The girl leaned in the car, frowning and looking at Angie over the tops of her sunglasses. She said, “Whoa. That was quite a spinout. Are you all right?”
Angie nodded, trying to catch her breath. The girl’s eyes were almond-shaped, more hazel than brown, Angie saw now. Despite the cold, the girl’s brow was sweaty, her cheeks flushed. Angie squeezed her arms tight against her sides, feeling the same warmth as when she stood in the school bathroom and smelled the other girls’ perfume, their hair spray, their glistening strawberry breath. She’d never once had a boyfriend, nor had she wanted one, but she wanted to believe Papa when he told her: “Ah, Angie, just you wait, mi’ja. You’ll find love. You’ll find the right boy.” Pat, pat. He was her father. She wanted to believe him.
The girl stared at her with raised eyebrows.
Angie said, “I didn’t see you at first.” Her voice came out tiny, warbly as a cricket.
The girl grinned, and Angie saw that her two front teeth protruded. Not bucked exactly. Tilted, Angie thought, feeling heat in her neck.
“So you do talk,” the girl said.
Angie shrugged. She wanted to talk. She always could feel the words. She thought of them as glass beads, a constant marbled roundness in her throat.
The girl gave her another toothy grin. “I’m Jess.” She threw one arm out. “Jessica Violet Winters, all the way from Phoenix, Arizona.” She said it loud and twangy, a beauty pageant contestant. “Jesus, it’s cold today.” She blew into her gloveless hands. She wore only a jean jacket and thin striped scarf. She snapped a red rubber band at her wrist and then took it off and popped it in her mouth.
Jess thumped the door. “This is a great car.” She chewed on the rubber band and drew out the words with a long sigh. She paused, ruffling her hair. “Definitely makes you look like you’re from somewhere way cooler than this place. Light-years beyond.”
Light-years beyond. No one had ever told Angie such a thing before. She only knew she didn’t belong, and that it was somehow her fault. She held the wheel tight, her breath still unsteady.
“Do you need a ride?” Angie asked. She picked up the box from Eddie’s off the front seat and threw it in the back.
“Sure,” Jess said. “I was just out walking. I’m not really going anywhere.” She slid in next to Angie on the bench seat and clicked on her seat belt. “Where you headed?”
Angie shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about her father or the shop. She didn’t want to be that careful girl right now. She recalled the urge she’d had to gun it down Main as Papa watched.
She wanted to go fast for once.
She stepped hard on the accelerator, and Jess laughed, letting out a whoop as the wind through the open window whipped her long curls. Dust plumed behind the bumper. Angie’s palms sweated, and once she almost swerved off the road, but she laughed, too. At the lake pullout, she bumped into the makeshift parking area and slammed the brakes. They both jerked forward as the engine stalled.
Jess laughed. “Congratulations. I think you might be the world’s worst driver,” she said, and Angie smelled a hint of rubber and sweet shampoo mixed with gas fumes.
They sat in silence, staring out the windshield. Besides the shop, Arroyo Lake was one of the other places Angie felt okay, bigger than her public self. Behind the tufts of creosote and shrub oaks, Angie could see the water flash. It was so quiet she could hear the nasal ka-kah call of a quail, a rustling in the thin brush under the mesquites and junipers. On the horizon, the cement-plant smokestacks smoldered at the tips.
Her papa had taught Angie to swim at this lake when she was a girl, long before these days of bras and embarrassing toiletries, when she could float in his arms without him gently pushing her away. Good, bien, mira, mira like this, he’d say as she kicked and sputtered. He bobbed and frog-kicked below the dock, assuring her, and she jumped out into his waiting arms again and again. He taught her to dive from the dock, too, kneeling first with her arms tight like an arrow over her head, until she grew stronger and braver. Then she would run to the end of the dock and spring out, flying, flying, until she torpedoed into the brown water, larger than she’d ever been.
Jess ran her finger on the side window, made an X mark. “The middle of nowhere. I live in nowhere.” She propped her feet on the dash. Her tennis shoes were the purple of plums, the canvas thin at the toes. The laces were too long, knotted three times, and it looked as if she’d shoved her feet in without untying them, breaking down the heel. She had drawn black diagonal lines along the white rubber trim. Like tick marks. Or jail bars.
Angie made a noise in her throat, something between a sigh and a whimper.
Jess said, “You don’t have to talk. I don’t mind.” She scratched at her neck. “In my opinion, not talking isn’t the worst thing in the world. A lot of people I know ought to shut up more often.” She chewed hard on the rubber band. “My dad, he’s got this whole other family now. Like ours wasn’t good enough, so he went out and got himself a new one. Like we were old shoes. Like my stupid Chucks.” She tugged at the shoelaces. “Last thing he ever bought me.” She spit her rubber band into her palm, put it on her wrist.
Jess’s chin quivered, and her eyes blurred with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
It’s okay, Angie wanted to say, but it came out as a soft sigh.
Jess fell over onto Angie’s shoulder, limp as a drop cloth. Her plastic sunglasses dug into Angie’s bicep.
“I haven’t been sleeping. I get up and wander around in the dark.” Jess sniffled and sighed. “I feel like I want to go somewhere, but I don’t know where. Somewhere far away.” She took two hard breaths and fell asleep.
As the sun liquefied and seeped into the horizon, Angie rubbed a slow circle on Jess’s forearm. She knew her father would be waiting for her, starting to worry, but she didn’t want to move. The round glass rose in her throat, and she pressed her thumb on the butterfly indent of her neck. She could feel something there, tender as a swollen gland.