Smoking Mirror

Smoking Mirror

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Synopsis: After a disastrous experience in Central America, Penny Lane returns to Lawndale, her life in shambles—but with her is a dark souvenir that unravels the lives of everyone around her in terrifying ways.

Author’s Notes: Most events in this story take place in August 2001, the year in which Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane graduate high school, per the Daria movie, Is It College Yet? This movie is assumed to take place throughout early 2001, based on a reference to Dale Earnhardt’s death in one scene. The reader is assumed to have a working knowledge of the major characters from the Daria series, so personal introductions are not given in the story. More “Author’s Notes” and the Acknowledgements are given at the story’s end.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One

If You Multiply an Unknown Quantity by Zero

But Get a Result Greater Than Zero,

Are You Using Complex Numbers or Imaginary Ones?

Part Two

The Secret History of Jane Lane

Part Three

Everest

Part Four

In the Light of Days to Come

Part One

If You Multiply an Unknown Quantity by Zero

But Get a Result Greater Than Zero,

Are You Using Complex Numbers or Imaginary Ones?

Surely, you think, there will come a time when there will be no further heights to conquer. This view is mistaken. You underestimate even the foothills that stand in front of you, and never suspect that far above them, hidden by cloud, rise precipices and snow-fields.

—Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men

It is possible that you can move into the moment of a Might-Have-Been and change it.

—Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Chapter One

Listening to a Mystik Spiral jam session in a dive on a hot Friday night in August was one of the last things on Earth that Penny Lane wanted to do, right down there with swimming through a lake of bat excrement or accidentally meeting her former high-school phys-ed teacher. However, her younger brother Trent said McGrundy’s Brew Pub on Main Street sold all sorts of beers, even ones from south of the border, and she finally thought it worth the risk of rock-induced ear and brain damage to see what they had. Plus, there was nothing else to do in Lawndale on a Friday night. Penny had walked across deserts that held more of interest.

She wandered into McGrundy’s just after seven that evening and asked for her favorite Mexican beers at the bar, but the bartender had never heard of Negra Modelo, Bohemia, or even Dos Equis, which was just ridiculous because everyone had Dos Equis. Even Taco Hut and Burrito Barn each served three types of Dos Equis. However, behind the bar at McGrundy’s were row upon row of Corona and Tecate and, gods forbid, the locally made Blank Check Beer, which was worse than cat piss no matter how many limes you stuck in it.

Muttering a curse she had picked up from an old Zapotec woman in Guatemala, Penny was storming her way out of the pub when her gaze fell on a colorful label on a clear bottle at the end of one shelf. She stopped dead in her tracks. It was a Del Maguey, an Oaxaca mescal so smooth that it could be drunk straight. She dug into her pockets and bought the whole bottle, the only one that McGrundy’s had, and then she settled down to get deliciously messed up. It was at the top of her list of things she wanted to do most at this dead-end stage of her life, ranking even above trekking up the cordilleras again or watching her former phys-ed teacher roast in a gasoline-fed bonfire.

“Here’s a glass,” said the bartender, placing one on the counter in front of her.

“Won’t need it,” said Penny, and she took a long, slow swallow straight from the bottle. When she lowered her drink, her mouth filled with half-remembered flavors and her throat lightly burning from the alcohol, she looked right into the mirrored wall behind the bar’s stock shelves. Her reflection caught her eye for a fraction of a second: a lean, wiry, hard-faced burnout with short red hair and dull jade eyes, wearing a low-cut black tank top with white lettering across her braless breasts. Lowering her head, she pretended to study her long camouflage pants and knee-high black-leather hiking boots, hand-tooled in Mexico City. Looking at her own image was the thing she least wanted to do. It reminded her too much of that one other time she’d recently looked into a mirror. And there was nothing to see in the mirror, anyway—just herself, the nothing.

She heard noises behind her suggesting that her brother’s band was setting up its equipment on the stage across the room. Turning around on her bar stool, Penny leaned back and put her elbows on the counter, letting her dangling legs swing free. The mescal bottle rested on her thigh, with the neck in the fingers of her right hand. Trent’s three band buddies were plugging in amps and doing sound checks. The younger brother of one was helping out. Was he Jesse, or was Jesse his older brother in the band? Penny couldn’t remember their names. She’d never been home long enough to learn them.

Black-haired Trent sat on a bass speaker, tuning his guitar. Glancing once at Penny, he looked down at his guitar again with no change in expression. He’d spoken maybe two-dozen words to her since she’d come back to Lawndale from El Salvador the day before, acting like her arrival home for the first time in over a year was nothing big. He hadn’t even invited her to the session at McGrundy’s. The idea had actually been her younger sister Jane’s, made after Penny complained that the liquor cabinet was empty. It was likely that Jane just wanted Penny out of the house so Jane could finish a painting in relative quiet, and Trent went along with it. Penny tried not to let it bug her too much.

Though she hated her older siblings, Penny saw Trent and Jane differently. True, she had resented babysitting them in her high-school years while Mom and Dad ran off to the ends of the earth, but Trent was rarely awake long enough to fight with, and Jane was absorbed in her art—which, Penny admitted, was pretty good, better than her own. Trent and Jane also liked each other, a miracle for any two Lanes. More power to them, Penny thought with a touch of sadness. She recalled the nightmarish fights between her parents before her photographer father began taking overseas assignments. Now, he and his wife Amanda got along smashingly for the few weeks out of the year they were under the same roof. Hitting each other with foam bats helped a little, too.

Penny sighed in contentment, feeling the mescal spread through her bloodstream. Good thing the house is within walking distance from here, she thought. She watched Trent as he talked with one of his band mates, a skinny bald guy she thought might be the drummer, and she wondered what would become of her twenty-something brother when Jane went off to college in Boston in four months’ time. He’d probably travel more with Mystik Spiral, become another ever-wandering Lane without Jane to anchor him. The house would likely stay empty for long periods after that, unless their mother started teaching ceramics classes in the basement again when she returned from Ireland.

Where will I travel next? When will I go? Penny wondered. She fingered the mescal bottle. Will I ever go south again, knowing what I do about me? I sure as hell can’t stay around this dump. What the hell am I going to do with my life, now that I have no life left? Does it matter? Couldn’t that whole mess with the mirror have just been a bad dream? She remembered the moment when her life had changed, barely a week earlier, and felt renewed shame. Dream or not, the message rang true—the Penny Lane in the mirror had been the real one.

Pity that the tavern had only one bottle of mescal left. She was in the mood to drink a case of them.

At this moment, Penny became aware that a heavily muscled guy in a T-shirt and athletic shorts was walking toward her from the left. He was about to say something that Penny knew would be a come-on. She tensed, angry that her solitude was threatened.

The guy slowed, clearly staring at her chest—and the warning printed across her tank top. After a moment, the guy laughed and walked on by. Relief ran through her as he did. The tank top’s message was better at deflecting unwanted male companionship than a charged TASER gun.

Raising the mescal bottle again, she took several long, deep swigs. A girl sitting two stools away on her right hummed an old Sixties song by—what was the band? Jefferson Starship? Penny remembered her ex-hippie parents once sang that very tune whenever it came on the oldies radio stations, so it automatically sucked. Still, when the girl hummed it in her measured way, it didn’t sound too bad. Depressing, maybe, but not too bad. Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?

As Penny lowered the bottle, her head buzzing and her muscles loosening at last, the girl sitting on her right leaned in close. Now on the stool next to Penny, she was a thin girl with long, thick black hair, candy-apple red lipstick, and eye makeup that gave her face a hyper-intense look. Below her leather and copper choker, the girl wore an ash-gray vest over an olive-green tee, tight black pants that bordered a hand-span of bare midriff, and fashionable black boots with platform soles. Penny had a half-second to absorb this before the girl said in a cheery voice, “Hey! This your first time here?”

Chapter Two

The redheaded girl sitting two seats over at the bar looked familiar, but Monique couldn’t place her at all. One thing for sure: she looked interesting. Maybe a little weird, too. She was kind of young and kind of old at the same time; Monique guessed she was around thirty, give or take a couple years. After wandering in alone, the new girl bought the bottle of hard liquor that no one ever bought, the one shipped by mistake with a case of Mexican beer. It was clear the new girl meant to get blasted out of her mind. She probably had a good reason to do it. People who drank like that always did. Monique found herself thinking about her father, but she shook it off so she could focus on having a good time and not be depressed.

She gently scratched the reddened base of her nose. The new girl had the strangest sea-green eyes. Those eyes had looked into dark places and not forgotten what they’d seen. Haunted, that was a good word for them. A good story lurked behind those eyes. Monique loved to listen as well as talk, if someone had something interesting to say. The redheaded girl sure would. What was written on the new girl’s shirt didn’t put her off, either. Monique liked everyone. She could deal with it.

A jock started to walk toward the redheaded girl, who tensed as if she’d seen him in the corner of her eye—but then the jock read what was printed on the redhead’s butch tank top: I’M HERE LOOKING FOR GIRLS, TOO. The jock laughed and walked on, but Monique sensed that he was eyeing her next. Time to squelch that impulse.

As the redheaded girl raised her liquor bottle and began chugging it down, Monique got up from her seat and moved over to the stool next to the redhead. For some reason, an old Jefferson Airplane tune from the Sixties came to mind, and she began to hum it—“Somebody to Love,” from a worn-out Surrealistic Pillow LP that elementary-school Monique played on her father’s battered stereo when no one was home at night. The jock got the hint and kept walking. Tah-dah!

The new girl lowered the liquor bottle and took it from her lips with a sigh. She sensed Monique’s presence and gave her head a half turn.

“Hey!” Monique said in a lively tone. “This your first time here?”

The redhead looked at her in vague surprise, blinking. “¿Qué?” she said.

“I haven’t seen you around before. I’m Monique. Are you here for the band or the booze?”

The new girl looked flustered. “I’m just hanging out,” she said, a little tense. She started to point to Mystik Spiral, still setting up for its session across the room.

“Oh, the band!” said Monique. She clapped her bone-thin hands in delight. “I know the lead singer, Trent Lane! He and I used to go out, but that was like a while ago. We broke up. He’s okay, but we didn’t have any karma as a couple, you know? We like fought all the time. We used to be like good friends, and maybe we should have stayed that way, you know? I mean, he’s like a cool guy and all, really, and he helped me get my start in music. He’s the best, I mean it. He says I have stage presence. We were in this band together for a while in high school, before he started Mystik Spiral, and then I got into this other band, a girl band called the Harpies, and I was with them for a couple years, but then I like wanted to do my own thing, you know? Start my own group? It didn’t work out, but I still sing and play bass guitar and do drums a little, too, sort of as backup for different groups when someone gets sick or something, you know? I’m multitalented or something, I guess. How about you?”

The new girl barely suppressed a smile. “I’m Trent’s sister,” she said.

“Oh, no!” Monique gasped in mock horror. She then got the giggles. “Oh, my God, you are so kidding me! Really? Oh, my God! You’re older than Trent, right? Are you the oldest?”

“No,” said the new girl. “I’m la hermana media, the middle kid. I’ve got a sister and brother older than me, and a sister and brother younger than me.”

“Oh, my God, that’s right! I remember you now! Trent showed me a picture with you in it. I thought I recognized you from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. Wow! This is so cool! You’re Penny, right? You were like in Arizona or Mexico or the Amazon for a long time, right? And you just came back? Wow!”

Penny hesitated, unsure of which conversational thread to follow. “I’m back, yeah,” she said. “I was . . . I was just living around south for a while, doing odd jobs and selling handicrafts.”

“So, you make craft stuff, right? What kind of crafts do you do? Trent told me that everyone in your family is really artistic, like really into arts and crafts and things, so you must be really good at it, right?”

The smile on Penny’s face faded. She looked down at her mescal and made a pained face. “No. It was just yonque. It wasn’t any good.”

“Oh, right!” Monique nodded and laughed. “I bet you’re great! Oh, hey, look—Spiral’s about to play!”

Penny looked up. Trent was warming up on his guitar, but he was eyeing both Penny and Monique with concern. Penny waved at him, but he continued to look bugged and even frowned before he looked down at his guitar again. What’s his problem? She snorted, lowering her hand. Fine, be that way, then. Don’t pee on my evening. She took a quick drink from her bottle and was surprised to find it was already down by a third. The mescal buzz had deepened into a profound sense of well-being and warmth.

“You like Spiral?” Monique asked. “They play here all the time. Well, not really all the time, you know, but like once a month or so, or like when another band falls through. I played backup bass guitar for them when Nick got food poisoning in June, but he got over it in a couple weeks, which was good, like really! I mean, he was really sick. It was weird, though, being in a band with Trent again. He was like, you know, kind of quiet and didn’t talk to me much, but he’s always like that. He doesn’t say much about anything, you know? Is he like that with you? I mean, we didn’t talk much, but I think he was glad I could help him out. He’s pretty good. Too bad we couldn’t make it together, but that’s life, right?”

Penny shrugged, content. Her input did not seem particularly necessary. She thought it curious, given that she had wanted so much to be alone, that Monique’s presence wasn’t bothering her more. Maybe the mescal was responsible.

“I bet you have some really good stories, you know, from all the places you’ve been. I love hearing stories. Where did you go last?”

Penny’s cheek twitched. “Just around,” she said. Her expression darkened. “El Salvador for a couple months, then through Guatemala and Mexico up into Texas, then here. I took buses. I wanted to see the countryside on the way home, like a turista.”

“Why’d you want to leave and come back? I thought you like lived down there or something, from what Trent said.”

Penny stared at her mescal, her good mood souring.

“Broke up with your girlfriend?” Monique asked gently.

Penny looked up in surprise, then caught on. “Oh,” she said, more animated now. She looked down at her tank top, her face coloring. “Oh, no. Um—” She hesitated, then leaned close to Monique and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not really a lesbian. I just wear this thing when I want guys to leave me alone.”

Monique gasped, then burst into laughter and pounded her knees in hysteria. Penny looked away, trying not to smile. She spotted Trent watching the two of them with clear anxiety. His band mates were looking to him, waiting for him to start the jam session, but he was oblivious to everything but his sister and his former girlfriend, and the secret thing that had passed between them that caused them to look so happy together.

I wonder if he thinks I’m going to hit on his ex, Penny thought, and then realized, He thinks I am hitting on her, and she’s going along with it. Penny burst into laughter, too. She couldn’t help it. The mescal was in full bloom inside her. Her spirit was at peace, for this one blessed moment in time, and she felt great.

When Monique recovered, Penny leaned over and whispered, “Trent thinks we’ve hooked up.”

“What?” Monique looked at Trent in confusion. “Why would—oh!” She clapped a hand over her mouth as she looked down at Penny’s tank top. “Oh, you’re kidding! Is it freaking him out?”

Penny grinned. “Sí, it’s freaking him out.”

“Oh, my God! That’s great!” said Monique—and she leaned back and slipped her left arm around Penny’s shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Penny turned and stared goggle-eyed for a moment at Monique—then on impulse she put her right arm around Monique’s shoulders, too, the mescal bottle still in her hand. She looked at Trent for his reaction.

Trent could have been hit with a sledgehammer. He stared white-faced at his sister and ex-girlfriend, while his band mates and several members of the audience shouted his name and snapped their fingers, trying to get his attention to start playing.

Penny laughed as she hadn’t laughed in years. The mescal made it funnier, until the joy became spiritual and lifted her soul. What am I doing? she asked herself, but then she stopped questioning the moment and simply enjoyed it. She forgot she was a failure, the laughing stock of not only the world but the heavens, too. She forgot all but her joy at a practical joke—and her joy at being close to someone who seemed to like her. Penny hadn’t had a real friend in ages, just acquaintances who tolerated her until either they or she found a reason to move on. Having a friend was a fragile thing. In her heart she knew it could end at any moment—yet it held on as if it might grow.

Thank you for this moment, she thought in gratitude, to any higher being who could hear her. Thank you, gracias, thank you so much—but if it is your will that this joy should not last, please let me die tonight and remain happy forever.

She did not die. She forgot herself, her arm around her friend, and laughed.

Chapter Three

The mescal was gone an hour later. Penny had the idea that her hangover the following morning would be spectacular, but that was all right. It was a small price to pay for having fun.

It was impossible to hear anything in the pub with everyone talking and Mystik Spiral playing, so Penny gestured toward the door until Monique caught on. They got up and walked out of the bar together, bathed in the strains of “Icebox Woman” and the interested stares of several hundred people. Penny noticed that Trent stopped singing in the middle of a stanza as they headed for the doors. She snickered and waved him goodbye, then put an arm around Monique’s waist as they went out, just to rub it in.

Once outside, awash in the warm evening sun and the roar of rush-hour traffic, they had to stop because they were laughing too hard to walk straight. Penny wiped her eyes as she leaned against a streetlight by the pub. She could not recall the last time she had felt this good.

“Ohmigod!” gasped Monique through her laughter, standing on the sidewalk doubled over. “Ohmigod! I’m never going to breathe! I have to stop!” She straightened, saw Penny and her tank top, then burst into new hysteria and bent over again.

Penny pushed away from the streetlight and tugged on Monique’s arm. “C’mon! ¡Vamanos!” she said, resisting a new round of giggles. “Let’s walk it off!”

“O-o-okay!” Monique agreed, and she staggered off with Penny. A half-block later, when they stopped at a traffic intersection, they were close to normal again.

“God, did you see the look on his face?” Monique dabbed her eyes with her vest sleeves. “I thought he was going to die! I hope that wasn’t too mean or anything, but that was so funny! Ohmigod!”

“Yeah.” Penny nodded, then caught herself swaying where she stood. “Oh, boy,” she said, steadying herself against a signpost. “I drank muy too much.”

“Wow, like, what was that stuff you were drinking? Vodka?”

“Uh-uh. Mescal. It’s a Mexican thing, like tequila. Aiy-yi-yi! That stuff was good! Do you drink?”

“Oh, no.” Monique sniffed and rubbed her nose, suddenly sober. “No, no, I can’t. I mean, I don’t. I don’t like to get drunk.”

“It’s fun sometimes,” said Penny, feeling light-headed. “I really needed it. Damn, that was so funny with Trent.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, flicking her ragged red hair back and forth. “I am going to be so freaking sick tomorrow, though.”

“Oh, I hope not.” Monique sighed and straightened her vest. “See, that’s another reason I don’t drink. I mean, I don’t mind if you do, you know. That’s okay with me. I just . . . you know, everyone’s different. I used to smoke weed when I was in high school, and I did some E a year ago when I was with the Harpies on this gig traveling up the East Coast, just to see what it was like, but I had to quit. It was really messing me up. I had to quit everything last fall, a year ago.” She ran both hands through her thick black hair, then shook her head and blew out a breath. “Wow, I think I’m okay again. Tired, though. That wore me out.”

“Whoops.” Penny caught herself before she stumbled and fell on the sidewalk. “I need to sit down for a minute.” She stopped and looked around, shading her eyes against a reflection of the setting sun in windows a block away. “Over there,” she said, pointing. “Let’s go across the street to the pavilion, behind the town hall.”

“Where?” Monique looked around. Across the street she spotted a small city park in back of the ex-cathedral that now served as Lawndale’s government building. In the center of the park, surrounded by a circle of trees and shrubbery, was a domed structure on columns done in Greek style, perhaps twenty feet wide and twenty high. “Oh, sure. I’m kind of beat.”

They made it across the street when the light turned red and a traffic jam developed, dashing between the stalled cars. Penny bumped into several, yelling, “¡Excúseme!” as she went. On the other side, she stopped beside Monique, who seemed quite tired and was doubled over again, panting for air.

“You okay?” Penny asked, feeling her thighs and thinking she’d bruised herself pretty good a few times. Stupid cars! They should watch where I’m going!

“Huh?” Monique gasped. “Oh, yeah, just winded. Just a sec.” She straightened, her pale face almost white.

“Bueno.” Penny led the way across the manicured park grass and through several rows of flowers and shrubs to the pavilion. The pavilion lights weren’t on yet, as it was still too bright out. No one else was around. “We’ve got it all to ourselves,” Penny announced with satisfaction. She walked up the few steps to the pavilion, went inside between two columns, and threw herself down on a varnished wooden bench. Draping her arms over the back of the bench, she stretched out her legs and waved her feet back and forth. “Grab a seat,” she said, patting the backrest of the space beside her.

Monique sat down beside Penny and leaned back, blowing air from her lungs.

“You look tired,” said Penny. She frowned and leaned in for a closer look. Beads of sweat had formed across Monique’s forehead. “You really okay?”

“Yeah,” said her friend faintly. “I don’t get out enough. I was going to stay home tonight, but . . . this is silly, but when I heard Trent’s band was going to play, I sorta wanted to come out and hear him again. Hear them again, I mean.”

“You still have a thing for him?”

Monique shook her head slowly. “Nah. He’s really nice and all, but it just wasn’t working out. He was always like, I’m going to be a rock star some day, you know, and then he’d always sort of sleep on it, and nothing would happen. We had so many fights, and—” She looked, annoyed with herself. “I’m really sorry, I shouldn’t be talking about your brother like that. He’s okay, he just—we just didn’t work out. I just wanted to hear them play tonight. I like his music.” Her face relaxed. “I always did like to hear him play. Sorta helps me get centered, you know?”

Penny snorted and looked across the park at an emptying parking lot and a distant gas station. Trees blocked the setting sun. “You didn’t offend me. I never got into his music. His lyrics were too silly and pretentious, I thought. And he really does sleep more than any human being should. If he ever got off his butt, he could make something of himself.” She exhaled. “Only one of us Lanes who’s probably going anywhere is Jane.”

“Jane? Your little sister?”

“Sí. I dunno, she just seems like she’s got her head together, mostly. It’s not stuck up her butt like some people I know. I think she’ll make it. Hope so, anyway.”

“Don’t you think you’re going somewhere?” Monique sat up on the bench. “I mean, wow, you go all over the world, don’t you? You’ve seen a lot, right?”

Penny shook her head and looked away. I saw too much. She tried not to think of the mirror.

“Don’t want to talk about it?”

“No. Not right now.”

“So, why’d you come out tonight?” Monique asked. “You weren’t really looking for chicks?”

Penny glanced over with an eyebrow raised, but Monique was grinning. She looked a little better now, though still pale. Penny smiled back and shook her head. “Trent told me that McGrundy’s had lots of good Mexican beers, but all they had was the same old mierda. The mescal, though, that was muy fantástico.”

“Yeah, but now you’re going to be sick tomorrow.”

“Eh, so what.” Penny shrugged. “I feel pretty good now.”

“So, you got a boyfriend?”

“Nah. A guy here, a guy there, whatever. Just a little fun, you know.” She made a face when she caught herself saying you know, just like Monique did. “Doesn’t happen too often, though.”

“Really? That’s weird, ‘cause I’d think you wouldn’t have any problem, you know? You’re so cool. I’d think, like, traveling around, you’d meet a lot of cool guys.”

Penny grimaced, her spirits sagging. “It’s . . . what it is, see, a lot of places aren’t like here. They’re just different. It’s a cultural thing. The people get pretty wound up about stuff. They don’t like it if you act like you’re liberated, especially if you’re a woman. They can get pretty tense about it.” La puta americana, they had called her in southern Mexico—the American whore—or things far worse than that. She rubbed her cheek where an old woman had slapped her. “You have to be careful about your personal life in other countries, you know?” She caught herself saying you know again and groaned, but then gave up editing what came out of her mouth. She was too drunk to care.

Monique nodded at the sage advice she’d been given. “Yeah. I have to be careful, too. So, why are you back here? I mean, in Lawndale, you know? This place is nowhere. You could be partying around in like the Amazon or something.”

Penny shrugged. I have nowhere else to go. “I just came back,” she said.

“Well, where would you rather be, here or there?” asked Monique.

A serene expression crossed Penny’s face as she looked at the distant parking lot. “The cordilleras,” she said. “I’d like to go back and see the mountains again.”

“Mountains? Which mountains?”

“Sierra Madre,” said Penny in a soft voice, looking away. “It’s the southern part of the Rocky Mountains, going down through Mexico into Central America, all the way to Panama. They call them the cordilleras. You can climb them. Some are volcanoes, but you can climb the dead ones. Some of the lower peaks are covered in jungle. They’re all different, each of them. I’ve gone up a few.”

“Wow! What was that like?”

“Oh . . . it’s hard, even if you have a guide, but when you get to the top and you look around, it’s so incredible. You’re standing on top of the world, and everything is down below your feet—the cities, the roads, the people, everything. Sometimes even the clouds. You can see the ocean, if the atmosphere isn’t too misty. It’s . . . it’s beautiful.” She sighed. “I’d love to go back.” A pause. “Maybe.”

“When are you going back?”

Her lips pressed together, Penny shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Monique was uncharacteristically silent.

“I left home when I got out of high school,” said Penny. “I was fed up with everything: my parents, my school, my stupid older brother and sister, everyone. I wanted to get out and change the world. I had this plan . . . oh, forget it.”

Monique poked her in the thigh. “No, c’mon. Tell me.”

Even drunk, it was harder to talk about it than she thought. “It . . . oh, I don’t know. I just wanted to change the world. I had this idea that if I could show the local people how to use their native crafts, making cool useful things, they could sell them to turistas and bring up their standard of living and get rid of all the fat-cat companies and big governments that were exploiting them, show the people how to bring themselves up from poverty. I guess it was like capitalism, though I tried not to think of it that way. I mean, capitalism is kind of exploitative, but it was capitalism for the people, I guess.” Her face tightened. “It was estúpido. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Why? That makes sense, what you were saying! Why was it stupid?”

“Because everyone was already doing that!” said Penny with some heat. “They were already trying to get themselves out of poverty! It wasn’t that they didn’t understand how. It was that I didn’t understand what was really going on, how hard it was for them to do it. I didn’t really want to see it, all the troubles they were having: war and terrorism, overpopulation, bad soil, earthquakes and hurricanes, prejudice, diseases, lack of jobs, right-wing death squads, left-wing revolutionaries who murder the people they claim to help, everything!” She glared into the distance. “I was the stupid one. I didn’t understand anything. I wanted to be like some kind of messiah, I guess, walking among the peasants and making their lives better, and they’d love me for it. Instead, I just made myself look like a fool, from one end of Central America to the other. Gecko-skin coin purses—Jesús Cristo, I don’t know what I was thinking.”

They sat together in silence, listening to the traffic.

“I was in El Salvador a week ago,” Penny went on, “and I was trying to help these street kids in this village near San Salvador, the capital. I bought them food and gave them handouts, whatever I could. Then they stole my money in broad daylight, almost everything I had. They grabbed it and ran, and I was chasing after them, screaming at them, and then everyone around started laughing at me. Everyone in the street, everyone, laughed at me like I was the biggest fool. There was nothing I could do. I just gave up and walked off. I had enough money left to get drunk, so I went off to these really old Aztec kind of ruins, maybe a thousand years old, and I climbed one of those big piles of stone with some bad tequila and I got really stinking drunk, just totally wasted.” She skipped over the pivotal event of that night as she went on in a subdued voice. “The next day, I sold everything I had left and got on a bus and came home. I don’t have to go back there. I don’t have anywhere to go, now. The hell with it.”

She looked down at her empty hands and wished she had another bottle of mescal. “I’m thirty years old and washed up. Twelve years I spent running around after I got out of high school, wasting my life, and here I am. A nothing—no, I’m worse than that. I’m a joke, a total joke.” She turned to Monique. “I’m sorry, but I am so damn drunk. I wouldn’t say this to anyone if I wasn’t smashed.”

They sat quietly for half a minute more.

“So, what’re you gonna do?” asked Monique.

Penny turned to look at her. It was hard to believe anyone could be as thin as Monique. Did she eat three meals a day and throw up two, or just eat one?

“I have some money left,” she said. “Is there a liquor store around here?”

Chapter Four

The idea of visiting a liquor store caused Monique’s stomach to knot up. She remembered walking nervously behind her dad into liquor stores when she was a kid, always the prelude to a long, bad night of listening to him swear and throw things in the living room while she locked herself in her bedroom and tried to watch TV. Why am I always meeting people who either drink a lot or ignore me? “You’re not a joke,” she said at last. “Can we just sit here for a while? I like talking to you. I don’t want to go anywhere just yet.”

For a moment, Penny looked as if she was going to get up and find a liquor store on her own. Her face worked, but she settled back with a heavy sigh. “Fine,” she said. “Maybe later, then.”

Monique nodded in relief. “Sure. Nice evening, isn’t it? I like it like this, when it’s warm and you can like sit and listen to the world go on around you, you know? I like to sit in my room with the windows open and play my guitar and just feel really, I don’t know, like, peaceful.”

“It’s more fun to get a little drunk,” said Penny. “You really should try some mescal. It’s incredible stuff.”

Monique crossed her arms over the knot in her stomach. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.” Taking a deep breath, Monique decided to spill it and get it over with. “It’ll mess up my liver. I got sick a year ago, and it sort of screwed up my liver real bad, so I can’t drink or do anything else that would hurt it.” She glanced over and saw Penny eyeing her.

“Screwed up your liver?” said Penny. Her eyes narrowed, her mind flipping through a long list of diseases with which she had more than a passing familiarity in her years of travel. “Hepatitis?”

Monique looked away and swallowed, nodding. “Yeah, hep C. I didn’t even know it at first, you know, which was sort of crazy, but I got a blood test when I went to the doctor last year, ‘cause I had this nose ring and it got infected, so like I went to the doctor for some stuff, and they did a blood test and said I had hep C. They said I probably got it from the nose ring. I used to go to this guy in town named Axl who ran a tattoo and body-piercing shop, and they said he didn’t clean his stuff when he used it, so I like caught hep C from it, from some blood or something that was on the nose ring. I guess someone else had used it before he gave it to me. The health department shut him down, and then he ran off before they arrested him. I felt bad about it ‘cause I really liked him. Axl was a nice guy.” She picked dust from her vest sleeves. “So, that’s why I can’t drink. It would hurt my liver, and the doctor said my liver isn’t doing all that well anymore. I get kinda run down and have to rest sometimes, but otherwise I’m okay, I guess. It could be worse. I just have to watch myself.”

Penny stared at Monique without blinking or speaking.

“You can’t catch it from me,” Monique added quickly, looking up. “Seriously, you’re okay. It’s like a blood disease, so even if we were like, uh, you know, touching or anything, you still wouldn’t get it from me. I mean, you couldn’t catch it from me unless you were like, you know, touching my blood or something, that’s the only way. I mean, we can’t like share toothbrushes or anything, or razors, ‘cause like there might be a cut or something, but other than that, you know, you’re safe. It’s okay. I mean, like, when we were sort of hugging back at the bar, you know, trying to fool Trent, you didn’t—”

“I know, I know,” said Penny softly. “Don’t worry about it. Are you taking medicine for it?”

“No, not really. I mean, I don’t have any health insurance, you know? I can’t get any. I was like covered by my dad’s insurance when I was in school, but when I turned twenty, three years ago, it all stopped, and I never got any health insurance on my own ‘cause it was expensive. My dad helps me pay my medical bills, but he doesn’t have a lot, so I try not to go to the doctor too much. I don’t get sick very often, but now, with the hep, I can’t get any insurance. I couldn’t afford it even if they offered it to me. I don’t make enough money playing in bands or anything. I’d have to be like Britney Spears or something to get insurance now, so, no, I don’t take any medicine. I’m kind of scared, ‘cause actually I’m doing okay right now, just tired sometimes, but if it gets worse, I don’t know what I’d do. I just don’t know. I have to be real careful about what I do, so I can’t drink or anything. I like hanging around you, if that’s okay, and I don’t mind if you drink, but I can’t.”

“Okay,” said Penny. She hesitated, then added, “I like hanging around you, too.”

“Good,” said Monique in relief. She rubbed her eyes. “Thanks. You’re pretty cool.” Monique sniffed deeply and stopped rubbing her eyes, which were turning red. “Trent . . . he was cool with me playing with Spiral, like when Nick ate that bad tuna salad that got left out for a few days, but some of the other guys got sort of worried ‘cause they thought I might cut myself or something while I was on stage with them, and I don’t know if they’d ask me to come back. They told me to use my own guitar, which was okay. I understood, you know. I’ve played solo a few times at places around here, but I don’t travel around like I used to.”

“Do you wear out a lot?”

“Yeah. I’ve been sorta down for a while. I haven’t really wanted to go anywhere, though it . . . I dunno, it might be fun to try it, I guess, to go places. Somewhere away from here. I liked getting around before I got sick. I just kind of worry about it now, if I get hurt when I’m not near a doctor, you know, ‘cause I don’t know how I’d pay for it.”

“Where do you live?”

“Oh, I kind of like rent a room at my dad’s house, over on Disher Avenue on the south side, between the landfill and the railroad tracks. I guess he really just lets me live there, ‘cause I haven’t been able to pay him much. I make enough to get groceries, and I pick up around the house and take our clothes to the coin laundry, and he says that’s okay. He counsels drunks and druggies at Cedars of Lawndale. He cleaned himself up a few years ago, which was really great, and now he helps other people kinda like him. Like he was, I mean.”

“Is your mom around?”

“Ah, nah, she kind of like took off when I was in second grade. We never did find her. It’s just been my dad and me, mostly, with my aunts and uncles helping out. They live around here.”

“Oh.” Penny became thoughtful. “Well, my parents both ran off, but they keep coming back. That’s the real problem.”

This had the desired effect of making Monique laugh. “That’s awful!” she said, but she kept laughing.

“Well, I’m kind of kidding, but my parents really are off in their own worlds. They left me on my own a lot when I was growing up, which always pissed me off. I wish they’d been around more. On the other hand, if my older brother and sister disappeared, that would be great. Mi Dios, listening to them whine and cry and fight when I was growing up was the pits.”

“I always wanted a brother or sister,” said Monique with a smile, wiping her eyes, “but maybe I didn’t have it so bad growing up by myself after all.”

“Got a boyfriend?” As the words left her mouth, Penny realized it might be a dumb thing to ask.

“Huh? Ah, nah, no one.” The cheer faded from Monique’s face. “Nah, they sort of like don’t hang around anymore. Trent was the last. It’s sort of complicated.”

“Because of the hepatitis?”

“Ah, yeah. That’s . . . yeah. That kind of . . .” She shrugged. “Eh.”

“Well, screw ‘em,” said Penny. “You need a shirt like this.” She tugged on her tank top and its warning.

“What? Oh, yeah!” Monique laughed again in relief. “I probably do! That would be funny! Sometimes it would be, I guess. It’s just that . . . you know, I hate having to explain it all, over and over and over again, to every new guy. It like kills everything, you know? There are certain things you gotta do, I tell them, ‘cause I got this problem, I got this thing, and they like—hey, whatever, I’m out of here, and off they go.” She waved it away but looked sad. “Whatever.”

“Shame you can’t drink.”

“Yeah, sometimes I think so, too. I could really do that. I probably would, if it wasn’t for the other stuff.”

“Huh.” Penny watched the traffic pass by. “So, what do you do for fun?”

“Oh, my guitar, you know, I play that and sing a little. When I can get a solo gig in the county somewhere, I like that a lot. It doesn’t pay much, but it helps with groceries and stuff with my dad. I want to get a job, but no one will hire me now, ‘cause of the, you know, so I do whatever. I don’t have any good job skills, I guess.”

Just like me, Penny thought. I don’t have any real skills, either. Both of us are screwed. On impulse, she turned to her new friend. “Hey, muchacha, you wanna come over to my place? You can stay over if you want.” She hesitated—then decided to go ahead and show her the souvenir. It was risky, but it was all she had to share. “I brought back some things from down south, if you want to take a look at them.”

Light spread over Monique’s face. “Wow, yeah! That would be great! Are you staying with Trent and Jane?”

“Yeah. The house is about three, four blocks from here.” Penny pointed to the east, between the gas station and a light manufacturing plant beside it. “You went out with Trent, right, so you know where it is?”

“Sure! I know where it is.”

“Think you can make it over there?”

“Yeah! No problem!”

Penny got to her feet and gritted her teeth against the sudden pain in her thighs. Did I run into something and bruise myself up? She vaguely remembered bumping into some cars crossing the street a few minutes earlier, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time. She reached down to help Monique up. “Thanks,” said the dark-haired girl, and she brushed off her pants and straightened her vest.

“I have to ask you something, if you don’t mind,” said Penny.

“What? Oh, sure. Anything.”

“If you don’t drink, why do you hang around bars?”

“Oh. Yeah, well, I really wanted to hear Trent and all, but yeah, I do kind of like hang around bars a lot, ‘cause that’s where the cool people hang around, you know? It’s kind of fun there, everybody talking and stuff. And—” She shrugged and grinned “—I might get lucky there, you know?”

“Might get lucky,” repeated Penny. She glanced down at her tank top. “You sure you’re straight, mi muchacha?”

Monique giggled. “Yeah, but I just want someone to talk to, you know?”

“Yeah, sí,” said Penny. “Me, too.”

Penny led the way out of the Greek pavilion and across the grass to the street. “We’ll cross over there and cut through the gas station and some people’s yards. I did it all the time when I was in school.”

Looking refreshed, Monique kept up the pace. “So, like, what kind of stuff did you bring back from South America? I mean, Central America? Or Mexico, you know, wherever?”

Penny chewed her lower lip. They got to the road and waited for traffic to clear before crossing the street. “I kind of stole something,” she said in a low voice.

“Stole something?” Monique stared at her with huge eyes and open mouth. “You stole something?”

“Yeah,” said Penny. “Don’t talk about it right now. Later!” She caught Monique by the arm, pulling her across the momentarily clear highway. “¡Vamanos!”

Chapter Five

When she opened the front door at the Lane home, Penny heard Jane’s voice back in the kitchen. She motioned Monique inside, noting that her friend was sweating and panting from exertion. “You need to rest?” she asked.

Monique waved it aside. “Nah, I’m . . . fine,” she huffed. “Ruh-really.”

“Want a drink of water?”

“Shuh-sure.” Monique nodded rapidly and dabbed at her face with her sleeves.

The kitchen seemed brighter than Penny remembered. Someone had replaced the burned-out bulbs in the ceiling lights since her last visit—probably her little sister, who was talking on the phone. Her black bangs framing her heart-shaped face, lanky nineteen-year-old Jane sat at the kitchen table wearing a red T-shirt, a pair of black jeans, and high gray boots. A box of leftover pizza sat in front of her, beside a glass of cranberry juice.

Jane looked up from the phone, her blue-eyed gaze jumping from her older sister to Monique and back. “Hold on, company’s here,” she said, then lowered the phone without covering the receiver. “Did Spiral blow out the fuses again?” she asked Penny. “Or did McGrundy’s lose its liquor license?”

“Nothing happened, they’re still there,” said Penny, walking to the cabinets and getting a glass. “We left early.”

“Hey, Jane!” Monique waved with an excited smile. “Good to see ya!”

“Hey, Monique,” Jane replied. She didn’t wave back. “You waiting for Trent?”

Monique shook her head and giggled. “Nah. We’re just . . . hanging out.”

A strange expression crossed Jane’s face as she looked from one woman to the other. She raised the phone to her mouth. “Daria?” she said, eyeing Monique. “Can I call you back later? Yeah, and Penny’s here, too. Why don’t I call around ten? Yeah. Curiouser and curiouser. Okay. Bye.” She reached back and hung the phone on its wall hook. “‘Sup?” she asked in a casual voice.

“Nada,” said Penny, handing Monique a glass of water.

“The two of you get bored?” Jane asked, looking at Monique.

“Oh, no,” said Monique, who drank half the glass before she continued. “We just wanted to get away, you know!” She held out the glass to Penny. “Thanks! That’s all.”

Penny started to reach for the glass.

Jane was out of her chair like a shot. “Let me!” she said. She snatched the glass from Monique, put it in the sink, then flipped on the hot water and rinsed off her hands and the glass as well. “Hey,” she said, shaking water from her fingers, “you guys want the rest of my pizza? It’s only a day old. Monique, have a seat and I’ll warm it up.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Penny asked, looking confused.

“Being helpful,” said Jane. “New thing for me, I know. Had to start sometime.” She grabbed the pizza box from the table and began putting slices into the toaster oven’s stained metal tray. “It’ll be warm soon. Penny—got a sec?” She shut the toaster oven and set the temperature, then turned around. “I have a sister-to-sister sort of question for you, about some things. Can we go in the other room?”

“Jane, it’s okay, really,” said Monique. She stood by a chair, biting her lower lip.

“What’s okay?” said Jane.

“I told her about the hep,” Monique said softly. “It’s okay.”

Jane stared at her. The moment drew out.

“And we’re not hooked up,” Penny added in an irritated tone. “We’re just friends, okay?”

“Not hooked up.” Jane looked from one to the other. Her actions noticeably slowed down. “Yeah, well, that’s not really any of my business. I was just—”

Penny took a seat at the table. “Look,” she said to her sister, “she and I are friends, okay? We met while Trent was playing, we got to talking, and we took a walk. It’s okay.” She tugged on her tank top and its lettering. “You know this is bogus, right?”

Jane slowly took a seat across from her sister. “I don’t see much of you,” she said in a low voice. “I really don’t mean to piss you off, but I don’t know what’s real with you and what isn’t these days.”

Monique edged toward the door. “You know, maybe I should go,” she said. “I don’t want to—”

“No, stay,” said Penny. “Please.” She reached over and caught Monique by the arm, gently pulling her close. “Have a seat.”

Monique looked at Jane, who sighed and gestured to the chair beside Penny. “The pizza offer still stands,” she said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

“You really thought I was gay?” Penny asked her sister as Monique sat down. “I thought you of all people would know me better than that.”

“Know you?” Jane looked exasperated. “Penny, I hardly ever see you! You blew out of here before I got into first grade, and you’ve been back for a total of six months in the last decade. What am I supposed to know about you, exactly?”

Penny’s expression hardened, but she held her tongue for a few moments longer and softened her response. “Well, for starters, I’m not gay.”

Jane nodded. “Okay,” she said slowly, “that’s one thing I know now,” she said. She waited.

Penny spread her hands and looked annoyed. “¿Qué?”

Her sister leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get on your back. Perdón yo, por favor. Let’s drop it, okay?”

“Something eating you?” Penny asked, her eyes narrowing.

“No!” Jane snapped. “Nothing’s—” She bit off her reply and turned her head away for a moment. “Sorry, forget it.”

“It’s not me being here at home again, is it?”

Jane looked away with a sad smile. “No. Just forget it.” Her attention turned to Monique. “So, how are you feeling?”

“Okay, but tired,” said Monique, trying to be cheery. “Mostly okay, though.”

“Did you have a checkup recently?”

“Uh, yeah, two weeks ago. Doctor said I was okay, I guess. He was a little bugged about some stuff, test results, but he said I was okay, mostly.”

“You look good, if that counts for anything.”

Monique brightened. “Thanks!” she said. “Yeah, I try to keep up appearances. I think it’s good for me, you know? Hey, was that your friend Daria on the phone?”

Jane hesitated, looking tense. “Yeah. She’s packing her things. She heads off to Boston next week, to Raft.”

“Raft, that’s a good school, I think,” said Monique. “That’s great. Trent said Daria was really cool.”

Jane shrugged. “Yeah, she is. We’ve had our ups and downs, but yeah, she’s . . .” She let it go.

“You aren’t gay, are you?” asked Penny with a thin smile.

Jane’s frosty blue eyes took in Penny for a long moment. She leaned back in her chair. “Nope,” she said softly. “Guess we’re even, there.”

“Hey, you know,” said Monique, looking nervous, “I always wished I’d had a sister. It would have been super to have someone to talk to when I was growing up, you know? That would have been great. Sisters are great, right?”

Penny and Jane looked at each other in cold silence. Penny finally turned to her friend. “How about we go upstairs for a minute while the pizza’s getting ready? I’ll show you what I brought back.”

“Oh, sure! Thanks!” Monique hesitated, then got up from her chair. Penny followed suit.

“I’ll call you when it’s ready,” said Jane in a lackluster tone.

Monique followed Penny out of the kitchen to the stairs by the front door. They stomped up the steps together, Penny in the lead.

“Jane’s a good person,” Monique said in a low voice.

“Usually,” Penny grumbled as they walked to one end of the hall. “Something’s bugging her, though. She’s usually not this pissy.” She threw open the door to her room, flipped on the lights, and walked in, turning left to get into her curtain-covered closet. Monique came in behind her, looking around.

Penny’s room was square, the hall door opening in the center of the north wall. The wood-slat floor had a large square rug in the center with a southwest-flavor abstract pattern on it. Posters, photographs, masks, chili-pepper strings, and maps hung from the beige walls, and wind chimes and planters with artificial plants from the off-white ceiling. Two windows with crystals hanging in them were across the room, with a desk between them. On the near left was a closet with a curtain door, beyond which were wall shelves lined with pottery, sculptures, baskets, and wire figures. On the near right, a bookshelf and a round table with a lamp, with throw pillows surrounding it. On the far right, a mattress laid on two-by-fours, just above the floor, with a Mexican-style wool blanket and pillow. Discarded clothing lay scattered over the floor near the closet curtain. The room smelled faintly of incense, chili peppers, and dried leaves.

“Wow.” Monique stood in the center of the room, rotating to take it in. “Did you make all this, the masks and pots and stuff?”

“Most of it.” Penny dragged a large, dirty duffle bag from her closet and began pulling clothes out of it. “I experiment with different crafts sometimes when I’m home, then leave the experiments here.”

“Cool. It was nice of your folks to keep your room for you.”

“I doubt that they’re around enough to know when I’m here, most of the time. Jane said she let a friend stay over in my room for a while a year and a half ago. I think it was that girl she was tal