The Pursuit of Miss Heartbreak Hotel Read online

  She’s like warm water on my arctic skin as her body presses gently into mine, her soft voice sweet sugar in my ears. Beatbug, she whispers as I rise and fall, slowly, and I’m easy and calm as I’m lulled over the edge by my quiet lust. My breath comes deep, my heart cage pounds, my body aches for more, but I lie still. Heavy and clear. I curl onto my side and hug a dog-scented pillow to my chest. I imagine my arms wrapping around Eve’s warm body and hot, raw tears come in fiery drops from my closed-shut eyes as I rock my imaginary lover to sleep.

  I dream Oma and I are walking, hand in hand, into the sea.

  Shrapnel

  Over morning OJ, granola, and a hangover the metric weight of King Kong, Dad comes into Oma’s kitchen and gives me the parental once-over. I can only imagine what a washed-up sad sack I look like this morning, what with my frizzed-out braids, bloodshot eyes, brains smoking from the holes of my ears.

  He sits down beside me and his steady, measured presence pulls at my scratchy lids, my limbs crying out to curl up against him and sleep for a hundred thousand years. Even so, I still can’t shake last night’s lingering jazz of possibility.

  “Well, Daughter,” he says, pouring us each a steaming cuppa joe. “Didn’t know you were joining the sleepover party. We could have painted each other’s toenails and talked about makeup.”

  I chuckle, shovel in a spoonful of crunchy goodness. Miles walks in, plunks down on a stool, and picks up a bowl and spoon.

  “Y’know, Louie,” Dad says, rubbing his face. “I don’t think it would kill you to call, like ever. Tell me where you’re at, what’s going on, everything’s okay.”

  “Yeah, Louie,” Miles says, spitting milk. “It wouldn’t kill you to call.”

  Dad takes a breath. “Luce, you smell … And look at you…,” he groans. “I get that it’s graduation and all, but c’mon, kid, pull yourself together. We got ourselves a family crisis on hand.”

  My brother nods. “A family crisis.”

  “Miles, can it,” Dad says, and Miles looks at me, giggles.

  I look hard at Dad’s creased-around-the-edges eyes, study the small scar at the crux of his chin. He watches me warily me from behind the heavy bags under his bloodshot eyes.

  “What?”

  “Where’d you get that?” I say, pointing my dripping spoon at his chin. “I never noticed it before.” Miles leans in, too, takes a good look.

  Dad furrows his brow, sits forward. “Louie, are you feeling okay? I mean, besides Oma—”

  “Dying?”

  He sighs, closes his eyes.

  Dad frowns, shakes his head. “We need to talk about college, Lu. And the partying. And Marta. Mart’s home now. The house is getting full. And Mom. You need to call your mom.” His voice trails off, falls quiet, and he presses a thick, shaking hand to his eyes. A tear rolls slowly down his cheek and Miles puts a small palm on Dad’s thick shoulder.

  I look at him and realize I haven’t even tried to absorb what he’s going through, losing his mother, his last living parental. An emotional infant, I believe, were Marta’s words. And it occurs to me again that life, it’s ticking on by, all the time. My insides melt and I want to say or do something to help, but before I can get my act together and be a decent human, Dad stands and heels it to the bathroom, Miles close behind. And I’m too late. To give him a hug or tell him how sorry I am. Anything.

  I get up, do a gaggle of dishes, and then Zoë’s buzzing my speak, reminding me (though she doesn’t need to) that the Pennies’ toaster is tonight and neither of us are gonna miss it if it’s the last flippin’ thing we ever do. She says she’ll swing by and we can hang for the day, and just as I’m making my not-so-stealthy escape, Marta, looking both well rested and well read, comes sauntering in the front door. I brace myself.

  The Cousins are piling in, too, Auntie Julie’s little girl, and Auntie Kay’s twin boys. Uncle Edgar, Kay’s husband, is already getting going on a round of early morning Republican Cross Fire with any left-minded fishy chump enough to bite the lure. And my sister-Jack, no doubt wake-and-baked out of her skull, is eyeing the bait with red-eyed interest.

  I slink by the crowd at the door, dodging the free-flying political shrapnel. Between breaths Marta shakes her head, hissing disapproval at me like a slow-deflating tire.

  “Be right back, Jacks,” I lie and hop down the steps, snag my spin, and start heeling on foot up the hill. Not a moment too soon, Zoë and Gideon are pulling up beside me, Zoë tweaked because I gave such lame-o directions to my Oma’s and she got lost three times.

  I apologize and load my bike on her rack, settle into the back seat. Up front, Zo and Gid talk low, some major heart-Jack drama boiling in their ever-simmering pot, both of them giving me and my sick-old-person aura a wide berth. I still haven’t really spilled to Zoë what’s going on, just how serious it is. It hasn’t felt right. Or real. I think maybe saying it out loud will make it true, so I don’t say anything at all.

  Miss Heartbreak Hotel

  We sunbathe the day away on Gid’s new back patio, and come dusk, we heel it to my empty, echoing house to shower and slap on some proper clothes. I wait around while Zo experiments with about twenty different—though very similar—outfits and I nervously chew my nails and drag a tar out my bedroom window. No more after this one. For real. I go to the bathroom and rinse and repeat with mouthwash and say, unblinking into my own eyes, “No more.”

  We park at Green Lake and follow the Pennies’ hand-drawn, red-crayon treasure map to Clay Beach. Along the narrow wooded path, we throw back searing swigs of Cuervo from the Five-Fingered Flask and we know we approach X marks the spot when we see the flickering bonfire and hear the hollers and squeals of a toaster, sharp in the night.

  At the bonfire I put my nose to ground and am hot on the trail of No Longer Miss Ancient History.

  “No, Eve’s not here,” they say. My smile fades.

  “She’s not coming.” My heart sinks.

  “Nate and her split.” My ears perk.

  “She’s heartbroken. He was scheming on her with a sophomore.” My mind whirls.

  “I hear she fainted she was so clash.” My heart breaks.

  I’m more and more worked up and I talk to Zoë about Eve too much. I’m spewing sentences and I say her name over and over, just to feel the taste of it between my teeth and on my tongue and hear it hit the night air like a shock of electricity. I can’t believe Eve’s MIA.

  Zoë’s not concerned. She says, “Go Children Slow, Butler. At least she’s finally hit to Nate’s scheming. Who cares she’s not here?”

  So I say, “Not I,” and prove it by flirting with the flap-Jack who graduated last year and plays college soccer at a small, crank school in a small, crank town. I’m boisterous and witty and kick his flip butt in a brewcan shotgun showdown and he laughs and thinks I’m a badrat as he high-fives me and hugs me tight.

  Eve finally does arrive, Miss Heartbreak Hotel, in late high fashion, and her Pennies are a cooing crowd of overly sympathetic clichés. I wait but it seems I won’t be getting a word in edgewise.

  “Hey, it’s beat! It’s beat. Be easy. We patched it up.” Eve smiles her electric lips, though her eyes don’t follow their cue. “We’re switch. We’re kill. It was all a massive, mop flip-up.” She’s reassuring and coaxes her flap-Jacks into subdued, sauced submission. They continue to hover around their queen of the hive.

  As the hype slowly dies, I realize I’ve lost my nerve. I go Ophelia and ditch the increasingly sloppy Soccer-Star-Nobody-Man and am paralyzed by what I want. I’ve waited, impatience twitching under my skin, all day and night for Eve, but now I can’t be near her. She’s too bright, and I blink and squint and turn away from her comet trail as it moves like fire through the crowd.

  I heel it far down the shore and find flat stones that rock and roll my sauced body when I send them skipping, hip hop, across the lake’s glassy face. I pee behind a prickly shrub and lie by the shore as my head spins and swims. I’m a sticky little magnet dan
gling into the vast black sky and I claw the sand to keep from free-falling in.

  There’s a ruckus as boys with men’s voices whoop and holler and I see flecks of splashing water and hear the diving and spraying of bodies hitting liquid in the night. I stand and wobble and giggle as I remember where I am and who is here.

  I’m resolute.

  I will stand and conquer.

  For best results, rinse and repeat.

  I am In Pursuit of Miss Heartbreak Hotel.

  The Magician

  We’re sitting on a rock. Eve Brooks and me.

  * * *

  I was standing, scatting a group of flap-Jacks, when suddenly she was behind me, grabbing my shoulders and hugging my neck, squeezing my esophagus, saying, “What’s eggs, Beatstreet Bug? How’s your happyface?”

  I coughed, said, “Vise Grip Jones, watch the plumbing!” as I rubbed my throat and she laughed, sauce thick on her breath.

  * * *

  We’re sitting on a rock. Eve is sighing and talking about what a clash mop heart-Jack Nate Gray is. I’m dragging a tar.

  I feel her watching me. “That’s one toxic hobby you got there,” she says. “I thought you were quits.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “Be easy, Bug. Nate’s hit,” she says. “He just has a lot going on.”

  I drag. “I hear you passed out.”

  “Oh.” She takes a breath. “I’ve been eating only grapefruits for a week,” and I turn, give her goggle eyes. “I’m on a diet,” she says and then schemes a drag from my tar.

  “Hypocrite,” I say as she hands it back. She smiles, and then chokes. She coughs and smoke billows from her mouth and she’s gagging and sticking out her tongue. “I’ll catch your lung if you hack it up,” I say, leaning into her and cupping my mitts under her chin.

  * * *

  She touched the roughed-up red of my throat and laughed, saying, “If I’m Vise Grip Jones, you are the Magician. You make me laugh when I’m sad. You perform marvelous, death-defying acts of cunning and charm.” She didn’t really say that, but I would like to think she would have if she hadn’t said, “Oh crank, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  We ran to the woods and she wasn’t sick. Not even a little. She burped a belch that woke the dead natives sleeping below our feet and we hooted and held our shaking brew-filled bellies with glee.

  * * *

  We’re sitting on a rock. Eve and I split a piece of gum and she blows tiny snapping bubbles as I pull my hood up over my head and explain my Theory of the Universe. That is: We’re all walking talking Popsicle sticks with our heads melting, our brains juice at our feet.

  * * *

  We’re sitting on a rock. Eve’s superfreeze ace in this speckled white-and-blue angora sweater and I’m studying it, petting it softly like a pup.

  “My apple-Jacks are driving me bananas,” she says. “It’s like school never ended and the drama just goes on.” I nod, glad she’s confiding in me. “Hey, Beatbug,” she sighs. “I wish we could’ve stayed hit these past years. I really coulda used you by my side. Even if you are a toxic hobbyist, I’m glad we’re ponies ’n’ pigtails again.”

  I smile. “You’ve massive missed out.”

  Eve laughs. “And so have you.”

  And she points a finger at my nose and I bat at it like a cat, and she mimes like it hurts.

  “True words,” I say.

  * * *

  We sit on this rock and I tell her about my Oma. Eve picks up a water-smoothed stone and places it, warm from her hand, into mine.

  * * *

  We’re stumbling up the path to my banger. It’s massive dark. “I know these trails,” she says. “I grew up in these woods.” I picture her here, a miniature version of her now, white-blond curls, red dress, and Mary Janes, dog off its leash, mother and father heeling it arm in arm. They sing a song about a frog and some logs and laugh in fits at the riot parts.

  “Your life’s like a Disney flick,” I say.

  “You don’t know flip about my life.”

  “Truth,” I say and shut my crank mouth, feel a-flap-Jack.

  “Or dare?” she finally says.

  “Huh?”

  “Truth or dare, Lu Butler?”

  I laugh. “Dare.”

  “Um,” she thinks. “Crush all the tars in your pack.” I roll my eyes at the night sky and twist and turn the crumpled box, paper and tobacco in my mitt. “Beatstreet.” She smiles.

  We keep walking, I push a branch from my face. “Truth or dare, Eve Brooks?”

  “Truth.”

  I’m silent. Then I laugh. “Would you or have you ever kissed another betty?”

  My question hangs between us like a hammock as we forge ahead. “Nope. Never have. But … word. I think I would. Not just any ace-Jack, though. She’d have to be something special.” She smiles at me over her shoulder.

  I try not to trip.

  “Truth or dare, Lu Butler?” she says into the woods.

  “Dare.”

  Eve whips around in the path. “No fair! All you want is dare. No truth.” She crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Well, word, then. Truth. Probe away, Miss Inquisition. Ask anything.” She looks at me for a minute and then shakes her head.

  “No.” She smiles. “I don’t need to ask. I know you and all your pesky Bug secrets.”

  I laugh. “I’m sure you do,” I say, but I’m not so sure she does.

  * * *

  We’re sitting in my banger. My heap banger. We. Us. Me and Evelyn Brooks. I’m sliding fast into sober as I start the engine and feel her arm brush light against mine.

  She’s shivering and chit-chattering and I’m blasting on the heat and wiping the fog off the windshield with my sleeve. I slide out of my hoodie and fork it over to her. She’s got freckles on the backs of her hands. She’s sleepy and slow and I’m geared up, fully charged. The pulse of my blood under my skin, in my groin, under my temples is overwhelming, deafening. Eve fumbles with her seat belt and says, smiling, with a big yawn, “I’m all thumbs, Bug.”

  I laugh. “Listen, Thumbs. You could just crashpad at my house tonight,” I suggest, the coolest cucumber on the block.

  “No, Bug,” she says. “I gotta jetset home. I’m early-bird shift at the restaurant tomorrow morning. Plus, you don’t understand. I have to brush my teeth.”

  “Word,” I laugh and we wheel in silence, tunes slipping softly through our ears, moving so hush through our sleeping town to her front door. She’s no longer Ms. Ancient-History-His-Betty-Vise-Grip-Jones. I am no Magician.

  And we are Lu and Eve. Bug ’n’ Thumbs.

  Low Tide

  In her driveway, Eve asks if I’m into a glass of water. I nod and follow her in.

  In her front hall, she says, “I’ll be back,” and returns toting two toothbrushes with massive white gobs of paste on their bristles. I laugh, take one.

  “This isn’t, like, your dog’s toothbrush, or anything?”

  “We don’t have a dog. We have a cat.”

  We brush side by side at the kitchen sink, her stepdad’s snores descending softly through the ceiling. We spit and our frothy white foam whirls side by side down the drain. I steal her hand and wipe my mouth on the frayed cuff of my sweatshirt she’s still sporting. “Don’t get this all cruddy,” I say. “It’s my favorite.” And she checks me with her hips.

  She walks me out and I count twelve steps from the front door to my car, trying to calm my nerves going haywire inside. We stand by the open door and she says, “Thanks for the lift.” She begins backing away and my hopscotch heart fissures. She says, “Night,” waving a small hand and I’ve come undone. She walks away and I sink into my car, heart crawling up, clinging to my throat. She turns and heels it back over to me. I climb out.

  “Don’t wanna forget,” she says as she starts sliding out of my sweatshirt.

  “Keep it,” I say. “It superfreeze fits you. B’sides, I don’t give a rat’s tail about that crank old th
ing. It’s like shrink wrap on me. Makes my arms look like Abraham Lincoln arms. You know, like, crazy, long Abraham Lincoln … arms.” I hold my bare wrists up massive awkward and she laughs and drops her hands to her sides.

  “Oh, pesky Bug, you’re very special,” she says, laughing. “Does your dad ever tell you that?” I shrug and giggle. Her words from before come back—she’d have to be something special—and I wonder.

  She walks to my open door and wraps her arms around my neck and my life could end now. Her blond curls are thick and cool with summer nights on my face as I hug her, and when she lets go, she’s smiling, big.

  I wanna kiss you, I think, but my lips are silent as my heart cage thumps a heavy-metal hair-band double bass drumbeat.

  “What’s eggs?” she says. “You look massive sad.”

  “I think … I d-dunno,” I stutter. I must be unhinged. “This is so flip. But I feel like I’m missing you already.” I frown comically. “That must sound so crickets.” And we’re laughing and she’s hugging me tight, again. Her body, so close, again.

  We stand and our heads bow together.

  “Not crickets,” she says softly. “Be easy.”

  Her face so close.

  And then, I’m kissing her.

  A small, soft thing of a kiss. An idea. A question. The world’s spin stops, sputters, stalls. And then she’s pulling away slowly, wide-eyed and smiling, holding her fingertips to her mouth. She shuffles backward and my brain function returns in increments, and I smile, watching as she heels it to her front door, looking over her shoulder at me, her fingers still at her lips. She leans her back into the door, her hands two small peace signs, and then I’m folding into my banger just as my bones turn to dust and I’m washed away in her low tide.