Jess let out a breath. “Fuck that yogurt place,” she said, and we both laughed. “No, it’s just…now I’m basically moving in with my mother. For a month.”
“You mean in that gaudy hotel she lives in?”
“It’s a condominium building,” Jess said, making the word sound super, super hoity-toity. “And yeah, it’s ugly. But Dad keeps telling me I have to try. He just keeps saying she’s my mom and blah blah blah, custody agreement. Whatever. Legality is probably the only reason she agreed to it.”
Living with Jess’s mom would probably suck in some ways, but it couldn’t be worse than my house. Growing up, I’d spent so much time at the Velez residence that sometimes I thought I lived there. I used to lay in bed at night and pray I was a girl so I could sleep over there, or move in and become Jess’s sister, but I never told her that.
Some secrets are best kept in that deep, dark corner of yourself.
We turned and started walking back into our neighborhood, all the one-story houses with dilapidated roofs and crumbling driveways, old people watching you from their porches, rocking back and forth in their chairs like time had stopped on this street. That was really the only thing left to do.
“Maybe it would be nice to get away from here for a while,” I said. “She doesn’t live that far.”
“I’d have to take the county bus to school,” Jess groaned. “I’m so used to Dad driving me. The bus is full of creepy homeless people and drug dealers.”
I moved my tongue around my mouth so I wouldn’t say anything. I hated when she said stuff like that.
“Maybe you should give her a chance,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure why I was saying it. “Maybe she really does love you and wants to show you that. The thing is, adults don’t like to tell you stuff upfront, so you’ll have to go there in person either way to find out. But isn’t it better to know the truth?”
She stared at me for a while, frowning like I had just spoken some Martian language, like she couldn’t quite figure me out. Then she broke into a grin and punched my arm.
“I was mad at you for yesterday, you punk,” she said. “But now that you gave me some decent advice, I’ll let it slide.”
I shrugged. “I do what I can. You want to smoke?”
She rolled her eyes. “I have to study, Jack. I have a big test tomorrow.”
“But it’s Sunday. Sundays are smoking days.”
“Every day is a smoking day for you. You are such a stoner.”
I laughed off her little jab like it didn’t hurt.
“Shall we go to the Spot?” I asked.
The corner of her mouth turned up into a smile. “When have I ever said no the Spot, Jack?”
“The Spot solves everything.”
She looped her arm through mine. “All of life’s greatest quandaries are mysteriously solved the moment one sets foot in The Spot.”
The Spot—our Spot—was just a patch of grassy bluff. It was overlooking the freeway—a strip of concrete glittering in the harsh sun—with the broad shoulders of those ever-looming mountains towering over it all. I loved it. We’d been going there since we’d first discovered it back in seventh grade, before the new housing developments and shopping center, back when it felt like this secret little retreat from the rest of Burro Hills.
Jess rested her head on my shoulder.
“What should we do now?” she asked. Her voice had that dreamy quality to it, and I knew we were about to play the game we always played whenever we sat at the Spot—the game where we dreamed of where we’d go and what we’d do when we finally got out of here. When we were younger, it was Disney World or Six Flags or the world’s biggest indoor splash park. When we got a little older, it got a little vaguer, a little more out of reach.
What should we do now? The question fell from her mouth and rolled out across the land below us, into the sounds of honking horns and revving engines, and the air that was always thick with exhaust fumes. “Let’s just get a car and get out of here,” she said. “We’ll drive down the Pacific Highway and never look back. What do you think?”
“That sounds sick,” I said. “But I don’t know. Are you paying for gas? I’m dead broke.”
She laughed. “Don’t think about the money. The money doesn’t exist in the fantasy. We can go anywhere we want. We could run from here, just run away and do whatever we liked. We could see the country, maybe see the world. There’s so much more outside this town. So much more besides high school and college and some boring nine-to-five job we’ll get someday and totally hate.”
We. She’d go to college. She’d get the nine-to-five. I wouldn’t go anywhere.
But I closed my eyes and imagined it anyway, just for a moment. The fantasy of us she’d created. Us away from everywhere. All of this. Together.
“But you’ll leave anyway,” I said. Behind my eyelids, the vision popped and deflated like a sad balloon. “You’re going to college for sure. And you’re probably going out-of-state.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” she said, but she said it quietly, and we both knew that it was. Jess had always dreamed of attending an Ivy—or even a Little Ivy, if they’d have her. She had the grades, the family connections, the money. She could do it. She could make it.
What the hell did I have?
I would stay here, and I would probably die here. But at least for another year, we’d be together in this broken, crumbling town, rotting and burning to death in the baking sun.
Or, we could just say “fuck it” and make that
