10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Silas
I peer out of the passenger window toward the carousel exit, but there’s still no sign of Jackie. I hate that she still doesn’t get it. She thinks she knows me. She thinks she knows what I deserve and how I need to change. Hell, she thinks it’s her job to change me.
And I get she feels she has to do the “right thing”, because that’s who she is. Just like I’m hard-wired to always do the wrong thing. She gives in to her conscience while I try to ignore mine. We’re like water and vinegar. I have no idea why we ever got along so well, to be honest.
I flex and unflex my fist. My knuckles are bashed even worse than they were before. It doesn’t help that the interior of the camper is hot as hell, even with the windows open. I can barely stand it anymore. I glance back at the exit again, but there’s still no sign of Jackie.
I think of her riding that carousel all by herself, and I feel like a total asshole. Not that I would have gone on that thing with her, but still—at least her fun wouldn’t be completely ruined if we hadn’t had that fight. She’d be smiling while she was going around, chasing whatever high it is she gets from ticking kitschy roadside attractions off some invisible bucket list.
I shove the door open and the air that hits me is cooler than in the camper, which is a sweet relief. It’s still hot, but at least I can breathe. I close the door and lean against Trudy’s side. When I stuff my hands in my pockets, my right hand presses against something warm and slimy. And when I pull it out, my fingers are covered in melted chocolate.
And the day just keeps getting better and better …
I wipe my hand off on my pants, then let my head fall back against the camper. It makes a satisfying banging sound and I do it again—a little harder this time, then blow out a long breath. The metal starts scorching my skin though, even through my T-shirt, so I pull away and step inside to change.
I remove the one relatively intact chocolate bar and place it on the counter, then strip down to my briefs, tossing my dirty clothes in a bag underneath the bench where Jackie stashed the comforter she bought for me. I rummage through the bin with the rest of the stuff she insisted on getting until I find a pair of cargo shorts, label still attached and everything. A bargain at twelve dollars and forty-nine cents.
Before putting them on, I grab the remaining chocolate bar from the counter and carefully tear it open. The chocolate is so melted it’s like eating pudding: awkward and messy, but still the best thing I’ve tasted in days.
“What the heck are you doing? ”
I whirl around to find Jackie staring up at me from the step in the open doorway. Her eyes are oreo-cookie round.
“Shit.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Sorry. I uh… I just—” I glance around for the shorts I thought I’d tossed on the counter, but I can’t see them now, and Jackie keeps staring up at me from the bottom step, her cheeks glowing pink.
Is she blushing at the sight of me in my briefs?
She yells again: “Are you actually eating the chocolate bars that you stole ?”
Okay, so she’s angry—not blushing. Good to know.
But I have no clue why she gives a shit if I eat the chocolate bars. It’s not like I can give them back.
“Silas. Seriously… what the heck?”
I shrug. “What else did you want me to do with them? You threw a hissy fit when I tossed a breakfast sandwich out the window. I wasn’t gonna risk tossing stolen chocolate, too.”
Her cheeks redden even more and she shakes her head, like she can’t believe I’m for real. I toss the wrapper in the bin under the sink and finish licking the remnants of chocolate off my fingers. I glance up just as Jackie’s gaze drops to my chest, down to my crotch… my bare legs.
Her eyes narrow. “Why are you naked ?”
Kind of funny that she’s only noticing my state of undress now.
I glance down. “I’m not naked. I’m wearing—”
“You know what I mean.” Her eyes flutter back to my crotch, the mottled bruises along my sides, then to my abs. I don’t say anything—just wait for her eyes to reach my face. When they do, her cheeks flush again.
Definitely blushing this time.
I can’t keep from smirking and she gives me this disgusted look, like she can’t believe she has to deal with… this— whatever ‘this’ is. Me , I guess: a half-naked homeless guy eating stolen confections in the back of her canary-yellow food truck.
“Geez…” She lets out a sigh that’s too dramatic to take seriously, then steps down and starts making her way around the camper.
“Can you please put some clothes on?” She calls, still totally flustered as she disappears from view.
I can’t keep from smiling: she isn’t mad anymore. Annoyed, maybe. But not mad. And God knows why, but I feel a twinge of relief. Probably because I’m too exhausted to fight with her anymore. Or maybe there’s a part of me that does still give a shit, despite everything we’ve gone through and everything she knows about me. And everything that she doesn’t.
Once I’ve got my clothes back on, Jackie joins me in the back and she gets out a bunch of sandwich stuff. We stand side by side, silently making lunch like we’re part of a mini assembly-line or something. I don’t argue with her this time, and I make a sandwich for myself. In fact, I pile the ingredients on and smother them in mustard and mayo. I even accept the water bottle and two cookies she hands me from a tupperware container.
Once we’re up front again, Jackie finally breaks the silence .
“We’ll just drive straight to the festival grounds from here.”
She passes me one of her carefully folded maps. “Right there,” she says, pointing, once I’ve opened it. Like I could have missed the neon pink arrow pasted just below the town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, that literally says ‘ Old Orchard Beach Festival Grounds ’.
There are a few other tiny neon green dots stuck in other spots which look to be on the route we’re taking. And I feel kind of bad because they must be places she was planning on stopping at and, presumably because of the fact that she’s now got a chocolate-bar-stealing-criminal in tow, she’s eliminating them from her meticulously planned itinerary.
“We can stop other places if you want,” I say after a few more minutes of driving in silence.
“It’s fine,” she says.
I think I liked it better when she was asking a million questions about my personal life. When she was all sunshine and smiles.
I don’t miss that playlist, though. The break from the cheery loop from hell is honestly a sweet relief.
I try again: “Make stops if you want to.”
I wait and then after a second, I add: “I promise not to steal from any more gift shops… Not even if they sell those beautiful porcelain bells with naked cherubs hand-painted on the front.”
But she doesn’t even smile.
“I said it’s fine. We’ll go straight there. Those stops were just—”
“Close by and nice to check out,” I finish for her. “I know. Green stickies - how could I forget? We’ve still got plenty of time, though. So let’s go.”
She sighs. “Sure. Maybe we’ll make a couple of stops.”
She says it like she’s doing me some huge favor or something and I can’t keep from rolling my eyes. I think she notices because she shakes her head again with this serious look, like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.
When we get close to the first stop, I start giving her more detailed directions to the off-road detour. She still hasn’t told me exactly what it is we’re going to check out, and I haven’t asked — I’m not exactly jonesing to open up the dialogue between us again and my guilt-induced charitable mood has worn off. Which is why I have no idea if I’m directing us to a giant rutabaga or a museum of linguini noodles or some other unfathomable American relic.
And then: “Oh my gosh! Look! There!” she points excitedly with one hand, barely keeping the camper on the road with the other. “See? Right up ahead!”
There’s no way I couldn’t see it.
It’s a massive orange fiberglass dinosaur, standing next to a row of condo buildings.
What is it with this girl and giant roadside dinosaur replicas?
She pulls the truck over to park alongside the weathered Palaeolithic monstrosity and jumps out. Then she jogs over and just stands there, beaming up at the thing like it’s a bloody masterpiece.
Believe me: it’s not.
She wants me to take a photo of her in front of it, so I climb out and walk over. Then she insists on getting a shot with the two of us in it, even though you can barely see the tops of our heads in the shot in order to fit in the rest of the twelve-foot kitschy beast.
“Wow… That was so cool,” Jackie says when we’re back in the camper. “So so cool. And it’s a protected national landmark. Which is even cooler.”
My eyes widen. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I kid about that?”
I don’t answer. I just keep my mouth shut while she spouts off super fun facts and a super fun backstory for the next fifteen minutes while she drives, because I’m hedging my bets on the fact that the detailed history of an orange fiberglass dinosaur will still be less painful to sit through than another one of her cheery playlists.
I learn that the tacky dino used to be part of a miniature golf course, along with a pile of other fiberglass animals which, lucky for me, are off rotting in a landfill somewhere. I miss the part where we find out what made Dino so worthy of being spared a similar fate, though .
I’m guessing size.
We make another couple of similar stops along Route 1 over the next two hours: the largest (fiberglass) cactus in Massachusetts, a sixteen-foot beach santa (also fiberglass), the grave of the Boston Strangler (sadly, not fiberglass), a submarine in a ditch, a cheese shop—shaped like cheese, and last but not least, the oldest fruit tree in North America.
I’m not even kidding.
By the time we approach Old Orchard Beach, it’s about seven-thirty and we’re both pretty wiped. I start directing her off the highway to the festival grounds, but she completely ignores me and takes a left instead of a right—because apparently there’s one more stop she wants to make that isn’t on her map.
I am one tacky roadside attraction away from losing my cool. I’ve been compliant all afternoon—taken pics for her, posed in pics with her, listened to background information that is just as inane as the actual attractions (possibly more), and most impressive: I’ve listened to another one of her playlists without making one snarky comment.
Okay, maybe a couple of comments. But still, I’m pretty sure I’m up for sainthood at this point.
Jackie must be able to tell I’m done, because she glances over at me anxiously.
“This stop is just ten minutes away from the fairgrounds. I swear.”
I have no idea what to expect from a stopover that didn’t even merit a stickie of any kind, but I keep my trap shut. I will humor her for another half-hour max, because I have been an ass to her, but then I’m tapping out.
A few minutes later we pull onto a narrow gravel road, then into a small parking lot surrounded by woods.
“We’re here!” she announces, still brimming with energy. But there’s no giant fiberglass fruit or plant or alien anywhere in sight. As if she senses my confusion, she calls to me as she hops out of the camper. “Come on. It’s just a short walk.”
“I’m good,” I tell her. “I’ll wait here.”
“You have to come; you’ll like it,” she insists. “Please… I promise it’ll be worth it.”
I roll my eyes but follow her. Maybe if I suck it up for one final photo-op, she’ll gift me a couple cans of beer tonight. Or apricot-melon coolers or whatever- the-hell fancy drinks a girl like her might have stashed away somewhere inside that giant banana-on-wheels. Because when it comes to liquor, I’m willing to suspend my aversion to Jackie’s handouts.
We start along a trail that winds downhill through a lush hardwood and pine forest. And man, it’s actually really nice. The trail is pretty worn, but there isn’t another soul in sight. The silence and woodsy smell is refreshing after being on the road all day.
And it suddenly dawns on me I haven’t been for a walk in the woods in about seven years. Since my parents died. We used to go for short hikes on the weekend sometimes, and I would complain because the family outings would take me away from a video game or baseball or whatever I could have been doing with my friends.
I push aside the memory and focus on avoiding protruding roots as we take a left turn down a steeper, less maintained path. And then I hear it:
Rushing water.
I stop in my tracks for a second because Jackie did this for me.
Despite the pain-in-the-ass I’ve been since she found me passed out in her bed yesterday morning, she went out of her way to find a waterfall near the festival grounds once she knew how jazzed I was about seeing those tiered falls back in Massachusetts.
“You didn’t have to do this.” I say softly, as the cascading water comes in to view just around the corner.
“I know,” she shrugs.
We walk right up to a small pool at the base of the falls, and I’m speechless for a few minutes. We both are. It’s beautiful. And not just the white curtain of water that spills over the moss-covered cliff, but the sound of it, too. Loud but still soothing, like white-noise.
I take a few steps closer and peer into the shallow pool. I can just make out the smooth rocks about five feet below the surface.
I tug off my T-shirt and throw it onto a rock behind me.
“I’m going in,” I say, tugging off my boots and flinging them without even glancing back to see where they land. My shorts are next and two seconds later, I’m stepping into the water, wading toward the waterfall. I reach my hand out and watch the droplets splatter and spray across my palm before ducking my whole body in. The water roars over me and it’s ice-cold but still… amazing. It’s perfect.
I pull back and shake my head a couple of times, sending water droplets flying, then push my bangs out of my eyes. I turn to Jackie, who’s watching me with a huge smile on her face.
“You coming in?” I call, scrubbing a palm across my face.
“Uh… yeah. Um, I guess?” she glances around like she’s looking for something. Probably an excuse not to have to strip down to her undies with me watching. She’s always been kind of bashful about stuff like that.
“I’ll turn around.” I tell her. “And then you can tell me when you’re sitting in the water.”
She bites down on her lip. She’s so different from any of the girls I hang out with in Allerston Lake. It’s part of what makes New Jackie a pain in the ass. Except for right now. For some reason, right now, it’s refreshing.
“Yeah… I guess.” She finally says. “Okay.”
“Cool.”
I wade a few steps from the waterfall and lower myself into the shallow pool before she can change her mind. And either my body is acclimatized already or the water in this spot isn’t as arctic cold. I lean back and rest one arm on a low rock and angle my body away from where Jackie is still standing, shifting from one foot to the other.
I turn away. “I’m not looking.”
“Promise?” Her voice is timid now; a lot more like the Old Jackie.
“Geez… Yes.” I roll my eyes, even though she obviously can’t see me. “I promise.”
There’s a rippling swiiish… swiiiish… swiiiish as she enters the water. And then a sudden and very loud SPLASH! Followed by a high-pitched screech.
“Ow!!! Owwww!”
I whirl around.
Jackie is ass-deep in the water, pushing herself up from where she obviously fell in sideways. I do a quick once-over: no cuts or blood or anything. She looks fine.
As in, she looks fine . Water droplets trail down her tanned curves and she’s wearing a frilly pale yellow bra, which is girlish and sexy all at the same time.
“You okay?” I ask.
She’s facing away from me, still sputtering and ringing her hair out with both hands.
“Yes,” she huffs. “I’m fine.”
See? Like I said.
I’m about to turn away again but notice three bright words written in bubble letters across the ass cheeks of her yellow striped panties. I squint, trying to make out what they say.
And then I chuckle: “Wait… Do your underwear say—”
She whips around and catches me checking her out and plunges back into the water so quickly that it actually makes another loud splash, cutting me off mid-sentence.
Then she glares at me as she gets settled a few feet to my right, against the same smooth rock I’m resting my arm on.
“ You go girl. ” She finishes curtly for me. “That’s what it says on my underwear, okay?” And then she adds: “And I thought you promised not to turn around until I was sitting in the water.”
“Well, I didn’t realize you were going to canon-ball your ass in here.”
Her cheeks redden. Man, she embarrasses easy.
“I didn’t cannonball,” she says indignantly. “I fell.”
I tilt my head from side to side, like I’m pondering the legitimacy of her statement.
“Okay, fine.” I concede. “But if we’re gonna get all nit-picky, then I believe the sentence on the back of your undies actually says: ‘you go grrrrl ’.” I growl the last word, drawing it out. “A bunch of ‘r’s. Totally not the same thing as ‘ you go girl ’.”
Jackie rolls her eyes, her cheeks still as red as the lobsters that never even made an appearance at yesterday’s Lobster Festival.
“It’s a moot point,” she says. “Because you weren’t supposed to be checking out my butt.” And then she adds pointedly: “Remember?”
I laugh.
“I couldn’t even see your butt because of the novel written across your underwear.”
She rolls her eyes. Again. She laughs though and slaps my arm playfully, like she used to do when I told a raunchy joke when we were kids.
We both sit in silence after that, looking up at the waterfall just a few feet away. The sun is getting lower and the light that filters its way through the leaves shimmers off the surface of the water. It’s honestly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Even the sky beyond the leafy trees above us is a soft, cloudless pink. And in this moment right now, I am happy.
I can’t even remember the last time I was happy.
Jackie trails the tips of her fingers slowly back and forth across the water and it makes tiny ripples.
“So… what do you think of your first waterfall?”
“I love it,” I say, before I can think to filter the raw-ness of my response.
Her eyes go wide and the corners of her lips lift into a full-face smile that makes me glad I was honest.
“Me too,” she says. “It’s really beautiful here.”
After a while, the air gets cooler—still warm but not scorching like it has been all day. And the sky is going from pink to soft orange. ‘ Peach ’, Jackie calls it—because even with colors, she is precise and categorical.
My mind inevitably returns to the shit that went down last week, and the fact that I’m kicked out of my house and stuck in this temporary baby-sitting situation with Jackie. And while most people probably think about dinner plans in the evening, or tv binging or something mundane like that, my mind instinctively shifts to liquor. I’m not proud of it, but it’s become part of my routine. It’s the only way I can get any sleep: by dousing my conscience with enough liquor to drown out any of the nightmares that usually wake me if I try going to sleep sober.
The silver lining is that my memories will probably be so pickled one day from all the alcohol that I’ll have no trouble sleeping at the drop of a hat once I hit my forties.
Like I said before, I’m not an alcoholic or anything. It’s just a coping mechanism I stumbled across a couple of years after my parents died, when night after night of being woken up by nightmares had me screaming into my pillow and wiping my hands over and over against the sheets because I was sure there was still blood on them. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I started staying later and later at friend’s houses or going to parties—any outlet that made it easier to push sleep later and later. And once I passed out after my first real bender when I was around thirteen, and woke up after almost five straight hours of sleep without a nightmare, it was a game changer. I’d found a tonic to cure my diseased sleeping pattern.
It was harder at Trenton. At first. But then I found three or four guys who became my “suppliers”. They hooked me up with a steady influx of rye and vodka in exchange for favors I’m admittedly not proud of. Namely, I was their muscle: if they needed someone roughed up (or several people roughed up), I was the one to do it. Which also meant I took the fall a lot of the time when shit went down. It’s the reason I went in to juvie for seven months and came out after more than two years.
Like I said: I’m not proud of it, but I needed the liquor. It worked. And it still does, when I can get my hands on something. Anything . Although ironically, it’s been harder to get a steady supply since I’ve been out of juvie. So most of the time, I walk around like a goddamn zombie, caught between wanting desperately to give in to the fatigue, and fighting it other times with every bone in my body.
I have a feeling that scoring a supply these next few weeks is going to be even more of a challenge.
I wade out of the stream, running my hands through my hair to squeeze out most of the water. And once I’m dressed, Jackie follows quietly. I know the drill, so I turn my back and wait this time until she’s fully dressed… no matter how tempted I am to take one last peak at those taunting neon letters.
You go girl, indeed.
It’s eight-thirty by the time we pull into the festival grounds and it takes us half an hour to get set up. Turns out Trudy is a needy gal: she has raw sewage and used water that needs to be emptied, electrical and water to hook up and a few other things that need to be done before we can settle down inside her big ol’ belly for the night. I’m not complaining: she’s pretty pimped out for such an old broad. Jackie even installed a window AC unit, which is sweet. It’s an oven in there without that thing on. It’s loud, and unreliable—sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, right?
Once we’re settled, Jackie tells me she’s going to walk around a bit while I call Richard. Clearly, this is her way of giving me some privacy - which would be nice, except I’ve been asking her to back off for the past two days and this is when she finally relents? For a bloody check-in call with her adoptive father, who is basically stepping in as my glorified social worker slash shrink?
The call is as awkward as I expected. It’s not that Richard isn’t a nice guy—he is. He’s just a certain type of nice guy. Namely, the type who wants to get you to open up and talk and help you figure out your shit. But I don’t want anyone else wading through my shit, and it’s hard enough trying to get that through to Jackie, without having her fairy foster-father waving his magic wand at me, too.
I manage to keep the call short and sweet again, at least. Richard feels bad for yacking about me with Jackie yesterday on speaker-phone while I was there listening the whole time. Which he should. And I fully intend to milk his guilt for as long as I can. So for now anyway, he’s just trying to feel me out, waiting to find what angle will work to get me to let down my guard so he can “reach me.” That’s the catch-phrase I’ve overheard at least a dozen times from counselors and social workers over the years: “I just wish there was a way I could reach him.”
Once I’ve hung up with Richard, I take the opportunity to quickly scavenge for any liquor Jackie might have stashed in here. It’s a long-shot, but I’m a desperate man. I only get as far as checking the fridge and cupboards before she gets back, and there’s nothing. I’m panicking a little because I need at least something to take the edge off tonight. It’s a small space and I’m sleeping literally twelve feet from Jackie’s bed. I do not want her to wake up to me talking in my sleep or screaming like a two-year-old on Halloween. Or worse: when I’m in that horrible in-between state where I’m half-delusional and likely to do or say any number of embarrassing crap that is hard enough to deal with on my own, let alone in front of an audience.
I’m so desperate at this point that when Jackie opens the mini freezer to take out one of the pre-cooked meals to heat up, I use the opportunity to peer over her shoulder in the hopes of spotting a bottle of vodka or something that she might have stashed away in there. I’d even take a couple of those tiny one-shot bottles, if that’s all she’s got. But it’s a no-go, for any kind of liquor in any kind of size. And same for the cupboards I didn’t get to earlier: zilch. No-thing.
Either I need to score something in the next few hours or I’m going to have to keep myself awake until tomorrow, when I’ll make finding a bottle my top priority.
I should have left the chocolate bars and nabbed booze instead. Hell, I probably should have just kept right on walking along that country road this morning. Hitchhiked straight to the nearest liquor store and drank myself into a two-month slumber.
It might just have been the smartest decision I’ve made since I got kicked out.