And then it was there. In my head. In every part of me. Fully there, and it seemed unimaginable that it had taken even that split second to arrive.
Next thing I knew I was on my feet, but with no memory of standing up. And I was chasing the car down the dark street. Through an intersection, where my ears were assaulted by the blaring horns of cars that almost hit me. Almost ended my life in that moment.
But they sounded far away.
My chest caught fire, but I just kept running. The Mercedes was moving ten times faster than I was, its red taillights fading into the distance. But I couldn’t stop running. I couldn’t bring myself to stop.
To admit that it was over.
And I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I knew because my throat was strained and sore. But my voice sounded distant and small to me.
I was screaming, “Etta!” Over and over and over.
Chapter Two
Molly: Because of a Banana
I just wanted a damn banana and I just had this feeling like it was not too much to ask from my life. Like life owed me one little stinking banana after everything else it gave me.
It was dark, but I didn’t know how late it was—just that it was dark, and I was walking back from the recycling place—but I only had one dollar and forty-two cents. That’s it. From a whole day of going around picking up bottles and cans. One dollar and forty-two cents. It just wasn’t a very good day recycling-wise.
I stopped at the corner store, and I was looking at everything they had to eat, and it was all the same crap I ate every day. Well. Every day I was lucky enough to eat.
Chips. Jerky, but that’s expensive. Nuts, but they’re so salty. But at least they’re pretty cheap and they have some protein.
I looked up at the guy behind the counter, who made me nervous. I sort of knew him, but not in a good way, because he used to offer me food and say he would trade me. I kept saying I had nothing to trade and he would only laugh this creepy laugh and he would never tell me straight out what he meant.
After a while it was my friend Bodhi who told me what it meant. Bodhi wanted to help me so he went in and told the guy he was my boyfriend and threatened to beat him up, and after that the guy was mostly just mean and rude to me.
Bodhi was not my boyfriend. He just said that to try to help.
Anyway, the corner store guy still made me nervous. He was old and bald—literally old not just old compared to me like everybody is—seventy, maybe, so it was extra creepy when you thought about it.
On the counter in front of him was a plastic container of bananas. They had never been there before—at least, not that I’d ever noticed. They actually looked kind of disgusting, because they were completely green, but all of a sudden none of the other food in that place looked like food to me at all. It all sounded salty and dry and old and not fresh and not something I wanted. Not even anything I could bring myself to choke down.
I think I hadn’t had a single fruit or vegetable since I left Utah with Bodhi.
I walked up to the counter but I never took my eyes off the guy because he made me nervous. And he never took his eyes off me—believe me when I tell you that—but for different reasons.
“How much?” I said, and pointed at the green bananas.
“Dollar fifty.”
“A dollar fifty? For one banana? It’s too much!”
“Then don’t buy one.”
But by then I wanted one so bad that it was more like I needed it. You know how that can happen? How all of a sudden a thing gets to be more than just the thing it is, and then all of a sudden it feels like everything that’s wrong in your life? Not having bananas felt like everything that’d gone wrong in my life since I had to leave home, and, let me tell you, that’s a whole big bag of wrong.
He opened his mouth to say more and I knew what he was going to say so I walked out before he could. I have to be worth more than the price of a banana, even a too-expensive one, and the day I lose that I think I’d rather just be gone from this world.
I decided to walk to the all-night market.
Problem was, it was kind of a stupid idea, because all of a sudden I was feeling it in every cell of my body how I’d been eating nothing but junk food—empty calories, my mom would say—and feeling like I needed actual nutrition that my body could use for actual health. Full calories. But at the same time I knew it was a long walk to the all-night market and by the time I got there and back I would’ve walked off the calories two or three times over. But by then it was a thing I couldn’t let go of in my head. I don’t know how to explain it any better than that.
So I got into the market and right off the bat this older lady in a company polo shirt and apron started following me around, and not on the sly, either. Real obvious, like “Here I am, you little punk kid, and I’m watching everything you do.” But I wasn’t doing anything, so it made me mad—I was just walking over to the produce section to look at their bananas, and there’s no law against doing that as far as I know.
I found the bananas and
