It’s a cruel joke.
“Get past these people and tell that large man that your mother is Chelsea Martin, Florida Woman, and your old, sick nana is back here. He’ll take you to your mama, and then you can bring her back here to collect me. I’m just going to sit down by that wall over there. Okay?” She points to a deeper shadow against the huge metal building, which seems like it might offer some respite from the way the asphalt just here has absorbed a day’s worth of blazing sun. Or perhaps that’s her fever talking.
Brooklyn nods and throws her arms around Patricia’s waist.
“I love you, Nana! Wait here! I’ll save you!”
And then she’s gone.
The last thing Patricia sees before she turns to hobble to the patch of shadows and sink to the hot, hot ground is her spunky, clever granddaughter bypassing the crowd entirely and crawling under a tour bus on hands and knees.
54.
Ella has been to a few concerts, but she’s never been the one driving, and this concert parking lot shit is bananas. She nearly gets in three accidents before pulling into a space, and losing that ten-dollar bill hurt, passing it over as if for nothing. Surely her mother has money. Surely her mother will take care of her. Surely she won’t have to find her way in the world with only seventy dollars to her name.
Outside, the heat beams up off the cracked asphalt, the gabbled voices laughing and carefree in a way that she can’t even approach. She follows the crowd because they know where to go and she doesn’t. People in green vests use lit-up lightsabers to guide them toward gates like they’re airplanes going in for a landing. She doesn’t have a ticket. She couldn’t afford one. But she knows what to do. Chelsea told her what to say in her email.
“Can you please direct me to Security?” she asks an old woman with a face like a withered apple.
The woman’s face crinkles down. “What for? What’s wrong?” But then she shakes her head before Ella has to come up with a lie and points. “Doesn’t matter. Girl asks for Security, you send her to Security. Go knock on that door.”
Ella thanks her and heads for a thick metal door with, rightly enough, a sign reading SECURITY taped to it. She knocks, and a huge bald dude glares out. When he sees her, his face softens.
“You okay, honey?”
Normally, Ella hates it when people call her honey, especially men. But just now, she’ll take any kindness she can get.
“My mom is Florida Woman. Chelsea Martin. I’m supposed to meet her. She said you would have my name. It’s Ella Martin. And she said if there’s any problem with that, you can radio Arlene or Sienna and they’ll set you straight.”
The guy flinches at mention of those names. “Hang tight for a few.” He gently closes the door, and a few moments later it swings all the way open, letting out a puff of cold, mechanical-smelling air. He smiles. “Come on in.”
Ella steps into a room that looks like some kind of crisis center. There are several big dudes in SECURITY shirts, a teen guy looking at a bank of monitors, and lots of little radios.
“I’ll take you back to the tour bus,” the guy says. “Arlene said your mom was real excited to see you.”
He leads her down a long, cold hall, all white concrete blocks going gray with dirt. Their footsteps echo, and Ella realizes that she probably looks like some kind of animal, that her hair is a mess and she never put on deodorant today. She crosses her arms as she walks. “Yeah, I haven’t seen her in weeks. Months. I didn’t know she was here.”
The guy chuckles, but not in a mean way. “Your mom’s a star. Guess that was a big surprise, huh?”
“Yeah.”
At the end of the hall, he opens another heavy metal door, and the humid, hot air makes her draw back. They’re outside in a loading zone, where several RVs and buses are lined up. There’s a riot of voices, people laughing and talking. Sounds like a party. Her head jerks around as she looks for her mom, but all she sees are fans, lined up like groupies.
“It’s this bus,” he says, guiding her around the group. “Arlene said you could make yourself at home.”
A teen girl in the driver’s seat opens the door, cocking her head at Ella with curiosity, a hardback book splayed in her lap. “So you’re Ella,” she says. “You look just like your mom.”
But Ella stops before stepping up into the air-conditioned bus, which feels like a cool, calm, safe space, a space where she’s expected and wanted, two things she hasn’t felt in forever.
Something…she heard something.
Her name?
“Ella! Ella!”
She turns, and there, running up the asphalt, impossible and magical and wearing her broken tiara, is her little sister, Brooklyn.
55.
Chelsea runs down the grimy hallway in her VFR-branded robe, heart pounding harder than it did in the ring.
Her baby is coming. Her daughter.
Ella.
She shoves out the big metal door into the humid twilight fug of the parking lot beyond, the asphalt lit by sick orange streetlights, and much to her surprise a small crowd of people is standing there in the dark. A few heads turn, someone starts whispering, and it only takes a moment before they all focus on her like sharks smelling blood. They screech and wave and hold up signs, screaming, “Florida Woman, oh my God, it’s Florida Woman! I love you!” They surge toward her, but the security guys hold them back, and still hands press out toward her like she’s a guru who can offer blessings. She gives the crowd a single, frowning up-nod, trying to stay in Florida Woman character until she’s past, then jogs for the tour bus. It’s chugging in place, right where she left it earlier today. She stops in front of the door, her heart going a mile a minute, the makeup melting off her face, her lungs bursting.
The tour bus door swings open, but Indigo isn’t sitting in the driver’s seat. Chelsea turns her head to the left to ask what’s up, and that’s when she sees him.
David.
It’s like seeing a ghost, some hideous monster from her nightmares, and she’s stepping back outside in slow motion, the world running slow as honey when she hears a familiar voice from inside the bus cry, “Mommy!”
Ah. Shit.
He has Brooklyn.
She freezes.
“Come on in,” David says, looming over her as she stands on the bottom step, a wall of heat and groupie energy behind her. “The water’s fine.” His smile is a slow, cold thing, an alligator crawling up from the blackened depths. When she doesn’t step up fast enough, he raises his eyebrows and shows her the evil black gun in his hand.
She steps fully onto the tour bus that has become her safety, her sanctuary, her healing space, and he jerks the lever that closes the door behind her and locks it. The sound of the crowd goes utterly silent; that’s the beauty of a tour bus. It blocks all sound.
Well, most sound.
She’s pretty sure that if he shoots his gun, someone will hear it. But considering the close quarters, by then it would be too late.