Mayhem Page 5

  Neve parks herself under the umbrella like nothing just happened and scowls at the rest of us, lying in a row in the sun. “In twenty years you’re going to look like a bunch of raisins.”

  “Do you think we should be worried?” I ask. “About the girls who are missing?”

  “Come over here, Kidd. Neve’s right. You need some lotion,” Jason says, giving me a nasty look.

  “A serial killer?” I whisper to Neve.

  “It’s broad daylight. Those girls were alone on the beach when they were taken,” Neve says, blowing into her bangs like she’s bored by my line of questioning. “I’m not going to stress for no reason. It’s summer.” She’s slathering sunblock all over herself, even though she’s in the shade. Once done, she throws Jason the bottle.

  “The … Gecko brothers or whatever,” I say. “Vampires? That was a joke, right?”

  Jason looks up from getting Kidd covered like he wants to say something, but he doesn’t, just goes back to what he’s doing. Which is when I realize he hasn’t said anything directly to me this whole time.

  “Their parents own the comic-book shop,” Neve says, “and they’re where you go if you want weed. Those guys are always high. Convinced there’s some kind of conspiracy. Pay it no mind.”

  “But vampires?” I say. “And what did he mean about my family business?”

  “There’s vampires on that side of the beach, but they only come out at night,” Kidd says. She points to the left. “They don’t bother us because they’re scared. They go over that way. And we go over here.” She indicates the right.

  “Kidd, stop telling stories.” Jason looks at me.

  “I’m not—”

  “Kidd.”

  I don’t miss the glance Jason and Neve share.

  “It’s nothing,” Neve says. “But the dudes are cool, and if there’s ever a fight or someone is bothering you, you want them on your side. We consider them allies. And okay, there have been some disappearances lately that have everyone in town on edge. But like, you need to relax. No one is going to hurt you,” Neve says. “Change of subject. Time to look at all the pretty people in Santa Maria.”

  Kidd plops down next to me in her white bathing suit and plays with my fingers until I tickle her and she lies back laughing. My anxiety fades.

  “For instance, the boys with the low-riders. They’re over there. See all the chrome? Mmm,” Neve says, appreciatively.

  I thought she was dating Jason, but he doesn’t react at all, just keeps looking out at the ocean. I have to squint, but I can see the light reflecting off a line of cars and trucks in the distance, and guys in white tank tops, mostly muscled, some in straw hats, staring out.

  “And then there’s surfers,” Neve says. She lowers her shades to the tip of her nose. “If you like a more docile varietal.”

  The boys and a few girls are darkened and blondened and they’re talking about water.

  “When they’re on land, some of them magically transform into skaters. You can identify them by their footwear.” Neve points down. “Converse or Vans only. There’s a few stragglers—some ballers and freaks—but that’s about it for Santa Maria.”

  “In Taylor there was really only one kind of person.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, like not me.”

  “Meaning?”

  “It was all blond and blue eyes and clean clothes and white teeth. A few of us couldn’t make ourselves fit, but we didn’t hang out together. There weren’t enough of us.” It hurts to talk about, makes me remember walking alone through hallways, like everything was in slow motion and everyone was looking at me.

  Why can’t you just try? Lyle said to me when he presented me with some Guess jeans and a lavender blouse and I wouldn’t put them on.

  It wasn’t me.

  I couldn’t.

  “And so where do you guys fit in?” I ask.

  “We,” Neve says, “roll with the Brayburns, and everybody knows it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning we’re untouchable.”

  “Because my family has been here a long time?”

  Neve scoffs and shakes her head. “Wow, you really don’t know anything, do you?”

  “Like what?”

  “She doesn’t need to know anything,” Jason says. “She just got here.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “Maybe later,” Neve says dismissively.

  “Elle seems so nice,” I say. “Why would anyone be afraid of her?”

  Neve shrugs her shoulders.

  “Why do people leave presents at the gate?”

  Nothing. She looks bored.

  “Neve?” I say.

  Something has caught her attention. “You kids go play. I’m not in a swimming mood. I’m in a watching mood.” She scans the beach with concentration.

  “Come on!” Kidd says.

  Jason eyes me for a moment, then puts Kidd on his shoulders and runs into the water. She shrieks as he flings her in.

  I would press Neve for more, but years of living with Roxy have taught me when a door is closed. I walk into the water slowly, let the shallow waves nip at my ankles. I try to focus. In Taylor, the dimensions of the pool were clear, the lines in the lanes decided for me. Here, there are no borders. Anything could happen.

  The water fills me up as I step in. I swim, avoiding the surfers, and after a while it’s like everything else falls away and I am quiet, swimming in the direction my body wants to go. I swim. I swim. I swim.

  I stop, far from the shore so the people on the beach look like sugar sprinkles on an ice-cream cone and the lights from the rides flash. Further along where the land juts out, cliffs kiss the sky. That’s where my father died. I can see his body falling. There would be no surviving that. Behind the cliff tops, cars pass. He must have parked up there, or maybe he climbed up and then lost his footing. Maybe he was watching the sea and gravity pulled him downward. It’s so quiet out here, it’s like nothing else even exists. Which is why when Jason pops up beside me, I almost die.

  “You all right?” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Except for you terrifying me.”

  “Why’d you come this far out?” He looks annoyed, forehead creased. “I left Kidd.”

  “No one asked you to.”

  “I thought you were in distress.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “What?”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “You want to know?”

  “I mean, yeah.”

  “Hard to explain.”

  “Try.”

  “My dad…” I look to the cliffs again. A ball forms in my throat. “I don’t want to,” I say.

  He looks to the shore uncertainly. “Well, don’t come this far out. There’s sharks and shit.”

  “I can take care of myself. I’m a good swimmer.”

  “I’m sure,” he says.

  My stomach whirrs. I expect him to go away now, but instead, we tread water and Jason keeps glancing at me like I’m going to talk.

  “You can go, you know,” I say.

  He doesn’t.

  There are scars on his chest, and a small tattoo of the sun on his right shoulder. His necklace hangs heavy.

  “You’re not the only one with an ache,” he says. “You’re not the only one who’s had bad things happen.”

  “I know. I didn’t say I was.”

  He wipes some water off his cheeks. “Everyone here does.”

  “Does what?”

  “Has a story. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. Just remember that. You’re not special.”

  “Well, thank you for sharing.”

  No one asked him to come out here.

  “And she’s witty, too.” He bends his mouth into a smirk, then shakes his head and kicks off toward the shore.

  TWELVE

  BONER

  I’m still drying off, a little out of breath and a lot grumpy at Jason, thin
king of all sorts of clever comebacks way too late, when Elle calls my name from the boardwalk. Neve looks out toward her and waves. Elle gives her a wave in return, then calls for me again. In the time it takes me to slip on a T-shirt and shorts, she greets several people, giving a gray-haired woman in braids a hug. The woman is still thanking her when I get there, but quickly disappears when Elle turns her attention to me.

  “How was your first swim? You look refreshed.” Elle smooths back my hair and looks into my eyes. “I wish I could have been there for it, but your mom and I had to get you two the basics.”

  I nod. “It was nice.”

  “Nice, hunh?” She looks past me to Neve, who has on huge sunglasses and an even bigger black hat. In the distance, Jason and Kidd have started on their sandcastle. “My babies treating you okay?”

  “They’ve been great.” Almost.

  “Well, I’m sorry to mess up your day, hon, but your mom is refusing to do this without you.”

  I look at her blankly, still thinking about Jason and his odd behavior toward me. “Do what?”

  “The report,” she says. “I tried to talk her out of bugging you, but you know Roxy.” A soft wind tickles her hair back from her temples. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, then opens them again and takes my hand, watching me.

  It all comes blowing back. The bruises. The pain. The road trip. My lack of clothes, of roots, of friends. That everything is new and we still can’t get away from what happened.

  And then a blanket of stress covers me, any remaining good smothered into silence.

  * * *

  The police station isn’t dingy like I expect it to be. On the outside, it’s gray slabs of concrete, set back a little ways from the boardwalk and surrounded by palm trees, plain and severe against the color all around it. But inside, there’s a security gate and then the room opens up onto an archipelago of desks where people are typing and talking, holding cups of coffee, consulting files. There’s a view of the ocean through one wall of windows, an abandoned, desolate corner of beach, but it’s there nevertheless; a hint of seawater, the grit of the sand.

  A little further in, I’m accosted by an entire wall of MISSING posters. These must be the disappeared girls the Gecko brothers were talking about. Girls with braids, with big hair, bangs, side ponytails. Girls with braces, with their names on necklaces hanging in the hollows of their throats, stapled into two black-and-white dimensions, hovering and frozen. I graze the paper.

  They’re dead.

  The thought is fast and certain.

  I examine the posters more closely.

  LAST SEEN IN SANTA MARIA, CALIFORNIA

  HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

  MISSING FROM SANTA MARIA, CALIFORNIA

  Over and over and over.

  Roxy comes up from behind, so I’m startled and thrown off balance. I hold her hand, stumble, and my chest tightens. “The picket fences are a lie,” she whispers in my ear, and I smell traces of wine.

  In the main room a tall police officer with black hair is slapping another on the back, laughing. I went to the police station in Taylor so many times, such a different place than this. Small and quiet, disturbed for the most part only by the occasional drunk or some neighborly dispute. The stone steps, which also led to the courthouse and the one-room jail, had a statue of some war hero out front, the flag flapping proudly in the hot wind. How many times I sat outside, watching the two town cops come and go, blood pounding in my cheeks. I rehearsed what I would say, folded my mind around the words.

  My stepfather is Lyle St. James and he …

  And what might follow?

  My stepfather is Lyle St. James and he pretends to be a nice guy, but …

  The officers greeted me, got used to seeing me reading and writing in my notebook outside the building, probably thinking it was a good place to study under the shade of that tree. I drew the truth. I wrote it in haikus. I wrote it all out in long paragraphs. But I couldn’t say it out loud.

  Lyle St. James is a

  Bully liar drunken punch

  But oh he can dance

  Everyone knew Lyle.

  Best real estate agent in town, probably sold you your house, Officer. Probably your mom loves him because of that smile, and he sure does appreciate a cold glass of lemonade. If your mama is low, he’ll make her feel like she’s eighteen again, he’ll two-step her right into the sunset. He might mow your grass if you’re a helpless old lady. Plus he’s a deacon in the First Baptist church and oh boy he can sing a hymn like all get out. He and the Lord are saving you together, one tune at a time.

  My country ’tis of thee I once was lost but now I’m …

  And if he loses his temper in a bar fight every now and then, well, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. He’s got to be able to take a stand, to protect what’s his.

  And what’s his? We are, that’s what.

  We were.

  The front desk of the Santa Maria police station is piloted by a female officer in full uniform. She is not in shorts. Her body is tight and hard, and she is busily moving through a stack of manila folders, sorting them into piles. She nods at us with sharp features, her eyes glinting, unsurprised by our appearance.

  “Elle.” She straightens some papers and puts them in a manila folder, pats her afro reflexively. “Thought you’d be here earlier.”

  “Rebecca, honey.” Elle leans across the desk and plants a kiss on her cheek. Rebecca’s face contorts into what can only be a mix between stress and pleasure. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

  Rebecca picks up a pile of folders and drops them back down onto the desk. “I’m in paperwork hell.” She purses her lips at me. “Oppression comes in many forms, young lady. I’m drowning in shit over here. All the interviews they’re doing; the reports. Do they give this job to a man?” She slaps the folder on the table with an open palm. “Of course not. File your own damn reports.” She smiles. “But you know what my mother used to say? You don’t need a man, girl, you need your books. Keep your head up and do your schoolwork, you’ll be all right.” She stops and exhales. “That’s good advice.”

  “I hear you,” Elle says.

  Rebecca gives Roxy and me the up-and-down, taking time to pause at Roxy’s attire for the day, consisting of polka dots, heart-shaped sunglasses, and red lipstick, plus heels to the sky.

  “This your sister?” Rebecca’s eyebrows are raised.

  “Roxy. And my niece,” Elle says. “Mayhem.”

  I shake Rebecca’s hand. “How do you do?” I say.

  “I’m so glad to finally meet you,” she says, glancing at Roxy. “So.” She eyes the office behind her. “You ready to make a report? We should get to it. You-know-who is here today and should be back any second.”

  “Oh no,” Elle says, “I didn’t even think of that. My damn stupid head.” She turns to Roxy. “There’s something I should tell you.”

  “He’s harmless as a piece of felt,” Rebecca says. “I don’t know why you let him bother you.”

  “Boner works here,” Elle says, as though she is delivering a death sentence.

  Roxy claps her hands together. “Boner Boner? Boner is a cop? The last time I saw him he was smoking a joint on the beach!”

  Elle waits for Roxy’s mirth to burn off. “Things change when you’re gone for a decade,” she says. “Stoner Boner turned into a know-it-all cop.” She throws her hands up, then rests them on her hips. “Well, speak of the pain in the ass,” Elle says, “and he shall appear.”

  A man in plainclothes peers over Rebecca’s shoulder. He’s tall and in shape, hair shaved close to his head. I try to picture this guy on the beach with a joint hanging out of his mouth and come up empty. He is standing so straight he looks like he actually has a stick in his ass.

  “Elle,” he says jovially, settling his chin into his cupped hands and batting his eyelashes at her. “What brings you in on this fine day? Shouldn’t you be out for an evening ride on your broomstick? Perhaps collecting goat fetuses some
where?”

  Elle folds her arms.

  Rebecca snorts.

  Roxy laughs.

  “Oh, you’re so hilarious,” Elle says.

  “I do try,” he says. “Did you know I almost got onstage at the Comedy Store? Could have been the next Robin Williams. Alas. What about you, Ellie? If you weren’t cackling the night away with your bats and spells, what would you have been?”

  “Me?” Her fingers glide along her chest. “Why, Boner, I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t have a plan B, so throw a party, because you’re stuck with me.” Elle opens her arm wide to give the attention to Roxy. “Oh my goodness, I plum forgot. You remember my sister?” Elle is smirking so hard her cheeks might split.

  Boner goes completely still and looks at us. Really looks at us. His smile drops from his face like someone slapped it off. “Roxy?” he says uncertainly. “Holy shit, Rox.” He nearly sweeps Roxy into his arms, but holds back at the last second. His eyes are moist and shining. “Where the hell have you been? I can’t even remember the last time … I mean of course I remember, but … you had a baby in your arms, a purple jacket on, and pigtails. You were so upset…”

  “Hey, Bone,” Roxy says. She moves in for a short hug.

  “Is this your daughter? She looks just like—”

  “I know, I know, she looks like my mother.”

  He’s trying to absorb the magnitude of Roxy’s beauty, and it’s so awkward. “I just can’t believe … I haven’t seen you in…”

  “Thirteen years. Boner’s parents owned the closest house to us on the hill,” Roxy explains to me. “We grew up together. More than that. We were like family. When we were little some of the other kids were scared of us because of the stories, but not Bone. Never him.”

  He beams. “Maybe the first time I snuck over there. But once your mom fed me those chocolate cookies of hers, I couldn’t stay away.”

  “And he’s in the next house over from ours,” Elle says, “to this very day.”

  “Last time I checked you were exactly where you’ve always been, too,” he says.

  “Every damn time these two run into each other it’s the same thing,” Rebecca says to Roxy. “Bicker, bicker, bicker. Maybe you can make it stop.”