The Pursuit of Miss Heartbreak Hotel Read online

  I’m the first to stick my skull under. The falls tug at my neck and I yelp and heel it back, tossing my dripping shag. I squat by the cascade and submerge massive slow and soon I’m beneath it, the torrent crashing cymbals onto my head and shoulders and legs and the volume of the world is flipped to nil as the surge of water engulfs me and I’m pelted until I’m near coma and numb. I think of Oma and wish in an aching rush she could do something like this, get outta that creaky cot and dingy room and remember what life feels like, really, pulling and yanking and tearing at your skin and head and limbs.

  And in a moment of reckoning, I realize I’m terrified of what I’ve always wanted and maybe now could have. I’m terrified. It’s so simple. I emerge gasping and sputtering in the heavy glare of the sun, and the ruckus of the easy wooded world is deafening and exuberant and raw.

  And I love this clawing, screaming, tormenting life. I love this life of mine.

  Soft Suns

  I lay out on the grass of the old swimming pool and I snag my speak, buzz Eve a few lines I’ve composed and edited over and over in my head.

  Sorry I bailed. Way lame. If u aren’t 2 busy plotting my death and/or sticking pins in ur voodoo doll of me, u should come by. Oma was just asking bout my little friend Evie.

  I stare at my screen and wait. I wonder where she is, what she’s doing, who she’s with. The sun is massive hot. Too hot. Oppressive. I pull out a sweaty grocery receipt from my pocket and jot down a poem that comes quick to my mind. A crank sad stab at an apology.

  I left before the sun. But

  just after the moon. So no one could see

  or tell about

  the half girl in her half body,

  crumpled in her half hand a

  kiss, goodbye

  unleft and unremembered

  for half-true reasons

  even half girls will never truly know.

  —I’m sorry.

  I fold up the paper and tuck it deep down into my pocket. I squirm and wait. I’m a sticky little gummy worm wriggling in the dirt and I burrow my toes through the grass and into the cool top layer of soil. The cicadas’ hum is a 360-degree dissonant symphony in my ears. I’m drowning in this mess of me.

  Finally, Eve buzzes back.

  Be there in ten.

  Bull’s-Eye

  “Really, I’m sorry I bailed.” We’re sitting on the warm stone wall overlooking the old badminton field. Below our feet, busy bees scurry in white clover.

  “I get it,” Eve says, the midday sun glowing her profile a golden blaze.

  “I mean it. And then I used my Oma to get you to heel it over here and now she’s asleep.” Eve laughs, looks at me with one eye closed to the light.

  “She’s probably not even sick,” she says, shoving my shoulder, and my pulse jumps as I’m snagging her hand, my fingers curling into hers. My armpits and knees erupt in sweat.

  “No, she is,” I manage to say.

  “I know.”

  I climb down the wall monkey-style, showing off, and we wander through the yard and scope a jumble of bright green three-speed Schwinn spins stashed away in Oma’s musty shed for what must be eons. Swooping handlebars, leather saddles, and red-rusted shifters that sit at a massive cricket angle on the top tube frame and I say let’s take a ride but Eve says these bad boys aren’t going anywhere. I move through Opa’s relic of a workshop like an old pro, show Eve the ancient tools, aged wood grooved in the shapes of his thick, strong hands. And then I get down to tinkering. She watches as I pump full a flat.

  “It’s hit these ole tires are filling. I was for sure the inner tubes would be wasted.”

  She crinkles up her nose. “Inner tubes?”

  Next I fiddle with her spin’s chain that hangs like loose teeth and she’s standing, scoping from over my shoulder. The fabric of her flannel is brushing against my back.

  “Those things are massive filthy.”

  “It’s grease, Jack.”

  “Grease?” And I smile.

  I show her what’s an Allen wrench and how to squirt a can of WD-40 and tighten a bolt and realign the brakes.

  “Beatbug?” she says, and I look up, a black smear running a line from her freckled nose to her ear. I drop my wrench to stand, wipe her face with the cuff of my sleeve.

  “Yeah?”

  “When did you know you were into betties?”

  “Oh,” I say. “I … dunno. I guess I’ve always known. Ever since my first crush, way back when.”

  “Way back when when?”

  “Kindergarten, maybe. Does that count?” She nods, slides her fingertips into the front pocket of my jeans, and my skin is live wires, hot circuits. I play it cool. “But I’ve always been massive stiff scared to do anything about it. No matter how much I wanted to, I just never did. Never thought I could.”

  “Hmm,” she hums, stepping back to snag a ball of twine, twirling one end round and round her finger. “You weren’t stiff scared with me.”

  I laugh. “I was! Sure as shootin’ I was. I’m still sorta yeller. You ain’t?”

  She shrugs. “Not with you. You don’t spook me, Beatstreet Butler. You’re sugary as peach ’n’ cream pie, ponies ’n’ pigtails galore.”

  “Me?” I mock horror. “I’ll have you know I’m the most meanest, most durn tootin,’ most gun-totin’-est, most hard-knockin’-est flap-flippin’-Jack in these here parts. Heart a’ stone, thas Bull’s-Eye Butler.”

  “Sure,” she says. “Whaver you say, Bull’s-Eye,” and I laugh, squat beside the spins to finish up.

  “All right, Thumbs.” I stand, wiping my hands on an old, dirty rag. “Let’s roll.”

  “Y’know, I forgot you’re so gosh-dang handy, what with all this tinkerin’. It’s pretty dang hot.” And I’m grinning flap-Jack big and massive wanna jump all up in her bones.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Eve and I are happyface riding our switch old spins on the rail-trail when Eve grins mischief, chug-chugging quick ahead.

  “Go Children Slow,” I warn. “These ole beasts can’t shred gravel the way they used to.”

  She cranes her neck and smiles back, pedaling faster still. Then her handlebars get wobbly, and bump bump she goes, over a tree root and a bolt in her seat snaps clean and she’s careening from the path, rodeo-style through the trees. Her spin’s chain catches fast on a stump and it shoots off the gears and she’s grinding to a gut-wrenching stop.

  Her shoulders are shaking as I roll up, worrywart central.

  “What’s broken?” I say, skidding out and dashing to her side.

  And then I see she’s laughing riots, and when she scopes my flipped mug, she says, “Look at you, Bull’s-Eye Butler, hard-knockin’, flap-flippin’, heart-a’-stone-Jack.” She’s laughing so hard even I crack a small smile. “Rinse and repeat, Bug. I didn’t break. Not even close,” and she drops her cranked-up spin to the ground. The seat gives another groan and crack and she’s a flip-flop howling hyena again.

  “Oh, word, Thumbs,” I say, kick at its tire. “Massive riot. But what Popsicle stick’s gonna tinker this in-n-out heap?”

  She smiles. “You?”

  “Nope. We.” And I poke her in the ribs and she wraps her arms around my neck and my legs turn to jelly but I don’t buckle or sway. I pull her hard into me under the soft rustle of woodsounds and birdsong and we stand there breathing into the other, my whole being electric with her touch. A mom pushing a stroller comes jogging by, so we quickly peel ourselves apart and heel it home to tinker the chain and seat together. Bug ’n’ Thumbs.

  * * *

  We’re just finishing up in the garage, the sun cresting high in the sky, when Dad, Mart, and Miles pull in with a truck full of grub. We help them lug it in and I roll my eyes as Dad grills Eve on her post–high school plans, on college, career, and the great beyond.

  I tell him to lay off, but Eve, she’s radiant and eloquent and has it all figured out: the Master Plan. I cut in, asking if she’s set up a 401(k), or prere
gistered for any retirement communities in the Florida Keys. Dad just laughs, slaps a palm to his forehead, and announces he’s upgrading his Daughter Plan, thinks he can get a good trade-in rate at the store. Good ole Marta goes splitting a gut at this until she remembers she’s also his daughter and then she’s throwing a small fit. She stalks off into the living room and Dad gives me a funny look when I say I’m gonna drive Eve home, so probably won’t be back around until late.

  “What?” I say, furrowing my brow.

  “Nothing,” he says. “Nothing at all.”

  But I don’t believe him.

  Centipedes

  Eve and I decide to heel it quick down to the lake before the sunset and I shadow her steps as we twist and turn down trails. She’s a light woods walker and a massive flip whistler, but does it anyway. I laugh and mimic her wayward melodies and we toot and flute our way to the water’s murky edge. Hot pine needles and swampy sludge and slime are in my nose and I inhale deep.

  “Smells like centipedes.”

  “Centipedes?” she says, eyebrow cocked, curly hair aflame.

  “Word, flap-Jack. What’s so flip ’bout that?”

  “Dunno,” she laughs. “I didn’t know centipedes smelled like anything.”

  “They do! Behind our old shack in the city, under Mom’s lilacs, there were these cold, mossy rocks that, like, a gajillion centipedes lived under, just whirlwinding their crank little legs away. And it smelled just like this.”

  Eve catches my eye. “You don’t really talk so much about your mom anymore.”

  “Not much to scat. Just that she’s gone.” I walk a few steps, feel the place inside me that holds her—small, hard, sharp. “Her choice, not mine. I try not to be jammed at her for heeling on us. Just dial on Christmas, Thanksgiving, say hullo. Whatever.”

  She sighs. “That’s very evolved of you. If my mom jetset to start another life with other Jacks…”

  “Yeah, well, Marta kept beating me out for Most Angry Award, so for the past three, four years I’ve been working Indifference pretty hard. It’s going well.”

  She laughs. “I see.”

  “And anyway, those goddamn rocks of hers with the goddamn centipedes, they smelled just like this.”

  Eve steps forward, clutches my earlobes with her warm digits, and she kisses me in a patch of sun like a hummingbird on a lilac. Nose to nose, forehead to forehead, bumper to bumper.

  “Your mom shouldn’t have jetset on you,” she whispers. “Shouldn’t have in a million years.” And I press my eyes closed, willing tears not to come, but they do. We stand and she holds me, and the moments tick by only for us.

  “I’m a mess,” I mumble and then she’s smiling, nipping at my nose, and I poke her in the ribs, growl, and she hoots, spinning on her heels. I wipe my sad-sack face and lope after her down the worn and winding path. Nothing should feel this good.

  * * *

  “That does not smell like centipedes,” she says as we round a corner to the lake onto a large stone outcropping. The air’s pungent with canna and we’re suddenly standing above a gang of five red-eyed smiling-Jacks I know so well.

  Dream Queen Raine with Mister Blue Eyes, and three other party hardies peer up at us and say, “What’s beat, Butler!” and Eve and I shimmy and shake down the rocks. Eve’s hush as I scat with Raine and Blue and I can see Eve’s not hit with these Jacks. I introduce her and they scope her massive skeptic but then Blue says, “Eve Brooks. Nate Gray’s girl, yeah?” and Eve laughs sorta crickets, shakes her head.

  “They’re spilt,” I say. “Banana split,” and everyone nods their heads, like Eve being split with Nate makes her A-OK to crashpad their powwow.

  We take hits of their harsh canna and soon I’m laughing and squinting into the lake’s glimmering glare, befuddled and full of stupid, mindless joy. I’m linking nets with Blue, who’s cracking me up, thinking for sure he saw a whole family of beaver swim by, when Raine busts in and pulls me away and slings an arm around my shoulder.

  “Well, the rumors are true,” she says, and my mug’s massive hot and glowing as I sling my own heavy arm over her. And it suddenly feels so normal. Raine Hall feels okay.

  “Pigs can fly? I know. But, they need two seats and don’t fly as much as they used to.”

  “Wow,” she laughs. “That was … creative. But no, wee-Butler. My ship’s a-sailin’. I’m jetset in a week. Off to the great unknown! Well, the Cayman Islands.”

  “Man-o, Jack! But what in tarnation’ll you do without me or this hog-killin’ town?” and she’s giggling, her head tipped toward mine.

  “Well, I dunno ’bout this rathole dump, but you could stow away as first mate. Mend sails, bum smokes, hit canna in the sun, sauce on brews, and dip-skinny. What more could a betty-Jack want?”

  “Solid ground.” I grin, stomping my feet. “‘Ain’t flip in life worth doin’ if it cain’t be done from a horse,’ I always say. I’m Bull’s Eye Butler, lily-bellied mainland-lovin’ flap-Jack, and I ain’t too blowhard t’admit it.” I look back grinning at Eve and she rolls her eyes. “Too far?” I ask. She kicks at a rock.

  Raine tosses back her head, cracking up. “You’re so Ophelia, Jack.”

  “Certifiable.”

  Then another canna’s passed, but Eve shakes her head and I know she wants to jetset. I try to catch her eyes but she darts her gaze to the lichen-laden rock. I say, “Word,” to everyone and Raine and I have a quick hug. She sticks her digits in my speak, tells me to dial if I can find a pair of adult-sized arm floaties as Eve and I heel it up the trail.

  As we walk, Eve’s hush and heels it quickly ahead. She stumbles on a root and I catch her but she yanks away her hand.

  “Hold it, Jack,” I say. She stops but doesn’t turn around.

  “What?” she asks the trees.

  “What’s broken, Thumbs?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right,” I say. I put my hand on her hip and she shifts her weight on her feet. She turns her head slightly over her shoulder.

  “It’s, like, you were trying so hard.”

  “Me?”

  “And she was, like, drooling all over your crank flap-Jack jokes.”

  “Um.”

  “Dippin’ skinny?” she says, eyebrows raised.

  “Dippin’ skinny?”

  She shakes her curls and turns to face me. “I’ll spell it out. You, Jack, were massive flirt with that flap-Jack, Raine Hall. And she was massive flirt with you.”

  I nod slowly. “O-kay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, maybe that’s a little bit truth. But, I’m curious, which one jams you most?”

  She sticks out her chin, enraged. “Both!” she says, tossing her hands in the air and I can’t help but laugh. “What could possibly be riot right now?”

  “You.”

  “Me.”

  “You, Jack, are jealous.”

  “Am not.”

  “Am, too. And it’s making you Ophelia-pants.”

  “No,” she says. “It’s Raine and her massive phony-Jack vibe that’s driving me Ophelia-pants, or whatever. And you, Bull’s-Eye Butler, pulling that phony cowboy-Jack scat with her!”

  “You love when I scat cowboy-Jack!”

  “Yeah—to me!”

  “Brooks, you are so massive green-eyed. Admit it!”

  “No,” Eve says again. She turns away from me and brings her fingers to her lips. “Fine,” she finally says. “Maybe I am green-eyed. Happy?”

  “Most definitively,” I say and wrap my nets around her waist and push my nose into her swan-song neck. She tilts her head onto mine and I’m laughing into her coiled amber shag.

  “I got jealous,” she says, pouting big, as she turns to face me and I touch my nose to hers and kiss her sad mouth. I kiss her again. She finally smiles.

  “I s’pose this means you’re really beatstreet for me.”

  “I s’pose it maybe does.” She frowns. “I also s’pose this means you’re gonna stop being fli
rt with flap-Jacks like Raine Hall?”

  “Durn tootin’,” I say. “Cuz you’re my cowgirl, and me, I’m yours,” and she laughs out loud and kisses me something fierce. I hold her tight and Eve, she curls into me like a gently closing flower.

  Jive

  A hop and a skip later and we’re skating light along the end of the darkening path, laughing our skulls off about massive dragonfly sex happening all over kingdom come, when we crashpad into two of her flapple-Jacks in the parking lot. Pretty Penny One and Two. This town is just too dang small.

  “Clash,” Eve whispers and they wave and beep beep the remote lock on their massive swank whip.

  “Word, EB!” They’re both superfreeze flip in shades so massive, their frames swallow their mugs and in their lenses, Eve is tiny, wavering and warped.

  “Word, Jacks,” Eve says, sporting a fashion of smile she’s never worn with me.

  “Geezuschrist! Evelyn Brooks! Where the flip’ve you been all our life?” they say. Their shags are immaculately combed and they sport slinky sarongs with long strands of bathing suit ties looped and bowed at every corner of their bony, tanned bodies.

  “Dunno, sweet-Jacks,” Eve says. “I’ve been gigging at the restaurant a ton.”

  “You should dial us or something. We dialed your speak like a gajillion times,” they say. “We have to get into it before we all jetset for colley.” They both tote massive billowing purses with snaps and buckles and bulges and fringes, strapped with thick bands that drape over their gaunt shoulders.

  “Word,” Eve says, faking a frown. “I wasn’t hit to your dials. My speak’s, like, crank, or something. It’s been acting massive flip.” Just then Eve’s speak rings and she yanks it from her pocket, hits ignore. Their eyebrows arch. I laugh. I cough. I shuffle my feet. I’m a parody of a flap-Jack in a massive crickets jam. I back away toward my banger.