Mayhem Read online

  “I like this one better than the first.” She hands the box for Aliens back to me.

  “The first one is quieter, but better tension,” I say.

  “Both stupid. That’s not even a real Latina playing Vasquez in the second,” Jason says.

  “Still a good movie.”

  “No, it’s not. The whole thing is bullshit.”

  Kidd reaches into the bubble-gum machine and shakes it, trying to get a ball to come out. After a few seconds, a yellow one drops into her palm. “Works every time.” She fixes Neve with a severe glare. “You said if I went and did the one thing you guys would—”

  “Kidd—” Jason’s voice is filled with warning.

  “I heard what Elle said. I’m not going to spill any beans to Mayhem.” She fiddles with the machine again. “All I’m saying is you said if I went to watch that creepy guy’s house you would take me on the roller coaster, so let’s go to the creepy guy’s house so I can go on the roller coaster.”

  “I don’t want her going,” Jason says.

  “I need you there,” Neve says. “What if something goes wrong? There’s got to be at least two of us.”

  “Not Kidd.”

  “We have a job to do,” she says. “I’ll just take him to the tunnel, no big deal. I’m not going to let him—”

  “Neve.” Jason looks in my direction.

  Neve stops talking and pouts. “I was really looking forward to this. You’re ruining all my fun with your rules.”

  I glance outside. Roxy is telling some kind of animated story.

  “How long are you guys going to be gone?” I ask.

  “Forty-five minutes, tops,” Neve says.

  “I’ll take her,” I say. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Really? You’re the best!” Neve tries to pull Jason to the door, but he doesn’t budge.

  “I’m not even a baby,” Kidd says. “You guys are rude.”

  Jason shakes his head and stands firm. “Yeah, right. I’m not leaving Kidd with her. She’s a—”

  “Brayburn? Hardly,” Neve says, rolling her eyes.

  “I was going to say stranger.”

  “Come on. Look at her. You can see plain and simple that there’s nothing going on. Let’s go, get it done, boom, bang, bing, we’ll be back in a jiffy and Kidd will be right here, safe and sound.”

  “On the rides,” Kidd corrects.

  “On the rides,” Neve confirms. “Having a total blast.”

  “I’ll make sure she’s taken care of,” I say. “We don’t have a car, so you guys will be back?”

  “Totally!” Neve says. “This is great. Perfect!”

  Jason looks unconvinced.

  “Ugh, oh my God!” Neve says, with a heavy emphasis on the d. “Let’s get this over with. What’s your favorite color?” She looks at me expectantly.

  “Um, red maybe?” I say, trying to think.

  “How do you like your eggs?”

  “No eggs. They make me gag.”

  “Excellent answer. Seconded, and thirded by Jason himself. And are you going to harm Kidd in any way, shape, or form?”

  “No!” I say. “Of course not.”

  “Well, then.” Neve curls herself around Jason, leaning into him. “What’s the problem? Jason, she lives in the same house as us. If we can’t find her, we only have to walk down a very short flight of stairs. Anyway, she’s supposed to be our sister now, or cousin or something.”

  Jason keeps his body stiff. “Kidd, it’s up to you, I guess.”

  Kidd pops a second bubble-gum ball into her mouth, this time a pink one. She scans me up and down and then says, “I’ll go with Mayhem.” She smiles. “And if she messes with me, I’ll just kill her.”

  FIFTEEN

  THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS

  The roller coaster is a rickety thing, made of white wood, and I regret it the second I’m on board. I tell myself I’m ridiculous. I don’t know why anyone would ever want to do this. I don’t know why I am trying so hard to impress a little kid who, judging from the way she’s giving me the side-eye, thinks I’m a total moron.

  As we climb upward, I catch wave after wave of paralyzing fear. I can’t get back to the ground. Kidd fixes me with open curiosity and some smugness as we climb into the damp air, as though she wants to observe my cowardly ways. Either that, or she’s watching me like my entire being is a car wreck. The lights around us are a pink and indigo rainbow, and they blur into the cries coming from below as we climb. That’s how high we’re going. If I weren’t gutted by my own anxiety, I would be mesmerized.

  “I’ve never been on a roller coaster before,” I squeak as we approach the summit.

  Kidd pries my hand from the bar and rests it in her own. “You don’t have to be scared,” she says. “And if you are, you can scream. It will make you feel better.”

  Then I do scream. We round the hump and fly downward and then up again and through the night and I yell and I laugh until I choke.

  This is the opposite of swimming, which is all me, every muscle moving toward an end, my spirit controlling every move. I don’t have any control at all here. The fear is gone as we round corner after corner, hands gripped. When we pull into the loading zone, my whole body is vibrating.

  “You did a good job,” Kidd tells me as the safety bars lift up automatically, and the guy signals us to move along and out so the next group can get in.

  “You did, too.” I am fully exhilarated as Kidd bounces next to me.

  “How did you never go on a roller coaster before? How is that even possible?”

  “Taylor,” I say. “It doesn’t have roller coasters. There aren’t even any anywhere nearby.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “I would never live anywhere with no roller coaster.”

  “Agreed,” I say, deciding that’s an excellent way to assess a town’s appeal.

  “So what did you do there? In Taylor? If there was no roller coaster, I mean?”

  I think about this for so long she finally says, “Are you hungry?”

  I nod and tousle her hair. “Where are the tacos everyone has been talking about?”

  Kidd points to the end of the boardwalk, to a beat-up old ice-cream truck. There are still pictures of rockets and Fudgsicles glued onto its sides, but now a boom box sits in the window blaring some music with words I can’t understand, and the guys with the shirts buttoned at the top and the hot cars we saw at the beach crowd around, laughing and talking. Another trail of people passes, jostling by, heading somewhere beyond, off the boardwalk. It looks like they’re following the Pied Piper or something, jumping over each other, skateboarding, elated.

  “What are they in such a hurry for?”

  “Sax Man,” she says. “He plays every Friday, and then there’s always a party on the beach. Fires and stuff like that. Sometimes people surf or get naked and swim.” She shrugs.

  “And you go every time?”

  She nods.

  “And what do you do at a party? Do you have friends?”

  “I like the fires. I like watching them. And I don’t need friends. I have Jason and Neve.”

  “Nine’s pretty little for going to parties.”

  “Jason doesn’t like me to be away from him. He says I’m safest when we’re together, even though that’s not true anymore. I take care of myself.” She looks away.

  “Don’t you want to be at home, drinking cocoa in your pj’s?”

  “I was in my house when the men came.” She stares straight ahead. “Being home doesn’t make you safe.”

  I think of Lyle, of how I felt in that house.

  “Yeah, I know that’s true,” I say. “Being home doesn’t make you safe.”

  Kidd eyes me shyly, then licks at her lips. “I can see it. You don’t have to tell me about it.”

  “See what?”

  She pretends not to hear me.

  “See what, Kidd?”

  She sighs like I’m boring. “You getting pushed into the wall. That guy standing in
your room at night. The mean lady leaving you in the basement.”

  That’s an unexpected jolt. Grandmother. I must have been four years old when she found me putting on her jewelry and left me in the dark for hours. I haven’t thought about it in years.

  “How do you know about that?” I ask her, trying to catch my breath.

  “I just do.”

  “What do you see?”

  She stops and folds her arms in front of her. “You going to tell someone on me? Because I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You would ruin everything and then Neve would get mad. And you don’t want to see what happens when Neve gets mad.”

  I don’t have to think about that for long. “You are correct. I do not want to see Neve mad. I just want to understand how you could know about that. Did my mom say something to you?”

  She softens somewhat but refuses to answer, then says, “We know the truth, that’s all. Everyone’s truth.”

  I stop walking because my thoughts are swimming. I’m awash in Sunday school, in rules and Lyle and Grandmother, and Roxy swinging her hips to Frank Sinatra in the living room and my father falling from a cliff’s edge and Lyle with murder in him. Things keep coming together so they almost make sense, but then they split apart again before I can get to them.

  “You okay?” she says.

  I nod, wanting her to say more. “So you were telling me about the men in your house?”

  I wait.

  “I was telling you about the parties, not the men,” she says finally. “Can I get a soda?”

  “Sure.”

  She’s so upright, so alert, watching everything, our handholding on the roller coaster as far behind us as the adrenaline rush from the ride.

  “Do you want one, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how hungry are you?”

  “You don’t want to tell me what happened,” I say. “That’s okay. Sometimes it’s hard to talk.”

  She stops walking and throws both hands on her hips. “You want to know what happened?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, but I’m used to it so it’s not hard for me, but it might be hard for you.”

  “Okay.”

  She makes a gun from her fingers and pulls the imaginary trigger. “Banging on the door. Men coming in. No more Mommy. No more Daddy. Got it?”

  We’ve reached the truck, the Latin music coming out, and the best smell ever.

  “It’s okay,” Kidd says. “No one is ever going to do anything like that to me ever again. No one could.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Neve says it’s not time for telling you that yet,” Kidd says. “But don’t worry, you’ll find out.”

  I float the rest of the way to the truck’s window, everything around us, from the music to the smells to the soft swells of the waves and the people screaming as the roller coaster tears downward, steeped in surreal hues.

  “Buenas noches,” the guy at the window says to us. He’s sweaty, bandana tied around his head, AC/DC T-shirt on.

  Roxy used to make meat with cumin and oregano and all kinds of other spices that would fill up the house on good days. It smells even better than that now, which almost distracts me from the crazy conversation with Kidd. It has definitely distracted her. She’s reading over the menu board tacked next to the window.

  “Buenas noches, señor,” Kidd says. “Dos Coca-Colas, por favor, y cuatro”—she looks me up and down—“seis barbacoa tacos.”

  “Bien,” the guy says, beaming at her Spanish.

  A few minutes later he hands us a couple of cardboard boats filled with tacos. I grab our drinks and my change.

  “You girls be careful of the Sand Snatcher, now,” he says.

  “Sand Snatcher,” I repeat.

  The guy folds his arms. “You never know when he’s going to strike, but all those girls were on the beach, so just look out.”

  “We’re not scared,” Kidd says.

  “You mean the girls from the posters?” I say.

  The guy nods. “Everyone knows it’s one dude. They keep saying the girls ran away because there’s no bodies, but then how come they were all last seen on the beach? That would be a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think? First girl gone a year ago, then no one for six months, then bam, bam, bam, bam.” He motions to a red baseball bat in the corner behind him. “I’m looking out.”

  “I told you, we’re not scared,” Kidd says, with a mouthful of taco.

  I thank him and shuffle her along before she starts a fight with the taco guy, and soon we’re too busy eating to think about much else.

  “Tacos are the perfect food.” I rub my belly. “First crunchy, then the meat, and then there’s cheese and whatever that salsa was.”

  “Chimichurri, duh.”

  I spot Neve, coming down the boardwalk, using Jason’s arm as leverage as she bounces and bounces. She is glowing and wide-eyed. Not him. He has gone dark again.

  “Come on!” she says. “Let’s go let’s go let’s go, slackers!”

  She dances me to the video store, where Roxy and Marcy are still talking, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts on the table beside them.

  “Miss Roxy,” Neve says, “can Mayhem have permission to come out with us tonight?”

  Roxy looks happier than I’ve seen her in a while. Even with the Sand Snatcher and all the weird shit going on in this town, joy seems to be leaking all over everyone. Including me. Neve is like some kind of sprite, and here she is, holding my hand, batting her eyelashes at my mother because she wants to spend time with me.

  I expect Roxy to say no. She likes to have me close by. Usually I don’t mind that, but right now I want to be close by Neve.

  “Well, where are you going to be?” Roxy asks.

  “We thought we’d listen to some music. We’ll be safe, I promise.”

  “You won’t be drinking?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And you won’t be doing drugs?”

  “We don’t do drugs. Swear.” Neve puts up two fingers. “I’ve seen those commercials with the egg and the guy with the frying pan.” She shudders. “Terrible stuff.”

  “What about the beach? I don’t want Mayhem walking out there tonight.” Roxy looks outward to the sea.

  “You said not to dwell on that stuff,” I say.

  “That doesn’t mean I want you to walk into the lion’s mouth. It’s so dark. There isn’t even any moon at all.”

  “We’ll stay strictly on the boardwalk,” Neve says, “and we have our bus if anything comes up and she wants to go home.”

  Roxy hesitates.

  “We’ll make sure she’s safe,” Neve presses. “We’re not going to disappear. Mayhem isn’t going to be alone. She’s with us.”

  Roxy runs a hand across my cheek. “You want to go, baby?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I had some tacos, rode the roller coaster. It’s actually pretty fun here.” It’s heaven, but I’m not going to tell her that. Showing too much excitement would be detrimental to my goal of staying here forever.

  “Let her go, Rox. You’re only young once,” Marcy says. She lets her lids fall shut and puts her index finger into the center of her forehead. “I predict this night is going to turn out fine.” She opens her eyes and winks at me.

  Roxy looks at Neve so sharply for a moment, I feel a trill of fear. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “Okay,” Roxy says. “Go have some fun. Just be careful. And can you grab the bike and bring it back to the house?”

  “We can totally do that. We have a bike rack on the back of the bus and everything.” Neve smiles obligingly.

  I don’t know her very well, but I know this version of her right here is total bullshit, and I’m pretty sure Roxy knows it, too.

  Marcy has gone inside and comes back with a couple bottles of beer. She twists them open and hands one to Roxy. “See you, girls.”

  Roxy takes a long sip and looks at me one more time. “You sure?”

  I nod and kiss her gau
nt cheek. It’s cool and smooth.

  Neve and I walk a few paces and then Neve grabs my hand and we run down the boardwalk, weaving through the crowd. I probably look so dumb laughing and running, but everything is alive and possible and rushing through me, as good as a movie.

  A few paces back toward Jason and Kidd, Neve drags me onto the beach, away from the boardwalk. She gave my mother her word and it only took her two minutes to break it, because here we are standing on sand in the dark.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” Neve sings to the world, tugging me further down the sand toward the water.

  “You said no beach. I mean, you promised. What about the Sand Snatcher guy?”

  “Oh my God, don’t worry about it. I would kick his ass.” She stops. “Also, rule number one, adults need to be placated. You tell them what you need to tell them to get them to behave. They think it’s the other way around, and you let them think that. Common sense.” She twirls herself under my arm. “Come on, Mayhem, don’t you want to be found, like us? Don’t you want to see?” Neve opens her hand. In the center is something shriveled up and terrible-smelling. “Mushrooms.”

  “I’m not eating those!” I cover my mouth and try not to gag. “I think they’re rotten.”

  “No, dumbass. Mushrooms. Like, see reality and other dimensions and your true spiritual self … mushrooms.”

  “You just told my mom we weren’t going to do drugs!”

  “Mushrooms aren’t drugs.” She spins in a circle and stops just in front of me. “Mushrooms are a revelation. They’re medicine. They give you access to what’s really going on. Don’t you want to know what’s really going on, Mayhem?”

  I have heard about mushrooms, but I expected them to look red with white spots or something, like the ones in the movies, not brown. Plenty of people get drunk in Taylor. They get in fights, shoot each other’s houses up on occasion, even murder someone every once in a while, and I know there are some who love their weed, too. More than once Roxy has muttered curses under her breath while someone swerves around on the farm roads at nine a.m. But mushrooms aren’t really in the mix.