Walking through the weeds of a highway shoulder at night. That was okay. She’d check on Valerie and finish off the bit on Joey’s mirror. Whenever cars passed she turned and stuck out her thumb like she was in a movie. She felt ridiculous, but a car pulled over. Milk ran up to it, got in, and came to in the morning in the weeds of another shoulder . . .
“Lousy son of a . . . a . . . bitch! . . . He d . . . d . . . deserved it anyway! . . .”
Stella and Chris were arguing again—something about the television. They made me want to pick it up and just throw it out the window onto the street, Led Zeppelin–style . . .
I spill coffee on the bed. The white quilt is stained.
How can I fix this? I tiptoe up the stairs to their kitchen, soak a wad of paper towels in the sink. I go back down the stairs, rub the paper towels into the stain. I scrub and scrub. The sun is rising; the stain is not. I lay back down on the bed. Hopelessness . . .
This is me at fifteen, splayed out on Carly’s giant trampoline—stargazing, helpless, hopeful, smiling through a mouthful of stolen popcorn . . .
I didn’t know he was hooked on smack when I moved in. That confession came two nights later . . .
Emptiness walked in uninvited and refused to leave. When? How? I can’t recall . . .
We decided that one thing we could do with the money is buy a house, so we looked at some houses and it was weird and to offset the weird we got tattoos . . .