Max Allen Paz

Yoni’s father was a long-haul truck driver, a rank and file Teamster, and away from home nine months out of the year. As such, he didn’t teach his firstborn how to drive. Yoni learned from his mother at fifteen, and the boy was already a veteran behind the wheel by the time he got his permit and license in the years that followed. His responsibilities included maintaining the car, reminding his mother to keep the stickers and registration up to date, and driving his younger sister Carolina to and from her tutor’s house 80 miles away, just a few minutes from the county line.

The car was a late addition to his life; Sigrid came first. She was just a girl in his class who he didn’t even like, but they worked together on their fourth-grade science fair project. Although his English was unaccented enough to escape attention, his rhythms and habits were foreign enough to ward off potential friends, and when everyone was pairing up to study the rock cycle (the way igneous rock bubbles from under the crust and becomes black glass, the way sediment and geological garbage can be cemented together, the way stone can change in form when it’s heated and pressed together for a long, long, long, long time) Sigrid was also avoided and so she became his partner. 

Sigrid agreed to work with Yoni on the project because she didn’t mind failing it, nor did she mind being held back a year, and she certainly would have if Yoni hadn’t slaved over their project on his own for five hours straight one Sunday.

Sigrid’s family (dismissive parents, a vulgar uncle, two hostile adult brothers) was very comfortable with their youngest being a latchkey kid, since, as both a girl and an asthmatic, she would be of little use at the lumber mill. Sigrid spent a treacherously unsupervised childhood in desperate need of rescue. She bonded herself to Yoni.

Their relationship was cyclical, with two-sided arguments, periods of estrangement, and impassioned reunions. After one particular heartbreak at fourteen, when Yoni was ready to cut ties with her altogether, Sigrid burst into his living room with a hot face.

“What are you doing here? You won’t apologize, but you’ll eat my mom’s food?” Yoni sneered.

“Why should I apologize? You’re the one blowing me off to hang out with Wallace Hogue, Johnny.” Sigrid didn’t sit down, but she swayed at the entrance. She tried to meet Yoni’s eye but kept looking down, greasy black hair falling over her gaze.

“I told you I was sorry. But you’re not the only friend I’ve got! I get to hang out with anyone I want.”

“That’s not even what I said! God, stop pretending like I’m some possessive bitch!” She was raising her voice, her shoulders trembling.

“You literally called my mom and ratted on me! So yea, maybe you are a possessive bitch!”

“You didn’t mind me being around so much two months ago-“

“Oh, get bent-!”

“-two months ago when we made out at Janie’s birthday party!” Sigrid was screaming now. Her flushed cheeks were mottled like smashed cranberries. Sigrid usually avoided getting worked up because she couldn’t control the rush of blood to her cheeks, her ears, her nose.

“You showed up crazy drunk, and then you got me drunk. Where did you even get that stuff?” Yoni realized that his sister was in the house halfway through and lowered his volume. “And you still haven’t told me what happened that set you off so bad.”

Sigrid didn’t remember it like that. She didn’t remember being drunk that night, but it would explain a few things. Her temples began to pound.

“I’m trying to help you, Sig, but you can’t just show up when you need me and tell me to piss off when you don’t,” Yoni spoke softer. “Come on. I know it was something your uncle said. What happened?”

Instead, she grabbed his shoulder, pushed him down into the sofa, and they pressed their dry chapped lips together for a long, long, long, long time.

They shared their first time a while after. Yoni had sex with Sigrid when she thought she had something to prove, and he felt that his purity, rather than disappearing all in one go, gradually leaked out of him every time she came over. He had a vague awareness that what he and Sigrid did at the end of each crisis had nothing to do with him. He was an accessory to her self-medication rituals, even as she cried "Johnny" in orgasm. Sigrid's face, blotched red and streaked with old eyeliner, was a smoldering coal, dying and losing heat, and Yoni draped his body over her to smother whatever burns remained on her skin.

They’d been a couple for a year when Yoni learned to drive and started taking his baby sister Carolina to her tutor. Caro was congenitally secretive, her accent was heavier in both languages, and although they shared no common ground, she grew attached to Sigrid on the basis of her gender alone once Caro started growing into her hips.

Other than Carolina, there were six students in town shooting for college admission. There was a man several towns over who had a Master’s in Education and had taught high school in Chicago for ten years. He offered college prep courses at a steep cost to anyone who could make the trip to his house (and could tolerate the heat and skeeters for the 2 hours they studied on his porch as the sun set). He was their only real option to guarantee they got in someplace.

Caro’s six college-bound classmates carpooled to collectivize the travel costs. Yoni and Carolina were deliberately not invited, and so at fifteen and thirteen, they made the drive alone twice a week while their mother completed her second shift at the grocery store. Upon their return, they frequently found Sigrid in Yoni’s room, alone and drunk. They would sober her up as best they could and send her home before their mother returned.

She did not go voluntarily. They would try to joke with her until she got into Yoni’s car, but once inside she would start screaming and beating the back of the driver’s headrest, or she’d yowl for the entire ride and destroy anything she found in the backseat. Sigrid in hangover was consistently in denial of having control over her drunken actions.

“Just let me stay over longer, Johnny!” she would tell him. “I would have sucked it up and gone home on my own eventually!”

One day the backseat primadonna was so unbearable that he didn’t take her home. He drove out to a high cliff where their friends frequently went to smoke and share dirty music. It was a slow night. A couple was huddled in the bed of a red pickup under the large post oak, whispering.

Sigrid saw where they were and wiggled into the front seat, leaned in to kiss Yoni, but he caught her face and stroked her cheek with his thumb.

“What do you need from me, Sig?” he asked her. She stared at him. Her mind was still cloudy, and she didn’t understand. She raced to decode his question.

“You?” Sigrid answered in hopes. Yoni sighed. “I need you, Johnny. I’ll always need you.”

“What happened today?” he asked. She’d been sober for two months this time.

Sigrid scrunched her face and straightened her posture out, slamming her back against the passenger’s seat.

“Same shit as always. No one cares, everyone hates me, yadda yadda,” she mumbled. “Not that you noticed, but my toe’s broken. Bruce put all his weight on it and didn’t move no matter how much I screamed. He’s such a fat ass.” Yoni’s stomach tightened. He knew from experience that nothing would be done about the brother. Sigrid’s frightening stories were mundane now and washed over him, but she had called Carolina a fat ass once and he couldn’t forget.

“Did you go to the doctor?”

“School nurse did what she could,” Sigrid’s liquid eyes moved towards him. “Anyways, what do you care? You’ve got your future all set out for you. Your daddy’s gonna set you up with a big truck, and you’ll leave me here for-- what was it? Nine months out of the year.” He could hear the question in her voice.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Yoni said. “Working isn’t leaving. Besides, you’ll be working too. You’ll make some money, and you’ll move out.”

“With you?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“You’ll stay with me?”

“Yea.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah. We’ll get married and everything.” She was surprised at that.

“Married. Babies.” Sigrid listed these like a prayer.

“Sure. And we won’t live here. We’ll move somewhere else, somewhere your uncle and your brothers won’t ever bother you.”

“Like Chicago.”

“Maybe we’ll see where Caro goes to college and follow her,” Yoni said. For one it was a fantasy, for the other it was a plan.

The mention of Carolina’s name deflated Sigrid. She’d just gotten her eyes dry, but she started crying again.

“Just don’t break your promise, Johnny. You can’t. Just, just, just don’t break your promise,” she said over and over, turning away to the passenger window. Once she settled down, Yoni put the car in reverse to take her home.

Sigrid dropped out of high school just a few weeks later. She already had a job lined up at the diner. Her teachers were happy to see her go. Yoni wasn’t, but he didn’t fight her on it. They announced their engagement at Easter (his parents were resigned to Yoni’s decision), and they were broken up by the fall after an accident.

Yoni graduated from high school on time, eighteen years old. He wished to start his trucking career when he had fewer home responsibilities, for instance when Carolina was in college and his wedding was past. Yoni spent his time on odd jobs, saving for the wedding. Sigrid didn't contribute much to the fund. Her parents made her pay rent now, so accumulating savings was slow going.

Sigrid’s only participation in the planning was to make the guest list. She presented Yoni with new “finalized” copies in 2 week intervals. She wanted her family there to see her finally make it in life. Then her uncle reminded her of her small tits and how much of a whore she was, and suddenly she didn’t want a single god-fucking-damn one of those sons of bitches at her wedding.  Then she wanted to invite everyone who ever bullied her in school to come, so they’d be forced to buy her expensive gifts. Then she wanted an intimate wedding with only the family. Then she wanted to call off the wedding and just go down to the courthouse. Then she wanted to postpone the wedding for a year so they could save up for a Princess Diana themed reception. Then she wanted Carolina as her maid of honor, and then she didn’t want Carolina to come because she was too chubby and would ruin the pictures. Yoni deduced that if he wanted any finality, he would have to make the list himself.

In the fall, Yoni and his parents were setting a date and would soon put down a deposit on a venue. The latest guest list included both families, Yoni’s friends from high school, including his best friend who’d left town, and a few girls who’d smeared blood all over the seat of Sigrid’s gym shorts in 8th grade.

Carolina's junior year of high school came after the busiest summer of her life. Studying was her talent: Carolina played the black and white keys of Cornell note-taking with true virtuosity. And still, Yoni drove her to the tutor by the county line.

The event occurred on September 21st. Sigrid learned most of the details from the news reports. The passenger hadn’t slept much the previous few days. He’d worked a long shift. He kept himself awake long enough to take the girl to her tutor, but he couldn’t make the trip back. The girl was driving. A drunk driver was coming the opposite way and clipped them on the left side. A poorly placed pothole and rock outcropping made the car leap and flip, not sticking the landing. The girl crashed through the windshield and landed in a wooded area. Tracking efforts revealed that she tried to walk back to the road, but experts believed she was heavily concussed and walked in the wrong direction until she was completely lost.

Yoni was almost exsanguinated, but the first responders found him in time. The medics said that once he came to, he wailed for his sister until he was put under for surgery.

The rest, Sigrid heard from customers at the diner.

After two nights awake on the interstates, their father returned. Yoni cried into his father’s shoulder, saying he’d get out of bed right away to lead the search for his baby girl. Papi chirped soothingly for Yoni to rest and bunched his son’s curls in his fist. “Yonatan, no, mijito, no… mi Yoni…”

Against professional advice, Papi went out in the woods most mornings with a walking stick and a supply pack to search for his daughter. Yoni spent all this time choking on panic. No one knew it, but Mami did not sleep. When Papi came home in the evening to sleep after hours of futile pursuit, Mami fixed him dinner, put her two men to bed, and grabbed a Milwaukee handheld search light to comb the forest herself in the dead of night.

Yoni did not take many visitors during his hospitalization. His parents, of course, were permitted entry at their leisure (official visiting hours were disregarded considering the circumstances), but Yoni dismissed his friends from high school almost entirely, even after he was released to his home. 

Still, Wallace Hogue flew down from Wisconsin in a panic. Yoni was glad to see his dear friend, but neither could find a word to say. When they shook hands, Yoni didn’t let go and trembled against him silently. Wallace brought out his phone to share pictures of them from old summers. Yoni’s favorite was when they went up to the high cliff together after Sigrid broke up with him for the third time, and the two spent all the starbright hours buzzed and laughing at the midnight talk shows on the car radio.

Sigrid walked in just as Yoni was opening his mouth to speak, and Wallace stared at her. She hadn’t gained any weight since they were sixteen, and her bobbed hair looked like black yarn. Wallace greeted her, but she didn’t respond. It irritated Sigrid that he wasn’t afraid of her.

With privacy, Yoni closed his eyes and waited for her to speak.

“Who does he think he is, swooping in at the last minute like some kind of hero?” she said. “What a dick move. He moves away and thinks y’all’re just gonna go back to being friends? Right.” Yoni let her talk.

“Anyways,” Sigrid continued. “I went to the flea market. I haven’t been there in so long ‘cause I already sold all my middle school clothes, but I really wanted to see if I could find something nice. I found the perfect black dress and some leather pumps! I’ll look real presentable.”

“For what?” Yoni was startled.

“For the funeral,” Sigrid said gently. “I know it’s been hard, but I wanted us to look like family. Maybe we should get married before the service, just so we can be all together and no one will say anything about me sitting with y’all when we pay our respects.”

“What are you talking about? Whose funeral?”

“Uh, Carrie’s? What, don’t you have funerals in Honduras or whatever?”

Yoni was still for a moment. Then his eyes, mouth, nose, flesh crunched together, teeth bare and vicious.

“What are you talking about? Caro’s not dead. Are you-? Why are you saying she’s dead?”

“I’m sorry, baby, but it’s been four whole days. I didn’t think-”

“She’s smart, okay? She can survive on her own! She’s alive, and we’re going to find her!”

“I’m sure they’ll do their best, sweetie. And I don’t know why you’re biting my head off. I just don’t want you to get your hopes up for nothing.”

“Nothing? Nothing? Is Carolina nothing to you? I’ll run my car right out into the desert every day to find her! I’m getting her to college, I’m getting her an apartment, I’m getting her a laptop! I’m bringing her home! I’m bringing her home!”

“Miss Ortega!” Sigrid cried out over her shoulder, throwing her hands over her face. “Miss Ortega, help!”

“Get out, Sig! Get out! Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out!” Yoni smothered his face with a pillow until his mother tore into the room and wrestled it out of his hands. Sigrid could still hear him yelling “get out” from the driveway as she burst out the door and ran down the street.

Carolina was found three days later. She had been missing a full week. From the initial crash, she was deaf in one ear and was subject to frequent migraines for the rest of her life. A wound in her left arm had a severe infection, and she was amputated below the elbow.

Sigrid fully expected to be forgiven within a few months, but her phone remained silent. She reasoned Yoni was preoccupying himself with his sister, but once the poor girl was back to normal and out of the picture, he would come back to her. She continued to revise the guest list.

Diner customers heard about her wedding fantasies, about how Sigrid would take her mother’s wedding dress and modify it (“I’m much thinner than my old lady was on her wedding day”), about how they would have the best food you’ve ever had in your life (“not like this slop y’all come here to eat!”), about how she would have ten babies by her darling Johnny (“I’m not naming my first boy after the father, though. That’s so stupid.”). Christmas came and went, and she was still waiting for Johnny to let her know when and where to go so she could be swept off her feet. The next Easter came and went, and she wondered if Miss Ortega would invite her to sample cakes.

Yoni was no coward, and he visited her at home several times in that year. He didn’t want to break off their engagement over the phone, but she never answered the door. Uncle Uriel answered every time and said she wouldn’t see him, said she was pouting in her room. Yoni would insist it was urgent, but still she refused. He only stopped going when Uriel answered the door with a rifle.

Eventually he called her, but she wouldn’t answer. She sent him to voicemail a dozen times, and he’d say “Sigrid, pick up. It’s Johnny. We really need to talk. It’s serious.” And she would never call him back. She started answering the call and hanging up immediately so that he couldn’t even leave a message. Sigrid must have known what he was going to say. Yoni tried to find her at the diner, but she started training to be the line cook in the back. She wouldn’t come out, not even when the manager told her the Latin boy was there. He spent two months tracking her, then he gave up.

In relatively little time Yoni's family came upon a new peace. As a healthy young man, Yoni’s only remaining injury was a permanent limp. He no longer wanted a career on the road, and so Papi worked out a mechanic apprenticeship at the company’s garage in town. Nothing Yoni had learned about trucks would go to waste. With talk and occupational therapy, Carolina took longer to heal, but in little more than two years she and her doctors agreed her health was sustainable enough to finally start applying to college at age nineteen. 

Mami didn’t notice the difference at first, because from the time he was a teenager Yoni had always been the one in the driver’s seat, but he was very changed. He pulled long hours at the apprenticeship, and after he earned a junior welder position his hours were even more so. Even so, he drove himself everywhere. Mami offered to pick him up every so often when he seemed particularly exhausted, but he declined each time. On several occasions, when his hands were stiff and his mind wretched, he called his mother and notified her that he’d sleep at work and only go home after the next day's shift. That was when she started to notice.

It was more obvious when he went out with his friends. Yoni’s family car wasn’t the biggest (most of the year it was just the three of them); nonetheless, when Isaiah Michelson stopped by in his pickup, the bed overflowing with the same people Yoni had gone to school with most of his life, Yoni preferred to hop into his old Pontiac and follow close behind. His friends either failed to notice or failed to muster interest, and the few who cared simply didn’t know how to ask.

Now, every time Yoni entered a car, he ran a twitchy prayer through his mouth and squeezed the steering wheel until his hands pulsed. His fingers were already rough, but he developed additional strangely positioned calluses on his palms from this habit. He would say aloud, “I will not be too tired. I will hold onto this wheel. I will carry myself home. I will carry all passengers home.” If this process was interrupted or rendered impossible in any way, Yoni would remove himself from the vehicle without fail. To the family it was a harmless enough rule, and it only really came up on holidays when Papi argued about taking the whole family out to dinner (“I’m a professional driver, por amor de Dios!”). Yoni would not get into the car if he wasn’t driving the thing himself.

It came up again the next August, with Yoni at twenty two after three years of recovery, when the family road-tripped down to La Jolla, California to check Carolina into her dorm at the University of California at San Diego. There were orientation events going on at various places on campus, and the easiest way around was on the campus shuttles. Mami, Papi, Yoni, and Carolina were the only group walking, and Yoni’s stilted gait brought them down to a crawl, flesh digesting radiation from the remorseful sun until the orientation was at long last over and Yoni could take his parents home.

With no sister, Yoni sought a new place to lay his energy. He considered Sigrid. Their parting had been so abrupt, so violent, that he nearly forgave her by habit. What pettiness to not absolve a girl he’d already forgiven for so many other transgressions; all those past forgivenesses were now sunk cost. But then he would talk to Carolina on the phone and he'd remember Sigrid's leather pumps. Surely Sigrid must have had the thought: What a shame that she was never able to use them.

Sigrid of venom. Sigrid the cursed. Their old schoolmates execrated her for the wrong reasons, and Yoni had convinced himself they were wrong about it all. Sigrid had sacrificed for him, fought on his behalf. She had made Yoni’s troubles her own. Had she not been selfless when she had occasion?

The time since the broken engagement was asphyxiating. Sigrid, continuously close to moving out, never seemed to make much progress; even her brothers, now married and with small children of their own, had left and never come back. Even still, Sigrid returned home to find her father smoking by the rotting gate, her mother once more making Sisyphean repairs on a hand-me-down rocking chair, and her uncle squawking distasteful jokes on the landline in the kitchen. In the past year she had lost a pregnancy of undisclosed paternity, and still every so often she mentioned her fiance and the wedding that was no doubt around the corner.

Sigrid fantasized about the party to come, and Yoni pined for the engagement promise from years ago. He walked to the cliff. In his memory, she was sober. In his memory, there was no desperation. In his memory, his body didn't ache. How strange that his body once supported his weight without collapse; it felt like the light at the mouth of the tunnel was far behind him and now he was staggering down a black shaft. 

Yoni dedicated himself to strengthening his injured leg. He took daily treks out the front door and down the dirt road and past the junipers and cedars. Once he got a cane, Yoni could walk farther and faster with fewer breaks. The bum leg didn’t get in the way of his driving, but he preferred to suffer than to think himself lazy. He walked places he should have driven. He ignored the doctors and leaned his full weight on it, supposing if it hurt enough it would one day pop back into place, instantly repairing all the harm. Strong as he was, fast as he was, his leg felt like the bone might split down the middle. He leaned on it till his stomach turned.

He was there one night, on the cliff, when he saw a car approaching, the headlights first, just fireflies on the horizon from that altitude. Once the chugga engine was within earshot, Yoni knew it was his own car, the Pontiac. He'd recognize it anywhere like his own mother's voice.

While Yoni waited for the car to catch up with him, he wondered who had brought it: Mami, once again warning him against overexertion? Papi, home early from his last route and eager to see him? His sister, in distress and needing comfort? As he ran the scenarios, Yoni noticed that the car was shuddering on and off the dirt path, bouncing over off-road boulders and narrowly missing the ravine. Acid bubbled in Yoni’s stomach.

The car came straight for him, and Yoni moved back several meters to avoid getting hit. The driver had overshot the target stopping point, and Yoni’s pupils dilated painfully as he tried to look past the brake lights. He knew who to expect just the same.

He fully expected to see her coming out of the front door, but instead the first thing to emerge from his car was the barrel of a rifle. Pale vascular hands slapped it to the roof of the Pontiac while a body struggled to rise from the car seat.

Sigrid of venom. She was not smiling and she was not crying. She was not backlit in victory. There was a bullethole in the car’s rear window. And she had a rifle, now gripped in one hand. In the other she had a tiny cigarette, barely lit. Once she was out of the car she leaned on the gun heavy like his own walking cane, and for a moment Sigrid and Yoni mirrored each other, burdened.

“What, don’t you recognize me?” Sigrid yelled out loud like she couldn’t hear herself speak.

“Sig, what are you doing here?” Yoni froze. There was nowhere safe to back away. “How did you know where to find me?”

“You come here all the time. And you weren’t anywhere else,” she said, taking a last drag of the cigarette before stomping it into the dry dirt. Yoni’s skin rippled, violated.

“You finally want to talk?” Yoni said. Tension knots formed on his shoulder blades.

“I’m not here to listen to your boring apologies,” Sigrid said. “Today you’re keeping your promise.”

“Sig-”

“You’re keeping your promise, Johnny!” she spat. “Get in the car.”

“You’re not okay. Let me take you to my place and we can-”

“No! Get in, now” Sigrid lurched towards him. Yoni flinched but took a step towards her, wincing at the unbalanced weight on his legs. They were not so far apart now.

“I hear you. I’ll take you anywhere you want, just let me drive,” Yoni made a wide circle around her and took ginger steps toward the driver’s seat. Sigrid raised the rifle.

“Johnny, you best get to where I told you. I’m warning you.”

“Sig. Don’t make me do this.” Yoni was frozen with his hand on the door handle.  The jerking motion required to open the car door made his heart shudder. “Let me drive.”

Sigrid walked towards her lover without putting the gun down. She only lowered her aim when she was close enough to stand on his toes. Sigrid struggled to dull her expression.

“Why should I trust you?” Sigrid sobbed. “You said you’d marry me and you’d take me away. We should be in Chicago by now with an apartment and a laptop. You said you’d bring me home.” Yoni licked his lips.

“Come on then. Better late than never.” Yoni held a hand out to her. “I can take you.”

Sigrid looked from his hands, then his face, then his hands again. She was calculating whether Yoni was being honest. Her emotions had always been so clearly legible on her face, but now that she'd regained composure, her face was opaque.

She released the rifle with one hand and touched the tender center of Yoni’s palm, the plain of Mars, ticklish and ruddy. His hand felt hot against her shaking fingers. Yoni did not move.

Before Yoni could reach for the gun, Sigrid grabbed his wrist. She stuck his palm over the muzzle of the rifle and pulled the trigger. Yoni cried out and staggered backward, but Sigrid closed the gap again, grabbed his other wrist, and shot through the other palm.

Yoni’s whole body trembled, and he howled in the dark. Hot blood spattered down to the ground and kicked up a cloud of dust. The pain was sharp, it was burning, it was bubbling, it was acid on his ripped muscle. He collapsed backward onto the driver's door and it shut.

“Sig! Sig! Oh my God! Holy shit, Sig!” He couldn’t see through the slick blood that coated his hands, running down his forearms, but he could sense the holes in his hands. He knew without trying that to move his fingers would be an excruciating and futile experiment.

“There. You can’t drive now, so get in the car. Or do you want me to shoot your feet off too?”

Yoni slumped to the ground and began to dry heave, a small trickle of vomit slipping down his chin. Sigrid sighed like a buffalo and kicked him lazily towards the passenger door. He moved, dragging himself in that direction, and she kept kicking him (sometimes tapping the gun onto the car, a loud hollow clank) until he was near the side mirror before yanking him to his feet by the bicep.

She opened the door. Yoni, still bleeding into the dirt, moaned low and hiccupped as she put him in the car. When she shut the door behind him, Yoni’s stomach tightened, and he coated the floor in vomit. He could not hold onto the wheel. He could not carry himself home. And still, with his hands in this state, the closed door was an insurmountable obstacle.

Sigrid circled around to the driver’s side and climbed in. She rolled her eyes again when she saw Yoni retching and took off for the highway.

Sigrid drove in a shaky line for a half hour. The only sounds were Yoni's horrified gagging and Sigrid trying to find something on the radio. None of the Ortega's presets did her any good. She found static, and static, and static, and finally she surrendered, slapping the car radio until it was silent. She looked from the windshield to Yoni’s stooped spine and back to the black road.

"Now was this so hard?" she finally said. Yoni’s head was tucked between his knees. “All we had to do was pack. But no. Typical selfish Johnny had to forget all about me. It’s alright. I’m over it. I’m just cashing the check. Fulfilling the contract. This is the fine print is all.”

The car picked up speed. Yoni’s stomach twisted again.

“God, your puke smells like shit.” Sigrid’s voice was accusatory. “You had to go and spew right at the start of our trip. That’s just great. I’ll bet getting in a car with Wallace Hogue doesn’t make you puke. Sicko."

Yoni’s whole body trembled. He’d thought his mind was shut down, and he hadn’t realized that her gibes could reach him in this state, but the feeling of defilement continued to rise. He kept expecting his hysteria to reach a maximum, so it would cap itself and peter out, the law of diminishing returns on pain. Today, pain was infinite. 

Yoni remembered telling Sigrid about what happened with Wallace. That night, such a spiritual moment of actualization, was now embittered by the blood still dropping from his hands. His hands, his hands, penetrated and destroyed.

What happened next is less important. Actually, it is very important, but it merits no illustration, inevitable as it was. This would be the car’s final crash. It lay in pieces upside down, flat on its back. There were two bodies, living for the moment. 

One landed on hard soil, porous and well-draining, finely ground, almost sandy. Dust from the impact floated around the site, but the body and the rocks were still. The other body crashed through a giant sagebrush plant. Unyielding branches left deep gashes on the body’s shoulder and elbows, a hematoma in the head. Black clouds covered the moon and the stars so that human eyes were ornamental.

Yoni imagined an approaching siren. This dream, though it would save his life, was no comfort. He dreamt of something else instead. When he was in the fourth grade, he and Sigrid had been partners in a science project. The first time Yoni ever saw her smile was when they got that grade back. She had done nothing to earn it, not even the presentation, but she was a part of it. It was pizza Friday in the cafeteria, and Sigrid gave her ration to Yoni. He worried that if Sigrid got any thinner she would have trouble opening the heavy doors at school, but she insisted. It was his payment for letting Sigrid pass off his radiance as her own. Yoni said thank you, but he never liked pepperoni. He saved it in his lunchbox and gave it to Carolina instead.

{fin}