Mary Miller - The Last Days of California

I wanted Gabe to know I could take him or leave him, so I swam to the shallow end and floated on my back, watching a big gray military plane fly low overhead; low-flying planes always made me think a bomb was about to be dropped, though I’d seen hundreds if not thousands of planes and a bomb had never been dropped. It was awful being a girl. All I could think about was whether he thought I was pretty, and if he thought I was pretty, how pretty. I’d only kissed one boy, a guy I’d met at church camp who hadn’t known that boys at school didn’t like me. That more than a mouthful’s a waste. He’d written me emails for months after, but they hadn’t said anything: the places he’d gone; the things he’d eaten; what song he was learning to play on the guitar. I’d wanted to like him but couldn’t, even though he was the only boy who’d ever taken an interest in me.

“Hi,” I said to the kid. He picked up his head and blinked. He was only seven or eight and already had dark circles under his eyes like an insomniac. He was so sad and ugly, I didn’t feel sorry for him any more.

“It looks like your kickboard got attacked by a shark,” Gabe said.

The kid’s father stopped swimming and looked at us like we might try something crazy. Then he took the boy’s hand and hauled him out of the pool. I felt sorry for the kid again. He couldn’t help being ugly—no one wanted to be ugly. Sometimes I had to remind myself.

When they were gone, Gabe held up his hand and I slapped it, a nice solid connection as opposed to the half-misses I usually managed. He dove under and pulled my legs, the water giving him courage he wouldn’t have had on land. I came up laughing and then went under again to smooth back my hair. I wondered what his friends thought of me, if they thought I was fat. But when I glanced over at the table, they weren’t paying any attention to us. They were trying to engage Elise in conversation, trying to make her laugh.

All Gabe knew about Alabama was “Sweet Home Alabama,” a song that Elise and I hated because we’d had to hear it every day for our whole lives and we would continue hearing it unless we moved far away and never went back. “‘In Birmingham, they love the govna,’” he sang.

“Please stop.”

“That’s your state song,” he said. “You should have some state pride.”

“Like y’all have in Texas?” I said, throwing my arms around him.

“That’s right,” he said.

I was having a great time until I caught my sister’s eye, and then I was embarrassed. And then I was angry for being embarrassed, for always having to be the person she knew.

Elise and the other boys got into the pool with us. After less than a minute, Erik suggested we take off our tops and Gabe told him to go fuck himself and pointed out that I had on a one-piece and Charlie said I could take the whole thing off. Elise got out and put her dress on, lit another cigarette. They insisted they were kidding, only joking.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“You can go,” I said, wrapping my legs around Gabe’s waist. No wonder people liked to drink—you didn’t have to be who you were, you could change who you were. I ran my fingers through his wet, clumpy hair. There was a pimple on his neck and I made note of its location so I wouldn’t look at it again. “If I don’t get raptured, will you come for me?” I asked.

“What? Like if you’re left behind?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were agnostic,” he said.

“Exactly. I haven’t ruled anything out.”

“Well, it’s a lot to ask, but okay.”

“You promise?”

He placed his hand over his heart with a smack. “I’ll cross the Mojave.”

“What else?”

“I’ll ford the Mississippi,” he said. “And the Nile. The Nile, too.”

“That’s amazing.”

“I know, I’m pretty amazing.”

“Did you know that the Nile is the longest river in the world? It runs through ten African countries,” I said. These were the kind of useless facts I retained. Whenever I demonstrated my knowledge, I did it like this, without weaving it into the conversation at all. I pushed off of him and floated on my back, staring up at the huge cloud blocking the sun. The rays shot out in straight thick lines like a child’s drawing.

“Jess,” Elise said.

I swam over to the side and held on to the ladder. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. It was nearly dark and she was far enough away that I couldn’t differentiate her pupils from her irises.

“Do I need to go get Dad?” she said.

I swam back to Gabe, held onto him, and put my wet cheek against his.

“You better go,” he said.

“She won’t get my dad,” I said. “She’s just being a bitch.”

He whispered “room 212” in my ear and got out. I treaded water and read the POOL RULES. No cutoffs. No glass containers, food, or drinks. No smoking. No running. There were always so many rules, most of them unnecessary. I noticed a cricket and scooped it out. I looked around—there were a bunch of them. I scooped out another and another but they seemed to be multiplying, or else launching themselves right back in. I scooped out a fourth one and waited to see what it would do—it watched me watch it, still and patient.

I swam over to the ladder and climbed out.

On the way out, I said goodbye to Gabe, who was laughing and drinking with his friends as if he’d never met me.

Almost to our room, I hit my head on the low branch of a tree. The boys were still laughing—not at me, they hadn’t seen me—but I felt it in my throat, my chest. Boys would always laugh at me. They’d never want me.

Elise parted my hair to take a look. “You’re fine,” she said.

She opened the door, and we immediately peeled off our swimsuits and soaked them in the sink like our mother taught us. I put on a clean pair of panties and a tank top, left a pair of shorts on top of my bag. Elise sat on her bed and cleaned out her purse; it was full of trash: wrappers and receipts, a pebble she launched across the room.

“Do you want anything from the vending machine?” she asked.

“A Kit Kat,” I said, “And some Lay’s—no barbeque.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said, closing the door behind her.

I drank a mug of water and then another. I’d be up all night peeing. I was always doing stuff that I immediately regretted. I checked my head in the mirror but couldn’t see anything. When I pressed, though, I could feel my pulse, a strange alien thing. Then I backed up until I had a view of my body. If I kept my legs slightly apart, there was a tiny triangle of light that peeked through. I wanted to starve myself until the space grew larger and larger, until I was the skinniest, most beautiful girl in the world.

Elise came back with two bags of Lay’s, a Kit Kat, and some Famous Amos cookies. We sat on her bed and ate everything, fast, and then I got in my own bed and watched her brush her hair. She could have been in a hair commercial, trying to convince me that Suave or some other cheap shampoo was responsible. I hated those commercials; there was no shampoo in the world that could make my hair look like that.

When she was finished, she picked up the remote and changed the channels until she came to a documentary on the Appalachian Trail, the camera panning over the mountains. It was over 2,100 miles long and went from Georgia all the way to Maine. From above, it looked treacherous, just a little path running over the mountains. We decided that one day we’d hike it together. We’d hike the entire thing, and we’d have trail names that started with “Moon” and “Rain,” like the girls in the documentary.

“I smoked too much,” Elise said. “My heart’s beating so fast.”