Rebecca Jones-Howe

Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Jones-Howe

All rights reserved. This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

We meet on the old paved pathway tucked behind the 7-11. The path leads down to the hiking trails that once dominated the hillside before the suburbs crept in. People still use the trails but the paved path hasn’t exactly held to the test of time. The cement’s filled with cracks and weeds, neglected by the city to better things, modern things like water park or the baseball diamonds or the recreation centre where I spent most of my high school years drinking behind.

Every time I told my parents I was taking the dog for a walk, it’s where I’ve gone.

Now, Badgley pulls me along. He’s excited, his tail wagging, his gait quick. He sniffs at the cracks in the pavement, dragging me toward the graffiti-covered bench in the clearing. He treads into a mass of dandelions. The white seeds scatter in the breeze and I pull my phone from my pocket to check the time.

I haven’t seen Olivia since school was cancelled. She felt like a ghost ever since that afternoon she crept into the dark of the computer lab while I was formatting the yearbook. Her orange nails dug into my shoulders.

“I know the school didn’t approve of my grad statement,” she whispered. “You should put it in anyway.”

Let’s start a motherfucking riot!

I told her I couldn’t but she kissed me anyway, the hum of the computers dulling the sound of our lips. We kissed until the bell rang.

Then school was cancelled. No finals. No grad. No chance to speak to her. All she had for social media was her Instagram page full of guillotine pictures and socialist memes. Her avatar was a picture of a marigold. She’d held a bouquet of them in lieu of roses for her grad photo.

It was all I could remember of her until she slid into my DMs.

Badgley looks up from the bushes, letting out a bark. A breeze shifts through the trees, swaying their heavy pine branches back and forth like wavering arms.

Olivia emerges, turning the corner in a white halter top and frayed denim shorts. She pulls down her black cloth face mask and so do I. Badgley barks and jumps.
Olivia leans down, letting him lick at her face.

I try to pull him back but the leash tangles in the weeds.

“It’s okay,” she says, scratching behind his floppy ears. “He looks like a good dog.” She leans forward and cradles his snout in her hands, “You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Badgley? Aren’t you a good boy?”

Her voices deepens, makes me think of the moan she made when I bit her ear in the computer lab. I turn away, wanting to walk, but instead she pulls a vape from her tiny leather backpack. She takes a hit and stands. She steps in close, breaking the six feet of required social distancing.

Badgley jumps up again, his paws hitting her chest. She’s not wearing a bra and her tits jiggle beneath the thin white knit of her top. I tug on the leash again, telling him to get down.

All Olivia does is take a step closer. “Neither of us is going to get sick,” she assures.

“We could be asymptomatic,” I say, thinking of the things I’ve heard enough times on the news, Dad always sitting in the living room with the volume cranked all the way up.

She smirks.

“My brother’s got asthma,” I say. “He just moved back home.”

“Mason, right? He’s like, a lot older than you, isn’t he?”

“He’s 32,” I say, taking another step back. “He got laid off and couldn’t pay rent.”

“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s not exactly ideal.”

“Nothing is,” she says. “But we have a bright future to look forward to, don’t we? At least your brother got to live the lie for a few years before everything went to shit.”

“Is that really any better?”

She shrugs. “He at least got to enjoy college life, unlike us.”

I laugh.

“Remember when the world was supposed to end in 2012?” she asks. “We were like 10. It fucking freaked me out. I literally thought we were going to die.”

“Me too,” I admit.

She nods at the mask in my pocket, stepping closer again. “It’s happening, you know. It feels slow but it’s real this time.”

Badgley jumps at her again, his paws scraping up her thighs. I pull on the leash, creating distance, using his misbehaviour like a shield. “Down, Badge!”

She glances at my arm, the thick veins, the tension. She bends down to ease Badgley’s excitement and holds up the vape for me to try.

“I don’t. I can’t.”

“You should,” she says, pushing it at me. “You’re always so tense.”

I take it, hesitating. A streak of her lip gloss glistens on the mouthpiece. She tells me to breathe in slow, so I do. The smoke coils down my throat. I hold my breath trying to keep it down but the pressure becomes too much. I end up coughing.
Olivia laughs. Badgley turns to me. The wind gusts, pulling his eager barks down the trail, making them sound all distorted and distant.

“You’ll feel less tense when it hits.” She puts her hand on my forearm, nails digging firm over my flexed muscles. Her grasp warms over the goosebumps, tickling the hair on my skin. “I missed you,” she says. “I wanted to ask you to grad but I didn’t even get the chance.”

“What?” I ask, heaving for another breath before breaking into another spasm of coughs.

“I wanted to since that day in history class.”

“What day?”

“You pissed off Mr. Reid, remember? You asked about square dancing being racist.”

Pressure builds and I cough as Badgley yanks on the leash. He barks at something in the bushes, down the path.

“He didn’t even know what to say,” she laughs.

“It was an honest question.” I cough again. “You posted that meme about it. I wanted to know the truth.”

“And you’d ask a fucking Boomer?”

“A teacher,” I say, finally getting a full breath.

“Boomers don’t know shit,” she says,

I roll my eyes but then Badgley rips out of my hand and tears off down the path.

“Shit.”

Olivia grabs my arm. “He’ll come back,” she says. “It’s not as big as it looks in there. Unlike you.” Her hand moves up my chest, over my shoulders. “You’ve got big dick energy.”

I shift, pushing her back the way most guys did at parties through the years. She was always too forward. Too weird. She had too much to prove, always talking about how we needed to destroy capitalism in order to save the world. Most of the guys still wanted to fuck her. They joked about wearing earplugs. They mocked her Teen Vogue. I held back from admitting that she sometimes made some good points.

She pinches my chin between her fingers. She raises herself onto her toes. Her nails sink into my skin again. Her lips press against mine.

She smells like cherries.

She tastes like wine.

She feels like a little fire beneath my palm, and I kiss her back.

Another bark. We both turn our heads as the red of the nylon leash disappears into the wall of beige sagebrush.

“We’ll have more privacy if we follow him,” she says. Her smile forms beneath her eyes. Smile lines. Places to settle. I’d never tell her how the sight of her dimples always seized me. Her smile spreads into a grin, making the blood rush to my loins.

“You’re feeling it,” she says.

“Am I?” My face burns. My limbs seize again but her puts her hand over the tension, the heat of her palm softening over the goosebumps.

She tilts her head down the path. Her white Keds making prints in the gravel and I follow them, struggling to stay inside her strides.

“Have you been down here before?” she asks.

“Not in a while.” The wind blows past my ears, tossing the sagebrush back and forth. A string of power lines stretches between the wooden posts weave between the neighbourhoods.

“If you don’t pay attention you end up in people’s backyards and shit,” she says.

“Some of them get real pissed about it, which is stupid. I’m just trying to enjoy the outdoors.”

She takes out her vape and offers me another hit. “You have to try to hold it in your throat, not breathe it in.”

The full-effect hits me, numbing my throat to the smoke that pulses inward. I cough less but still enough for her to laugh again, to show her dimples again.

Big dick energy.

“There’s a clearing ahead,” she says before inhaling her second hit. “We’ll probably see Badgley from there.”

I adjust myself and follow her lead. The sagebrush hits my skin like little sparks.

Her shoes strike against the scratchy earth.

Match to paper.

My heart rattles in my ribcage like rocks in a can.

The path leads into an open clearing at the top of the hillside. A string of power lines tower above us, the heavy wires carried on old wooden posts. Little spots of red form in the brush and I squint, searching for Badgely, but she pushes me up against one of the posts, her breaths all heavy and frantic, burning up in my throat.

Confidence without cockiness.

I feel high enough to believe it, slipping my hand up her waist and beneath her shirt.

“Do you ever get off thinking about how fucked up everything is?” she asks.
Another spot of red flickers in the corner of my eye. I think it’s Badgley’s leash but it moves upward into the brush instead of away. Another bark sounds. An excited one. The wind gusts again, carrying the red spot away into the corner of my eye. I blink and turn my attention back to her.

“I don’t like thinking about it,” I say. “I wish my dad would turn off the news sometimes.”

Badgley barks again but Olivia leans in, her lips to my ear. “Everything feels so wrong and everybody’s out breaking everything, fucking it all up.” Her nails scrape the back of my neck. “It gets me off sometimes.”

I move my hand.

“I can’t tell this shit to anyone else,” she says. “Nobody else gets it.” She moves her elbow, allowing my reach to venture further up. She lets me grope her, lets me understand. Her nipples harden beneath her palm. I curl my hand and pinch, her moan vibrating against my ear.

It’s enough to distract, but not enough to break the tension.

A sound bellows. Not Badgley this time. It’s louder. Heavier. It sifts into my throat. The call encompasses the hillside, vibrating through the brush, shaking the gravel. It works nerves between us, friction between our skin.

“What the fuck was that?” she asks.

I snatch my palm away, fingers trembling as the disassociation of the high wears off to nerves.

The sound cries out again. Guttural. It raps against my ribs, competes with my heartbeat, wanting control. I glance upward at the expanse of the blue sky above and my breaths start to pace. Badgley finally barks again. I take a step toward the sound but then the bellow sounds a third time.

I point at the little red flash of Badgley’s leash in the distance and we both hurry toward it. The trail narrows and descends into a valley tucked between a mass of sagebrush gathered between a steep embankment.

“This way,” she says, squeezing between the bushes. The branches scratch her skin and snag her top. She doesn’t notice when her arm starts to bleed.

I wrestle myself after her.

Badgley barks again. I squint from the new vantage point. It overlooks a new area. Greener and more lush. A creek sounds in the distance, but it’s not much of one. The trickling water sounds like people talking, sounds like high school banter, sounds like History class.

I cup my hand over my mouth and call Badgley’s name. He barks in response. The excitement’s still there but it sounds even further away now.

The bellow thunders. It overtakes the sky like trumpet, a call of warning. I squint through the brush, looking for red, for movement. The wind pulls at the bushes and little spots of light spark in the yellow grass.

“We’re losing him,” I say.

“Shh,” Olivia says.

Another trumpet call tears through the air, encompassing everything. I reach for her.

“This is crazy,” she whispers. “God, I’m shaking.” She moves ahead of me, twisting up the path through the trees. The bushes feel like fingers touching me, distracting me. The centre of my brain fills with a pressure, a weight, a mass threatening to puncture my eardrums. I cover my ears with my palms but the sound still claws its way through, twisting into my skull and prodding at memory.

I think of the squeal of the gate at the SPCA when they opened it to reveal a tiny puppy rescued from a dumpster.

I think of Mason taking his grad walk to “Good Riddance” by Greenday.

I think of my mom crying when she saw me in the suit I was supposed to rent for grad.

Oh, the places you’ll go!

Olivia disappears round the bend of the trail and I hurry, already gasping breaths, my throat aching from the burn of the pot.

She stands at the top of the hill with her phone grasped at her side. Smoke billows around her. I get a little closer and then I see the source. A tiny fire cuts its way out of a nest of dead weeds. Yellow flames lick their way past the smoke, lapping at the sagebrush.

The wind gusts. The fire cracks.

Behind me, Badgley’s bark mutates into a whimper.

I grab Olivia’s hand and pull her back the way we came. Her blond hair mixes with the brush, but the orange of her nail points the way down the next path to the left. Badgley whimpers again. I call him. He answers. I start down the trail after him but a cloud of grey smoke fingers its way out.

Olivia shakes her head.

“We have to get him,” I plead.

Orange twists before me. She yanks again, screams in my face. “We have to go!”

My lungs heave, giving to her influences. Her shoes skid down the patch, gravel tumbling like thunder. Rocks spill against my ankles as we scale down the face of the hill, twisting through the brambles.

Badgely keeps whimpering. Louder. Harder.

Heat builds at my back, but then the brush thickens. Tall grass slices at my calves. Flowers dot the landscape, these ones more vivid than desert blooms. More bold. The grass gives way to a meadow full of orange marigolds. The little crumpled petals sway like tiny fires in the breeze.

I take the change to breathe, but Olivia shakes her head.

“I don’t recognize this place.” She points beyond the meadow where the beige brush thickens with thorny yellow weeds. “The hills aren’t this big. There should be houses there.”

Badgley whimpers again like he did in his kennel, faint and scared, distant and fogged.

Dad always lectured me for not walking him enough.

The trumpet sounds again and I turn my head, only to see flames.

Olivia backs against me before turning. Again, we hurry back the way we came.
I follow again, my breath catching, my legs pumping, feet losing grip over the gravel that loosens between my strides.

She glances each way at the fork. Heat filters from each path. I point down one. She points to another. Behind me, Badgley’s whimpering continues, sounding even more sick and mutated, like when he ate chocolate that Halloween when I was 10 and the entire family was sure he was going to die. Dad blamed me for feeding it to him, but it wasn’t my fault.

I didn’t know.

Badgley whimpers behind me, the pitch almost human. The cries curdle in my stomach. They pinch at my throat and I falter, heat at my back, heat behind my eyes. My limbs go tight. Badgley’s cries wither in the expanse, wither to the trumpet, fading with everything beyond the dry brush.

I stumble backward, trying to hold my footing.

“We can’t,” Olivia says. “We can’t stay here.” She shakes me, heaving, breathless. A bead of sweat drips down her chest and beneath her shirt, pulling me for just a moment. She yanks me forward and I follow her back to where the power lines stand, where I was supposed to prove to her that Big Dick Energy was real.

Flames lick their way up the power line poles, working up toward the black lines in the sky.

One of them gives way to the heat. The wood cracks and the tower falls, sending weighted metal lines sagging toward the earth. Sparks snap behind the smoke, turning the grey into the black, the black into yellow, orange, red, a new flame. A new ball flares upward, competing with the trumpet’s wavering cry.

I try to listen for barking but there’s nothing, just a war of rage and the great unknown. I blink out tears. I grab her arm and touch the blood that’s dripped down from where she scratched herself. It’s hot, sticky, but I still cling. She falters against me but her knees remain slightly bent. She absorbs the shock but I can’t help but tense.

“Maybe the smoke will kill us first,” I say.

She stares at the flame. She shakes her head. “I’d rather burn trying to get out.” She makes a fist and she turns. She kisses me.

She still smells like cherries.

She still tastes like wine.

Let’s start a motherfucking riot!

She feels like a burning fury beneath my palm, and I reach into my pocket for my mask. I pull it on and so does she.

We both hold hands and charge together into the flames.