Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

Drops of sweat drip off my nose and onto the floor of the car.

“You’re the oldest.” Carin flourishes a hand. “I’d bow down, but I’m driving.”

“Carin, pull the car over.”

“What?” She looks over at me confused.

“Pull it over.”

She crosses three lanes of traffic to the side of the road and I swing open the door and stumble to the ditch. I bend down, resting my elbows on my knees, and throw up all over the grass. Everything comes up and when it’s all out, I dry heave. Once I’ve finally stopped, I feel Carin’s gentle hand on the small of my back. Cars speed past us on the highway. She hands me a bottle of water and I take a swig, spitting it out on the ground. I take another swig and swallow. The water is warm and metallic from sitting in the heat of the car. It’s days old. I get back inside and we drive the rest of the way home in silence.

CARIN HAS CLEARED THE trailer floor of clothes and laid a foamy down with a neatly tucked pink-and-blue flowered bedsheet and matching floral pillow. They’re Mom’s old linens. I don’t know why, but the whole scene makes me feel lonely. I can hear Carin outside laughing with someone as I go to get a glass of water. She opens the trailer door and pokes her head in. “Do you want to come out with us tonight?”

“I’m still feeling sick.” I pour myself a tall glass of water.

“Heat stroke?”

“I guess.”

We stare at each other a moment, the refrigerator humming in the background.

“Okay,” Carin shrugs. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Sure.” I head back into the living room as Carin, drunk, struggles to close the door. She lets out a giggle and then opens it again. “June?”

When I turn back the look of sadness in her face surprises me. “Yeah?”

“Are you mad at me or something?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“Just checking,” she says, shrugging again and ducking out the door. From the window I watch her and some guy traipse out to the street, Carin’s hand tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.

I slide into the cool sheets, trying not to disturb Carin’s tucking job. Beside the foamy she’s placed a thick manila envelope addressed to me. I tear it open and papers fall out everywhere — pink cakes with white flowers, white cakes with pink flowers, white cakes with white flowers. Out flutters a handwritten note from Sue Clarkson: Pick one you love. Love, Sue . Love Sue? I shove the envelope of pictures as far under the couch as I can reach and flip off the table lamp. In the dark I squint at a corkboard Carin has propped up against the wall with pictures pinned all over it of her with a variety of guys I don’t recognize. In the middle of them all there’s an old picture of Mom. I reach out and unpin it from the corkboard. It’s from the early seventies, her hair parted in the middle, her eyes thick with liner. The expression on her face is typical Carin: cool deadpan. She was probably the same age as me in that photo or close anyway. I realize looking at the picture what different paths our lives took and that maybe if we’d met at that age, as strangers on the street or in a bar, maybe we wouldn’t have been friends or even spoken to one another.

WHEN I OPEN MY eyes the photo of my mother is a few inches from my nose. I put it back on the corkboard and hope Carin hasn’t noticed I moved it. Outside Carin is sprawled on her back on her air mattress in the gravel, her head fallen partially onto the ground, her neck at an awkward angle. I walk down the three trailer steps and look around. There are beer bottles all over the patio table and an overflowing ashtray by Carin’s head. Near her feet there’s also a pair of large men’s sneakers, but I don’t see the possible owner anywhere. I place my foot near her head on the air mattress and give it a good bounce.

Carin groans and rolls over onto the gravel. “What?” Bleary-eyed, she tries to focus on me and then dismisses me with a limp wave.

“It’s going to rain,” I say, before heading back into the trailer.

She spends the rest of the day in her bedroom with the curtain drawn, coming out only once to make fried eggs. While the rain comes down outside, I wander around, bored, tidying up the trailer, wiping down the inside of the empty fridge, and flipping through cheap gossip magazines, the only reading material I can find. I call Anton and tell him I’ll be coming back by tomorrow evening.

By late afternoon the rain has stopped and the sun comes out and burns away the clouds. I take a walk along the beach and eat a hot dog for dinner, sitting on the promenade watching couples, families, and groups of friends go by. A limousine drives slowly down the strip, honking, with grads waving out the sunroof. I go back to the trailer but don’t head inside, instead dragging one of the patio chairs to the channel, where I can watch the sunset. Carin comes out with her own chair and we sit together in silence for a while. The sun has just finished dropping behind the mountains, pulling with it a shade of darkening blue. Across the way, a teenage couple is standing on the edge of the channel with a dinghy, testing the water with their toes. I shiver at the thought of floating down in the dark. “Feeling better?” Carin asks eventually.

“I am. I’m going home tomorrow morning,” I say. The couple is in the water now, drifting under the first bridge. “How are you feeling?”

“Great.” As if to demonstrate, Carin stands up and touches her toes a couple times before bending into a yoga pose. “So, let’s go out tonight.”

“I don’t think so,” I say, shaking my head. “I have a long drive tomorrow.”

“Come on. Can’t we have one fun night?”

“I thought we were having fun.”

“Right,” Carin says, rolling her eyes and stifling a yawn.

“I’m not in the mood.”

“I want you to meet someone. Remember that guy on the bus?” She smiles brightly and I figure it’s probably easier to say yes then to say no at this point. “One drink.”

AS WE WALK ALONG the crowded promenade, I pull self-consciously at the hem of the denim skirt Carin has lent me and try not to worry about how or if I will sit down. I picture seams split wide open, leaving me exposed in the middle of the bar. The strip radiates in the glow from the hotel casino. Tricked out lowriders and muscle trucks cruise the street as competing hip hop boom boom booms from their open windows. Carin leads us through the patio jammed with tables full of people to the back of the restaurant, where the bar is just as packed. I ease myself — minding the skirt — onto a stool at the edge of the bar, Top 40 blasting from speakers in the ceiling above us. Carin waves at one of the bartenders, trying to order us drinks overtop a row of people seated along the bar. He pulls down two tall glasses and several bottles of colourful booze. I recognize the bartender now. He was on the channel bus and he was also the guy Carin was with last night. He’s not as good-looking as I remember. It must have been the wet hair, now a fuzzy mess of blond curls around his head, like he’s attempting cherubic but failing miserably. He sets two drinks in front of us. “You found me,” he says, grinning at Carin and bobbing his head.

“This is my sister, June,” Carin says. “June, meet Jet.”

“From the bus, right?” he says, shaking my hand. I press my lips together, suppressing a smirk. His hands are wet from working behind the bar — ice, beer, and mixers. Idiot boyfriend number... oh, I’ve lost count.

“I brought your sneakers,” Carin says, pulling them out of her bag.

“Awesome.” Jet pours a round of pink shooters for all three of us and we touch shot glasses and down them. He pours another round and I push mine toward Carin. “Come on,” she laughs. “We’re just getting started.”