Jesse Goolsby - I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

Then, back to the kitchen, to her parents, to the morning hangover. Mia has forgotten the question, but she hears herself say, “My body was ready.”

Her father’s mouth opens, and Mia senses a surge of excitement when nothing comes out. “My body was ready,” she says a little louder. Silence. Neither her mother nor her father appears ready to argue. Her father touches one of the tiny circles of bloodied Kleenex on his chin, then folds his arms.

“Damn,” he says, and turns away; surprisingly, so does her mother. They move down the hallway and her mother stops and looks back, but not at Mia. She scans the living room and then locks her eyes on the oak front door, as if it’s been moved slightly and she wants to remember its location when she comes back.

Mia is unsure how old her mother was when she lost her virginity, and she realizes that they’ve never had the sex talk, or really any talk of substance for some time. Mia thinks, When I have a child, she’ll know everything, and much later Mia will tell her daughter everything, she will talk to her about sex and blood and regret, she will drive her daughter to the clinic for her abortion and stroke her hair while the drugs wear off. But today Mia tugs her sweatpants down below her hip bones and her mother shakes her head, kisses her fingers, and touches Mia’s third-grade photo hanging in the hallway.

Mia moves her hands in a ray of dusty sunlight that beams through the crack in the living room drapes. She visualizes taking her blue baseball bat to Camila’s healthy knees. That traitor bitch. She envisions Camila’s lifelong limp and grins, but the dream evaporates as her parents move down the hallway with luggage.

“We’re going to Estes Park,” her mother says. “Don’t call. You’re a big shot. You and your sister can do what the hell you want.” She disappears into the garage.

Before her father leaves he grabs a bottle of Johnnie Walker and tucks it into his duffel bag. Rashlike bumps of dried blood dot his jaw.

“Yellowstone?” he says. Then, in a drawn-out, mocking falsetto, “My body is ready.” He shakes his head. “Good luck with that,” and out he wheels.

The maroon sedan backs out of the garage, and for a few seconds Mia sees her mother laugh and her father’s mouth move, and she wonders if he retells his parting words to her. After they disappear Mia slides her vision over to their neighbors’ house: the Burtons’ red-brick home, the aspen, hedge, and prairie grass landscaping, a Toyota truck in the driveway with an I’m proud of my Eagle Scout bumper sticker. She guesses this is Camila’s hideout. Not one to question, or even consider, the morality of adult-level commitment, Mia wonders if everyone has gone crazy. How is she able to walk just feet away from her army obligation, and no one blinks an eye? Not our army dad, not our freaking Eagle Scout neighbors? She places Camila in the Burtons’ basement, probably already comfortable and confident, and nosy Mrs. Burton eyeing the roadway, ready to prevent the big bad military from taking their innocent neighbor. Never mind that Camila signed up herself. And then the answer comes to her. Mia brushes away the bat-to-the-knee revenge and frames a new, more enticing proposition. She turns the television on and gets comfortable, with an eye on the driveway. Screw her mother; she knows exactly where Camila is, and when the time is right, so will the recruiter.

Four reruns of The Vampire Diaries and a full fruit juicer infomercial later, the green-and-white army Ford Taurus pulls up to the front of their home. Before the uniformed man can leave the vehicle, Mia stands in her front yard, grinning. The recruiter is younger and shorter than she imagined, with a narrow face and a limp.

“Camila’s next door,” she says when he reaches their driveway.

“Okay.”

“She’s hiding, but she’s over there. It’s the Burtons’ place.”

Mia steps toward their neighbors’, but the man doesn’t follow.

“Your folks here?”

“No.”

The recruiter removes his hat and clicks his tongue. He has picked up all types. He scratches his neck.

“Why don’t you go get Camila so we can talk?” he says, lowering his voice a half octave. “I’ll wait here.”

“She won’t come if it’s me. That’s the point.” Mia overhears her own eagerness and tries to dial it back. Unknowingly, she plays with the drawstrings of her sweats. “Besides, doesn’t she have to go?”

“You want her to go?”

She knows the answer, but she waits for the right words. Before she can comment he asks, “How old are you?”

His eyes dart to her torso.

“I’m in high school. How old are you?”

“Okay.”

He gazes up at the sky and taps his foot. “Listen. I’m happy to talk to your sister, but I’m here for pickup, not deliberation. If you want to get her, great. If not, she can give me a call, but there are consequences.” He hands Mia a card. “I have other stops today.” When Mia stays in place, he nods his head, limps around to the driver’s side, gets in, and drives off.

When Mia wakes, she rubs at her sweaty neck and pulls herself up from the leather couch. As she comes to she recalls her morning anger, and the fury rises in her again — a complicated rush of anxiety and the impulse for revenge.

Raul arrives at her house ten minutes after she calls him. She can hear the old Ford truck from around the corner, and when he pulls into her driveway she notices the purple driver’s-side fender on an otherwise faded red truck. He wears a bright orange hunting vest over a black shirt, and cargo shorts.

“Get me out of here for a while,” she says.

“I know where there’s water.”

She remains quiet until they hit Sedalia and turn west onto Jarre Canyon Road, and when the road turns up into the Rockies her shoulders relax. Their dalliance last night was not their first, but their relationship, if it can be called that, is one of lazy convenience. She imagines that he thinks of her seldom but fondly. That’s how she thinks of him.

Mia leaves out the parent-virginity surprise but rattles on about her sister and the army, how Camila betrayed her — she leaves it unspecified — and wonders out loud what she can do for revenge. Raul speaks with calm, and this fits Mia’s picture of him: soft-spoken, a funky dresser, with a confidence and an intelligence that enable him to stay at the top of their class despite his frequent unexplained absences. As he drives his eyes dart to his rearview mirror, then to the side mirrors and back to the road, a routine he performs every thirty seconds or so.

“She should go into the navy. Boats are cool, and no one ever shoots at them,” he says in a southern drawl that still surprises Mia. For all she knows, he was born and raised in Colorado. He glances at her and notes her disappointment.

“You could lock her out. Your parents are gone.”

“Lock her out? She’d be upset for two seconds, then go back to the Burtons’.”

“It’s something.”

“Yeah.”

“You could run away.”

“Not much of a revenge move. My folks might like it. They’ve said as much.”

“No parents want that.”

“You’re wrong. Parents don’t have to beat the shit out of you to show they don’t love you.”

“True.”

“Sometimes they just do nothing.”

“But yours get pissed at you. That’s supposed to mean something. It might not be as bad—” He stops his sentence and, without transition, says, “House is on fire. You can grab two things. Go.”

“Besides people?”

“So you still love them.”

“Don’t screw with me.”

“Fine. What would you take? Everyone gets out okay.”