At night, Don and I trek onto the ten acres of manicured backyard. We pretend we’re Special Forces soldiers stranded between rows of ornamental shrubs, camped out by an Olympic-size swimming pool outside Kabul.
I follow the diagrammed instructions to make Molotov cocktails, which we hurl across the diving board. A chair catches fire. Three guys who work for my dad come running outside, ready to take down an invading army.
In the morning, my dad is there, eating bacon and eggs.
He says, “What was wrong with that?”
For once, Don doesn’t point at me. He’s figured out that I could blow him up. But my dad isn’t asking Don.
I say, “It was in the book.”
He keeps eating.
I say, “I didn’t know it would start a fire.”
Then I say, “It was stupid?”
“It was loud. Do we want the police at this house? Do we want to attract attention to this house?”
I’m not just afraid he’s going to hit me—that’s a given. I’m afraid I’ve caused something terrible to happen.
The guy standing guard by the back door says, “Come on, Art, at least he didn’t put shrapnel in it.”
My dad laughs so hard, the guy comes over and pounds him between the shoulders so he won’t choke on the bacon.
He doesn’t say anything when he slaps down the knife between us on the console in the front seat of his car. The blade says, Life is gruesome, be prepared, go camping with assholes in shorts if your mother insists. But get ready, be armed to draw and quarter anything that comes at you because the insurance agent troop leader dads sure as hell won’t.
? ? ?
I wrap myself in the space blanket, but I can’t get warm. I fall asleep thinking about Scouts and toasted marshmallows, playing with Don, hiding in the bushes and throwing incendiary bottles at deck chairs.
I imagine Don in an open coffin, eyelids folded down over dead eyes. Even for my father, in his closed, black coffin, my mother’s face collapsed and never plumped back up, not ever. And this happened after he’d divorced her and she hated him. Don’s a shit, but he’s not dying the kind of prison death it makes my mother sick to think about.
My mother isn’t burying her kid or going up in flames when her dryer accidently on purpose blows up again, this time singeing her hair down to the roots, blackening her bones.
Her car isn’t accidently on purpose losing its brakes on the interstate.
No one is going to touch any of us.
I have to do this.
I have to make Nicolette Holland disappear.
That’s why I’m here.
49
Cat
“Did you miss me?”
He’s standing in my doorway.
He’s tanner than before. It suits him.
He’s back! I hope looking shocked suits me.
My getaway can wait. Underneath my new and different exterior, in this rapidly transforming vessel of moral decay, I’m still me. It’s got to be okay to like guys. Why can’t I have whatever extremely low level of fun is possible under the circumstances?
I pull him inside, bolt the door, and kiss him.
Kiss him some more.
He says, “You’re depraved. I should beat on drunks and leave town more often.”
He hesitates for a second, looking at me. Hands me a bottle of rum. Then he kisses me back. And then some.
“You smell like a campfire.”
J crosses his arms behind my back, pulls me in closer. “It was South Dakota. You’re lucky I don’t smell like a cow patty. I was going to shower when I got back to my apartment, but there was this cop car outside when I was unpacking. So I ducked out the kitchen window.”
“A cop car?” Does he even get how bad this is?
“Calm down. They drive up and down my street every ten minutes looking for jaywalkers. What else is there for them to do around here?”
“Look for us?” Then I might make too big a show of sniffing the air. His face. I say, “No, you’re fine. Really. Was it nice?”
“Was what nice?”
“Uh, the wedding. Groomsman. Bachelor party.”
He sits down on the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed. Does the thing where he grabs on to the back of his neck and massages it. It must have been one amazing bachelor party. “It was home on the range. No strippers—just a lot of cows.”
“Did you meet any cowgirls?”
“You’re depraved and jealous.”
Now he’s massaging my neck. Much better.
“I’m so not jealous. We’d have to be together for me to be jealous and we’re so not together.”
“Not us.” He stretches out on the bed, closes his eyes.
I nudge him slightly. Nothing.
“Did you drive all night?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s asleep.
I roll the desk chair next to the bed and sit there reading, my feet draped over him on the bed. His hand closes on my ankle.
After dark, I wedge myself between him and the wall.
Fully clothed, on top of the blanket.
Not totally depraved yet, but slipping fast.
50
Jack
I wake up in her bed.