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Someday, you will ache like I ache
—Hole, “Doll Parts”
Day One
“Buckle up.”
That’s what Tracy says to me in the van in the hospital parking lot.
Phil, one of the guys from the hospital lobby, turns around and hands me a Pedialyte. I don’t know what happened to the crew cut guy.
“Stay hydrated,” he says. “And if you’re thinking of running, my advice is…don’t.”
Phil is bearded and ponytailed and rumpled and weathered in that way that so many older men are in Tucson. Tie-dyed shirt. Cutoff chinos. Birkenstocks with socks.
He goes back to scrolling on his phone.
My stomach feels tight and hot. I feel trapped.
I can’t crack the plastic seal on the Pedialyte bottle. I gnaw it off with my teeth.
—
Familiar places drift by my window: the abandoned movie theater on Campbell and Grant with the whale mural on the side; Raging Sage Coffee; India Oven, with its creamy tikka masala and garlic naan. Laurel liked to go there on her birthday.
Tracy turns down a residential street. A neighborhood of adobe houses and ocotillo fences. She stops at a pink adobe and honks the horn.
“Billy Lewis,” Tracy says to Phil. He jots something down on a clipboard.
The front door opens. A lanky kid steps out, yells something back into the house. Slams the door so hard the chile pepper ristra that hung there shatters on the ground, spraying red bits everywhere.
The boy hurls himself over my lap and jams himself against the window.
“Buckle up,” Tracy murmurs.
“This is some bullshit, right here,” the kid says angrily. “Major child abandonment, possible kidnapping. I should sue.”
“Feel free to hop out and go back,” Phil says, not looking up from his phone. “Find a lawyer. Make a lengthy TikTok with a sprightly background sound. Be my guest.”
The kid doesn’t answer, just clenches his jaw and stares out his window.
Then I can feel him looking at me intently. Heat spreads across my face.
“The hell happened toyou?” There’s a sneer in his voice, mixed with curiosity.
“Shut up,” I say. I turn away to my own window.
“No, like, seriously, because you had to do something extremely bad to make someone dothatto you. I don’t know whether to be impressed by you or scared of you,” he says.
“Billy.” A warning from Tracy.
From the corner of my eye, I see the boy named Billy tuck his longish brown hair behind his ears and roll his head.
“How long are we going to be in this car?” he asks. “And why does she get something to drink and I don’t?”
Without missing a beat, Phil backhands a water bottle toBilly, who misses the catch. It bangs off his knee and onto the floor of the van.
“The abuse begins already,” Billy murmurs.
