I blink, and there’s Brian, and the brown of the house and the brown of the desert.
“But it’s all bullshit, right? My mom just, she keeps talking about him like…”
Brian leans in. The desert air slides slimy fingers up my back. “Bill thought it was real. How about when he gets back, you ask him.”
I smell his mixture of sweat and mistrust, antibacterial spray and a lifetime of believing in his own superiority. I smell his curse rearing on its hind legs, desperate to attack. And him, deciding whether to loose the chain.
“Are you fucking with me, Bill’s niece?” he whispers.
“No,” I choke out. “Sorry—it’s really not—thanks for helping us out.”
Then the moment’s gone. No more dread. No more threat blocking out the sun.
“Sure.” Brian reaches around me to tug the car door fully open. It’s like the last few minutes, the conversation about the flayed man, never happened. “Anytime.”
I smile big enough to show my back teeth and say, “Appreciate it.”
As I settle into the driver’s seat, Brian calls, “Hey.” He retraces the path from his door to my car. Something metal jingles in one of his pockets. “Give me your email.”
I find myself frozen. Prey again.
Brian scowls. “Or not.”
“No, um.” I scramble for a smile. This is a sign that Brian wants to keep helping us, right? I spell out my email address, waiting for him to type it into his phone or write it down on a notepad, but he just nods.
“Okay. Drive safe now.” And he’s disappeared back through the brown door and into the brown house, the only sign of him the faint movement of one of the curtains.
My back twinges as I pull away from the curb. I can’t get myself to relax, even with Brian out of sight. The steering wheel is so hot to the touch I’m scared to breathe in, in case I smell my palms burning. A rusty kid’s bike lies abandoned in the driveway next door. I wonder again about Brian’s neighbors.
Better not to.
It takes me till I get back on the highway to finally fill my lungs all the way. What’s in the trunk will feed us for two weeks. That’s two more weeks to find another solution, because I’m sure as hell not coming back here.
I don’t think to check my phone until twenty minutes into the drive. There are three texts from Veer.
Twenty-three minutes ago:All done
Eighteen minutes ago:Ellis? You okay?
Six minutes ago:where are you. please come back already I hate this place fuck
Sorry, I text back.Be there in ten
When I pull up, she’s squatting on the curb, elbows on knees, face a hurricane.
“It was fine,” she growls, before I can ask. “Let’s get out of here.”
As the highway unfurls under our tires, the sky grows dull and dark, the color of a fresh bruise. Veer is restless in the driver’s seat, putting on music, then turning it down, alternating between humming to herself and squinting into the windshield. When we stop for gas and fresh ice, I text Joanne:Have you been able to check on my mom today? How is she?
Yesterday the desert was so beautiful. Now it’s just gray blankness.
It starts to drizzle as the stoplights fade and we cross into another long, dead stretch of asphalt. We sit in silence. What’s waiting for me at home? Rage? Hurt? Desolation? Or what if, worse, she woke up again while I was gone, brain fully functional, memory patched over, and I wasn’t there to hold it tight and make it last?
I told her I hated her.
I told her I hated her, and then I left.
Veer coughs. I can smell everything—her reticence, her longing, her fear that she’s fucked this all up. She hasn’t, of course. It was me.
