tight hug before we split mid-lot en route to our separate vehicles. “Miss you already!”
“You, too,” I say, watching her turn her key in the lock, wincing as she ducks—all that dark, slender height—inside her hot car (deep-dark blue—only a memory now, too difficult for me to distinguish from straight black), long velvety braid snaked down her back.
Thunk-thunk-thunk
goes the hammer inside my skull.
* * *
Eight days
. My heart pounds as I ride up the long lily-lined drive that leads to Ghost Town, my book bag accumulating little lakes of moisture where it presses against my back. I stand up to pedal as the hill goes steeper, sweat rivering down my arms and forehead and neck.
Eight days
. I wonder what she does all day long in that cell. I wonder if she’s angry we couldn’t come up with the million dollars in cash required to bail her out while she waits to go right back in again, though I can’t imagine her expecting us to have even a hundred grand lying around for a bond.
I lock my bike to a lamppost in the parking lot, lift the accordion file, full of receipts, from my book bag, various mind-numbing legal contracts, account statements—I stopped snooping quickly after I discovered that everything inside interested me about as much as the Pythagorean theorem—and hug it into my chest, walking toward the gleaming entranceway.
I reach for the keys inside the side pocket of my woven purse, turn the lock open, walk inside.
“Dad?” I call out—I’m supposed to meet him here with the files, help arrange his office for a meeting he’s got in an hour, and set up drinks. No answer. The air-conditioning gusts and my skin pricks up with gooseflesh as I walk to stand in the center of the lobby. It smells like new construction, that over-cold insulation smell that some basements carry, though the light pouring in from those hugesquare windows makes everything slightly more inviting. I hurry forward, turning left down a short hallway that leads to Dad and Ted Oakley’s administrative office, wondering if I’ll find one of them inside, immersed in work. I knock softly. Silence.
I don’t have the key to his office, so I lay the files outside his door.
My phone buzzes in my pocket; a text from Dad:
Still in a meeting with the caterer. Sorry, darlin’. Be there soon and we can start setting up!
Typical. Dad is caught up in more wedding preparations with his bride-to-be, while his own flesh and blood waits it out in a place he knows she hates. But Heather’s his priority now, not me.
I walk back into the lobby. If I have to wait, at least there’s AC. It’s the one thing this place has going for it, as far as I can see.
I notice a folded up piece of paper by the entrance. I pick it up—it’s crisp, lightweight—and unfold it once my butt is planted on the cold floor, my back pressing comfortably against the wall just left of the entrance. It’s a computer printout, some kind of CAD architectural plan.
I smooth out the creases with the side of my palm, running my fingers over the straight lines, the angles that make up the hulking, hideous structure, the complex of brick and mortar and faceless glass before me. It’s all I have now to glom onto—shapes and angles. Structure. I stare at the curves of the piping system, snaking throughthe walls, along the ceilings of each room, little rectangles drawn around the places they intersect.
Snaking through the walls. Snakes in the walls.
Something catches in my throat. Impulsively, I reach for a pencil, and quickly begin sketching, eager to change the pipes into something else. I surround them with looping, wiry vines, big, heavy, drooping flowers, petals, bird’s wings, spiny feathers.
My body seems to disappear beneath me. The pain in my head slinks away and, with it, all the things mucked up inside. I’m breathing fully again. My hand sweeps and licks and dances of its own accord.
Freedom. Just a lick of it, but, still. I can almost
“You, too,” I say, watching her turn her key in the lock, wincing as she ducks—all that dark, slender height—inside her hot car (deep-dark blue—only a memory now, too difficult for me to distinguish from straight black), long velvety braid snaked down her back.
Thunk-thunk-thunk
goes the hammer inside my skull.
* * *
Eight days
. My heart pounds as I ride up the long lily-lined drive that leads to Ghost Town, my book bag accumulating little lakes of moisture where it presses against my back. I stand up to pedal as the hill goes steeper, sweat rivering down my arms and forehead and neck.
Eight days
. I wonder what she does all day long in that cell. I wonder if she’s angry we couldn’t come up with the million dollars in cash required to bail her out while she waits to go right back in again, though I can’t imagine her expecting us to have even a hundred grand lying around for a bond.
I lock my bike to a lamppost in the parking lot, lift the accordion file, full of receipts, from my book bag, various mind-numbing legal contracts, account statements—I stopped snooping quickly after I discovered that everything inside interested me about as much as the Pythagorean theorem—and hug it into my chest, walking toward the gleaming entranceway.
I reach for the keys inside the side pocket of my woven purse, turn the lock open, walk inside.
“Dad?” I call out—I’m supposed to meet him here with the files, help arrange his office for a meeting he’s got in an hour, and set up drinks. No answer. The air-conditioning gusts and my skin pricks up with gooseflesh as I walk to stand in the center of the lobby. It smells like new construction, that over-cold insulation smell that some basements carry, though the light pouring in from those hugesquare windows makes everything slightly more inviting. I hurry forward, turning left down a short hallway that leads to Dad and Ted Oakley’s administrative office, wondering if I’ll find one of them inside, immersed in work. I knock softly. Silence.
I don’t have the key to his office, so I lay the files outside his door.
My phone buzzes in my pocket; a text from Dad:
Still in a meeting with the caterer. Sorry, darlin’. Be there soon and we can start setting up!
Typical. Dad is caught up in more wedding preparations with his bride-to-be, while his own flesh and blood waits it out in a place he knows she hates. But Heather’s his priority now, not me.
I walk back into the lobby. If I have to wait, at least there’s AC. It’s the one thing this place has going for it, as far as I can see.
I notice a folded up piece of paper by the entrance. I pick it up—it’s crisp, lightweight—and unfold it once my butt is planted on the cold floor, my back pressing comfortably against the wall just left of the entrance. It’s a computer printout, some kind of CAD architectural plan.
I smooth out the creases with the side of my palm, running my fingers over the straight lines, the angles that make up the hulking, hideous structure, the complex of brick and mortar and faceless glass before me. It’s all I have now to glom onto—shapes and angles. Structure. I stare at the curves of the piping system, snaking throughthe walls, along the ceilings of each room, little rectangles drawn around the places they intersect.
Snaking through the walls. Snakes in the walls.
Something catches in my throat. Impulsively, I reach for a pencil, and quickly begin sketching, eager to change the pipes into something else. I surround them with looping, wiry vines, big, heavy, drooping flowers, petals, bird’s wings, spiny feathers.
My body seems to disappear beneath me. The pain in my head slinks away and, with it, all the things mucked up inside. I’m breathing fully again. My hand sweeps and licks and dances of its own accord.
Freedom. Just a lick of it, but, still. I can almost
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