rusty

“hold up!” this voice yells from behind me and I almost jump out of my skin. I don’t know if it’s a cop or what till I turn around and see the stringy blond-haired girl, halfway across the parking lot, careening up to the car like some crazy bird with half a wing. I recognize her face: I’ve seen her around the corner on Pacific, a little past the liquor store next to the beach; she’s the only other one out here in Venice near my age. But now out of nowhere she’s running in five directions at once, toward me and the guy in the car, who hasn’t even told me his name yet. He’s old, and at first he looks nervous, but then she catches up and throws her arm around my shoulder, squeezing her face next to mine so it’s me and her in his open window and I can feel her heavy breath. “You taking good care of my baby brother?” she asks the guy and when he nods, his eyes all wide, she grins and says “I’m Tracy. You wanna take care of me too?” I start to say something, but the guy leans over to open the passenger door so we both just get in.

She shoves me over so I’m on the brown pleather hump pressed into him. I fumble for a seat belt, but the one in the middle is half stuck down in the seat and won’t come out. While I’m tugging, she leans into me quick and soft and whispers “My name’s Tracy; we’re from Fresno and I’m two years older.” Then she leans back, rests her feet up on the glove compartment, and points her face into the breeze.

I’ve only been doing this a couple weeks. When I got off the Greyhound from Bakersfield a month ago I had two hundred bucks and Jim’s number crumpled up in my pocket. I’d had it memorized for practically a year but he insisted on writing it down, like he wanted to make sure nothing got in the way of him finding me to start our new life in L.A. He gave me everything I might need, toothpaste and money and a map, and he told me to stay in a hostel and call him every night till he came. He wished he could drive us to the city in his convertible Volkswagen and get us our own place first thing, but he said they might come find us if he quit with no notice on the same day that I ran away.

Jim is the choir teacher at Bakersfield High and we’ve been in love since spring of ninth grade. It was perfect and secret for eight months, till my mom came home early from work and saw his Cabriolet pull out of our driveway. She stopped talking to me then and started going through my shit, and even though I hid everything he ever wrote me, Jim was nervous. After he heard her click onto the line one night when we were talking, he said we’d have to go someplace else if we wanted to stay together.

It wasn’t much of a choice: Jim and I are in love. He’s the only person who knows who I am in the places that you can’t put into words, those places that are alive and raw and secret, and bigger than your regular life. We all have those places, I think, but we almost never see or touch them in each other because everyone is always scared. But Jim’s not scared: he’s big enough to hold every single part of me, and brave enough to show me himself. We had sex for the first time at the end of ninth grade in the choir room and afterward he held me on the brown carpet and told me he was all I’d ever need and I breathed in the rough smell of his neck and knew that it was true.

So the fact that he hasn’t answered his phone since the day after I got here is weird, and I’m worried that something happened to him. Every night I call Jim on the pay phone and let it ring twenty times till the operator comes on and says “Your party is not answering. Please try your call again later.” Every time I pray while it’s ringing that Jim will pick up, but I guess I haven’t learned how to pray well enough yet, because it keeps just being the operator.

It’s been a month now since I left and we were only planning for a week, so the money Jim gave me ran out a while ago. I’m too young to get a job, so I was getting really hungry till one night in Hollywood by the hostel a guy asked me if I needed cash and I said yes. It was scary getting in his car, but he parked nearby beneath some trees and all he wanted was to touch me. I closed my eyes and thought about the apartment Jim was going to get us when he got here and the bed we’d have. At the end I told Jim I was sorry in my head, but I knew he’d understand I was just waiting for him.

The second guy brought me over to his place in Santa Monica. I watched the ocean from his window and afterward I walked out his door and toward the sea and down the beach till I got to Venice. The sun setting turned the sky orange and the ocean black. The air was open in my lungs and there were seagulls and I thought maybe I could make some money over here instead of Hollywood, where the air was thick and close and way too hot. I walked the boardwalk while the hippies packed up their bad paintings into RVs and the T-shirt stores closed, then I crisscrossed the alleys in the dark till I saw people standing around who looked kind of like me.

So here’s where I’ve been the last couple weeks: on Pacific and Navy by the liquor store, or else in the parks by the boardwalk. It’s not too bad sleeping outside, not like Hollywood where it’s hard and dirty and every place you go is full of trash. Here at least there’s grass and sand: every night I feel the ground against my cheek and imagine it’s the brown rug in the choir room.

I’ve never gone so long without talking to anyone, though. To the guys I never say more than my name and what do they want and that I’m eighteen, which is a lie, and none of that really counts as conversation. I miss Jim so much it feels like a clamp twisting inside my chest. Closing my eyes to think of him when I’m working helped at first, but now it’s starting to make it worse. So even though I don’t really know what Tracy’s doing here in the car, taking up so much of the seat that I’m straddling the hump and paranoid my bony knees will knock the gearshift, I’m kind of glad she’s sitting next to me.

I keep looking at my lap. I’m embarrassed to talk to the guy with Tracy here, which is weird because I can tell she does the same things I do. The silence gets dense and the guy drives and finally Tracy leans forward and goes “So don’t you want to know where we’re from?” He looks relieved that somebody’s talking to him and he says “Yeah,” so Tracy goes into this whole story about Fresno and how we slept in the same bed growing up and came to L.A. together for adventures. I guess I can see the resemblance— we’re both pale and skinny enough that our ribs poke out— but I still feel like the guy is going to know I’m not her brother. My hair is brown, not blond like hers, and besides I think he’ll just be able to smell it. I want her to shut up, but she just keeps talking about our bed.

She elbows me at the end of her story like I’m supposed to say something. I don’t know what to say, so I just go “Yup” and look up at the guy all dumb. Tracy laughs and says “He’s really shy” and makes this face like they’re on the same team and they’re planning something about me. For a minute I get scared, and then Tracy leans back and pulls me toward her and I can tell it’s really me and her on the team.

We’re at the guy’s house a little less than an hour. His place is gross, with stacked-up newspapers on the scratchy orange couch and just mustard in the refrigerator. And he’s older than my dad, like fifty or something, so it makes me this weird creepy kind of sad. Not for very long though, because Tracy grabs my baggy T-shirt and yanks me into the back hallway by the bathroom. She pulls out four cans of Campbell’s soup she’s stuck in her backpack, plus a package of ramen. She’s got two lighters too, and says one of them’s for me. She’s good: I never saw her open any drawers.

After a minute the guy hollers out to us from the living room. My heart starts pounding because of the Campbell’s and ramen, but Tracy zips her bag up slow; when she’s ready she pulls me out into the living room and toward the couch.

Before the guy can talk I tell him I won’t use anything but my hands. Tracy shoots me a look for a second like I really fucked up, but then a smirk flickers over her face like a mask and she goes “I told you he’s shy. It’s cute, right?” The guy sort of half nods and doesn’t look mad so then she smiles at me.

I’m nervous around a girl, especially since the lights are on and Tracy’s just sitting there like she’s not planning to do anything except sit there and watch, but I go for his belt anyway, because that’s what we’re there for. Then she starts talking. She goes “He’s always been that way, ever since he was little,” and the guy closes his eyes like it’s all part of the same thing, her story and my hands, like he’s expecting her to start in on something sexy. But it starts turning into this weird long made-up thing about when we were kids, like the stuff your mom told you at bedtime when she was out of books to read and couldn’t think of what to say. When I finally look up at Tracy, she’s got this huge grin on her face and I snort out this giant sudden almost laugh. I swallow it fast but she makes the story weirder and weirder trying to get me to crack up and pretty soon I’ve got tears streaming down my cheeks from holding it in and I want to pee. I have to look at the wall; if I look at Tracy’s face again we’ll both lose our shit. Already the guy’s eyelids are twitching like this wasn’t what he expected and maybe he should stop and make sure everything’s okay. But he lets me keep going. At the end I don’t wait to hear the rest of Tracy’s story: I just get up super fast and run to the bathroom and she grabs her bag and follows me and we run the water full on while we both laugh so hard it hurts our stomachs and doesn’t make any sound. After a second we calm down and I wash my hands with crappy liquid soap. Then she gives me this look in the streaky gray mirror and we both crack up again.

Afterward Tracy takes the money, drops me off at the liquor store and goes to get some Baja Fresh. She says she’ll bring me back fish tacos, but without anyone to talk to I close my eyes and start thinking about Jim again and wind up falling asleep sitting up against the side of the building and wake up with drool all down my chin. When I open my eyes it’s late and I’m confused like when you lie down for a nap during the day and by the time you wake up it’s pitch black outside and the time in the middle just erased itself. Tracy never showed up with those tacos. I’m starving. I think maybe I should be pissed at her. I walk over to the beach so I can at least sleep somewhere soft.

The next guy who picks me up wants to take me to West Hollywood. He’s in a Lexus, jocky like he’s probably got a girlfriend that he’s mean to, but I go with him. Before I get in I do one more check to see if Tracy’s anywhere, even though I can see she’s not. Just in case she’d want to come.

He drives all the way east on Santa Monica with the windows down and the strip malls flicker by, their signs lit up even though they’re closed, the too-bright plastic lights against the black. Even the strip malls here are full of things hiding just behind where you can see, like if you reached past the outsides of them you could touch a thousand things you never knew. The air’s a mix of car exhaust and ocean; wind whips my hair against my cheeks. It hurts just enough to make me feel awake and I miss Jim. I wonder if he misses me the same, and then it scares me that I’m even wondering, so I tell myself Of course he does, and push away the question. The lights blink way into the distance, all the way out to Bakersfield and past it; if you look far enough you can’t tell the difference between lightbulbs and stars.

It’s quiet for so long I’m surprised when the guy talks to me, but he does, tells me to get out of the car and come in, asks me if I want a beer and tells me what he wants, and then doesn’t talk again for a long time. Afterward he says to leave because he’s got people coming over, and doesn’t let me finish the beer.

Outside his street is full of little squat houses, orange and yellow and green; they all look like sherbet and have trimmed lawns with agave plants and bougainvillea growing right up to the row of shiny cars. Every ten feet there’s another sign that says NO PARKING THIS BLOCK WITHOUT PERMIT; it makes me wonder who gets all those permits and what the rest of everyone’s supposed to do. It doesn’t bug me, though; all I’ve got is my feet and I’m sure when Jim gets here he’ll be able to park his Cabriolet wherever he wants. I walk through no-parking streets to Melrose where there’s pay phones and I let Jim’s number ring till it gets dark.

Starting that night I stay in Hollywood. Venice is better, but I can’t find anyone to drive me back and it’s far and I don’t know the bus routes. I’m tired, too, from strangers and car fumes and waiting. Before Jim I always wished I didn’t have to go to school, but now I’m realizing how hard it is to find something to do all day long if you don’t have a place to go. Every time I find something like go to Starbucks it only lasts an hour or two and then I’m back at zero with a Frappuccino sitting in my stomach, looking for another thing, and no one ever talks to me. It kind of makes me understand jobs.

There’s no beach to sleep on in Hollywood, so I check into the hostel on Vine, lay down on the stiff white sheets and think of Jim. When it’s quiet and I close my eyes I can see invisible cords that cross the highways and the hills, stretching out between me and him and tying us together. They tug at the middle of my chest, make it ache, but I’m still glad they’re there. Sometimes I roll over and stare at the space beside me on the bed, picturing he’s filling it, and some nights on the pay phone I imagine his voice in the space between the rings.

Besides that I’m alone. I’m trying not to pick anybody up: in Hollywood the air is like an oven and it feels like I could crawl into the back of some guy’s car and never get let out. I guess it’s really like that everywhere no matter how it feels, but I try not to think about that. Between not working and the hostel I’m almost out of money. One dollar and seventy-three cents left.

There’s a kind of hungry that’s way past stomach growling that I’ve only ever felt since I came to L.A. The empty inside you expands like it’s an actual thing instead of just a space; then it pushes against you from the inside, steady, till it starts to hurt. The bubbles turn to rocks, holding your insides apart, and after a while you can’t tell the difference between too full and too empty. You don’t feel what’s going on inside you anymore, just that something’s wrong. And even if you eat, it doesn’t go away for hours.

I’ve been trying to save my buck seventy-three for an emergency, but I’m starting to really need food and my throat’s so dry it’s sticking to itself. I can’t afford the taco stands so I walk west on Santa Monica, knowing eventually I’ll hit a 7-Eleven, where microwave burritos are eighty-nine cents and I can get a soda too. Once my stomach is calm I’ll be able to think; then maybe I can stick out my thumb like in the movies and some old guy will take pity on my plight and drive me back to Venice.

By the time I push through the door, past the magazine racks full of Variety and Hollywood Reporter, I’m dizzy enough that it’s hard to find my way around the store. I know burritos are always back by the Big Gulps, but my eyes are blurry and sped-up enough that I go the wrong way and brush into a tower of chips. The guy at the counter’s eyes flick up from People magazine as soon as I knock into the chip bags, and they stay on me. When I finally find my way through the plastic junk food maze, he hollers back at me to pay before I microwave and I have to say “What?” twice before I understand because he’s from Pakistan or someplace. I feel stupid for not deciphering his accent, like I might offend him; my face gets hot and I know it’s turning pink. I bring the burrito up to the counter and a big Mountain Dew for caffeine. I can’t look at him but I can tell his eyes are still stuck to my face and hands. They dart back and forth as I count out my change on the scuffed white Formica.

He rings me up and it comes out to a dollar ninety-three. Even before I’m done counting I know I don’t have it, but I keep sliding nickels and dimes across from one hand to the other so I can act like it’s a surprise. Finally I get to the end and go “Oh shit!” and look up and blink like Oops, I forgot the rest of my money in the car or something. He just looks at me and says “One dollar ninety-three cents.”

“I’m short. Twenty cents. Can I owe you?” I say and make my eyes as wide as I can without twitching.

“One dollar ninety-three cents,” he says.

“Come on,” I go. It’s not like it’s going to kill him. There are spots in front of everything and I’m starting to feel like I need to eat like right now.

“Sorry.” He shrugs.

“Come on!” I say. “It’s twenty cents!” He looks at me like a concrete wall and raises his eyebrows. I wait for him to answer.

“Sorry,” he goes again, in the exact same identical monotone as before.

I’ve never gotten mad at a stranger or especially a grown-up, but the empty in my stomach has spread to my head. “It’s twenty fucking cents!” I go. “I’m hungry! Just let me have it!” and I’m kind of yelling.

“Please quiet down, sir,” he tells me and his voice is like a rock.

“Don’t call me fucking sir!” I yell louder, and I can feel hot tears rolling down the dry of my cheeks and all of a sudden my nose is full of snot. The guy and the counter and the cigarettes and the hot-dog machine on the counter all go blurry and I can’t even read the red numbers on the register anymore; I’m just crying and swearing and I don’t even know why or what I’m saying.

Then the guy is around on my side of the counter and he’s got his big hand in the middle of my back, covering my spine, and his spread-out fingers reach almost across both my shoulder blades. My bones feel like a bird beneath his hand and I feel like if I fell back it’d catch me except he’s pushing me toward the door hard enough to make me trip over my feet and if I don’t watch out I’ll fly right into the glass. “Don’t come back,” he says and now his voice is mean and a new wave of tears and snot comes up from my chest. I shove into the door with my shoulder and stumble away from the hot push of his hand.

On the pavement the first thing I realize is I left my fucking change on the counter, all seventy-three cents, and my ribs jerk in and out again and I crumple down onto the pebbly gravel of the parking lot.

“Hey,” someone says above me, and I can hardly even lift my head to look—I can’t take one more thing. If it’s a cop or some guy hitting on me I think I’ll break into a million pieces and turn to dust. I nod just enough to let him know I heard him, though, so nobody can call me rude. “That guy never cuts anyone a break. I saw through the window. You hungry?”

His voice is nice enough to make the crying wear off for a second; I rub my eyes and look up. It’s just this kid. He’s my age I think and about my height, five eight or so, but bigger. He’s got the opposite body of me: instead of straight-up-and-down skinny, he’s broad through the shoulders and solid, almost stocky, with dark brown hair cut really short and freckles—and he’s dressed like a whole other world. His T-shirt and shorts are faded black like they’ve been in the sun for a year and he’s got patches sewn on everywhere and a knife strapped to his belt loop in a leather case that looks like he made it himself. Down by his boots there’s a big army bag, and tied to the bag is a piece of long dirty rope, and at the end of the rope is a brown pit bull, panting. He smiles at me. “I’ll be right back. You watch the dog?”

I nod and he goes into the 7-Eleven. The counter guy glares but doesn’t say anything, and I watch through the window as the kid microwaves two burritos and buys them and a Mountain Dew. When he gets his change back he looks at it and says something I can’t hear. Then the counter guy opens the register again and gives him three more quarters.

He comes back out, sits down next to the dog, and says “Thanks.” I must look scared because he goes “Germ’s friendly. He won’t hurt you.” I’ve never heard of a dog named Germ, but okay. He hands me the bag with the burritos. “I thought you could maybe use two.”

All the water that was in my eyes before is in my mouth now. I’m starving. I tell him thanks and take the bag, trying not to snatch it out of his hands and rip it open. He watches me and smiles. “My name’s Squid,” he says.

My mouth is so full I can barely chew, let alone talk. I try to say my name, but instead I make some weird kind of grunty noise and then my face turns red. I’m such a loser. “It’s cool,” he goes, and kind of laughs. “You can tell me after.”

After I choke down both burritos and chug half the Mountain Dew I feel like maybe I can breathe again. I have no idea why this guy is being nice to me. “Thanks” is the only thing I can think of to say, but it seems like not enough. He just smiles at me again. He keeps smiling. I don’t know if I’m funny or what. “I’m Rusty,” I remember to tell him.

“Cool,” he goes. “Where you from?” I tell him Bakersfield. I start to explain more, but then remember that I can’t: Jim always said no one should find out, no matter if they’re someone we know or not. I sort of trail off in the middle but Squid doesn’t seem to notice; he just nods and says “I hear Bakersfield sucks.” He doesn’t tell me where he’s from. Germ pants some more and I pet him.

“Oh,” Squid goes and reaches into his pocket. “I almost forgot.” He hands me three quarters. “This is yours.”

“Thanks,” I go, and take the change; then I realize I haven’t spent any money but I still just ate. “Do you want—” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

“Nah. It’s cool.” I keep watching him to see if he’s expecting something else from me, but he just pets the dog.

We hang out in the parking lot till the sky starts turning pink. Once in a while the 7-Eleven guy comes over and glares at us through the window; when he does, Squid reaches out his arm without even looking and hits the glass hard with the back of his hand. It always makes the guy go away.

That nervous feeling of not having something to do doesn’t happen when there’s another person there. Whenever the silence gets too long you can ask the other person questions and they’ll fill it up for you. After a while Squid says where he’s from, which is Arizona, and that he’s been in L.A. since last year. He’s sixteen. It sort of scares me that someone could live like this for a whole year without anything changing, especially when he asks me how long I’ve been here and I hear myself tell him a month and a half. It was only supposed to be a week.

Before I can think about that too much I ask him how he got here and he says “Trains.” I think he means Amtrak, but then he describes it: he snuck into the backs of freight trains and rode them for free, hidden out with his ex-girlfriend Annabelle. When they ran away they headed toward L.A. instead of Austin because the train to Texas runs near Mexico and INS will take you to jail. It doesn’t matter if you’re American or not; if you don’t pay they’ll come on the train and get you. So they went the other way. She came all the way to California with him, he says, and then a couple weeks went by and she met a guy who took her up to Berkeley. He sort of stops for a second when he tells me that part and I want to ask him about it, but I don’t know what to say.

I can’t believe the train thing, though. I never heard of anyone doing that except in movies, and never a kid. I didn’t even know there were such things as freight trains anymore. All of a sudden his face turns into something out of a storybook and I have about a hundred million questions I want to ask, but he says “C’mon. Let’s go meet my friends” and pulls me up by the elbow. Germ perks up his ears like we’re on an adventure.

We go down Hollywood a few blocks to this taco stand Benito’s. On the way I’m nervous and I wish that Jim was here; he always knows how to act and what to do. When we get close, Squid waves at two kids sitting on the dirty orange stools; I fall in step behind him as we walk up to them. The guy’s named Critter and he’s really tall and skinny with a stocking cap on top and has a face like nothing I’ve ever seen before except for on a billboard or a magazine. It’s almost like a girl’s, so beautiful, with all the bones lined up, pronounced and delicate, his long dark eyelashes ringing bright green eyes. I try not to stare. He nods at me and I sort of lift my chin at him but then I look at my feet.

The girl says “Hey” to me, sort of too loud like she’s trying to prove she’s there. She’s short, so I don’t have to raise my head too much to meet her eyes; when I do she looks me up and down in this way that’s supposed to seem brave but is obviously jumpy underneath. She can’t be older than thirteen. She’s got short magenta hair that looks like she cut it herself and a ring through her lip, and she’s chunky. Her clothes are cleaner than the rest of them, and her backpack is the kind you use for school, not camping. “I’m Eeyore,” she goes, and then she leans back into Critter and looks up at him.

“Eeyore just started hanging out with us,” Squid goes. “Right?” he asks her, and she sort of seems embarrassed that it hasn’t been very long. I don’t know why she would be; I just met them today.

“Couple weeks,” she goes.

Squid laughs. “More like a couple days.” Eeyore looks at the sidewalk, mad. “We found her back behind Whole Foods when we were Dumpstering. She like memorized their whole schedule. This kid knows how to get the good shit.” All of a sudden a big grin takes over Eeyore’s face; she sticks out her chest a little and beams up at Critter. Squid shoots me a look like he did it on purpose.

After a couple days, Germ starts to wag his tail when I talk to him. It’s nice being recognized; it hasn’t happened in a while. Not since Bakersfield. It’s exhausting to always only see brand-new faces and corners and sidewalks, to never get to settle on one, rest your eyes and feel like home. It wears you out. When I picture Jim in my head there’s this mad feeling that’s starting to mix in with the worry, but I still keep imagining him anyway, just because he’s the only thing I can really remember, the only thing that lets me know where I am.

But now Germ knows me, and Squid starts feeling familiar to me too: I know what he smells like and the sound of his voice. I have a little place to rest, even if it’s only small. Critter and Eeyore come and go some, but Squid is always there. He never leaves me alone. I memorize him fast; hanging out with him just feels sort of normal and he smiles at me so much I never worry about saying the wrong thing. One time I went off to find a pay phone, but I told him I was going to the bathroom. But everything else I can say.

I’ve done a good job with stretching my last dollar out: Eeyore’s always bringing us free food from trash cans I don’t know where, and Squid taught me to sleep in the alleys. I’d never spend the night out there alone—I’d feel so naked and peeled open I’d never be able to sleep—but with the rest of them around it’s okay. Kind of like camping, except without a tent or a fire or trees. Sometimes we go behind Whole Foods where you can smell the warm sugar of the bakery through the vents, or else in alleys by Benito’s. It’s never quiet enough to close my eyes and imagine Jim like in the hostel, but the rest of them fill the space laughing so usually I don’t feel it much. Eeyore and Critter huddle up in the middle of everyone: she curls into him like a little sister and he keeps her warm. Squid and I say good night to each other over the lump the two of them make and I soak in the heat across them.

After the first few days Eeyore quits talking so loud all the time, and as long as I don’t stand too close to Critter she’s sweet to me. When she’s not trying hard to stand up the tallest, you can see what she actually looks like: really young and like a baby bird, with all these soft spots that aren’t covered up by anything. I know that feeling. I have them too. I want to tell her she doesn’t have to put all that stupid hard stuff over them, that those spots are beautiful and the way to be safe is to find somebody who will touch them, not to cover them up. But she’d probably take it wrong.

It’s been a week of me hanging out with them when Critter goes to meet some guy one night and comes back with a backpack full of junk, which I’ve never seen before.

I’m actually not even sure what kind of drug junk is, although I know it’s something serious. I want to ask him if I can look at it but I know he’ll think I’m stupid, so I don’t. In the morning Critter says he’s gonna go unload the junk at Hollywood and Highland. Squid nods like it’s normal, but Eeyore’s eyes ping-pong up at Critter like she thinks he’ll never come back. Right away he asks her if she wants to come. She jumps up so fast she almost falls back down, and he holds out his hand in case she needs to balance. She doesn’t take it, even though you can tell she wants to.

They don’t come back that afternoon or night, or the next morning either. Squid doesn’t seem worried, but I am: I’m thinking about food. I don’t know any place to Dumpster besides Whole Foods and usually we don’t go that far west; I guess I got used to Eeyore doing it for us. And Squid always seems to have money, but I can’t ask him to pay for me. The one thing I could give him in return he wouldn’t want, and when you ask for stuff and don’t give back, people start wanting you to go away. Squid buys me a chicken and bean burrito without me asking the first morning they’re not back; it lasts me till it’s almost dark, but then I start getting that solid empty feeling in my stomach again.

That night Squid drinks a 40 and passes out in the alley. I lie there looking up at the moon and the stars and the helicopters, my hunger pangs too sharp for me to fall asleep, and realize I have to make some money.

Jim promised he’d show up before my cash ran out, and when I think about it I get really pissed that he hasn’t. A jolt runs through me like my blood is speeding up; it almost makes my stomach sick. But then I tell myself there has to be a reason, something that happened that’s keeping him away from his phone, and the pissed-off turns to worry, which is familiar and a whole lot better. I try to hang on to that feeling, keep it from switching back and scaring me again. My blood calms down and I remember that the thing I have to do is keep myself okay until he finds me. That’s what Jim said.

It wouldn’t be hard to work from here: it’s where I started anyway. Probably if I found a corner and stood out there a couple days I could make enough to live on for a week and even buy Squid a couple burritos. The problem is I have friends now. Squid is with me every day; he’d come looking if I left. He knows every corner and cross street in Hollywood, and if I stayed around here, he’d come find me.

When I imagine that, I feel like I’ve got dirt coating all my skin that won’t wash off and I look over at Squid, scared I’ll wake him just by picturing it. I know he wouldn’t hate me for it but he’d probably be grossed out and that’s worse. And it’s weird but I also feel this thing like it’d kind of be cheating on him, which is bizarre because I have a boyfriend, and even though he’s all the way back in Bakersfield, never picking up his phone, I haven’t ever felt like I was cheating on him.

I figure if Squid can sneak onto trains all across the country, I can ride a bus. And so in the morning when Squid goes for coffee I say I’m still sleepy, and while he’s gone I spange a dollar and get on the first bus going west. I ride it all the way to Venice. It takes two hours, but I finally get off at Rose and Pacific, three blocks from the liquor store parking lot, and when I walk up who of course is sitting there drinking out of a brown paper bag in broad daylight but Tracy.

“Hey.” I go up to her and kick her boot. “I think you owe me some fish tacos.” She looks up at me with this blank mean sleepy look that I’ve never seen before; it sort of scares me. But after about three seconds she sees who I am, and a big grin washes over her face and her eyes wake up again.

“What’s up!” She jumps to her feet and throws her arms around my neck. Her beer bottle hits the base of my skull but not too hard and I sort of laugh, surprised at getting hit but also that she’s so happy to see me. She takes a little step back and appraises me, like I’ve seen guys do sometimes when I’m working, except she puts a twinkle behind it. “You want fish tacos, you have to earn ’em, sweetie,” she says to me. “Let’s get to work.”

That whole day we’re like a factory: four tricks, one after the other. I’d never be able to do that many by myself, but with her I can. The first three guys stop for me and she tags along; they’re weirded out that Tracy’s there but she acts like it’s so normal I guess they feel like they can’t say anything. She doesn’t tell crazy stories like before, which to tell you the truth I’m a little disappointed, but she’s fun the whole time. Even though it’s embarrassing doing stuff in front of a girl, it’s way easier with her there. I don’t feel the kind of pushed-down scared alone I usually do, trying to make my face tough so the guys won’t be mean. With her around, my eyes relax and no one can hurt me. Tracy’s knees-and-elbows skinny, but having her in the backseat is like sleeping curled up beside Germ: it’s always good to have someone next to you who bites. Also, with her there I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. Usually I have to squeeze my eyes shut and try really hard to take my head to Jim or Disneyland or Taco Bell: all my someplace elses are far away from the lonely sweaty cars and it takes a lot of work to get to them. But with Tracy there the someplace else is right behind me, giggling, and she turns the whole thing into one big joke that we walk away from with lunch money.

That’s how it is with the first three, at least; but the fourth one stops for her, not me. He’s more than forty and he’s got a mustache, which is always gross. I’m thinking he’s not gonna be cool with me coming, but Tracy grabs me by the hand and pulls me in. His first question to her is “Who the hell is he?” He asks without even looking at me.

“He’s my little brother; I’m just babysitting.” She has this way of saying the most ridiculous things like they are completely one hundred percent normal, so normal you feel stupid arguing with her or even asking questions.

The guy just grunts and drives to an alley behind Lincoln. He puts the car in park and goes for her right away. I know I’m supposed to say funny things and distract Tracy like she does for me, but I can’t think of anything to say. Also, I can tell this guy thinks I’m invisible and that’s the only thing protecting me from getting my ass kicked. So I just slink down in the backseat as low as I can, and in my head I shrink smaller and smaller until I understand what people mean when they say “fly on the wall.” From the back the only thing I can see is Tracy’s face. She’s looking out the windshield at nothing. Her eyes have that glassy tired mean look, and there’s nothing I can do to make it funny or easier.

When it’s over, she holds her hand out without looking at him. He sets the money on her palm like it’s a table and I can tell he wants to say something but he doesn’t. She opens the door and gets out onto the gravel.

I have to almost run to catch up with her. She’s staring straight ahead with empty eyes; I’m afraid she’s mad at me. But when I finally get beside her, panting, she snaps her eyes out of their stare and fills them up with herself again. “Hey,” she goes, and pulls the money out of her pocket to show me. “Look, he gave me a tip.”

“Cool,” I say, still watching to make sure she’s really here. She takes my hand and leads me toward the beach.

We go to the biggest food stand on the whole boardwalk, the one on the corner by Muscle Beach with yellow menus painted on the outside walls, and get pizza and onion rings and fries with extra ketchup and mayonnaise. Tracy buys an extra-large Coke for us too, and we take our food up to the hill by the sand and sit down on the thin cool grass and eat. If you look north you can see the curve of Malibu; the sunset silhouettes it, dark black mountains against the burning orange sky, and the pink ocean spread out in front of it forever, glistening and moving. If you look south it’s all factories, some kind of chemical refinery: spidery towers stacked up all the way to the ocean, delicate and complicated as lace but ugly and stinky and made of hard metal. The smog browns the sunset and helicopters hover like big black bugs. While we eat, I turn my head back and forth a couple times, up at Malibu, down at Long Beach; I feel like a different person depending which direction I’m pointed. I finally settle on the mountains and finish the fries.

When we’re done, I tell Tracy to take off her shoes and follow me north. We walk up the beach as the sun sinks and the sky turns purple, then gray, then black. By the time our feet get achy, we’re almost up by Malibu; through Venice, past Santa Monica and the Vons by the highway pouring its late-night grocery-store light onto the sand. I’ve never been up this far before, but I know if you go much farther the beach starts being private property and you’ll set off alarms just by walking. Here it’s still free. We plop down on the sand, and right away Tracy lies back and starts counting stars. She only knows a couple. The waves crash in front of me and cars rush by in back, but the noise and moving feel really far away, like there’s a cocoon of quiet and dark around us. After a long time she turns to me. “So where’d you come from, anyway?”

I realize we never talked about any of that: we were brother and sister from Fresno, it was all made up. “Bakersfield,” I say.

“That’s not too far,” she goes. “What’re you doing here?”

I start to say something but it stops in my throat like a plug. Jim made me promise not to tell and I haven’t, not the whole two months I’ve been here waiting. That’s what keeps me tied to him: the cords from me to Jim, from here to Bakersfield, are made up of a million little sparkling threads like spiderwebs; those threads are built from promises between us, the only thing that keeps me from floating away. If I tell our secret I know I’ll cut those cords, and come untied, and I don’t know where I’ll go.

But Jim hasn’t answered his phone in two months and I can’t remember the sound of his voice. And Tracy is here, right here, and she is the only one who I could ever tell. And the night around us is quiet enough to keep a secret. So I do it. I tell her I am in love and I explain who Jim is and why I had to go, and that he said he’s coming, but that he hasn’t yet. I try to explain to her the feeling of locking together with someone like a puzzle piece, and it’s not just your outsides that fit or the way you seem to the world, but all the inside parts of you that you didn’t even know had a shape until they matched up so perfectly with his. Tracy’s looking at me like she doesn’t quite believe what I’m saying, like she’s not sure it’s possible for a person to feel that way with someone, and I understand: lots of people don’t believe in love. And you have to believe in it before it will let you see or touch it, so if you don’t make the leap you might not ever see it. But it’s there.

Tracy doesn’t know that. I can tell. But she asks me lots of questions, and it feels so good to answer. Jim’s been more important to me than even myself for almost a year, and all of it has only happened in two places: inside of me or in the space between me and him. Telling Tracy’s like opening a faucet.

It comes out of my mouth like water: the things he said at the beginning, what it’s like to know a person’s smell, the anxious catch that now has dulled to normal when I hold the pay phone and it rings and rings. How underneath I don’t believe he’s coming anymore, and I wish I could turn the air beside me into something solid to fill the hole he leaves. How sometimes when he’d touch me I’d go out onto the very edges of myself, far like on a tightrope or a plank, and balance knowing there was only air to catch me; how he’d hold me there till it got scary, sometimes longer, and it was realer and more raw than any thing I’d ever felt. How he would always close his eyes and seem so comfortable, casual even, and I was always amazed at that: how brave he must be for it not to scare him at all. How sometimes it broke me into two pieces, and I’d lie there under him naked and stretched out past my skin, and another me would watch from the ceiling. Even if it was too much I had to grow to hold it, because it belonged to me now, and I belonged to him, and if I let any of the pressure of it spill like water from my faucet mouth, it would all leak out and be gone from me forever. That’s what he always said.

And he was right: now the words go out of me, and Tracy catches them, and somehow the swelling of the secrets shrinks down and Jim is smaller inside me, and far away. My own skin goes back to my own size finally and is tight enough to hold me; the space beside me is full of air and ocean and I’m all one piece. My cheeks are hot with tears, which run under my chin making it sticky, and I try to sniffle them up but they just keep coming, and I don’t even know why, and Tracy takes my hand and holds it in the sand and we both watch the waves break, spreading out and getting sucked back into the sea.

We stay there all night, watching the red lights from the oil drills blink way out toward the sky. When the sun first starts to lift the curtain of black we finally fall asleep, just a little while before the cars start their early morning roar.

I wake up before Tracy does and lie there, watching. Everything looks different in daylight. I have this funny feeling in my chest, half light and half nervous, like I changed something big last night, even though all I did was talk.

I know Tracy didn’t get the stuff I said about jigsaw puzzles and fitting together and love. But when I talked about the other stuff, the secret stuff—being stretched out past your edges, split in half, and the feeling you could fall and fall and nobody will ever let you tell—that was when she held my hand.

Something happened then: part of me that’s been knotted up for a year came loose when I started telling all those things and Tracy heard me. Her fingers locked in mine, our palms pressed tight; we were together, but I could feel where she ended and I began. I never had that with a person ever: being close and whole at the same time. And I told her all the secret scary things, and the whole time she kept holding on to me.

I haven’t showered in a month almost, but I feel clean. I lie there breathing and watch the nannies show up at the beach, all black and brown with other people’s shiny white Malibu babies on their backs. They look at each other and laugh and are bored with the children and really, really tired. For some reason they make me think of me and Tracy working.

All of a sudden I want to get out of here. The beach is softer than the sidewalk in Hollywood and Tracy is my friend but our friendship is too much in the backs of guys’ cars. I want to go back where no one knows that part of me.

Squid bought me a burrito just because he liked me. He didn’t want anything back. My head fills up with his face and I need to get back to him.

I shake Tracy’s shoulder. “Tracy,” I whisper.

She rubs her eyes and looks up at me, bleary and soft. “Hey,” she goes.

“I’m gonna catch the bus back in to Hollywood,” I tell her. “You want anything before I go?”

She sits up and looks a way I’ve never seen her look: sad. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah, I gotta, uh—” and I don’t know how to finish that sentence so I just scratch my head and look at the sand.

“Okay,” she goes, louder, in her normal voice: sharp like broken glass, rough like cigarettes. “That’s cool, man.”

“Okay,” I go.

“Okay,” she goes again. I keep expecting her to say something more, but she doesn’t; she just puts on her boots and starts lacing them up.

I stand up. “So I’ll see ya.” I don’t want to say when, because I’m hoping to not have to come back.

“Okay,” she goes. I walk over the hill of sand.

Staring out the gray-streaked bus window as the city rolls by, I realize I’ve been awake for two hours and haven’t thought about Jim once. It’s weird: I’ve been with Jim the whole time I’ve been a person; before that I was just a kid. And it’s always been like in order to keep being myself I have to be with him, or wait for him, or imagine him at least. And now I’m not. Instead I’m thinking about Tracy’s face, and how it changes back and forth from hard to laughing, like she’s going someplace else and coming back, and how I kind of recognize that back and forth even though I don’t know why. I’m thinking that I have to find another way of making money, even though I’m not sure I really can. And I’m thinking about Squid. Inside my head I can see the exact shape of his cheek and where his freckles are, and there’s something that folds up inside me, curled round and warm and right, when I think about Squid’s face.

When I get off the 217 bus by Benito’s, the three of them are right there, where they always are. It makes me feel like there’s something I can count on. Germ sees me first and barks. Squid looks up and gets a big grin on his face and something twists inside me, in a good way even though it makes my legs feel wobbly. When I walk up Eeyore gives me a hug and Critter goes “Hey, man,” and nods.

“Where’d you go, man?” Squid asks me, his face wide open.

I hadn’t thought about having to explain. I freeze for a second, hold my breath and watch the traffic like I’m actually looking at something. “Uh—I went over to the beach,” I say, and kick the sidewalk.

“Needed a little vacation, huh?” Critter says, and cracks a smile.

“Yeah,” I breathe out. I meet his eyes: he can tell it’s not the truth, but he isn’t fucking with me either. “Yeah,” I say again, relieved. And that’s all anyone says about it.

That night when it gets dark, Critter and Eeyore go off to Dumpster for tomorrow. They’re gone for a while, long enough for me and Squid to eat some tacos and for Squid to drink a 40 and get tired. When his eyes start to droop, we lie down in the alley by Benito’s, heads on our backpacks. Some nightclub’s got a searchlight and they’re sweeping it against the sky, throwing up big beams that crisscross the black and drown out the stars. It makes me dizzy to look at it and I turn onto my side, away from Squid.

Even though I was up all last night with Tracy, I’m not tired. My whole body’s awake, perked up like I’m nervous, except I’m not, not really. I watch the wall of the building beside us, count the bricks, try to stay quiet so Squid can fall asleep.

I’ve been lying there for fifteen minutes when I hear rustling behind me. I stay on my side, breathing, and listen to Squid move. There’s more rustling and then I feel him near me, but not touching. He’s close enough that I can feel his breath on my neck, just a little warmer than the hot night air. My heart starts pounding like a drum against the inside of my chest, so hard I’m sure he can hear it. I time my breaths so they’re exactly even, faking sleep as perfectly as I can.

He doesn’t move for about a minute. Eight breaths exactly. Then he’s up against me and I almost jump out of my skin, like when you’re concentrating hard and someone suddenly talks. But I keep myself from moving and my eyes stay closed. My heartbeat’s up in my head now, fluttering. Squid puts his arm around my waist and just stays there, pressed against me like spoons. His face brushes up against the back of my neck and I can feel his lips. I keep waiting for him to do something else, to want something from me, but he doesn’t. We stay like that all night.

I sleep harder than I have since I came here. By the time I wake up the sun is high over our heads, spreading out in the sky, and Squid’s a few feet away giving Germ water from a squeezy bottle. I wait a minute before I move too much or speak, so I’ll have a chance to watch without him knowing. His shoulders are as wide and strong as two of me put together. His freckles are like a map across his cheeks.

After a minute I get nervous he’ll see me looking, so I yawn loud, like I just woke up, and stretch my arms. He looks over at me. “Hey,” he goes. “What’s up.”

“Morning,” I go, and then wait. My heart starts thumping in my chest again. I guess I’m expecting him to say something about last night, or at least act different, but he just keeps giving water to Germ.

I guess I must be staring because after a minute he looks over and goes “What?” My whole body is hot and prickly but I say “Nothing.”

He finishes with the dog and goes “I bet Critter and Eeyore are at Winchell’s. Let’s get some donuts,” and gets up. Just like that. The whole way to Winchell’s he doesn’t say anything, and I feel like I’m keeping a big secret from him even though we both know the same things.

Since that night it’s been different and almost exactly the same. Eeyore hangs on Critter’s neck, and we four sleep back in the alleys and eat two-day-old donuts, and Squid sits with me to spange, and grins and buys me food when he’s got cash. But he doesn’t touch me again, and he never says anything about that night. I guess I feel like I can’t either. Every day I spend beside Squid on the sidewalk I can feel my insides lock more into place with his, fitting up perfect like a brand-new puzzle, and so my secrets stretch out past my skin, out there unarmored in the hot air of Hollywood, and I don’t want to point them out to him if he can’t already see. I’m pretty sure it’s not the same for him. Which means that there are lots of things I’ll always have to never say.

But I still don’t get how you can touch someone and act afterward like it didn’t ever happen, like you’re still just two separate people, the same safe pocket of air swelled up between you. When Squid and I are waiting for our food to come up at Benito’s I watch him watch it cook and I think: I know what your breath feels like. I wonder if he ever thinks that about me.