and drown themselves in booze and the skunk-y sweet scent of pot. They tame wild beasts made of chrome, bury men in the woods behind my grandmother's house, and they don't lose a wink of sleep about any of it. I used to think of them as giants, guardians, big men with beards and tattoos and arms rippling with muscles that stood watch over me like an honor guard over a princess.
I don't think that anymore.
“I can't believe you talked me into going to this,” Reba whispers, her Southern accent as thick as the humidity clinging to the late evening air. It's getting dark, and in the distance, I swear, I can see fireflies. They don’t live in the Pacific Northwest, but a girl can dream, right?
I lead the way through the brush, alternating drags of my cigarette with sips of the whiskey. It burns my throat going down, but it's the only thing that keeps the memories at bay, locks them up and throws away the key. I'm only seventeen—I shouldn't have to deal with this kind of shit yet. Hang-ups and nightmares and emotional triggers are for people who've lived and loved and experienced and traveled.
I've been trapped in a cage my whole life.
So why is this happening to me? Old memories flicker up from the darkest depths of my soul.
Blood drips to the floor in thick, crimson drops. It pools around the knife, stains her white shirt red. It's too personal, the way she watches that blade, like she knows. She knows she's going to die—and I know it, too.
Ain’t nobody wants to relive that shit; I shake my head to clear the image of my dead sister.
“It's our last big hurrah before senior year,” I say, looking up at the yellow-brown leaves on the trees. It's been a hot summer, too hot. Everyone in our neighborhood has a dead lawn and shriveled bushes, dusty driveways and a newfound hatred for the sun—our little Oregon town is more than ready for fall. “We have to make an appearance.”
“We don't have to do a darn thing, sugar,” Reba says with an exasperated little sigh. I glance back at her and see her pinching the scooped bridge of her button nose. She's the perfect Southern belle, Reba is, a Tennessee transplant with a closet-alcoholic mother and a proselytizing father. I'm not judging her or them—I don't have room to judge anyone—but I can sense that this is where the conversation's heading. “We're better than them, than all of that nonsense.”
“You might be,” I say, giving her one last look before I turn my attention back to the trail, “but I know I'm sure as hell not.”
I ignore Reba until I finish my cigarette. As much as she complains, I know she wants to be here, too. Everybody else will be. The whole goddamn senior class. She wouldn't miss it for the world. Reba and I might be best friends, but she's also friends with three other girls—Dena, Chardou, and Amiya. She'll want to see them, let them know that even if she hangs out with me, she can just as easily slip into their group and be one of them, too.
A few minutes later, I'm starting to feel the Jameson in my blood and my steps get a little wobbly, my leather boots stumbling to the edge of the path as I weave my way through pines still green with needles and deciduous trees with sun-bleached leaves. Buzzed like this, the whole landscape looks prettier somehow, less dead and dry and more … I don't know, magical.
Despite the heat, a chill runs down my spine.
“Do you hear that?” Reba asks from behind me.
I do.
“Music,” I say with a sloppy, whiskey-laden grin.
The sound of an eighties rock ballad sneaks through the trees, weaves itself into the wind and teases my hair. Johnny R. must be DJing tonight. He's the only person I know under the age of thirty who still listens to Lynyrd Syknrd. But since he's also the only person with a professional DJ for a dad (a dad who lets him borrow his equipment, mind you), he gets to play whatever he wants.
We hit the edge of the trees and break through to the flickering light of a bonfire, built up and burning in an old swimming pool behind an abandoned country house. According to my mom, the family that lived there lost it to foreclosure in the seventies. It's been empty for so long that even she