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{brownie mix} kara carlson His peach stone skin makes my brain run expletives. He projects his hand and grin forward, slow as slate, knowing I give a shit. Mia and I sit next to each other in tenth grade Algebra, fractures in the pattern. Her green eyes reign rich. Nectar slides across her face. I slant my head and shoulder in inquiry. Mia’s eyes stretch to Mrs. Walsh’s turned back. Our teacher writes on the board and discharges number nonsense. Mia shadows her arm to me and displays received text messages. I can’t wait to see you baby. When do you get out of class. What are you wearing. I edge my amusement with silence as Mia barrages her back into her chair. Mrs. Walsh’s white pink mouth skewers me. She tells us she’s teaching. She asks if she has to separate us. She says she’s trying. We attach apologies, Mrs. Walsh exhales pins and rotates. I mouth to Mia, nothing. She glitters. When they hug, his chin sleeps on Mia’s head. Mia is five foot one inch. He is good-looking short, with waxed coffee hair and matching eyes. He snakes from group to group, a social tempest. He introduces us to C.J., number one cross-country and top fifteen hundred meter track runner for Maria Carrillo High School. Matt, a leading one hundred meter sprinter from Newman High, and Lia, best cross-country runner at Ursuline High, elite eight hundred meter runner, and my main competition. Everyone is under the age of eighteen. Most of us can’t buy porn yet. Some aren’t old enough to drive. As John captains the barbecue, other high school runners come and go, attendance palpitating like my opinion of him. Mia murmurs that he hosts barbeques at his house so the city’s runners can meld. So we can train together. Mia and I sit at a ripe honey wood table, our tongues hurtling ketchup and mustard fingers, our mouths raining hot dog. I ask why we would train together when we already have our own teams. She replies that he wants us to be more than competitors. He wants us to be friends. I can’t help noticing John’s hair rimmed in grey. It’s eighth grade and Mia dates Chris, a senior in high school. An hour after I get out of track practice, I answer the house phone to Mia’s mom’s voice. I spin frustration. Mia hadn’t even warned that her mom might call. When she asks to talk to her daughter, I hesitate, decapitated. I’ve covered for Mia for a month. I want to tell her mom that she’s with her boyfriend. I want to say that he’s eighteen, we’re fourteen. I want to spring secrets. The kitchen walls sweat. I don’t expose Mia. I tell her mom we’re leaving for a hike, Mia’s already outside, and she’ll call when we get back. Three weeks later, Chris drives Mia home. Her mom sees them kissing goodbye in his car. Instead of draining agitation at the age difference, she asks his name. Within three minutes, Chris inhales ice cream at the family table. Mia’s mom dated older guys too. Hell, she married a guy ten years older than her. John’s ice cream grin boxes Nicole, known for the four hundred meter and her ice cream smile. Fuchsia slashes her cobweb-thin straw hair. His right hand imprisons Nicole’s shoulder. His left, a spatula. He flips burgers. Their laughter fragments the smooth heat. My eyes thread Mia’s and detonate to John and Nicole. Mia’s head rhymes back and forth back and forth, no. She oozes a sedate smile. Contentment drips from her teeth. Nicole looks like a number. Mia leaks in the door. I abandon my book as she sits down, then lays down, her head on my thigh, an avalanche. Tears lace her face, pollinating my jeans and the couch. My hand grazes her ponytail, speaking easy. I feel like a boy. She cries and cries and cries. Her hands veil her face. Then she sits up, eyes pooling into mine. She apologizes. When I ask if everything’s okay, she says it’s her dad. He’s either never home or, when he is home, he’s cruel. “He calls me names. He’s not violent, but he calls me names. He yells at me for stuff I didn’t do. He called me a cocksucker last week because someone left the garage door open. He called me a cunt an hour ago. I don’t know why,” Mia says, her voice curling. I’ve never heard anyone called that name. “I don’t want to talk about it. Just ask your mom if I can stay here tonight?” “Of course,” I reply. “You’re the only person I can talk to,” Mia says. Her mom had dropped her off. We’re thirteen. John angles against a white wood column supporting the alabaster lattice overhang. His fingertips nibble Mia’s butterscotch hair. I stand, feet apart, arms annoyed. His strident voice strokes the few runners left on the other side of the patio. He’s a photographer specializing in athletic events. At a women’s soccer game this week, he tells us, he carved photos of a defensive midfielder. As he dashed down the sideline, a rogue trashcan raped him. He tripped, his camera projectile vomited into the air, and he collapsed onto the grass like a handicapped cow. Mia evaporates in laughter. I can’t resist smiling at his descriptions. Mia and I sit cross-legged on my parents’ hardwood kitchen floor with a bowlful of uncooked brownie mix between us. Our tongues circle spoons and we sip whole milk. She reads her text message response three times, pegs perfection, and sends. I ask for the twenty-eighth time who she’s texting. “Oh, he’s just a friend,” she replies. “Well, at least tell me his name. You’ve been seeing him for months,” I implore. “John,” her voice liquid, soft like Sunday morning. Run. Energy shrieks into my limbs. Win. Arms launch legs. My feet lick soil. One more mile. My inhale exhale punches my ears lungs throat. I reverberate certainty. I will win. My feet birth speed. Obstacles braid the dirt path. My feet recoil rocks and trace holes. By the time the second girl finishes, my heart rate is calm as quartz. As the rest of the team drains in, Mia and I walk back from the bathroom. Orange yellow green big leaf maple trees scroll in the breeze. Mia’s legs cord the earth and she solidifies. I stride two steps before turning. Her eyes trim the ground. When I ask if she’s okay, her face kindles ecstasy. She doesn’t look at me. “It’s from John,” she whispers, her voice beaming wide as empty space. “What’s from John?” “The flowers.” I don’t see flowers. When I don’t respond, her eyes soak the ground. I notice two entwined poppies behind a rock. She kneels and her arm dives. “He stalks you on the trails, knows what routes you take and when you run? Who is this guy,” I ask, my voice scales. “He’s a runner. He knows the trails. He just leaves little things he knows only I’ll pay attention to.” Mia roofs the flowers with her fingers. “He’s having a barbeque next weekend. If you really want to meet him, I can take you to that,” she says, her voice a jeweled flag. As the impregnated sun slopes downward, Mia and I are the only two remaining at John’s house. He details his last San Francisco marathon, his fourth-place finish in two hours thirty-five minutes and thirteen seconds, and how he pissed himself like a Special Olympics twelve-year-old. He couldn’t make it to the bathroom. Men bought him beer. Mia orbits laughter, her hand nailing his arm to the table. A woman at least fifteen years older than me huddles through the back door and towards the table and amusement. Haggard eyes and empty hair border us. “Hi Baby,” she says, dashed breath, coiling to John. “Hey. This is Mia and Lauren. We’re just wrapping up the barbeque. I’ll be inside in a minute,” John publishes. “Okay... the Ob/Gyn had a few suggestions...” She vacillates. His eyes weave through hers. Her hand glimpses his arm, where Mia’s had been. “Great. I said I’d be inside in a minute.” She nods lethargy. I watch her heavy overcast jeans and cream shirt trail to the house. A silver band harnesses the fourth finger on her left hand. My eyes brand Mia’s cheek. She doesn’t look at me. I breathe collision. Mia stands, says we should go. I stand, tongueless. John’s back to the house, his pointer finger sands his penis through his shorts. He stands two steps from Mia, but his eyes crawl words in hers. We walk through the stoned side yard and the driveway to Mia’s Toyota Corolla. Her parents bought it for her sixteenth birthday two months ago. I radiate reproach as I get in the car. “Well, he doesn’t look forty-three, does he?” Mia asks five minutes into the drive and silence, her tone dancing too much. “Jesus. Fucking. Christ. Mia. He’s forty-three and married. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I skewer words. “He’s going to leave her. He talks to me. He can’t talk to anyone else,” Mia says, her voice miniature. Tears embroider her cheeks. “He doesn’t even like her,” Mia’s pitch buttons her position. “And you’ve had sex with him.” It isn’t a question. Mia hovers between admitting or lying. Her eyes sever the windshield. “Lauren, just because that guy made you grab him when you were five doesn’t mean you have to automatically disapprove just because the guy I love is older than us.” “Pull the car over,” I rule, voice rural, heartbeat driving. Mia refuses. I repeat. She refuses. As I open the door, Mia hooks the car off the road. I step out into the bruised sunlight. I didn’t tell you that John and his wife had been trying to have a baby. I didn’t tell you the wife got pregnant. I didn’t tell you our friend’s mom called the police when she found out about Mia and John. I didn’t tell you a detective pulled me out of class to interview me. I didn’t tell you the police confiscated Mia’s diary and a couch cushion they had sex on. I didn’t tell you the authorities located more girls he slept with. I didn’t tell you Mia testified in court against John and he was found guilty on nine counts of statutory rape. I didn’t tell you she was the only one who testified. I didn’t tell you John went to jail and his wife gave birth to a daughter while he was incarcerated. I didn’t tell you his wife didn’t leave him. I didn’t tell you he got released from jail. I didn’t tell you Mia has a restraining order against John. I didn’t tell you he’s broken it. |
