dusk came, not a single car had pulled over, so Dad reluctantly let me take a turn.
The first truck stopped.
Since I turned fifteen, I’d gotten used to being ogled, teased, and harassed by men at parties and bars and corporate events. Being objectified was part of the performer’s life, I told myself. But when that trucker pulled over, it was different. The way he looked me up and down, evaluating me like I was something on a menu. I felt gross. Frightened.
And then his manner changed entirely when he saw that I wasn’t alone.
Dad didn’t say a word to me, didn’t even look at me—but with the driver, he was quick and charismatic. He spotted his tattoo and engaged the guy in conversation about the Gulf War. The trucker went from potential rapist to harmless uncle in an instant.
One thing I’ve learned: Men are capable of far more shocking transformations than magic could ever account for.
“I’m not going to Flagstaff,” the guy had said, scratching his graying beard. “But I can drop you near Phoenix. How does two hundred bucks sound?”
As if we had a choice.
Thirty minutes into the ride, the war stories ran dry, and the driver cranked up his radio. I wanted to sleep, but my mind was whirling, counting and recounting everything we’d left behind.
Some of the big props had looked fixable—but with the RV’s axle broken and the trailer hitch beyond repair, we had no way to take them with us. I’d crammed all our close-up stuff—cards, coins, cups—into my backpack and duffel bag, along with toiletries and a few changes of clothes. We had padlocked the overturned trailer in case we ever came back for it, but I had little hope. It lay in plain sight of the road, where anyone with a pair of bolt cutters could get in. Our props were gone, our RV was wrecked, and all prospects of financial rescue had evaporated. All my rage at Dad had been wasted; I was the one who had made us hit bottom.
At sunset, I had walked a quarter mile north, opened the door to the bird cage, and watched the doves flap away into the spreading desert darkness.
Now I lay in the back of the cab, staring up at the cracked screen of my phone. Some of the shards looked jagged enough to open a vein.
But no. I couldn’t afford to think like that, couldn’t afford to start down that slope.
I considered calling Grace to beg for help. If Flynn & Kellar were going to pay us five grand just to appear, maybe they could offer some kind of advance to help us get there. On the other hand, if Grace found out we didn’t even have props yet, she might take us off the bill. I couldn’t risk it.
And then it occurred to me that none of it mattered anyway, because Dad wasn’t going to do the show.
The trucker dropped us off at a motel half a block from a big mall. I thanked him and smiled and tried not to vomit as he looked me up and down one last time before I shut the door and walked away.
The water pressure was low, the mattress was hard, and Dad maintained his silence. I could feel him ignoring me as he moved around the room, unpacking what little there was to unpack. He put a few shirts in a drawer, hung his coat in the closet, set his nearly empty prescription bottle on the nightstand with a rattle. He hated living out of a suitcase, he said, so he preferred to make himself at home wherever he was. I didn’t see the point.
I lay on one of the beds, which smelled like chlorine and cigarettes, staring at the water-stained cottage-cheese ceiling and trying to fight off spiraling thoughts. I picked up my phone and thumbed the cracks in the screen, thinking about that open vein. A quick step into fast traffic. A bedsheet and the closet pole. A razor and a red bath. The images were sharp and incessant and impossible to banish.
My eyes felt dry and too big for their sockets, and my pulse beat low and slow in my wrists and neck. All that blood, like a river. In the back of my mind somewhere, a thought swam. Ripley would want me to call him. Molly, the nice woman at the Suicide Prevention Lifeline, would want me to call her. But I didn’t want a pep talk. I wanted to