Like Mandarin - Kirsten Hubbard [86]
I took a deep breath. Maybe that was my mistake. Because at that moment, the wind increased. I felt my throat capture it, my lungs swell with it.
And all of a sudden, I longed to pretend that nothing had happened. To pretend Mandarin had never betrayed me, and I had never betrayed her back. To pretend that this was one of our spangled, breathless, fucking-gorgeous nights, like the one we spent at the canal, or the one when we liberated the trophies, or even the night of the tri-county pageant, before everything went sour. I needed to hold our magic just a little longer. Whatever it took.
“Mandarin.” I grabbed both her hands. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Away. Let’s leave town. Tonight.”
She shook her head. “You’re crazy.”
“You don’t have to work later, do you? Will anyone miss you?”
She glanced down at our entwined fingers.
“I’m serious, Mandarin! I really want to go this time, I mean it. You can count on me. I haven’t got the modeling pictures back from where I sent the film, but I’ll bring my camera and we can take new ones. On the beach—the beach in California. Or in the strawberry fields. Come and get me at midnight. That’ll give us enough time to pack.”
Despite her tears, I thought I saw the trembling beginnings of a smile.
“Really?”
“Yeah really. We can do this! And not for the people here, but for us. We just made too big of a deal out of it, made it seem harder than it really is. When it’s really just about—”
“Taking that first step,” Mandarin finished.
“Exactly!” I exclaimed. “Look—I’ll wait on my front porch at midnight. With two bowls of strawberry ice cream for the road.” I squeezed her hands more tightly. Her wet eyelashes looked like stars. “Will you go?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, smiling at last.
Her smile made me want to dance. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t been balanced at the very top of the Tombs, dizzy with adrenaline, the Bighorn River slogging along many feet below. When I stood, the earth appeared to drop another ten feet. “Are you ready to go?”
“I’m going to stay here a bit.” She paused. “Grace?”
I caught my balance at the edge of the boulder before I glanced back.
“Thanks,” Mandarin said. “For everything.”
I noticed she was gripping her mother’s arrowhead. For some strange reason, her words plucked at my spine like a winter chill. But I chose to ignore them.
“So I’ll see you at midnight, all right?” I lowered my feet onto the next rock. “Forget this stupid river. We’re going to see the ocean!”
When I crawled into the cave, I found it almost entirely dark. I’d never stayed out at the Tombs so late. I could barely make out the Virgin Mary, or the nameless Indian mother, or whoever she was.
For a second I paused, squinting at the twin black splotches of her eyes, recalling how I used to consider her the perfect mother. Now, in the dark, she just looked creepy. I had an urge to smear my hand across the stone surface. But I didn’t want some prehistoric Native American curse to thunder down upon me. I scrambled out. The wildwinds thrust against me until my feet hit the ground.
Forty minutes after midnight, I sat with my back against the front door of my house. I had nothing with me but two bowls of melted pink ice cream, cradled on my lap.
I heard the drone of the summer cicadas, a few crickets, the tick-tick-flutter of someone’s sprinklers. Far off, a dog bayed forlornly. Or maybe a coyote. I didn’t hear what I was listening for: the hum of an engine, the rasp of tires on Pioneer Ridge’s patchy asphalt.
The street was empty.
Earlier, after Momma had gone to bed, I’d opened the closet and stared at my clothes. Then I shut the door and paced around, looking at my room from different angles. The stack of shoe boxes containing every worthy rock I’d ever found. The stupid swans peeling from my walls. Grandma’s musty pillows. My camera. My old computer, and the books on my shelves. I could place each one: where and when I’d gotten it, what I’d been doing when I read it.