There was so much I didn’t know about her. Like if she’d had a real boyfriend, or if she’d had sex or done drugs—like the kind of drugs she’d brought home for Mom or anything else. I didn’t know what she did at night when she wasn’t home, what her friendship with Lia meant to her. It felt urgent, now, to find out everything, but I also knew it was probably too late. It made me sad, the idea that for the last few years I’d stopped knowing my sister, who she had become.
“Yeah, it hurt a little,” she said. She stepped away from me and pulled on a new pair of leggings after ripping off the tag. “A tattoo like this just takes like ten minutes; it’s over fast.”
I watched her finish getting dressed. “How much did it cost?”
“I don’t remember. Not a lot.”
“I want one,” I said. “A matching one.”
She blew out a little laugh, as if I’d never really do it.
I reached for the new phone. “Maybe Kip knows a place around here we could go.”
“You want to do it right now?” Dixie asked.
“I’ll chicken out if I don’t just go. You know how I am.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
“You’re coming, too. I want mine to be just like yours. They need to see.”
“It’s a star. It’s not like it’s the Mona Lisa or something.”
“Come on,” I pleaded.
There was a little bit of risk leaving her alone at the hotel. I’d take the phone and the money with me, but she could call Dad or Mom if she could remember their numbers. They could get over to the island within a couple hours and be waiting for me.
But that wasn’t the reason I wanted her to come. At least, not the whole reason. “I need you there,” I said. “For support. I want to do it together.”
She studied me, then gave a small nod.
Kip knew a place over on the other side of the island that wouldn’t card me, and said she could come pick us up. As soon as we got in the car, Kip said to Dixie, “Sorry about how I didn’t just tell you right away, before, that I’m . . . me.”
Dixie climbed in the backseat. “It was dumb,” she muttered. “I should have figured it out.”
We drove farther into the island. Apart from the sound of Kip’s car, things were still and quiet. And green. So many trees lined the road that it seemed like the sun itself was beaming emerald and jade from its low position behind us. We passed a woman on a bicycle that had swooping lines and a big seat and a basket on the back. The handlebars had streamers. The woman’s dark hair, gathered in a ponytail, flew behind her as she pedaled.
I twisted in my seat so I could see her until we went around a corner.
That could be me, I thought. I could get a bike to ride around the island and put groceries or whatever in the basket.
“. . . come to the city,” Dixie was saying to Kip. She’d leaned forward to rest her chin on the front passenger seat. “I can take you to the best places. Our dad is gonna open a club. . . .”
Her saying that, those same old words, didn’t do anything to me then. It didn’t make me anxious or angry or jealous, not anymore. The space in me kept opening and the green light that surrounded the car seemed to fill that space. While she talked about her imagined future, I thought about my own.
I’d never thought much before about having a future. When Mr. Bergstrom would ask me about my plans after high school, I’d say I don’t know, I’d say Stop asking, I’d change the subject. I couldn’t see beyond the walls of our apartment or the few miles between home and school. Every day was about getting through it. Every weekend was about getting back to school, where there could be some structure and my routines.
It’s not that I didn’t want to see possibilities for myself. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t see how or where I’d wind up. I knew it couldn’t be the same as Mom and Dad, but I didn’t see exactly how it could be different from them and the whole twisted root system of our family tree.
And then I did see, in that moment. In the light, in the air, in the order and the disorder and Kip’s noisy car and the woman on the bicycle. I don’t know how or why right then—but I saw. I could belong in the world. There was space for me.
22.
THE TATTOO place was small, with every inch of its walls covered by pictures of tattoo designs. There was only one person working there, a middle-aged guy with a huge mustache and a black snake tattoo that wound around his neck and disappeared under the collar of his flannel shirt. If I’d seen him on the street, I’d have walked the other way, but here he didn’t look out of place, and he was nice. Just like Kip said, he didn’t even ask for ID.
Dixie showed him her tattoo and he looked at me and asked, “Is that all you want?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But somewhere I can see it.” I pulled up the sleeve of my hoodie and showed my forearm. “Here?”
He tapped closer to the inside of my elbow. His hands were covered in inked vines. “Up here is good. You can see it, but you can also hide it, like if you’re at a job interview or something.”
Kip had wandered off to look through a binder of more tattoo art. She’d told us on the way there she secretly had her own—a red balloon—on her shoulder and was thinking of getting another one.
“Let me trace yours and I’ll make a stencil,” the guy said to Dixie. “I’m Elton, by the way. I guess I should introduce myself before I go touching you.”
I looked at Dixie’s star while Elton made the stencil. It was so plain and alone. I wanted to mark myself to remember these days with her, but she was going to leave this place the same as when she got here.
I scanned designs on the walls. One was of two hearts linked together, sort of overlapping.
“Dixie,” I said. “What if we did something like that?” I pointed. “Only with stars. Interlocking stars.”
“Like add one to hers and put two on you?” Elton asked. “I like it. Want me to go draw something up? So you can see how it would look?”
Dixie pulled her shirt down. I waited for her to say no, that my idea was dumb or what would make me think she’d get a tattoo for me—something representing us—permanently on her body?
“Go ahead,” she told Elton, and I smiled.
We sat with Kip on the bench and waited. “Are you going to do one?” I asked her.
“Not tonight. I have to think about it more.”
Next to me, Dixie sniffled, and I looked in time to see her brushing a tear away.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and again wiped her hand across her face.
Elton came back and brought over his stencils. One with two interlocking stars for me, and another with just one that he could lay over Dixie’s existing tattoo to match. He’d added a little shading to both.
“That’s awesome,” Kip said.
I loved it. I wanted Dixie to love it, and to say so, and smile at me and hug me. All she did was nod and say “Okay,” and it was almost enough.
Kip got up. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“You can stay,” I said.
“There’s a bookstore near here I want to check out. I’ll be back.”
We paid cash up front, then he did mine first. I took off my hoodie and he cleaned my arm and shaved some of the fine hairs there. He used the stencil to position the design and transfer an outline to follow. “You sure that’s exactly how you want it? Because this is forever.”