Lauren Beukes - Broken Monsters

‘They managed,’ William said, and she could picture his brow crinkling in amused horror. ‘It was godawful, Lay, you have no idea.’

She laughed. ‘Maybe that’ll be me one day. The sea witch on skates.’ He was supposed to retort, Are you kidding, you’d be the lead, honey . And then she would feign outrage and maybe she’d go on to mention this guy she met. It’s a comedy routine the two of them have, with established rules. But then his new life butted in, like elderly neighbors cutting the music at a house party.

‘Hang on a sec, Layla. No! Julie! Do not throw food on the floor! C’mon, you know you’re not supposed to do that, baby.’

‘Remind me again why I have to stay in Detroit?’ She meant for it to sound light-hearted, just to hook his attention back to her, but he started reeling off all the same old reasons, on auto-pilot. Just till you finish high school. Your mother needs you. I need to try to make this work. It’s not easy with little step-kids.

‘Yeah, the last thing you want is your teenage daughter from your previous marriage hanging around to remind you of how you screwed up the last one,’ she snapped. Which led to a long silence down the phone line.

‘Hello? You still there?’ She suddenly missed their DIY craft projects she threw out when they moved: the scientifically accurate mobile of glow-in-the-dark planets she and her dad hung together, the dreamcatcher he helped her weave when she was seven – inspired by the Ojibwe who hunted here, he told her – with dangling crystals that caught the light. She wondered what shiny bits of wisdom he was passing on to his new kids.

‘Earth to Dad?’ She tried for jokey.

He came back from very far away. ‘That was a terrible thing to say Layla. I’m really hurt.’ That pleading note entered his voice, the one she thinks of as PD: Post Divorce. Be reasonable . ‘Besides, you know your mother needs you.’

‘Bzzzzz! And that’s the incorrect answer! Thank you for playing!’ She hung up before he could say anything else. She waited for him to ring back. He didn’t. She’s not going to apologize, she thinks fiercely. Not this time.

She doesn’t notice the white Crown Vic pulling up very slowly alongside the skate ramp, cruising for trouble like only cops and gangs and bored teenagers do. She’s lost inside her weed-fuzzed head, intent on Dorian poised on the concrete lip in that perfect moment of potential, the streetlight flared behind his head in the dusk. He shades his eyes against the headlights. His beanie is pulled low over his sideburns. ‘Hey, Lay,’ he calls out to her. ‘I think it’s your mom.’ But it’s like overhearing the Iranian women gossiping at the corner store – sounds fraught with meaning that don’t have anything to do with her.

He tilts his board over the edge and lets gravity have its way with him. He glides down the curve and up the other side, tracing lazy parabolas through the gray slush of melted ice. If she slits her eyes, she can almost see contrails in his wake. It’s beautiful. Like art. Or music, she thinks, the zipper scrape of the wheels across the cement.

‘Lay,’ he arcs around, catching the trunk of the tree. His breath fogs out in a cartoon speech bubble in the cold. ‘Ley’ means ‘law’ in Spanish. This is her mom’s idea of an inside joke.

‘What?’ She’s annoyed with him for breaking the magic. And then the Crown Vic gives a single whoop-whoop of the siren, a flash of red and blue from the lights mounted in the grille. More subtle than the bubble they stick on top, but not by much.

‘Crap!’ She drops the joint from her fingers. God, she wishes her mom wouldn’t do that. She slides down from the tree, super-aware of her body, her limbs like foreign objects that aren’t quite ready to do what they’re told. She tucks her hands under her armpits, not only to hide the smell of the weed on her fingertips, but to prevent her arms floating off, because right now it feels like they might drift right out of her sleeves into the sky.

‘Wake up,’ Dorian pokes her in the ribs, totally busting her spacing out. He’s laughing at her. But not in a shitty way.

‘Okay, okay,’ she mumbles, her face going hot. She concentrates on the ridiculous choreography of putting one foot in front of the other. Who invented walking? Seriously.

He shakes his head and guides his board over to the car. He grabs on the side mirror to bring himself to a bumping stop and leans down to greet through the window. ‘Hola, Mrs. V.’

‘It’s Ms .’ her mother says. ‘And I prefer Detective Versado. Or ma’am. As in, “No, ma’am, that’s not marijuana you can smell coming off me like I’ve taken up residence inside a bong.”’

‘Legal in several states now,’ he grins.

‘So move to Colorado.’

‘Mom!’ Layla winces. ‘Leave off. Please.’ She opens the door to climb in the back.

‘Don’t you want to sit up front?’

‘Nah. This way I can pretend I’m one of your perps. You treat me like a criminal anyway.’

‘Well, if I catch you smoking that stuff …’

‘You won’t ,’ Layla retorts. Catch her that is. Especially if she can lurk in the back seat and shut down the conversation. Then she can lie down in the back and watch the streamers of lights out the window, like she used to when she was a little kid when they went out for dinner and she fell asleep in the back and her dad would lift her out and carry her into the house to install her in her bed, smelling like cigarettes and sweat and the sharp aftershave he always wore for special occasions. She feels a burn of nostalgia for that little kid and that happy family.

‘Later,’ Dor says now, kicking away.

‘Bye,’ she says, going for casual disdain, which seems to work on boys like him, along with lots of eye-liner. And tits. And being three years older, and not such a colossal dork. God, she’s so screwed.

Her mother is watching her in the rear-view mirror, with that little crease tugging downwards at the corner of her mouth, the one that didn’t used to be there. It’s a PD thing. ‘You know, there are studies that show—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know , Mom. Weed corrodes the brain, I’m gonna be sorry when the only job I can get is flipping burgers. Or worse. End up po-lice.’

‘Sure wouldn’t want that,’ her mother says mildly, but Layla knows she got to her by the way she pulls away, jerking the steering wheel into a hard U-turn toward the freeway.

‘I had a weird case today,’ she says. Opening gambit. Layla’s not falling for it. She engages super-surly mode from the drop-down menu of emotional options in her head.

‘I wish you wouldn’t talk to my friends.’

‘Don’t worry. The feeling’s mutual. Dorian, anyway. I like Cas, though.’

‘And don’t rate them either. This isn’t the friend Olympics. They don’t get a score out of ten.’

‘Do you want to walk home?’

‘Dorian could have given me a ride.’

‘I suppose he is cute, in that deadbeat stoner way.’

‘Mom!’ Layla dies inside. If it’s that transparent to her mother , then the whole world knows. Which means it’s obvious to Dorian as well, and that’s too hideous to contemplate.

‘All right, all right. Truce. I bought you some lipgloss.’

‘Swell.’ Layla says. She sits up, pulls out her phone and starts typing a text to Cas.

>Lay: Finally! 3 HOURS late!

>Cas: More time for loooo-oooobe with Dorian

>Lay: Excuse me?!?

>Cas: Aaargh! Loooooove. Love! Not lube! Autocorrect.

>Lay: Freud much?

>Cas: :) :) :)

‘I had to use some of it,’ her mother says. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’