Chapter 12
Zombie
Gemiah
“Wait! It’s not gonna—”
The horrible screech of tearing metal fills the cab of the box truck before I slam on the brakes.
“Fuck.”
“—fit,” Josha finishes, and we stare at each other in the shadow of the parking garage.
“I didn’t see a low-clearance sign.” I crane my neck through the window to scope out the damage. All I can see is the top of the truck wedged against the roof of the concrete entrance.
“We shouldn’t have smoked that joint.”
“I drive stoned all the time.” After two years of practice, I’ve gotten pretty good at functioning while high. Josha rolls his eyes, unimpressed.
We’re halfway through the jump to our last city of the tour, and Josha and I decided to stop for lunch in Oakland. Rather than trying to parallel park the box truck on the street, I’d opted for the parking garage. In retrospect, we should have stuck with some truck-stop fried chicken.
“Back it up so we can get out and see how bad it is,” he says, pulling out his phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Jesse.” At my scowl, he adds, “He’s riding in the quad cab with Hals.”
Jesse is one of the tramp wall gymnasts in this year’s cast, and Josha has a huge crush on him. Which is fine. I have a Jessie, too, this tour. Mine is the flyer in our acro duo, and her mom is a coach at ENC in Montreal. The best things about her are her flexibility and her French-Canadian accent.
Josha’s Jesse is eighteen, with golden hair, green eyes, and a fucking tongue piercing that Josha is obsessed with. He’s also ripped, talented, and a total flirt. And he’s bi.
I hate him.
“Would you rather I called Shilo?” Josha asks, eyebrows arched knowingly.
“Whatever.” I shove my way out of the truck. “Let’s find out how fucked we are.”
Things with my mom have been…complicated since she and Cheyenne moved back to the lot.
Partly because she swept in and took over our show, relegating me to a minor act and Josha to an apprentice tech, but mainly because of the way she treats my dad.
Like they can go back to being best friends and business partners while she sleeps with Cheyenne in a trailer fifty yards away.
Worse, he lets her. He’s so grateful to have her and Milla back he’s started treating Cheyenne like part of the family. It’s pathetic.
I tried calling her out on it earlier in the spring, when it became obvious that she was sticking around like nothing ever happened.
“Dad is obviously still in love with you. How can you sit there calling him your best friend when you treat him like some fucking accessory to your real life?”
“Your father is my best friend,” she replies. “We have a shared dream. Big Top. You and Milla. Our family.”
“Cheyenne isn’t our family,” I spit. “If Big Top is you and Dad’s dream, why do you need her?”
“Because being best friends isn’t enough, Gem. I love Hals, but meeting Cheyenne was like…finally waking up after being half asleep my whole life. There was no turning my back on that, even though it hurt. Your father loves me enough to be happy for the first part and forgive me for the second.”
“Yeah, well, that’s his choice. I don’t have to like it.”
She sighs, gazing off across the tent to where Josha and my dad are singing along to the Rolling Stones while they test the soundboard.
“I don’t need you to like it, Gem. But I hope someday you understand.”
Turns out, the truck isn’t that fucked—I only peeled about eighteen inches of roof back, and the side panels are basically fine. Both my parents are pissed, though, because we can’t drive it around with a bunch of valuable equipment exposed.
Josha and I are both sent back to Mendo to fix it, effectively banished from the final run of the show.
I feel kinda bad about dragging him down with me, but since I have no hope of fixing the damn thing without him, I don’t protest. He doesn’t put up a fight either, even though it means leaving his precious Jesse behind.
We have to unload the gear at the site in Calistoga and help set the king poles and raise the sidewalls before my mom finally releases us, and by the time we pull into the deserted home lot, we’re both exhausted.
There are a couple of camping tents in the big barnlike shop, but neither of us feel like wrangling one of them in the dark, so we end up crashing out in our old hammock without even removing our shoes.
The thing about hammocks is, they’re great for an afternoon nap, but not really designed for two seventeen-year-old guys to get a good night’s sleep in.
I wake up sweaty and stiff, with a crick in my neck and an ache in my shoulder where it’s squished at an awkward angle under my head.
I’m also half draped over Josha, who has the magical ability to sleep on his back like a psychopath.
He’s warm and solid and still beneath me, but I can tell he’s awake by his breathing—and the semi pressing into my leg.
I shift slightly, pretending to stretch, curiously fascinated by the feel of him swelling under my thigh.
“You finally awake?” He shoves me off him and swings his feet over the side, hiding his crotch from me. I can’t help the smug smile that bleeds into my voice.
“Good morning to you too, sunshine.”
The look he sends over his shoulder simmers with repressed heat—under the resignation. It’s a look I haven’t seen from him in a while, and my heart kicks greedily in response.
“We gotta make a run to town today. We need food and a few supplies that aren’t already in the shop.
Hals gave me a credit card to use.” He’d spent almost an hour with my dad yesterday, making lists and coming up with the plan to fix the truck, while I was busting my ass unloading speakers and cables and pieces of the stage.
“And we can hit up Sweetwater while we’re there. I need a shower.”
“You don’t want to go home to your trailer? The shower there is free.”
“No way. If my family knows I’m back, I’ll get sucked into a bunch of chores. Plus, I’ll have to explain why we’re here and…” He trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t want to deal with all that.”
At age eleven, Jeremy has finally been deemed old enough by the Garrity clan to handle being alone at the trailer.
To no one’s surprise, Josha has used his newfound freedom to spend all of his extra time on the Big Top lot, learning everything he can and prepping for the show.
It took multiple phone calls from both my parents to convince Diana and Paul to let him join the tour, and if Josha hadn’t started laying the groundwork last winter, they probably still would have said no.
I’m sure they only agreed in the end because Big Top is paying him.
Josha sends home half of his four-hundred-dollar-a-week apprentice salary and considers it a small price to pay for his independence.
He thrives in the tent like he was fucking born to it, and everybody loves him.
I, on the other hand, feel more like the black sheep than ever.
I don’t fit. I’m not sure if it’s because I never really fit and I was used to it, or because in the last few years, I’ve beaten myself into an unfittable shape.
Most performers have a little narcissism in them, and I’m not stupid enough to think I’m an exception.
In the tent, I’m one of many people crying “look at me” in a world made for spectacle, so I should belong.
But in my case, when anyone actually looks, they can tell I’m somehow trapped in the wrong role, wearing the wrong costume, walking the wrong stage.
I’m not the prodigal son I’m supposed to be, and it makes everyone uncomfortable when they can’t figure out why.
For some reason, I still give a shit. I’m as needy as ever, but now I’m also too broken, too dangerous to get close to. Trusting me has become too expensive. I’m like a noisy slot machine that takes and takes and never delivers on its promise of reward.
I know a lot of it comes from the fact that Big Top is, as always, my mom’s one true baby, and my relationship with her is more strained than ever.
It doesn’t matter that she was only gone for two years and that she never stopped trying to talk to me or get me to come visit them in Phoenix.
I know so many kids have it way worse, and I should be glad that she’s back, not bitter and resentful.
Even Josha doesn’t understand how I can be mad at her for leaving and then even more pissed at her for coming back.
Especially when everyone else is fucking ecstatic.
At least my best friend tries to hide it, which softens that particular betrayal.
Honestly, I don’t know why I’m the only one who can’t forgive her. It wasn’t me she hurt the worst. But it’s like whatever she broke when she left was already fragile, and now I’m supposed to fit the pieces back together with shitty Scotch tape when I need super glue.
I would have avoided the lot entirely last year if it weren’t for Josha.
As it was, I spent more time getting fucked up with my other friends from school than helping with the show my mom yanked away from us.
I showed up to more than one rehearsal too high to get on my pole, then laughed through the fog of disapproval thrown my way.
But Josha freaked and begged me to get my shit together, which was worse than anything my parents could have thrown at me, so I tried.
I also discovered the miracle drug that is cocaine, and that I could use it to sharpen the blur of alcohol and bring my body back online without suffering through the misery of sobriety, and things got a little easier to tolerate.
As long as no one finds out.