So what? Like did her mother think she was going to slip with the razor and perform a clitoridectomy? When Suzanne saw her tattoo—her gorgeous rose with the thorn and the drop of blood—she just went ballistic. She spent a whole evening investigating law governing tattoos on minors in Rhode Island before Elena persuaded her to cool it. Then Elena heard her on the phone to her friend Marta asking about how one got tattoos removed. Elena just couldn’t stand the fuss that was going to happen when her mother saw her report card. All that guilt, all that screaming and moaning. So she said to the guys, “If we’re ever hitting the road, it better be now. Chad’s facing military school and I’m facing the electric chair.”
Now here they were, driving across endless expanses of nothing in particular. They could hardly find a place to pee, it was so vacant. It felt like high school in the form of a landscape. Nothing at all for a hundred miles and then a fucking Hardee or a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a gas station. They didn’t even have Burger Kings. They were playing Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil. Every time they sang “Bastard,” she felt they were singing to her. When Chad changed the music to Iron Maiden, they all shouted with the tape on “Runnin Free.” They were running free. The other song the guys kept playing was Scorpions, which was not her favorite group, “Bad Boys Running Wild.” She was just as wild as them.
They were past Iowa and into Nebraska at a service plaza. They always tried to sit by the window because it was more interesting, and they could keep an eye on the car and stuff. They saw the state troopers stop and one of them walking all around the car. He looked at something and he was reading the license plate.
“Come on,” Evan said. “The Greyhound is loading. We can get on and pay for our tickets on board. Just get on. We can say we were hitchhiking and got stranded. The driver won’t throw us off in the middle of nowhere.”
They boarded the bus with the other passengers. They couldn’t sit together, but they got it straightened out and went as far as Denver, where the bus was going. Chad paid for all their tickets. He had cleaned out a money stash at his house. The main things she missed were her clothes and the tape player. She still had her Walkman and most of her tapes that were in her backpack, but a lot of the tapes had been in the BMW, including the Iron Maiden tape with “Wrathchild” on it.
Denver was kind of cool. They could see the mountains the next morning, after they walked around during what remained of the night. Soon it was too smoggy to see, but they knew the mountains were there. They had no luggage, because when they had left the car, they had left everything. She had only the clothes she was standing in, jeans and a T-shirt and her leather jacket and sneakers, plus the few things in her backpack.
“What are we going to do?” They were sitting in a café that had opened for breakfast. They were eating a big breakfast because they hadn’t eaten much the day before. They had been scared in Nebraska and they were still nervous. Before they left the café, Elena washed her hair in the basin in the women’s room, with the weird liquid soap. She patted it with paper towels. It would dry as they walked around.
“We should cut your hair off and pretend you’re a boy,” Chad said.
“Nobody’s going to think I’m a boy and keep your hands off my hair.”
“What are we going to do now? Keep taking buses?”
“That is distinctly not cool,” Chad said. “We need wheels.”
“Do you know how to hot-wire a car?” Evan asked. “I don’t.”
Reluctantly after a couple of minutes, Chad admitted, “No. I don’t either.”
“I don’t see charities ringing their bells on street corners to give away used cars,” Evan continued. Maybe he felt the other two had dragged him into this mess. Evan had swiped his old man’s American Express card, but soon his old man would put a halt on it. Plus if they used it, it would be like a big sign to the cops as to exactly where they were. They had already gone close to the limit on Chad’s Visa, and that too would leave a paper trail. They had to buy a few clothes, and all three got matching nose studs. It was like a wedding ring, but cooler. It said they were one another’s people, a family. This was all the family she would ever want or need.
“There’s worse places to be,” Elena said in a conciliatory tone. “It’s nothing like Boston or New York or Washington. I like the Spanish I hear in the streets.” That was the only class she missed from high school, except English. She wanted to be smooth in Spanish so that if she ever met her father, she could impress him. “Maybe we could like go up into the mountains. They’re so fucking awesome. Why not? There’s a lot of ghost towns here. We could just find some old deserted cabin and move in.”
“We could go to Mexico,” Evan said. “I was there once with my parents in Acapulco, but I barely remember it. I think I got sick and threw up.”
“Well, then, we don’t want to be going there,” Chad said sarcastically. “Poor little Evan. Besides, if we don’t get wheels, we aren’t going anyplace.”
“I just said, I don’t see why we can’t stay here for a while…. I think it’s cool.”
“We said we were going to California. I have friends in California. They can help us.”
“Oh sure, they can give us their allowance. Loan us ten bucks. I can hardly wait,” Evan said.
“Guys, we’re getting cross. I think we all need sleep. We got to find a place to crash,” she said. It was real important to her that they all get along, not carp like married people. Mostly they all did get along, because they loved one another, but when things were hard, then the two guys would start sniping.
They walked around for a couple more hours, getting crankier and more and more silent together, until finally they found a cheap hotel that did not give a damn that there were three of them sharing a room. In motels, it was easier, because just one of them checked in. It all came down to Chad’s being right: they had to have a car.
Around eight that night they woke up and went out to eat. Elena got them to try a Mexican place. She hardly ever had Mexican food. Her grandma had taken her out for it a couple of times in New York, but Suzanne didn’t like hot food. But at least, thanks to Beverly, she could pretend to having eaten it all her life. It was greasy but good and definitely cheap, which helped a lot because none of them had much cash.
They walked around and looked at people and stared into store windows. They bought a couple of T-shirts and some underwear and socks and the Rising Force tape. Chad tried to buy beer, but they wouldn’t sell it to him. Evan said, “When my beard grows out, I’ll look much older, and they won’t ask for ID.”
Chad said, “We can always pimp for Elena. That should support us.”
“Fuck you, Chad. I don’t think that’s funny. I won’t do that. You go sell your ass.”
“Nah,” Evan said. “Nobody’d pay for her. We’d have to pay them.”
They were both grinning now, bonded over teasing her. She pretended to be upset, but she was glad they stopped being cranky.
Back in the hotel room it was stuffy and dim. Chad stood in the middle of the floor looking at both of them where they sprawled on the bed, Evan’s head on her breasts. “I have the solution to our problems right here. Never pays to doubt the Chad.”
“Your credit card.” Evan threw up his hands. “We can use it maybe twice more and then they’ll be down on us.”
“No. This.” Chad reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun.
She remembered it. It was from his father’s bedroom. The Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum, he had called it. It lay there in his hand, large and deadly.
“What’s that for?” she asked, not wanting to hear.
“Freedom. If they corner us, I’m not going back.” He raised the pistol to his temple and mimicked firing. “Fast death, sure and sweet.”
Evan hefted it dubiously. “Exit? Bang bang, an emergency measure? Is that why you brought the damned thing?”
“No, man, it gives us a chance. That’s our ticket to California.”
Elena h
ated guns, but she didn’t speak. She would sound like a wimp.
Elena and the boys spent a week in Denver, arguing about what they should do. The money was going. “We could always rob a gas station or a convenience store,” Chad said. “People do that all the time.”
“That doesn’t make it right!” Elena said with a fierce conviction that surprised even her. “You can’t go sticking a gun into the face of some guy who’s just pumping gas. Just an ordinary working guy. That’s not right!” It could have been Suzanne talking, she knew it, but she couldn’t help her upbringing. Or Grandma Beverly, who was as cool a grandma as anybody ever had. Elena couldn’t condone casual crime committed against ordinary people just for money.
“I never thought there was any use having a gun along,” Evan said.
“It’s a way out,” Chad said. “I won’t go back. I’ll never go back.”
Evan shrugged. “Don’t be so dramatic. If we’re ever going on to California, it should be before all our money runs out. Maybe we should just take a frigging bus as far as we can go.”
Chad grimaced. “I hate buses. They stink.”
“Well, do you just want to stay here until our money’s all gone?” Evan demanded.
Sometimes she hated Chad. They were out here because of him. Okay, she was scared for Suzanne to find out she was flunking physics, but Suzanne wasn’t about to do anything more than guilt-trip her and make up some stupid punishment, like doing the dishes for two weeks straight. But Chad had all these complications, like his mother he wasn’t supposed to see and his father who wanted to send him to military school and he suffered all the time at the top of his lungs. He’d bullied them into coming. They had just been daydreaming about it like kids would talk about setting fire to the school or robbing a bank or a beer truck. It was like imagining you were Batman or something. It was like getting high. When it was over, you were still home and everything was the same. But here they were a couple of thousand miles from home and a mile high in a city that felt terribly dry and made her heart pound when she ran up the stairs at the hotel. They were dirty and had no nice clothes. The beds were awful and the mattresses were lumpy and smelled of stale urine. Her face was breaking out, which just never happened to her. It was all the greasy food, her mother was right. Too many french fries did ruin your skin. There was a special shampoo she used at home she didn’t even see in the drugstore here. It made her hair shine. Now her hair hung there dull and limp. She didn’t even have a hair dryer to blow it out the way she wore it. No wonder when she saw herself in a mirror or a shop window, she just didn’t want to look. She worried about Big Boy, that Rachel and Suzanne wouldn’t give him his medicine twice a day and would forget to get the special food he needed from the vet.
Evan was getting grumpy, her Evan who was always above the fray. The situation was out of his control. He knew it, she knew it, and neither of them liked it. She liked it better when Evan ran things, when it was his ideas they followed—although it was Evan’s stupid desire to fuck Chad that had got them into this mess to begin with. When they all had sex now, she didn’t come. She was too angry. She lay there bored and a little sore. Mostly Evan wanted to fuck Chad and Chad wanted to fuck her, and they both wanted it too often to suit her. Chad was always wanting to try new positions with his feet in her face or her straddling a chair that was uncomfortable anyhow. Lately whenever she peed, it burned. The guys were so noisy together they gave her a headache. If she could only be alone sometimes, quiet, peaceful.
She wished they would just lay off her until they got to California. She saw the golden state in her mind, beaches, orange groves, cable cars, movie stars, waves rolling in. If they could only finally get to California, everything would be better. Chad had friends there who’d help them. They would be okay. They would all live in a little shack on the ocean and get brown and happy together. In the meantime, she felt like they insisted on sex all the time because they were bored shitless, the same as her.
“Pack up. We’re going,” Chad announced suddenly, clapping his hands together. “Let’s move on out.”
Everything they had, what little it was, fitted into the backpack Elena always wore, only now Evan kept it on his back. They sneaked out, because they owed the desk for the last night. Elena had been sent down to give him a story about how they were waiting for money to come. He’d leered at her but said he’d give them until the next day at noon. It was evening. They took a bus to a mall where they ate burgers and ice cream.
Elena didn’t know what Chad had in mind and she was sure Evan didn’t either, but both of them were scared to ask. Maybe if she knew, she’d have to try to stop him, and then what would they do? They were running out of options. It had seemed to her before they left that they had so much money. She had taken three hundred dollars out of the savings account set up for college. The check had to be cosigned by Suzanne and her, but Evan was expert at forging Suzanne’s signature. He had been doing it on absence excuses for two years.
Food used up money fast. Gas, when they had had the car. It had needed a lot of gas. “If we do get a car,” Elena said, “it shouldn’t be so gaudy, so conspicuous. And it shouldn’t use so much gas.”
“I better check the consumer’s guide ratings on gasoline consumption before I lift us some wheels. And don’t you care about emissions standards? We shouldn’t like drive a car that pollutes,” Chad said, slapping her butt. She hated when he did that, and he knew it.
They walked around the mall until the traffic thinned out. Finally Chad saw what he was waiting for. A guy pulled up in a dark blue Ford Taurus. His girlfriend was waiting in the passenger’s seat while he ran into the liquor store. He left the engine running.
Chad yanked open the door on the passenger’s side. “Out.” He shoved the gun into her neck.
“Don’t hurt me!”
“Don’t scream, or I’ll shoot. I don’t want you, just the car. “He pulled her out. “Evan, drive.” Evan flung the backpack behind him and fumbled for the parking brake.
Chad motioned Elena into the backseat, and they lurched off. “Okay. Elena. Where do we go?”
“Turn right at the light.” She turned on the overhead and looked at the map Evan had bought. “Okay, just keep going. We’re heading for the interstate.”
They drove all night. Before they climbed into the mountains, they had to buy gas. “That jerk had less than a quarter of a tank. I used to know this guy who never put more than a quarter tank in his wreck at once, because he always thought it was going to die on him.” Chad sounded almost cheerful. The tapes in the car were country western crap, and Elena threw them out the window as they roared upward. The one tape she kept was Kiss, who were okay. It was an old tape but it had “Partners in Crime.”
She finally got her turn at the wheel. Evan tried to stay awake to talk to her but he dozed off, his head against the passenger seat window. She drove just five miles over the speed limit, the way Suzanne always did. They didn’t want to be stopped by police. She had a brief fantasy that they would be, and then she could go home and take a real bubble bath and change her clothes and sleep in her own clean bed with Big Boy. But she didn’t want them to get caught while she was driving. The guys had waited all this time to finally let her drive, so she wasn’t about to fuck up.
She drove on through the dark shapes of the mountains, the engine straining sometimes. She had to turn on the heater, it got so cold in the car. She could see patches of snow and then more snow to either side of the car. Then white banks of snow hemmed them in. In the headlights of oncoming trucks, she saw a whole winter of snow around them. Then finally they were coming down and down. The snow disappeared and the sky began to lighten over the mountains behind them. She was tired now but she wouldn’t admit it. She gripped the wheel hard. Chad was snoring in back. Evan lay against the windows, his head at an awkward angle as if his neck were broken. What was going to become of them all? Suppose they did get to California? So what? Kiss was singing “Nowhere to Run,” whic
h matched her mood.
Still, she had flown through the dark. She had driven all night and her exhaustion was like a drug singing in her veins. There was no going back now. They were across the first high mountains and she would never be the same again. She had come into a new country of the damned. She was not who she had been, but new and dangerous and desperate. They had stolen this car, they had stolen their new life. They were real criminals now, outside the law, outside the prefabricated flat lives she scorned. She loved them both passionately, Evan, who was a part of her, and Chad whom they both adored and who ruled them like the sun, as they turned about his fire and ice. Her desire for him slowly returned as she drove on into the pasty predawn, the air like congealed grease around them. He had been right to yank them out of their boring lives and turn them loose. On to California, where they would live together and there would be no one else they would have to please—only themselves, only each other. They would be free—together.
18
Twelve Years Earlier
Elena
Elena said, “So what’s going to happen in California, when we get there?”
They were camping in the desert under a sky that had more stars than she had ever seen. They were partway across Nevada. They had got gas in Elko and got back on 80. In Battle Mountain, they bought Cokes from a machine. The last time they ate was in Utah. They were scared to get out of the car in a town, scared to go into a fast-food place or a restaurant. They were trying to make the money last and trying to avoid being seen, because they were sure they were wanted now. The night was cold. She had her jacket but she was still chilled through, pressed against Evan’s bony side. He had been increasingly silent all day. Now he spoke up. “Yeah, Chad, what’s in California?” There was an undertone of confrontation in his voice.
“Nothing,” Chad said. “But wouldn’t you like some real honest nothing?”