ain’t it? Knowing someone’s got your life in his hands.”
I looked at her wrinkled, sun-painted face. Her face like this, soft and sad, always did remind me of my mother’s.
TIME HAD PASSED in an odd way after my mother left, fast yet slow, day running into night creating the feeling of one continuous day that never really ended or began. I needed her I needed her. It was not even the fantasy that things had been great when she was around, because that didn’t matter. I needed her body next to mine to remind me of my own. I don’t know why I loved her the way I did, in this aching way that could not be explained, other than she was my mother. There was no reason beyond that.
The temperature never cooled, never offered relief, and then somehow it was mid-August, time for school to start again. I waited outside the gate that bordered the classroom trailers until the last moment before I had to go in. A huge SUV sailed into the parking lot like a boat, a pop song about undeniable California girls blaring from the speakers.
The cheer girls got out one by one, their knee-length blue skirts rolled at the waist so their periwinkle undies could be seen. I was surprised they were coming back to Peaches Valley High at all. It wouldn’t last long, I knew. But it seemed the drought hadn’t touched them, still probably having cookouts with Costco hot dogs and jugs of corn syrup limeade, showering at their granny’s house in the right county. Their legs long, muscles cut in a line down their thighs. Ribbons perched high on their heads. Some of them were part-time believers, but they didn’t come to our church. They liked to say our church wasn’t actually Christian at all, didn’t follow the true words of the Bible, didn’t believe in grace, and didn’t know the real Jesus, like he was just a nice casual guy we were refusing to meet. Cult, they called us, their sterling silver crosses swinging around their necks.
But Vern liked to remind us that they didn’t know that true belief meant giving your whole self away and that anything short of that was just a hobby. They wore their faith like a loose sash they could put on and take off when the moment struck them. Some went to the Journey, a big warehouse church in Fresno County, and attended Rage every Friday night, where a Christian rock band did worship and couples made out behind the building while the cool young pastor played video games with the boys. It sounded both useless and intriguing, a place where it seemed no one had to earn God’s approval and where salvation was handed out like a participation ribbon.
“Spacey Lacey,” Farley Sampson said. She was the head cheerleader and a Rage girl. She loved God in the way you might love chocolate sundaes. “Meet any spirit fairies in the sky this summer?”
“An eternity’s a long time,” I said. “Are you prepared?”
She rolled her eyes. Took out a bottle of Crystal Geyser water from her backpack and drank it slowly. Her tiny silver cross necklace glinted in the sun. I wanted her to pull me into her SUV and haul me out of Peaches then, lead me to a simple life where the drought was something you heard about on the news but didn’t connect to your actual life. The rest of the squad crowded around her, pressing powder from black MAC compacts into sweaty foreheads, smearing their lips in sparkly Oh Baby gloss.
“Can I try that powder?” I said. I knew it was nice makeup, much more expensive than anything in my mother’s makeup bag. But they had already forgotten about me, huddled together. I was invisible.
I scanned the parking lot for Denay or Taffy, but they weren’t there. I walked to the edge of the gate where Laramie Stam’s red truck tore down the road, Lyle and some of the boys’ club standing up in the bed, puff-chested like ship guides. Lyle wore rolled-up jean overalls with a black torn shirt underneath, new white cowboy boots, and his hair was combed back in a smooth wave, his teeth a wet shine. He looked more alive than ever. More vibrant. I hated that he reminded me of the photograph of my mother that hung in Cherry’s entryway, her arms out as if about to take flight, the flat stretch of land behind her, all