People like to put their paranoia on you to keep you from having the fun they’re afraid to have themselves.
Bronwyn comes to and asks me if I’ve taken my turn yet.
“Nah. I was spacing out.” I spray a burst into the bag until the fumes rise up to my face. I put the bag on my head and feel the wet of the waterproofing spray on my forehead, waterproofing my hair. The last thing I hear before the blast of color fills my mind is Dom’s voice.
“Jesus, Ivy. What the hell are you…”
10. NOTHING TO SAY
THE FIRST THING in my line of sight when I come to is Dom’s combat boot. I don’t understand why my entire body is shaking, or why his boot is so close to my face. I hear him shouting, but can’t make out what he’s saying. His voice is so far, but his foot is so close.
A grinding sound in my ear drowns out his voice. A strange, bumpy sensation on my cheek confuses me and I want to ask why someone is rubbing crushed ice on my face, but I can’t make my mouth use words.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.” Bronwyn's voice, gasping panic. “Is she dead? What the fuck?”
Dominic’s scabby forehead, his big brown eyes blinking at me. “Ivy? You dead?”
“I dunno. Why was I shaking? What’s on my face?”
“Shaking?” Bronwyn’s panic doesn’t give way to relief. Instead, it seems to escalate, making her voice louder and shriller. “You were convulsing. You were doing the fucking fish, Ivy.”
I look up. “So, how did I get down from the rocket?”
“You said you wanted some food.” Dom tilts his head in that gee, don’t-you-remember-any-of-this way. “Then you started to climb down the ladder, but you didn’t actually climb or anything. You just sort of stepped off the ledge and ate shit into the gravel.”
“What’s on my face?” I put my hand on my cheek and little bits of gravel fall to the ground.
“You landed hard,” Bronwyn says. “You have gravel stuck on your face. It’s gonna look pretty jacked up in the morning.”
“Oh. Oh, yeah.” I rub my face. “Well, I think I still want some food, though. We got any money left?”
We count up the few dollars we have between us. A feast under the golden arches is out of the question. We could go to the 29-cent hamburger stand, but Bronwyn says it made her sick once because it isn’t real meat and that’s why she’s probably going to stop eating both real and fake meat. She suggests Lou’s Hot Dog Stand, but me and Dom refuse. Lou scares the shit out of me with his creepy flirting and Old Spice pickle relish smell. Besides that, Dom owes him money for some shitty mushrooms he bought a few months ago.
We decide to go to the 7-Eleven so Dom can five-finger discount some stuff to grub. We can hang out there for a while, maybe come up with a new plan for the rest of the night before morning arrives and forces us all back home.
Watching Dominic do his thing is always something to see. He’s an artist. Whatever isn’t behind the counter, or locked up in a glass case, Dominic can walk out with it. He’s never been caught, either. Even when we were little kids, he’d saunter out of Safeway with sodas and big bags of chips or chocolate chip cookies. He doesn’t even try to hide anything. He just glides through the door carrying the shit like he owns it.
A couple of months ago, he shoplifted a dozen boxes of caffeine pills. He and the twins were up for two whole days, playing Dungeons and Dragons and hanging around the 24-hour breakfast place, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, making their caffeine buzz even worse.
“Okay, so what do we want?”
I shrug and light up a smoke. “I don't care. Whatever. Just something.”
“No nasty marshmallow shit,” Bronwyn says.
“Yeah, yeah... I know that.”
We smoke cigarettes and watch Dom from outside. He nods at the guy working behind the counter, gets a soda from the fountain and starts playing a video game in the corner.
These things take time. He’d told us that back when we were still in junior high and demanded to know why it took half an hour to yank a bag of chips.
I walk over to the pay phones, check the coin return for forgotten quarters and find nothing. We sit on the curb, realizing we have a lengthy wait ahead of us.
“Hey,” I say.
“What?”
“You think maybe he was right? I mean, what he said about my shrink and all that?”
“I dunno. Maybe remembering all the gory details isn’t good, but maybe if you at could remember more stuff about your mom and dad, or understand what it did to Indra, it would be better. To move on, or whatever.”
“Yeah. I just feel like everyone wants to dwell on that shit, you know? I get tired of my whole life being all about being the murdered people’s kid, or the little sister of the chick who became a total mess after her parents were killed.”
“So, what should it be about instead?”
“Whattaya mean?”
“If your life isn’t about that, then what is it about? What would be better?”
I think about that and wonder if I’d be angry and broken like Indra if I could remember the sight of my dead father, if I had the burden of memory to carry around all the time.
Before she went away, my sister asked me if I’d ever heard of phantom limbs.
“What? Like ghost arms and legs?”
She shook her head. “Nah. Not really. It’s like, when someone gets a part of themselves amputated. After that limb is cut off, the person can still feel it there for a while. They get a leg chopped off for some reason,
