from Corpse's side and hugged Mr. Handler. A couple other kids did the same. William shook his hand, and Corpse noticed his grip was light, like he was giving Mr. Handler something delicate.

“Good luck this summer,” Mr. Handler said to him. “Good luck to you all.”

Roberta hung at the back of the group, studying the asphalt. Corpse had an urge to slap her. To shout,
Hey!
These people care about you!
But I remembered Roberta's scowl in the counseling office after she'd passed through me, her astonished face at Circle.

Mr. Handler and Corpse walked to their sides of the Prius. They opened its doors.

William, with Angel at his elbow, followed Corpse. “Angel has my number,” Corpse said to him. “If you're in Leadville, come for some ice cream.”

“I might be on a diet. Slimming down for college.” He grinned.

“Bye,” Angel said, and she and Corpse hugged. “Let me know how it goes with your dad.”

Mr. Handler seemed to absorb her words as he watched them across the Prius's shining roof.

“I will,” Corpse said. She started to get in the car but felt as if she was leaving something important. Too important. She turned to Angel. “Maybe you can come visit me this summer?”

Angel's eyebrows rose. “I have to work.”

“A few days?”

“Maybe.”

Corpse got in and closed the door. She rolled down the window. Mr. Handler started the car, and Angel said, “You had a sky blue bedspread. With clouds. Okay. I'll come see how rich white folks live.”

Mr. Handler pulled from the lot and waved his arm out the window. The Prius ascended the road, and Corpse craned around and looked through me out the back window. The kids were talking in a group, but Louise and Angel watched the Prius.

“Amazing place, isn't it?” Mr. Handler said.

“Yes.”

Angel grew smaller. Corpse held up her thumb, and Angel was the size of its nail. Her eyes rose to where the fire had been, across the ridges' waves to the horizon. The Prius crested the rise, zinged over the cattle guard, and started bouncing along the washboard dirt road.

“In the middle of nowhere,” Mr. Handler said, shaking his head.

The dog sprinted out to them.

“Crazy animal,” Mr. Handler said. “I wish they'd tie it up. I'm afraid I'm going to hit it.”

Corpse pictured the dog chained up, yanking and choking itself as it snapped and barked, frantic to get to Mr. Handler's car. This dog would break its neck trying to chase them.

The dog's fierce barking trailed off, and she watched it in the side mirror, braced in the road, fangs bared. Did that dog ever curl by the fire and let itself be petted? She craned around, looking through me again at the space where she imagined the school to be, curled in its valley.
Middle of nowhere
.
DEAD GIRL GOES NOWHERE.
In nowhere, we finally started to puzzle ourself out.