Gay Writes

A place for my poetry, excerpts of my short or long fiction, and general thoughts.

[dandrabbles]

Find the Word

I was tagged by @fictionshewrote for this! Thank you so much <3 Basic concept: find a quote that contains the following words “breath, open, deep, gently.” Every post gets different words, so if I tagged you, your words are at the bottom of this post!

I’m gonna have to dig around through various drafts, since all I’ve been writing are short stories. But all of these short stories will be part of the same collection! I’ll post the associated titles along with the excerpts. Breath

This is from my story “Until it Hits Something Solid” about two guys in Oakhurst sorting out their friendship.

All his adult life, Wilder has felt he hasn’t quite understood things. The lectures at his community college, how to talk to women, why Corey always looks like he’s ready to fight. Now, with Corey’s sad, self-assured face staring at him, and the creeping suspicion that he’s in the wrong, he takes one, slow breath. “Then fucking enlighten me,” he says.

“No,” Corey says. Then, quieter, “What do you think is going to happen to Tracy’s daughter?”

“I don’t get it.”

“Every asshole here has an opinion. How do you think this works out for her?”

“I don’t know,” Wilder says. His neck hurts, tense with the promise of a headache. He isn’t sure if he wants Tracy’s daughter—or the idea of her—to have a kid or not. He wants her to make her own decision. He doesn’t want to have to think about what that decision means. Whenever things like this came up in his house growing up, they were pushed aside. They didn’t involve him. There was the obvious answer of choice, the answer that he felt was best because he didn’t have to have an opinion about it. Now, the more he thought about Tracy’s daughter, and having to carry a baby with Oakhurst watching, or without a place to sleep, the more he was certain he couldn’t know the answer. “There’s no good option,” he says.

“There it is,” Corey says. “For once you figured something out yourself.” He sinks back into the seat, body hanging slack. “There’s no version of this where she doesn’t do exactly what she needs to survive,” he says. “Same as any of us.” Open

This is from a short story with the working title “Collection,” about a young girl trying to find control and power in her life in self-destructive ways. She tosses more crackers whenever the ducks grow disinterested, keeps them waiting around for more. They quack and squabble and snap flat bills her way, wide open and demanding. The youngest ones are the loudest, still shedding their grey fluff for full grown feathers. The babies leave clumps of themselves floating on the water in a way she finds careless, stuck to each other, snagged on twigs or scum. But, whenever they draw close to land, the parents crowd around their children, shrill and over protective against the girl’s interest. Her dad always pulls her back from the edge when they walk the paths around the lake. Concerned is the word he uses for how tightly he holds onto her. “Your mother and I are concerned,” or, “You can’t wander off” or, “I love you—stay close.” He never lets her leave the paved path to feed the ducks or climb trees, always keeps her where he wants her. She suspects that her parents know more than she does about where danger lurks, or if, more likely, they are just scared of the possibilities that lie outside closed doors.

Feet crunch in the dirt behind her and when she turns it is as she suspected: Reid is watching her. He smiles at her as if she has said a funny joke or invited him to stay, and she does not smile back. She knows he will come closer whether she smiles or not, because it is hot and her tree has shade. Because they are the only two looking out at the lake. Because he has followed her here from Mrs. Herschel’s house. She had wanted him to show up, but now that he is here a part of her misses her closet and the dark and the ants.

Deep

I cheated slightly and went for “deeper” instead of “deep.” This comes out of a story titled “Beyond the Storm, the Night is Peaceful.” It’s about a young girl and her father trying to communicate, and trying to learn to trust each other to care.

“Tomorrow we’ll go into town and thank Bill right. Pay him for the gas he used on you,” her dad says.

Calliope sits across from him, the pint of pistachio ice cream between them. It’s half soup, no point freezing it again. Once solid, it’ll taste like freezer burn. She digs her spoon into the island of ice cream floating in the middle, pins it against the side to get a scoop out. Melt drips onto her shirt. Wiping it rubs it deeper into the fabric. Her dad looks tired, shoulders slack, eyes red. They sit like that, her eating and him quiet, until he picks up his spoon. The pint goes back and forth after that. A few bites, then pass it along until it’s gone.

“I was going to Fresno,” Calliope says.

“Don’t start like that,” her dad says. He sets the empty pint down between them, spreads his hands, palms against the table.

“How else is there?” she says. Her backpack lays open next to her father’s chair.

He reaches into the backpack, pulls out a wad of bills. “You took three hundred dollars.” He tosses it next to the empty ice cream.

“Two thirty-five.”

He pounds the table, palm flat, hard enough to jump the empty pint. Then again, just as loud, but the weight behind the blow is gone. He looks at her without moving his head, up through his lashes. His eyes look large and wet and too young for his face. Like a child who has found his parents out in a lie for the first time, all that trust broken open into tears. “What’d you expect to do?” he says. “Fresno, sure. At night when everything’s closed. And alone—I didn’t raise you to be this fucking stupid.” When he looks at her this time there’s a weakness, a pain in the trembled set of his mouth that sends discomfort down Calliope’s spine. “I went to your school to find you,” he says.

“Didn’t have to,” she says.

Gently

This comes out of a story called “There Is No Fire Here.” It’s about a young person trying to grapple with their sister’s abuse, and the ways they’re implicated by not stopping that abuse.

The first time I set a fire, I was fifteen. In the fading evening light, I had bundled dry twigs and some brush in the dirt behind our trailer. Used some matches I found in a drawer to start the burn. It had smoked up so bad I’d almost passed out. Dad watched Survivor religiously. One season, a contestant passed out from smoke inhalation and fell into the fire. The pain was what woke him up. I only heard him screaming from the TV, turned in time to see him wading into a lake, skin and blood dripping from his hands. The flare of light and that image kept me steady. All of me clenched so tight that I saw spots, eyes aching against the severity. It was like staring into my own, hand-crafted Sun. I had made a star. A single point of light in the dark and the cold.

Inside, I could hear the belt. I could hear Tati. But the fire—the light—was alive. It burned so hot I felt the skin on my cheeks dry and gently blister. I watched until it had burned itself to ashes, until all that was left behind was blackened earth. Until the evening was quiet. Until I was quiet. Still me. The offering.

This was a lot of fun! Thank you so much for tagging me <3

I’m gonna tag @bealicey @ritedudehere and @wulphi but if anyone else would like to do it, please do so and remember to tag me so I can see the post. (Also, I’d say, if you can’t find something with that word, I challenge you to write a paragraph or some such using it.)

Your words are: Scrubbed, another, tangle, and everywhere.

[dandrabbles]

There Is No Fire Here

“Hey, bro-sis.”

Eleven that night was when Tati decided to show her face around our room. Whether or not she’d been dealing or just avoiding home, her backpack crumpled empty where she chucked it on the ground. She was all smiles, always the happier of the two of us. Even when she wasn’t. Her dimples made her look like a child in a way I could never say no to. Classic bambi-eyed rapscallion right out of a movie, and the blonde curls to match. Well, before she shaved them off.

“Sup, fuckface,” I said.

“Good day? Elliot said you got snatched by a cop,” Tati said.

“The best day.”

Tati flopped onto our bed, sending her boots across the room with two hard kicks. The duct taped toes were starting to pull up from the rain and she pressed her wet socks against my thighs.

“You’re sleeping on the wet spots if you don’t get your damn wet socks off the bed,” I said.

“Mongilla was talking about it,” she said. Her socks came off, slapping against the wall to crumple with her boots.“You know teachers. Anything to spice up conversation.”

“You’re still dealing to him?”

“He’s my best customer. Buys more weed than anyone.”

“How am I getting expelled before you?” I said.

“Search me. Be smarter about your criminality, man.” She smiled her dimpled smile and spread her arms wide, palms out and fingers splayed, her head tilting upward toward the ceiling. “I’m but a local businesswoman peddling her wares. You, my dear, bro-sis,” she shrugged in my direction, “decided to go hardcore and burn shit down.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I’m cooler than you.”

“So fucking cool.”

When she grinned wide her whole face squished together. Seventeen and she still looked twelve more often than not. Short, like me, but with a rounder, softer face, none of our mom’s harsh edges. I got Mom’s nose, her chin, her hair. Tati got her attitude. That baby face got into trouble and I knew better than to ask about her backpack or why she’d been walking in the rain so much that her boots were falling apart again. When she smiled like that, it was too damn easy to let it all go.

Down the hall, Mom was singing in the bathroom. A high-pitched, off key rendition of a song I knew from childhood. Words that suggested the vague outline of her, smiling, leaning over me in a bed that didn’t have my sister in it. A night where the dark didn’t feel cold yet. Tati and I looked at each other, both of us suddenly still, listening, until the singing quieted. There was a moment where we both relaxed. Idiots.

Then, Mom’s voice, quiet and inviting from down the hall. “Come help me in the bedroom, Tatiana.”

Tati’s face went desperate, fixed on me, still waiting. We both knew. There are things in this world bigger than us, but when Mom’s voice got sweet like that, everything felt real small. Just the two of us and Mom and the calm before I failed again. I reached out, touched the back of her hand with two of my fingers. Neither of us moved.

Tati got cold, her eyes brimming, her mouth and brows gone smooth. “Yes, Mama.” She said it to me. Eyes locked, held solid, before she slipped off our bed.

Then there was just me. Sitting on our bed. Not watching her go. Her bare feet on the carpet shuffled to the door and down the hall. Didn’t ask her to stay or lie about us having homework or do a damn thing. I didn’t even try. See our whole house knew what Mom’s sweet voice meant. A trip to the principal’s office for her good kid, a dirty bathroom, and all that stress needing a way out. The more Tati smiled, the bigger a target she got on her back. Dad was down the hall in the living room, turning the television up loud enough that I might as well be sitting next to him, loud enough to cover up the sound of Mom’s belt on Tati, then louder. So no one had to hear it. So no one had to hear the way neither of us stopped it.

No matter how many times Mom hit her, Tati kept smiling at me. Like we didn’t know I could stop it. Like I didn’t sit there quiet every time Tati got pulled away. Mom’s nails digging into Tati’s arm hard enough to leave divots in her skin. Tati’s face so smooth and cold. What was my excuse? Too scared to speak up. Too scared to point out how fucked up it all was. Didn’t want divots in me.

When Tati came back I already had the Neosporin ready. Bandaids out of the bathroom, only a few left in the box. She didn’t say anything. Neither of us did. She just took her shirt off and laid out on her stomach while I tried to clean up her back. No busted skin, but welting bruises the same color as Tati’s plum lipstick. That was good. I wanted to make a joke about it. To distract her; me; both. Like it was just another fashion choice she made better than me.

“I’ll get you some new tape from Office Max tomorrow,” I said. “For your shoes.”

Her breath hissed through her teeth when I pressed too hard against her skin. Then she reached for me, her fingers flexing in the air behind her, both of us aching, needing affection. We curled together in our bed. No covers so Tati’s skin could breathe. She pressed in against my chest, her baby’s face wet and cold against my cheek. Quiet. So quiet.

Mom never touched me. I always figured I reminded her too much of herself. Same hair, same eyes, same olive skin—she was always yelling about how she was Greek in her Spanish accent. Tati had the bad luck of looking too much like her dad. Same Mom, different Dads, and Tati’s was the one that Mom claimed “broke” her. He’d ditched before the baby cropped up. What was my excuse? All I did was stay. That wasn’t anything. I wasn’t anything.

[dandrabbles]

There Is Nothing Past This Moment

Coolant smells like syrup when it gets hot. Elliot’s car had a leak, and, standing in NAPA’s parking lot, his hip warming on the hood, the smell made him hungry. He could picture it: a steady drip of blue liquid sizzling down the metal ribs of the radiator, burning off to leave behind a greasy stain that smelled like Monday mornings. Back when he was still a kid, he’d drowned his Eggos in brown stickiness. Not maple syrup. Pancake syrup—the cheap stuff that tasted like someone yelled the word “maple” near the bottles. No butter. Just eggy, freezer-burned toaster waffles and processed sugar. Christ, waffles would be fantastic. Monday, four AM, two hours of sleep, he waited with a stale cup of coffee for the weekly parts delivery. To Elliot’s left, hunched into her phone, Mom dug into whatever poor sap was working dispatch from the warehouse. Their driver was an hour late.

“Pretty damn sure he’s not here,” she said. “It’s me and my guy and one empty fucking parking lot.” Her breath huffed each syllable into the air as harsh clouds, their lazy dwindling giving way around each new word. “Can you see something I don’t? Cuz I’d love whatever magic you have there if that’s the case.”

“Still empty, boss,” Elliot said.

She wasn’t paying attention—or, if she was, she had no time for him. Better that way. Elliot and the other under-twenties might call her “Mom,” but they knew where lines were drawn. There was no joking with the boss when she got like this. When she’d started the call, she’d pulled her hair back and off her neck, tying it into a messy bun with the scrunchie she kept on her wrist. The universal in-store sign for “shit’s about to go down.” No one who worked the counter stuck around when the boss lady was set on a task. Not if they wanted to be part of the problem. If it weren’t for the cold, the early hour, the not knowing who was on the other end of the phone, Elliot might have bothered to feel sorry for whoever Mom was chewing out. Instead, he drank his coffee.

“Fuck your GPS,” Mom said. She snapped her fingers at Elliot without looking at him, pointing to the cup balanced on the roof of his car. Get coffee. Bring coffee. She didn’t look up when she took the cup from him either.

“You’re welcome,” Elliot said.

Mom had called last night after the newbie flaked, and he couldn’t say no to her. She’d shown up with McDonald’s coffee and a pocketful of sugar packets as a thank you for his reliability. Watching Mom, her phone pinned between her shoulder and ear, tearing first one packet of sugar, then another, with her teeth, he wondered if she’d called anyone before him. Eric was only part time. Yvette was in charge of the drivers and wouldn’t bother answering a call before her six AM clock-in. No one but Elliot trusted Wilder. No, Elliot was sure, he was the only one to call. There was pride in that knowledge, and, beneath that, a bitterness. He turned to the empty lot, the street, the squat, concrete buildings past that. The sky was still dark enough that morning felt like a suggestion more than a certainty. Past the golden haze of light pollution, the moon backlit a patch of clouds like a flashlight pressed against a quilt, the cotton guts picked out with softened light. Somewhere, a few blocks down, a train horn peeled back the quiet. They weren’t that far from the train station, logistically speaking. Past the abandoned La Michoacana market across the street, its painted, sombreroed mascot peeling off the front window, through the two neighborhoods it used to feed, down a half-paved road that ran parallel to the tracks, was the station with its two passenger lines. Those lines saw more freight than people. How many times had Elliot joked with Wilder about doing the hobo thing and hopping a train car? Stow away with some Fords and hitch a ride wherever they were going. To LA, The Bay, The Ocean, The End—whatever that was.

“You got somewhere to be, Major Tom?”

Mom was off her phone and staring at him over her paper cup, arms folded across her chest, waiting. Ever since he was little, Elliot had the tendency to drift, easily taken with a thought, a sound, a smell, until he had followed his fancy down a rabbit hole and came back to the world, unsure of where he was or how he’d gotten there. Distractible, America said. Always so distractible. But Mom didn’t look impatient or concerned, just amused.

“Tired,” Elliot said.

“Delivery will be here in thirty.”

They both turned to the parking lot, looking up the street, as if doing so would summon the blue semi that much sooner.

“Can I nap in my car?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, her gaze on his cup, then him, his face. Could she see the dark circles behind his glasses? Did she care?

“Kid your age shouldn’t be tired,” Mom said.

Elliot shrugged and took a long pull from his coffee. It burned its way down his throat to his chest, settling, hot and molten in his stomach until he bent double with the pain.

“Kid your age should be smarter,” Mom said.

Elliot could hear the smile in her voice. “Thanks, boss,” he said, digging a fist into his gut to dislodge the lump of fire.

“You’re smart,” she said finally, glancing at him sideways. “Just not very intelligent.”

Then it was only them, the quiet awkwardness of having nothing to say and nowhere to go, the thrum of Elliot’s car, one of its belts whining soft and high. And, despite the way the back of his neck itched with the clawing need to fill the silence, Elliot was almost comfortable. There were four more days until he graduated. Him and all the rest on their way and off to college or jobs or burning out. Too much, too big, and when he pictured himself next week, next month, next year: there was nothing. But, standing in that parking lot, he didn’t have to be anything more than a body filling space. That. He focused on that. There was nothing past this moment, and the next, and the next.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said.

“Don’t get used to it,” she said.

[dandrabbles]

Study Hall - Scene 4

Two years. That’s how long it’d been since Rat had seen his dad. They didn’t know when his dad’s bus was supposed to be in. Tuesday before six. That was all the man on the phone had said.

The Reserves office was a concrete box set up at the front entrance of a park, behind a big black steam engine that was meant to draw in curious tourists but mostly gathered dirt. There was no tree cover near the office, just low scrubby bushes that Park Officials kept neat once a month. Inside, there was air conditioning and water and a gray emptiness that made Rat anxious. The war took everyone, even the Reserves. So he’d let his mom go in on her own and parked himself on the curb to wait.

He’d watched his mom inside through the glare on the windows. For a while, she’d paced, but eventually settled on her own in a chair against the front window, plastic the color of corn barely holding together beneath her thighs. At one point a woman in a grey-green uniform brought her water in a styrofoam cup. Once the woman went away, his mom had braided her hair until it fell down her back in a neat tail, all dusty brown shot through with grey, the strays lit up gold in the sun. She’d let it grow after his dad shipped out. Grew it until the ends were split and dead and heavy, until the only way it looked presentable was tied up in that long braid. It was her way of dressing up.

Sitting outside, the heat off the asphalt cooking through the rubber soles of his shoes, Rat worried the dog tags around his neck. The metal scratching set an ache into his molars like crunching down on ice, kept him from pacing like his mom. Until the door swung open behind him with a canned chime. There was the soft crunch of footsteps and then his mom was sitting beside him. She brought the smell of lilac laundry detergent with her everywhere she went, and under that, cigarette smoke and the sour, metallic tang of beer.

“We’re gonna be here a while,” she said. She held the empty styrofoam cup by its lip, pinched between her forefinger and thumb, and gestured with it towards the street. “Lady inside says they haven’t gotten a call about any bus on its way yet.” She reached over and tugged at the scuffed leather shoulder of Rat’s jacket. “You’re gonna get heat stroke.”

“I’m good,” Rat said.

“No one’s gonna wanna touch you all sweaty like that.”

“Dad wouldn’t, or you wouldn’t?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You’re not him, then. Are you.” Rat snatched the cup from between her fingers and palmed it, squeezing it to deform and reform the body of it like a stress ball. “Ain’t gonna be hugging you.”

“Don’t be a shit,” she said.

“Can’t be any other way than how I was raised,” he said. He ripped a chunk of styrofoam free, then another, until the cup lay in a little pile between them and flecks of white dotted his jeans.

His mom watched him and pulled out a pack of Camels. It took her three goes to get her cigarette to light.

“You’re gonna taste like tar when you kiss dad,” he said.

“Worse things to taste like,” she said. She handed over the pack and lighter. “Besides,” she said. “I have gum.” She finished the cigarette fast, rubbed it out on the cement next to the pieces of the cup, pulled out another. Every time she ashed her cigarette the cinders drifted down and stuck to her skirt, rubbed gray smudges into the light yellow fabric and floral pattern. She did laundry daily. And for what? She carried laundry to her room to fold, cigarette in her mouth, leaving soot on the fresh, warm linen.

She was going to smoke herself through the pack at the pace she was setting. He wished she’d go back inside and sit with that Reserves woman. Out here, in the orange glow of sunset, her anxiety left him raw in a way he resented. Bad enough that he had to worry for himself without having to think about her too. The night she got the call, he’d found her sitting alone on the toilet lid, three Coors cans on the shag mat between her feet, her breathing sobbed down to hiccups. She’d chainsmoked five Camels and was starting on another. Rat only found her because of the smell. All that smoke trapped in their little bathroom and no window open. Neither of them knew what was coming. How could they?

Rat blew smoke into the air. “Maybe try the gum instead of inhaling another fucking cigarette,” he said. He flicked his to the ground, scrubbed the half-smoked body out with his boot. His mom didn’t say anything. She left her cigarette dangling between her lips, the filter smudged coral with her lipstick, smoke laying thick enough to water Rat’s eyes and burn his throat.

The sun dwindled until it was just the suggestion of light along the treetops. Only then did the bus come. A metal brick on wheels, painted white with a peeling advertisement on the side, the US Army logo tattered. Sweat stuck Rat’s shirt to his back under his jacket. It cooled with the fading light until he was left shivering, or maybe that was the nerves. He should have smoked the rest of that cigarette. Even though the nicotine would have kept his hands steady, his mom never offered him another one, just smoked three more down to nothing before she gave up to the cold.

He watched as the bus parked its long body at the far end of the parking lot. Watched as the doors opened and the driver clambered down the steps to the ground. He was fat, rolls strained his khaki uniform as he fumbled with cubby doors marked “storage.” There was only one duffel bag in the black belly of the bus. Only one passenger. Rat wrapped his arms around his legs, hugged them in against his chest and watched. Somewhere in his periphery the chime of the door rang again. His mom and her lavender smell, the hurried pop of gum in her cheek, the way smoke still clung to her. She had to know that gum wasn’t enough.

Then a body came down the bus steps, propped on crutches it seemed uneasy with. They fumbled for purchase in the narrow stairway, first the left crutch, the body heaved down, the right, all of them fighting for space despite the clear lack. There were only three legs. Crutch, leg, crutch. Where a left leg should start, a nub of folded pant leg. Rat was grateful for the growing dark and the length of the parking lot. He could see the outline of the body, but no clear face. Didn’t want to see the face yet. Until his mom grabbed hold of his jacket and hauled him up.

“Get up—so fucking rude. Not even listening,” she said.

It was all too fast after that. The parking lot too small. The body next to the bus too familiar, getting closer, smiling, teeth colored with coffee, no stubble. Then everything stopped. The three of them stood a few feet apart with the churning engine and the dark and the cool air between them. Rat tried to find something to look at: the bus, the driver holding the duffel, the place a leg used to be, should have been. It was all there could be.

“Two years and you’ve got nothing for me?” His dad’s voice was the same. Maybe a little harsher, like it was coated in sand.

Rat didn’t look up. He imagined his dad, M4 in hand, spread low on the side of a dust-strewn street, bullets ripping out through enemies, all that sand getting up under his shemagh, down his throat, drying everything out. Somewhere, maybe too close, an explosion—and then? Nothing. Then this parking lot and the quiet darkness. Behind his dad’s not-leg a cockroach scuttled behind a tire and disappeared. His mom was crying. “Hey, Pops,” Rat said.

“Jacket looks good on you,” his dad said. He cupped the back of Rat’s head, pulled him in against his chest and held him there. “You look good.”

Rat stood there against his dad’s chest, closed his eyes, breathed in the strangeness of him. Dust, sweat, the sharp, decaying must of oil. Maybe it was just the bus. Maybe this was how his dad was supposed to be now. Then his dad let go and his mom was in Rat’s place, the sound of her happy sobbing too loud. The bus driver hovered and Rat found himself wandering down the length of the bus, looking up into the tinted windows, squinting hard to find another body, taking the duffel from the driver’s pudgy hands.

“Anyone else on there?” Rat said.

“You hoping for someone else?” the driver said.

He looked back at his parents, outlined in the sparse light from inside the bus, both of them clutching the other. “No,” Rat said.  

His dad’s crutches had fallen to the ground at some point, and from this angle, with the dark and the way the light hit him, Rat could almost pretend he stood on two feet. Then he saw the shadows. Their bodies stretched three times their length, two distorted giants with three legs between them.

“Two year deployment. S’not a bad return rate,” the driver said. “Shame about the leg, though.”

Rat wheeled around and slammed the duffel into the man’s gut. The driver stumbled against the bus and the cubby slammed closed against his back. “Say shit about my dad again,” he said.

“You brat—you fucking crazy?”

His parents were quiet. The bus driver was quiet. All that was left was the echo of that cubby closing and the bus engine, like a clap of thunder without lightning, all of them left waiting for another flash of light, anything to count off of, to tell how close the storm was, when the next crash would come.

Rat spat on the asphalt. “I’ll be in the car,” he said.

[dandrabbles]

Study Hall - Scene 1

The gay bar was built in the hollowed out bones of an IHOP. That’s how Jacob pitched the spot to Rat. Midnight in Jacob’s bed, just a mattress on the floor, Jacob’s fingers twined into the chain of Rat’s dog tags. He brought it up in that way Jacob had, too casual not to be planned. He was always pushing an angle.

“You’ve seen it. Out back of the Plaza. Shares the parking lot with Staples,” Jacob said.

“Yeah I’ve seen it,” Rat said. “What about it?”

“We go Wednesdays,” Jacob’s head rested in the bend of Rat’s shoulder, but now he glanced up. Jacob’s face was roughened and boyish. Large blue eyes, nose bent crooked along the bridge from too many breaks. A fading black eye set off the freckles on his pale face. When he smiled his lips pulled back on the right side to flash his missing cuspid. He lost the tooth last year, when their buddy, America chucked a full water bottle at his face. Even covered in blood, Jacob had laughed so hard he got light headed. Right then, looking up at him in bed, Jacob reminded Rat of a kid on Christmas. All hopeful wonder before he sees the empty space beneath the tree, same as it was last year. “You should come. Homework, the crew, your very cute boyfriend,” Jacob said. There was the angle.

Rat took Jacob’s fingers and unwrapped the chain from around them. “You know what I’m gonna say,” Rat said.

“You could still come.”

Rat rubbed the heel of his palm against his eye, trailed his fingers back and up through his buzzed hair. “Dad’s back in town this week.” He wished they’d just gone to sleep instead of fucking. He never slept after sex and all Jacob ever wanted to do was push things that were better left alone. “There’s no doing it.”

“So you don’t tell him. What’s the fucking deal? You don’t tell him anything anyway.”

“He’s never finding out.”

“Exactly, so—.”

Rat shoved him off. Jacob didn’t make a sound when he hit the mattress. He just lay there, his messy, bottle-black hair fanned out against the sheets. Soft yellow light from the streetlamp outside cut through the blinds and spliced the bed, the two of them, in shades of gold and navy. They could have been two characters out of the detective movies Rat’s mom loved to watch. Old black and whites with PIs that drank and smoked and never got sloppy off of it. There was always that one shot, maybe the femme fatale had come on screen, and the PI said something particularly biting but charming to get her attention, and then it’d cut to the PI, real close on his face, with hard light through the blinds that cast him in stripes. That’s how you knew he was a man on the edge but in control. Light and dark all mixed together.

“It’s not happening,” Rat said.

“Then why’re you here?” Jacob said.

“What do you want me to say?” Rat gestured towards the ceiling. He wouldn’t look at Jacob. “Oh, it’s because I love you, Jay. Clearly. I just can’t live without you, so here I am.” He pressed the heels of his palms against his closed lids until colors bloomed across his vision. “You’re not usually this stupid.”

“Fuck you.” Jacob swung his legs over the mattress, folding them so he was cross-legged half-off the bed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” Rat said.

“You’re such a prick.”

“Thought that’s why you love me, sweetheart.”

Jacob sighed, his whole body tightening around the whoosh of his breath. “I need a smoke,” he said.

Rat rolled onto his stomach and tugged his backpack over with one hand. He rummaged without looking, found his lighter and stash. Didn’t ask Jacob before he lit up. He took two drags and pinched it, held it out across the bed. “C’mon, then,” he said, wheezing around the smoke.

Jacob waited long enough that Rat’s arm started to burn, but he took the joint all the same. He didn’t bother holding the first draw, blowing it into Rat’s face. Rat wrapped an arm around Jacob’s shoulders and eased him back into bed. They lay like that for a while, sometimes kissing, blowing lazy smoke between their mouths to try and spark passion, until the moment was dead and the roach lay forgotten.

“So your dad’s back Wednesday,” Jacob said. His eyes were closed and so were Rat’s, and Rat considered ignoring the bait.

“Yeah,” Rat said. “Ma’s got the place cleaned up and everything.”

“They tell you why?”

“Guy on the phone told Ma they gave Dad a medal.”

“What kind?” Jacob said.

Rat opened his eyes and stared into the fuzzy grey of one AM. “The type they give someone that got blown up,” he said.

[dandrabbles]

Scene

It’s raining. April, mid-week, cloudy doesn’t begin to describe the way the gray hangs over everything, has hung over everything for most of the month, until, finally, the whole of it split apart to pour out its insides. Calliope sits in the backseat of Connor’s car, sans Connor. He’s in the Chevron grabbing snacks. Wednesday night is date night. She knows what he’ll come back with: two SlimJims, pickle flavored chips, A&W, and a bag of mini crumb donuts as a surprise for her. He’s sweet like that, small gestures. Does that more and more lately.

Calliope kicks her boots up onto either side of the headrest of the seat in front of her. The yellow canvas toes reflect a beeswax sheen that reminds her of crayons. She closes her eyes, lets her head fall back, heart slowing, breath in, then out, until all that exists is rain. Connor’s knock shunts her calm aside before it can settle. He’s soaked, face pressed to the streaming glass. He holds up two plastic bags, moves for the front door. She jumps forward, leans past the seat to hit the power lock.

“Bitch!” Connor says. He’s smiling, fumbles his keys with the bags, drops them.

She unlocks the door again and then Connor’s in, all wet plastic rustling and the hard hush of rain.“Donuts?” she says.

Connor tosses one of the bags into her lap. “Don’t deserve them,” he says. He shakes his hair, sprays water over the inside of the windshield and her face.

“Incorrect,” she says. She tears into the paper bag, pulls out a single donut, careful, pinched between the tips of her thumb and forefinger, pops it into her mouth in one go.

Connor watches her, backwards and on his knees in the front seat, both arms wrapped around the headrest, chest laid against the backing. “We going to the drive-in tonight?” he says.

“It’s still showing Iron Man, same as last week,” Calliope says. She takes out another donut, holds it out to him. “There’s nothing to do in this town. You know that.”

He eats the donut right out of her hand, exaggerates the chomping noise as he takes the snack, her fingers, and half the heel of her palm into his mouth. She sticks her finger out, jabs it into the roof of his mouth until he releases her. The donut, damp with spit, falls to the floor and bounces under one of the seats.

“Fucking gross ass,” she says.

Connor grins, sticks his tongue out. “You love it,” he says. “What should we do then? My place? We could Netflix something.”

Her fingers feel sticky only two donuts in, a tacky clinging she can’t rub away. On the floor, Connor’s donut left a trail of crumbs along the gray carpet. A little snail trail of spit, wet and shiny. It’ll be weeks before he bothers to get the donut, dried into a sweet crouton, from under the seat. Right now, he’s grinning at her like he already knows what she’s going to say. The same way she knew about the donuts. The same way they both knew they weren’t really going to go to the drive-in. Predictable sameness. Comfort.

Calliope cheeks another donut. “I wanna go home,” she says.

Head tilt, curious. “You okay?”

The sound of the rain picks up against the roof of the car and Calliope closes her eyes. She feels suddenly lightheaded with the way the storm rocks the car. Her stomach heaves and settles. “No,” she says.

She knows the look on his face without opening her eyes. Confused, brows pushed together and up, like he’s a kid she took a toy from, mouth soft and small and round. Eyes searching: her face, the way her fingers clench and unclench around the bag of little donuts. What has he done wrong? What can he do to fix this? He’s sweet like that.

Calliope’s jaw tightens, crushes the soggy donut in her cheek. Everything tightens. Her closed lids, her fingers curled against her palm, her stomach. A burning lump of ache works up into her nose behind her eyes.

“I want to break up.” She says it slow to control the way her lips quiver. Smoothes out her face as best she can amd waits for the burn to soften before she opens her eyes. Connor’s face is so young for its confusion, maybe more hurt than she expected.

“We can still go to the movies,” he says.

“Did you hear me?”

“Iron Man isn’t that bad.”

“Connor.”

“I heard you.” He shifts, presses his forehead into the headrest. Takes a breath in that expands his whole frame and holds it. “You’ve thought about this,” he says. He doesn’t look up.

“I have.”

“How long?”

“A week.”

“A week.”

The burning is behind her eyes again but she can’t close them. Connor still won’t look up and she’s the only one of them staying in the moment.

“What’s actually wrong,” he says.

“I’m bored. This is—”

“Bullshit.” He straightens, glares down at his knees on the seat. “No. Bullshit—you’re not bored,” he says. You’ve been weird all week. Sure, you want to break up. Why? Is it the snoring?”

“I’m not—.”

“If it’s the snoring I can get those shitty nose strips that leave the glue on your skin for days.” She snorts, low and derisive, shoots him a look out of the side of her eyes. “Seriously, I get it. Mom’s told me for years I could shake the house down.”

“Shut up.”

He leans forward with the joke, head tilted to try and catch her eye.“No, really. I’d throw me out too if I had to share a bed with me.”

Calliope shakes her head, rubs at the smile creeping onto her face. “Idiot. Fucking moron.”

“There she is,” Connor says. He’s not smiling exactly, but there’s a softness to his face. The way his brows smoothe and his lips spread flat. He reaches out, touches his hand to her wet cheek.

She eases into the touch, presses her face into the palm of his hand. “You’re the fucking worst,” she says. This is all so easy. “I’m pregnant,” she says. It doesn’t fix the ache in her throat, but it stops the tears.

“Yeah, okay,” he says.

“Why would I joke about this shit?”

She looks up, cheek still in his palm, lays her hand over his. That’s when he gets scared. Takes over his face quicker than she thought it would, sweeps left to right as all of him opens up, eyes and mouth wide, shaken. He breathes out slow and shaky, his fingers twitching against her skin. It’s enough—all she needs to see.

“We’re breaking up,” she says. This time, her lips don’t tremble.

[dandrabbles]

Excerpt 2.5

I thought it’d be cool to post a rewritten version of this

Last night, her dad told her that he sold his ATV to one of the guys on the crew. He’s saving up so the medical bills don’t destroy the family.

“Tell me who did this to you,” he said. Her, cross-legged on the carpet in front of his chair. This. He won’t say the word pregnant. If he says it, then it’ll be real.

He folded one hand into the other, his thumb massaging circles into the back of his knuckles. It was joint aching cold, the fireplace long burned down to muted ashes that didn’t carry more than three feet.

“I’m giving you the chance,” he says. “Tell me.”

There was a desperateness to his voice, a subtle break underneath the command. It worked into the worrying rub of his knuckles, how his frame sagged forward over his knees, head tilted, as if he was trying to hear her in the quiet. They both knew it was Connor, but he needed her to say it. Then he said “Please.”

Calliope stared into the fireplace and imagined what being pregnant was supposed to feel like. She touched her hand to her flat stomach and thought about all the pregnant women she’d seen on television, aunts and cousins at family reunions, women in church or on signs in the baby section of Target. They always looked so happy. She could never tell if it was sincere or not.

Her dad told stories about how miserable her mom had been when she was pregnant. With all of Calliope’s brothers, but especially with Calliope. Always moving, kicking, shoving organs out of the way for more room. A night owl, Calliope had kept her mom up with aches and pains and demands to be free. Her mom’s water broke an entire month early at two AM. Except, once it was time to get moving, Calliope had refused to come out. Indecisive, Whenever Calliope was getting an earful, her dad would remind her. “You were grief from day one,” he’d say. But in pictures, swollen-bellied with tired eyes, her mom was smiling the same as the other women. Calliope touched her stomach and tried to find something besides the guilty tug of anxiety she got whenever her dad scolded her. She had to crane her neck up to look into his face with how she was sat. Fet small, childish with the shag of the carpet digging into the skin of her thighs. Maybe that was the point.

Once, when Calliope was ten, her dad had tried to do her hair for picture day at school. Struggled for nearly an hour to slick her curls into two neat braids that twined down the sides of her head. One was crooked, dipped towards her center part halfway around the crown of her head, but she’d loved it. The whole time he worked, Calliope had watched his face in the mirror. The more frustrated he got, the more his eyes closed, buried under his heavy brows. Sat in front of her last night, one hand covering his mouth, his face was much the same. Her quiet weighed on him, brought his lids down as if heavy with the need for rest.

His hand moved to his eyes, pinched tight across the bridge of his nose. “You tell me whose ass I’m beating,” her dad said. “There aren’t any more secrets.”

“There’s no point,” she said.

He looked like he might hit her, his whole body tense. “Why fight me on this?” he said. But he knew.

Ever since she was young, Calliope gets the same look when she’s come to a decision. Her brow smooths out and her whole face goes soft, impassive and cold in the way of someone no longer listening. Trying to stop her with that look is the same as trying to stop a train. The first time, when she was six and set on playing tackle football with her brothers at Thanksgiving, Tracy suggested she go sit with her mom and the other girls. Calliope charged and tackled her middle brother, Bryan, knocked the air out of him in a dull, whooshing sound. He lay with her on top of him, a deep, guttural sucking emanating from his throat. She snatched the ball from his hands and tucked it against her body, ready. Tracy says she gets it from her mom, the fire and drive, but he’s wrong. Calliope, unlike her brothers, is too much the same as him. Brash and stubborn and willing to see a decision to its end.

In the living room, with only one lamp turned on and the rest of the house dark, they measured each other. Her dad was all raw eyes and crooked shoulders. His face, pockmarked with tiny, pitted scars from the shrapnel off trees, felt foreign to her. The scars caught in the light on the high points of his cheeks, little valleys of shadow left pearly around the edges like the promises of wrinkles still years out. They aged him. She had never seen her dad tired like that. Not on nights after double shifts cutting trees, or when her oldest brother, Jake broke his femur and lost his football scholarship.

When they had found out about the scholarship, her dad sat up with her brother all night, too many beers between them even though Jake was eighteen, and let Jake cry. They all knew there was no affording school for him. Calliope could hear her brother, the way he sobbed, muffled against their dad. The next morning, the sky just turning rosy, she had found her dad slumped at the table, watching Jake asleep in his chair. Her dad’s eyes were rimmed red, his hand resting on top of Jake’s head.  He hadn’t moved when she came in, just sat and watched his oldest son, resting. Took him to sign up with the crew after his leg healed. The dad that sat across from her last night was different, harder. His brow smooth, face soft. Grief. He calls her grief.

“You know how you got your name, baby?” he said. She had heard the story before, the way her parents had argued for weeks, gone idea to idea until she’d crashed into their lives early.

“Figured it out the night I was born,” she said.

“I chose it,” he said. “Your mom, she named all the boys. But she let me have you.”

Her fingers tightened around her bare knee, knuckles creaking into the silence. The way he smiled at her, the strain in his voice, ground against her. “Can I go to bed?” she said.

“Go to bed,” he said.

She got up, kissed his cheek, and left him there, staring into the ashes in the fireplace.

[dandrabbles]

Excerpt 2

Last night, her dad told her that he sold his ATV to one of the guys on the crew. He’s saving up so the medical bills don’t destroy the family. He wants to know who did this to her. That’s how he said it, “Tell me who did this to you,” with her cross-legged on the carpet in front of his chair. This. He won’t say the word pregnant. Like if he says it, then it’ll be real.

Last night, while her dad yelled, while he threatened and begged and searched for someone he could blame that wasn’t her, she imagined what being pregnant was supposed to feel like. She touched her hand to her flat stomach and thought about all the pregnant women she’d seen on television, her aunties at family reunions, women in church or on signs in the baby section of Target. They always looked so happy. She could never tell if it was sincere or not.

Her dad told stories about how miserable her mom had been when she was pregnant. With all of Calliope’s brothers, but especially with Calliope. Always moving, kicking, shoving organs out of the way for more room. She had been a night owl, keeping her mom up with aches and pains and demands to be free. Her mom’s water broke an entire month early at two AM. Whenever Calliope was getting an earful, her dad would remind her. “You were grief from day one,” he’d say. But in pictures, swollen-bellied with tired eyes, her mom was smiling too. Calliope touched her stomach and tried to find something besides the guilty tug of anxiety she got whenever her dad scolded her.

“You’ll tell me whose ass I’m beating,” her dad said. “There aren’t any more fucking secrets from you.”

“No,” she said. “I won’t.”

He looked like he might hit her, his whole body tense. “Why fight me on this?” he said. But he knew.

Ever since she was young, Calliope gets the same look when she’s come to a decision. Her brow smooths out and her whole face goes soft, impassive and cold in the way of someone no longer listening. Trying to stop her with that look is the same as trying to stop a train. The first time, when she was six and set on playing tackle football with her brothers at Thanksgiving, Tracy suggested she go sit with her mom and the other girls. Calliope charged and tackled her middle brother, Bryan, knocked the air out of him in a dull, whooshing sound. He lay with her on top of him, a deep, guttural sucking emanating from his throat. She snatched the ball from his hands and tucked it against her body, ready. Tracy says she gets it from her mom, the fire and drive, but he’s wrong. Calliope, unlike her brothers, is too much the same as him. Brash and stubborn and willing to see a decision to its end.

In the living room, with only one lamp turned on and the rest of the house dark, they measured each other. Her dad was all raw eyes and crooked shoulders. His face, pockmarked with tiny, pitted scars from the shrapnel off trees, felt foreign to her. The scars caught in the light on the high points of his cheeks, little valleys of shadow left pearly around the edges like the promises of wrinkles still years out. They aged him. She had never seen her dad tired like that. Not on nights after double shifts cutting trees, or when her oldest brother, Jake broke his femur and lost his football scholarship.

When they had found out about the scholarship, her dad sat up with her brother all night, too many beers between them even though Jake was eighteen, and let Jake cry. They all knew there was no affording school for him. Calliope could hear her brother, the way he sobbed, muffled against their dad. The next morning, the sky just turning rosy, she had found her dad slumped at the table, watching Jake asleep in his chair. Her dad’s eyes were rimmed red, his hand resting on top of Jake’s head. He hadn’t moved when she came in, just sat and watched his oldest son, resting. Took him to sign up with the crew after his leg healed. The dad that sat across from her last night was different, harder. His brow smooth, face soft. Grief. He calls her grief.

“You tell me,” he said, “or you don’t come home.”

[dandrabbles]

Excerpt 1

Six weeks ago, Calliope had sex with Connor. At Oakhurst Community Park, tucked along the bank of the Fresno river, on a blanket that belonged to her mom.

The blanket is weighty, the pressure of it draped over her at night is comforting in a way she can’t explain. Faded from maroon to almost-pink from washing, edges frayed, the images of two lion heads sun dried ghostly. There’s a bleach stain on the bottom right corner that’s been there longer than Calliope. Her dad says he bought it for her mom on a trip to Mexico, long before they had kids. In those stories her parents are different people. Nineteen and engaged and capable of spontaneous trips down the coast and across the border to Baja. It sounds romantic.

Calliope sometimes likes to picture her mom, short, with dark, curly hair like Calliope’s, spread out under the sun on a Mexican beach, the blanket between her and the hot sand. Sometimes she reads a book, or dozes, or watches Calliope’s dad, her not-yet-husband, crash about in the waves or collect sea shells or float on his back in an ocean so clear and blue it hurts Calliope’s eyes to think about. In those moments, in her mind, her mom is beautiful and smiles without looking tired. She’s compact, with strong arms from years lifting boxes for USPS. She hasn’t thought about kids, but she wants to. Her dad, barely kissed by scars, a year into tree cutting, heart forfeited to a dark-eyed woman he courted in high school. He’s softer than he is now, shoulders and back straight, laughs easier, looser, without the wheeze of twenty years of cigarettes.

Her dad hasn’t worn his wedding ring since Calliope was nine. Still, she pictures it in the sunlight. Simple, silver. A plain band with the date etched into the underside, pressed into his skin like a promise. Her mom’s is much the same. Thinner, set with blue topaz, her birthstone. Calliope’s mom took her ring when she left. It was the only thing she took. She left parts of herself behind. The blanket, some clothes, photos. There are times when Calliope’s dad looks at her, his eyes creased like when he smiles. She wonders how much of her mom he sees in her. How is she to know the wounds that are left in him?

Now, as she rides in Bill Parker’s truck, the blanket, with its ghostly lions, is stuffed inside her pack. Wrapped in it: enough clothes for four days, a photo of her parents, and two hundred and thirty five dollars.

…

The first time Calliope kissed Connor, they were fourteen. Behind Oakhurst Lutheran, after service ended, she took hold of his face in both hands and kissed him. She hadn’t planned to do it, but she didn’t regret it either. Since they were babies, they’d been running together, raising hell. When she looked at him, Calliope didn’t get the nervous fluttering that movies talked about, she just saw her best friend. She didn’t feel nothing, either. Connor was steady, constant in a way she was not. He knew her. No need to deal with the mess of letting him in. The thought wormed into her hands, made her palms itch to move. He already knew her.

His lips were dry and soft and trembled when she pulled back, their breath hushing against each other’s cheeks. Then, he smiled. Soft, shy, as if he’d been waiting for this, the silence between action. In that moment, there was a rush of heat in her face, heart kicking against her chest, wrists, temples. Get out. She had made a mistake only a deeper, animal part of her could identify. Then she kissed him again. It wasn’t special, nothing stirred in her, but it eased the way her blood pounded. This, whatever this was, could be okay. Comfortable, tepid. She pulled back first again.

“The fuck was that?” he said.

“A kiss,” she said. She let go of his face, slipped one hand into his as a test. He didn’t stop her.

“Yeah, Cali. I’m not an idiot.”

“Good. I don’t kiss idiots.”

“You don’t kiss anyone.”

“I kissed you.”

He looked at his feet, his grip tightening. His palm was cold, slick against hers. “You called me an idiot before service,” he said.

“Guess I did,” she said. “Guess you better prove me wrong.”

They would kiss again, between classes, between the stacks of the public library, in her backyard, in Connor’s car. They’d have sex. After dates, at a movie theater, in her bed, at the park. He always said he loved her after, both of them sweaty, his face nestled into the curve of her neck, breath on her skin. Every time he did, she tried to find the thing she imagined her parents had found in each other, before they became who they were when she met them. What makes her dad’s eyes go soft when he talks about her mom? Even now, when it hurts him. When he tells stories about the early years there is a gentleness that creeps into his voice, a soft vulnerability that fills Calliope with an anxiety she can’t name. She doesn’t want to watch him ache over what has been lost.

There’s no way to ask someone what love is. There’s no way to discern it, thrown bones, pulled cards, watched marriages that crumble people to dust. Connor, with his shy smile and quiet understanding, feels too much like a future she doesn’t think possible. Where they get to stay themselves, where years and kids and too much time together won’t change them. It’s unrealistic, terrifying. She hasn’t returned his calls in three weeks.