Chapter 7 #4
Light flickers above our heads. My eyes dart to the lone light bulb. It flickers more, then cuts off completely, covering us in near complete darkness.
“Shit,” I hiss out.
“Guess we should have changed it when Timber told us to.”
“Shouldn’t him or somebody be looking for us by now? It’s got to be past lunchtime.”
“Last I looked at my watch it was around eleven.”
I heave a heavy sigh and rest my head against the wall again.
“You’re adopted, right?” Harvey’s voice sounds distant in the dark.
“Yes.”
“I thought so.”
“Why’d you ask then?”
“Where are your real parents?”
I wipe more sweat from my face. “In LA.”
“No, I mean, your biological parents.”
I don’t often think about the woman who gave birth to me, but when I do it’s in little flashes of memory. A Virginia Slim between two red fingernails. A rough hand gripping my arm and dragging me through a parking lot. The acrid scent of permanent and a voice that crackles like firecrackers.
“I don’t know,” I say. “And I don’t care.”
“You’ve never wanted to look for them?”
My father isn’t as vivid, but I do remember white undershirts with yellow pit stains, a burnt rubber smell, and the feeling of being watched.
“They didn’t give a shit about me,” I say. “Why should I give a shit about them?”
Harvey’s quiet for a moment before he asks, “What happened? Did they put you in a basket and leave you on someone’s doorstep?”
“Why are you being so fucking nosy?”
“Just wondering, man. Sorry.”
I wipe more sweat from my face. A shrink is here.
I’ve met with him once so far. I told him right away that I wasn’t going to talk about all that Freudian everything-is-a-penis crap, and he said that was fine.
He said he didn’t like Dr. Freud anyway.
We sat quietly by the river until I was hungry and went to lunch.
It’s probably because it’s so dark in here I can’t see Harvey’s face. Dark enough to pretend I’m alone and talking to myself. That’s probably the reason I answer Harvey’s question.
“They left me in an apartment,” I say. “In this filthy apartment on a filthy mattress. I don’t know where they went.
They just left. There were bed bugs, and I had bites all over my legs.
There were roaches crawling all over the place.
They just left me there. Somebody in the building heard me crying and called the landlord.
The landlord called social services. They took me to a home. That was it.”
Talking about it always makes me feel like bugs are crawling on me, so I impulsively brush at my arms and legs.
“If you run your mouth to the tabloids, I’ll rip your throat out so you can’t talk at all.”
He laughs softly. “You’re funny.”
“And you’re a nosy bastard,” I grumble.
“Technically, I’m not.”
“What?”
“A bastard.”
I feel heavy from all this heat. Every inch of me is soaked in sweat, and my lungs ache. We can’t be running out of air already.
“You gonna tell me why you’re here?” Harvey asks.
“Jesus, what is this? An interrogation?” I try to find a more comfortable spot in the dirt, but it’s impossible.
“The show I’m gonna be on. One of the producers wanted me to come here first.” I hesitate.
“He saw the photos of our fight.” I almost tell him what Phil said about him, but I decide not to.
I hear Harvey shift. “Did you come at me outside of The Roxy because of New Year’s Eve?”
My breath catches in my throat. I’ve tried hard not to think about it when I’m around him, which is all the time. I’ve tried to erase what he said and the way he looked at me from my memory. I thought we’d made an unofficial and unspoken agreement not to mention it again.
I swallow. “No. I don’t know.”
“That’s clear as mud.”
“I thought you’d run your mouth or something.” It wasn’t long after that fight that I went to the hospital, but he doesn’t need to know that. “It was like you had something to hold over me.”
“Do you think I just have all these people I talk to?”
“I think that if you had the opportunity or were paid enough, you’d blab a story to the tabloids that would destroy me.”
“I don’t have this vendetta against you, Hollywood. Get over yourself. Not everything is about you, and not everyone thinks like you do.”
I’m too hot and thirsty to fight with him. I close my eyes against the darkness, and more sweat drips down my face. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
A few minutes pass before he responds. “For what?”
“Anything. Everything. Whatever you want me to be sorry for. All right?”
Another beat of silence, then he says. “Gee, thanks.”
Trapped in this hot box, I mistake the weight of this heat for my anger at Harvey. Anger that’s tangled up in my mind and unclear. But I don’t want to fight with him anymore. I’m tired. I’m done.
“When they did those comparisons with us in Teen Street, I always thought you were better,” I say softly. “Better at… whatever it was. Having what they wanted you to have. I heard about it, you know, all the mail you got. I still don’t understand why they compared me to you, but you win.”
He huffs out a laugh. “It wasn’t a competition. It was just for the girls to get all giddy over. And anyway, I don’t think either of us won anything. We’re both here now.” He pauses. “What do you mean I would hold something over you?”
I fan myself with my shirt again. “I just meant… like, that night.”
“What about it?”
It’s easier to say these things in the dark. “What you said. And then in the mirror.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you.”
“I wasn’t offended.”
“What then?”
I close my eyes and more sweat drips down my face. He has me cornered, and it really doesn’t matter, does it? We’re either going to die in here or leave here and never speak again. “That you’d know. That you’d see. For a split second…” I swallow, my throat dry. “All I wanted was you.”
The inside of the shed feels like a live wire buzzing. I hear Harvey breathing. I hear him swallow and sigh. My eyes open. I start to speak, but an engine rumbles outside. I jump up and feel my way to the door.
A car door slams, and we knock and shout. Keys rustle, then the doors open. I put my hands up to block the bright sunlight.
“What are you two doing in here?” Timber asks.
I’m blinded by it at first and squint with watery eyes. I turn my head away from the sun.
“I told you to be careful,” Timber says. “And prop the door open.”
Harvey’s next to me. It’s still too bright for me to see him. He looks mostly like a shadow.
“Are you guys all right? Don’t go in there again until we can get that lock fixed.”
My eyes start to adjust, and he’s not a shadow anymore. I see him more clearly.
“Man,” Timber says. “It’s hot in there. Is the light out too? You guys need some water?”
And then I notice, by the expression on his face, that Harvey can see me more clearly too.