Tuesday, 24 April 2035 #2
I stood, staring, breathing the hot, fetid air and waiting for him to stand up. He didn’t.
‘Fuck,’ I breathed. ‘Fuck!’ The blood on my hands was almost dry and dusted with desert sand but even so, I couldn’t believe what I had just done: I’d turned my worst fear into my worse rage and I had won.
Well, almost.
A grumble emerged from the scrub as he started to come round, and I wasted no more time, running towards the front of the cab, sliding into the driver’s seat, locking it from the inside and starting the engine. I glanced back once. He was on his feet then, woozy but stumbling towards the cab.
‘Oh, thank fuck,’ I gasped.
‘Hey! Hey no! No, chica, no!’ he yelled, running towards the car as I stuttered and bunny-hopped back onto the main highway, before finding my groove with the accelerator and rejoining the road. My hands were still red with my blood but completely dry now. Blood wasn’t so scary anymore.
‘Fucking hell!’ I laughed as I sped up, glancing back but seeing him disappear out of sight, shouting into the empty sky.
‘Haha! I guess you were right, Rhiannon.’ I pumped the accelerator harder as I passed a sign for the beach – A la playa.
‘Sometimes you have to know when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, and when to bite their fucking dicks right off. ’
I ripped my head back and whooped with delight as I sped on, ever closer to my destination.
Soon I was a mere five minutes from the coast road when the realisation hit me: I’d stolen a car!
I’d nearly killed a man! I was a freak! Just like Rhiannon.
I cried and cried, and laughed and laughed, feeling awful but at the same time exhilarated. Who the hell was I?
‘Free,’ I said. ‘I’m free.’
When I came off the freeway, I ditched the car in a derelict car park behind an old church, walking the rest of the way into the town centre with my belongings.
Google Maps was telling me I was mere feet away from the restaurant.
I was so adrenalized by that point I didn’t notice how tired I was anymore.
It was like I’d pushed past it. By the time I reached the esplanade and saw the beach, the sun was setting and it sparkled off the wide-open sea like a bucket of diamonds had just been poured in.
There were a number of crows pecking at the sand on the water’s edge too.
Thirteen of them, though I couldn’t remember what thirteen meant.
And I don’t think they were my crows from home but I was glad they were there anyway.
I walked down to the water’s edge and they all scarpered as I weaved in and out of stray dogs and straw umbrellas, washing the remnants of blood off my hands as best I could.
I guessed that was one thing that marked me out from my mother – I was washing off my own blood, not someone else’s.
I held up my clean, dripping hand, parallel to the horizon. It was still shaking.
But the sight of a man sitting on a surfboard out in the ocean seemed to calm me. I shielded my eyes to see him better and I couldn’t be sure it was him but he waved. And I waved back, clutching the ashes bottle against my neck as though to preserve the moment inside it forever.
I walked past the storefronts with their music and smiling store owners in chanclas and vests, waving to me, saying hello, offering me things to drink or eat.
I thought I was heading in the direction of the restaurant but I soon became lost which made me even more flustered.
I stopped to ask one of the vendors, a girl about my age.
‘Hola, senorita, dónde está el restaurante Hiedra y Leo, por favor?’
‘Ah si si,’ the girl replied, pointing away from the beach towards a cobbled side street. She had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen and she smiled when our eyes locked. ‘Yo soy Xochil.’
‘Oh, right – yo soy Ivy. Xochil – es un nombre hermosa.’
‘Tu nombre también es hermosa,’ she replied. ‘Como tu cara es hermosa.’ [Your name is beautiful too. Just as your face is beautiful.]
I blushed furiously. ‘Muchas gracias.’
She walked with me to the edge of the kerb outside the store and pointed me in the exact direction of Hiedra y Leo.
‘Thank you, er, muchas gracias,’ I said again, and she smiled at me again.
My God she was breathtaking, and not just because the sun was setting in her eyes as she smiled back at me.
Because I fancied her pants off. It turned out she was a little older than me, eighteen and a few months, and we started conversing about her job in the store and her parents who owned it.
I bought some hand sanitiser, water and crisps from her, just so we could keep talking, and I asked her what there was to do around here.
She said she liked hiking in the mountains, and deep-sea diving on her uncle’s boat.
She asked me if I wanted to come with her one day.
I hadn’t felt the things I was feeling since that first time with Chloe.
‘Sí, definitivamente, eso sería fantástico,’ I answered as we swapped numbers. I slung my bag on my shoulder as we said goodbye and I finally headed towards the restaurant.
I thought many things as I walked that final stretch with my bag on my back and the hoverboard box under my arm.
How Rhiannon must have felt when she first came here.
Whether I was walking in the same places she had.
Whether coming here had been the right idea after all.
Whether Xochil really did like me or whether I was mixing my signals with someone just being kind.
I took Jon Hamm out of my bag and squeezed him for good luck.
A kid loitered under a shop veranda at the corner of the street where Hiedra y Leo supposedly was.
He seemed impatient, checking his phone repeatedly.
A boy of around ten. Shorn black hair, yellow T-shirt and red shorts and black-and-white Vans.
Looking around – looking for me? Did I dare to hope it was him, my brother?
He squinted my way. I screened my eyes and we locked on.
He screened his eyes too and stood still, just sort of staring.
What if he’d decided he doesn’t want to see me anymore? I thought.
Then suddenly the boy waved out, frantically – his feet leaving the ground completely as he jumped up and down, pocketing his phone and running towards me at full pelt. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
My brother; my little lion man.
‘IVY!!!!!!’ he screeched, like we’d known each other for years even though I’d only ever seen him on our short video call the other night.
We smashed into a hug that threw all my things to the pavement – bag, sunglasses, phone, hoverboard box, the lot.
But I didn’t care. I finally had my brother.
I could hold him and hug him and he was as real as I was, not a ghost or a vision. We both cried.
‘I can’t believe you’re here! I dreamed about you last night!’ he said.
‘Did you?’ I wiped my cheeks on the back of my hand. ‘I can’t remember the last time I slept!’
‘Oh my God, Ivy. It’s so good to see you. Here …’ He bent down and began collecting up all my things and handing them back to me, one by one. ‘Holy shit, you have a hoverboard! I had one of these.’
‘No, it’s a present for you,’ I said. ‘To replace the one Gus Herrera broke.’
‘Oh my God!’ he said, mouth wide in shock. And then he started crying and dropped the box and wrapped his arms around me again. ‘Thank you so much.’ I held him against me.
‘You’re welcome. It was no trouble.’
When he finally pulled back, his tears had gone but he stared at me intensely in silence. ‘We have the same eyes, I think.’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘But I think we have the same nose.’
‘You really think?’ said Leo, all serious.
‘Yeah,’ I said, tweaking his nose, much to his surprise.
He giggled like a toddler and grabbed my hand. ‘Come see Papi! Come see Papi!’
‘Okay, hang on,’ I giggled, wiping my eyes again as he picked up his hoverboard and my bag, slung it over his shoulder, and carried them the rest of the way.
I felt so tethered at last. I hadn’t felt tethered to anyone or anywhere, not since Mum died.
Leo chattered on like a little bird, telling me about his day and what he’d done and how he couldn’t wait to show me his workshop back at their house. He talked a mile a minute.
‘Leo, slow down, it’s okay, I’m not going anywhere. I think.’
‘Why you think?’ he asked, his face falling. He stopped walking.
‘Well, I don’t know. Your dad might not want me.’
‘He does! You know he does. You live with us now. Come see him!’
And Leo virtually dragged me along the street and we finally turned into a quieter alley, wide and flanked on both sides by the cafés and restaurants I’d seen on Google Maps. It was still bustling and hot and the sign stuck out ahead for the restaurant, lit up by fairy lights – Hiedra y Leo.
‘See? That’s named after us,’ he said. ‘You and me.’
‘I know.’ I smiled. ‘Me and you.’
It was my turn to stop in my tracks as we passed the front of the restaurant.
People ate on benches outside. Gelato, pancakes, pork belly, ceviche, shrimp.
There were around five stray dogs, ambling among the tables where the customers fed them pieces of meat on a Sit command, and a sequence of water bowls was set up for them in the shade of the awning.
There was even a sign up on the wall in Spanish that said ‘Well behaved humans welcome too’. I knew I was going to like it here.
A man stood in the doorway of the restaurant in a black T-shirt, jeans, white apron and Vans like Leo’s. He was the taller, older version of him: Rafael. And he was smiling at me. Not someone behind me – actually me.
He held out his arms. ‘Ivy – thank God you made it. I was worried sick. You should have told me when your flight was, I’d have come and picked you up.’
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ I sniffed.
‘It’s so nice to meet you, sweetheart. I’ve heard so much about you.’