Aria felt the all-too-familiar seduction of her usual way of coping with emotions at times like this. She tried for a while to defy it until she couldn’t do so any longer. She needed the release. The release of pain.
She told Taylor and Luke she was going to pee and went out into the woods to a place outside of their visual range. She found the sullied shards of a broken beer bottle and, buzzing with adrenaline, drew the edges that were sharpest across her arms. The electric sting that sliced through her forearms as she cut them again and again was more powerful than her overwhelming feelings. The glass, now coated with her blood, became slippery as she used it. She started crying. But the multitude of splits in her arms were still weeping more than she was. The sharp sting had climaxed to an overall burning sensation that induced her body to start shaking. She watched her body forming clots to stop the flow of blood. She could feel the disunity in part of her wanting to be punished and another part, whatever part was forming those clots, wanting her to thrive. She watched her blood fall into the dust and laminate the grass blades.
Aria could see herself in the bruises that hugged Aston’s face. It was a tragedy to be hidden. A cycle of perpetual let-down that neither of them could find a way to escape. It was not even the pain of yesterday that mattered. It was that the pain was back again today.
She wanted there to be a sunrise on the darkness of his life. But she couldn’t make one for him any more than she could make one for herself.
CHAPTER 18
Aria had developed a cold again. Her body ached and her throat was sore. The pressure in her head made her feel disconnected from the world and it seemed like her voice had risen up into her sinuses. Taylor had gone out looking for work and had promised to try to bring something back for her to eat.
In predictable fashion, Ciarra had returned to the camp with Aston a few days earlier and Mike was watching him again. The bruises on his face had diminished and turned yellow-green. Aria didn’t want him to get sick, but she was playing with him anyway because of how sad she felt for him. Aston had spied a way out of his boredom when Aria had exited the Land Cruiser and sat down beside it, looking to get some sun. He had brought his little collection of Hot Wheels cars over to her and asked her if she wanted to play.
“Not like that, like this,” he said, dissatisfied with the method she was using to scoot one of the cars across the dirt.
“Vroom!” Aria sounded, trying to make an engine noise to bring life to their game of pretend. But Aston cut her attempt short.
“They don’t make that sound. That’s the wrong kind of engine. They sound like this … zzzzzz.”
He repeated the sound for a couple of minutes, taking breaths in between his buzzing. He drove the car up onto Aria’s legs and back down again into the dirt.
It was sad to Aria how in his own world his play was, even when he had someone to play with. She began copying him. A bright smile lit up his face and he stared at Aria with a playful, innocent look, which was uncommon to him. She showed him how to drive the car up and over the actual cars in the lot, pretending that they were huge mountains to climb, until Ciarra showed up, having been gone all night, and called him over.
Ciarra ushered him into the purple van and Aston continued the game that they had been playing across the inside of the car, while Ciarra climbed into the bed of the van and fell asleep. It was enough to break Aria’s heart.
She sat down again beside the Land Cruiser. Luke waved at her on his way out of the lot with Palin. She smiled and waved back. Aria had come to find that just like Taylor, Luke had a tendency to imagine a rapport that didn’t actually exist between himself and others, including the people who were currently inhabiting the car lot with them. In fact, Aria and Taylor were now more generally accepted than he was.
Despite Luke’s friendliness, Mike, Robert, Darren and Anthony barely tolerated him. To be voluntarily homeless was an insult to those who had no other choice. Aria read between the lines of their obvious annoyance when he was around. They saw him as both irresponsible and pathetic. Though tolerance was a long way away from friendship, it seemed to be enough for Luke to set up camp and imagine himself to be welcome there.
Still, she couldn’t help but like him. Her original dislike of him had been replaced by fondness. She felt that fondness when she watched him and Palin leave the lot to walk together toward the heart of the city.
In the afternoon, she wrote in her journal, then tried to take a nap. She grew sick of waiting for Taylor to return with nothing to do in the meantime, so resolved to walk to find a place where she could watch some television for free. In the previous weeks Aria had devised a clever way of accessing free entertainment. She would make herself look as presentable as possible, then find a restaurant with a sports bar and tell them that she needed a table for two, and ask them to sit her in a place where
