Clarisse’s house is bigger than I’d imagined. I’d pictured her in a white Key West–style bungalow with two bedrooms and a tin roof. But really, her house is peach and has four bedrooms. It’s built in what my mother and Shea call McMansion Style—a stucco house in a neighborhood with identical stucco houses in various shades of Florida neutral, which includes beige, tan, sandalwood, pink, and peach. Clarisse lives in Seffner, about twenty minutes northeast of Tampa, in a gated community called Darcy Lake. There are no sidewalks in Darcy Lake, only identical mailboxes lined up in rows, their little red flags in various positions based upon the status of their letters. Incoming or outgoing, I can never remember which means which.
My mother pulls up to the intercom at the gate, pushes the silver call button, and then enters the code that Clarisse has provided. The black wrought iron gate opens, and we are granted access. When we pull into Clarisse’s driveway, my mother shuts the car off and turns to me. I’m sitting in the backseat with my red duffel bag and my pillow. Shea is in the passenger seat, her right hand dangling out the window, a swirl of smoke rising from the tip of her lit cigarette.
“You have everything, right?” my mother asks. I can only see the reflection of her eyes beaming back at me in the rearview mirror. “Your toothbrush, your phone, your deodorant?” She turns around to see me now. “Do you have your phone, Ev?” Her voice rises, and her eyes search my face for something—a sign that I will be okay. Shea reaches over and rubs the back of my mother’s neck with her left hand.
“Yes, I have my phone,” I answer. “I have everything.” I unbuckle my seat belt and lean forward to give my mother a kiss on the cheek.
“And you’ll text me tomorrow? Keep me posted on when I can come get you?” she says. She’s been repeating this like a mantra the entire ride to Seffner. Text me tomorrow, text me tomorrow.
“I will text you tomorrow, Mom,” I say.
“Okay, then. Have fun and mind your manners,” she says.
“Aren’t you coming in to meet Clarisse’s mom?”
“Oh, right. You know what, I’ll just meet her tomorrow when I pick you up. I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
“Love you three,” Shea says, and I give her a kiss on the cheek too.
After getting out of the car, I walk up to the front door of the house. It looks like solid wood, maybe dark cherry, with a small oval window made to imitate stained glass. I ring the doorbell and hear the muffled sound of chimes from inside the house. When Clarisse opens the front door, I turn around and wave at my mother and Shea in the car and Clarisse waves too. The car backs out of the driveway, my mother honking the horn good-bye. Shea’s hand out the window offers a smoke signal farewell.
Inside the foyer, I meet Clarisse’s mom, Jenny, and Uncle George. George must be Jenny’s brother, as they both have the same small nose, and the same crooked teeth.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Evelyn,” Jenny says. She is young, probably even younger than my mother and Shea. “We’ve heard so much about you.” She looks self-conscious as soon as the words are spoken, shooting a nervous glance at George and then Clarisse.
“I hope you’re hungry,” George says. “Pizza will be here soon.” He wears a Pink Floyd T-shirt and faded black jeans. He’s definitely younger than Jenny, probably late twenties.
“Thank you for having me,” I say, following my mother’s instructions. “And pizza sounds great. I love pizza.”
“It’s from Cubby’s, a great little mom-and-pop place down MLK Boulevard. New York style,” he says. “As if there is any other, right?” Jenny smiles and nods in agreement.
“Well, just let us know when it’s here,” Clarisse says. “Come on, Evelyn. I’ll give you the grand tour.”
I slip off my sandals and follow her as she shows me around the various rooms of the cavernous house. The kitchen is sprawling with a marble center island, cherry cabinets, and a stainless steel refrigerator. There is a wooden rack hanging over the island, with wineglasses and goblets and flutes hanging upside down from their feet. Above the stove, knives are lined up in a neat row on a magnetic strip, their sharp ends pointed toward the ceiling. There is one knife missing, and I see a bloody handprint in its place for just a moment, until I blink it away. The blades catch the light, shining like diamonds in jewelry store cases. My father shattered those cases with bullets. Crushed glass rained onto the hard floor, sounding like hail in a summer storm.
The family room has a TV and a sectional couch of black leather. Three black dogs (one big, two small) are nestled on the couch, each occupying their own little territory. The big dog lifts his head for a moment and sniffs the air before settling back into position. One of the small dogs chews on something raw and bloody. He holds it between his front paws. It is dark red like a liver. The small dog devours it, his teeth stained pink until I close my eyes for a moment, reminding myself it isn’t real.
The hallway leading toward the bedrooms has pastel blue walls and a white ceramic tile floor, cool on my bare feet. Clarisse points out the doors to the four bedrooms—one for her mother, one for George, one for George’s exercise equipment, and one for Clarisse. Each closed door looks identical, as if they could all lead to the same place.
Clarisse’s bedroom is big and mostly white, with one intensely dark red wall, the color of blood in a vial after it’s been drawn from your body. It’s not the bright primary red of fresh blood that seeps slowly from small scrapes and cuts, but the darker crimson that flows deep under your skin, inside your veins, that mysterious network of canals and rivers, invisible pathways of life. Clarisse has a queen-size bed outfitted in heather gray sheets and a neon pink comforter. I sit on it, and it’s so puffy I sink, feel the air releasing itself from invisible holes.
“It’s goose down,” Clarisse says. “My mom and George turn the house into the North Pole at night. I used to hate it, but now I can’t stand sleeping in a warm room. I have to be freezing when I sleep. It’s just so cozy.” The room is indeed a freezer. It even smells cold, which I love, like the scent of the frosted glasses my mother and Shea use for margaritas sometimes, when they remember to chill them ahead of time. Sometimes I’ll sneak a lick, my wet tongue on the dry frost of the glass, and it sticks for a moment until I gently tug myself away.
I know there are places where the air is truly cold—naturally cold, not air-conditioned cold—although I’ve never been to those places. There are places where frost appears on the ground and in the trees and even in your hair if you go outside while it’s still wet from the shower. In those places, you can lick a frozen flagpole or frozen mailbox, anything metal, and get your tongue stuck for real.
Clarisse’s room has vaulted ceilings and a floor-to-ceiling window covered with vertical blinds. Their plastic edges make a tiny sound as they move together and apart, set in motion by the hissing AC vent. Clarisse doesn’t have any stuffed animals or dolls, no bottles of perfume or nail polish cluttering a vanity. Everything is out of sight.
“Wow, your room is really clean,” I say.
“Oh yeah? Well, let me show you something.” Clarisse walks over to the double doors that take up half of an entire wall. The doors are white with silver-toned handles curved like question marks on the ends. Clarisse twists the question marks with both hands and swings the doors open with a ta-da motion.
It’s a large walk-in closet, and inside, there is a fuzzy orange folding chair in a corner. There’s a bookshelf littered with makeup instead of books—uncapped tubes of lipstick, half-empty blush compacts, and cylinders of mascara standing on end, arranged in an orderly line. On the bottom shelf are four cans of compressed air, the kind you find at an office supply store, used for cleaning computers and other electronics. Each can has a thin red straw taped to it, which can be placed over the nozzle to make it easy to reach tiny spaces—the intricate circuitry of a laptop or the charging port of a cell phone. There is crumpled clothing pushed to the edges of the small room. Inside-out jeans and T-shirts and socks peek out from the rubble, which includes a few empty plastic water bottles and Pixie Stix candy wrappers, those pastel-swirled straws that hold flavored sugar.
“My mom never comes in here,” Clarisse says. “And just in case she ever tries, I keep it locked.” She pulls a small silver key from inside her shirt, her bra I’m guessing, although she moves so smoothly it seems as though she just plucked it from a secret compartment inside her rib cage.
Clarisse sits down cross-legged on the floor of the closet, and I join her, matching my shape to hers. I eye the makeup on the shelf, wondering if we’ll paint each other’s faces, turning ourselves into giant doll heads. All week, I’ve been imagining the classic sleepover activities we might engage in tonight, the ones you see girls doing in the movies—maybe we’ll conjure the dead with a séance or sneak vodka from an unlocked liquor cabinet. I pick up a bottle of nail polish and read the name of the color on the label. Mint Condition. It’s a chalky pastel green color, and through the frosted glass of the bottle, it looks like green milk.
“You should put that color on your toes,” Clarisse says in a voice so casual it makes me smile. This is what a friend sounds like when talking to another friend. The sound of pure ease of conversation, like unconscious speech. I’m out of my mind on Clarisse’s friendship right now, her voice cool and comforting as white noise, a box fan whirring in the bedroom corner to lull you to sleep. I shake the nail polish bottle, and the small silver-mixing bead inside makes a lovely little sound, a tiny bell ringing.
I twist open the top of the nail polish bottle, and with the small brush, I sweep Mint Condition on my baby toe, concentrating deeply and trying to avoid painting all the skin around my toenail, which is inevitable in spite of my efforts. Clarisse grabs one of the cans of computer duster from the shelf, and pulls the trigger gently to let out just a small whistle of air.
“So have you tried it before?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m not too bad at it,” I say. “See?” I flash my finished baby toe at Clarisse. I go back to biting my tongue gently in concentration as I paint the next-to-baby-toe.
Clarisse laughs. “No, not nail polish. This stuff.” She wiggles the can of air close to my face for a moment. Then she puts the nozzle in her mouth, and ssssssssss—a sharp inhale, like she’s breathing in a long ribbon of clouds.
Clarisse rests the can in the triangle of carpet she’s created with her thin legs. She waits a few seconds, and then places the nozzle in her mouth again. Another pull of the plastic trigger, another hiss, another inhale, and she smiles without teeth, the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on a girl in person, as close to an ear-to-ear smile as you can get. I twist the nail polish bottle closed and place it back on the makeup shelf. Clarisse reaches her slender arm toward me, offering the can to me. And I take it.
The small closet becomes smaller, and the walls thin themselves out, transforming into papery palm fronds almost ready to fall from their trees. I think I feel something shift inside the bowl of my skull, but on second thought, no, it’s subtler than that, more like a vibration, a small swarm of bees buzzing in the distance. Clarisse is moving her lips, but I only hear the sea—the waves swelling with air, getting fuller and fuller with each inhale.
The doorbell rings in the distance, an entire ocean away from me. I raise my arms toward Clarisse, and she grabs my hands, pulling me to my feet. We walk out of the closet, and position ourselves on Clarisse’s bed in typical girl poses—on our stomachs with elbows on the comforter, our heads in our palms. If only we had the slick pages of a teen magazine open nearby.
Uncle George knocks twice before opening Clarisse’s bedroom door with one hand, cardboard pizza box balanced on the palm of the other like a waiter’s tray. “One New York style with sausage and mushrooms,” he says, and his white teeth shine a smile in my direction. He glides over to Clarisse’s desk, placing the pizza box down along with paper plates and napkins. Then he pulls two cold cans of Wild Cherry Pepsi from his jeans pockets—Clarisse’s favorite soda.
“Thank you,” we say in unison, our girl voices blending like harmony, my voice a little higher than the low lilt of Clarisse’s. Everything about her seems dense, filled with heavy air. George smiles and throws us a thumbs-up in our direction with his right hand.
“Enjoy,” he says. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“We will,” Clarisse says. We watch our reflections eat pizza in the mirror above her dresser.
We’re each on our second slice of pizza when Clarisse ends the silence.
“So what did your dad do?” she asks. She grabs a napkin and wipes grease from the corner of her mouth.
“Um, he owned a tree service business,” I say with my mouth full of cheese. I take a second to chew and swallow. “Mostly palm trees. Planting and removing. Landscaping stuff. What did your dad do?”
“First-degree murder, kidnapping, and capital sexual battery,” Clarisse says matter-of-factly. She reaches for another piece of pizza. “Those are the official convictions, but I can give you all the gory details too, if you want.”
I laugh nervously, realizing what she meant by her original question. “Oh, you want to know what my dad did.”
Clarisse is looking at me through the mirror, her eyes square on mine. “Come on, Evelyn,” she says. “I showed you mine. Now you show me yours. Haven’t you ever played that game before?”
I look down and stare at my paper plate for a moment, searching for patterns in the grease spots as if they were clouds in the sky. “Mass shooting, I guess you’d call it. I mean, I don’t know his actual convictions. He killed twelve people. The Ponce de Leon mall shooting in St. Augustine.”
“Oh wow, then he’s famous, right?” Clarisse asks and then licks her fingers.
“I guess so.”
“My dad was Florida-famous for a while, but most people outside the state have probably forgotten about him by now.”
“How long has it been?” I ask, hoping I don’t sound overly interested in the answer. In the past, I’ve had a tendency to ask too many questions when I’m getting to know someone, appearing too invested in knowing every little detail about the person, acting more like an overzealous interviewer than a possible new friend.
“Ten years this year. Happy anniversary, right?” Clarisse says, laughing at her own joke. She gathers our used plates and napkins, stuffs them inside the pizza box, and throws the box on the floor. It lands without a sound. “Where is he?” she asks.
We’re having this entire conversation through the mirror, speaking to each other, but also speaking to reflections of ourselves.
“He’s on death row. At Raiford. Where is your dad?”
“Same,” Clarisse says. She turns her head and smiles at me this time, not at the girl in the mirror. A feeling of relief rushes through me, like ripping off a Band-Aid and realizing that the wound beneath isn’t nearly as bad as you had imagined. In fact, if you look closely, you swear you can already see a scab beginning to form, the skin working to rebuild itself, the body’s own magic trick.
“Time for dessert now?” I ask, motioning toward the closet. I want to feel that fuzzy feeling again, go back to that gauzy world.
“Hell yeah,” Clarisse says, and she grabs me by the wrist. She leads me back inside the small space, where we take turns, one inhale each, until once again there are no sharp lines, no thick boundaries. Everything is blurry. Shoes are piled up in the corner like severed feet. The walls are tinged pink, as if painted with the wisp of a paintbrush dipped in blood.
We both lie on our backs, looking up at the ceiling. My left elbow touches Clarisse’s right elbow, bare skin to bare skin. My brain tingles, the synapses on fire, an engine warming up for liftoff, as though my head could become a rocket ship, detach from my body, and climb up, up, up to the sky.
The sky is nothing like the ocean. It doesn’t have an ending, does it? If you send yourself into the sky, will you fly and fly until you reach a boundary, smashing into a wall made of pure blue crystal? In the ocean, you will eventually reach bottom. You will reach the ocean floor, where the strange creatures live without light.
If you travel too far under the sea, your chest will implode—too much pressure exerted upon your body, too much to bear. If you travel too far in the sky, you will explode. Not enough pressure acting upon your body to keep your insides inside. I’ve always wondered which is a better way to die.
“I have another question for you,” Clarisse says to the ceiling. “About your father.”
“Okay, shoot,” I say, and we both start laughing again. “Sorry,” I say when we finally compose ourselves.
“Are you afraid of him?” Clarisse asks.
“No. I’ve never even met him. He’s been locked up since before I was born.”
“You’ve never been to Raiford to visit him?”
“No. Have you been there?”
“Just once. After he was sentenced. My mom wouldn’t let me go to the trial, and she said she wanted me to see him one more time before, you know.” Clarisse’s voice lowers at the end of the sentence.
“What is Raiford like?” I ask. I’ve imagined visiting my father, sitting across from him in the visiting quarters, a pane of reinforced glass separating us. I’ve imagined my father’s hand reaching for the black telephone receiver so I can hear him, although I’ve never allowed the daydream to go any further, never allowed myself to actually conjure a voice for him. Still, I imagine how his lips might curl into a smile as he realizes how much I look like him, a young girl version of himself, like a reflection in a magic mirror.
“Scary. And pretty depressing, actually. Which is why we never went back. I remember sitting there and looking at him and wondering if he ever thought about the little girl he killed. She was about my age, and we looked similar. I wondered if I reminded him of her.”
“Were there any signs? Before he did it? Did he have a history?”
“No signs, no history. He was just an ordinary guy. It seemed to come out of nowhere. It makes me angry, what he did. But it also makes me afraid…”
“Of him? He’s away for life. He’ll never be able to hurt you or anyone else ever again.”
“No, not afraid of him so much, although I guess that’s a part of it. More like afraid of myself. Not all the time. But sometimes, when I think about what he did and how he just snapped.”
I turn my head toward Clarisse, and she is still looking up at the ceiling. A tear frees itself from the corner of her eye, rolling down her temple. She wipes it away with her fingertip. “I don’t know, maybe I’m being crazy, but if there was something in him that made him do it, then maybe that same something is in me. Do you ever think about stuff like that?” Clarisse breathes deeply and holds the air in her lungs for a few seconds, waiting for me to answer.
“We are individuals, just like Greg says. Remember?” My left hand reaches for her right hand, and I lace my fingers with hers. “We get to start from scratch.”
Clarisse turns onto her side and exhales, her warm breath tickling my neck. She buries her head in my armpit and slings her other arm across my rib cage.
I feel a pulsing within me, as though I can feel my own heart pumping blood through my veins. My blood, but my father’s blood too, and as soon as I think it, I try to stop the idea, the thought that will gather other thoughts and accelerate like a runaway truck if I don’t hurry up and slam on the brakes.
To start from scratch didn’t begin as a baking phrase. It had to do with a starting line for a race that was drawn or scratched in the dirt. If you started from scratch, it meant you started from the same place as everyone else. You started at zero.
Clarisse and I started at zero when we were born, in spite of what our fathers did. We were born from our mothers’ bodies, a mercy that I cling to. Our mothers grew our tiny cells, forming our bodies inside their wombs. Yes, our fathers added ingredients to conjure us into being, but they aren’t raising us, aren’t doing any of the difficult stuff that comes afterward. And I’m hoping it’s the afterward that will matter most for us—the kneading of dough, the waiting for us to rise.