The girl lay on her side with her knees pulled up almost to her chest. It was so hot outside that even in her underwear and with the air-conditioning on sweat collected on her face and dampened the sheet between her legs. If she lay very still and looked at one spot on the wall the pain in her head relaxed, and instead of being a fist full of sharpened nails it turned into a heavy knot.
“Jesus H. Friggin Key-rist,” her sister said, walking into the bedroom as she wiped her face with a damp paper towel. “It’s hot enough to melt bricks out there. You want me to get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” the girl said. “I just had some ice water.”
“I’ve had a gallon of ice water and I’ve only peed once,” her sister said, sitting on her bed and then removing her sandals. “I think this is it, the earth’s frying like a chicken, we’re doomed. When the electricity goes we’ll all start running around in the streets naked, screaming until our brains boil out. What’d you call it the other day? Something about evolution and how the dinosaurs fell over one day, like turtles, something about a blind alley.”
“An evolutionary dead end,” the girl said after struggling to untangle her sister’s syntax.
“You see,” her sister said, sitting on her bed with her back against the wall. “You’re smart. People like you should survive. Mom and me will go the way of the dodo. Head still hurt, uh? You take any more drops? Doc says you can have all the drugs you want. If I were you I’d take ‘em. Shit, I’d take everything they’d give me. You know Mom is such a dimwitty, I mean really. She could have moved out of this dump and with the money she’ll be getting from Dad we could have moved into a three bedroom house with a down payment. But all she does is sit in front of assbites who tell her to forgive everyone because Jesus says women should get slapped around. I mean it’s really pretty pathetic, you know? People just take advantage of each other and call it religion. I’m not giving blow jobs just so that I can sleep at night.”
“Do you have to talk like that?” the girl said, looking intently, without blinking, at the spot on the wall.
“She tells me that I can go out with Buster and then for no reason changes her mind and won’t talk about it because of what? My grades? What does that have to do with who I hang out with? She won’t pay for a tutor. I can’t bring any of my friends over and when I go to see them she calls me when it’s seven thirty because she’s panicked that I might not eat dinner. I’m fat enough as it is, a big toad. Look at the way she talks to us. Last night she got pissed off because I didn’t want any salad dressing.”
“She doesn’t like Buster,” the girl said.
His name was Ben Luster but everyone called him Buster. He was short, compact, muscular and, the girl thought, ruggedly good looking. But he scared her. He always moved with his head slightly down and when he talked it was with a crazy kind of cocked grin on his smooth face. Whenever the girl saw him little bubbles of electricity danced at the base of her spine.
“She doesn’t like anyone. She’s mad at you because the doctors say there’s nothing wrong with your ear but there must be something wrong or you wouldn’t be in so much pain, I mean, even if it is all in your head there’s got to be something screwed up, know what I mean? Just because they can’t find it it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You remember Dot? That really ugly, scrawny girl who sat behind me in third grade? She got scabies once. Kept scratching herself all over but her mother said she was fine. So what do the doctor’s know? They can be as stupid as anyone else. I don’t trust them. They look at you funny and they always talk to you like you were a kola bear or something.”
“She thinks Buster is a criminal.” The girl said, putting the palms of her hands against her eyes. She saw herself alone in her room, with her books, plants, flute and sheet music, looking out the window on a cold winter’s day, listening to the rain and the ticking of the clock. There would be no one to disturb her and she could think in peace and quiet.
Her sister went to the bathroom to wash her face. When she returned, pink from the cold water, she sat on the floor with her back to the bed.
“Is that what you told her?” she said. “That I go out with gangbangers?”
“I didn’t say anything to her about it,” the girl said quickly, removing a stray hair from her face.
“You know what you’re problem is?” her sister said, drawing up her knees. “You don’t live in the real world. Buster may not be perfect but he knows what’s going on, you know? We’re all being taken over by Big Brother. Mom doesn’t have a clue. She still thinks Dad is having some kind of mid-life crisis. Like cheating on your wife is a mid-life crisis. Maybe blaming yourself for marrying a dick is a mid-life crisis. That’s it. Mom’s having a mid-life crisis.”
“He’s three years older than you,” the girl said, feeling the first blunt points of the fist. Soon they would be sharpened points and the real pain would begin in earnest.
“You see, this is why I’m glad the world is ending and we’ll all be dead of radiation poisoning because everyone is so full of crap. What difference does it make in a few years when I’m an adult? How many married people are there who are the exact same age? Mom and Dad weren’t. I mean, not like, what d’ya call it? Mentally, in emotion IQ points, like Mom is forty and Dad is eight.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” the girl said. The image of the quiet room on a winter’s day faded. Chaos struck her in the forehead like a rain of rubber bullets. Would the stupid girl never shut up?
“No, go ahead, tell me,” her sister said.
“I know,” the girl said, feeling her heart beat faster in her chest. “I know you guys smoke pot and if you’re not careful you’re going to get yourself pregnant.”
“Oh this is news! When did you find this out, when you were reading Oliver Twist?”
“I know…”
“Well I don’t know what it is you think you know,” her sister said. “You don’t know what he’s had to go through and. You know what? I don’t have to explain anything to you. He hasn’t done anything. He hasn’t asked me to do anything.”
“He was kicked out of school,” the girl said. “He hasn’t finished high school. What are you two going to do?”
“Nothing,” her sister said sullenly, inspecting her toes. “Goddamn blisters. You know I wouldn’t get blisters if we didn’t have to wear cheap shoes. I hate my clothes. They make me look like a chubby eight year old.”
“Maybe you should go live with Dad for a while,” the girl said.
“He doesn’t want us around for Christ’s sake,” her sister said, picking at a nail. “He’s got a girl friend now.”
“Who told you that?”
“You really do live in another world,” her sister said, putting both bare feet flat on the floor. “No one had to tell me anything, you can tell just by looking at the place. I asked Mom a couple of times and she finally said that he was seeing someone and then she got all teary eyed about it being the doormat she is.”
“So what are you going to do?” the girl said.
“Go away eventually,” her sister said, looking down at her lap. “When we can. We’ll have to have some money. There’s not a whole lot to do anymore. There’s no jobs. We had that one plant down at Valley View that made spare parts and I thought I could get a job there but they shut down and there’s nothing anymore in retail. Everything’s done by computers and machines. Buster says that in a few years we’ll all be on the dole. We’ll just be sitting around waiting for our check. I mean, I know that you might want to teach one day but how long are there going to be any schools? Not with all this new technology. Wow look. We can send a chimp to the moon who can type. This town is drying up I tell you. If you’re smart you’ll clear out too.”
The girl lay very still for a long time, looking at the knot in her head rotate, turn black, smooth and then pointed. For five, six, seven seconds she held her breath, feeling a trickle of cool air from the air conditioner and heat on her back from the window.
“I have money,” the girl said, lacing fingers and then pressing them across her face.
“You don’t have any money,” her sister said, getting up so that she could sit on the bed again.
“No one knows about it,” the girl said. “I’ve been saving it up for a long time.”
“So what are you saying?” her sister said. “You’ve been saving up dough since you were three and now what?”
“Why don’t we face it?” the girl said. “You’re flunking out of school, you hang out with hoodlums and all you do is whine and complain about everything. You’re not happy here. I know you’ve probably been talking to Buster about being on your own.”
“I knew you’d turn against me,” her sister said. “This is the gratitude I get for raising you. Hit the road!”
“My ear hurts,” the girl cried. “Can’t you leave me alone for a while? I just need a little quiet.”
“I’ll leave you alone,” her sister said, walking to the door. “I’m sorry your ear hurts. I’m sorry about everything. I don’t know why I even talk to you.”
“Because,” the girl said.
But then she was alone.
Posted by james-hazard
at 12:07 PM PST
Updated: Monday, 23 June 2008 6:28 PM PDT
