We would open our eyes and it would be beautiful, all of it, and the world would crack open and arms would reach out for us and we’d finally be home. We’d strip our skins and run right into the light, into a future of possibility and fresh air and freedom, real freedom, the freeway flayed by our tires as we drove over this place and never looked back. All of it would be gone, Toby, his cousins, Mom, Dad, the boys, the girls, Burro Hills…all those watchful mountains looming in our rearview mirrors.
I clung to this vision as we watched the sunlight catch on the tires of the hundreds of cars on the freeway, going somewhere, anywhere, someplace better than this.
And I thought, if only for a moment: She’s getting out. I’m not. Maybe there’s nothing left for me to do but run.
5.
I was only thirteen.
I told myself that over and over whenever the memory would spring into my mind and attack me, in an otherwise peaceful moment, when I was going about my day, minding my own business.
It was a very Velez Christmas party. Their modest little ranch house had been transformed, dolled up with tinsel, blow-up Santa Clauses, and snowmen. A big plastic Christmas tree was planted in the middle of the living room, shedding cheap ornaments. Jess played with her cousins, chasing them around the house while her mom poured glass after glass of champagne and complained to her husband about how her youngest daughter was getting too old to act like a boy.
The way she said it made me feel sick inside my stomach.
I sat on their gold-and-green striped couch in the living room, busying myself with my Gameboy, the murmur and laughter of adults drunk on wine and Christmas spirit creating a peaceful white noise barrier. Any minute now, Jess would tire of her games and come find me, and we’d crawl upstairs to her room and whisper our thoughts about all the grown-ups around us.
Any minute now.
But the minutes lingered on and turned to hours, and soon I was wandering the house, bored, bumping past adults and sneaking flutes of champagne and handfuls of frosted sugar cookies until my stomach ached. The noise and the food and the clatter of silverware were starting to give me a headache too, so I climbed upstairs and lay down in Jess’s bedroom, snuggling up in her big purple comforter.
The door opened with a creak. It was dark in the room and in the hallway, and for a moment, relief flooded through me.
“Jess!” I said. “Thank God, I was so bored down there. Do you—”
But it wasn’t Jess. It was her big sister Kellie, her big sister about to go off to the University of Southern California and join a sorority and get a job that would make her rich and even more popular. Her big sister with the long, platinum blonde hair, the too-tight sweater, the giant fake boobs, the crispy orange tan. I stiffened.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She laughed, a little musical laugh that made me want to pull the covers up over my head. “Oh Jack, why are you always so upset to see me?”
She stumbled over to me, the way Dad always did after he’d had too many beers. She sat down on the bed and yanked the comforter off me, revealing my scrawny body engulfed by a hoodie. I said nothing.
“You’re such a cute little guy,” she slurred, reaching over and tracing my cheek with her fingertip. “You’re gonna be a looker someday. Trust me, all the girls will want you.”
I shrugged. Kellie groaned, mumbled something about it being “so hot in here,” then moved to take off her sweater.
“Don’t!” I said, but she’d already lifted it over her head, revealing her big, bulging watermelon boobs. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
She cocked her head at me and squeezed at her tits, at the pink, pointed nipples. “What’s wrong?” Her voice was all weird and husky. “You haven’t seen my new breasts yet, have you?”
I couldn’t speak. My mouth was sewn shut and my stomach had turned to ice. I tried to avert my eyes, to look anywhere but directly at her chest. She’d shown me them before, when I’d hung out at Jess’s house one night and she’d been all tipsy and handsy. But that time, I’d managed to get away, make up some excuse about how Jess was calling for me in another room. I’d managed to evade her.
“These were real expensive, you know,” Kellie said. Her breath smelled sour and strong, like Daddy’s before he got angry. I started shaking. “What’s wrong? Don’t like boobs? What, are you a little faggot or something? You must be a little faggot.” I’d never seen her like this, so cruel and detached from her body. “Everybody loves me. All of you want me. You just don’t know it yet, you’re so young and…”
And Kellie reached forward and pulled my face to hers. The shaking got worse, so bad I thought I might collapse into myself. She touched her lips gently to mine—sweet, sticky, lip gloss-covered lips—then pressed them hard against my mouth, hungry, angry.
She pushed me against the bed and tugged at the seams of my pants. No, I thought. I tried to say it, but her mouth was crushing mine. My arms had gone limp at my sides. My body refused to move. My heart was two fists pumping at my chest, screaming for help.
She reached down into my pants, under my boxers, and touched my dick. It remained limp in her cold hand. She tried to awaken it, tried to get it to move, but it was frozen solid like the rest of me. She stopped kissing and frowned at me like I was defective, like I had deeply
