The car—I guess it’s a rental, because it’s very clean and new-smelling—turns onto the main downtown street and I see, down a side street, the diner where Luke got his hand skewered. I wonder how Luke is doing now.
Then we pass Gene’s Western Supplies and the climbing store, and a couple of hundred yards down the road, Michael pulls over, close to a newspaper box that will sell you the Arizona Daily Sun for twenty-five cents.
He turns around in the seat. This is us, he says. For now.
I look up: it’s a new building, big high windows, balconies on each floor. A black metal fire escape that runs down the side, accessible from each balcony.
I follow them up. It’s a top-floor condo, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, they wanted me to have my own bathroom, says Jennifer, kind of babbling. Victoria and Richie are with their grandparents—MY grandparents—back in Alaska; the younger kids know about me, evidently, have been told about me all their lives.
I wonder how they think of me. What I am, in their minds. More like a symbol than a person, I guess. Like the Easter Bunny, or Santa. When I walk into their lives, when before I’ve just been a toddler on a milk carton, it’s going to be INTENSE for them.
Luckily, there’s an elevator—I don’t think I’d have gotten up any stairs with my CAM Walker. We stand in silence as we ride up. I am used to silence, but the parents look uncomfortable in it, like it’s a heat, pressing on them.
There’s a bike in the hall, a full suspension mountain bike. That’s Michael’s, says Jennifer, in her slow stage voice, mouth moving like molasses.
The trails here are [ ], says Michael, who speaks much quicker. I wasn’t sure if [ ], so I thought, why not?
What he’s saying:
He didn’t know if I would turn out to be real, if the police would turn out to be right. So he brought a bike, so he could hit the trails, if it turned out to be a bust, a dead end.
Michael, I am thinking, wrote me off for dead a long time ago, and so he’s going to be the one to watch out for. This whole thing may turn out to be maybe ten thousand times harder for him than for Jennifer, because she KNEW I was alive, she trusted in Jesus.
She has just had her faith confirmed; he, though—he’s going to have to unbury me; unpack my dead limbs from where he has stowed them away, deep inside him.
I know I’m right about this: I see it in the veins in his nose, I see it in the way he moves so jerkily, so shakily, like we’re all in HD and he’s been filmed on Super 8, or whatever, some old camera stock like in black-and-white movies, where people moved like marionettes.
I see it in the way he excuses himself and goes off to the kitchen, leaving me and Jennifer alone in the living room.
Drink? says Jennifer.
I nod.
Okay, great, honey, great. Coke?
I nod again.
She goes to the kitchen. The apartment is furnished in black leather, with polished mahogany floors. There are no personal touches, no photos, no flowers—I guess there wouldn’t be. Good views from the windows, though—the red brick and glass of Flagstaff’s downtown; mountains and forest in the distance.
Jennifer comes back with a glass of Coke, and hands it to me, the awkwardness between us giving an air of ceremony to the way she does it.
I’ll make lunch, soon, she says.
I nod.
Then we need to get you some clothes, you like shopping?
I shrug.
Okay … well, whatever, we can get you some stuff quickly. Is there anything you like? Books, games, music … She looks up at me, startled. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I’m such a klutz … Then she clutches her cross. I took your name in vain, she says, I’m sorry for that too, I … forgive me.
It’s weird—she’s so beautiful, so, like, movie-star and cheerleader gorgeous, but she’s too nervous and sweet and, I think, a tiny bit crazy, to really BE beautiful.
I smile, and shake my head, like, don’t worry about it; it’s easy to forget. And it is, I know.
Do you … watch movies, TV?
I nod. Closed captions, I say, accentuating the syllables.
Oh! Of course.
She shows me around, talking endlessly, but nothing that I really need to know, just nerves I guess. I have no words to describe how I am feeling—it’s like grief, maybe, but grief for myself. I was living my life, and then something came along and killed me, erased me from the world, and now I’m not Shelby Jane Cooper anymore, I’m some other person.
Except I don’t know this other person. Or anything about them.
It’s like I don’t exist. Like some magician has taken up my life like a card—SWISH—and swapped it with another, and put them in new and separate decks. We pass a mirror, full length, and I don’t recognize the girl in it. She’s pretty, with dark hair tied back, big brown eyes. A little skinny, maybe.
But she’s a stranger to me.
I’m not really paying attention to what Jennifer is saying but suddenly I see her mouth make the words “Grand Canyon.”
What? I say.
She slows and exaggerates her speech. The Grand Canyon, she says. We thought we could go. I mean, not today. But while we’re here. It’s so close.
Two hundred conversations with my (mom) go through my head, from so many years—me saying it’s so close, we can fly there in an hour—her saying, we can’t afford it, honey but really meaning, I know now, I’m afraid because I don’t want to get caught, I don’t want to lose you.
And even though she always said no, and even though I know it’s stupid … I don’t know. I guess I always thought I would go with her.
Suddenly I realize: I miss my (mom). I mean, Shaylene Cooper, whatever. I hate her, yes, I’m fricking furious with her, for ruining everything like this, but at the same time there is a part of me that would be happy to go back in time, to roll everything back to before that car hit me, so nothing would have to change, and all the secrets would remain hidden, forever.
Her face floats in my imagination, disintegrating already.
I wonder where she is.
The woman who raised me. Who told me she loved me, who baked me cookies, who put Band-Aids on my cuts, who taught me to sign, who taught me to read, who put aside her money for me, gave me books, gave me hugs, took me for Ice Cream for Dinner Nights, watched everything in closed captions because of me …
Hell, what if Jennifer and Michael don’t do ice cream for dinner?
A touch on my arm. We’re standing looking into the room where I’m going to sleep. Jennifer has already put the bunny on the bed; she must have brought it from the car; I didn’t see.
Angelica? Or … A pained look crosses Jennifer’s face. Do you … do you prefer Shelby? Her arms spread outward; it’s your choice, say her hands, but her face says different. Her face says my name is Angelica.
I shrug. I think this is going to be my answer to a lot of things.
Are you feeling bad, honey?
Oh you have NO idea.
I shake my head. I have a little backpack that Carla got for me. I swing it to my front; open it. There’s my cigarettes inside, they’re Pall Mals, whatever that means. I show them to Jennifer.
Oh! she says. A flicker of disappointment—quick, and then she tries to hide it, but I spot it. Then she puts it away totally out of sight, under brisk helpfulness. There’s a balcony just out here, she says, walking backward into the living room, indicating it with her hand.
I know, I think.
I nod at her and she opens the door, sliding it. I go out, awkwardly leaning on the door jamb to lever myself and my bionic-man CAM Walker up and over the lip of the sliding door. If she thinks it’s weird that I don’t take off my backpack, she doesn’t say anything.
Outside, I lean against the railing, looking down on the cars going by. It’s a beautiful day; the sun is shining even though it’s cold, and crows tumble past me, black rags against the blue sky; freewheeling. There are peaked and gabled roofs in Flagstaff, reaching up to the mountains in the background; you don’t see roofs like that in Phoenix, everything is just flat. I take out a cigarette and light it—the smoke hits my lungs and I cough, but fight to control it, to hold it in.
People do this by choice? It feels like some creature with dagger-fingers has reached into my chest and yanked.
After that, I don’t inhale, I just take the smoke in my mouth and then puff it out. From the corner of my eye, I watch Jennifer—she watches me for a while, kind of rapt just by my presence I guess, but when I put out the cigarette and light another one, she starts to get bored.
Everyone gets bored, even of the people they love. It’s a fact of life.
Michael comes in, from their bedroom, maybe, and they talk, then walk toward the kitchen.
I am about to move, when Jennifer suddenly turns her head and then heads to the door—I guess someone has knocked on it or rung a bell. She opens it wide and a woman in a suit comes in, young, blond. Attractive. Jennifer’s body is saying that this woman has some kind of authority, and also that Jennifer doesn’t like it and is afraid of it.
They come into the living space of the big open plan room and Jennifer beckons me in.
I slide the door and go back inside. The woman sticks out her hand. Her eyes are sea-blue, her hair like sand. Everything about her says summer. Summer Andrews, she says. CPS. I’m going to be looking in on you. Making sure you’re okay. You want to sit? Talk a bit?
No, I say.
She blinks but then catches herself; professional. That’s all right, she says. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Perhaps we can all just discuss living arrangements. Clothes. Food.
I sigh inside. I’m trapped.
For now.