November Writing Blitz

This is the 1st draft of a novel I wrote last November -- National Novel Writing Month. Keep in mind that it is a FIRST draft, and it's full of holes and probably typos. Someday I might get back to it and fix it up. Enjoy. -fk

Chapter 1: O., Kara Mia

He almost didn’t see her. She was already slipping into the alley through the back door of the liquor store, a clear bottle filled with clear liquid tucked neatly under one arm. Adrian had only glanced up from his book to look at the clock, to see how much time he had left on his break. Four and a half minutes. She was there, and then she wasn’t there. She hadn’t noticed him, either, as though they were both nearly invisible.

He set down his book and went after her. While another stock boy’s first instinct might be to chase down a thief with the intention of presenting her to the store manager (a bloated man of thirty-seven who has long since lost his looks, had he ever been handsome, no one could say), Adrian had one thought: I hope she’s pretty. He had other thoughts, too, but this was the one that dominated. He looked left from the back door, into the alley. If he had looked right and then left, he would have missed her, because just then, as he looked left, the girl slipped into the back door of the bakery, two doors down. She’s clever, he thought. She’s adorable.

The distance between them, dry and dirty pavement, was maybe a hundred feet. Adrian’s long legs stretched out like a colt’s, awkward, but strong. His black canvas sneakers thumped the ground, staccato, like his heart beating loud in his chest. From the bakery, sugary smells, rising dough, the air consumed with the strong scent of hot yeasty bread, filling Adrian’s lungs. Before he reached the door, the girl surprised him by emerging into the alley.

“Jesus,” he said. She smiled.
“I scare ya?” She carried a tote bag, the kind the public radio stations give away. She slipped a loaf of caraway seeded rye into the bag and said, “Sorry ‘bout that.”
She unnerved him with her steadiness, her confidence, her smile.
“Look,” he said. He was breathing harder than he wanted to, so he put one hand on his hip and took in a gulp of bakery air. The girl began to walk away from him at a quick clip, and he went after her. “Hey, wait a sec,” he caught her by the arm with his hand. She turned and looked at his hand on her arm, as if he were dirty.
“I beg your pardon,” she snapped, taking her arm back.
“Look,” said Adrian, “I saw you take that bottle from the liquor store.” He pointed to the liquor store logo on his blue apron. “I just need to get it back, that’s all. It’s my job, you know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She said, turning away from him again.
“Come on,” he ran ahead of her, turned around, and now they stood face to face. “Give me a break here, huh?” The girl looked into his eyes, and glanced at his chest to read his name tag. Her eyes were nearly black, as dark as her shiny hair, which she wore cropped short. It suited her, he thought. Her clothes were plain and boyish, cropped jeans, a cotton blouse. Her arms were delicate, her skin as white as cream.
“Adrian, is it? Listen, Adrian,” she touched his hand lightly, in a way that might suggest she wanted her hand held, a nudge. “Is it really your job? I mean, do you think you’re going to lose your job because someone walks out with a little bottle of vodka? I’m telling you you’re not. Call it breakage or whatever, okay? You’re sweet. I gotta go.”

The girl stepped around him and continued down the alley, toward C Street. Adrian watched her walk with slow deliberate steps. She wore little mannish boots, workman’s boots, black with heavy toes, and somehow made them dainty. She was right, he wouldn’t lose his job over something like this, a measly bottle of vodka. He cared more about losing her than losing his job. He jogged after her and caught up with her at the crosswalk, where she waited for the light to change, even thought there weren’t any cars at the intersection.

“What’s your name?” He asked her. “Can you just tell me your name?” The light changed and they began crossing to the other side.
“Mia,” she said, offering her hand for him to shake. Her grip was firm, her skin cool.
“Mia. That’s beautiful. That’s a nice name, Mia. I’m Adrian.”
“Yes,” she said, thumbing toward his badge, “I saw that.” Her smile revealed her teeth, and Adrian noticed her incisors stuck out a bit, like a cat’s. He had an overwhelming urge to kiss her, not in an ordinary way, but in a way that he might consume an ice cream cone.
“Don’t you have to get back to work, Adrian?” Mia stopped on the sidewalk, next to a bus stop where a white haired woman whose back was curled like a baby fern sat waiting for a ride. She stared at the old woman from behind and hoped her spine would never betray her like that. Mia raised her chin and took a full breath, her dark eyes met Adrian’s. “I’m not giving back the vodka, so you can just forget about it, okay? Can we call this over?”
“Wait,” he said. She was starting to walk again. “I don’t care about the vodka. You keep it. Whatever. It’s not important. You were right.”
“Thank you. I’m glad we settled that.”
“Wait! Mia?” She was losing patience.
“Yes Adrian.”
“I just thought maybe we could hang out sometime. Could we?”
Mia huffed a laugh. “Seriously? You want to hang out with me? What ever for?”
“Who talks like that?” He said. “’What ever for?’ Do people say that?”
“Well, if you’re going to make fun of me, sure, why wouldn’t I want to go out with you?”
“I didn’t say ‘go out’, I said ‘hang out’. It’s different.” He touched her elbow, then drew his hand away. “Could we? I mean, do you want to?”
Mia studied him for a moment, looked into each of his clear blue eyes one at a time, back and forth. He bled sincerity and she liked him, so she agreed. “Okay, yeah, we could hang out. I’d be okay with that.”
“Good,” he said. “Great. So, I have to get back to the store, but should I call you?”
Mia stood on her tip toes and kissed his cheek. “Meet me at the fountain at seven. How does that sound?”
“Fountain at seven. I will be there. I will be there for sure, Mia.” He liked saying her name.
“Calm down, bag boy. See you then.” She smiled and waved like she was swatting a fly.
“You’re not going to bail on me, are you?” He shouted after her.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Nope,” she said, “I’ll see you then.”

Adrian made his way to the store in seconds. He ran, his head full of Mia, his heart beating quickly again. He wished he’d kissed her, but that was a ridiculous thought. The back door of the store was closed, which meant locked, and he had to run around the building to use the street entrance. Hal, the assistant store manager (a pimply college guy who the employees couldn’t quite think of as their boss) stood behind the counter helping a customer. When Adrian walked into the store, Hal tried to give him a solid, meaningful stare, something he practiced in reflective surfaces around the shop, a stare that illustrated his authority, but Hal wasn’t really made for solid, meaningful stares, and Adrian didn’t see it anyway. He tidied a stack of shopping baskets, grabbed a stray feather duster from a shelf, and walked through the store, humming along to a Lucinda Williams song on the radio, dusting bottles along his path to the store room. He kicked the bottom of the swinging door with the toe of his shoe, using just the right amount of force to open it a sliver, so he could slip through.

Adrian opened the back door and stepped into the alley again. He looked toward the bakery. Two Latino men dressed in white t-shirts, white pants, aprons and small paper hats, stood smoking near the open bakery door. One of the men, whom everyone knew as Pez, nodded his way, and Adrian waved.

“You working, or what, kid?” Hal handed him a half-sheet of paper, a delivery tag. “Take off right now, okay? I want that order to their front door in fifteen. Do it.” Hal liked to say “Do it.” He said it fifty times a day. Adrian read the order, checked the address: Oak Street. Easy, a three minute drive.

Adrian went through his inventory, marking the boxes as he went, ticking off the sold bottles. He packed the bottles together in a blue plastic delivery crate with white lettering on the side that said: Bickman’s Liquors. Bick’s Liqs was what everyone called the store. Bick’s had been in business for a million years, since before Adrian’s father had been born, at least. The crates were heavy, a good forty pounds, by Adrian’s calculation, and Adrian had grown wiry and strong from lifting crates and walking them to the delivery van. He touched every bottle in the store at least once, if not two or three times: unloading pallets, stocking shelves, taking inventory, creating towers of wine cases at the ends of aisles. He had made an art form of cutting the case boxes into displays, removing the tops and the innards, then cutting away triangles of cardboard and leaving a precise two inch lip on the front of the case, so that the bottles wouldn’t fall onto the floor, even if someone were to ram a shopping cart straight into the case-stack.

Now he loaded the crates into the delivery van. The two bakers had gone back to work, or maybe home, or maybe they were out having a couple of beers together, Adrian imagined. He was seventeen, and had worked at Bick’s for almost a year, saving for college. There were things he wanted, a new bike for example, but the money he made was for college, not bikes. He’d grown out of his old bike, so now he ran everywhere, which worked for him in two ways: he could get where he wanted to go faster than if he walked, and he also stayed in shape. In September he would begin his senior year in high school, his third year on the varsity track team. His performance in his last year, he knew, would determine his future, and he hoped to gain the attention of a college recruiter. Maybe earn a scholarship. His grades were good enough, and he took advanced placement classes whenever he was asked. He could only hope. He could only keep running. It was all he could think of to do: hope, work hard, and run like the wind.

He had tried beer, and some of his friends drank alcohol on occasion, but no one on the track team drank, so he didn’t bother. He swallowed gallons of milk and ate all his veggies, and his mother could barely keep the refrigerator stocked to meet the needs of her growing teenager. Adrian had no siblings, and his parents worked hard because working hard was what they had been taught to do by their parents. So, Adrian worked hard, too, not because it was expected of him, but because he didn’t know how not to.

By his watch, Adrian had delivered the crates to the home on Oak Street twelve minutes and fifteen seconds after Hal had handed him the delivery ticket. He unloaded the crates for the customer in her kitchen, leaving the bottles in an organized pattern on the counter before accepting her five dollar tip with an exaggerated smile. He drove the van back to the shop and thought about Mia. He wondered how old she was. Old enough to drink, he imagined, although maybe she only stole the vodka because she wasn’t old enough to buy alcohol. But then she had stolen the bread from the bakery, too, hadn’t she? Maybe she just didn’t have any money. When he got back to the shop, he checked his pockets for tips. He had made $27 today. His habit was to stop by the bank after work and deposit his cash tips straight into his savings account, a safety measure he took so as not to spend his hard earned money on anything stupid. But a girl like Mia wasn’t a stupid thing to spend on, so he’d budget the $27 to take her some place nice for a coffee or a salad, or whatever she liked. He hoped she liked pizza because he was already half-starved at 5:24, and that’s all he could think of to eat. Plus, they could walk to Pete’s Pizza from the fountain, and that way she wouldn’t notice that he didn’t own a car or even a proper bicycle.

Twenty one minutes later, Adrian clocked out, slid his paperback novel into the pocket of his blue apron, said goodnight to Hal, and went to the back door of the shop. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, looking toward C Street, where Mia had walked away from him, where he had held her arm and she had pulled it away from him. He stepped into the alley and secured the door behind him, retracing the path he had walked with Mia. He felt light as a hummingbird, and ran home in nine minutes flat, a personal best.

While he showered, Adrian sang O Cara Mia, although he didn’t know any of the words, and vaguely knew the tune. He scrubbed the parts of his body where his limbs met his torso with grapefruit scented soap, and shampooed twice. He brushed his teeth and ran a blob of leave-in conditioner through his brown hair, which was starting to curl. He was due for a trim. He inspected his chin for signs of whiskers, but there was nothing to shave.

“Dude, you in there?” he heard Will Tinkerton’s voice in the hall.
“Tink. Yeah, man, I’m in here.” Tink walked into Adrian’s room and threw himself on the bed, crossing his arms behind his head.
“What are we doing tonight?”
“I,” said Adrian, “have a date tonight.” He raised his eyebrows at his friend. “Can you believe that?”
“Get out. You do not have a date. Like, with an actual girl or what, homo?” Tink turned on his side and propped one hand under his head. Adrian dropped the towel from his waist and pulled on a pair of light blue boxer shorts.
“Mia,” Adrian said. “That’s her name. She’s, I don’t know, she’s really pretty.”
“You’re never going to get laid if you wear those shorts, man.” Tink hopped off the bed and pawed through Adrian’s top dresser drawer. “Don’t you have anything sexier than those? Seriously, man, you have got to start buying your own underwear some day.”
“Huh,” Adrian laughed. “I seriously doubt she’s going to want to see my shorts, dude.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Who’d want to see that skinny ass?” He sat back on the bed. “Who is this girl anyway? Is she slow or something? What does she want with you?”
“You’re jealous, my friend. You are totally jealous of me.”
“Yeah,” Tink said, “you’re right. I’m pretty jealous. But I’m shallow that way.”

Adrian held up two pairs of cargo shorts. Tink told him to go with the green ones, so he did.

“I met her at the store. I think she’s older, but I can’t be sure. I don’t know, man, she’s just amazing. She’s cute. You’ll meet her. I think. Jesus, does this shirt make me look retarded or what?” He took off his t-shirt and exchanged it for another.
“Dude, everything makes you look retarded.”

Tink offered to drive Adrian back into town, which bought him some time, so the two boys stood in the kitchen and ate microwaved burritos and drank orange juice. When Adrian’s mother arrived home from work, the boys carried groceries into the house for her.
“Okay, we’re going out, Mom. Later,” Adrian said.
“See you, hon,” she said.

As the boys neared the center of town, Adrian told Tink to drop him at A Street.
“I’ll walk over. That’s cooler, right?”
“What? Cool that you have no friends and you walked here? Don’t be a dick. It’s much cooler if she sees me, that way she’ll know you’re not a complete doofus.”

Adrian thought about it and in the thirty seconds it took to drive to the square, the decision was made for him.

“Is that her?” Tink asked, pointing to a perky blonde sitting alone on the edge of the fountain.
“Um, no. Mia’s the opposite of that girl.”
“That’s too bad, Ad, because that girl is smokin’ hot.”

Adrian considered the blonde girl and disagreed with his friend, but didn’t say so. He recognized the blonde girl from somewhere, but couldn’t place her. Perhaps she was a runner from another high school. He saw people like that all the time: people he thought he knew, but didn’t. It was the curse of living in the same town all his life.

He checked his watch. It was 7:06. What if she wasn’t coming? What if she had come and left already because he was a few minutes late? He began to sweat. A young mother with two small children was fighting with the stubborn one, while the good kid held her hand and sucked it’s finger. The mother’s face was red with heat and frustration. A fire truck roared past them on the street and parked in the red zone next to the grocery store. Three somber firemen jumped out, one of them carrying green cloth shopping bags, and they went into the market. Adrian felt annoyed. He turned the stereo volume down so that the music could barely be heard.

“Can you at least shut the car off?” He said to Tink.
“You want me to pick you up later, Dude? I kind of want to see this chick.”
“She’s not a chick. Don’t call her that.” When he saw Mia come out of the grocery store, he flipped the door handle and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “That’s her. Thanks for the ride. Call you later.”
“Okay, faggot. Hope you get some!” Tink shouted.

Mia wore a sky blue cotton shirt dress that came to her knees with little puffs for sleeves. Same color as my shorts, Adrian thought. He was impossibly uncool at the sight of her, and ran to greet her. She unwrapped a Tootsie Pop and stuck it in her mouth, gave it a good suck, then pulled it out again to inspect it before shoving it between her teeth and her cheek. She rolled the candy around in her mouth and pulled it out with a sweet sucking noise to say hello when they met on the sidewalk next to the fire truck.

“Hi, Mia,” he said. He was so nervous, his legs felt shaky. He was sure it reverberated to his voice.
“Hi, yourself,” she smiled, revealing her cat teeth.
“What should we do?” He asked her. “I was thinking we could get a bite to eat, maybe. Are you hungry?”
“First, you should kiss me.” She said.
“What?”
“I said first, you should kiss me.” She put the sucker in her mouth for a second, and popped it out again. “That way, we get it over with, you know? So there’s not all this anticipation about it all night. Don’t you think? That way, we won’t be self-conscious around each other.”
“Really? You want me to kiss you?”
“I wish you would.” She craned her slender neck and stood on her toes. Without touching him with her hands, she placed her lips on his, and they kissed. He stepped back and looked at her.
“Okay, now again, with feeling,” she commanded.

Adrian licked his lips. Everything disappeared: the store, the fire truck, people passing them on the sidewalk. Mia’s hands hung at her sides, like a dancer’s.

“Should I,” he started to say.
“Don’t think about it,” said Mia, “just kiss.”

He had kissed girls before. Three girls, to be exact, but hadn’t really wanted to kiss any of them, even though it had been his idea all three times. This one, Mia, he wanted to kiss very much, and now the feeling took over his entire body, so that he could do nothing but kiss her. He would rather kiss her than breathe, and so that’s what he did, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do. He placed his hands on either side of her ribcage, very gently, and he felt her breathing, his thumbs beneath her small breasts. She closed her eyes as her mouth opened slightly to receive his, and placed one hand on his neck. Adrian could hear the blood rushing though his head. When their tongues touched, he could taste the red flavor of the Tootsie Pop. Cherry? Raspberry? He moved his hands to her back and she pressed her body into his. Their mouths became warm and liquid. When they pulled apart, their wet lips glistened in the dimming glow of the summer night.

“You’re going to fall in love with me,” she said to him.
He nodded, “Yeah,” he laughed, “probably.”
“And I’m okay with that,” she said, popping the Tootsie Pop back into her mouth. “Let’s eat, Adrian. I’m starving.”

Mia was right; the thing about kissing before their date even began had been a good idea. Adrian sat next to her on a bench outside Pete’s eating a slice of cheese pizza, their knees touching and then not touching. They shared a Coke, which he held between his legs. Mia ate with enthusiasm, her slice decorated with hot pepper flakes. He was down $8.47, and hoped the rest of the night could be had for the remainder of his $27.

“Where do you live?” He asked her.
“Ask me something different,” she said. “Ask me something interesting.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know, something more revealing than where I live. I live over there,” she nodded her head to the left, toward the shadier side of town.
Adrian thought for a second. “Okay, so, you mean like something more philosophical.”
“Exactly,” she said, sipping the Coke, then replacing the cup between his legs.
“You go first,” he said, “I’ve got to think. No one ever asked me to ask them something meaningful before.”
She nodded, “People can be pretty shallow, that’s why.” Mia crossed her bare legs and leaned into him. She looked in his eyes and quietly kissed his mouth. “So, let’s see, a question for Adrian.” She placed her pizza slice on the paper plate next to her on the bench and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Um, if you had a super-power, what would it be?”
“A super-power. Let me think about that. Can it be anything, or does it have to be something that an already established Super Hero can do?”
“It can be anything,” she said. “Anything you can think of.”
“Okay, so Superman has a lot of good powers. It’s like he can do anything. I mean, he seems to get more powers with every new movie, you know? They just keep adding things. Can I just have one, or can I have a range of powers, like Superman?”
“Just one,” Mia smiled and picked up her pizza again.
“I don’t know. There are so many good ones.”
“Pick one.”
“Okay, how about mind-reading.”
“Mind reading? Okay, whatever, man. That’s cool. Reading minds is cool. You’d rather read minds than, say, be really, really strong or invisible or something?”
“You want another slice?” He offered.
She patted her belly, uncrossed her legs and leaned back into the bench. “No, I’m good, thanks. You want my crust?”
“What’s your super-power?” He took the crust from her plate.
“My super power would be to time travel.”
“That,” he said, “is so cool. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“You can have it, too,” she said. “Then you could come with me.”
“I’d like that,” Adrian said,” I think I’d like that very much.
“Good,” Mia said, “then it’s settled.”

They walked for a long time, without touching, just two happy people full of pizza, taking a walk like it was a normal thing to do. Neither of them seemed to be leading, and they simply walked. Adrian picked leaves and flowers from bushes and trees they passed, leaving a trail of colorful breadcrumbs in their wake.

“Okay,” he said, “I have one for you. A question.”
“Shoot,” she said.
“Tell me something about you that no one else knows.” She looked at him, hesitant, wondering how much she could trust him. He was so innocent, she thought.
“I’m a thief,” she confessed with a straight face. Adrian laughed.
“I already know that, Mia.” He loved saying her name. “You stole a bottle of vodka from me today, remember? Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
She rolled her eyes, “I didn’t steal from you, okay? Let’s just keep that straight. I stole from the store, not from you personally. Got it? I would never steal anything from you, Adrian.” Here she stopped in the middle of an undeveloped lot they happened to be walking through. The nearby street lights made their skin glow slightly green. “Do you believe me when I say that?”
“Oh, are we getting serious?” He reached for her shoulder, but she took a step to the side, dodging him. “Okay,” he tried to read her face. “Are you mad or something? What’d I say?”
Mia stuck her hands into the little pockets in her dress. “Adrian, why did you want to hang out with me tonight?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He felt shy. “Because you’re really cute, and I like you, I guess.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know anything about me except that I stole a bottle of vodka from the store you work at.”
“And a loaf of bread. You stole the bread, too, remember?”
“So what are you doing here,” she swung her body around a little, to illustrate the empty lot in a strange neighborhood where they stood. “With me.”
“I just like you. Isn’t that okay? Isn’t that enough?”
“But why, Adrian, why do you think you like me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Mia. I just do. Do you not want me to like you? Because I don’t think I can not like you. That’s all. I don’t know. Do you want a list? You’re pretty, you’re clever,” he thought for a second, “you just seem like you have it all together. You’re confident. You are.”
Mia sighed and began walking again, back in the direction they had come from, back through the empty lot. Adrian followed close behind her.
“Okay,” he said, “wait!” He took her hand. “Is this okay? Me holding your hand?” She nodded. “Good,” They shared a secret glance. “I’ve never held a girl’s hand before.
“Never?” She said, surprised.
Adrian shook his head and squeezed her hand tighter. “Nope. How am I doing?”
“Pretty good,” she said. “So far, I like it.”

They stepped onto the sidewalk and a car full of teenagers drove by, windows down, music blaring, the sound of laughter and people talking loudly over one another. “Losers!” Someone shouted.
Mia frowned. “I hate people like that,” she said. “People like that make me want to kill myself. I never want to be like that. I never want anyone I know to be like that. Please tell me you’re not like that.”
“I am definitely not like that. Didn’t you hear them? I’m a loser, Mia.”
She smiled and pulled his hand to her shoulder, tucking her own arm around his waist. She slipped her thumb into the waistband of his shorts, which made his breath catch. “Just like me,” she said, “a real loser.”
“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but me, personally, I like losers. I like them a lot.”

When Adrian and Tink were in seventh grade, they made up a fake friend they called Milo. Milo allowed them to do things without the consent of their parents. For example, if they wanted to go exploring in the woods or catch crawfish in the creek, they could spend all day unsupervised, while their parents figured someone else, Milo’s fake father or mother, was watching out for them. They frequently rode their bikes just outside of town to camp out overnight at a KOA campground, eating junk food and contemplating the stars, and lighting things on fire. When they returned to their respective homes dirty and smelling of campfire in the morning, no one was the wiser. In the minds of Adrain’s parents, and also Tink’s, the boys had simply slept out in the vast yard behind Milo’s house, under the careful watch of Milo’s supposed perfect parents, who no one ever asked to meet. The creation of Milo, and the on-going growth of Milo was work, for sure. The boys had to come up with excuses for Milo. Where was Milo on Parent/Teacher night? He changed schools. Why don’t you invite Milo for dinner? Because he’s being a pain in the ass this week. What does his mother look like? She’s tall and blonde. She was Miss Wyoming twenty years ago; look it up. What does Milo’s father do? Airline pilot. The rouse was fun and, at times, almost too easy. Often still, even though they were teenagers now and their parents didn’t notice their comings and goings so much, Adrian and Tink would still occasionally “pull a Milo” and head to the campground, or take in a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.

Mia spotted an apple tree growing in someone’s side yard, the branches spilling over the fence offering fruit to anyone who happened to be seven feet tall.

“Pick me up,” Mia had stopped next to the apple tree and was coveting the fruit. “I’ve got to have one of those apples. You want one?”
Adrian said, “Sure. How you wanna do this?”

Mia held the top of the fence with her hands, stepped onto Adrian’s bent knee, and lifted herself so that she was sitting on his shoulders. He straightened with ease and the skirt of her blue dress went over his head, covering his face. They both laughed and Mia pulled her skirt back so he could see.
“Shush,” she said. Come over here, this way, a little farther. Shit, I got a sliver from the fence. Ow! I can’t see it. Can you see it?” She held her hand in front of his face and he walked into the light of a street lamp.
“I see it,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

He took her fingertip into his mouth, extracted the sliver with his teeth, and spit it on the ground.

“There you go, okay?” he held her calves, feeling the warmth of her smooth skin against his cheek, the cotton of her underpants at the nape of his neck. His adrenaline kicked up a notch and he felt something new, something real. He felt true and strong and powerful. He felt desire.

Mia handed him an apple, ordered him to take one baby step to the right, then tightened her thighs around his neck as she picked another.

“Okay, down,” she said, and he carefully bent his legs until he was kneeling on the ground. Mia put one hand in his hair and stepped onto the sidewalk leap-frog style, her firm backside grazing the top of his head. Adrian saw that her panties were black.

“I love apple season. There’s nothing like a good, real apple, you know?” She said this while rubbing the apple clean with the hem of her dress. “Nice work, kid.” She took a bite. “God, this is delicious. Oh! Isn’t it great? Did you try it? You gotta try it, man. It’s awesome.”

Adrian stayed on his knees. Arousal was pending. If he stood now, he might scare her. He was scaring himself. He was concentrating on solving a trigonometry problem in his head. The one he missed on the final last year. He bit into his apple. “Fucking awesome,” he said. “Totally intense.”

“Adrian?” She sat down on the curb with her feet in the gutter. She wore white canvas sneakers without socks, the same as his black ones. He crawled to the edge of the sidewalk and sat next to her, their matching shoes side by side. Her feet were bony, her ankles sprinkled with dust from their walk. “This apple,” she groaned. “Mmm, so good.”
Adrian nodded and took another bite. He stopped thinking about the trig problem. They ate their apples and watched cars pass by. Adrian hoped the passengers couldn’t see Mia’s black panties. Finally she said, “Would you spend the night with me?”

He choked on a bite of fruit, spit it into his palm. “I’m sorry. That was really gross.” She laughed. “Are you sure? I mean, I guess. What about your parents? Are they going to be okay with that?” Adrian stood and tossed his apple core over the fence, wiped his hand on his shorts. “I think you should, um, I don’t know, Mia. That’s a nice offer, but I’m, yeah, I’m just not sure about. . . anything.” He laughed at himself. Mia grabbed his hand and pulled herself up from the curb. “God, this is making me really, horribly nervous. I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’ve never done this, right?” She asked. Her tone was quiet and kind.
“No,” he shook his head, “no, I haven’t ever done that. I’ve never,”
“It’s okay. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked you like that.” She tucked a curl around his ear with her fingers, touched his face. “It’s just that I really want you to.”
He put his hands on his hips. “I just don’t know what to say, I guess,” he told her. “This is sort of new to me.”
“Nothing has to happen if you don’t want it to,” she assured him. “I just don’t want you to leave me yet.
“What about your parents?” he asked her.
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him along the sidewalk. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “I don’t have parents.”

Mia lived in a 27 foot Airstream trailer, which had been parked in 1976 on someone’s property and never moved. The main house, a well-kept, colorful Victorian, was occupied by an ancient hippie Mia called Grasshopper. Mia led Adrian up the gravel driveway and stopped to retrieve a flashlight from the glove box of her car, a non-descript sedan, which he thought didn’t suit her. Trees and bushes had grown around the trailer, which seemed to bloom from the ground like a shiny silver mushroom. A long, dark path barely wide enough for one led to the door.

“Can you see?” She asked.
“Sort of. Where are we going? You’re not going to murder me in the woods, are you?”
Mia turned to face him on the path, holding the flashlight beneath her chin, and said, “No, probably not. Depends how the night goes down.” She resumed her route to the trailer. “Watch that tree root there.”

When they finally made their way through the woods to the trailer, she shone the flashlight on the front door. “Home sweet home”, she said. She kept the key nailed to a tree. Before she opened the door, she turned to Adrian. “I really am a thief, you know.”
He nodded. “I know, you mentioned that.”
“No, I mean, for real I’m a thief. It’s what I do for a living. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Okay, I get it,” Adrian said, although, really, he didn’t quite understand Mia’s commitment to her career until he stepped inside the trailer.

The floors were polished cherry wood, gleaming blood red. A small crystal chandelier hung over the kitchen table. The windows were adorned with heavy linen curtains, and rich fabrics covered the built-in benches. Adrian’s mouth hung open as he inspected everything: expensive flat-screened televisions, a fancy laptop, a wall of designer shoes in custom-made cubbies. A four foot stack of shallow flat boxes tooled from fine leather caught his attention.

“What’s in these?” he asked. Mia took the top one from the stack and placed it on the table. She opened it to reveal a collection of pearl necklaces, bracelets and earrings.

“Do you want a drink?” Mia pulled a beer from the fridge.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you okay?” She asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” he lied. “You know, maybe I will have a beer. I don’t really drink ever.”

Adrian called home. “Mom? Hey, okay if I stay at Milo’s tonight? Yeah, we’re just playing Wii. See you in the morning, okay? What? No, I’m not working tomorrow; it’s Sunday. Store’s closed. Right. Okay, then, Mom, good night.”

“So, this is you,” he said to Mia.
“Does it freak you out?” She asked.
“A little.”
“Do you want to leave?”
“Not at all, Mia. The thing is, I really like you. I might not get you, but I still like you. I mean, I don’t even know what to think of all this, really. I don’t.”

Mia started to explain to him how her operation worked. She had rules, lots of them. One, she didn’t steal from people she knew or people who couldn’t afford to lose anything. She only stole from rich baddies. Two, she didn’t steal anything from houses here in town. Three: she didn’t steal anything that wouldn’t fit into her car.

“How long have you lived here?” he wanted to know. “How come I’ve never seen you before?”
“About six years,” she said. “But I’m not home much. I tend to travel around a lot.” She sipped her beer. “And I change my appearance from time to time.”
“Six years?” Unless she moved in when she was eleven, she was much older than Adrian had previously thought. “Jesus, how old are you?”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“Oh, wow.” Adrian was past being nervous, but the age difference was unexpected. He took his first slug of beer and the bitter taste made it hard to swallow. He choked a little.
“You okay? What? How old are you?”
“Is this one of those trivial questions?” They stared at each other. “I’m seventeen,” he told her. “I’m in high school. I start my senior year in a few weeks.”
“Huh.” Mia took another sip of beer, then placed the bottle on the table between them. “Is this too weird for you? I mean, I’ll totally understand if you want to leave, but I wish you would stay. Will you stay?”

He said he would, and he did. He couldn’t possibly go home, even though spending the night with a felon excited him and scared the shit out of him at the same time. He couldn’t tell anyone, she made him promise he wouldn’t. He swore he wouldn’t say anything, not to anyone, not even Tink who had been his best friend forever. Adrian and Mia talked late into the night. They lay side by side, fully clothed, on top of her Calvin Klein duvet. She played with his hair, he inspected the lines on her hand while she told him about how she’d run away from Roxbury, Mass. when she was just fifteen. How she spent a year cleaning hotel rooms in Maine before saving enough money to move to California, to this very Airstream. She babysat for money in an affluent town twenty five miles across the San Francisco Bay, and started breaking into houses, stealing from perfectly nice rich people to get by. She figured out she was good at it, and now she couldn’t stop.

“I don’t babysit anymore, of course. But that’s enough about that.” Mia kissed his face and said, “Tell me something about you.”
“That’s what I asked you before, remember? You were supposed to tell me something about you. Something no one knows.”
“I’m a thief. That’s not something?”
“No, something different. Something I don’t know about you.” Adrian propped his head up with his hand. “Come on,” he said.
“Okay, let me think.” Mia closed her eyes. When she opened them she said, “Mia is my middle name. I grew up being called by my first name.”
“Which is what?” he asked.
“Kara. My first name is Kara.” She spelled it for him.
“Kara Mia,” he said, “that’s amazing. I was singing that song in the shower today.”

Adrian stretched out on his back, his eyelids heavy. Mia tucked in under his arm, her head against his strong shoulder. “Tell me one. Something I don’t know.”
“Okay,” he rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. “Um, let’s see. I shave my legs during track season.”
“Really?”
“Uhuh. It’s makes me run faster. Everyone does it.”
“Oh, well, if everyone does it, then it’s not exactly a secret, right?”
“Yeah, but instead of shaving, I wax. That’s the secret. It takes forever to grow back, which is the good part. The bad part is the actual waxing. I don’t know how you girls do it.”
“That’s not that interesting,” she teased.
“Really? Not deep enough?”
She shook her head, her soft hair tickling his arm. “No, tell me something private, something secret.”
“I can’t think of anything. Really, Mia, I’m not that interesting. Nothing ever happens around here.”
Mia pulled the duvet around her legs and curled into him. She kissed his chest and closed her eyes. “I’ll do my best to shake up your world, Adrian. Just give me a couple of weeks.”

Chapter 2: I Think I Fell in Love With You

According to the clock by her bed, it was 10:05. He felt like he had slept forever, like he couldn’t get enough sleep. Two things motivated him to get out from under the duvet: his stomach was empty and he had to pee, but he lay in the bed for a minute thinking about things. From his view, he couldn’t see her in the trailer, so he called her name softly, once, then louder as he lowered his feet to the cool hard floor. He listened, but heard nothing. Being alone in her house made him nervous. The black boxes full of jewelry were gone. She’d left a note for him on the kitchen table, under a can of Red Bull. It said: a, had to run. catch up w/ u later. xo –m

Adrian folded the note and put it in the pocket of his cargo shorts, then stepped outside and took a deep breath, admiring the thick grove of trees around him. Surprising, he thought, how different everything looks in the daylight. He peed in the brush, then went back inside to put on his socks and shoes, locked up the trailer, and headed down the trail. Mia’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and Adrian wondered where she’d gone. At the intersection, he oriented himself and thought about the shortest route home, but decided a long run might do him some good. He checked his watch.

He had better shoes, real running shoes, in the closet in his bedroom, but his feet had grown and the shoes were tight; he was hesitant to ask his parents for a new pair. And now his canvas Chuck’s were starting to wear out and Adrian thought he might have to break down and invest in a new pair, even though they were probably ruining his feet. In a couple of weeks, when Cross Country season started, he would need new running shoes. Real shoes. They wouldn’t discuss their financials with their son, but he knew his parents were strapped. They hadn’t taken a family vacation in five years, and that had been to San Diego to see his dying grandmother, Taffy. When Taffy died, Adrian’s mother went back to San Diego alone and paid for the funeral with her own savings. When she came home, she locked herself in the master bedroom for four days, and there was nothing to discuss when she finally emerged and discovered Adrian eating Pop Tarts for dinner.

Thirty-four minutes flat. He wondered how far he’d run. He figured at moderate speed, with the bad shoes, he’d probably done five miles, give or take. When would he see her again? He couldn’t stop thinking about her. He showered and called Tink.
“Tell me everything, Ad. Leave nothing out.”
“What are we doing today?” Adrian asked.
“I’ll be there in ten. No, five. I’m leaving now. Put your panties on, homo.”

Adrian made scrambled eggs and ate them with Saltines, standing at the kitchen counter. His mother was out somewhere, his father, Gary, was in the garage, changing the oil in the car, a bondo-plastered Buick from the last century. He wanted to hear her voice, but didn’t know Mia’s phone number. He had to think about something else. Just as he was trying to adjust the TV (they didn’t have cable, just an old fashioned crappy TV with rabbit ears), Tink walked into the house like he lived there and threw his keys on the coffee table. He flopped down on the couch and put his feet up, his hands behind his head.

“Start talking, douche-bag. Leave nothing out or I’ll be forced to waterboard you.”
“Nothing happened, Tink.” Adrian flicked the TV off and sat on the floor.
“Wrong answer,” said Tink.
Adrian picked at a toenail. “Honest, it wasn’t like that.”
“You’re lying. You’re fucking glowing, dude, like Angelina Jolie in her third month. Don’t be coy, Slim, gimme the dirt. Does the carpet match the drapes or what?”
This comment confused Adrian a bit, and then he got it. “Don’t be gross, dude. Seriously, it wasn’t like that.”
Tink rolled his eyes and snorted a sarcastic laugh. “You spent the night at Milo’s,” he made air quotes, “without me, by the way, and I was stuck playing Wii with my little sister all night. I only know that because I called here at midnight to talk to you, and Betty gave me a phone beating. Dude, you need to get a cell phone. What’s your problem?” Tink liked to call Adrian’s mom Betty, even though she went by her given name, Elizabeth.
“There’s nothing to report.” Adrian told him. He stood and walked to the kitchen door, slipped on his flip flops. “We going or what?”
“We should skate,” Tink said. “Take off those high heels, and put on your Chuck’s.”

At the skate park, no one knows you’re a dork. Tink and Adrian had both received skateboards from Tink’s parents one Christmas when they were little, and had been skating together ever since. Tink was better; he had more time on his hands because he hardly ever studied, and he could afford to upgrade his skateboards more often than Adrian could. Tink was a natural at everything compared to Adrian. Adrian had to study harder, work harder, run harder. Everything was harder. Maybe Tink had a leg up because of his confidence, or maybe he was just a little more gifted than his friend. Tink got girls, not very often, but sometimes. More than Adrian did anyway. Tink was not a virgin; he had been with four girls already and, while none of them had stuck as girlfriends, still, he had done it. Tink didn’t do as well in his classes, but he didn’t care as much, didn’t have as much riding on grades. His parents could afford to pay for college. But at the end of the day, they were still both pretty geeky.

“Who does she look like?” Tink asked, pulling his car into the skatepark lot.
“She looks like Mia.”
“No, doof, I mean, which actress? If you had to compare her to someone.”
Adrian shook his head. “She doesn’t look like anyone. I don’t know. She has short dark hair. She’s like a foot shorter than me, maybe. There’s a parking spot.”
“Did you at least feel her boobies, man? Are they small? I’ll be they’re small, right?”
“I’m not having this conversation, Tink.”

They pulled the skateboards from the trunk and skated through the lot.
“We are already having this conversation. Come on, Slim, give me something. One little thing about her,” Tink begged.
“She’s sweet. I barely know her, Tink. I’m not going to tell you anything,” Adrian said.
“Have it your way, homo.” Tink skated ahead of him, stopping at the edge of the park to observe the other skaters. Adrian caught up to him and they stood together, watching for a minute. “God, why can’t there be more Jesus freak skaters, so we can have a little space on Sundays? It’s the Lord’s day, for Christ’s sake. It’s supposed to be the day of rest, right?” Tink turned to look at his friend. “You really are glowing, man. I think you’re spun. You’re really spun.”

Adrian dropped his skate, smiling. He remembered the apples, how Mia’s warm thighs felt against his neck, how nervous he’d been at the moment she stepped over his head, back onto the sidewalk. He’d pulled it off. He’d actually spent the night with a girl. She liked him. He smiled to himself. He felt like a damn Jedi Master. Before he stepped onto his skate Adrian said, “She was wearing black panties.” Tink’s mouth dropped open and he chased after Adrian. “You little slut,” he yelled. “You dirty little slut.”

Accidents sometimes happen, and if it weren’t for the six year old who broke his fall, Adrian might have been hurt much worse than he was. The six year old had a helmet, of course, and came out of the collision unscathed. Maybe he got the wind knocked out of him. Adrian, on the other hand, who, after being cut off by some punk who was apparently not clear on the rules of the park (Rule #1: Show courtesy to your fellow skaters), rammed into the little kid, stopped suddenly, tripped up on his skateboard, landed on his right hand (which broke his wrist in two places), cart-wheeled into the air, and landed square on his left kneecap, which shattered like a beer bottle. From Tink’s point of view, the accident looked almost comical. He skated over to Adrian, stopped, kicked his skate up and caught it with his hand.

“Dude, what the fuck was that? You new here?” His face tightened when he saw the blood. Adrian had screamed on impact, but now lay silent, his eyes wide, his body tangled. “Oh fuck,” Tink said, kneeling before him. “Call 911,” he yelled, “fucking call 911, now! Now! Don’t touch him! Fuck! Fuck, man. Okay. You’re gonna be okay, Slim. Don’t move, buddy, just stay put, okay?” He yelled to the crowd of kids around them, “Is someone calling 911?” A boy wearing checkered Vans and a backward cap pointed to his phone, which he held to his ear.
“He’s on it, man,” someone said.
“Are they coming?” Tink asked, his eyes fixed on Adrian’s.
“Don’t move him,” the kid on the phone said. He stood behind Tink now.
“Give me that,” Tink commanded. The kid handed him the phone.
“Hello? Hello? My name is William Tinkerton. My best friend Adrian Moss has had a terrible fall. Please, you have to send an ambulance right away. I don’t know. He looks pretty fucked up to me. Yes, ma’am. Yes. I don’t know, let me look. Dilated? I guess. Yes, I would say so.” He listened. “Okay. Shit. Are they coming right now? Okay, yes, I understand. Stay with me, buddy.”

Adrian woke the next evening to the sound of Tink yelling at the television in his hospital room. “What is Lake Tahoe!? Too easy, Alex. Give me something stronger.” He was watching Jeopardy. Tink knew everything. Ding! “Who is John Houston?” Adrian could see that Tink had eaten what was probably his dinner. Ding! “What is the Medal of Honor?”

“Hey,” was all Adrian could muster. Tink spun off his chair and leapt to Adrian’s side.
“Jesus, Slim, you’re up!” He leaned his face close to his friend’s. “Oh, fuck, man, I’m so happy. I thought you were going to fucking die on me or be in a coma or some shit. Fuck, man. I gotta call your mom. She said to call, so I’m gonna call her, okay?” He punched “2” on his phone and it speed-dialed Adrian’s house. “Elizabeth? It’s me, hi. Yeah! Our boy’s awake.” He asked Adrian, “Your mom wants to know how you’re feeling? I didn’t even ask. How do you feel? You feel okay? I think he feels okay, Elizabeth. I think he’s okay. I don’t know. He just woke up. We’ll call you back in a sec, okay? Okay, great. I’m psyched, aren’t you? I’m totally psyched, Elizabeth. He’s gonna be fine, I can tell. Call you back.”

“Is it bad?” Adrain asked. “I think it’s bad, right? Can you get me some water?”
“It’s not that bad, dude.” Tink poured water from a yellow plastic pitcher into a Styrofoam cup. You’re gonna be okay. I told you. You’re fine. Just a scratch. Couple of bumps.”

Adrian began to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. Tears filled his blue eyes, and red veins shot quickly through the whites, his eyelashes wet and black, like a seal’s. He was druggy and weak.
“Fuck,” he said softly. He tried to pull his right hand to his face, but it was held by something resembling a small crane, so he used his left hand to wipe his eyes.
“It’s okay, buddy,” Tink stood at the side of his bed and touched Adrian’s shoulder. “You’re gonna be okay, man, I promise. Nothing serious.”
Adrian sobbed. “Don’t lie to me, Tink. I can tell by looking at you that things are not okay. I can’t even sit up. What the fuck?”

The injury was bad, that was true. He understood this before anyone said it aloud. “You’ll mend, son,” his father would say a few days later, when the hospital finally released him. He’d gone through two surgeries, and now had a knee full of pins and wires. Adrian struggled with the help of his father to haul his lanky frame from the back seat of the Buick, his leg strapped tight into a ROM brace which held his broken limb in a straight line. He slammed his jaw shut and sucked air through his teeth when his father lifted him out by his armpits. The pain wasn’t off-the-charts because he was hopped up on Vicodin, but everything hurt anyway, a low dull ache that crept from his knee and radiated out to the rest of his body. The cast on his wrist didn’t help anything. He checked his watch. It took them seven minutes and eighteen seconds to make it from the car to the couch, where his mother stood, helpless, wondering aloud if she should do something.
“Mom, ith’s fine,” he slurred. “You don’ hafta do it. Wadder, maybe? Glath a wadder?”
“Water? You want water? Okay, baby.” She hadn’t called him that in years. He couldn’t recall, in fact, the last time she’d looked him straight in the eye.
“Thans, Mah.”

Adrian reclined at one end of the couch, his leg stretched out across the cushions like a mummified birch tree. Elizabeth brought him a stack of magazines she’d been given second-hand at the office: old copies of People, Us Weekly, Newsweek, Martha Stewart, and Redbook. Elizabeth worked as a receptionist for her Gynecologist. If he’d had the energy, Adrian would have wished for a couple of old National Geographics, but he didn’t really have the energy for anything.

He tried to sleep, but only dozed off-and-on. Tink’s voice at the kitchen door slapped him out of a cat nap.
“Hey, Slim,” Tink sat on the coffee table and patted the cast on Adrian’s wrist. “How’s it hangin’, man? You look good, dude, you look really good.”
“S’okay, I geth,” Adrian drooled. “I’m sorta fugged up.” He worked his tongue in his mouth. “Been bedder.”
Tink said, “I’m gonna hang out with you for the night, okay? I brought a bunch of stuff,” he pointed toward the kitchen. “I got the DVD player, a shitload of movies. I got the old X-Box and a hundred games. My mom gave me some cash so we can order pizza. We’re gold, bud. You stay right here, don’t move. Your dad and I are gonna set everything up in your room, okay? We’re gonna put the TV in there. It’s gonna be awesome. You just hang there, okay? Give me five minutes.”

He dozed again, while Tink and Gary rearranged the bed, the television. They hooked up the Sony X-Box and the DVD player, and moved all the magazines to Adrian’s night stand. Elizabeth headed to the library for books.

Tink walked her out to the driveway. “Nothing about running, okay?” Elizabeth clutched Adrian’s old empty messenger bag, the one he’d have to use for school again this year. She nodded. “I’m serious. I mean nothing. No running. Got it? And no coming-of-age stories. No Lord of the Flies or Mr. Chips. None of that stuff. Don’t get Love Story or any of that crap. No athletes, no relationship-heavy garbage. Try to stick with history and stuff about space travel, and maybe some fun fiction. Stephen King, but not “It”, because that might give him nightmares. We want to stay away from anything too scary, now that I think about it.” As Elizabeth walked toward the library, Tink spit out his last thought on the subject, “And no Harry Potter.”

After deliberating for a while, Tink and Gary pulled Adrian off the couch and hauled him toward his bedroom. He groaned and begged them to slow down. His beaten leg throbbed. Four minutes and twenty seconds later, with the assistance of every pillow in the house, including three couch cushions, they had Adrian propped as well as they could figure on his bed. Tink flipped on the fan and fed Adrian two pain killers. He was almost comfortable, and fell into a deep sleep that lasted for nearly an hour. When he woke, Tink was sitting on the end of his sleeping bag on the floor, playing golf on X-Box.

“Hey, Tink.” Adrian growled.
Tink paused the game and threw the joystick on the carpet. “Hey, Slim. You’re awake.”
“Yeah. I’m okay.” He fumbled to move a pillow with his good hand, and Tink jumped up to help him.
“That better?”
“Yeah, it’s okay. Thanks.”
“I just ordered a pizza,” Tink said. “Pepperoni, just for you.”
Adrian nodded. “Thanks, man. Thanks for being here.”
“I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be,” he offered.
“I appreciate that,” Adrian laughed, knowing that Tink would be lost without him.
“Don’t be a lezbo, dude.”

The boys ate pizza and played X-Box for a while, but Adrian had the great disadvantage of using only his left hand.

Adrian passed out while they watched Forty Year Old Virgin. His sleep was deep and filled with dreams he couldn’t make sense of. In one dream, he was running through the empty lot where he had walked with Mia just days before. The lot was littered with jagged rocks the size of his head, he stumbled, his ankles twisting, the rocks flying up to his face. He took blows to his hands, tried to protect his head, his chest. Pebbles blew from every direction, the sky, the ground, from left and right, a diagonal rain of debris. As he ran, his mouth filled with dust, leaves, moss. The path shrunk to nothing, like a path deer might make, and the greenery around him closed in, snagging his clothes and hair. He ducked under a branch, he couldn’t slow his pace. Now everything fell away, the trees, the flying pebbles, the scratching shrubbery, and Mia stood before him. She wore the light blue dress with the tiny pockets. In her hands, she held the duvet, the one from her bed in the Airstream. She held it up to him like a flag, and he fell into her as she wrapped it around his body, the way a fire fighter might wrap someone who was in flames. She took him to the ground, and they fell with a thud that woke Adrian, abruptly, so that he cried out.

The idle days felt too long. He would begin physical therapy on day twelve, with two annoying doctor visits in between, visits that would take so much out of him, he’d spend the rest of the day sleeping it off in a pain-killer haze. “Stay positive,” his mother would say. “This isn’t the end of the world.” He would respond the way she wanted him to, by saying that he knew it wasn’t the end of the world. He’d tell her, “I’m not complaining, Mom,” and he didn’t grumble too often, but the physical pain and the months ahead of repairing his knee were the least of his problems. His real problem was that he couldn’t run. He started timing things that didn’t matter to keep his mind off the fact that he wasn’t running.

On an occasion when he finally made it to the kitchen table for dinner, he timed how long it took his father to eat his meal. Gary sat on the couch in the living room, staring at the blank space where the TV used to be, while Adrian sat at the kitchen table with his leg out before him, in the way of everything, like a pair of skis, with his heel rested on a folded bath towel on the vinyl kitchen floor. They listened to David Sedaris on NPR. Seven minutes and fourteen seconds.

Within a few days, his mother grew tired of taking care of him and recruited her friend Toni to help out once in a while. In exchange, Elizabeth committed the same number of hours to help Toni in her garden, where the women cleared out the last of the tomato plants and yellowed vines, and prepared the soil for fall planting. Adrian would have liked to have used the stopwatch feature on his Casio, but the fingers on his right hand were swollen and didn’t work the way he wanted them to, so he had to watch the actual time instead. He timed Toni while she stripped the sheets one afternoon while he lay prone on the floor in his bedroom. Twenty six seconds, a good eighteen seconds faster than his mother. Toni threw the old plaid curtains back and opened the two windows in his room. “Get some fresh air in here for you,” she said, “it’ll do you some good.”

Toni had enthusiasm that his mother lacked. She ran the vacuum (3:52), washed his clothes, brought fresh magazines and day old newspapers. She put a plant in his room, a philodendron, and taught him how to propagate new little philodendrons by clipping the leaves and putting them in water to root (2:03:17). One day, while washing his hair (4:12), she told him she thought he was lucky. She used a plastic cup to pour water over his head. The toes on his left foot were cold and turning purple.
“You’re young, Adrian. You’re young and you’re so strong, and you have good people around you. Look at Tink; what a sweetheart. I mean, I wish I had a friend as good as Tink. You’re going to be up in no time. Do you believe that? I wish you would, kiddo, because I’m telling you, no forty-five year old could get through something like this the way you are.” She scrubbed a dab of conditioner through his hair, which was growing wild now, several weeks overdue for a cut. “I’ll tell you something I think might be good for you.” Again with the cup, she poured warm water over his skull. Toni’s voice was low and comforting. He closed his eyes.
“Here’s what you do,” she said, lifting his head from the sink. She wrapped a towel around his hair the way women do. “You’re all done, sweetie.” While she helped him back to his bed, her arm slung lightly around his waist, she offered him some advice. “Make a list. Get yourself a notebook. I’ll bring you one tomorrow if you want. And I just want you to write down all the things you’re grateful for. You know?” He lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. Toni held his left ankle and when he gave her a nod, the nod that said he was ready, she carefully lifted his stiff leg up onto the mattress while Adrian shifted his weight with his good arm. “It might be a good idea to just write everything down, everything you’re thinking about, whatever you want.” She winked at him as she left his room. “It’ll be good for you. I’m sure I’ve got an extra at the house. I’ll bring it back over in a few.”

School would start in a few days, but Adrian wouldn’t be there. His mobility, eleven days after his accident, was still very limited. His mother and father would take turns picking up his lessons from school, and Tink promised to pitch in and help out with school stuff when he could.

The spiral notebook had a bright yellow cover, with a whopping 200 ruled pages. Toni handed him a Bic pen and said, “Just write whatever you feel like. No one has to read it but you. It’s for your eyes only.” Toni could be a bit corny, but he appreciated her encouragement.
“Thanks, Toni,” Adrian said. “You’re really a saint. Really, I mean that. Thanks for everything. I can’t believe you want to help us out so much.”
“It’s my pleasure, pal. Get to writing, okay? Pros, cons, feelings, all that Dr. Phil stuff. It’ll do you some good. I’ll see you later, alligator.”

Adrian opened the notebook and stared at the blank first page for a while. A thousand thoughts were in his brain, but nothing coherent. He hadn’t wanted to think about anything, so he sat there on his bed and shook his head. His life had been so rudely interrupted; he didn’t know where to begin making sense of anything. Finally, with a hard hand, he wrote: Where the fuck is Mia? (0:12)

The Physical Therapist was a short, tidy young man named Steve who looked perpetually fresh out of the shower. On the day before he was to start his senior year of high school, Adrian huffed and puffed his way through his first session, hauling his bones across six feet of Pergo flooring with the assistance of two parallel bars (5:18). His ROM brace had been adjusted a few degrees, so now there was a tiny bend to his knee. Progress. He collapsed into a wheel chair and Steve handed him a paper cup full of water. “Good job, Adrian. That was terrific.” Adrian blew out a strong puff of air. “Thanks,”
“Let me know when you’re ready to try it again, and we’ll give it another go. That was great. Take your time.”

When school started, Adrian tried to immerse himself in his studies. Tink collected his text books and dropped them off.
“There’s this new girl, she’s in homeroom with us,” Tink explained. Adrian liked that Tink included him in homeroom, even though he wouldn’t attend school for three weeks, at best. He would need to get his ROM brace to fifteen degrees and master his new crutches first.
“She’s hot, man. Her name’s Lexie. She moved here from Fresno or some shit, but wait ‘til you see her, Slim, she’s like six feet tall. She’s like a freakin’ super model. Everyone’s totally in love with her, even half the girls. She’s going out for soccer.”

Adrian fell asleep with the TV on, his finished homework piled next to him on the bed, the bedside lamp warm against his neck. He dreamed that Toni was washing his hair. The sensation was so real, her fingers through his hair, that he woke, startled.
“Shh. It’s just me,” Mia said. She ran her hand through his hair again. “The window was open.”
All of the air in his lungs escaped in a huge huff. “Mia? Oh my god,” he said. He tried to reposition his body so that he could face her.
“How did you,” he started to ask.
“I just did,” she said.
“My parents,” Adrian worried.
“They’re asleep,” Mia whispered. “It’s almost eleven thirty.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “Is this okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Wow. It’s really good to see you.”
“I know. It’s good to see you, too.”
“I have so much to tell you,” he whispered.
“Can I?” She carefully climbed over him and lay next to him on the bed, her tiny black boots on top of the comforter. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “I’ve got all night.”

They lay together for an hour or so, and he told her about the accident until he was almost too tired to talk anymore.
“I want to know what’s going on with you, Mia.”
She pressed her lips to his. “Let’s talk tomorrow. You need your rest. I should go.”
“No, Mia, don’t. Please,” She wiped a tear from his cheekbone with her thumb.
“You okay?”
“No,” he whimpered softly. He held her wrist with his good hand. “No, I’m not okay, Mia. I can’t deal with this. I can’t run, I’m missing school. Everything’s over for me, you know?”
She said she didn’t know. “Tell me,” she said. “I don’t know you well enough to know what’s going on, so tell me, okay?”
Adrian sniffled and took a big breath. “Running was the only way I was going to get a scholarship. My parents don’t have the money to send me to college. I’m fucked, basically.”
“What about your grades?” She wondered. “Your grades are pretty good, right? Can’t you try to get an academic scholarship or something? I’m not the best person to help you with this, Adrian. I don’t understand it. I mean, I’m a runaway; I never even finished high school.”
“Fuck,” he said. He looked into her eyes, their faces were close, the chipped end of her nose reflected light from the lamp by his bed. “You’re going to be my friend, right? We’re friends now, right?”
Mia kissed the fingers of his broken hand. “I hope so,” she said. “I hope we’re more than friends.” Her lips turned into a mischievous smirk and she raised her eyebrows. “You know? Do you want that?”
Adrian nodded, closed his eyes. His head was killing him.
“I mean that, Adrian,” she sat up on the bed and ran her hand over the curve of his hip. “I’ll help you in whatever way I can, okay?” He was silent, his good arm slung over his eyes. “So, I’m gonna go, then.” She kissed his mouth, and he kissed her back without removing his arm from his face.

“I brought you this.” She pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her corduroy jacket, and Adrian propped himself up on his elbow, blinked. He took the phone from her.
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. My number’s in there. Now we can talk whenever you want to, okay? Here, I got an ear thingy, too, so you don’t have to hold it up to your head all the time. That’s such a pain.”
“God, that’s so nice of you. Thank you. Wow, Mia.” He accepted the gift, kissed her quickly, touched her hair. “You’re the best,” he said.
“Call me tomorrow, okay? I’ll be around.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“You’re tired, Adrian. Get some rest and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay? I’ll just let myself out.” She pointed to the window and smiled.
“Just stay. Sleep here.”
“Be good,” she said. She opened the window near his bed. “Hope I didn’t freak you out too much,” she offered as she climbed over the window sill.
“Not at all,” Adrian laughed. “Okay, maybe a little.”
“There are some games on there, too,” Mia said. She blew him a kiss, slid the window closed, and slipped into the moonlit night.

Three times a week, Adrian’s father or mother, or more often, Toni, assisted Adrian to the car, struggled to fold his six foot two inch frame into the backseat, and drove him nine miles to the next town for his Physical Therapy appointments. Toni’s car was easier, as she drove an old minivan, which was easier to get in and out of than the Buick. Plus, Toni drove faster than either of his parents. While Gary could get them from door to door in under twenty minutes, casually coasting, Elizabeth was more deliberate, and tended to slam on the brakes a lot. Her best time was 22:05. Toni, on the other hand, drove like the wind, keeping in mind that to get Adrian in and out as quickly as possible was the common goal. Toni could do the drive in 15:25. She didn’t slow down for speed bumps or kids in cross-walks, she just blazed through town, chatting happily about how Jennifer Aniston looked so cute on Oprah, or shared her opinion about sex education in schools. On one drive, she shared her recipe for cream of mushroom soup. “Never use shitakes,” she warned, “they lose their flavor and end up tasting like rubber bands.” Adrian thought he might like to have a bowl of her mushroom soup once the weather turned cold. He’d like to sit at her homey little white kitchen table and dip chunks of sourdough bread into that soup. “And you have to double the sherry,” she said. “That’s my little secret.”

Mia tap-tapped her code knock on his window. Adrian was hobbling back from the kitchen on one crutch, balancing a carton of orange juice, an apple, and a cheese sandwich with his casted hand against his chest. When he pushed his bedroom door open, he got a comical view of the bottom half of Mia’s body, her butt in the air, her legs off the floor. She pulled herself through the window with one hand. With the other, she held a large white cardboard box by the plastic handle.
“Got you something,” she grinned and placed the box on his bed. Adrian fumbled to put the orange juice and food on his desk.
“What’s this, Mia?”
“You said you didn’t have a laptop, so I got you one. For school. You gotta have one, right?” She took a bite of his sandwich and opened the juice, drinking from the plastic bottle.
“Hope you don’t mind,” she said, “I’m starving.”
“Mia, I can’t take that. What am I supposed to tell my parents? That’s like a seventeen hundred dollar Mac.”
“Uhuh,” she mumbled between bites, “it is.”
“That’s really nice, but I can’t take it. It’s too much.”
Mia folded her knees, sat on the carpet and sipped from the jug of orange juice. “Sure you can. It’s a gift. Just say thank you.”
He hobbled to the bed, tossed his crutch to the floor. “What am I supposed to tell my parents? They’ll know something’s up, Mia. I can’t take it; I can’t.”
“I dunno. Tell them you saved up for it. You worked at the liquor store all summer, right? They don’t know how much you made. Just tell them you bought it.”
Adrian stared at the box for a while. “You steal it?”
“Yup,” she said. “That’s what I do.”
He nodded, considering the gravity of the hot computer.
“Tell them the kids in the Pep Club all pitched in to buy it for you. No, better, tell them they had a bake sale.”

Four weeks after his accident, Adrian sat in his doctor’s office worrying not about the pending procedure of removing some of he wires from his knee, but about how on Earth his parents were paying for all of this. He knew they had insurance, his dad’s job at the cardboard box factory paid for coverage for the whole family, but he was pretty sure the coverage was minimal, and that the Physical Therapy sessions and the prescriptions were costing his parents something, although he couldn’t be sure. He hoped they weren’t dipping into their retirement fund, which couldn’t be much at all.

The wires came out and his ROM brace was adjusted – not without teeth grinding pain – to twenty degrees. Two days on the lawn chair with his new Mac Book, and Adrian was ready to go back to school.
“I’m sorta freaked out about it,” he told Mia over the phone.
“You sound like you need a pep talk,” she said.
“That might help.”
“Can I come over later?” She asked.
“You bet. Of course. That’d be great, Mia.”
“Then it’s settled,” she said. He could hear the smile in her voice. He pictured her cat teeth, her lips. Something in him said I love you, but he didn’t say it out loud. “How’s eight-thirty?”
“That’s kind of early, don’t you think?” He laughed. She had visited him earlier and earlier, and sometimes now she stayed well into the night, until the whole world was asleep. Adrian woke some mornings wondering when she’d gone.
“Too early? What do you think? Ten?”
“Ten’s better.” He felt relived.
“See you then,” she said. Mia hung up before the conversation was over.

She brought him a steak in a Styrofoam box, the evil kind that clogged up landfills.
“What’s this?”
“Filet, medium rare. I hope that’s okay. Potatoes, and something green, broccoli rabe, I think.” She plunked herself into the chair at his desk. “Oh, here, I brought utensils, too.” She pulled a knife and fork from the pocket inside her corduroy jacket.
“Thanks,” he barely said before digging in to his dinner. “Mmm,” he said while chewing,” this is just what the doctor ordered. You’re a saint, Mia.”
She laughed. “That’s me, Kara Mia, patron saint of steaks.” Mia watched him eat, then busied herself putting his clean laundry away.
“Don’t do that, Mia,” he mumbled between bites. “It’s embarrassing.”
“Not to me, it’s not,” she said. “I’ve seen underwear before, Adrian.”
“Really, I wish you wouldn’t. Sit down and tell me about your day. What’d you do today?”
She shoved a stack of t-shirts into his drawer, folded the way Adrian liked. “Are we having our first fight?”

They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled.
“Come over here,” Adrian patted the bed, put his meal aside. She took off her jacket and sat on the edge of the bed and he kissed her.
“Why are you so nice to me?” He asked, kissing her again. “God, I love kissing you.”
Mia began to undo the buttons of her shirt -- a short-sleeved black number, a little sheer, something slightly fancier than what she normally wore – revealing a black padded demi-cup bra that made her breasts look bigger than they really were, the milky white of her skin showing blue veins. Her skin was flawless, her shoulders strong. Her waist was impossibly small, her belly button stuck out like it was being born. Adrian watched her, surprised by his own calm.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied. “Sometimes I don’t think so, but thank you.” She dropped her top to the floor. “Are you worried about your parents?”
He shook his head, took note of the sweet smattering of sand colored freckles across her chest. “Haven’t you noticed? They don’t pay any attention to me if they don’t have to.”

Before Mia taught Adrian about thieving, she taught him about sex. Like burglary, sex was about action, not words. Select words could get you where you wanted to go faster, but too many words could ruin the whole job. Practice was important, since one’s skills could become rusty with neglect, but it was important not to become obsessed, she warned, because that’s when people made mistakes. That’s when people got hurt. Success, she explained, was obtained by honing one’s instincts, listening. Experience was experience; it didn’t hurt. “There’s only one way to make love to a woman, and that’s with your mind,” she told him. “Just like pulling a job. You gotta look ‘em in the eye and mean it.”

So there, on his childhood double mattress, Adrian received his first blow job. His concentration was fierce. He’d cut back on the pain killers and was feeling more like himself again. He stopped thinking about tomorrow, his first day back at school, consumed by what now occurred to him was the center of his body. The sensation of her mouth, small and cool, then warmer and wetter, her hands against his groin, his chest, his good leg, brought him to a height of ecstasy he couldn’t ever have achieved on his own. Mia was on her hands and knees, her head gently bobbing up and down, her jeans tight against her thighs. He dared to look at her face, contorted and serious, her mouth wider than he could have imagined it could open. All self-consciousness blew out the window, and he gave in to her mouth, touched her breasts, ran his fingers between her legs, causing her to convulse. When he climaxed, she forced her hand over his chin, covering his open mouth, muffling his noises. She swallowed his ejaculation and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. She raised herself up on her knees and looked into his eyes. “Happy?” She asked. “Yes,” he whispered, gasping for air. “Happy. Very happy, Mia, thank you.”

“My turn,” she explained, kicking her jeans to the floor. Mia led his good hand to her back and worked his fingers, showed him how to undo the clasp of her bra. She kissed him, and he could taste the briny moisture on her tongue. “Okay?” She asked. Her movements were thoughtful and slow, deliberate. Adrian nodded and kissed her again.

She taught him how to please her, her strong fingers playing his like a piano, the rhythm of her hips keeping time. She pushed his finger inside of her, then commanded him to use two fingers, pulled them out and into her mouth, then into his, then back down to the space between her legs. Her cool tongue flicked in and out of his mouth until she shook without a sound, her lips wide apart.

Adrian woke to the sound of his bedroom window opening.
“Mia?”
“I’m going.” She returned to the bed to give him a polite kiss.
“Thanks for spending the night.”
“My pleasure,” she said, stroking his hair. “You have a good first day at school, okay?”
“I’m a little freaked out,” he admitted.
Mia tilted her head. “You’ll do fine, I think.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, I mean, what else can you do but get back on the horse, right? You’re going to be just fine, Adrian. Everything will work itself out. You’re smart and you’re sexy and you’re brave. Everything will work out fine, I know it will.”
“I’m sexy? Really? Huh.” They both smiled.
“Yeah, you’re totally sexy. That brace? It’s utterly sexy. It’s sex on a stick. The cheerleaders are going to go nuts over that thing.”

He sat next to Tink in homeroom. They were early to class, projecting way too much time for his trip up to the second story of the school. Adrian had over-thought everything, but now, there they were, five minutes before the bell, planted in their desks. Adrian pulled his new Mac Book from his messenger bag and placed it before him on the desk. Tink was untangling a power cord from his headphones.
“Dude, score. Where’d you get that? Your parents pop for it?”
“Pep club,” he replied.

Chapter 3: Said You’d Stand by Me.

Elizabeth was making dinner, pork chops. Gary was watching the CBS Evening News on the TV. He’d been watching a lot of TV since they’d moved it back into the living room. Katie Couric was talking about Pakistan. Adrian was immediately suspicious. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday, which was the only reason Elizabeth ever cooked a family meal. On a normal day, she might throw a meatloaf in the oven and let everyone help themselves, but an actual three course meal was suspect.
“What’s going on?” Adrian placed his bag on the kitchen floor, propped his crutches against the counter. He’d been at the library with Tink after school.
“Pork chops,” his mother announced, her voice void of kindness. She didn’t bother to fake a smile. “I thought we’d all have dinner together.”

Gary was drinking a can of beer. His feet were on the coffee table, the remote clenched in his left hand. He turned the volume up, became annoyed when a commercial came on. He clicked the TV off and without looking in the direction of the kitchen said, “We’re getting a divorce.”

Elizabeth let a metal spoon drop to the counter with a loud clank. “Nice, Gary. Very nice.”

Adrian spun his head around to look at his father, so quickly as to cause a sharp muscle spasm in his neck.
“Ow, fuck.” He massaged the sore spot with his casted hand.
“Adrian,” his mother warned. She smashed the cooked potatoes in the pot, like she was trying to kill them. Her thin wrists looked as though they might snap under the pressure of the mashing. “Language.”
“Did you just say you’re getting divorced? What the hell, Mom? Seriously? What’s going on?”
Elizabeth frowned and let out a sharp breath. “We were supposed to wait until after dinner to tell you, so I apologize for your father’s insensitivity.”

She slopped food onto three plates into a careless arrangement: pork chops, potatoes, Caesar salad with croutons. The food all looked the same color to Adrian, and his stomach turned at the sight of a plate before him on the kitchen table.
Gary stood and went to the fridge for another beer. He snapped the can open and drank a couple of gulps.
“This isn’t about you, kid,” his father told him. Gary took a plate of food and headed for the garage, leaving Adrian alone with his mother, who stood at the kitchen counter, not exactly crying, but he could see tears filling up in her eyes.
“What does he do in there?” Elizabeth asked.
“I don’t get it,” Adrian said, although, really he did get it. His parents had barely looked at each other in years. Their conversations were always short and benign. “What’s going to happen, Mom?”
Elizabeth brought her plate to the table and sat across from her son. She took a bite of potatoes and sighed before she swallowed. “Well,” she said. “I think I’ll probably go stay with Elaine for a while.”
“What? Aunt Elaine lives in Portland. No way, Mom, I’m not moving to Portland.”
“You’ll stay here in California with your dad.” She finally looked into his eyes. “You boys will be fine, honey.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Mom? No, no way. I’ll fucking starve to death if you leave.”
“Language,” she demanded. She cut her pork chop into a hundred little pieces and shoved one nugget of the meat into her mouth. Her lipstick was all but gone, a blurred hue of pink lined her lips.
“Mom, that’s ridiculous. I can’t believe you would leave us. Can’t you guys just separate for a while? See how things go?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No, honey, we can’t. That won’t help anything.” She let her fork fall to the table, wiped her mouth with a paper towel. “Your father has a girlfriend.”
“That’s absurd,” Adrian said. “Dad? My father has a girlfriend? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You should eat something,” she told him.
“Why didn’t you say something before? How long has this been going on?” Adrian hobbled to the fridge for some milk. Elizabeth forced a fork full of salad into her mouth, then spoke before she swallowed. “I’m saying something now,” she said. “What do you want from me?”

It turned out that Elizabeth had been planning on leaving for some time. She had filed for the divorce months earlier, in April, she said, and the whole thing was practically over. Before it could all sink in, the gravity of the divorce, before he could understand any of it, his mother was packed up and gone. Toni drove her to the Amtrack with two borrowed suitcases and a paper shopping bag, and she got on the train to Portland without hesitation.

“I’m going to Milo’s” he told his father one evening. Gary was dressed in slacks and a clean shirt. Apparently, he had a date.
“You staying over there tonight?” Gary asked, hopeful.
“Sure, yeah,” Adrian said. He hopped on his good foot, and struggled to pull the strap of his messenger bag over his head. “I can spend the night.”
“Great,” Gary said. “You boys have fun. Say hi to Milo for me.”
“Will do, Pop.”

Adrian used his key to let himself into the Airstream. Mia was out. He took off his ROM brace, propped his skinny leg up on the bench seat and gave his knee a good scratch. While he waited for his computer to fire up, he pulled his math book from his bag, and reached across to the tiny refrigerator for a can of Red Bull.

“Hi honey, I’m home!” Mia sang. She was wearing a wig, long mousey brown hair straight down her back. The bangs made her look years younger than she was. She could have passed for fourteen.
“Look at you,” he said. “Adorable, really.”
“You like?” She threw her boy-band themed backpack onto the counter, gave him a quick kiss, then popped a beer and sat across from him at the table. She flipped her fake hair around and squealed.
“I do. How was work today, dear?”
“Mmm, very good. Things went great. Sorry, I’m super hopped-up on adrenaline. I’m feeling pretty hyper.”
“You seem it,” Adrian said. “May I ask what you did with your day?”
“Yes, you may. What’s this, calculus? Don’t let me interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting.” He put his pen down and used a yellow sticky note to mark his spot in the textbook. “I’m all yours.”
“Okay,” she wiggled in her seat. “First, I went to that new place in Berkeley I found, the place I was telling you about,” Mia often pawned goods under fake names in different cities around the Bay, Berkeley, San Francisco, East Palo Alto. For turning around wedding ring sets, this was her best scam. Rings were small and therefore easy to steal. She had boxes full of engagement rings and wedding bands.
“You went in there like that?”
“No, huh uh,” she sipped her beer. “No, I had on the hippie hair for that.”
“Ah, Kathy,” he said. Kathy was her hippie persona. “Of course,”

She hit six pawn shops before noon, all as Kathy. Not too terribly risky, even though all the shops were equipped with cameras. She could go in as Alexandra or Jennifer the following week, hit six different pawn shops, and no one would be the wiser. This was the fun part of her job, playing the broken-hearted divorcee who needed to pawn her wedding set to pay the make-believe mortgage on her make-believe house in Castro Valley or Colma or Campbell. Stealing was the dark part, she’d told him, cashing in the goods was like being on stage, in the light. Her personas were a bit boring and ordinary. His favorite was Suzette, a white-trash speed freak with a remarkable overbite, which Mia achieved with a prosthetic set of teeth she wore over her own, hiding her special cat teeth. The key, she told him, was to distract people with an odd characteristic, like the teeth, or a band aid over the nose, or a fake scar. That way, if anyone was ever asked to identify her, all they’d remember was the band aid or the scar, or the funny teeth. Kathy, the hippie, wore a pair of old-school horn rimmed glasses with a sunglasses attachment she could flip up to cover her forehead, which were much too large for her face. Mia had to push them up on her nose every couple of seconds; that was Kathy’s distraction. Kathy also involved an inflatable body suit that made Mia look twenty pounds heavier, but weighed nothing. The fat suit wasn’t good for hot days, but now that the weather had cooled off, she could be Kathy without passing out from heat stroke.

Jennifer wore a cheap skirt and blouse outfit, had long layered dark brown hair, which she flung around her shoulders like she was in a shampoo commercial, and favored big cheap jewelry, lots of fake pearls and gold, mostly. That was her distraction, the jewelry. She spoke in a voice Mia called San Jose ghetto.

Alexandra was born out of a Whole Foods apron Mia snagged while shopping one day. She simply stepped into the back room and stuck the green apron in her hand bag, and then went on to finish her grocery shopping. The name tag said Alex, so Alex she was. Alex’s distraction was the apron, but it could have been the peacock feather earrings or the mirrored sunglasses she wore on her head, which held back her great furls of messy sun-streaked hair. When she dressed as Alex, she’d dab a drop of Patchouli oil on either side of her neck and say, rock on, little gypsy.

“How’d Kathy turn into Lucy?” Adrian asked before sucking down the last of the Red Bull.
“So, I did the Kathy thing all morning, changed into Lucy at the mall, had a Hot Dog on a Stick and a lemonade.” She sucked down the last of her beer. “Then I went and hit a couple houses in Danville, rode my little bike around. This one McMansion had the lamest security system. Almost too easy.”

Lucy had a blue bicycle and peddled house to house, filling her boy-band backpack with precious jewelry. She could slip through a bathroom window faster than a house cat. During the months of September and October, the weather in Northern California was reliable and warm. Mia called it Event Season because that’s when schools held fundraisers, corporations threw lavish outdoor parties, and there were several music festivals around the Bay to choose from every weekend. People were hardly home during Event Season, and Mia kept busy, prowling through empty houses until the rain started in November. She never took anything that wouldn’t fit in her backpack, and she never cleaned someone out, so that they might not realize a missing anniversary ring or a pair of diamond studs until Thanksgiving.

She took a shower while he finished his homework, and he watched Mia get dressed as Mia, in a striped cotton sundress and her little black work boots.
“Let’s go out and get something to eat. What do you say?” She combed her wet hair with her fingers. “Hungry?”
“Always,” he said.

They drove to an Ethiopian restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, and sat side by side at a table near the door.
“We need to get you a persona,” she said to him, sipping honey wine.
“Yeah, like what’d you have in mind? Butch the biker? Tommy the tour guide?”
“That’s not bad,” she sad. “Tour guide. I like the way you think, my friend.” Their food came, and they dug in, scooping legumes with soft bread. Mia fed him a slice of carrot and licked a speck of food from his bottom lip. “You sure you want to do this?”
He nodded, “I’m positive. As soon as this brace comes off and my leg is back to semi-normal. College isn’t going to pay for itself.”
“Gotta be able to run,” she said.
“Yup,” he nodded, drank from her glass. “Gotta be able to run.”
“After this, should we go home and have wild sex all night?” Her dimples punctuated her smirk.
“Absolutely,” he said.

October turned into November, and Tink was finally introduced to “The Mia” as he called her. She met them at Borders and they drank coffees and browsed the books. Tink was unimpressed.
“She’s cool, I guess. I don’t know, Slim, I thought she was going to have a beam of light shining out of her ass or something, the way you go on about her.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m in love with her,” Adrian told him.
“No shit, Romeo.”
“I’m serious, Tink. I totally love this girl.”
“I can tell,” Tink said, “by the serious wet stain in your panties.”
“You don’t like her?” Adrian looked at his friend, concerned.
“No, of course I like her, dude. I’m just not all spun-out over her. But I can see that you are, and that’s what matters, Slim. I’m happy for you. Really, I mean that.” And he did.

Elizabeth threatened to come to San Francisco for Thanksgiving. She called Adrian on his cell phone and told him she’d make a reservation at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. “You’re never at home when I call the house. What’s gotten into you two?” She asked, meaning Adrian and his father.
“Nothing, Mom. We’re just trying to keep busy. I don’t know. Dad’s always out in the garage. You know how it is.”
“Do you think your father would be okay if I came down for Thanksgiving?”
“Why, Mom? That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You don’t want to come down here.” He listened to his mother’s breathing. “Seriously. Mom? Are you hearing yourself?”
“Well, I want to see you,” she said. “Maybe you could come up on the Amtrack. It’s only twelve hours.” A twelve hour train ride sounded terrible to Adrian.
“I have a better idea, Mom. How about if I fly? I’ll bring my new girlfriend.” He raised his eyebrows at Mia, and she blushed a little, which surprised him.
“You have a girlfriend, honey? Good for you,” Elizabeth laughed. “What’s her name? What’s she like? Does she go to your school?”
“Yes, yes, she goes to my school,” he said. Mia shook her head, no. “No, I mean, she did. She graduated, though, and she’s in the um, nursing program at the junior college.” Mia giggled.
“What’s her name, Adrian? Has Dad met her?”
“Her name? Uh,”
Mia whispered her own name. “Just tell her my real name.”
“It’s Mia, Mom. You’ll love her, she’s great. And, no, Dad hasn’t met her yet. I don’t know, he just hasn’t. She’s new. I mean, new to me. I guess I should introduce them.” He shrugged at Mia, she shrugged back and screwed up her face in a comical way.

It was decided that they would go to Portland for Thanksgiving. They could fly in and take the Max and then a cab to his aunt’s house in the Irvington. Adrian gave the news to his father when he brought Mia home one evening. They ordered pizza to be delivered and Mia hooked up a new DVD player so they could commune around the TV. They watched “Pieces of April”, a movie starring Katie Holmes as April, a girl who throws Thanksgiving dinner in her tiny apartment in New York.
“Fine by me,” Gary said between bites of pizza. His appetite had soared since Elizabeth had moved to Portland, and Adrian noticed the subtle new layer of fat around his father’s usually trim waistline. “Do you some good to see your mother, I suppose. I’m sure I’ll find something to do with myself, maybe go to Carol’s for dinner.”

Carol was the girlfriend, a divorcee herself, an old sort-of friend of Elizabeth’s, the mother of a kid in Adrian’s class, Skyler McQueen, who, if nothing else, had the coolest name of anyone Adrian knew. Skyler played tennis and was probably gay, although he dated girls, mostly other tennis players. Carol was young compared to Elizabeth, still in her thirties, with a yoga-fit body and a vast knowledge of wine. She worked for a wine distributor and Gary had started to drink a lot. He sipped a glass of Napa Chardonnay and said, looking at the television, “That idiot girl is married to Tom Cruise.”

“Were you flirting with my dad?” Adrian joked, when they went into his bedroom after dinner. He scratched his arm, where his cast used to be. His forearm was white as Mia’s belly.
“I do that when I get nervous, I guess. I was nervous to meet your dad. But I like him. He seems alright.”
“Are you kidding me? He’s a doofus.” Adrian tore off his t-shirt and hobbled to the bathroom to pee with the door wide open.
“At least you have a dad,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and plopped down on the bed. She pulled up her shirt and rubbed her stomach. “I ate too much, I think.”
Adrian appeared in the doorway, his toothbrush in his cheek. “Want to work it off?”
“Yeah,” she said, “why not.”

His time was getting better. Better, meaning longer. He could now make love to his girlfriend for almost ten minutes, which took great concentration.
“Think about calculus,” she offered. “Think about baseball or your mom.”
“Don’t be gross,” he told her.
“Okay, then think about maps.”
“Maps?” He groaned as he slipped out of her, then back inside.
“Yeah, like, name all the countries in Africa. Not aloud, though, please.”

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, of course.

“Chad,” he recited, “Niger, Mali. Everyone forgets about poor Mali.” Mia laughed and pounded his chest with her little fist.
“Not out loud!” She threw her head back and Adrian could see the back side of her upper row of teeth.
“Sudan, of course, very popular,” he moved his hips more quickly, gave her neck a quick nip. “Sierra Leone, beautiful in the springtime. Angola, Namibia, Botswana,”
“Stop it!” Mia howled with laughter. “You’re killing me, Adrian, seriously.” He watched her stomach tighten, her tiny breasts bouncing in time with each thrust and giggle.
“Hang, on,” he said, “I’m almost done. How many is that so far?”
“Too many!”
“Keep it down, Kara Mia, keep it down. The neighbors can hear you.”
“This is really unsexy,” she said.
“It was your idea, missy.” He pulled out of her and flipped around so that he lay behind her, wrapped his good arm around her waist and pulled her close again. The position was easier on his knee. Mia called it lazy sex. “Angola,”
“You already used Angola,” she offered.
“Um, shit, I’m not going to make it! Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland, Rwanda.”
“That’s a lot of countries,” she said, her breath short and fast.
“Shit, what’s that little one by Sudan?”
“Stop it!” She commanded, laughing loudly.
“Okay,” he said. He held her tightly and nuzzled his mouth against her neck. He lasted for forty two more seconds, and then it was over. “Congo!” he shouted. When he’d caught his breath, he rolled her onto her back and straddled her, kissing all of her parts as he moved down her body.
“Gaborone’s about here,” he said, licking her the way she’d taught him. “That’s the capitol of Botswana, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

They woke early, made lazy love, and took a shower together. Adrian sat on the bottom of the tub while Mia stood, her feet together between his knees. She washed his hair while he soaped her lower half.
“You need a shave,” he said. She handed him the razor they shared and he went to work on her calves.
“Have at it,” she said.
“Mia?” He ran the razor from her ankle to her knee.
“Yes, Adrian?”
“Where’s your family?” he rinsed the razor in the water gathered on the floor of the tub.
“I told you, I don’t have one. Close your eyes.” She filled the plastic cup with warm water and rinsed his hair.
“Yeah, but everybody comes from somewhere,” he said. She poured another cupful of water over his curls.
“You know I don’t really want to talk about it,” she said.
“Sure you do.” He opened his eyes and held both of her calves in his hands. “Come on, just tell me.”

She pushed his knees apart and joined him on the floor of the tub, sitting cross-legged. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you a little. It’s hard for me to trust people, you know?” She turned to adjust the water to make it hotter.
“Anytime,” he said.
She huffed. “Okay, so my dad’s in an institution somewhere near Phoenix, Arizona, I think, and I don’t know him. He is what they call criminally insane. I guess he killed someone. No one ever really bothered to explain anything to me about him.”
“That sucks,” Adrian offered.
“Yeah, it does suck, but whatever, I don’t know him, so it doesn’t really occur to me to think about whether it sucks or not. He could be dead for all I know.”
“And your mom?”
“My mom,” she sighed. “My mom is a ten-time loser who married some dickhead when I was fourteen and moved to Rhode Island.”
“Without you?”
“Without me, yes, that’s right.”
“Are you making this up?” He said it, but knew she was telling the truth.
“No, Adrian. Fuck you. I’m not lying. I wouldn’t lie to you, ever, about anything. You know that.”
“I was kidding,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do that,” she warned. “Don’t kid.”
“I won’t, I’m sorry. Really. Keep telling.”

She stretched her legs over his and shook her hair with her fingers, then slicked it back. Water fell down on his face like warm rain.
“Can we go to Hawaii sometime?” he asked. “I’d fucking love to go to Hawaii.”
“Sure, lover-boy, whatever you want. I’d love to do that with you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We’ll take surfing lessons and get real tan.”
“That sounds good,” he kissed her, wrapped his arms around her, pulled her in close. He fingered the ribs on her back, the cage that held her heart. Without thinking about it he said, “I love you Kara Mia.”
All of her breath went out of her, like she’d been punched. She kissed him softly.
“Are you crying?” Adrian asked. She shook her head. “I think you are.”
She laughed and cried at the same time, “I might be.”
“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” He asked.
She nodded and kissed him again, then made herself very small, curling into his chest until the water ran cool.

They pulled their first job together when the rain finally came. “Rain is perfect,” she said. Adrian was trying to fold his leg into the front seat of her Toyota.
“Perfect for what?” He grunted, jamming his leg into position with his hands. He slammed the car door, frustrated and sore from physical therapy.
“You ready for your first job, kid?”
“Not really,” he admitted.
“You don’t have to do anything. Just stay in the car and watch mama work.” She put the car in reverse and backed out of the space in front of the physical therapy clinic.
“Where are we going?” Adrian felt sick, tired from the therapy.
“Black Oak Country Club.” She pulled the car onto the street, made a quick right, and headed for the freeway.
“Does it have to be right now?” He asked.
Mia nodded. “The rain does weird things, Adrian. People forget how to drive, they lose their bearings.”
“They do?”
“Absolutely.” She looked at him like he was dense. “People get stupid when it rains. Put this on.” She reached into the back seat and handed him a cap, the kind caddies wore at the Country Club, apparently.
“Whatever you say, chief.” He slipped the cap onto his head. His curls stuck out over his ears. Adrian popped a Vicodin.
“You’re gorgeous, you know that?” She said. “You could be a model. It’s not too late, you know.”
“Just drive, Mia.”
“You don’t want to do this,” she said.
“No,” he confessed, “not really. I have all this homework to do, and my leg is fucking killing me. I can barely use my hand.”
“Fine,” she said, making a drastic lane change. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have brought you along. Just forget it. I’ll drop you at home.” She signaled and took the next exit, stopping at the light behind a Mercedes. The driver was on the phone.
“Mia,” he started.
“It’s okay, Adrian. I thought you were cut out for this, but you’re not. That’s pretty clear.” Mia checked her mirrors and pulled the emergency brake. She felt around under her seat and pulled out a handgun. If you had asked him, Adrian couldn’t have told you the caliber, but he would learn later that it was a 9mm Ruger, a girl’s gun. Before he could ask what she thought she was doing, she was out of the car, racing toward the Mercedes, her tiny silhouette all but disappearing in the heavy downpour. He couldn’t hear her words, but this is what he saw: Mia’s arm went up in the air, and she slammed the butt of the gun into the driver’s side window. Mia then reached into the car, took the woman’s cell phone out of her hand, and threw it over her head. The woman handed her purse to Mia and wrapped her arms over her face, leaning away from this criminal Adrian called his girlfriend. Mia reached into the car again, did something he couldn’t see, and ran back to her Toyota. She tore the door open, threw the woman’s purse into Adrian’s lap, and shifted the transmission into drive. While Adrian caught his breath, his hand to his chest for fear that his heart might explode, Mia casually drove around the Mercedes, turned left (using her signal), drove over the overpass, and steered the car back onto the freeway in the direction from which they’d come. After a couple of miles, she pressed the Mercedes car keys into his hand.
“Look in her wallet, honey. Tell me her address.”
“I have such a boner right now, I can’t even tell you,” he said. They looked at each other and laughed. They laughed until they both had tears in their eyes. “You are so fucking hot!” he screamed. “That was amazing, Mia! Truly,” he said, digging into their victim’s purse, “you are the coolest person I know, I swear.” He checked the driver’s license. “427 Golden Hinde.”
“Where’s that?” She asked, signaling to change lanes.
“Here, here, right here. Take this exit. It’s up in the hills.”
“How far?” She demanded. They were both yelling.
“Four, five miles, maybe. I used to run up there.”

They entered the house in their socks. No shoes, she told him. Shoes leave prints. Socks are hard to trace. They kicked their shoes off at the door and Mia placed them on a piece of junk mail she picked out of the mailbox. The concept, she explained, was to avoid leaving any trace. She opened the door with the house key on the Mercedes key ring. “We were never here, understand?” Adrian nodded, followed her across the living room and down the hall.
“The master bedroom,” she said,” is usually, not always, but usually, at the end of the structure. It’s here. She pushed the door open with her elbow and they stepped inside the room.
“Check the dresser, but don’t use your fingers. Cover your hand like this.” She pulled her sleeves over her hands and demonstrated opening a drawer without leaving fingerprints. Adrian did as he was told.
“Rummage without rummaging. Does that make sense?” Mia dropped a gold watch with a black leather strap into the pocket of her corduroy jacket.
Adrian felt around in a drawer full of expensive women’s underwear. Nothing. He tried the next drawer; again, nothing. Just when he was getting frustrated, he hit the mother lode with the third drawer, a handful of cash folded into a scarf, like a money burrito.
“Look! Oh my god,” he said. Mia turned from her task of rifling through a row of shoe boxes in the closet.
“Nice,” she said. “Keep looking,”
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Adrian was becoming nervous.
“This woman has the same size feet as me.” Mia inspected a pair of heels. “Too bad she has such shitty taste. Don’t lose your cool, baby. She won’t be home for hours.”
“How do you know?” He stuffed the money into the pocket of his jeans.
“Fear does interesting things to people.” She dropped a pair of diamond earrings into her pocket. “Plus, we have her keys.” Adrian handed her a gold ring set with an emerald. She dropped it into her pocket. “God, people have the worst taste, don’t they?”

Back at the Airstream, Adrian lounged on the couch/bench, his leg propped on pillows from the bed, and watched an episode of Dexter while Mia inspected the rings and earrings through a jeweler’s loop.
“Good stuff,” she bragged. “How you doing, my little cat burglar?”
“Good,” he said. “I feel okay. My legs hurts like a son of a bitch, though. Sorry, I’m kind of out of it. What’s the verdict on the loot?”
She put her hand on the pile of cash. “Nine fifty in bills. Cash is best. That’s unusual, to find such a big wad like that. Nice work, baby.”
“My pleasure,” he smiled.
“And the jewelry looks pretty good. This ring is a mess,” she held up a pearl and diamond ring to show him what a mess it was. She made a face. “But this one, this diamond one is really clean. Good clarity, I think. And this watch is beautiful, although it doesn’t work.” She shook the watch and pressed it against her ear. “Probably just needs a good cleaning.” She laid her hands flat on the table and assessed everything in front of her. “I’d say we did pretty good for your first time out. Enough to get us to Portland and back in style, at least.” They were leaving the next morning. Adrian would miss a day of school, which bothered him a little. “Plus,” she held up the woman’s keys, “we know where we can get a silver Mercedes if we ever need one.”
“Did I do okay?” He asked her without taking his eyes off the TV.
“You were great, babe. Were you scared?” she asked, putting the loop to her eye for one last look at the diamonds before putting them into their tidy boxes for the night.
“A little,” he confessed. He muted the TV. “But you were so cool and calm, it made it easier. You’re good, Mia. You’re really good.”
“Thanks,” she smiled wide, sipped a glass of Pinot Noir. “I appreciate that Adrian. No one ever tells me I’m good.”

Chapter 4: Thoughts Arrive Like Butterflies

Rain blew from every direction. Adrian shielded his face with his jacket, while Mia ran ahead of him, her head protected by a kooky colorful wool hat, her Louis Vuitton satchel held tight to her chest like a shield of armor. Her suitcase bounced on tiny wheels behind her.
“You okay?” She yelled through the storm. Adrian was hobbling behind, his duffel bag slung over his shoulders, backpack style, his messenger bag banging against his hip.
He nodded and waved her on. She leapt through puddles of water, laughing, stomping the water with her tiny black work boots. Adrian’s Converse were beginning to take on water. He caught up with her under the shelter next to the train.
“This is crazy, huh?” Mia said with a wild smile. Her eyes were shining and happy. “I love it!”
Adrian groaned and shook the water from his hair. “You’re weird.”
They purchased tickets and stepped on board the Max. Within ten minutes, they were at the Lloyd Center on the east side of the Willamette River and the rain magically stopped. A taxi driver took them to the Irvington, a pretty, tree-filled neighborhood with wide quiet streets and oversized craftsman cottages. Adrian’s aunt Elaine was the widow of a crooked judge who had been dead for many years. Heart attack, Adrian thought. Or cancer. He couldn’t remember. Within a few minutes, the young couple stood on the porch of Elaine’s enormous house on Siskiyou Street. Mia marveled at the size of the home.
“Some spread,” she said, raising her eyebrows in the way that made him want to kiss her. “No wonder your mom wants to live here.”
“Don’t get any ideas, missy.”
“I feel like we’re on the run or something,” she said, hitting the doorbell with her thumb.
“Exactly,” he agreed. “Let’s try to be normal while we’re here, okay? I could use a few days of normal. Don’t steal anything from my aunt. Promise.”
Mia faked a frown and said, “Just try to enjoy yourself, you big grump.”

Elizabeth answered the door and greeted her son with an unexpected two-armed hug and an awkward kiss on the cheek. She made a huge deal out of Mia, which embarrassed Adrian, but Mia seemed to enjoy it, so he’d have to let it slide. Elaine showed them to their rooms on the second floor. Elizabeth trailed behind, carrying Adrian’s bag, so he could hobble up the staircase.
“We’ll put you here on the left, Mia,” Elaine opened the door to the bedroom she’d assigned Mia. “It hasn’t been redecorated in a while, I guess. Bathroom’s over here.”
Adrian caught up; his breath short.
“This is nice, Elaine,” he said.
“Oh, you’re over here, Adrian,” his aunt held her hand out like a model on a TV game show, “just across the hall.”
“Two rooms?” Mia said, smiling at what she thought was a joke. The puzzled look on Elaine’s face told her it wasn’t a joke. “If it’s okay with you, Elaine, we’d just assume stay together.”
Elaine blushed. “Oh, of course. I guess that would be fine.” Adrian avoided eye contact with his mother.
“Oh, you were serious.” Mia shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to show disrespect.”
“What’s the difference?” Elizabeth chimed in.
“No. Don’t be silly,” Elaine reached between Adrian and Mia to open the door to the other bedroom. “I’m just old-fashioned. Of course you can both stay in here; this is the bigger room anyway. You’re all grown up now, Adrian. You’ll always be nine years old to me.” They all followed her into the bigger room and laid their bags on the floor. “I’m just old. Don’t pay any attention to me.”
“We’re just so glad you’re here, kids,” Elizabeth said. “Nobody cares. We’re all adults here.”

Over lunch in the Pearl District, Adrian marveled at his mother’s noticeable transformation. Her hair had been newly cut and colored a flattering reddish blonde, like a sunset, and she had lost some weight. Her clothes were obvious cast-offs from Elaine, but she looked nice, feminine, refined, almost. A definite improvement from the unhappy suburban receptionist Adrian knew. The absence of a husband and childlessness somehow suited her. He wondered if she’d ever liked being his mother or his father’s wife. She talked about her new part-time job at the library, where she shelved books. It wasn’t exactly an intellectual job, but it was something, and it made her feel useful.
“Our daddy was a cattle rancher,” Elizabeth explained to Mia. “We grew up back in Montana. I don’t know how much Adrian’s told you, but long story short, Elaine here got the beauty and the brains, and I got the strong back.”
Elaine gave her sister a pained look. “Oh, come on, Lizzie. That’s not true.”
Elizabeth nodded, “It is true, Lainey.” She spoke with food in her mouth, pointed her fork at Mia. She wouldn’t look at her son. Adrian felt more abandoned there at lunch in Portland with his mother than he did at home, where she didn’t exist anymore.
“I’m the broken one; she’s the saint.” Elizabeth said. Adrian squirmed in his chair. His leg itched madly, and his joints were stiff from the rain. He wished he could run out into the rain until his face hurt from the cold pelting drops.
“Everybody loved Lainey,” she smirked, sipped her Irish Coffee. “It was like I wasn’t even there sometimes.”

Adrian’s mother was making him crazy. He looked at her like she was from outer space, and just then he realized why she’d left his father, why she’d moved to Portland so her sister could take care of her. Because she was invisible, too. She was invisible before he was invisible.

“I see where you get your passion,” Mia told him later, while they shopped at The North Face for winter jackets. He tilted his head sideways.
“You’re not serious.”
“Yes, I am, doodle-head. You like the brown or the blue?” She held up two puffy down vests for him to consider.
Adrian said, “The brown suits you, but the blue is cute.”
“Your mother is very passionate.” Mia glanced across the street toward the bar where Elizabeth and her sister sat drinking martinis.
“They’re going to be hammered,” Adrian said.
“Oh, well, they’re old. Let them. Your mom seems happy. Just let her be happy. Who cares?”
Adrian laughed. “She’s,” he sighed, “I don’t know, Mia. I don’t know what to think about my mother. I’m starting to think it’s not important.” He pulled a hat over his curls, a black and white Sherpa hat with earflaps.
“I totally love that on you, doodle.” She said. “Let’s get that for sure.”
He agreed without bothering to look in the mirror. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “I don’t feel like she wants us here.”
Mia was trying the blue vest out, twirling in front of the mirror.
“Please don’t steal that,” he said.
She slapped his arm. “I have every intention of paying good money for this.”
“Okay. Sorry. Shit, Mia, what are we doing here? My Mom doesn’t even like me.”
She placed her hands on either of his forearms and looked into his eyes. “How much love do you need? You got me. Okay? Now shut up and try on that sweater. It’s totally you, doodle.”

Thanksgiving morning, the sun was sharp, the air colder than a popsicle. Adrian and Mia bundled up in their new clothes from The North Face, walked around the neighborhood and got coffees at Stumptown.
“My tongue feels funny,” Mia said. She stuck her tongue out for Adrian to inspect. He held her chin in his left hand and checked her mouth.
“Looks okay,” he said. “You’re good.”
“Ith all futhy feelink.”
He stopped, touched her face. She opened wide. “Really, girlfriend, I think you’re okay. I don’t see anything suspicious. Wait! Oh no, Mia. Oh my god,” he joked, pressing her cheeks tight with his gloved hand.
“Okay, stop it!” She giggled.
He kissed her open mouth. “Don’t stop,” he said.
She savored his kiss. Her eyes were shiny with cold and sweetness. “Don’t stop what?”
“Loving me.”
“I won’t.”
“You love me, right?” he felt an unusual confidence. He knew they were true, he and Mia.
“In the worst way,” she said.

Thanksgiving day went down like this: Adrian’s cousins, Elaine’s daughters, Kelly, Erin, Cynthia, Danna, and Julia, brought their husbands, pets, children, other cousins, stray friends, and one wife of a wife, whom Adrian and Mia could never figure out who she belonged to, even though they spent a good hour talking to her about Lake Tahoe. A gaggle of people stormed the house like firefighters, pies everywhere, and all hell broke loose. The house filled with music, crying and laughter, cashmere, and enough food to feed a small country. “Is that Tofurkey?” Mia asked.
“I believe it is, my lovely.” Adrian told her. “May I offer you a Champagne cocktail?”

The young lovers slipped upstairs to take a shower and put on some decent clothes. Elaine’s girls and their partners were dressed to the nines in luxurious slacks and dresses and tweed, with glittering accessories, high shoes, and made-up faces. Even the kids wore bowties and velvet skirts and shiny patent leather shoes. One of the dogs, a little tortoise whippet, was decked out in a colorful crinoline filled skirt that could have belonged to an oversized Barbie. Adrian wore the best thing he had, a wrinkled white button-down shirt, a pair of khakis that were a little scuffed around the cuffs, and a black Shetland wool sweater vest that he had all but outgrown. He put on his Chuck’s.
“It’s like a baby doll vest,” Mia said. “Very fashionable.”
Mia put on a short loose shifty platinum colored silk dress that, when she moved, caught her little curves and showed off her bones. On someone larger, it could have passed for a long blouse. She slipped on a pair of strappy Jimmy Choos.
“You’re going to freeze in that,” Adrian said. “But you look really cute; don’t get me wrong.”
“My blood runs pretty hot,” she said.
He ran his hands over her breasts. “Are you at least wearing underpants?”
She pulled up her dress to reveal a pair of practical white cotton panties before they went down stairs to join his family.

Elizabeth offered her son a drink, which was odd, he thought, since a) he wasn’t much of a drinker and, b) because he was still seventeen and, c) because it was just so unlike his mother to pay much attention to him at all, let alone for her to want to include him in something so adult as a pre-dinner drink.
“Seriously?” He said. “No, Mom, thanks. I’m good.”
She shot him a tiny glance, revealing her water blue eyes, his eyes, matching pairs. “Have a drink, honey. You need to relax.” Was she half in the bag already? Adrian couldn’t tell. He’d never known his mother to drink, really, but he guessed there were plenty of things about Elizabeth Harding Moss he didn’t know. He accepted the vodka cranberry she gave him, took a sip, walked around with it for a while, then forgot it on a chopping block on the kitchen counter, where the glass sweated onto the wood and left a puddle.

Mia chatted everyone up until she knew all their names and which child was whose, and whose husband did what. She was trimming a pile of Brussels sprouts when Adrian finally found his drink. He poured it into one of the three sinks in the kitchen. There was a bar sink, a main sink, and what his cousin Julia called the auxiliary sink. He rinsed his glass and filled it with tap water. Mia wore a flour sack dish towel tied around her waist, a make shift apron. She told him his cousin Cynthia wanted to take them to Wildwood for dinner the next night.
“I guess the food’s really good,” she said. “It’s supposed to be nice.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” he said.
She set down her paring knife and wiped her hands on the dish towel/apron. “I’d like to go,” she said in a quiet voice. “It’d be a break from,” she nodded toward the living room, “you know.”
“I said okay.”
She leaned in close, so the gaggle of family members around them wouldn’t hear. “Are you not having a good time here, Adrian? I just want you to have a good time. I want us to have a good time.” She held his wrists with her fingertips. “Please try to have fun? Go talk to your cousins. They’re crazy about you.”
“Are they? I don’t know why they would be.”
She dropped his hands to zest a lemon. He stepped in behind her, ran his thumb over her silky hip.
“You’re so very lucky to have all these people,” she said. Her tone sounded a little frustrated to Adrian. He rubbed her left shoulder with his good hand. Indeed, her skin was warm to the touch. He kissed her near her ear. She said, “Remember, some people have nothing. Would it kill you to participate?”

Tink called twice during dinner, but Adrian didn’t hear the phone ringing in his pocket over all the noise his family made. Four tables had been arranged to form a square, and everyone sat on the outside. The set-up smacked of a UN Meeting, or a trial, Adrian thought, a trial with mashed potatoes and string beans, gravy boats, and a lentil salad no one would touch. He was happy to be seated between his cousin Cynthia, on his right, and Mia to his left. Boy-girl-boy-girl; that was how the Lawford’s did things, cute, contrived. The twelve-and-under set sat in the living room around the circular kitchen table, which had been dragged through the house with much ado. The kids’ table was draped with a forest green table cloth, and festooned with an arrangement of autumn leaves and white lilies and candles to match the grown-up table. Adrian though it was all a little too adorable. He sipped Mia’s champagne. Cynthia poured him one and said, “Here you go, little cousin, have your own.” Cynthia was the cool one out of all the Lawford girls. She was 23, the youngest of the five, and wore clear braces on her teeth that made her look younger. Throughout the meal, she’d drape her arm over the back of Adrian’s chair to tell Mia something funny about her family.

“Robby,” Cynthia said to Mia behind his back, “got a DUI last week, and Julia’s all bent about it, and I’m like, whatever, Jules, at least he’s out having a good time. I mean, it could be worse, right? The guy could be sitting around home every night bitching about the mortgage or what have you. I try to tell her, look for the good, but she’s so uptight, you know?”

Mia feigned interest, or maybe she was really interested, Adrian couldn’t tell. Elizabeth was slipping into drunkenness, and he tried to keep his mind on eating, although his appetite wasn’t what it should be. He felt like running, or working out. Something. Instead, he was stuck with twenty seven people he didn’t care about, eating turkey and yams and stuffing. He stuck his fork into the side of his brace and scratched his knee.

After dinner and before the pies came out, Adrian worked in the kitchen with the other men, his brothers-in-law, to wash dishes and scrape wasted food into garbage cans. He listened for Mia’s voice while rinsing glasses in the bar sink and loading the bar dishwasher. He heard her laugh aloud twice from the other room, and heard his mother’s voice, low and slurred behind him in the kitchen. Adrian’s phone rang in his pocket and he was glad to have a reason to hobble outside.

“Tink! You crazy mother fucker! I’m so glad you called.”
“Dude,” Tink said, “are you sitting down?”
“Sure. What?” Adrian strolled toward the gazebo in his aunt’s backyard, the clatter of voices and dishes behind him.
“Fuck, Slim. Your dad didn’t call you?”
“No. Not that I know of. It’s crazy here. There are like a kabillion people.”
“Slim, I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Tink sighed into the receiver, “but, dude, your house is on fire. It’s bad, man. Your house is burning to the ground as we speak. I’m standing in front of it right now.”
“Holy shit, Tink. Are you fucking with me? Don’t fuck with me, man. You sound serious. For real?”
“I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this, would I? I’m not that sick. Dude, it’s for real.”
“I can’t believe this,” Adrian’s knees crumpled and he sat hard on a rock pathway in his aunt’s back yard, his left leg bound by his brace at a perfect 30 degrees. The rain started.
“I’m not shitting you, Slim, your house is aflame. The shit box is a flaming bag of poo on the doorstep of the world.”

“Mom!?” Adrian limped through the kitchen, begging for his mother. Mia was sitting on the staircase, playing with two of the children.
“Adrian?” She shouted over the music and voices. She could see the panic in his expression. “Adrian? What’s wrong?”
“Mom? Fuck!” he said. Mia sat on the steps and watched him, curious. “Does anyone know where my mom is?” And then he spotted his mother sitting on the piano bench, browsing an old photo album with his cousin Kelly. He interrupted them with the single-mindedness the situation called for. From Mia’s vantage point, she could see Elizabeth choking on her drink. Barefoot, Mia quickly tip-toed across the foyer, through the crowd to the piano, just in time to hear Adrian say, “Mom, I’m serious.”
Elizabeth said, “It was probably your father. I mean, I can’t imagine that it wasn’t him. Jesus Christ.” She reached for her plate of pie atop the piano and took a bite.
“What happened?” Mia asked.
“His god damned father burned the house down, that’s what.”

Adrian didn’t cry. Instead, he brooded and wouldn’t talk. He and Mia were in their guest room.
“Please talk to me,” she begged. “Adrian, tell me something, anything.” Mia sat on the bed. Adrian paced the room, remained silent. “Okay, you’re not going to talk. That’s fine. Why don’t you collect your thoughts and I’ll go down stairs for a while and leave you to do your thing.”
“He hasn’t even called me,” Adrian moaned. “Where’s my fucking father, Mia? Huh? Where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. Can you call him?”
“He’s at Carol’s. I don’t even have her number. Why hasn’t he called?” He threw himself on the bed. “Can you get my Vicadin?” Mia gave him two and went back down stairs to join the Thanksgiving celebration while Adrian called Tink for more details.

The mood of the party had altered only slightly, but everyone just kind of went, ah that’s too bad, and continued to drink. Erin and her husband started a game of Cranium that got everyone involved, and laughter filled the house again. Mia sat at the kitchen table with Julia and three other people and shot the shit for a while, drinking champagne and smoking cigarettes. Adrian’s cousin Danna made cappuccinos for everyone. About the fire, she said, “If old Gary burned that dump down, well, God bless him. Nothing like a good fire to clean the slate, you know?” She looked at Mia and said, “Whipped cream? I love a good double espresso with whipped cream.”

When Mia crawled into bed, it was after 3:00, and the girls were still downstairs playing games and listening to music. Brad, one of the husbands, had started a game where you had to rummage through the CDs to find a song that was better than the last. Mia chose “What It Takes” by Aerosmith before heading upstairs.
“Nice,” Brad said. “It’s no Don’t Go Back To Rockvillle, but it’s good. Nice one, Mia.”

Adrian was snoring. Mia crawled in beside him and shoved him with her feet. He groaned. “Stop,” she said, drunk and tired. Adrian rolled over to face her. He slung an arm over her shoulder, kissed her head, rubbed his body against hers.
“I’m fucked, Mia.”
She whispered, “I know. It’s messed up. Let’s talk in the morning, okay?”
“I’m totally fucked. I hate my life.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “Let’s figure everything out tomorrow, Adrian. It’s so late. Let’s do this tomorrow, okay?”
“I want to make love to you,” he slurred.
“In the morning,” she promised.
He planted a sloppy kiss near her mouth. “Mmkay. Love you, Kara Mia.”
“What do you need, Adrian?” She asked him.
He thought for a while, rolled in the sheets, collected his thoughts through the fog of pain killers. “I just need to be safe,” he said.

Adrian braced himself with a bloody mary, waiting for his father’s call.
“Where the fuck is he?” He spoke into the phone to Tink.
“I don’t know, brother,” Tink sighed. He could be anywhere. He could be in Tahoe. Shit, he could be in Mexico by now. You really think he did it? That’s fucked up, Slim.”
Adrian slurped his drink. “Could be, Tink. My mom seems to think it. What do you think?”
“Sounds insane, don’t you think? I mean, why would he do that?”
“Insurance money?”
“How much could the shit box be worth? I guess it makes sense.”
“My father’s going to jail,” Adrian said. “Shit, Tink, do you think that could happen? That could happen. I’m fucked, dude. Do you think my father did this? Because my mom thinks he did it.”
Tink sighed into the phone. “I don’t know, dude. Looks like you’ll be shacking up with Mia for now, I guess. You can totally stay with us, if you want, you know. My parents are totally fine with that.”
“Thanks, Tink. That just might happen.” Adrian twirled the celery stick in his drink. “I might just have to do that.”
“Seriously,” Tink said, “We want you to stay, so just know that. You’re more than welcome. You know that, right? You’re like my brother for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s just totally gone,” Adrian said.
“Yeah, man, it’s gone.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
“Fuckin’ A is right.”

Adrian took himself for a walk. The air was cold, but the sun was sharp, so he put on the sunglasses Mia had given him, a fresh pair of Maui Jim’s that made the world look much better than it really was, and zipped his jacket tight up under his squared chin. In his head, he was running. His bum leg was the only thing keeping him from breaking into a full speed tear. His mind and the rest of him wanted to run. He stuffed the headphones of Mia’s iPod into his ears and cranked up a Damian Marley song he liked, found his way up to Fremont, and walked for a few blocks until he hit the Whole Foods. Hunger first, he thought. The idea of going back to his aunt’s house and eating Thanksgiving leftovers was almost painful. He searched the pockets of his new puffy jacket and found $47 in crumpled bills.

A warm gust of air greeted him at the door. He grabbed a hand basket and limped through the store, taking his time, comforted by the presence of strangers around him, the smell of the baked goods, the air thick with the scent of pomegranates, herbs and garden greens, and pumpkin pies. Generous samples of fruits and cheeses throughout the store kept his appetite at bay while he shopped. He sampled everything offered: mango slices from Ecuador, Chilean grapes, artisan soft cheese from Sonoma, local chocolate and cinnamon cookies. He ate what amounted to a shot of wild rice salad with dried cranberries from a paper cup, and ordered a sandwich from a guy at the deli counter who had so many tattoos and so many piercings in his ears and face, that Adrian couldn’t have identified him in a line-up with out the ink and silver. The distraction, he thought. He grabbed a fistful of string cheeses and dropped the wrappers into the basket as he ate them. He perused every aisle at a slow pace, as though he might find something he needed. In the Whole Body aisle, he dabbed a bit of Kiss My Face botanical acne gel on a pimple he imagined was forming under his jawbone.
“Your skin is flawless,” a woman’s voice said. Adrian glanced at her. She was a larger version of Mia’s Alex character, all wild hair and earrings. He checked her name tag: Glory. Good one, he thought. Good cover. Was she coming on to him? He couldn’t tell.
“Maybe you can help me,” he said. “I want to get something for my girlfriend. You know, something like a nice lotion or whatever. Something that smells good.”
“I’ve got just the thing,” Glory said. She snapped her fingers and Adrian almost regretted having opened his mouth.
“She’s always doing nice things for me, and I just feel like getting her something. I don’t know.”
Glory led him down the aisle and pulled a box from a high shelf. “This,” she said, “will totally change your sex life.”
“Uh,” Adrian lost his words.
“It’s called Midnight Oil. It smells like,” she pulled the tester bottle from the shelf and squirted some oil into his palm. “Like jasmine. Isn’t that awesome? It’s real jasmine even. She’ll love it. Do you love it?”
Adrian rubbed the oil into his hands. “I don’t know, sure, I guess.” Glory took the box from him and dropped it into his basket. “I was thinking more like something for her face, or a nice body lotion.”
“I should give you a facial,” she said. “Do you want one? Come on, I’m totally bored.” Glory grabbed him by the wrist and led him to a tall wood and canvas chair, the kind film people used. She ordered him to take off his jacket, and pulled out some Juice Beauty products and went to work on Adrian’s face.
“You have brilliant cheek bones,” she said, swabbing him with something fruity.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Seriously, your skin is really beautiful. You have, like, no blackheads or anything. Just relax.”

Adrian leaned back into the director’s chair and breathed deeply.
“Do you want a brownie?” She handed him a chocolaty cookie from a plastic bin. “So much for health food, huh? At least it’s not made with corn syrup. I swear, high fructose corn syrup is killing this whole fat country of ours.” The sensation of Glory’s touch made him more nervous than relaxed, but Adrian did his best to enjoy her kindness. “So, what’s your thing?” She wanted to know. “What do you do?”
“I’m a professional thief,” he smiled without bothering to open his eyes to see her reaction.
Glory giggled. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

Adrian ate his sandwich in the park near Elaine’s house and watched a young father try to figure out how to make his kid happy. He called Tink.
“Nothing from my dad,” he said.
“Seriously? Shit, Slim, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. You want me to hunt the old bastard down?”
“Nah, it’s whatever, you know?” he brushed the crumbs from his jacket.
“My mom says she wants you to stay with us. She thinks you lack guidance.” Tink offered.
Adrian frowned. “Thanks, man,”
“For real, Slim. Just come stay with us for a while, you know? Get through senior year. My parents are really good about taking care of shit. It’d be good for you. My mom said you can have the guest room and everything. It’ll be great.”
“Okay,” Adrian said. “Tell your mom I have to talk to my dad first and,” he sighed, “we’ll figure it out. Tell her I appreciate it, though, okay? I really do.”
“You know you’re my brother, right? Whatever we gotta do, we’ll do, okay, Slim?”
“Thanks, Tink.”
“You’re my boy, and we’re here for you, man. You know that, right?”
“Don’t get all serious on me, Tink.”
Tink sighed. “Just come home, you giant homo.”

Finding a flight home before Sunday proved impossible. Mia and Adrian’s cousin Julia had been taking turns all morning trying to get them home earlier, but with the holiday weekend, there was nothing short of hiring a private jet or renting a car. So they waited it out, and Sunday morning, they took the Max back to the Portland airport and waited for their plane. They were two hours early for their flight, and they sat in the sushi bar, Rose City Sushi, and ate Rainbow Rolls for breakfast.
“This is going to be the worst day of my life, you know,” he said to Mia.
She nodded and leaned back in her chair to consider him, picked a piece of seaweed out of her teeth.
“You’re probably right,” she said. “You have a certain glow to you, though. Your skin looks amazing. Portland is good for you.”

Chapter 5: Long Distance Runner, What You Standin’ There For?

Sometimes when people burn houses down it is because they are evil and destructive, and sometimes it is because they are just plain stupid. Stupid people who light their houses on fire sometimes get burned. The fire in the Moss home began as a couple of small rags in a five gallon bucket from Home Depot on the floor of the garage. Gary tended to forget to wash or dispose of the rags he used on his car, and so a tiny wad of oil and gas covered rags combusted on Thanksgiving evening, while Gary dozed on the couch. This was called, Adrian would later learn, spontaneous ignition: when a combustible object is heated to its ignition temperature by a slow oxidation process. Oxidation is a chemical reaction involving the oxygen in the air gradually raising the inside temperature of something like an oily rag in a bucket to the point at which a fire starts. It seemed impossible, but Adrian Wikied it, and it seemed spontaneous combustion was indeed possible. Happened all the time. Turns out, Pistachio nuts are prone to spontaneous combustion, as well. Who knew?

There’d been a bad fight with the new girlfriend, Carol, and Gary had been not so cordially uninvited to Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Adrian would never find out what the fight was about, and he blamed Carol in a way for his father’s behavior, although he knew that Gary was responsible for his own actions. Adrian just really wanted to blame someone else. Instead of busting in on someone else’s Thanksgiving, or taking himself to dinner and a movie, Gary had microwaved an old Lean Cuisine pulled from the back of the freezer (Fiesta Grilled Chicken, 250 calories), and washed it down with most of a twelve pack of Natural Light beer and the rest of a bottle of blended whiskey. No one would ever know how much he drank that night, and it didn’t really matter if you looked at the big picture, and that’s what Adrian found himself doing now. Gary wasn’t dead, oh no, that would have been tragic. But he was in the hospital, a burn unit in Sacramento, being kept under heavy sedation while burn experts tried to keep his skin from falling off his body. Gary’s burns covered sixty-four percent of his body, as good as the experts could tell, and Adrian found himself wondering how they came up with a number like that. Why not just call it sixty or sixty-five or seventy? Did it matter anyway? Not really. Gary wouldn’t likely recover. Since Gary and Elizabeth were divorced and Adrian wouldn’t be eighteen for another couple of months, and since Carol didn’t want him anymore, Gary would become a ward of the state.

Adrian moved into Tink’s room with his suitcase full of dirty clothes and Mia’s iPod, and his Maui Jim sunglasses. When he looked at his possessions, it all seemed sort of ironic. He had one text book, Analytical Trigonometry; the others destroyed by the fire. He had his laptop and phone, thanks to Mia. He took a mental inventory of his clothes as he filled the washing machine in the Tinkerton’s laundry room: four pairs of boxer shorts, six pairs of socks, three thermal shirts, five t-shirts, two cargo pants, one pair of jeans, one faded black hoodie with a torn pocket. The machines were new, sleek and water-saving, with big round windows. Tink’s mom, Suze showed him how to use the machines and warned him not to use too much soap. “It’s really energy efficient in every way,” she said as though she might be trying to sell him the washing machine. He was instructed to use cold water, so he did. He sat on a stepstool and watched his clothes slosh around in sudsy water.

There was nothing anyone could say to make things better, so everyone kept quiet, including Tink, which was unlike him, but even Tink was at a loss for words. The first night at Tink’s, his sleep was fitful and free of dreams. Adrian woke at midnight and hobbled to the kitchen for a mineral water. He stood at the counter in the dark kitchen with his yellow notebook and a pen, and considered his future. “Now you’re free,” Mia had told him when they’d driven by the burnt out house on G Street to look at the remains earlier that day. They’d driven straight from the airport. Red and gold caution tape marked the scene, plastic tails waving in the breeze, nothing but blackened bones of a house where his family home had stood a few days before. “You can do anything,” she said. “You could move to Paris if you wanted to.”

With his left hand, he wrote out his options and challenges:
Option 1) take GED, grad early, get job
Challenge 1) Bad leg, no job exp. except Bick’s

Opt 2) stay in school, live at Tink’s on fucking air mattress, grad like normal
Ch 2) air mattress, feel bad

Opt 3) Move to PDX w/mom
Ch 3) Mom, Ugh. No Mia, No Tink

Opt 4) become notorious robber w/Mia
Ch 4)

He couldn’t think of a reason not to become a notorious robber. The key word here, the thought in the dead of night, orphaned, wired and wrecked, was notorious. We’d have to be notorious. Couldn’t be worth it any other way.

Adrian sat down at Suze’s desk in the kitchen and used her computer to Google “Notorious Outlaws”, which mostly provided him with lists of guys with names like “Big Nose” George Parrot and Dutch Charlie, The Dalton gang, and Jesse James, men who robbed trains and banks in the old west, who were sometimes hanged or shot. There were lots of gangs and posses, and mobs, proud sheriffs who lynched the bad guys. What he found was that most of these outlaws had experience with guns, and were trained. Frank James, for example, the older brother of Jesse James, was a Confederate soldier. Their stepfather, a doctor, taught the James brothers to shoot guns when they were just boys. Adrian noted his shortcomings and jotted this down in his yellow notebook: no exp. w/guns.

“It’s not like there’s a class you can take,” Mia laughed. They were outside Starbuck’s drinking Venti Pumpkin Spice Frappuccinos. “And I’m a terrible teacher.”
“You don’t want me to do this,” he sipped his icy drink. The sky was bright. She squinted when she looked at him, dropped her sunglasses from to top of her head to cover her eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to work with me, Adrian, it’s that I don’t think it’s necessary. I’ve been working alone for a long time.” She stirred her Frappuccino with an oversized straw. “I don’t know. Do you think you’re cut out for it? I mean, you’re so smart. Why bother?”
He tilted his head and gave her an anxious stare.
“Seriously, man, you’ve got a lot going on in that little cranium of yours. Why waste it on crime? You could be a doctor or a freakin’ astrophysicist. You don’t need this kind of life.”
Adrian stood. “Can we walk? I need to move.”
“Sure,” she said. They took their enormous Frappuccinos for a stroll.
“You have this type of life,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, Adrian, I do, and you know why? Because I didn’t know any better and I couldn’t imagine my options.”
“I just don’t feel like I have a future,” he told her. “You should be able to understand that more than anyone.”
She nodded. “I get it, Adrian, I do. It’s just, you know, this is a dangerous business. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you.”
“I don’t see any other way,” he said. She knew what he meant, she even agreed with him. Still, she thought it best to discourage him from making a decision he couldn’t undo later. Mia had been on the move since she was a girl, before she had her first period, even. She’d changed her looks fifteen times in seven years. “I lived in Los Angeles for a year. Did you know that?” He shook his head.
“I went to school, even. At UCLA. I took art history classes and learned Spanish.”
“Really? You never told me that,” he said.
She nodded, sipped her drink.
“How’d you manage that?”
“Used some other girl’s social security number, signed up for classes. Haley Stone. She was a junior.
Adrian smiled at his girlfriend’s cleverness. “Her transcripts must look pretty funny.”
Mia laughed, “I’ll bet.”

They walked past the center of town, through the old town residential area, and stopped at the Werner G. Ford park, a flat grassy area surrounded by Redwood trees. Adrian sat atop a picnic table and rested his braced leg on the bench. Mia took off her jacket and did a handstand against a giant tree. Adrian talked while Mia did handstand pushups, her tiny arms stronger than he could have imagined. She did twenty, then slowly lowered her legs to the ground, straight and even, ankles together, her little work boots yeah landing softly in the duff.
“Impressive,” he said.
“I just threw up in my mouth a little.” She held her hand to her stomach and burped. “Ugh, I think I’m done with my Frappe.”
“Why are they so big?” Adrian looked at his cup with a screwed up expression.
“I dunno, dude. Why is everything so big?”

In the State of California, if a person is within sixty days of his eighteenth birthday, he can take the GED and obtain a high school equivalent diploma. Adrian took the test online in the comfort of Mia’s Airstream. The advertised “2-6 week course” took him a week, and he sent a money order for $299 to something called Excel High School. Within days, proof of his completed education arrived in the mail box at the Tinkerton’s. Mia had spent much of the week away, occasionally returning home to change costumes and sleep.

Chapter 6: If Everything Could Only Feel This Real Forever

“Woman, you work too hard,” Adrian told her one Saturday night while she folded her legs into the sheets of the bed. Adrian was reading a Sam Shepard play, True West, and watching Saturday Night Live with the sound low. Exhausted, Mia could barely lift her head from the pillow.
“I do work too hard,” she agreed. “We gotta get out of here for a few days. What do you say? You and me. A few days at the beach or something.”
Adrian pushed her hair from her forehead. “That’s be great. I’d love that. Where should we go?”
“I dunno,” she barely said. “Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
“Can we go tomorrow?” He whispered. She nodded and made a little mmhmm noise. The idea of going away with Mia excited him more than he thought it would, and he put down his book to watch the rest of Saturday Night Live, which he thought had turned suddenly funny.

Mia slept until noon. Adrian got out of bed at ten and started to put on his ROM brace, but decided on a shower instead. His leg was working pretty good, he thought. Not bad for a loser. The leg was skinny, for sure, as skinny as Mia’s leg, but he’d been working hard with Steve the tidy physical therapist, and he could feel his muscle coming back. He dressed and walked five blocks to the mini mart without his brace, bought the Sunday newspapers and some orange juice. On the way back, he quickened his steps, landing lightly on his left foot, as though he might break into a run any second. His leg felt like it belonged to someone else. He was winded by the time he got back to the Airstream. Shit, he thought. If only.

Adrian was huffing and puffing when he sat down at the table. He drank the orange juice from the carton and rifled through the San Francisco Chronicle for the Sporting Green. When he heard Mia stirring, he put on the coffee and started scrambling eggs. Adrian had fourteen things in his cooking repertoire, which sounds like a lot until you’re Adrian, and you can spend those fourteen recipes in a week.
Not counting green salad, which for some reason, although he liked salad, he never liked to make it. Only Tink’s mom knew how to make a really great salad. It just seemed like so much work. So let’s just say he could make a salad, but he never did, so his recipes were fourteen. Among the things he counted as his specialties were: scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and tomatoes. This was his favorite and utterly over-used recipe. Second would have to be grilled cheese, or just regular cheese sandwiches. They were easy to make, and he was fond of both. Third, or say, fourth if you want to count the cheese sandwiches as two things, was Icky Melt, something his father taught him how to make (God bless him. How was he doing? Adrian wondered. He got sad for a minute just thinking about Icky Melts.) The recipe was simple: tuna salad (celery, chopped fine, sliced green onion, salt, pepper, a little mayo, a hard boiled egg, if you happen to have one, and of course tuna from the can) heaped generously on a toasted English muffin. Top that with a very thin slice of tomato and some cheese (sharp cheddar is best), and put the muffins on a piece of foil under the broiler until bubbly. Douse with hot sauce. Some people like the cheese to get a little bit brown and the edges of the English muffin to be nice and crisp. Adrian was one of those people.

Mac and cheese from the box (he wondered, did that count? Sure, he decided), Spaghetti with canned sauce (too easy), Linguini with clams, also easy because of the canned clams he liked to use, but it also had some other ingredients, like parsley and garlic, which he had to work for. This morning, Adrian was making the scrambled eggs with tomato and cheese, his best dish. He sliced two chunky slabs of walnut sourdough bread and put them in the toaster, ready. Got out the butter, diced a tomato, shredded some pepper jack cheese (they were out of sharp cheddar), and dug a Teflon pan out of a cramped kitchen cupboard. He found the pan he wanted next to a tall gold figure, an Academy Award. An actual Oscar. He pulled it out and read the inscription: Miklós Rózsa, Academy Award for Best Achievement Musical Score, Spellbound 1945. What the fuck? He wanted to say, but didn’t. Normal people had to practice their Oscar speeches in the shower with a bottle of shampoo subbing for the award. Mia could just pick one out of the pots and pans cupboard.

Mia flipped open her laptop and placed it on the table across from him. He pushed a cup of black coffee toward her and she accepted the mug without looking at him. He knew not to speak to her too early, unless she was already talking, and especially while she was Googling. He poured her a glass of juice, but she waved it away, so he drank it himself and went back to mixing eggs in a bowl. He stirred in a little half and half and some salt and pepper and turned the tiny trailer stove to low. That was his secret to perfect fluffy eggs: low heat. It was almost too easy. He never understood his mother’s impatience when cooking. If she’d just taken the time to let everything cook at a lower heat, her food might have tasted better. She cooked the shit out of food, and her meals always had a rushed quality to them. That’s what haste tastes like, Adrian thought. My eggs taste like love.

He sliced a Bosc pear and arranged the slices on two plates, slid a pat of butter into the pan, followed by the broken eggs, and gave them a quick stir. Let them sit a minute before you do anything. Don’t touch them for a while. Let the eggs set a bit before you mess with them.

Mia said, “How about Mendocino? Ever been there?”
“Nope,” he admitted. “I don’t even know where that is, really.”
“It’s just a few hours up the coast. The pictures look nice.” She turned her computer toward him, so he could get a view of an image of the town: high cliffs, a rugged shoreline, topped with an old-fashioned looking village with cute Victorian houses and hotels.
“Cute,” he said. “Yeah, anywhere.”
“Wiki says it’s a popular weekend getaway for Bay Area residents,” she told him.
“Looks good.”
“There’s this cottage,” she began typing furiously, staring at the keyboard. “Here, look. Right in the little town. It’s cute, right? That’s us, right?”
Adrian lifted the eggs with a silicone spatula to let the liquid eggs on top run into the bottom of the pan, wiped his hands on a dish towel and sat beside Mia on the bench. “Yeah, that’s nice. That looks like us. It has a hot tub? Awesome, Mia, we’re all over that place. How much?”
“It’s like nothing. Let’s see. Today’s Sunday? Let me call them.” She picked up her phone and dialed, waited, left a message and asked them to call Adrian’s number.

The excitement of their pending travels grew as they ate. Neither of them could sit still, so they started organizing their things, figuring they’d shack up in a motel if the cottage didn’t come through. Adrian piled some eggs (oh, they turned out so good!) on top of his toast and ate with one hand and grabbed their toothbrushes with the other. He handed them to Mia, and she shoved them in her toiletry kit.
“I’m so excited!” she said, and she was, he could tell. She was genuinely thrilled. Her eyes were bright and glossy, her lips wide, cat teeth showing.
“Mia, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, baby, anything.”
He swallowed the last bit of crust he was chewing. “Can I ask you something sort of serious?”
She tied a colorful silk scarf around her head. “How serious? Don’t get serious on me today, Adrian. Today is for fun. Today is for adventure.”
“I was just thinking, you know,” he leaned against the kitchen counter and rested his right leg over his left, a new habit when the bad leg grew tired. “I mean, it’s something I think about all the time,” he said.
“What, baby, what? Spit it out for Christ’s sake.” She shoved their sweaters into his black duffel bag.
Adrian ran the hot water in the sink and began scrubbing the dishes. “I just always wonder what you’re doing with me sometimes. I mean, you’re so, I don’t know, you’re bigger than life, Mia. You’re this amazing person. I can never figure out what you’re doing with a dumb kid like me.”

She stuffed rolled pairs of socks into the bag along with a handful of underpants. “Are you kidding me?”
He huffed.
Mia walked toward him and put her hand on his arm. “Adrian, seriously? It’s just so obvious, isn’t it? I mean, what are you asking? Why we’re together? Come on, you know why.”
He tilted his head. She considered him for a moment, then rested her hand on his hip.
“There must be a million guys who are crazy about you,” he said. “Yeah, I guess, why me?”
“Of all the liquor stores in the world,” she started, although he didn’t get the reference. “Adrian, you saw me. You noticed me that day at the liquor store and you came after me. No one does that. Ever. That never happens.”
“Get real,” he said. He resumed washing dishes. “You’re fucking gorgeous, Mia. That’s ridiculous.”
She laughed, broke away from him, refilled her coffee cup. “Adrian, people don’t see you if you don’t want them to. That’s my whole M.O. I’m a wallflower. That’s why I’m so good at what I do. Haven’t you noticed I don’t have any friends?”
“I don’t have any friends,” he said.
“You do too. You have Tink, who is like the best friend anyone could ever have. I don’t have a Tink, never have and probably never will. You have the guys from the track team. That girl, what’s her name? The nice girl that brought you those horrible gingerbread cookies when your house burned down? You have all these people, Adrian. But that’s not my point. It’s great that you have people. I just happen to not have any people, and I do that for a reason.”
He looked at her, suspicious. “Then, I don’t get it,” he said. “I’m the only person who can see you? You’re invisible to everyone else?”
“Kind of,” she smirked. “But you saw me, you came after me. No one ever did that before. So I knew you were special. You talked to me. You liked me. That doesn’t happen very often, that’s all I’m saying.” She forced her body between Adrian and the sink, placed her arms around his waist. “Does it really matter, sweetie? You got me, and I don’t know what else to say, except that I’m so glad we’re here right now, eating eggs and packing for a trip together. I couldn’t be happier.”
“Really?” they kissed.
“Yeah, retard, really.”

They said good-bye to Grasshopper, told him they’d be back in a few days. He was shirtless even though the fog was in and it couldn’t have been sixty degrees, shearing his massive lawn with a push mower, a joint firmly planted between his lips. His old droopy skin jiggled when he talked. “You kids have fun! Old Grass will watch over the place while you’re gone.” He followed them to the car. “Get me some Mendo bud while you’re there, if you can, ‘kay, Mia?”
“I’ll see what I can do, Grass, but it’s not really that kind of trip, you know?”
“Sure, kiddo, just see what you can do. No pressure. Christmas present, maybe, for the old man, huh?”
“Sure thing, Grass.”

They stopped at the mini mart for gas and bottled water, headed for the San Rafael bridge, then north on Highway 101. Marin was lovely, Mia thought. “We should live here,” she said. “All these golden hills and blue sky. It’s so pretty. And the people are really rich.”
“Must be,” Adrian said. He was fooling with the iPod, trying to find some good road music.
“I hit a place in Belvedere last week,” she told him. “They had so much crap, I doubt they even realized they’ve been robbed yet.”

Would you rather have to lie on an active hill of army ants for 24 hours, or be poked in the eye once a minute for 24 hours?

Would you rather eat a large pizza made with earthworms and banana slugs, or eat a bowl full of Jello laced with broken glass?

Would you rather have an ass like a cow, or a head like a dog?

Would you rather have hair down to your feet or no hair at all?

This was the game they played as they wound through the hills of Mendocino County, out Highway 128.
“Okay,” Mia said. They’d picked up a six pack of Anchor Steam Beer at the Chevron in Cloverdale, and were drinking in the car. She smoked a cigarette, and blew the smoke out the sunroof. “Would you rather have the tail of a Great White Shark?!” They both cracked up. “Or the tail of a peacock?”
“Duh,” Adrian said, “peacock. No question.”
“Me too, I guess,” she said. “Although that shark tail would be really good if you needed to get somewhere really fast and you happened to be in the ocean.”
“If you could have any kind of tail, what kind would you have?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Um, let me think. Can I have wings, too?”
“No,” he said, “just a tail. You’re normal Mia but with a tail. Any animal. Go.”
She considered the question, pulled over to let another car pass, and let the Toyota idle on the side of the road for a minute while she thought about it. He handed her a bottle of water, tucked her empty beer bottle into the six pack. “I think it would be nice to have a monkey tail,” she said. “You know, so it could be like an extra hand. Very helpful in my line of work. You know how monkeys can grab stuff with their tail? That’s like a no-brainer for me”
“Nice one.” Adrian wished he’d thought of a monkey tail. He’d thought of how helpful it would be to have a tail like a scorpion.
“That’s good,” she offered, pulling back onto the road. “Then you could kill yourself if you ever got cornered.”

When they got to Boonville, Adrian checked his phone. He had two messages, one from Tink and one from the cottage in Mendocino.
“We got the place!” He told her. “Pull over so we can call them. Reception has been fucked out here.”

Mia shopped at the Booneville Market while Adrian spoke with the cottage people on the phone. They asked him for a credit card, so he went inside the store to get Mia. She took the phone from him and asked the owner if she could pay cash. “I’ll pay you for the whole week up front,” she said. The woman agreed and told her she’d meet them at the cottage in an hour and a half. The conversation lasted for way too long. Adrian picked up a copy of the local newspaper, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and Mia bought more bottled water, Altoids, and potato chips. When they were in the car and back on the road, Mia said, “Damn, people around here must have a lot of time on their hands. That woman was sooooo long winded.”
“Okay, no more stops,” Adrian said. “I just want to be there.”
“Me too,” Mia agreed. They put on a My Morning Jacket album and zipped down Highway 128, the cool wind blowing in through the sunroof. They sang like they were part of the band until they got to Highway 1. Mia turned the sound down and they both gasped when they saw the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t that they had never seen the ocean, it was just that neither of them had ever seen it in this particular spot, where the cliffs were rugged and as high as buildings, and the waves crashed violently against cruel rocks. The sight was powerful and impressive.
“Damn! Look how high up we are!” Adrian shouted. He poked his head out of the sunroof and looked down to the water hundreds of feet below them.
“It’s like the edge of the world,” Mia said.

The cottage was furnished with a futon bed, a tiny kitchen area, an outdoor shower and a redwood hot tub. They fired up the tub and went straight in. Adrian was happy to soak his aching leg. Mia brought him some water and a couple of beers, just in case. The bag of chips, a cigarette and an ashtray, and two towels. She stripped down, showered off and hopped in across the round tub from him.
“Oh, I should plug the iPod player in so we can have tunes,” she said.
“I’d be okay with silence for a while,” Adrian said.
“Okay. Fine by me,” she agreed, relaxing into the hot water. Mia rested the back of her head on the edge of the tub. Within ten minutes, between the heat, the single beer she’d drank in the car, and her general weariness, Mia’s eyelids began to droop, so she packed it in and went inside to rest on the futon with a glass of ice water. Adrian soaked for nearly and hour, then climbed in beside her in the bed, propping his knee with a pillow, so he could lay flat on his back.

Adrian dreamed he was floating in the ocean. The water was calm, the sun warmed his face, his head rested on a bed of kelp. Shiny black seals swam nearby and he could hear them talking in their secret seal language. It looks good now, it feels safe, they said. But you never know what the ocean might do. Yup, never turn your back on the ocean. You don’t know when it might sneak up and eat you for lunch.

When he woke, Mia was still sleeping on her belly, her hands stuffed under a pillow, her mouth slightly open. He could see her tongue. Adrian dressed and put the kettle on to make tea. The cottage was stocked with the bare necessities, so he made a cup of Chamomile and took inventory of the other amenities in the kitchen: 4 packets of hot chocolate mix with mini marshmallows (just add water!), salt, pepper, a jar of dried dill, tins of Coleman’s mustard and Hungarian paprika, onion powder, and something called nori fumi furikake rice seasoning. Adrian poured some of the rice seasoning into his palm and tasted it. Not bad, just seaweed and sesame seeds and maybe sugar. There were a few other unfamiliar spices in unmarked jars, canned foods other people had probably left behind (black beans, artichoke hearts, chicken noodle soup). He warmed the soup on the stove in a dented aluminum pot and served it to Mia in a mug when she woke.
“You want to stay in tonight?” He asked her after she’d had a couple of spoonfuls of the soup. She shook her head. “Any crackers?”
Adrian retrieved the bag of potato chips. “Seriously, you seem so wiped out.”

Mia insisted she was okay, but then said maybe. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. Adrian lit a fire in the wood stove and they turned on a movie. The cabin was stocked with old VHS tapes of movies that had been filmed in Mendocino: Frenchman’s Creek, East of Eden with James Dean, Same Time Next Year, The Majestic with Jim Carey. Mia and Adrian settled on Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell. When the movie was over, the sky was dark, and the fog had rolled in. The couple dressed for dinner and walked to the MacCallum House, just a few blocks away. The village was encased in a cloud, the temperature hovered somewhere around really freaking cold, the kind of cold that makes you jump up and down, and they held hands.
“This is kind of romantic, huh?” Adrian said.
Mia agreed. “It’s a little bit on the amazing side,” she said. “It’s like the whole world just went away. God, I really needed this. Thank you, Adrian. Thank you for wanting to do this.”
“My pleasure,” he said. “I’d rather be here than anywhere right now.”
“How’s the leg?” She asked. Adrian had left his ROM brace behind at the cabin and was limping along.
“Pretty good,” he smiled and pulled his Sherpa hat tight over his ears to defend from the cold of the winter night. He could see his breath. “Feelin’ alright.”

The restaurant was quiet, the noise of the patrons muffled by the dark wood paneling. The lights were low, and it took a minute for their eyes to adjust.
“When’s your birthday?” Mia asked after they’d ordered.
“That’s kind of a trivial question, isn’t it?” Adrian didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but he saw irony in her query.
She smiled and sipped a pomegranate cosmo. “I guess. But aren’t we there?”
He understood. “Sure, I guess we are. Since you asked, I was born on January 2nd.”
“Good to know,” she said.
“And yours?” Adrian’s wild mushroom soup arrived.
“Dig in,” Mia offered. “Don’t wait for me.” He stirred the soup with his spoon and sipped it carefully. “January 2nd, huh? Almost a New Year’s baby.
“Almost,” he said, “but not.”
“Almost,” she repeated. “Mine’s in May. May 17th.” A windblown man with a white apron delivered her salad. “My name is Kara Mia, I like to roller skate, I dig beautiful sunsets and fruity drinks, and I’m a Taurus.”
“Oh, I see,” Adrian said, wiping his lips with a crisp white napkin. “That’s how we’re playing. This would be called getting to know each other.”
“I suppose.” Mia dug into her arugula salad with fennel and pecans and a local goat cheese. It was beautiful and she savored it with respect for the earth that invented all of the delectable ingredients.
“Okay, I can play that,” Adrian said. He dipped a crust of house made bread into the soup. “Hi, my name is Adrian. I’m a Capricorn. I like hula hooping and running, of course. I like to make sand castles and I like the Giants and the Cubbies, and I believe in true love.”
“Do you now?” Mia reached across the table and held his hand.
“I do, yes.”
“Me too.”
“Seriously? Mia, I’m,” he paused. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total turd.” She waited, tilted her pretty head, her hand still firmly on his. Adrian took a meaningful breath. “I feel really lucky to be with you, here or anywhere.”
“That’s sweet,” she said. “Thank you.”
“I mean it. I don’t know how to say it any other way, but that’s it. I mean, I really love you.”
“It means the world to me,” she said. Her eyes shone in the candle light.
“This is pretty cheesy,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“No it’s not.” She dropped his hand and went back to her salad, poking it with her fork. “I like it when you say things like that. It makes me feel important somehow, knowing that I mean something to someone.” Her sadness was indelible, and even though she was smiling and showing her cat teeth, Adrian could only wonder what exactly it would take, what monumental experience she needed to be truly and positively happy.

When Mia was little, when she was still Kara, she lived for a while with her mother, Delia in a crappy apartment in Cleveland, Ohio. They shared the apartment with a man named Duncan who worked as a ticket taker and usher at Lakefront Stadium, home of the Cleveland Indians baseball outfit, and also the Cleveland Browns football team. Delia worked that summer at a concession stand in the Stadium, where she hawked Cokes and French fries during baseball games. Kara free-ranged throughout the stadium day in and day out, nights, too, until she was familiar with every doorway, every drinking fountain, every Indian and his stats. She liked the stadium for the crowds, and even when it was mostly empty. She wore the same flimsy flip flops all summer and had two pairs of shorts, one pink, one navy blue, that she rotated until they were filthy and she’d beg her mother to wash them. Most times, she ended up washing the shorts by hand in the bathroom sink with a bar of Dial, which she thought smelled like a hospital. Her favorite thing was to sneak into the media box, where she could watch the sports reporters type furiously on their noisy electric typewriters. No one seemed to notice her presence and she learned to be silent and small. She would swipe a Sprite from a tin wash bin filled with ice and drinks meant for the press people, and find a perch from which to watch the game. Her favorite baseball expression was “can of corn”, she knew it meant a lazy fly ball. She also appreciated the expression “Snodgrass muff,” although she wasn’t totally sure of its meaning. One day, Chuck Heaton, the Plains Dealer reporter (who might have been reporting, but seemed to just be hanging out with his people) stood in the aisle next to Kara’s perch and pointed out to the field. “What do you think of that kid?” he asked, referring to a new player.
“What, that huckleberry?” She said, “Did you see how he hit that heater? Right down the gap. He’s got some wheels on him, huh?”
“Sure does, kiddo. You want a hot dog?”
“Can I?”
“Sure, I’ll get you one. You want ketchup?”
“The works?”
“You got it, sweetheart.”

It was the last time she could remember any man paying great attention to her, expressing pure and certain kindness. Delia and Kara lived for four months in that terrible apartment with Duncan above the dry cleaners, suffering heat betraying her while she pretended to sleep. Every night while she lay in bed trying not to hear the sounds of her mother in the other bedroom with the ticket taker, Kara Mia imagined, wished, prayed, that Mr. Heaton, that wonderful man who gave her a hot dog with the works was her dad.

Mia wanted crème brulee, but she was torn between dessert and bed, so the waiter, whose name was Pier, (not Pierre, but Pier, who bothered to tell them the origin of his name. The short version was that he’d given himself the moniker when he lived in Malibu in the 60’s, where he did a lot of surfing and apparently some very fine beach art), told her he’d pack up a couple of ramekins if they would bring the dishes back to the restaurant in the morning. It’s the best, he promised, and he presented them a minute later with a small white paper bag containing two ramekins nestled in foil.
“I put a couple of spoons in there, too. Just bring ‘em back, okay? You can drop them at the bar. It was nice serving you folks this evening.” And with that, Pier dropped a leather bill folder on the old polished wooden table with a slight bend of the waist, his hands together. Mia half expected him to say Namaste, but he didn’t. Surely, he was thinking it.

When they returned to the cottage, their room was cold and it felt like the fog had crept right inside. Adrian built a new fire in the wood stove and they settled into bed with their desserts.
“What nice people,” Adrian said. “This is delicious.”
“So trusting,” Mia exclaimed, cracking the sugary crust on top of the pudding with the back of her spoon.
“I know. Weird, right?”
“Totally weird.”
Adrian thought for a second, nodding. “People are different here.”
“Yeah, what’s with all the chit-chat?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Makes me think,” Mia said.
“What’s that?”
“Easy targets, maybe. Just a thought.”

The next morning, Adrian sat in the hot tub with a cup of sugary coffee, his yellow notebook on a little wooden shelf where he could reach it if he needed to write something. Mia jogged over to the restaurant with the clean ramekins and spoons in the same white bag they’d taken their desserts home in. She walked into the MacCallum House and went to the bar. People were scattered around the dining room eating breakfast. A man with short silver hair and silly eyeglasses was standing on a chair, replacing burnt out bulbs on a strand of Christmas lights over the bar. He stepped down and greeted her while he washed his hands and wiped them on his apron.
“Good morning, miss. What can I do for you? Coffee?”
“Nah, I’m good,” she said. “Just wanted to bring these dishes back. Pier was kind enough to let us take dessert to go last night.”
He pulled the ramekins from the bag and set them on the bar, tossed the spoons into the sink. “Thanks. Good crème brulee, huh?”
“The best,” she said. “Pier was really great. Tell him thank you.”
“Will do.”
Mia stuffed her hands into the pockets of her puffy jacket and started to walk away. She turned back to the bartender, and asked, “Is there a bank around here?”

If Adrian had been with her, he would have noted that a quick walk brought Mia from the restaurant to the bank in less than two minutes. The Savings Bank of Mendocino was a crisp white well-kept old building with a crazy statue on top, an angel and a man standing behind her. Mia noted several hippie kids hanging out on the other side of the street. They reminded her of the urchins she hung out with for a couple of weeks in Rhode Island when she herself was a teenage runaway, when she’d given blow jobs for a few bucks here and there. She stopped and took inventory of the street and her surroundings: grocery store, hardware, bead shop, clothing stores, café, a pub, a restaurant. A blonde woman dressed in dirty green work pants tucked in to black rubber boots, turtleneck, parka, and a homespun hat came out of the bank, laughing, talking loudly to someone still inside the bank. She held a stack of bills in one hand, an avocado in the other. The woman folded the money and stuck it into the pocket of her jacket, then began peeling the avocado with her dirty fingers, flinging the bits of skin into the street. Mia watched the woman walk north, her long hair blowing in the breeze, up the street a couple of doors, where she disappeared into a yellow Victorian building. People aren’t even thinking about getting robbed here, Mia thought. They trust everyone.

“How long are we going to stay here?” Adrian asked Mia. She stood next to the hot tub, her hands immersed. “Get in,” he told her. The water’s fine.”
“I dunno,” she said. She slipped off layers of clothes, tossing her jacket, sweater, shirt, and jeans on a wicker chair. She slipped into the water and shivered. “I’d like to stay for a little while. You got anywhere you need to be?”
“No, I guess not. I should probably check in on my dad at some point,” Adrian said. “I’m gonna get some water. You want some?”
“Sure,” she said.
Adrian slipped out of the tub, rubbed down quickly with a towel and limped into the cottage naked. “I don’t know, Mia. I guess we could stay a while,” he shouted, “I’m in no rush to get back. Are you?”
She wasn’t. When Adrian returned with two bottles of water, she said, “We could stay for Christmas. Would you be up for that?”
He climbed back into the tub, scratched his knee. “I don’t see why not. I’m not going to Portland, that’s for sure. Not after last time, not after that nightmare. My mom will understand.” He leaned back and rested his head on the edge of the tub.
“I think we should stay,” Mia said. “I think we should case out the bank.”
Adrian opened one eye, then closed it again. “Whatever you say, boss.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “You up for it?”
He sat up, washed his face with his hands and reached for a towel. “Oh, I see, you were serious serious.”
“Yes,” she said, “That’s what I just said, my darling. I’m serious. Serious as Oprah.”
“Are you talking about,” he whispered, although no one could have heard them over the rush of the ocean waves, even if someone happened to press their ear against the fence that surrounded them, which no one would. “Robbing the bank? Like a real bank robbery?”
Mia nodded. “Are you up for it?”
“Do you think I’m really ready?”
“Sure, why not? You’ll get ready. We both will.”
“I don’t know. Have you ever done something like this before?”
She shook her head, looked off into the sky. “No, but, I don’t know. This town is so funny. I just have a feeling about it. People are different here, like we talked about last night. People are trusting. I think it could be done.”
“What, with just the two of us? I mean, it seems like a big deal, to rob an actual bank.”
Mia nodded again. She let her water bottle float in the tub. “I guess,” she said, “but I think we could take this whole town if we wanted to. Let’s drive around today and get a lay of the land.”

With the aid of a local map from the bookstore in the village, they found out the area was littered with logging roads. If they decided to go through with the whole bank robbing business, logging roads, Mia thought, might be the way to go. Go as in get-away. There were loads of them, some winding into the woods (or where there used to be woods) for miles and miles. One in particular, ran east of the town of Caspar, the next town up the Highway from their cottage.
“Look at this one,” she told Adrian. “It goes out here, winds and winds around through here,” she traced the lines of the roads with her finger. “It goes way out into what looks like state property, and then lands us on Highway 20.”
“Then, boom,” he said, “out to the 101. Looks like a possibility.”
“We should drive it,” she said. “Let’s go take a look at that road. It could be in terrible condition for all we know. It could be gated or closed. Let’s go right now. You want to?”
“Coffee first?”

They grabbed lattes at the café, and Mia bothered to observe the hippie kids hanging out front with some scrutiny. She could see that they lived near by, since they all seemed to come and go from the same small street across from the café. Probably squatting in one of the old buildings, she thought. She wished she could take a picture of them, but for now, she memorized what she could. The kids all wore layer upon layer of clothes: dirty cargo pants, colorful Mexican pullovers, sweaters and socks, most likely salvaged from the Free Box she’d seen in front of the health food store. The hair styles were one or the other: long hair in dreadlocks or shaved heads. They all wore hats or hoods to protect them from the cold December morning air. One kid had a puppy, which he stuffed under his poncho to keep them both warm. They had backpacks and paper bags. Everyone of them was in dire need of a shower and a healthy meal.

Mia and Adrian headed north on Highway 1 to Caspar. She turned the Toyota onto Fern Creek Road, and found her way to something called Caspar Logging Road. The road was gated, so they continued down a small parallel street.
“People live out here, Mia.” Adrian noted. “This isn’t exactly off the grid.”
“Just wait,” she said, “let’s just see where this goes.”

Sure enough, a mile later, the paved road turned to dirt and merged with the logging road, which was long and twisted. While they bumped along the graded dirt, Adrian studied the intricate map and found every possible route from the coast to Highway 101, the main highway that ran north to south that would eventually take them home. The map was like a spider’s web: small private roads ran off the logging roads, and many of the roads were interconnected. Everything was twisted in a way that made Adrian scratch his head. There was no straight shot from the coast to civilization as they knew it. He did the math. Far as he could tell, within five or six miles of downtown Mendocino, staying off the main highways, there were nineteen different options. After bumping along for a half hour, they came to Highway 20. Mia swung the car into the westbound lane of the two lane road. A wall of lofty Redwood trees greeted them like sentries and they talked about breakfast.
Mia was disappointed by the whole idea of logging. “Did you notice how from the highway, it just looks like a huge forest, but then when you’re in there, it all disappears and there’s nothing but scrappy little pine trees and shrubs?” She shook her head. “That’s such bullshit. So all the people driving by think, ‘Oh, what a lovely forest of beautiful old redwoods; what a swell place,’ but it’s just a front. Every decent tree back there has a price tag on it. What do you call it? What’s the word I’m looking for? You know when something isn’t what it seems from the outside.”
“A façade?” Adrian said.
“Yes, a façade. That’s it. Thanks. Don’t you hate it when you can’t remember a word? I can’t imagine how old people think. Like Grasshopper? Christ. Conversations with him can take forever sometimes. It’s like he loses his words.”
“He’s as old as Jesus,” Adrian pointed out. He polished off his coffee.

In the end, after the heist, Mia and Adrian would take the highway out of town, just the same way they’d come in.

While they ate omelets at Egghead’s in Fort Bragg, Mia devised their disguises. “We’ll dress like those hippie kids who hang out in front of the café,” she told him.
“I like that,” he said.
“I’ll fix a couple of my wigs to give us crazy hippie kid hair, and we’ll wear a bunch of fucked up clothes.”
“Sounds good.” Adrian ate sausage links with his fingers.
“So for now,” she said, “we need to lay sort of low, you know? Don’t get to friendly with anyone. Be as inconspicuous as you can be.” She swallowed the rest of her orange juice. “We need to do something about that leg of yours before we can do this. You can’t rob a bank if you’re limping. It’s too obvious.”
He nodded. “So how do you propose we do that? I mean, I’m working on it, but it’s not like I can make it go away over night.”
“Let me think about it,” she said. “If we could shoot your knee up with Novocain or something, you wouldn’t limp, right? If you couldn’t feel it, you could just walk normally, couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“We should go get massages today,” she said. Adrian thought she was changing the subject.
“I need to call Tink,” he said. “There’s reception here in town. Do you mind if I leave you here for a minute?”
“A massage might do your knee some good,” she commented, waving him away. “Go make your phone call. I’m going to finish my breakfast.”

Mia found him in the shoe store a few doors down from the restaurant.
“We should get those for you,” she said. Adrian was checking out the running shoes.
“I don’t know if I’m ready,” he said. “They’re like ninety dollars anyway.”
She cocked her head and looked at him, her eyes smiling. “They’re on me. Come on, let’s get them. You’ll be running again in no time anyway. Think of them as your inspiration shoes.” Adrian hesitated, put his hands in his pockets. “Come on,” she insisted. “I’ll get a pair, too. And I’ll kick your ass in the 500.”
“You probably will,” he sighed.
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said. “Worse things have happened to people. Be grateful you have any legs at all.”

He got a fresh pair of New Balance 993 running shoes, and a pair of Converse to replace his old fading Chuck’s. Mia bought a pair of Saucony cross-trainers, some black Dansko clogs, the kind that chefs wear, and a pair of brown suede boots lined with fluffy sheep skin.
“You’re so practical,” Adrian told her. “Why don’t you get something sexy, like these?” He held up a pair of shiny black boots with towering heels.
“Right,” she said. “What am I going to do in those? A pole dance?”

On the way back down to Mendocino, Mia spotted a thrift store and pulled the Toyota into the lot. They sifted through the old clothes, house wares and junk. Adrian bought a trucker’s cap that said Mendo Mill on it, and Mia bought an armful of clothes and a pair of white plastic sunglasses.
“Very Kurt Cobain,” he said.
She smiled and paid the man behind the counter. “Grunge is back, baby.”

The couple hiked along a beach below the village, where dogs ran free on the beach. The air was cold, but the sun was out. A blue heron walked through shallow water and gulped tiny fishes. Adrian took a picture of the bird with his phone and texted it to Tink with the message: Mendocino is here, wish you were beautiful.

“When should we do this?” Adrian asked. The cold was making him anxious.
“We need a plan, first,” she said. “Let’s go back to the cottage and figure it out. I’m kind of thinking about Christmas Eve, or maybe the 26th.”
“Why then? That’s seems kind of far away,” Adrian said. He tossed flat rocks into the river and watched them skip on the surface of the water. He counted the skips. A small fishing boat cruised by carrying two fishermen wrapped in down and wool. A seal followed the boat for a second, then ducked under the surface of the river and reappeared a while later near where they stood. Mia marveled at the seal’s glossy black face.
“He’s like a little dog, isn’t he?” She smiled. The seal followed the pair as they strolled back down the beach, then slipped back under the surface of the water and disappeared. “Nature is so awesome, man.”

They stopped by Corners of the Mouth, an old church that had been converted into a health food store. Adrian dropped a handful of apples into his basket, Mia met him near a row of food in jars and bins, where he was filling a plastic bag with an almond and seaweed mix. She placed and armload of groceries into the basket, smoked salmon, cheeses, canned soups, a round loaf of fresh bread.
“What’s this?” Adrian held up a plastic packet.
“Tofu jerkey,” she said. “It’s good, I promise.”

Up a tiny set of stairs, they found rows of tea and herbs. Mia flipped through a book called You Can Heal Your Life by one Louise Hay. In the back of the book, there was a list of ailments and their supposed probable causes. Under Knee Problems it said: Stubborn ego and pride. Inability to bend. Fear. Inflexibility. Won’t give in. She started to tell Adrian about the probable cause, but decided against it when he interrupted her reading to show her two boxes of tea.
“Which one?” he asked.
Mia said, “Get both. We’re probably going to be here a while.” Mia was not a religious person and hadn’t spent much time in churches, but she figured she was standing about where a choir might have once stood, or perhaps the grand pipes of an organ. She looked down into the first floor of the store and observed the people shopping. There were only a few, a woman with a baby strapped to her chest with one of those little papoose things, a tubby man with a Santa Claus beard, and a red haired woman wearing yoga pants and a cashmere wrap. The redhead looked familiar. Mia studied her for a second. She carried an expensive oversized handbag and wore chunky boots.
“Is that,” she started to ask Adrian, but then she recognized the woman. “Adrian,” she whispered. “Look who that is.”
Adrian was start-struck. “Oh my god,” he said. “That’s Helena Swan. Is that really her? That’s really her.”
“I know, right? It’s fucking Helena Swan.”
“I love her music,” Adrian said. “She’s so fucking cool, dude!”
“Shh. Keep it down.” She smiled and took his arm and led him away from the railing. “Be cool, man.”
“I wonder if she lives here or if she’s visiting.”
“Let’s find out,” she said. “Come on, let’s get this stuff and get in the car and wait for her to come out. Be cool, okay? Act like you don’t know who she is.”
“What? How am I supposed to do that? Everyone on Earth knows who she is. Do I live under a rock?”
“You’re right. Okay, then just be polite and don’t talk to her.”
“I don’t know how cool I can be,” he said.
“I’m just thankful it’s not Johnny Depp,” Mia giggled. “’Cause then I’d really lose my shit.”

They rushed downstairs to buy the groceries, trying hard to be nonchalant, which is always harder to do when you’ve come unglued, however slightly. Seeing Helena Swan was not an everyday event. Adrian figured the chance of actually running into a rock star of her caliber on the street was somewhere around one in three billion. As the cashier rang up their items, Helena sidled up behind them and waited her turn to make her purchases. Adrian stared at the cash register and shifted from one foot to the other while Mia fiddled with her change purse. When they were paid and their groceries were packed in a brown paper sack, Mia quickly headed for the door. Adrian couldn’t resist the urge to turn and smile at Helena. She smiled back and gave him a nod. He lingered long enough to hear her sexy gravelly voice.

“Hey, there Miss Helena,” the cashier said. How’s everything out in Navarro today?”
Helena said, “Just as cold as can be, Mike.”

Adrian hobbled to the car and opened the passenger side door.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mia said, excited, not angry.
“I wanted to hear her voice. I had to wait until she said something.”
“Oh my god. What’d she say? I think that’s her BMW. It’s gotta be.” Mia pulled her hat down over her ears and turned the car on. She cranked the heater up as high as it would go. “Okay, tell me what she said!”
“She said ‘Just as cold as could be,’” Adrian tried to do the raspy voice.
“That’s it? Jesus, we just saw fucking Helena Swan.” She shook her head, held the steering wheel tight. “I can’t believe it. And you heard her talk!”
“She lives in some town called Navarro,” Adrian told her. “Do we know where that is? Is that like Dave Navarro?”
Mia scrambled for the map. “I think it’s south, one of those tiny little towns. Look it up; I’ll drive. We need to get ahead of her.”
Adrian laid the map out across his lap and turned it around until he was oriented. His heart raced.
“Here it is! South, yes, you’re right. Okay, it’s not really that far, just past Little River. Remember that big white inn with the golf course?” He turned to look at Mia. “Wait, why are we going there? I mean,” he stopped, shook his head. Mia’s dark eyes were focused on the road. He noticed how innocent she looked, like a young dumb animal, like a kitten or a lamb. And right then it occurred to him why she was so good at what she did; somewhere deep down inside, Mia was some kind of innocent, a child. A broken, lonely, abandoned child, maybe, but a child none the less.

Adrian crumpled the map in his lap. “We’re not doing this,” he said.
“Oh yes we are, Adrian,” she nodded her head and smiled. He was such a sucker for those cat teeth.
“No, Mia. Seriously,” he tossed the map into the back seat. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. It’s not who I am.”
Mia sped the car up. A screen of Eucalyptus trees lined the road and Adrian thought of home. There’s no there there, he said to himself. They came to a view of the ocean and Mia slowed the car. She pulled into a large parking lot, mostly empty, at the edge of the raging Pacific. Wind rocked the Toyota like a boat in the water.
“I can’t, Mia. She’s Helena Swan for fuck’s sake. We actually like her. We can’t case out her house. What are we thinking? Come on, Mia, you know what I’m talking about, right?”

She gripped the wheel with all her might and stared at the road, then at the sea. Two tidy redwood shacks stood on the bluff. Mia watched a man exit one of them, zipping his pants. He had a pee spot near his crotch. The man ran both of his hands through his thick shaggy gray hair and shook his head into the wind, as though it might cleanse him. She rolled her window down a little and let the cold air rush in.
“We’re doing this,” she said without looking at him.
“No, Mia. I don’t think so. You might be doing this, but I’m not. I’m not going to walk into the house of a rock icon like Helena Swan and steal from her. What’d she ever do to us except make some really good fucking music?”
Mia thought for a long time. She felt incurably fatigued until she spotted Helena’s BMW. “See? There she is!” Mia jammed the car into drive and raced out of the parking lot, back onto the highway, following Helena.
“Mia, no. I told you, no. I’m not fucking kidding. What did I just say?”
“Look!” She yelled. “You’re either with me or you’re not with me, Adrian! I should have known not to bring you on. Fuck!” She slammed the wheel with both her hands. “I never should have brought you on. I’m so fucking stupid. God damn it!”
“Mia, pull the car over, okay?” Adrian’s voice was calm. “Just,” he said, “come on, pull over. Please? Let’s stop this whole thing right now.”
“I have to see where she lives,” Mia said. “I’m not pulling over, so just stop it, okay? Fuck. Just stop talking. Christ almighty.”

Adrian shut up and watched the ocean while they followed Helena Swan up the winding road. Mia slowed to put some distance between them and the redheaded rock star’s BMW. Helena turned left and Mia continued straight down the highway. Adrian felt relieved, believing that Mia had given in and figured she’d turn the car around and take them home, back to the cottage on Ukiah Street. At the first pull out, she turned the car onto the shoulder and let a white Ford truck pass them. She signaled and watched for traffic, then turned the car around to face north, back onto the highway. Adrian sighed and rolled his window down. Mia was fuming, more serious than he’d ever seen her. He didn’t know what he should say to her, if anything. When they came to the road Helena had turned up, Mia made the right hand turn to follow her, now minutes behind. Surely, Helena Swan was putting her groceries away by now, and maybe already running the water in the shower.
“Mia,” he sighed. “Come on, seriously,” he said. Mia didn’t speak. She was that mad. She drove up the road a mile or so, then turned it around again. She stopped on a high bluff and got out of the car. Adrian thought to stay in the car, but followed her out of desire to defuse the tense situation. He watched her stomp ahead of him over a grassy yellow hill, her little boots hitting the ground with fury. When he caught up with her, she was standing with her hands on her hips, staring toward the ocean. Adrian breathed heavily.
“What do you see?” he asked.
Mia pointed. “That’s her house. See, there’s her car. Nice place, huh?”
“Mia,” he started.
She closed her eyes and exhaled loudly through her nose. He noticed the flare of her nostrils and wanted to kiss her.
“Can you just do this for me, Adrian? Can you just stick with me? You’re never gonna be a criminal. I get that. But I need you to support me, just the same way that any old normal guy supports his normal girlfriend. Just give it a shot, okay? I’d really like to have you with me on this, but if you’re not, if you feel like you can’t do it, that’s okay, I can go it alone. But I need you to be with me. Do you understand? Does that make any sense at all? I need you to support me, Adrian.”
He took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets, took in the scenery. “You’re all I’ve got,” he said.
Mia stuck her hand through the loop of his arm and leaned into him, staring in the direction of the crazy water. “I know,” she said. “And I’ve got you. We’ve got each other. And that’s it, right? We’ll figure it out. Let’s go home.”

Back at the cottage, they put away the groceries, and
Adrian climbed into the hot tub for another healing dip, while Mia put in a video, Racing With the Moon starring Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage when they were both very young and lovely to look at. She did yoga in front of the television in her underwear for two hours while Adrian soaked and wrote in his yellow note book. Pros: money, Mia, freedom. Cons: jail, hurting good people. He wrote: what is right and what is wrong?

“Do you believe in God?” Adrian pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and lay down on the bed. His face was red from the heat of the spa. Mia was lying on the floor in corpse pose, her hands turned toward the ceiling, her face calm.
“Not so much,” she said. She rolled over onto her side, sat up cross-legged and held her hands in prayer. She bowed toward the wood stove. “I mean, I think that if there is a God, or if people need to create a God or whatever, that’s cool. But me, personally, no, I don’t feel the need for a God of my own.”
“What about karma?” he asked.
She shrugged and finally opened her eyes. “Well, karma’s kind of a God thing, so if I don’t believe in God, I guess I don’t believe in karma. I mean, it’s just someone’s theory, right? There’s no, like, scientific proof of karma, so I guess you could say I don’t believe in it.” She spread her legs on the floor to form a ninety degree angle and lay down on top of her right leg. She closed her eyes again and breathed deeply.
“What about cause and effect?” Adrain said. “Don’t forget that. That’s scientific. Same thing.”
Mia folded her torso over her other leg. “I know where you’re coming from,” she said, “but science isn’t an exact science, if you know what I mean.” She raised her hands above her head and put her palms together, then lowered her arms so that her hands were in front of her heart in prayer.
“Namaste,” she said.
“Can I get an amen!?” Adrian said. They both laughed. “Seriously, Mia. Like you’re sitting here doing yoga and saying ‘Namaste’, but you don’t believe in karma? I mean, come on,” he sipped from a water bottle, handed it to her.
“You should try it with me sometime,” she said. Yoga’s great for the mind. Keeps me in check. Some people do it as part of their religion; I do it to keep me healthy and calm. Same diff.”
“So, yoga, but no karma,” he said.
“Karma is for people who believe in karma, Adrian, just like God. If you need him, he’s there for you. Invent the God that works for you.” She rolled onto the bed next to him. “I don’t operate that way. Don’t need to. Dig?”
“Dig.”
“Good. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to eat after yoga.”
“That’s just for sissies,” she said. Mia propped her head up on her hand. “Let’s eat.”

That night, Adrian added a new dish to his repertoire: pasta with smoked salmon, capers, diced red peppers, a few handfuls of arugula and garlic. He poured olive oil over the pan of pasta and gave it a quick stir. Mia made garlic bread slathered with butter and sprinkled with parsley. They ate at the table and washed the food down with pint glasses of tap water and jam jars of local Chardonnay.
“You’re a great cook, baby,” Mia said with her mouth full. “I ought to keep you around.”
Arian licked his fork. “You’re going to do this with or without me, aren’t you?”
Mia nodded and her eyes went sad for a second. “I am,” she admitted. She popped up and fiddled with the iPod. She settled on the Foo Fighters.
“Come on, Adrian. Dance with me.” She wore a short flouncy skirt, boys long johns and wooly socks, and a wife beater tank top of Adrian’s. When she twirled, her skirt danced with her. He took a slug of Chardonnay and stood.
“My leg,” he begged.
“Oh, come on, baby. Your leg is all better. Dancing will do you good. Come on!” She turned the music louder. Adrian hobbled toward her and did a lousy job of pretending to dance. “You can do better than that,” she said. “Feel it! Feel the music!” She shouted and bounced up and down, shook her head so that her short locks lifted from her skull in tiny waves. Adrian closed his eyes and listened to the music. The drums were especially contagious. They jumped and twirled and swung their hips. When the song ended, and as the next one began, Mia said, “You feel it? You get it?” They laughed and bobbed up and down and all over the cottage until the next song, which was slow and mellow-dramatic. Adrian held her by the waist, his hand planted against her lower back. He felt inside of the t-shirt, rubbed his fingers against her spine.
“Do you hate me for this?” he asked.
She shook her head, touched his nipple through his shirt. “I don’t, no. Of course not. You’re you. I’m me. That’s it. Whatever. I can’t hate you for that, Adrian. I can’t hate you for being you.” He kissed her lips. “We’ll figure it out.”
“You think? Because I don’t know about that.”
Mia pressed her hips into his legs, ran her hand over his hip, kissed him again. He picked her off the floor and held her as close as he could. They breathed into each other’s necks.
He whispered, “I love you, Kara Mia. I really do. I love you. You’re mine. I don’t want to lose you.”
She clung to him and inhaled the air. He smelled like bromine from the hot tub. “We’ll figure it out,” she said, a step ahead of the conversation.
“You think?” He dropped her to the floor and pulled back so he could see her eyes.
“We have to,” she said. “Will you still do the bank with me?”
“If we’re being honest here, I gotta tell you that I’ll have to think about it.”
She laid her head against his chest. “Okay. Honesty is okay.”
Adrian rubbed his hands over her back. “Honesty’s all I got,” he said. “Besides you, of course.”
“I dunno,” she said, “you’re kind of brainy. You have that, as well.”
“I guess so.”
Mia slung her arms around his neck and stood tip toe to meet his eyes. “And you do have me, Adrian. You totally have me. I’m not going anywhere without you. Understand? I mean that.”
“I believe you,” he said. He ran his hands through her hair, held her head and kissed her mouth.
Mia said, “Let’s have mad sex in the hot tub. What do you say?”

Cheap Trick came on the iPod. Mama’s alright, your Daddy’s alright, they just seem a little weird. Surrender.

Adrian joined Mia in the outdoor shower and they made slow love in the hot tub, their actions deliberate and impassioned, thoughtful. Adrian thought he might cry. Afterward, she sat on his lap, her shoulders barely above the surface of the bubbling water, and they shared a cold beer.
“It’s like a cauldron, this thing,” she said. “Boiling the witch.”

Mia arranged for them to take the cottage for another 5 days. After that, the owner told her, someone else had booked it through the holidays. “Shit,” Mia said. “We have to leave in five days. That means no Christmas.”
Adrian looked up from his note book. “This fog is oppressive anyway. We can move on. Let’s go somewhere sunny,” he suggested.
Mia threw her phone onto the bed. “I don’t know if I can figure out the bank thing in four days,” she said. “Plus, then it’s,” she stopped and thought for a second. “I don’t know. I have to figure this out.”
He said, “Can’t we just skip the bank?” She shot him a look. “Or not.” He closed his notebook. “Okay. What do we need to do? I’m in.”
“You’re in?”
“For real. I’m in.”
She sat across from him at the little kitchen table and took his note book, opening it to a blank page. He handed her his pen.
“Really?” She stared into his eyes. Adrian nodded and smiled.
“Yeah, I mean, what the fuck. Why not. You’re my girl. I could use the money. I’m tired of my sugar mama floating me all the time. Let’s do this thing, boss. Tell me what to do. I’m yours.”
“Beautiful!” Mia twinkled. He loved it when she twinkled. “You’re awesome.”
“You’re awesome,” Adrian joked.
“You’re the awesomest.”
“True. That’s true.”

Mia’s tentative plan was this: they’d acquire some funky clothes from the free box in front of the health food store, Corners of the Mouth, something hippie-ish and awful. The free box was untraceable. She’d fashion two of her wigs into dreadful locks, as she called them.
“You know, really fucked up, like those kids who hang out by the café.” The idea was that they would model themselves after the runaways and by doing so, they’d blend in. “Everyone will automatically go to those guys to find out who we are, except they won’t know who we are, and there will be this terrible amount of confusion about who did it because, those kids, if I’m guessing right, are going to be totally uncooperative with the authorities, and maybe one or two of them will even get busted for the job.”
“Okay,” Adrian nodded. Mia hadn’t written anything in the notebook yet. “You going to write this down?”
“I don’t really write stuff down,” she said. “Maybe.” She chewed his pen. “First things first, I have to get inside the bank and check it out. I’ll go today. You should stay here though because of your leg. That limp is too memorable. We have to figure something around that.”
“Like what?”
“Like, maybe you drive the get-away car and I pull the bank on my own.”
Adrian shook his head. “No way,” he said. “You’re not going in there by yourself. Besides, I’m a terrible driver. You should know that. I hardly ever drive. I run.”
“I have to go in alone!” She said. “We can’t risk the limp, the height difference between us. It’s all too obvious. That’s how people get caught. We’re not that stupid. Don’t be stupid about this, Adrian. Please.”
“Okay, grand master flash, so what’s your idea? I sit in the car with the engine running while you run in and make a withdraw? It’ll never work. We need bodies inside that bank. Don’t we?”
Mia sighed and leaned back in her chair. Adrian got up to stoke the fire.
“Let’s go for a run,” she suggested.
“Oh, okay,” he said.
“No, seriously. I think if we go out to the beach and go for a quiet little run, we might be able to figure this out. Let’s just see how you do.” She put the pen down and stared at him.
He stood and looked back at her, shook his head. “No way. There’s no way I’m ready to run.”
“I think you might be,” she said. “Can we try it? I just need to see where you’re at here, Adrian.”

Mia dressed in a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt she’d picked up at the Sweetwater Spa, where they’d gone for massages, a brunette bobbed wig and dorky eye glasses.

“What are you going to do at the bank?” Adrian asked.
“I’ll just ask for some change. Change of a hundred or something. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out on the way there.”
Adrian took to the floor, and stretched while she walked to the bank to case it out. He sat and did a forward fold, breathing and lengthening his spine until he could hold both of his feet in his hands. Tink called while he was holding Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, a yoga thing Mia had taught him to help stretch out his hips.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Tink yelled. They hadn’t spoken in days.
Adrian breathed audibly into his headset. “Downward dog,” he said. “Tink, how the hell are you? I miss you, man. What’s happening back in the big city?” he joked.
“Same old shit, man. You better come home soon or I’m gonna have to find a new best friend. What the fuck are you doing up there, anyway?”
“It’s good. It’s a good break, you know?” Adrian stretched his legs into a ninety degree angle and leaned over his left leg. For the life of him, he’d never understand how Mia could lay her entire torso over one leg. He pushed himself to get his head closer to one knee. “We should be home for Christmas, I think. We have to be out of here in a few days anyway. Someone else has the place for the rest of the year.”
“Good!” Tink said, “We need you home, buddy. You should see your dad.”
“Yeah, how’s he doing? I called the hospital a couple of days ago, but the dick head doctor never called me back.”
Tink sighed. “He’s okay, man. My mom went up to see him on Tuesday. It’s bad, though, you know? I was just shitting you when I said he’s okay. You know he’s not okay. Fuck, Slim, I don’t know. It sucks, right?”
“Right,” Adrian said. “Will you go up there with me when I get back? I guess we should go see him at Christmas, at least.”
“Of course I’ll go,” Tink offered. “Of course, dude. Just fucking come home, alright?”
“What’s going on there? What’s happening at school? I kind of miss it a little,” Adrian admitted. “It’s weird not being in school.”
“It’s the same. Nothing too interesting to report.”
“So, you’re not getting laid by the new girl, I take it? What’s her name? Lexie?”
“Dude, are you having sex like five times a day or what? Tell me, Slim.”
Adrian laughed, moved his body so his torso was over his other leg. “I get a little,” he said.
“Dude, you’re like a porn star compared to me, I’m sure. Nothing happening here at the old homestead, trust me. I almost had something going on with that little bitch Hannah, but she’s a fucking swimmer, you know? You know how those fish are. Nothing but stink.”
“Don’t be gross, man.”
“Sorry, but it’s true. All those swimmer bitches are prudes. I got nothin’, man. It’s dry as the mother fuckin’ Mojave here in Loserville.”
“Mia’s back, Tink. I gotta go. Call you tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure, Slim.”
“I miss you, loser.”
“Miss you too. Don’t be a dick, okay? Come home.”
“Soon enough,” he said. “Say hi to everyone for me.”

Mia put the kettle on, then crossed over Adrian’s stretched out legs to put another log on the fire. “Piece of cake,” she said. She was all amped up. “Those people are living in a dream. We got this, babe. We got this hard.”
“Yeah? Do tell, Kara Mia.” He sat almost cross-legged and put his hand in front of his chest in prayer. “Namaste.”
Mia folded her hands and bowed. “Namaste. I’m so proud of you. Look at that knee! Almost bent. See? You’re almost there, babe.”

She poured cups of black tea for each of them and they sipped while they dressed for their run. The bank, she told him, had two tellers. The manager was a woman, which was good because men can psych you out. Women were easier to scare. Nothing a couple of hippies with a small empty handgun couldn’t handle.

“No bullets?”
“No, honey, no bullets. No one gets hurt. Not ever.”
“Okay,” Adrian said. He snapped the lace of his new running shoe and told her he was ready. “Let’s do this.”
“That’s my boy.”

At first they walked, but then Mia started a slow jog, and Adrian stepped gently on his left foot.
“Don’t think about it, sweetie. Just start.”
He hopped for a minute, got a rhythm going and favored his right leg, as usual. Mia set the pace, and he concentrated on her footfalls, matching them with his own. He breathed deeply through his nose and set his sight on the horizon at the end of the beach, where the fog met the sand. The river was roaring and wide, the air misty, damp on their faces and hands. Adrian pumped his fingers and formed loose fists, swung his elbows slightly. It was all coming back to him. Like the tide, he thought, in and out, then back again. When she felt he could handle it, Mia picked up the pace and kept careful watch of his left foot hitting the sand next to her right.
“You’re good, baby,” she said after fifty yards or so. “You’re doing real good. You okay?”
“I’m good,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“Okay, let’s pick it up a bit.” She shifted gears and their matched pace increased speed. “You good?”
He nodded. “I’m good.”
“You’re doing it,” she offered.
“Shut up, Mia,” he begged.
“Okay, I’ll shut up.

They ran the length of the beach and most of the way back, when Adrian finally gave up. “I don’t want to over do it,” he puffed.
“You’re great, baby. You’re amazing.”
“Okay, cut the small talk, Mia. Let’s talk shop instead. No more running. I’m dying here.”
“Okay,” she laughed. She wasn’t winded in the least.
“I thought I loved you,” Adrian said. He placed his hand on his knees and bent at the waist. He spit into the sand. “Fuck me.”
Mia dropped on the hard wet sand and did a few push ups, then moved into plank pose and raised one leg straight into the air. “You did great, really.” She changed legs and pointed the other toe to the gray sky.
Arian sat in the sand. “I did it,” he said. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“Now,” she said, twisting her neck to take in the full view of him, “we got something to talk about.”

Chapter 7: She’s Fragile Like a String of Pearls, She’s Nobody’s Girl

Adrian woke the following morning to find himself alone in the cottage. She’d started the fire and put the coffee on, and he’d barely noticed when she kissed him on her way out the door. He was starving, so he sliced some cheddar and ate it with Wheat Thins while he watched the Today Show on TV. Matt Lauer interviewed a kid who’d lost his arm in a bizarre gardening accident. 8:00 a.m. turned to 10:00 a.m. and Adrian ate an apple and poured himself a second cup of coffee. He started to worry. She’d left her cell phone on the kitchen counter, which meant he couldn’t call her. The Dixie Chicks ended the Today Show with a mini concert of three songs in the middle of Rockefeller Center. Adrian thought he saw Tina Fey in the crowd. He slipped on his Chucks and stepped out into the driveway. Her car was missing. Don’t even think it, he said to himself. She wouldn’t just leave. She’s coming back. He felt very alone. She’ll come back, he said aloud. He called Tink, but Tink was in class, of course, so he didn’t answer. Was it Tuesday? He checked the calendar. It would have been the last day of school before the Christmas break. Adrian hung up without leaving a message. He put on his cargo pants and a sweater from the thrift store and walked into the village, bought a double latte and three pastries at the café, then walked back to the cottage.

At 1:15, he started packing his things. He didn’t know how he would get back home. Maybe he could hitch hike. Mia wasn’t coming back to the cottage, he knew. A million scenarios ran through his head. Maybe she’d pulled a job and been caught. She could be being interrogated right now, for all he knew. Maybe she was sitting in a cold jail cell somewhere. His heart hurt. Adrian sat on the futon and thought about crying. Instead, he called his mother.
“Adrian! Hello, there,” Elizabeth said. “How are you? How’s your dad?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I guess he’s alright. I haven’t seen him lately, but Tink’s mom says it’s pretty bad.” He regretted calling her, but felt comforted by the sound of her voice anyway.
“Do you want to come up for Christmas, Adrian? You can bring Mia, if you’d like. We’d love to have you.”
“Sure, Mom, I’ll think about it, okay? We haven’t really talked about Christmas yet.”

He laid on the futon and listened to his mother ramble on
about her life in Portland for a long time, trying to forget the fact that he may have very well been abandoned by his girlfriend. Elizabeth was seeing someone new, a retired Army Captain named Sid Chapman, who she called Chappy, whose wife had left him for a fifty-five year old black woman. They ran a bakery together down by Reed College that Elizabeth said was pretty good. Chappy drove a Ford 250 and raised chickens in his back yard in Portland. He gave her fresh eggs every week. Chappy had a fishing boat, too. What a scream. “Can you believe that,” she laughed, “Who leaves a man like that for a woman? I can’t believe it myself, I tell you. Too funny, really, if you think about it.”

At 4:00, Adrian stripped his clothes off and sunk into the hot tub with a cold Anchor Steam beer. They were paid up through Thursday at the cottage. He had forty seven dollars in his wallet. He regretted buying three pastries at the cafe. Twelve minutes and thirty four seconds later, Mia walked through the gate and threw her bag on a nearby bench.
“Where the hell have you been?” Adrian said. “I thought you’d fucking left me here. I was worried that something happened to you. Jesus, Mia.”
She peeled her damp jeans off and joined him in the tub.
“Christ that’s hot,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t know it would take me this long. What time is it?”
“It’s 4:15,” he told her. “What the fuck, Mia? Where’ve you been all day?”
She sunk into the tub until the water was over her head and stayed under for twenty six seconds. When she emerged, she stood on the bench, her bare backside facing him. She reached into her bag and handed him a set of car keys. “Been out thieving,” she smiled and plunked back into the tub. “Sorry. Are you mad? Don’t be mad at me.”
“Mad?” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m fucking mad. You scared me half to death. Where the hell did you go today? No note, no phone call. Don’t fucking do that to me, Mia.”
“I got a car!” She showed her cat teeth, paddled across the tub and threw her arms around his neck.
“We have a car,” he said, pushing her away. She settled on the redwood bench in the tub, the water up to her chin. She took his beer from him and swallowed a big mouthful.
“Now we have a get-away car, silly. You don’t expect us to rob a bank with the Toyota, do you? We need this car. This car!” She put her hand in his, the one he held above the water, the set of keys dangling from his thumb. He frowned, the sockets of his eyes grew deep and tears formed. “Oh, Adrian,” she said.
“I thought you left,” he finally said. Tears spilled across his cheeks.
“Oh, honey,” she took the keys from him and placed them on the towel by his note book. “I didn’t leave you. Baby, I’m right here. I told you this morning,” she said.
Adrian sobbed. “I thought you fucking left me here and I’ve been here all day wondering what the fuck I was going to do.”
“We had this whole conversation,” she said. “I’m so sorry, sweetie. Don’t cry. I’m right here. I told you this morning that I’d be back by five, and here I am. Don’t you remember? Adrian, look at me.”
He looked. “I didn’t know,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“You must have been half asleep. I’m so sorry, Adrian, really. You have to believe me. I would never do that. I would never leave you here, honey. You have to know that.”
“I can’t afford to lose you, Mia. I’ve been out of my mind all day.” He put his palms against his closed eyes. “Fuck, Mia. You scared the shit out of me.”
Mia pulled up beside him and did her best to wrap her arms around him. “I told you before I left. You don’t remember? You must have been half asleep. I’m so sorry. I thought you were awake.”
“I didn’t hear you,” he sobbed.
“Well, you nodded and kind of mumbled and kissed me good bye. I thought you were awake.” She kissed his lips. “I’m sorry, okay? Next time I’ll make sure you’re really awake. Dude! We got a car!”

Later, while Adrian, wearing just his blue boxers, lay on his belly on the futon half-heartedly watching yet another movie shot in Mendocino (he picked the Jim Carey film, The Majestic), Mia threw a couple of chicken pot pies from the café into the oven and made a simple green salad. She tossed the greens with balsamic and olive oil. The cottage was blazing warm from the wood stove, stoked with extra pieces of Madrone. Mia straddled Adrian on the bed and rubbed his shoulders.
She leaned close to his ear and said, “I’m sorry about today. Are we past it?”
“I’m exhausted,” he said. “That run really took it out of me yesterday.”
“Do you want to hear my plan for the bank? It’s pretty good, I think. I need your opinion.”
He paused the movie and rolled over onto his back. “Okay, shoot, boss.”
“What’s wrong?” She saw the pain in his expression, sad and empty.
Adrian rubbed his eyes. “I’m just really tired, Mia. Nothing. I’m okay.”
“No you’re not,” she sat cross-legged next to him on the bed. “I can see it all over your face. Are you getting cold feet about this?”
“No,” his eyes filled with tears. “I’m okay, really. Just tired.”
“Adrian,” she said. She looked at him for a long time, stroked his hair. Tears rolled across his cheeks into his ears, onto the pillow.
He said, “I miss my parents. I know that’s lame,”
“It’s not lame,” she said.
“I just really miss them sometimes. I’m just a fucking kid, Mia.”
“I know, honey, I know.” She hung her head and sighed.
“I’m just sad,” he said. He sat up and sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I hate all this growing up crap, you know?” He laughed at himself.
Mia smiled. “Do you want to go home? We can go home right now if you want to.”
He shook his head and stared at his hands in his lap for a minute. His right wrist was almost the same size as his left now. He flexed his hands. “I don’t need to go home, Mia. You’re my home, you know? There’s no there there anymore. I guess I’m just,” he stared at the wood stove.
“You’ve had a rough year,” Mia offered. “I’m going to check the pies.” She jumped up and went to the oven.
“How do you do it?” He asked. “How do you get by, day to day, all by yourself? I mean, where does the courage come from?”
She held her hands up, two giant oven mitts like flippers. “It’s called survival, Adrian. I’ve been on my own a long time. I do what I have to do because I don’t have any choice.” She sipped a glass of Pint Noir.
“How do you get over the loneliness?”
“I just do,” she shrugged. “I have to.”
“Don’t you get sad sometimes?”
She shook her head. “I used to, sure, but not anymore. I guess I just had to grow up so fast, I didn’t have time to think about it anymore.”
“Don’t you think about your parents or somebody? Don’t you wonder what might have happened if you’d done things differently?”
“Can’t change the past, darlin’. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“How did you do that? I don’t know if I can just forget about my parents, my friends, my past. It’s my life. It’s all I know.” He got up and walked to the kitchen counter, sat down on one of the two wooden stools.
Mia took the pies out and put them on an oak chopping block to cool. She said, “I turned the page, Adrian. I looked at today. It’s all I can do now.”
“I don’t know if I know how to do that.” He looked into her dark eyes. “How’d you do it? How’d you get to the point where you didn’t need to look back anymore?”
She placed her hands in the mitts on the counter and all of the muscles in her body tightened. “I got mad,” she said. “I just got really fucking mad.”

They stayed up late working on their costumes for the bank heist, and Mia filled him in on her plan. They’d park the Toyota out at a trail head in Caspar, make an easy one mile hike over to Little Lake Road, which ran east of the village. They’d pick up the get-away car, a Silver Prius, at a house on Little Lake, and take it into town. The car was silent, she explained. The owner wouldn’t even hear it leave the driveway. It was parked more than thirty yeard from the house, she figured.
“No dog?” Adrian asked.
“The guy takes it with him to work,” she said. “Piece of cake. That car is just asking to be taken.”
“How’d you get the keys?”
“The chick went for a run at 2:30. I just walked in and found her extra set in a kitchen drawer. It was almost too easy. People don’t even lock their houses around here.”

Mia fashioned for herself a pair of holey brown corduroy pants a couple sizes too big for her (she cut a few inches off the legs), a Fair Isle sweater, a bright green turtleneck, a flouncy patterned hippie skirt, and mismatched sneakers. She wove her Alex wig with beads from the bead shop, and feathers and leaves. The Kathy wig was transformed for Adrian into nasty dreadlocks. Mia took it out to a patch of dirt near the driveway and rolled it around until it was sticky and filthy, then spent an hour twirling the locks into incredible knots, a real rat’s nest. Adrian tried it on and laughed at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“This is really gross,” he said.
“Totally gross,” Mia agreed. “It’s pretty good, though, right? Keep it on; I want to cut it a little.”

“So, then what happens?” Adrian asked. They dressed in their costumes, hair and all, and settled into lounges on the porch next to the hot tub. Mia sipped a beer while Adrian worked on a cup of tea and rubbed his knee with Arnica gel. He stood up and strolled across the porch.
“Nice,” Mia said, puffing smoke from a cigarette. “See? You’re barely limping. That’ll be over in a week.”
“When should we do this?”
“I’m thinking Thursday,” she said. “Today is Tuesday, so that gives us a day to plan, a day to pull the job and get out of town.”
“Isn’t that a bit obvious?” Adrian wondered. “I mean, we check out of here on Thursday and also happen to rob a bank. Isn’t it coincidental?”
“We don’t have to be out of the cottage until Friday morning. If we do it Thursday and leave town early, the cottage people won’t know the difference. We just leave the keys on the bed with a little tip and a nice note.”

They went for another run in the morning, drove up to Ten Mile Beach for a long, flat run. The wind was bitchy, but at their backs. Adrian stretched for fifteen minutes and started off walking. His limp was pronounced. “Run it off, babe,” Mia said as they started out. “You’re great. You’re doing fine. Feel okay?”
“Yup,” Adrian said. He pushed through the stiffness and made it to the end of the beach without stopping. They walked back to the car.
“What do you think that was?” Mia puffed. “Four, five miles? You did great, hon.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He checked his watch. Forty three minutes on sand. Not bad for a gimp. “I don’t want to leave this place,” he said. “God, it’s beautiful, right?”

Back at the cottage, they showered together and took a nap. When Adrian woke, Mia was dressed in her hippie kid costume.
“Car’s packed, babe. You ready? Come on, get up.”
Adrian sat up, startled. “I thought we were doing this tomorrow.”
“We’re doing it now. I didn’t want you to have too much time to think about it.” She adjusted the damper on the wood stove. “Come on, Moss, time’s a wastin’. No time to think about it. Let’s do this.”

Adrian dressed in his hippie outfit: dirty jeans, his old Chuck’s, layered t-shirts and a flannel. Mia fixed his wig and shoved a ski cap over his head.
“Really? We’re doing this right now?” He asked.
“Right now, baby cakes. Come on, stop fussing. Let’s go.”

They hopped into the Toyota and drove to the trail head in Caspar. The fog was thick as clam chowder. Mia stopped the car and led them through the woods. In under ten minutes, they could see the Prius. Mia waited, guided Adrian with her touch. She scoped out the house. “Now,” she said. Let’s go.” Adrian wondered what she saw. He followed her to the Prius and went for the passenger door.
“Psst,” she warned. She pointed to the driver’s side of the car. He ran around and opened the door. Mia slid into the passenger seat and Adrian started the car.
“Breathe,” she told him. He took a deep breath and put the car in reverse. “Go slow,” she said.

Adrian backed the car out of the driveway and onto Little Lake Road. Mia instructed him to be cautious, to pretend like they were just going for a leisurely drive. “Don’t think about it too hard,” she said. “It’s just you and me, babe, no one else matters right now, okay? So just maintain. Just make like you and I are driving into town for groceries. You gotta own it. Be sober. Breathe, honey. You have to breathe.”

Mia instructed Adrian to wait in the car in front of the clothing store kitty corner from the bank. “I thought we were doing this together.” He said.
“I got it, babe. You stay here and keep it running. The beauty of the Prius is that no one can tell it’s running. No fumes! We should get one of these when we get home, maybe the black one.”

Mia calmly cracked a customer over the head with the butt of her handgun, then pointed the Ruger inches in front the face of one of the two tellers.
“No fucking around, sweetheart. Put everything you’ve got into the bag.” She threw a paper shopping bag at the woman. Her nameplate said Beth.
“Beth, put the money in the bag. Beth? Are you with me here? I will shoot you unless you put the money in the bag. Do it.”

The manager of the bank came from the back room and spilled her coffee on the floor when she saw Mia.

“Anyone hits the alarm or calls the cops, and this one dies, right?” Mia slung her arm around the manager’s neck and stuck the barrel of the gun into her temple. Beth cried and shook and dropped the bag onto the floor. Mia smacked the gun against the manager’s skull.
“Beth? Listen to me. What’s your name?” she said to the other teller.
“What?” The teller said. “Fuck you, bitch.”
Mia cracked the butt of the gun harder on the manager’s head. “Fuck me? That’s not how it works, you white trash little cunt.”
“Do it!” The bank manager squeeked. “Give her the fucking money!”
Mia tossed her dreadful locks, pushed her sunglasses up on the bridge of her nose, snapped her Juicy Fruit gum. She snatched the keys dangling on a springy cord from the manager’s wrist. “Beth?”
Beth picked up the bag, and Mia let the manager drop.
“You stay, there, banker lady,” she said to the manager. “Hands up, buttercup.” The bank manager clasped her hands on her head; her knees knocked together. Mia sprung over the counter like a gymnast and stuck the butt of her gun between the breasts of the sassy teller, slapped the teller’s face hard with her gloved hand.
“You’re a real fuckhead, you know that? Jesus Christ.” To Beth, she said, “Give me everything you have access to, or this idiot gets it in the heart.”

Beth filled the grocery bag with cash and broke a nail. “Shit,” she said.
“You’ll get over it, Beth,” Mia said. She threw the bag over the counter and picked up a stray twenty from the floor. “You’ve been a real pro, Beth. Thank you. That one, though,” she pointed her gun at the bitchy teller and spoke to the manager. “You should dump her fat ass. She’s such a dick.” She told them all to lie on their bellies and count to a hundred. They obeyed. The bitchy one was crying.

Mia strolled to the door of the bank and tossed her gun on top of her loot. She wore the manager’s keys on her wrist. “Y’all been real helpful. Merry Christmas, y’all.”

Adrian waited in the passenger seat and popped the trunk when she approached. She tossed the paper bag into the trunk and slid into the driver’s seat. “Some get-away driver you turned out to be.” She smiled and slid the gearshift into drive, then casually drove around the block and out of town.

“How’d you do?”
“No sweat,” she said. She hit the radio and they listened to Don Henley sing about the boys of summer. Within eight minutes, they were at the trailhead, where they parked the Prius and transferred to her Camry. She left the Prius unlocked, the keys tucked into the visor.
“These Toyotas, I tell ya,” she said, backing onto the highway, “they’re so reliable.”

They wandered out Highway 20 to Highway 101, and headed south, Mia suggested they get a hotel room in the city, where they could count the loot and figure out what to do next. Before they reached Willits, Mia pulled the car over and they changed into their regular clothes.

They checked into the Hotel del Sol on Webster Street and took a cab to Chez Spencer on 14th Street to sit at the bar and celebrate with champagne and foie gras. Adrian ordered the scallops, and Mia had a steak. Silly jazz music played on the PA, and they relaxed into their meal.
“What’s next?” he asked. “I’m in on the next one, by the way.”
“Can we just enjoy our dinner and pretend like it didn’t happen? Can we just be two young lovers enjoying a night out on the town?” Mia giggled and drank her lime martini.
Adrian squirmed. He poured from a bottle of Pellegrino into their water glasses, gulped his down and filled his glass again. “I’m dead weight, right? Isn’t that what you call it? You don’t even need me, Mia. You totally did that job on your own. You could have easily pulled that off without me.”
“No way,” she said. She placed her drink on the bar and held his hand in both of hers. “You’re my doodle. I totally need you. Are you kidding me? Don’t be goofy.”
Adrian put his hand on her knee and kissed the side of her head. “Really? You mean that?”
“I absolutely do. Don’t talk like that, okay? Try this steak,” he ate from her fork. “Awesome, right?”
“Absolutely. Everything tastes like God.”
“I was thinking we should go to Big Sur, maybe, or Monterey. You know, for Christmas. What do you think?”
Adrian tossed his head from side to side. “I should probably go see my dad at some point, you know? He’s not doing that well.”
“Ah,” she said. She put down her fork and considered her drink. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. You can call Tink and find out what’s going on, and we can make a decision tomorrow or the next day or whatever. How does that sound?”

Chapter 8: If Dreams Were Thunder, Lightning Was Desire

When he woke the next morning she was gone. Her bags were missing. Fucking Ground Hog Day, he thought. He checked the safe, and was relieved to find the paper bag still filled with cash and Mia’s little girl gun. He double-checked the door and window locks, tightened the drapes and took the bag from the safe. Before he sat down to count their loot, he went to the bathroom to pee. She’d left a note on the seat of the toilet. It said: Don’t panic. Back before noon. Pack your bags and be ready to roll! -M

Adrian placed the gun back inside the safe, carrying it like it might explode in his hand. He pulled on some clothes and sat down on the bed, dumped the cash into a pile. First, he sorted the bills into piles of hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, fives and ones. He started with the big bills and jotted the count down in his notebook. There were ninety four hundreds. Excellent, he thought. Seventy fifty dollar bills, tons of twenties (684), 115 tens, eighty seven tens, 170 fives, and a mountain of ones. The money added up to somewhere around $30,000, Adrian figured. He stacked the bills into the paper bag and folded the bag around the cash so it seemed a more manageable stash, and locked the bag back in the safe. He checked his watch; it was 11:35. He hopped into the shower. Check out was in twenty-five minutes. From Mia’s note, he took it they were heading out today. He dressed in clothes that were in dire need of laundering, and ran his fingers through his hair. 11:50, still no Mia. He paced the room for a while, packed his bag, stashing the cash in the bottom of his duffel with the gun. He threw their dirty towels on the floor and put their water and beer bottles in a neat arrangement on the dresser, hoping the housekeeper would recycle everything.

Between noon and 1:30, he called Mia’s cell phone five times. She didn’t answer. At 1:45, there was a knock at the door. Adrian opened the drapes and saw the housekeeper waiting with her cart outside his room. He opened the door.
“Hi, sorry.”
“I can come back,” she said.
“I’m not sure we’re leaving today. Did my girlfriend check us out? I can’t get a hold of her.”
The housekeeper looked at her list. “Says you’re checked out already.”
Adrian closed his eyes and breathed deeply, nodded. “Okay, he said. I don’t know what could have happened to her. Is the room available for one more night? I can pay for one more night.”
She shrugged. “Go ask at the desk.” She pulled her cart to her next duty, a couple doors down. He watched her knock and say housekeeping.

The guy at the desk was talking on his cell phone when Adrian walked into the motel office. He didn’t bother to end his phone call, but held his phone to his chest and raised his eyebrows.
“Is our room available for another night? Two oh two?”
The desk clerk checked his computer and said, yes, it was available. “Just the one night?”
“I think so, yeah. Should I pay you now?”
“Sure,” he said. “Eighty one fifty.” Adrian paid him with some of the cash from the heist and the desk clerk nodded as he made change and went back to his phone call.

Adrian went back to the room, called Mia again and almost cried when she didn’t answer. “Don’t do this to me again, Mia.” He cranked the heat, lay on the bed and listened to his stomach growl for a while. There was nothing worth watching on TV, and he decided he needed some food in his belly. When he opened the door to leave the motel, he spotted Mia jogging through the parking lot. His heart jumped and all the air rushed out of his lungs. His knees went weak. He stood on the balcony and waited for her to look up at him, but she ran with her head down, her bag clutched tight to her side. She wore her sunglasses on top of her head like a hair band, and Adrian could see the refection of the gray sky in the lenses. She took the steps two at a time and almost ran into him when she approached the room.
“Oh! Jesus, honey!” Her breath made little puffs of steam. “Christ, you scared me.”
Adrian rolled his eyes and opened the door to their room. “I scrared you? Good one,” he said. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to call you for hours, Mia.”
She rushed into the room and went to the bathroom to run the water in the shower. “Sorry, she said,” I’m freezing. I have to get in.”
Adrian stood in the doorway and watched while she undressed and stepped into the stall. He lowered the lid on the toilet and sat down. “What happened?” He crossed his legs (bad over good) and noticed a bruise the size of an apple high on her left thigh.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, I had my phone off.”
“Where’d you go? What’s with the bruise?”
“What bruise?”
“You have a huge bruise on your ass.”
“I do?” She twisted her body to try to see the contusion. Adrian stood and pulled back the clear plastic shower curtain. He ran his fingers over the bruise. “Right here,” he said.
“I can’t see it,” she said. Adrian slapped her thigh hard. “It’s right here.”
“Hey! Ow, Adrian. You didn’t have to do that. Get out, okay? I’ll be done in a minute. Seriously, I’m freezing.”
He turned to leave. “I’m going to get a coffee,” he told her. She washed her hair. “You better fucking be here when I get back.”
Mia slid the curtain back and looked at him, “Don’t be mad at me, Adrian. Go get your coffee.”
He walked back to the shower and stared at her.
“What?” She was angry.
“You don’t get to be pissy with me, Mia. I’m the one who’s mad here, not you.”
“Can we talk about this when I get out, please?”
“Don’t pull this shit with me, Mia. It’s messed up. I can’t handle it.”
“Out!” she yelled.

He ran to a nearby café and ordered a double latte, then strolled back, taking the time to admire a black Triumph motorcycle parked on Lombard Street. He took his time to get back to the motel, sipping his latte, admiring smartly dressed people on the sidewalks. Normal people, he thought. This is what normal people do two days before Christmas. They shop and walk around arm and arm. They walk their dogs and push their children in strollers. They buy wine for Christmas dinner, champagne to celebrate the coming new year. He stopped fuming, didn’t have it in him, really. Mia always had an excuse, an agenda. He felt left out and sad. He felt stupid and inexperienced, as though he should know better, but didn’t understand what it was exactly he was supposed to know.

Mia was blow drying her hair when he stepped back into their room. “Are we staying or going?” he yelled over the whir of the hair dryer.
“Going,” she said. She turned the noisy dryer off and put it back in the caddy on the wall. “What’d you do with the cash?”
“It’s in my bag.”
“Go put it in the car,” she ordered.

He obeyed without asking any questions, without telling her he’d taken the room for another night. He dumped his bag in the trunk of the car and leaned against the passenger door and waited for her. Four minutes and fifty seconds later, he watched her emerge from their room at the Hotel Del Sol. She skipped down the steps and tossed her bag into the back seat. “Get in, darlin’. Mama’s taking baby on the road.”
“Where we going?” He put his seatbelt on.
“Don’t be mad at me, okay?”
“What’d you do? Forget it. I don’t want to know.”
She pulled the car onto Lombard Street and headed over to Bay Street, toward the Embarcadero. They drove in silence until they reached the Bay Bridge.
“Where’re we going, boss? I kind of wanted to go home, you know? To see my father. Did you forget about that part?”
“Don’t be huffy,” she said. “We’re going somewhere good. You’ll like it.”
“Great,” he said. “Can’t wait.”

A half hour later, Adrian woke to the sound of Mia pulling the emergency brake on the car. “We’re here,” she said. “Wake up, sleepy head.”
“Where are we?” They were parked in a lot
“Alta Bates,” she said. “Berkeley. Your dad’s been transferred to the critical care burn unit. He’s here,” she said. She grabbed her bag out of the back seat. “Come on, Slim,” she said. “Let’s go see your pops.”
“You’ve been talking to Tink, I take it?”
“I sure have, Slim.” She smiled and he almost forgave her for the morning of torture she’d put him through.
He sighed. “I don’t know about this.”
“Tink’s here. Come on, he’s probably waiting.”

Adrian followed her toward the hospital. Mia stopped and put her tiny hand in his.
“I hate it when you leave me like that, Mia.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. There was something I had to take care of. I didn’t know it would take so long.”
“Could you maybe just call me next time? At least answer the phone,” he said.
“I know.”
“No you don’t,” he said. He stopped and let her hand fall. She shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head.
“You don’t know, Mia. What’s your problem, anyway? You leave me stranded there, worrying about you, and what am I supposed to think?”
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“What? Are you at a loss for fucking words for once, Mia? It’s not okay. Do you understand that? Can you fucking hear me when I say it’s not okay? It’s not okay!”

He ran ahead of her and the automatic doors opened at the front of the building. He half-hoped she’d turn around and leave him, but she followed. His heart raced, and then he saw Tink chatting up a receptionist, and his world turned right again. Adrian tapped Tink’s shoulder, startling him.
“Slim!” Tink yelled. He hugged his friend. “This is him,” he told the receptionist. “This is my no-good friend Adrian.”

Mia stepped in behind Adrian and Tink gave her a hug, too, lifting her off the floor. “Thanks for bringing my boy back in one piece, Mia. Really, thanks.”
“It’s my pleasure, Tink,” she said. “Only the best for our boy, right?” She looked as though she might cry. Adrian ignored her and chatted with Tink while they took the elevator up to his dad’s room. When they landed on the fifth floor, Tink said, “I don’t know if you can prepare for this, Slim. It’s horrible. It’s not your father in there. It’s a monster. I just want to prepare you. It’s fuckin’ awful, dude. You’re going to hate it. Do you want a Valium? I stole a couple from my mom, just in case.” He pulled lint covered pill from his pocket.
“Where’s the room?” Adrian asked, anxious as a racehorse. Tink pointed down the hall. “Five oh five,” he said. Adrian walked at a fast pace, his eyes on every door, the hall closing in tight around him. When he got to his father’s room, he opened the door without thinking and walked inside; the door whooshed behind him. Gary certainly couldn’t have been Gary, so Adrian turned and walked back into the hall.
“That’s the wrong room,” he said to Tink and Mia. Tink grabbed Adrian’s shoulder and said, “It’s the right room. I tried to prepare you, man. I told you.”
“There’s no way. That’s not my dad.”
“It is your dad. Dude, that’s Gary. It’s him, I promise.”
“It can’t be,” Adrian shook his head. Mia started to cry, something he’d never seen her do. Mia pushed the handle and pressed the door open with her hip. Low winter light filled Gary’s room. The only noises were those of his monitors and the rush of an oxygen tank. Gary was in what Tink called a chemical coma, laying on his back. His gruesome skin open to the air, blanketed with a shiny substance, a few spots on his body covered with gauze. He looked to Mia very much like an alien creature, the kind invented for movies. She stood closer. Gary’s left eyelid was missing and she could see his blue pupil was clouded with goo.

Adrian entered and stood behind her. He squeezed her shoulders to try to stop them from shaking. Instead, she began to sob loudly. She turned to face him, her little black boots making a definite squeak against the hospital tile, and she tucked her head under his chin. He held her tight and stared at his father.
“What a train wreck,” he said. “It’s like a train wreck, isn’t it? I can’t stop looking at him.” Mia pressed harder against him and put her arms around his back, pressing her hands into his jacket, drawing him as close to her as he could be.
“It’s unreal, isn’t it?” Adrian felt detached, floaty. His stomach did a flip and he pulled away from Mia, opened the door to the bathroom and vomited into the sink. Mia followed him in, finding the site of him barfing better than her other option, staring at Gary. He rinsed his mouth with tap water and washed his face with his hands. Mia sat on the toilet and cried into her hands. Adrian began to cry, too. He leaned his forearms against the sink and a primal roar erupted from his mouth. He threw up until there was no latte left to throw up.

They waited for Gary’s doctor in the waiting room for an hour. She was a stunning woman with thick black hair. “I’m Dr. Gurcharan,” she said. Her voice was kind and gravelly. She wore a thin gold chain around her neck with a single bright diamond that bounced against her breastbone when she walked. Adrian, Tink, and Mia followed her to an office, where she sat them in black leather and chrome chairs.
“So, it’s not looking good,” Dr. Gurcharan told Adrian. “I am going to be honest with you here,” she looked into his eyes. Her eyelashes were so long, Adrian found them distracting. It was difficult to concentrate. Why is it, he thought, in situations where you want every word to register, when it really matters, you can’t capture the words and keep them and process them? They all just fly out the window. “I would suggest to you that you think about it. Sleep on it. Don’t feel like you have to make a decision today. There really isn’t any chance that your father is going to recover. Sometimes it’s just best to let people go.”
“Why am I making this decision?” He said.
“You’re his next of kin, correct?”
“Yes,” Adrian said. He shook his head. “But I didn’t even know he was here. How’d he get here from Sacramento?”
“Your mother,” Tink chimed in. “Elizabeth made the decision.”
“But they’re divorced. How could she make that decision, but not this one? I don’t understand.”
The doctor flipped through the first pages of Gary’s file. “Elizabeth is listed as his medical emergency contact, so the hospital probably called her first and figured she was his wife, so,” she closed the file. “People don’t read. We don’t always know who to call.”
“Okay, so why isn’t my mom making this decision?”
“We called her, and she said they were divorced and that it was to be your decision.”
“That’s ridiculous. I’m only seventeen years old. I can’t make a decision like that.”
“Well, technically, you are right. Your father is a ward of the state. But we don’t like to do these things without the family’s consent.” She folded her hands together. Her skin was smooth and bright, her fingernails polished with a neutral color. Gary would’ve liked Dr. Gurcharan.

They sat in the hospital cafeteria drinking coffee and sharing a plate of French fries.
“How you doin’?” Mia said. She touched his hand with hers and he pulled away from her. Mia slumped in her chair and stared at her coffee cup. Adrian realized his selfishness and reached out to her. She scooted her chair closer, curled her legs into the seat and leaned her head on Adrian’s shoulder. He wrapped his hand around hers and kissed the side of her head.

Tink called Elizabeth and told her that Adrian needed her to help him make the decision about Gary. Elizabeth said Gary wasn’t her problem anymore. When she made excuses about why she couldn’t come to San Francisco, Tink threatened to put Adrian on the phone. Elizabeth said, “Pull the plug! What do I care? Leave him plugged in so he can suffer. I don’t care, Tink. I gave the best years of my life to that man, and he can rot in hell after what he put me through.”

Tink handed the phone to Adrian, who snapped it shut and handed it back. “Fuck it,” Adrian said. “She’s not interested.”
“Apparently not,” Tink said.
“I guess I’m going to have to do this on my own.”
“You got us, buddy.”

Mia paid for a couple of rooms at the Best Western and gave Tink some money to order pizzas. She asked Tink for a minute alone with Adrian, so he walked to the corner store to pick up a toothbrush. “I hate fuzzy teeth,” he said. Mia dug around in the duffle bag and found the paper sack of cash, then stood on the sink in the bathroom to hide it in the ceiling tiles. “Let’s hope the critters don’t get it,” she said.

Adrian swallowed the Valium and fell asleep listening to Al Green on the iPod, while Tink and Mia ate and watched bad TV all night. When Mia finally rolled into bed, Adrian woke up. Mia smelled faintly of ranch dressing and green bell peppers. “Good night, love,” she said and kissed his mouth.
Adrian said, “You better fucking be here when I wake up.” He rolled away from her and went right back to sleep.

Tink knocked on their door at 9:30. He’d waited as long as he could.
“Let’s go eat some breakfast. I saw a place down the street here that looks pretty cool.” Mia was watching the Today show, drinking coffee she’d made in one of those crappy little coffee makers on the counter in her room. Adrian was in the shower.
“He’s a mess,” she said and offered Tink a cup of bad coffee.
“Pass,” he said. “Thanks, though.”
“He decided to go through with it,” Mia told him.
“Today?” Tink sat down on the bed. “Shit. Merry freakin’ Christmas, huh?”
“Yeah, I know. Jesus.” Mia ran her hands through her hair. “Help me get these bags into the car, huh, Tink?” She knocked and then opened the door to the bathroom. Adrian had one towel wrapped around his waist and was furiously drying his hair with another. “We’re just loading up the car, okay?

They put the bags into the trunk of the car and waited for Adrian to come out of the room.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Tink frowned.
“It’s time,” Mia said. “Those are his words, not mine.” She nodded toward the door of the motel room. “He just woke up this morning and had come the conclusion that it wasn’t worth stringing Gary’s life out any longer. Not if he isn’t going to get better. And he’s right, Tink. Gary’s never going to wake up.”
“No Christmas miracle?” He joked. Mia frowned. “Sorry. Humor is my defense mechanism. It’s automatic, like a tic. I just vomit it up sometimes. Bad form.”

They took Mia’s car to the hospital. When Adrian arrived on the fifth floor, he gave his name to the attending nurse and asked to speak with Dr. Gurcharan.
“Oh,” the nurse said. She reached for the phone, picked up the receiver, then put it down again. She stood. “You’re the son?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Come with me, please.”
They all followed her down the hall and Adrian stood in the doorway while the nurse went into another patient’s room to fetch the doctor. Mia slipped her hand into Adrian’s and motioned to Tink to hold her other hand. Dr. Gurcharan stepped into the hallway and greeted Adrian with a sad hello. “Let’s go into my office,” she said. They followed her and sat in the same seats they’d sat in the day before. The doctor leaned against her desk in front of Adrian and
“Adrian, I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” she started. He had no idea what she was going to say, but Mia immediately started crying. “Your father passed away this morning.” She paused and placed her hand on his bicep. “I’m very sorry, Adrian.”
Tink’s mouth dropped open. Mia quietly said, “Oh, no,” and put her hand on his leg. Adrian rubbed his closed eyes with his fingers. “Okay,” he said. The others stared at him, brows furrowed. “Jesus. Thanks,” he stood and stepped toward the door to get some distance from everyone.
“When?” Tink said. He was crying. “When did this happen?
Dr. Gurcharan checked her watch. “Just a while ago. Twenty minutes maybe.” She looked at Adrian. “Is there anyone you’d like me to call for you? Your mom?”

Mia drove Tink back to the motel, so he could pick up his car and head home, while Adrian called his mother from Dr. Gurcharan’s office. Elizabeth was out with Chappy, Elaine said. She told him she would break the news to Elizabeth, if that’s what he wanted. He thought about it for a few minutes and finally said he did. “Now what do I do?” he found the doctor at the nurses’ station. She walked him through the details. He took notes, wrote down numbers.
“Seems kind of ironic to cremate him, doesn’t it?”

They ate lunch at Sushi Sho on Solano (uni, cold smoked salmon, Bin Toro, Ootoro, a couple of rolls, miso) and Adrian felt almost light and happy. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he said. “I feel okay. Weird, huh?” He slugged back a ceramic cupful of warm sake. “I’m probably just in shock, right?”
Mia nodded, suspicious, picked the fish out of the rainbow roll, leaving the rice behind. “Would he have wanted a funeral?”
Adrian shook his head, “No,” swallowed a bite of hamachi. “I don’t think so. Who would come?” He stuffed more sashimi in his mouth and said, “I dunno. Have to think about that.”
“Do you want to go home, or do you want to go south? What do you want to do?” Mia poured more sake into their cups.
Adrian drank his down in one gulp and she poured him another. “Let’s do it,” he said. “We could go to the mountains or the coast. We can go anywhere. It’s California; we have everything. Isn’t that cool? I mean, I spent my whole life in this boring little suburban town, and the whole time, there’s all this amazing shit out there, a couple of hours from our front door. A couple of hours outside of the bubble, and you’re somewhere completely remarkable. Where else in the world can you do that?”
Mia nodded. “That’s why I moved here. It’s beautiful. We’re very lucky.”
“What happened to Hawaii? We should go there!” Adrian envisioned palm trees and sexy beaches.
“They’re having that awful storm right now,” Mia said. “It was on the news.”
“Really? Shoot. How about Mexico? That’s sunny right now, isn’t it?”
“We need the bookstore,” she said. “After lunch we’ll hit the bookstore and peruse the travel section.”
“I wish Cody’s still existed. That was a great bookstore, wasn’t it? My favorite place on the planet. Let’s do it,” Adrian said, shoving another roll into his mouth. “Don’t you need a passport to go to Mexico?”
“We won’t go to Mexico,” she said. “I mean, I can get you a passport, but that would take a few days. You really want to go somewhere? You up for that?”
“Yeah,” he smiled for the first time in days. “I really do. Somewhere sunny, somewhere that’s not here.”

Mia bought books about Florida, and Adrian picked up a travel book about Louisiana. Mia was interested in going to The Keys. “It’s about as far away from here as you can get,” she said. “Let’s go home and Google a few places, do some laundry.”

They searched online and came up with several options that suited their criteria. Adrian wrote down the things he wanted to do in his note book and rattled them off to Mia. She was slower on the computer than he was, but he so very much liked the idea of laying on the floor with his feet propped on the bench, where he could view the television and also sort of be at the table in the Airstream.
“I didn’t get you anything for Christmas,” he said. He slapped his pen down on his notebook. “Shoot. I’m sorry, Mia. I feel like such an idiot.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I don’t care about stuff anyway. I already have stuff.” She smiled at him. She was sincere, but he felt bad anyway.
“Tell you what,” he said, “when we get to Florida or wherever, I’ll spring for tennis lessons. We’ll get a couple of nice rackets and all the latest tennis clothes. Huh? Wouldn’t that be nice? You’d look cute in one of those little tennis outfits.”
“I’ve never played,” she admitted. “Could be fun, I guess. What about Aruba?”
“Too creepy. It’s where that girl went missing. Remember? It’s full of pirates and cretins. Besides, we need passports to go to Aruba, don’t we?”
“I guess. We can always get those, though. I know a guy who knows a guy.” Mia wiggled her eyebrows and clicked around on the computer. “Okay, how about Myrtle Beach? That looks nice.”
“Hurricane season,” Adrian reminded her.
“How about St. John’s?” Mia’s whole posture changed, as though she might levitate right off the bench.
“Passport,” he reminded her.
“No,” she shook her head. Her hair had grown out since he’d met her and Adrian noticed a subtle wave in her longer locks. “You don’t need a passport to go to St. John. All you need is a driver’s license. It’s U.S. Territory.”
“Do they have tennis?”
“Yes, they have tennis.”
“Hurricanes?”
“Maybe.”
“How much are flights?”
“I like it here,” Mia said, clicking through pictures. “Mama like St. John’s very much. Two tickets to paradise?” she offered.
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to drive somewhere?” Adrian said. He sat up and stretched his arms over his head, then sat across from her on the opposite bench. “I mean, don’t we have to have a credit card to travel by plane?”
“Not a prob,” Mia told him. “Peggy Sue’s got that covered.
“Who the fuck is Peggy Sue?”

Peggy Sue Ward was Mia’s alter ego. She was twenty-six years old, had a trust fund, and money stashed in banks in the Cayman Islands.
“Where’d you whip up Peggy Sue?”
“Baltimore. She was the daughter of a waitress my mom worked with a long time ago. She used to hang out with me while our moms were working, but then she got killed in a car accident. She was on a date. It’s a long story. So, after she died, I used to just hang out by myself at their apartment while my mom and Peggy Sue’s mom were at work because they lived above the restaurant. I was like twelve. Got her social, her driver’s license number. So now I’m her, sort of. Or I can be her if I need to be her.”
“Doesn’t anyone know she’s dead?”
“Oh, I took care of that a hundred years ago.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I just did.”
“And now you can just be her?”
“I file her taxes every year,” Mia told him. She pulled out her wallet and showed him her ID. Peggy Sue Ward, 1801 Lincoln Avenue. DOB: December 25.
“Her birthday is Christmas? No way.”
“Yes way. Just like baby Jesus.” They laughed.
“So, this is amazing, Mia. Where’d you get to be so clever? You’re a very clever girl.”
“It’s a gift,” she said. Her eyes twinkled. “I can get these tickets now, or we can think about it. What do you want to do, hon?”
Adrian went through his list:

Warm, sunny
Places to run
Water sports
Live music
Cell phone will work
People speak English and/or Spanish
Beautiful
Romantic
Can stay a while without getting bored
Private

“Let’s do it,” he said.
Mia checked the flights out of Oakland and found a house for rent on St. John’s, a shiny white cottage on the beach. She called the owner and booked it for two weeks. “Done,” she said. “St. John’s, here we come.” She put everything on Peggy Sue’s credit card. They would leave on the 27th, which gave them plenty of time to prepare.
“Do you pay that thing?” Adrian asked.
“Of course I do,” Mia said. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

Chapter 9: All is Calm, All is Bright

They spent Christmas afternoon at Tink’s drinking eggnog and playing Wii, eating from noon until dark. Mia lay on the floor in the living room and read National Geographic, trying to digest. She wished she had more time to do things like read magazines, and made a note-to-self to subscribe someday. She read about a crater in Canada that was made by a meteorite. It was 120 feet wide and twenty feet deep. “Huh,” she said out loud. “Crazy world.”
“Pie?” Adrian handed her a plate of pumpkin pie and lay down beside her on the rug. “Ugh,” she said. “I don’t know if I can do it. When does the eating stop?”
Adrian grabbed the fork and helped himself to a bite. “So good,” he mumbled. “I like pie.” He could barely breathe.
“Are we just going to eat all day?” She said, taking the plate away from him, shoveling a bite of pie into her mouth. Whipped cream stuck in the corners of her mouth. She held his wrist and looked at his watch. “We have to do this again in two hours.”

Tink sat at the couch, his laptop on the coffee table. “Do you guys really want to go to St. John’s? I’m not feeling it. Shouldn’t it be somewhere more interesting, like Mexico?”
“That’s what I said,” Adrian told him. “I told you to make it Oaxaca. You never listen to me.”
“I don’t speak Spanish!” Mia giggled.
“I do,” Adrian said. “We could get by. You could learn.”
“She can’t learn,” Tink said. “She’s practically Canadian.” Tink tapped his keyboard.
“Do you have to do this tonight?” Adrian said. “My mom’s expecting you for dinner. You can’t bring your story with you.”
“My novel,” he corrected his friend.
Adrian moaned, rolled over on his back, rubbed his stomach. “Did you have to kill off my dad?”
“Hey,” Tink said, “at least I let you run again. I could have made you a cripple.”
“Good point,” he said. “I do like to run.”
Mia motioned for Adrian to hand him the print-out of Tink’s story. She flipped through the pages and started reading where she’d left off earlier. “I love the part about the baseball stadium, Tink. It’s really touching. The part about the little girl. It’s so sad.”
“Little Mia had a sad life,” Tink offered.

Adrian’s phone rang. “Hey Pops,” he said. “Yeah, we’re just digesting lunch. Ham and stuff. It was awesome, of course.” He paused and looked at Mia. “Your parents are already there,” he said. “Okay, Dad, we’ll come soon. Ice? Okay. One bag? You got it. See ya.”
“Ugh,” Mia moaned. My folks are already there? It’s only five.”
“Apparently, it’s cocktail hour at the Moss house. We’d better get out of here. We have to pick up ice at 7-11.” He stood and pulled Mia up by her hands. They waddled to the kitchen door and took their coats off the hooks.
“Tink, are you coming with us or what?”
He tapped on the keyboard. “Nah, I’ll skate over later. I gotta get some words down. I only have five days left to crank this thing out.”
“It’s really good, Tink,” Mia said, buttoning her old wool coat. “Can I take this copy?”
He shrugged. “Sure thing.”
“How does it end?” She asked. She wrapped a scarf around her neck and remembered her knitting. “Adrian, where’s my knitting bag?”
“I have no idea, to tell you the truth,” Tink said.
“I still say Mexico,” Adrian offered. He found Mia’s knitting by the TV and handed her the bag, which she slung over her shoulder. “At least we’d be warm right now.”
“Speaking of which, I need to finish your hat,” Mia said.
“Get on it, woman. Isn’t that supposed to be my Christmas present?” He looked at his watch. “Christmas will be over in seven hours. You have six hours and fifty seven minutes to finish that hat.”
“You know, Tink, my mom would never move to Portland.”
“She might! If your dad was doing her friend.” Tink shoveled some pie into his mouth.
“My dad wouldn’t ‘do’ anyone. I don’t even think he would ‘do’ my mom”
“Don’t be gross, dude.”
“There aren’t any women like Carol in this town anyway,” Mia said. “She doesn’t exist.”
Tink shook his head. “You guys have to remember that this is fiction and I have poetic license to make up any character I want, no matter how unbelievable they may be.”
“The sex is a little embarrassing,” Adrian said. “Couldn’t you at least change our names, if you’re going to pretend we have this out of control sex life?”
“Poetic license,” Tink said. “Do you want me to say it more slowly, retard?”
“Come on, Tink. Our parents are going to want to read this monster when you’re done.”
“You’re my muse,” he said. He walked them to the door. “You, too, Mia.”
“I’m sure I am,” she rolled her eyes. “Come over to the Moss’s later, okay?”
“Hey, thanks, Suze,” Adrian said to Tink’s mom. Lunch was awesome as usual.”
She waved from the kitchen sink, where she and Tink’s dad were doing dishes, drinking wine, and dancing around to the Eagles Greatest Hits. “Bye, kids. Thanks for coming. Mia, tell your mom to call me in a couple of days. I want to talk to her about Tahoe.”
Mia nodded and waved a gloved hand. “Okay, Suze. Thanks again. Great meal.”

Adrian tucked his skateboard under one arm and walked ahead of Mia down the path. She caught up to him on the sidewalk and shoved Tink’s manuscript into her bag.
“You’re right about the sex part,” she said. “It is embarrassing. I don’t want my mom to read this!”
“And you know she’s going to want to, right?” Adrian said. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and jumped up and down. “Fuck, it’s freezing out here.”
“Stop moving so fast,” Mia said. “I can hardly even walk. How are we supposed to eat another meal? ”
“Ugh,” he said. “I know. I want to skate right now, but I don’t think I have it in me. I might barf ham all over the sidewalk.”
Mia tucked her arm into his. “Tink sure has an imagination on him.”
“That’s Tink,” Adrian said.
“Do you think our sex life will ever be that interesting?”
Adrian looked at her. She concentrated on her footfalls on the sidewalk. “I dunno,” he said. “I think we do okay.”
“If we ever had that kind of time on our hands,” she smiled.
“Or a cool Airstream to run away to,” he laughed.
“Exactly. Where do people have sex around here anyway?”
“They just wait for their parents to go out, like we do.”
“Our parents should go out more,” Mia said.

Adrian lay his skateboard on the sidewalk and stepped on the deck. He skated off the curb, into the street, and skated to the next intersection, then back to Mia. He kicked his skate up and caught it in his hand. “That was a bad idea.”
“Then don’t do it. Just walk with me,” she said. He threw the skateboard back down on the sidewalk and placed his hand on her shoulder. He skated along next to her until the sidewalk ended, then walked with her again.
“I wish we didn’t have to go to Tahoe,” he said. “Do you think the parents would let us stay home alone?”
“No!” She said. “Never. You know how my dad is. Family this and family that.”
“All those kids,” Adrian said, meaning Mia’s four siblings and their friends, “they’ll never know you’re not there.”
“It’ll never happen,” she said. “Maybe your parents would let you stay home, but mine won’t. Don’t be stupid.”
“Stupid? Be nice, Kara Mia. I’m the one who got into Cal already.”
“I’ll get in, too,” she said.
“What if you don’t? What if you end up somewhere else? Then what do we do?”
Mia sighed. They crossed the street to Adrian’s house. She could see her parents’ Mercedes in the driveway next to Elizabeth’s Volvo. Mia’s brother Mark was standing in the front yard smoking a cigarette and talking on his cell phone. He nodded at them as they approached the front door.
“Can we just not worry about that right now?” Mia said. “If I get into a different school, we can talk about it then, okay?”
Adrian skipped most of the steps up to the front door and set his skateboard against the house next to a huge pot overflowing with white Poinsettias. “I know, Mia,” he really did love saying her name. “I just get anxious. You know how I am.”
She slipped her arm around his waist and kissed him quickly. “Don’t,” she said. “Let’s do this thing.” Gary pulled the door open from the inside.
“Hey, kids,” he said. “Merry Christmas, Mia.”
“Merry Christmas, Gary.”
“I need your brother to help me in here,” he told her. “Mark? Come on in here when you’re done. I need you to give me a hand.” Mark held up an index finger to indicate he’d be in shortly.

Inside the house, lights twinkled, music played, the smells of turkey dinner filled the air.
“I finished your present, Dad.” Mia pulled a scarf out of her bag and her father wrapped it around his neck, kissed her forehead.
“I love it, Peanut. It’s very warm. Very pretty. Nice job, hon.” He put his arm around Adrian’s shoulder. “How you doin’, son?”
Adrian nodded and popped a handful of cashews into his mouth. “Quite a spread we have going here.”
Mia groaned. “I can’t believe we have to eat again. Adrian, how can you eat? You were about to barf five minutes ago.”
“Good point,” he said, popping another cashew into his mouth. “I think I need to lie down.”

Mia’s sister Katy chased her toddler through the kitchen and Elizabeth tripped over the child, causing a bowl of baby carrots to fly into the air and hit the counter. Baby carrots sprayed across the kitchen and there were screams followed by laughter. The women passed the baby around until someone handed the little guy to Pat, Mia’s father. The baby immediately stopped crying and played with the knot in Pat’s red and green striped tie.
“The magic touch, Pat,” Adrian said.
“Lots of practice,” he smiled.

Ben, Mia’s oldest brother, arrived with his wife and their three kids. It was the equivalent to forty people walking into the house. The kids were chubby and loud and needy. Mia raised one eyebrow at Adrian and he took her hand, led her upstairs to his room. Mark’s dog Hopper, a three-legged black mutt, passed them on the stairs. He was carrying one of the kids toys in his mouth and had been laying on the rug on the landing happily chewing it, keeping watch on the crowd below, until Mia and Adrian came along.
“Bad dog!” Mia laughed. “Did you see that? What a bad boy.” She leaned over the railing and shouted to her brother below, “Mark! Mark!” But he couldn’t hear her over the din of voices and Christmas music, so she gave up and followed Adrian to his room. She locked the door and flopped into one of the bean bags, put her feet up on the other.
“Oh my god. I’m so full I could vomit.”
“Do it,” he joked. Mia’s sister Fiona had recently been to rehab for Bulimia.
“Don’t joke,” she said.
He flopped his body onto the floor next to her and rested his head in her lap. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said.
She cut him off. “I know! My mom looks terrible. I don’t know what she was thinking.”
Adrian laughed. “You can barely see her eyes anymore!”
“You should have seen her a week ago. She looked like she’d been in a car accident. It’s supposed to relax eventually,” Mia laughed too. “It’s so gross, isn’t it? It’s like the world’s worst face lift ever.”
“It’s remarkable, really,”
“She looks like Cher.”

Elizabeth knocked on his door. “Adrian, honey?” He sat up and opened the door for her, then flopped back down on the floor, his head back in Mia’s lap. “Is Tink coming for dinner?”
“After. They’re going to David’s for a while first.”
“You kids have a nice time over there?”
“Yeah,” Mia said. “We ate a lot.”
“Well, get ready to eat again,” Elizabeth said. She closed the door on her way out.
“Tink got her all wrong in his story,” Mia said. She ran her fingers absently through Adrian’s hair. He closed his eyes.
“I like the wigs, though,” Adrian said. “Maybe you could pick one up.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?” She said. “It’s perfectly me, don’t you think?”

He rolled onto his side, kissed her chin. “It’s fine. Your hair is fine. It’s very you.” He kissed her again, on the mouth. “You want to fool around?”
“Our parents are here,” she said. “No.”
“Come on, Mia. The Mia in Tink’s story would fool around with me.”
She giggled and tried to turn away from him, but he pinned her to the bean bag and tickled her until she laughed so hard, she ran out of breath. “Seriously, man, I’m going to pee on you. Stop!”
“The Mia in Tink’s story wouldn’t pee on me.” He kissed her again.
“Do you wish I was more like Tink’s version of me?” She asked.
“Too grown up. She would scare me.” He put his hands around her waist, inside her shirt, kissed her little white belly. “But the sex is good, right? I mean, you and me? We’re pretty good, aren’t we?”
“I guess. I wouldn’t know what to compare it to,” she said. “Personally, I’m good with it. I mean, I like it. Do you?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
“If we do it right here, right now, they’re going to know when we go down for dinner.”
“No they won’t,” he said. He undid the snaps on her little cowgirl shirt. It was a fine plaid decorated with a little bit of lace around the pockets she had sewn herself. She wore a cotton camisole. Adrian kissed her tiny breasts through the fabric, and her body stiffened.
“This is a bad idea,” she said.
“No, huh uh. It isn’t. It’s a great idea.” He kissed her neck, pushed the camisole up. “Come on. It’s Christmas.”

Someone tried the door handle, and a little voice said, “Auntie Mia?”
“It’s Pookie,” Mia said. “Come on, get up.” Adrian rolled onto the floor. Mia pulled her shirt down and snapped it up, then opened the door to find her niece.
“Hi Pook,” Mia said.
Pookie looked into the room, but didn’t enter. She grabbed Mia’s hand. “Come downstairs,” she commanded. Mia looked back at Adrian. He waved her away. “Go,” he said. “It’s Christmas. It’s family time.” He followed the girls downstairs and found Mia’s brother Mark sitting at the coffee table in the living room. Mark and his girlfriend Pam were setting up to play Cranium.
“You guys in? We’re playing teams.”
“I dunno,” Adrian said. Let me find Mia.”
“She’s in the kitchen,” Pam said. “Get me a Pellegrino, would you, Adrian?”

Gary handed Adrian a beer. They clinked glasses. Adrian sipped his and put his glass down on the kitchen bar. “Thanks, Pops.”
“Merry Christmas, son.”
“You having a good time?” he asked.
“Sure. You program that iPhone yet?”
“Not yet. Seems like a project,” Adrian said. “Thanks for that, dad. That’s a really nice gift. I mean that. You guys spoil me.”
“You’re our baby,” he said. “Gotta take care of my kid.”
“Well, don’t think I don’t appreciate it. It’s really nice.”

Mia sent Pookie over with a wrapped shirt box. “What’s this, Pook?”
“It’s from them,” Mia said, nodding toward her parents, who were making a green salad together.
“Nice,” he looked at the Wards. “Thanks, guys.” Mia’s mother attempted a smile, but her face wasn’t quite working properly yet. He shook the box.
“It’s a cashmere sweater,” Mia told him. “I picked it out. Don’t worry, it’s not some hideous Christmas sweater or anything. It’s black.”
“Well, thanks for ruining the surprise,” he said. He put the box on the counter and held her hand. Fiona the bulimic took a picture of them with her new digital camera, then showed them the image. Adrian commented that he needed a hair cut.
“I like it long,” Mia said. “It’s devilish and wild.”
“I look like a criminal,” he said. He handed the camera back to Fiona, who continued to document the making of Christmas dinner.
“Like a bank robber almost,” Mia commented.
“Mark wants to play Cranium,” he said.
“We’re going to eat in like ten minutes,” Mia said. “We’ll play after.”
“I can’t believe we have to eat again.” Mia sipped his beer. Her father shot her a look. “It’s just one sip, Dad.”
“Beer is a gateway drug, Mia,” he joked.
She faked a laugh then rolled her eyes. She whispered to Adrian, “Let’s go upstairs for a minute. You can try on that sweater.”
“Really?” He raised his eyebrows and Mia smiled. “Okay, then,” he said. He looked at his mother. She had her head half in the oven, observing the bird. “Let’s go,”

Adrian took the stairs two at a time and closed the door to his room behind her, locking it. He threw his gift toward the bean bags and pressed Mia against the door, lifting her off the ground. “You gotta be fast,” she said. She whipped off her jeans and unsnapped her shirt, tossed it to the floor. She jumped onto the bed and removed her socks. Adrian pulled his clothes off and lay on top of her on the bed. “I can be fast. Fast is my specialty.” They laughed and kissed.

Tink arrived after dinner to find everyone playing Cranium in the living room. Pookie was passed out in a chair like a little old drunk. Mia’s dad was trying out Gary’s new putter on the rug in the foyer. Gary and Elizabeth were stacking dishes in the kitchen. Tink held his finished manuscript in his hand, the pages held together with one of those little metal binder clips. He placed it on the kitchen counter and helped himself to a beer. He squeezed in between Adrian and Mark and sat on the floor. “That’s it,” he told his best friend. “I’m done.”
“Finished,” Adrian corrected him. You’re not done, you’re finished. Cakes get done, stories get finished.”
“Whatev, dude. I’m finished. Can you believe it? That thing took the life out of me.”
“So, you still want to be a novelist after all that?” Adrian asked him.
“Yeah, I guess,” Tink said. “After all that, though, I think I might have run out of things to say.”
Adrian smiled. “You? I doubt that very much.”
“What happens in the end?” Mia wanted to know.
“It’s kind of a Butch Cassidy sort of ending. You’ll have to read it.”
“I look forward to that,” she said. “So, we die in the end?”
“We all gotta die in the end,” Tink said. “It’s part of life.”