Santa Cruz Noir

Buck Low by Tommy Moore

North Coast

The Mexicans say that the devil sleeps under the mouth of the San Lorenzo River. On moonless nights, he rides a black horse up the bank and through the streets of the Flats. If he catches you then he’ll tie you over his saddle and, before the sun rises, take you with him, beneath the river. I’ve spent nights waiting for their devil in the street, but of course I’ve never seen him.

I often end up here, by a fire in the dunes. Hitting a good vein in these hands is tricky. There is just the faint tickle of coke behind the watery brown chiva.

“Let’s take your car up the coast, leave Santa Cruz for the night, like a little vacation,” I’d told her. My fingers find their way along the scalloped edge of my ear, tracing the bite she left — remembering Katie’s mouth. The waves crash onto the shore below, the whitewash hisses up the sand. We brought blankets, beer, mushrooms, food, a tarp. We built a fire. Tonight, the moon is almost full. Then, it was just a sliver and the stars were bright.

I met Katie downtown. Jerry Garcia had just died and she didn’t know what to do. The first times, she wouldn’t come alone, she’d bring a girlfriend. They would use my place to shower, smoke some weed, and then wash the dishes, vacuum, take out the trash. It felt like a very honest and pure exchange. “Katie, come by yourself next time,” I told her. She started sleeping on the couch. I liked that, watching her dream, blissed out and far away. Eventually, she got into my bed. I took my time with her.

On the beach that night, the mushrooms hit her hard. We were both laughing at nothing and she settled down next to me by the fire. I put her on top of me. I liked her like that. I kissed her. She became very still. She froze sometimes. I didn’t mind. I kissed her again, unbuttoned and pulled down her jeans, and then slid her up my chest and onto my face. The warmth between her legs. I had all of it. I felt a shift in her again as I laid her down. When I came, she pushed me off. Her pupils were huge, spooked. I put my arms around her, held her tight. She struggled. I hugged her tighter. “I’ve got to go, let’s go,” she said.

“Calm down,” I said. “It’s just the mushrooms. Sit down with me by the fire. We’ll smoke some weed.” She struggled. I hugged her tighter, her head on my chest. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Relax,” I whispered as I stroked her little head. Her whimpers turned to panic, then screams.

I nuzzled her head into my neck and that’s when she bit my ear. I hit her but she just bit down harder, so I hit her again and when she let go, I grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to the ground. She was blubbering, drooling blood. It was my blood and I could feel it warm, running down my neck. I kneeled on her chest and held my hand over her mouth until she was still and the only sound was my beating heart and the raw ocean wind and waves upon the shore.

Had it really been a year? We could have had so much more time together but she didn’t give me the chance to plan, to curate a final moment for us, to draw it out, nice and slow.

The night fades into a soft purple. The fire has burned out and the ashes are scattering in the wind. There is the faint, sweet must of earthy matter decomposing in a dark channel within the ranging estuary behind the dunes. I love watching the sun rise up from behind the mountains.

In the bright morning, I follow the tracks I left on the beach in the night, stepping into each faint footprint. A wad of torn flannel is entangled in a matted patch of dry kelp. I pick it up, shake off the sand, stretch it taut, loosening the crusted salt from the fabric. Why did she have to bite my ear?

Between swaths of mussels, there are tide pools in the pocked surface of the rocky point at the northern limit of the crescent cove. I walk out to the widest pool, near the edge, just above the waves. Surrounded by sea anemones, there are hermit crabs between patches of eel grass. They are trudging along, dragging their shells, leaving little trails across the sandy bottom. I reach in, catch one, and hold it upside down, just beneath the surface of the water, until its alien head pokes out. The little crab lifts its soft body, tries to right itself, and pinches at my finger. The sea anemones seem to be waving at me. Their tentacles quiver in excitement. I drop the crab and the anemone puckers the meal into its gut.

The sun is hot on my neck. I’ve been crouched over the pool for hours. Feeding crabs to the anemones has become automatic, almost meditative. I ram the last hermit crab deep into an anemone’s distended blossom, overflowing with empty shells. It chokes on the meat and spews forth whole, half-digested crabs. The tide is rising and a wave washes over the pool, soaking my jeans. Another wave crashes over the rocky spit, I hold on and as the ocean recedes, I make a run for the edge, jump to the shore, and walk onto the dry sand.

The sun feels good. I pull off my wet pants and drape them on a flat rock to dry. I’m very hygienic. With Hep C, HIV, AIDS, one has to keep it clean. I have distilled water in a bottle and a little container of bleach, just in case, but I rarely share needles or spoons. With my jacket over my head to cut the breeze, I cook a bit of tar for now, no coke, and then for a little while, I let the windblown sand collect in my ears, my hair. I wish she was here, buttery and naked under the sun.

There are people at the far end of the beach walking their dogs. Maybe they’ll see me, the naked guy, and fuck off? I guess not. It’s a long walk and I don’t want to hitch in the dark. I put on my pants and leave. The path to the headland, up through the ravine, is steep and I’m careful not to slip on the loose, chalky scree. Between tilled fields, the path becomes a dirt road. Crows hop around something dead in a fresh row, stabbing at a chocolate clog of blood and fur.

If I sit here long enough with my thumb out, someone will stop. While I dump the sand from my shoes, a truck rattles by. Boxes of cabbage are on the open bed. As I lope over the highway, the wind scatters upon the harvested fields, rustling the faint smell of sulfur from the hollow brussels sprout stalks. More cars pass, no one stops. I pull down my stocking cap.

Finally, a pickup pulls over. The driver pushes open the passenger door. I get in. It’s good to always have a knife, especially when you hitchhike. I can feel it in my front pocket when I sit down and I shift forward a bit in the seat so it’s easier to grab. The Mexican behind the wheel looks harmless. His hands and face are dusted in fine, cut grass.

“Thank you.”

“De nada.”

“Katie was a lovely creature but she shouldn’t have bitten my ear.”

He shrugs.

I lift up my cap and show him.

He nods and says something about a kitchen. Out my window, corduroyed farm rows flicker by. The torn strip of flannel has made its way into my palm and is soft on my lips. I catch him glancing at me.

“You’ve probably seen her picture in the paper, maybe downtown near the bus station.”

“No sé.”

“You’re correct. I don’t know. They asked me about her, the police. So many people pass through this town. Transients, on their way north, south. People come, people go, it’s hard to figure where they’ll end up.”

“Si.”

“Yes. Not me, though. I’m from here. What about you? Mexico? Where you from?”

“Watsonville.”

“The original Santa Cruz Town Charter of 1866 forbade the ownership of property by Jews, Negroes, Mexicans, and subjects of the Ottoman Empire. You have a bunch of kids? Collect welfare? I’m sure you have a bunch of kids. Right?”

“Si. Watsonville.”

I pat the cooler between us. “Cerveza?” and I pull out two beers. “Now, it’s just nukes. The city don’t allow nukes. A fucking shame.” I open both cans and hand him a beer.

He takes a small sip and then puts it between his legs. Five miles per hour under the speed limit. On his own, he would never ever drink a beer on the road. He’s been here awhile. He’s careful. I suck mine down and open another. I want to cut his throat but we’re in town now, on Mission.

“Drop me here.”

He pulls over. I get out.

“You be good, ” I say and then slam the door.

Walking through downtown, I notice the fresh crop of girls from the university shopping, enjoying their freedom. They all have perfect pussies.

“Hey, you, Katie’s friend!”

I turn to see a kid who seems to be somewhere between deadhead and squatter punk. “Can I help you?”

“She was only seventeen, man.”

“I haven’t seen her. I talked to the cops already.”

“Well, talk to me.”

“Look, kid, I’m sure she’s fine. She took a few things, her backpack, a sleeping bag. She’s probably up north doing the same shit; maybe she got some work trimming weed.”

“She wouldn’t just split. We spent eight months in my van going to shows. I know her. I know her mom and dad. She always called them to check in.”

“What can I say? She seemed happy, and then one day I came home and she was gone.” I step off the curb into the street. “Hey, kid, I miss her too. You know where I live?”

“Yeah,” he says.

“Come by in a bit. She left a few things that the cops didn’t take. You can have them.”

I can’t help but check the message board as I pass by the bus station. There are some new Missing posters: Katie Rose. Boyfriend probably put them up. That photo of her, a class picture. So cute. So clean. I’ll keep trying but I’ll never find another one like her. If I could have it my way, I’d fuck her every afternoon, kill her at night, and she’d be there, waking up next to me, smiling, in the morning.

As I walk along the bike path on the levee, the San Lorenzo River is green and still. Two distinguished cholos emerge from the stand of willows along the riprap.

“Yo, Carlos. I need a gram—”

“Keep walking, blondie. It’s hot.”

I’m sure they’re not looking for me, but just in case I take the back way into Beach Flats, through the community garden. The cops have the basketball court taped off. Eight of my neighbors are sitting on the ground, handcuffed. I go around the block and cut through my yard. On the back door, someone tagged, FUCK YOU. How dare they? Fucking beaners. No class. And they left their spray can on the ground next to their paper bag still wet with activo. Huffers, no less. Brain-dead lumps of shit.

I can’t buff this today so I take the can and paint the F into a B and then turn the Y into an L and I’ll just double the U.

BUCK LOW. That’s a bit better.

The faded sheets covering my windows give the living room a pleasant soft pink glow. I dig a roach out of the ashtray, get comfortable on the couch, and nibble on some pretzels. Little boyfriend will come by. He can’t resist the opportunity to hold something of hers. He probably loves her. I cook up a shot of chiva and coke. It’s good. I wish I had some speed. I shoot some more coke and then some chiva which evens me out a bit.

There he is, I hear him on the steps. I slide the works under the couch and wait for him to knock.

“Come in,” I say as I open the door.

“This is my friend Owl,” Katie’s friend says.

“That’s fine,” I say. This has become a bit more difficult than I anticipated, but I’m almost unable to contain my joy. “Come inside. Please, make yourselves comfortable.”

I lock the dead bolt, latch the chain, walk past them, and sit on the couch. Owl takes a seat on the La-Z-Boy. Boyfriend stays standing in the middle of the room.

“You like my place?” I say.

“So, where’s her stuff?”

“This is my grandparents’ house. The neighborhood has changed a lot since I was a boy.” I pull out some weed from beneath the couch cushion and start rolling a joint on the coffee table. “It was mostly hippies, artists, in the sixties and seventies, and then in the 1980s the Mexicans came and took over.”

“Really, that’s great.”

“Her heart was so pure, just a perfect angel,” I say. I light the joint take a hit and pass it to Owl. “I miss her.”

“No thanks,” Boyfriend says.

“Hey, don’t be rude,” I say. “I’m trying to be hospitable.”

“Stop fucking with me and just give me her shit.”

Owl is hitting the joint.

“Fine,” I say, and get off the couch and open the door to the bedroom. “In the box, under the bed.”

“Stay in the living room. And Owl, watch my back.”

“Hey, man, chill out. Mi casa es su casa.”

I can see the kid through the doorway as he pulls the box out from under the bed. I back up a few steps until I’m right behind Owl, who is still puffing on the joint. I take the knife out of my pocket, open it up, and then grab Owl by his dreads and slit his throat. He makes a sound somewhere between a wheeze and a whistle. The blood gurgles, runs down his chest, and he gets up, leaps for the door, fumbles at the knob, and falls to the ground. The boyfriend is in the bedroom doorway, stunned, holding onto Katie’s patchwork Hubbard dress. I pounce and drive the knife deep into his gut. With my hand over his mouth, I stab him over and over again.

I black-bag both of them, tape up the seams, and lay them side by side. Then I cut the black oversized trash bags and wrap up the La-Z-Boy. It was my father’s chair and I’m a bit reluctant to get rid of it but it’s covered in Owl’s blood. I’ll dump everything up north, near Pittsburg or Alameda, in the backwater of the San Francisco Bay.

I keep my grandfather’s old panel van parked in my garage. Inside, I’ve got my kit: quickset concrete, extra-large duffel bags, exercise weights, black contractor trash bags, duct tape, a hacksaw, bleach, gloves. I load the bodies in first and then the carpets and cover everything with a furniture blanket before putting the chair on top. Cal’s Plumbing “The Local Pro” is still proudly painted across both sides of the van. When the logo shows some wear, I touch it up, keep it looking fresh. I apprenticed under my uncle. It’s a family business and a good trade.

I get high and lock up the house while the van idles in the garage, and pull out and drive north onto Highway 1. The moon is waning but still full and bright, so after Davenport I turn off the headlights and drive by the moonlight.

Katie is close by. Passing the beach where she’s buried, I almost pull over so we can spend some time together before I set off on the road for a while. But leaving my van parked on the side of the highway with these two assholes in the back is a bad idea. I keep driving north, switch on the headlights, and light up a joint. I should be in San Francisco by dawn.

One night, long ago, just out of high school, I wandered through Golden Gate Park with a tire iron beneath my parka. A few people were around. I checked out a couple of kids my age passing joints, bottles of beer. I followed two bums until they cut through a hedge to a secret hollow in a thick patch of bush. I stalked a lone dog walker past the windmill to Ocean Beach. Unable to get up the nerve, I turned around and walked back toward the Haight until I came across the buffalo paddock. They were just standing there, cowlike and tame. So I climbed over and cornered the smallest one. It was just a baby, really. I clubbed it in the back of its thick skull. It wobbled, ran, I chased it down and whacked it again — and again, until it fell.

On its side, in the grass, the little creature’s boney chest rose and fell with deep, slow breaths. Unconscious, she seemed at peace, and I reached out, running my hand through her wooly fur. Then I put my ear to her side and her great heart was still thumping in its cage. I laid down beside her, spooned up against her back, nuzzled my face into the long, fine hair along the nape of her neck. In the languid warmth of the dying beast, I found a wonderful peace.

At sunrise, I pull off the highway at Pacifica and into a service station. As I pump gas and the surf rolls into Rockaway Beach, I know the tide has changed the estuary’s course. The sand has shifted. Katie has become unburied.

I hang up the nozzle, screw on the gas cap, go inside the mini-mart, and buy two bundles of firewood. I open the back of the van and toss the bundles on top of the bodies of Owl and Boyfriend. I notice that the blood has pooled beneath the furniture blankets and is now seeping under the door and over my rusted chrome bumper. I need to get rid of the mess in the back as planned, clean up the van. I should stay away from Santa Cruz for a bit, head north, lay low.

But I can’t just leave her back there.

A workman’s truck pulls up on the other side of the gas pump. A man in coveralls gets out with an oversized coffee mug and walks into the mini-mart. I wipe down the bumper with some paper towels and scan the parking lot before I throw all my bloody towels into the trash.

The man exits the mini-mart, coffee steaming in the cold morning sunlight. I get in the van, start it up. I can see her there, on the beach. Her blond hair is tangled in the windswept dune grass and her face is open to the bright sky. I put the van into gear, wave at the guy, and pull away from the station. He smiles and nods. In the side mirror, I watch him lean against his truck, put his mug down on the hood, and holler to the gas station attendant as I turn left onto the highway and head back south.

Whatever Happened To Skinny Jane? by Ariel Gore

Pacific Avenue

The acid was just coming on. Bob Innes, the lead singer of Fleece the Rich, took the Catalyst Club stage — and there was his girlfriend, rushing on to join him like panic with faint tracers. She wore this see-through Indian dress with a stuffed pillowcase underneath, like she’s pregnant, right?

And in the middle of the show, when they’re singing,“I awoke in a sweat from the Amerikan dream / Our rage against the war machine,” the girlfriend just started SCREAMING — I mean, bloody-murder-shrieking — and she’s performing a spontaneous miscarriage with all these bloodred fabrics from the pillowcase spilling out.

I think it’s part of the show — hell, it’s the Catalyst on Halloween — but Bob Innes and everyone else just looked like they’re trying to keep going.

“Their trickle-down fuckonomics obscene / Their ‘freedom’ is a pyramid scheme.”

The girlfriend’s still shrieking and then she started pulling handfuls of real blood from herself and what looked like small body parts and I remember thinking: Shit, I wish I had a girl like that.

I didn’t even think of myself as gay or straight back then, but I knew I was attracted to the fucked-up.

The room spun tangerine. Shrieks became hysterical laughter and “Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Guilty” and yes, I wanted a girl like Innes’s girl.

And, you know, sometimes I think I conjure people right up.

Does that sound crazy?

It’s the next day and I’m down at the Clock Tower ’cause Food Not Bombs is serving lunch without a permit and I’m not hungry or anything, but I just dropped another tab and I’m in the mood to start some shit with the police. Before I even get a chance, here comes this skinny girl in a skirt and no fuckin’ shirt on and she’s all limbs and yellow hair and tiny pink tits and she’s hungry — she’s practically starving, right?

So, fuck the police — I’ve got my steel-toed boots on and I’m gonna to get this skinny girl some food so I’m dodging SCPD billy clubs and I’m made of steel and the Food Not Bombs guy with his goatee is serving his grub fast, and it’s all sirens and pigs trying to shut it down, and I get this girl some lentils and I’m kind of sheltering her with my body as she spoons stew into her mouth, and when she’s done, I say, “What’s your name, sweetie?”

And she says, “Jane.”

I mean, who’s named Jane, right? You can’t make this shit up. So I say, “Pleased to meet you, Jane, I’m Apex.” And obviously she’s new in town or I’d know her already and she smiles real sweet like something you could crush and I think, I gotta have this girl.

I say, “I don’t know if you’ve already got a place to stay, Jane, but I’ve got a tent at San Lorenzo Park—” And right then I look up and the Food Not Bombs guy is shaking his head and smirking like that’s the oldest line in the book, like next thing, I’m gonna say, What’s your sign? and start reading to her from Real Astrology.

I wink at the Food Not Bombs guy, but also kind of scowl. I mean, motherfucker can back up off my action. I look back at Jane and she’s got the face of a hummingbird but I play it off like I don’t see that and I take her fluttering hand and that’s the day I moved skinny Jane into my tent and everything smelled damp like sea salt and eucalyptus.

Now, I won’t lie: all the other dropouts and runaways in San Lorenzo Park say my girl Jane was psycho right from the get-go, like they could tell by lookin’ at her skinny, smiling face.

But I said, Don’t judge, man, and Who cares, anyway? I mean, her parents had her locked up at Agnew’s for kissing girls and slitting her own wrists, but you’d probably try and kill yourself too if you were stuck in that god-awful pale-blue suburban tract house with your straight-ass parents for all eternity. Did you know Agnew’s was once called the Great Asylum for the Insane and fell down in the 1906 quake and all the lunatics ran out when the building crumbled? — never got caught.

We were never going to get caught neither. I liked the way Jane needed me to hold her at night, the way she asked me to pin her arms to her sides real gentle-like, but tight.

She had nightmares.

She whispered stories about serial killers to soothe herself back to sleep. She whispered, “You ever hear of the Coed Killer, Apex?”

And truth is, I hadn’t.

I had Jane’s arms pinned to her sides and she’s whispering to me about this 1970s serial killer, and she lets her voice get kind of raspy when she whispers. She says, “He hated his mother, that was the thing, and his mom worked at the university and he had an IQ of, like, 145, and he was a giant too, maybe six foot nine, and heavy. His mother was completely narcissistic and abusive, so this giant grew up to be this homicidal psycho — he killed his grandmother when he was a teenager, and when his grandpa got home, he killed him too, and he served maybe five years in the Atascadero State Hospital, but they released him back to his mom up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1969.”

I tried holding her just a little bit tighter, but Jane wanted to keep talking.

“He started killing girls he picked up hitchhiking. He buried one girl’s head in his mother’s garden like it was this twisted joke because he said his mom always wanted people to look up to her.” Jane’s breath kind of settled as she talked, like other people’s terror calmed her own.

“He hung out in this cop bar on Ocean Street called The Jury Room and he befriended all the detectives so he could keep a step ahead — and not ONE of them suspected him. They just filled him in on the case, night after night. Finally, he killed his mother and her best friend — maybe her lover — and he ripped out her vocal cords and blasted them in the garbage disposal, and then he felt better! Cops never would’ve caught him, but he was done. Over it. He turned himself in. Confessed to everything.” Jane took a deep breath and sighed in my arms. “Apex?”

“Yes, Jane?”

“You’re gonna think I’m fucked up.”

My heart raced. “No, baby.”

“Sometimes I have this fantasy that I get strangled and somebody severs my head and buries, buries me looking up...”

I held her arms so tight. She finally trailed off and fell asleep.

We lived like that in my old tent in the bushes for almost three weeks. But the rains were coming on, and the cops were getting crazy on everybody, not just us — coming through at sunrise like they owned the place and kicking everybody awake. I’d already sold all the LSD I came to town with, except for my personal stash, and the outlook seemed pretty bleak. So when my girl Jane came running across the grass one morning, skinny limbs flying in every direction, scaring the ducks in the pond and yelling that she got us a room at the St. George Hotel, I wasn’t about to ask her how she pulled that one off.

I mean, for all I knew she had her suburban parents wire her money straight from their Costco lasagna dinner in Cupertino. I just packed up my tent and followed her skinny ass across the river and onto the Pacific Garden Mall.

I’m telling you, the old St. George was the best. Seedy and fancy at the same time, art deco and cracked plaster, creaking floors and red carpet. I was high, I admit it, but I knew that old-fashioned elevator was a portal to another realm the minute I stepped inside of it and pulled the metal grate door closed and the machine heaved us up, just rope and iron.

Jane said right then, “All the ifs are gonna become is,” and I wanted to kiss my girl so hard right then, but I didn’t.

Our room had black-and-white tile floors and a blue lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Who let Joni Mitchell in here? Me and skinny Jane had a place to get us through mudslide season.

“Or until the culmination,” Jane whispered.

I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. We could’ve been happy there.

Jane pulled the blinds closed against the morning gray and killed all the lights except the blue one. The place glowed dark like it was moonlit and Jane’s eyes gleamed. Her face looked so thin.

She said, “Now we can listen to it,” and she unzipped her backpack and pulled out an old cassette tape and a boom box and said, “This one is gonna blow your mind.”

“Should we smoke a bowl?”

“Don’t you have any acid?”

So I reached into my wallet and we each put a tab on our tongue and we stretched out on our thrift-store blankets and my Jane pressed Play with her big toe and grabbed my neck.

She said, “Listen.”

And it’s Edmund Kemper on tape, the Coed Killer himself, confessing his whole life. All calm. He said: “It started with surrogates at that, uh, nonhuman level. Physical objects: my possessions, other people’s, destruction of things that are cared about. And then to destruction of things that are living, on a lower level: small animals, uh, insects, animals, and then finally people.”

I opened my eyes and everything, every single thing, was indigo.

“He just started with objects that were cared about,” Jane whispered.

I wondered if we’d ever have anything we cared about. I imagined painting birds on canvas and blue glass goblets we could cherish and smash and that’s when I noticed the walls of our room were becoming less solid, melting like wax, maybe, melting like confines.

Kemper’s voice reverberated against the unsolid walls. He said: “If it’d been in a city, I’d have been a mass murderer at age fifteen. I would’ve killed until they gunned me down. I wouldn’t have been able to reason my way out of it. I was scared to death and I was violent. I felt my back hit that wall. I was the rabbit that always ran, that always backed away; always burned his bridges.”

My girl Jane says, “You ever burn your bridges, Apex?”

The acid came on. I get up on all fours and close my eyes and concentrate until I turn myself into a rabbit and I’m running — like scampering down the Pacific Garden Mall — and Jane says, “Apex! Let’s hitchhike.”

Her words pop my rabbit spell and I open my eyes and say, “Hitchhike where, baby?” ’Cause we didn’t have any damn place to go, but I look around our room just then and the walls have completely vanished.

Kemper is saying: “I was losing a grasp on something that was too violent to keep inside forever. As I’m sitting there with a severed head in my hand, talking to it, or looking at it, and I’m about to go crazy, literally... I told myself, ‘No, it isn’t. You’re saying that, and that makes it not insane.’”

Kemper’s voice is all there is. I’m my own rabbit again and I’m running, but I’ve been decapitated, a headless rabbit, and I’m trying to catch my breath. Then I’m human again, just us under the blue light at the St. George.

My girl Jane was nineteen right then and I was eighteen. I was thinking, No way, right? But then Jane said, “Let’s find our serial killer, Apex,” and who the hell could say no to that?

“Culmination,” Jane said. Her eyes were sapphires. Had her eyes always been sapphires? In those gems I saw our two minds become one — the ifs all became is. The fucking Apex right there.

Kemper’s voice kept rolling: “I didn’t go hog wild and totally limp. What I’m saying is I found myself doing things in an attempt to make things fit together inside.”

And just then — I got it. That was my problem too — needing to make things fit together inside.

We stood close, right on Mission Street. All the lights on.

The first car that pulled over was this Audi with a Michael Dukakis bumper sticker. The guy driving looks creepy as all get-out with his horn-rimmed glasses and I look at Jane and I can tell she’s excited. We both get in the back and he turns around as he starts the car and says, “You girls really shouldn’t be hitchhiking out here, you know? Are you students?”

For a second I think he means he’s the weirdo we shouldn’t hitchhike with and my heart races, but Jane rolls her eyes and shakes her head. ’Cause she knows.

The guy turns out to be some do-gooder biology professor and Jane’s looking at the door handle, wondering if we can make a break for it, roll on out while this guy is driving, but it’s useless.

He isn’t gonna be happy until we are all tucked in next to our mommies and our Barbie dream houses. So Jane says, “We’re sisters, we’re from Canada, and we’re meeting our aunt on Water Street and we missed the bus, okay?” She directs him to some better-than-Denny’s place which seems to satisfy his sense of propriety and we scramble out of the backseat and head over to The Jury Room to regroup.

Now, you gotta love a bar that looks like the goddamn Foursquare Church from outside. More than that, you gotta love a bartender who barely glances at your fake ID that features some blond bitch you never knew who once lived in your tent in San Lorenzo Park.

The place smells like smoke and Roy Orbison croons on the jukebox. We sit on the red vinyl barstools and order a couple of Coors, ’cause up on the chalkboard it says they’re as cold as your ex’s heart.

I say, “How about let’s try the road up to Felton.” It’s Highway 9 and it narrows fast and deep into the redwoods and I can already see the serial killers cruising up and down those curves waiting for two little girls with their thumbs out, and Jane nods. Her skin flickers red in the bar light.

Outside, the asphalt’s wet, but it isn’t raining.

First car that stops is some old sedan and the woman driving it cranes her neck toward us and says, “Where’re you headed?”

And I say, “Felton?”

I glance at my girl Jane, like, Can we trust a woman to murder us? Jane gets my question telepathically and she nods, so we climb into the back and it smells of patchouli. The woman starts talking, chattery-chat, and there’s graham cracker crumbs between the seats and I’m just shaking my head because where’s a goddamn serial killer when your girl wants one?

Little Miss Chatty-Chat, mother of graham-cracker eaters, says, “Where in Felton?”

My girl Jane looks like she’s gonna cry and I’m really about to lose it. I say, “Any goddamn place.”

The woman driver startles, offended, and pulls over at the first stop sign in town. “You girls be careful out there.”

I can feel all the blood moving in my veins and Jane takes my arm, like everything’s gonna be all right. We cross the street as the sedan rolls away and we stick out our thumbs again and skinny Jane winks at me and she says, “Third time’s a charm.”

Maybe she’s right. We’re waiting out there a long time. Hardly any cars. It’s getting cold and I whisper to my girl Jane, “Are you cold?”

She smiles at me sad, sad blue smile light, and that’s when the VW van rolls up and the front door flies open and I climb up into the front seat and Jane takes the back. The driver has long, greasy hair, and he says, “You wanna do some coke?”

Hell yeah.

He gets out this cracked old mirror and cuts three lines on it. Powder feels like power. I snort it and pocket the razor.

You ever sever a whole fuckin’ head with a razor?

It’s not easy. All the skin and tendon and throat and bone. I gotta be honest with you: I blame Jane.

Kemper said: “I am an American and I killed Americans, I am a human being and I killed human beings, and I did it in my society.”

That cassette tape of hers really did a number. Even as I tightened my grip around her skinny little neck, she still begged me to squeeze harder. She was begging me with her sapphires, wasn’t she? I was just trying to give her what she wanted. For all the ifs to become is? I’m a runaway. I killed a runaway. Do you get that? I’m a dropout who killed another dropout. And even as I severed her psycho little head, all blood and tendons, I was thinking, I’m taking care of my girl, right?

It’s not like I don’t have a conscience. I know a person’s eventually supposed to turn their ass in and make some calm confession. But that’s why I’m telling you right here at The Jury Room, where everything smells like smoke and Roy Orbison is still crooning. I had to get this whole thing off my chest before I blow this fuckin’ town. And while I’m at it, I’ll tell you the weird part.

I went back to San Lorenzo Park. I couldn’t very well stay on at the St. George. For the first few nights I was paranoid, like the cops at sunrise were coming just for me. But they kicked everyone out like they always had, and I didn’t care — but, you know, not one of the kids in the park asked me what happened to my girl Jane.

Like, how can a person fuckin’ vanish and nobody’s gonna come looking for her?

I lace up my boots and walk up to the Clock Tower and the Food Not Bombs guy is getting ready to set up his grub and I ask him, I say, “Don’t you wonder what ever happened to skinny Jane?”

Guy scratches his goatee and looks at me quizzical-like, and he says, “Apex, you’re the only person I ever met named Jane.” He smiles and shakes his head. “I remember when you showed up here emaciated and topless and bragging about the ten sheets of acid you stole from your psychiatrist before you busted out of Agnew.” He shakes his head again. “I was worried about you back then. You seemed really vulnerable.”

I could just taste the faintest bile in my mouth.

Sometimes I still think about that. I put a tab of acid on my tongue and I run my hands over my pink little tits and I wonder if skinny Jane was ever separate from me or if she was just the part of myself I wanted badly and knew had to die — like Bob Innes’s girlfriend’s baby back at the Catalyst.

I remember a lot more about where Jane came from than where I did. I try to remember my life before I got here, and the furthest back I can recall is when I was on a bus riding Highway 17 up into the mountains where the oak trees give way to second-growth redwoods. I remember cresting the Summit, my passenger window cracked, and the wisp of ocean air and smell of eucalyptus.

But then I let the questions go.

What does it matter, really?

I killed my girl Jane.

I’ll never know if we started out as two, ’cause truth be told, nobody ever came looking for either one of us.

I buried her head in San Lorenzo Park, right next to the duck pond and blue playground slide.

I buried her looking up.

Monarchs and Maidens by Margaret Elysia Garcia

Capitola

That little girl stood right in my way.

“You’re lucky to be here,” she said.

I was carrying the last of the boxes from the U-Haul trailer to my new furnished cottage. It was one of those mother-in-law units — sharing a long driveway with a main house up the road.

“These were built to be maid’s quarters, you know,” the girl continued. She looked to be about ten, with straight dirty-blond hair and small brown eyes. I was taking an instant dislike to her. She was the kind of child privy to too many adult conversations and too many items on her Christmas list. She already knew she belonged to a class far above me, and likely most of the other tenants she encountered in Capitola.

I smiled to acknowledge she was talking, but I said nothing back. She didn’t offer to help.

“Really. This unit is never empty for very long. We used to use it as a guest room, but we’ve remodeled rooms in the main house. You could’ve wound up in the trailer park,” she said.

I was to be here for six months, working on a grant project out of UC Santa Cruz. I wanted to tell the girl I owned a house someplace else. Someplace just as nice as Capitola, if not better. I was taking this job to be helpful and useful to the world — and because primo academic jobs were hard to come by. It was an honor. A feather in my cap. Why did I feel the need to explain this to a ten-year-old?

“Sometimes my parents allow the tenant access to the pool too. I can put in a good word for you.” She sat in an oversized wicker chair by the door. Her legs dangled over the edge. She kicked at the marble umbrella stand with two long black umbrellas in them.

I hadn’t even noticed how odd the furnishings were. It felt like the whole cottage was Hawaii-themed from the 1970s — perhaps an effort to make Capitola-by-the-Sea feel warmer and cozier than the fog would allow for.

I smiled at the girl and stood in front of her to offer my hand and help her up. She didn’t take it. “Well, that looks like that’s my last box,” I said. “Going to go return the U-Haul now. You can come by some other time.”

“I don’t need to go anywhere.”

“But you do. I’ve rented this place from your parents. It is mine for the time being. I need you to go.”

“But I always hang out in here.”

“Not today, I’m afraid.”

“You’re going to need me,” she said. She stood up and walked around me, eyeing me up and down. I felt defensive about — well, everything — my dress with its pilling around the arms, my shoes from five years ago. Everything. The girl opened the door and looked back. “Suit yourself. Though it is very — very ill-advised. My parents can tell you more about it.” She walked toward the main house.

I exhaled, locked the door behind me, and headed out to return the trailer.

As I merged onto Highway 1, I could feel the fog settling in. Perhaps the Hawaiian décor would help a seasonal depression that was sure to take hold given the constant damp I’d felt in just a few days of being here. It was September and I felt like I couldn’t get warm.

I found the Capitola cottage while having a bite to eat at the local strip mall book café. There were poetry anthologies out front and a giant brass elephant head on the wall. Both things made me calm. Their bulletin board said a cottage was available and that the owners only took graduate students or visiting professors. I fit in somewhere in between. I took their ad to mean they would be serious, older, and, for some reason, childless. They would, no doubt, invite me to tea. We’d exchange poetry.

Sharon, the wife, had bobbed blond hair and a country-club smile. The husband, Bradley, seemed a little out of it, but innocuous — sandy brown hair, overly groomed face. I admired a Victorian chair they had in the foyer when I came for the interview. Its upholstery was faded yellow, with bright leaves in the print. Holes and a few brown stains. The arms were solid oak and the legs had an inlay of cast-iron fleur-de-lis. I liked the chair immediately. It signaled that they’d be appreciative of antiquities but not too fussy about having everything absolutely manicured.

“This chair?” Bradley said. “It has a fascinating history. The innkeepers who used to own this property back in the early 1900s. Well, the wife shot herself in the face in this chair. You can still see the stains. Isn’t it marvelous? What a story!” He pointed out frays in the fabric and told me he just didn’t have the heart to restore it. He was sure you could still smell the gunpowder if you breathed in deep. He never looked at my face to gauge my reaction. Part of me appreciated him for that.

Then they led me out to the cottage they were renting for nearly four hundred dollars under the current market for houses in the Santa Cruz County area. The girl wasn’t with them.

U-Haul had the usual queue. I couldn’t wait to drive back to the cottage to set up my desk. I’d made sure to leave space in the living room to house the library I’d need for the six months.

The girl was sitting on my couch when I opened the door. “You took too long,” she said.

“You’ve broken-and-entered my cottage. Are your parents home?”

“You seem stressed out. You shouldn’t get stressed out. Although I suppose that’s what your kind does?”

“My kind?”

“Why, yes. The lower middle-class is always stressed out,” she said.

I dropped my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. “I need time alone to set up my office,” I said.

“It’s too bad you probably can’t afford a new laptop. This space could do without the clutter of older technology. But, chacun à son gout, as my mother says.” She stood up and I escorted her out and locked the windows and dead-bolted the door this time.

“When people around here want to chill out, they go to Natural Bridges Park,” she said over her shoulder. “You should, too. Relax.”

I unboxed my books and set up my old iMac on the old secretary’s desk I brought with me. I had a laptop too. A MacBook Air. Sure, it was a few years old — that just proves they last. I was muttering to myself again. I took out my old iPod and speaker out of a box and put on something old too. There was nothing on that iPod newer than 2006. I mean, my phone has newer things, but this particular device didn’t.

Little girl wasn’t even there and I was still justifying. I picked up my phone and dialed Sharon’s cell phone. I left her a message. Could she meet me somewhere so we could have coffee and chat? There were a few things I wanted to go over.

The phone rang. Sharon said to meet her at the book café.

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” she said the moment she arrived. “Madison is hanging out over there? She did kind of like to use it as a life-sized dollhouse. I’m so sorry. We’ll speak to her.”

“Thank you,” I said, and took a sip of the hot chai I’d ordered. “I think it’s great that she takes an interest in people, but I’m here to do research and promote this new program and that’s going to really fill my time.”

“I so understand. I do apologize for her. Madison doesn’t have many friends.”

Yes. Yes, I might have known that. “Where does she go to school?”

“Oh, we homeschool now. It’s really better this way — especially since the accident.” Sharon barely registered my raised eyebrow; she was practiced. “Madison did have a really good friend. They used to love gardening together. Well, one day Ashley and Maddy were climbing trees to catch butterflies. And Ashley missed a branch and stepped on one that was too small for her. Maddy was always telling her she was too fat to climb the trees. It broke and she fell out of the tree. Dead. Maddy said she couldn’t catch her. It happened too fast.”

“I’m so sorry.” What else could I say? Jesus. It’s not what I thought going out to coffee would be about. “Madison does seem very adult for her age.”

“Yes, I know she does.”

I chickened out going further. There was no way of not sounding like an asshole. I drove back to the cottage to finish setting up my desk. Madison was on the doorstep. At least she wasn’t inside.

“Your mother tells me you are homeschooled,” I said.

“Yes. For now,” the girl replied. “I’ve had a few tutors — the last one lived here, in fact. The other is around here somewhere. Anyhow. Yes. It suits me much better.”

“So is that why you keep hanging around my cottage? Because you used to come here for lessons?” I tried to keep my face from giving me away.

“My parents are busy. I manage our property for them since I’m home more often. I pay the gardener and the maid. I order the groceries. We have to make sure you’re a good fit for this place.”

“I signed my agreement with your father and mother,” I said.

Maybe I was hoping she’d see reason. I kept forgetting she was ten. This time I just closed the door and dead-bolted it behind me. I thought I could hear her mouth-breathing outside the door. I turned on music to drown her out and finished setting up my new temporary home.

In the early evening, before it went dark, I decided I’d take a walk into the village.

I saw Bradley pulling up the drive as I walked down our little hill of driveway. He waved good-naturedly and rolled down the window. Did I need a lift? I politely declined. There was no sign of Madison or the mother.

I walked clear down to the beach. It was a sweet two-street downtown filled with old-time-y quaint buildings. Present history clearly started at a specific time in architecture, by design. As darkness fell, my hair tangled in the salt air, I felt an uneasy veneer of displacement. I’d read that Capitola was once an Indian village — the Soquel people — driven out, of course, by those who sought to “better the land.” They were on my mind as I walked back up the hillside. That, and the knowledge that no matter what I did with my life now, I would never be able to afford to buy a house anywhere in my native California; I would always feel driven out.

When I got back, there was a small tray on the porch with a lacquered black box on it and a note. A monarch butterfly painted on the top. I put water on for tea, placed the tray on the coffee table, and read the note: Don’t agree to be a tutor. It isn’t safe here.

I looked over the message with the fortune-cookie-sized advice several times. I didn’t know the handwriting. It didn’t look like Bradley’s or Sharon’s when I checked their signatures on the lease agreement for comparison. I opened the black box and it contained a small crucifix necklace with a butterfly where the body of Christ would be.

I drank my tea and showered before bed. I put on my new necklace.

I was sitting in my kimono on the couch, staring at the same page of a book for what seemed like hours, when there was a knock on the door. It was Bradley. Maybe he found out about the Madison stuff and was here to apologize too.

“Hi, Bradley. What brings you out here?”

“Madison told us over dinner,” he said, “how impressed she was with you and your book collection and what you’re working on for the university. We know you’re probably busy, but we also know that college budgets are tight. We were wondering if you’d be interested in tutoring Madison in exchange for lobbing off a few more hundred from the rent. Think about it and let us know?”

In truth, it would bring down my rent considerably. Bradley’s offer meant my rent would actually be reasonable for six hundred square feet. I thought about the note I received. It was probably from Madison herself. I had a feeling I’d be seeing her all the time anyhow. Might as well get paid for it.

I said yes.

“Excellent,” Bradley said. “You can start tomorrow. Just an hour a day would keep her on track with her studies.”

I saw Bradley out. There was a small tray with another box and note on the ground by the planter.

“Secret admirer, huh?” said Bradley, as he whistled off across the driveway toward his house.

I opened the second box. It held a tiny petrified cocoon that had been made into a perfect lapel pin. I opened the note, my heart racing.

Protect yourself. And don’t look too closely in the backyard.

I went inside and found a flashlight. I immediately went to the backyard. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but there were large mounds of dirt in the rosebushes that looked as if something had been buried there. I went back inside and locked up the house. I locked up the rooms and slept on the couch. It was buttressed by a wall and seemed like the safest place. I hardly slept at all.

The next day I got up early and drove to the university provost’s office to check on paperwork and orientation. In the afternoon I headed home and Madison was waiting on the front step.

“Hello, my new tutor.”

“Yes, I suppose I am. You’ll have to tell me where you are in your studies so we can plan a course of study.”

“I need to know everything. For instance, who is sending you notes and boxes?” Right next to Madison’s Mary-Jane’d foot was yet another box and note.

“Tell you what, Madison — why don’t we start in an hour? I have to eat some lunch and attend to a few things first. I will meet you up at your place.” Again I whipped inside the house and dead-bolted the door behind me.

I opened the box. In it was a silver charm bracelet. Each charm was a butterfly but one was a tombstone. My name and birth date was inscribed on the largest charm. With a question mark at the other side for a death date.

You aren’t going to make it here.

I got out my laptop and began hunting for other places to live. Perhaps someone knew someone at the college who could put me up a couple of days. There was a knock. Of course, Madison had come back already. But it was Sharon. She had mail in her hand for me. A letter from the college. It was one of those glassine envelopes with something pink inside.

“Did your job get cut? That seems to happen all the time these days.” Sharon half-smiled.

Indeed. I figured I might as well open it up in front of her.

Something had happened with the funding. The job was on hiatus but the department head was sure they’d find funding from another source.

“Seems like it’s a great windfall for us. We can use you full time!” Sharon acted like she’d won a prize at the Boardwalk. “Let’s get a drink up at my house, shall we? When are they going to treat academics with the respect they deserve?”

“I told Madison I’d tutor her in an hour.”

“And you will, but first a drink! Then I’ll show you the library where she takes her lessons.”

Sharon led me by the hand up to the main house. I was stunned that my prestigious job was gone so fast, so fleetingly. A nice glass of wine was needed. At least Sharon is understanding, I thought.

“Let’s drink in the wine cellar. We had it custom-made and built into the hillside. It’s like a little café in there!”

I followed in Sharon’s footsteps. She punched a code in the side of the cellar door and a metal door opened. There were rows and rows of bottles inside. A little French café table and two chairs in the middle. She offered me the nicest one and found a pinot noir she thought would suit the occasion.

I drank two glasses on an empty stomach. And then a third. I felt sleepy. I felt Sharon’s fingers on my face brushing my hair back behind my ear. “It’s so unfair what you’ve been through!” she said. I felt her kiss on my neck. Then I felt nothing at all.

I woke up groggy and in my own bed. I couldn’t remember a thing after that kiss. There was no sign of anyone around me. I made coffee. I called Sharon’s number but there was no answer so I left a message: “Uh, it’s me. I don’t think this is going to work out. Money isn’t everything.” I opened the front door thinking perhaps Madison was out there, but she wasn’t.

I took Maddy’s advice from the other day. I drove out to Natural Bridges State Park to check out where the monarch butterflies migrate to hang in the trees by the thousands. A group of schoolchildren was leaving as I entered the trail. They’d all just been down there, so why couldn’t I do the same?

If you’re like me and don’t have the best vision, you don’t notice the butterflies, at first. But as you go closer to the trees, you realize they are moving. Thousands of monarchs beat their wings about the eucalyptus and pine so that trees appear to dance. They move back and forth like a kelp forest in a tide zone. Orange and black and white, so thick that the tree colors are hidden. The farther you go on the trail, the thicker the colony. By the end of the path there seem to be nothing left but the beating of a million orange wings.

It had a dizzying effect. I stumbled and found a park bench to sit on. My breath was quick — like the life of a butterfly itself. Had Madison known the effect it would have on me? Had she suggested this place for a reason? I wanted to be kind now — to bridge whatever it was that had set me to hate her. But I couldn’t help it.

And then I saw a girl around Maddy’s same age, staring up at me from an opposite bench. She had a neck brace on.

“I’m Ashley,” she said, “the dead girl who fell from the tree. Perhaps you heard of me? You’re one of the tutors, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” I said.

Ashley pulled a phone from her pocket and called a number. “Found her. I can wait till you arrive,” she said.

“You’re not dead?” I asked. I reached out to see if she was a ghost.

“Well, of course I am. But I have a job now.”

Two figures appeared at the top of the trail. It was Sharon and Bradley in their Land’s End trench coats. They smiled and waved.

“You need to remember to ask permission, young lady,” Sharon said, marching up to my side. “We can’t have you just wandering off like that. Give Bradley your keys.”

I did as I was told and dug into my pocket to get them. At the same time, I pulled out the cocoon pin and the butterfly necklace.

“What is that?” Sharon shrieked. Her whole body pulled away from me, like she was retreating into the air itself. Bradley stepped forward to shield her, but with the amulets in my hand, he too screamed and flapped away.

Ashley cackled hysterically.

“What’s going on?” I asked her. “What’s happening to them?”

“Nothing they don’t deserve,” she said. “But you’ve broken the spell. Thank you.” She sat down on the bench again. Her neck sank brokenly against her shoulder. Her eyes closed and she slumped over — and died.

I put the necklace around my neck and the pin on my dress. Sharon and Bradley squawked like chickens in a pen, helpless. They couldn’t get any closer and they couldn’t run away.

Wherever the jewelry touched on my skin it felt warm. I clasped the charm bracelet on my wrist and noticed that the butterflies seemed to be moving. Wings flying around my wrists. Sharon and Bradley were naked.

“Aargh — after all we’ve done to help teachers like you! We’re the only ones who really care anymore!” Sharon screamed.

“We rented for under market value! You should have been grateful!” Bradley seconded his wife.

I heard a wind come up from the eucalyptus — one of the strongest I’d ever heard, deafening. It was the monarchs’ wings. They were swarming, and all at once they descended upon the couple — a whole grove of butterflies — onto Sharon and Bradley’s pink flesh. I backed away and left the butterflies to it. None of them touched me.

Madison was waiting for me at my car. “Thanks,” she said. “CPS was totally useless, you know. You were far better.”

“I’m not even sure what I did,” I said.

“You weren’t really willing to be bought.”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“You don’t have to move out, you know... and I kind of need a guardian now. At least on paper.”

Madison had a point. The housing market still sucked.

“Okay,” I said. “Just promise me not to lurk around the cottage so much?”

“I’ll try not to lurk at all.”

“We’ll see how it goes,” I said. The fog had rolled all the way in. I drove us home. My jewelry had cooled off. It felt just right on my skin.

54028 Love Creek Road by Jessica Breheny

Bear Creek Road

I walk from my classroom at San Jose City College to the faculty lot, my coat draped over my elbow, tote bags full of papers that need grading slung on each shoulder, my hands gripping my dinner leftovers and an invitation to a union picnic. I don’t have a hand free to pull up the worn waistband of my skirt, which keeps falling down lower and lower on my hips. Dim amber lights illuminate the fog that trolled in while I was teaching my evening class. My white car is a smudge in a far corner of the lot, now, at 9:45 p.m., nearly empty.

I cut diagonally toward my car and hear the voice of my student Frank Gonzalo yell, “Miss! Doctor — Profess — Miss Janet—” His arms pump back and forth as he walks toward me.

Frank has missed the last two weeks of class, and his essay is late. He’s a tall man in his forties with a doughy face. He is wearing a shiny short-sleeved shirt printed with flames and skulls, and he smells of Bleu de Chanel. He brandishes a rolled-up piece of paper.

“My essay!” he says. He is out of breath. “Here, I’ll help you to your car.” He takes my leftover dinner and one of my bags and hands me his paper.

I pull up my sagging skirt as we walk. I have been teaching since 8 a.m., starting with two morning classes at Cabrillo College with its Monterey Bay views, then an afternoon class at West Valley College in Saratoga where every student drives a Benz — and, finally, ending my day at San Jose City College, flanked on one side by the freeway and on the other, an emergency room. I am hoping to get home to Ben Lomond with an hour or so of time to myself to shower and read before going to bed.

“You’ve missed a lot of classes,” I say. After his last paper, I’d hoped he wasn’t coming back.

“It’s my stomach. I have a note from the doctor. He says I have an ulcer. I have to keep, you know...” he lowers his voice to a whisper, “going to the bathroom.”

A motorcycle screeches past on Moorpark, the four-laner that divides the college from Highway 280.

“You can’t miss any more classes, okay? Or I have to drop you.” I fish my keys from the bottom of a bag of papers and open my car.

“I need to pass,” he says. “It’s—” again he whispers, “my probation officer. She wants me in school.”

His first essay was about his probation officer who, he wrote, was “always in all of my business.” She even stopped by his house sometimes unannounced. He ended his paper by saying he was in school to be an inspiration for his nieces and nephews and to earn a good living to “support his lady.”

“You need to come to class to pass.”

An airplane bellows overhead, descending toward the airport. Frank hovers so close I think for a moment that he might be planning to get into my car. He is very tall. I am eye level with a skull on his shirt, a flame burning in its mouth.

“No, no, you see, you don’t understand.” He gestures to his belly. “I’m not feeling very well. But I need to pass. And my group, you know, they still require a lot from me.”

Frank’s “group” is one of the major gangs — he hasn’t told me which one. His “group” was the topic of his second essay, a wandering mess describing his position of leadership. He is busy with a full-time job as a bouncer at a club downtown, and he said he was trying to get out of his gang but he still had to give them money and help run meetings. He made being in a gang sound boring, like serving on the board of a neighborhood association, except that in his conclusion he said he’d “hurt a lot of people.”

I tuck my bags into the back of the car, next to stacks of papers from my other classes. Frank’s cologne lingers.

“I need to go. It’s late.”

“Don’t drop me,” he says. “Read my paper. I was more descriptive, like you said we should be.”

I settle into the driver’s seat and close the door. He says something I don’t hear. He smiles and waves as I pull away.

To avoid the late-night construction on Highway 17, I take the hairpin turns of Bear Creek Road home to Ben Lomond. I’m tailgated most of the way by a car so close behind me that all I can see are its brights. I can’t make out the turnouts on the unlit road. Just after the Summit, the tailgater turns off, and I’m left alone in the darkness to muddle my way home. I pass a pile of car parts in a driveway. To my right are steep drops. It would be so easy to miscalculate a curve and drive right off.

When I get home, I turn on the space heater in my one-room rental and change out of the clothes I’ve been wearing since dawn. It’s only October but starting to get cold already. I look through my half-fridge for something to eat. Last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast dishes are piled in the sink; a dirty pan sits on the hotplate with a crust of pasta starch and rancid oil shimmering under the overhead light.

My landlord’s house is dark. He’s gone away on a vision quest with his shaman and won’t be back until Thanksgiving. I’m by myself on his six-acre property, up a long gravel driveway above Love Creek. The nearest neighbors are a mother and daughter who breed Burmese cats. The lights of their cabin are visible in the distance through the forest. I have never stayed for any length of time in a place this isolated before. The aloneness has taken on a heavy quality.

I make toast while I sort through the papers from the five classes I taught today. I unroll Frank’s paper, conscientiously stapled on the right-hand corner, his name typed on the first page, and a centered title, “My Life.” The assignment asked students to write about a single decision that changed their lives — not their entire lives — but he begins, “I was born in San Jose. The son of two parents a single mother and a father which was absent mostly.” I am about to check on my toast when I see the word “bleeding” near the bottom of the first page.

I read the sentences again. They are set in a paragraph about the “group.” The next paragraph is about going to church and how God can “transform everything unto something better.” Smoke wafts from the toast that is now burning in the toaster oven. I unplug it and look again at the paper. On the last page, he writes in his conclusion, “I had done a lot of things in my life. I’m am changing who I am and what I’m going to be.”

I look again at “pray to god for mercy because stabbed him.” He has left out the personal pronoun that should precede the word, “stabbed,” but obviously, someone was stabbed by someone. I make another piece of toast and get into bed.

The quiet in my house is so loud, I put earplugs in to muffle it. My bed is cold as dirt. I turn and face the wall and think, Because stabbed him. I see a young man, maybe twenty-five, the age of my daughter Zia, bleeding, too hurt to even beg for his life, being kicked. And Frank — maybe this stabber — standing there, watching. I will need to report the paper to someone in the morning. The campus police, perhaps the dean.

My alarm goes off at six. I’m exhausted and can’t imagine teaching “citation” in my morning English 1A at Cabrillo. The more tired I am in class, the more my students tend to slip away from me, into their phones, or wherever it is they go in the space they stare at, when I call their names. It will be another day where I won’t be able to hold their attention. I still owe them grades on papers they turned in two weeks ago.

Over coffee, I check my campus e-mail accounts. Two students who’ve been absent in my West Valley “Intro to Lit” write to tell me they were absent. An e-mail at Cabrillo alerts employees that e-mail will be down for maintenance. The dean at San Jose City College writes about an upcoming division meeting I can’t attend. The SJCC union sends another reminder about the union picnic. And I have an e-mail from Frank: Don’t tell anyone what I wrote, okay. It is confidential. I just want to be descriptive. And then, under that: 54028 Love Creek Road. My address.

For a moment, I don’t register what the e-mail means. A spring of nausea bubbles up from my stomach and percolates into the tips of my fingers. Frank knows where I live. Frank is telling me he knows where I live.

I stand up and walk to the other side of the room, as far away from the computer as possible. I want to run outside, away from 54028 Love Creek Road, and I want to check the locks on the door and windows and stay inside 54028 Love Creek Road. I don’t do either. I am having trouble breathing.

I turn on my phone to call the campus police but stop after the area code, my index finger hovering over the number. Frank knows where I live, and if he got in trouble, he could come to my house. And even if the police took his description of the stabbing seriously and arrested him, he could always send someone else.

I pace around the house. It’s too small for my belongings, and I don’t have time during the semesters to clean. Each week of the sixteen-week semester it gets messier. Now, eight weeks into the fall term, dishes sit on the floor under my futon with dried pasta noodles, the recycling bag overflows with yogurt containers and diet soda cans, a flow of dirty clothes erupts out of the open drawers of the small dresser I picked up at the Abbot’s thrift shop in Felton. I stare at a pile of clothes on the floor. I imagine a bleeding man being kicked over and over again by a heavy boot.

My ex-husband Ben is a lawyer, and our daughter Zia is in law school. I want to call them both to ask advice. But I can’t get them involved. The paper might be evidence of a crime, and they would want to report it to the police.

I’ll just pass Frank. That’s it. He doesn’t want anything else from me. I’ll tell him his descriptions are good in his paper and leave it at that. It’s none of my business what he’s done. It’s between him and his conscience. Besides, he never actually says he stabbed anyone, just “because stabbed him.” Without a subject in the sentence, anyone could have done the stabbing. I imagine the grammar lesson I could give with Frank’s sentence — I stabbed him / You stabbed him / They stabbed him / Frank stabbed him.

I reply to his e-mail: I got your note. I understand. I add, No problem, in an effort to sound casual.

Frank is absent the next class. I spend the three hours of class time working on run-on sentences, fragments, and paragraph organization, while eyeing the classroom door for any sign of him. Jorge, a dance major with thick, beautifully shaped eyebrows, asks if you can begin a sentence with “and.”

“Sometimes,” I say unhelpfully.

Jorge writes down my answer. He is a diligent student.

Yesenia, who is studying to become an occupational therapist, asks if you can begin a sentence with “because.”

“Of course.” I catch the curt impatience in my voice, but I’m too nervous to speak gently. “You begin sentences with ‘if,’ don’t you?”

Yesenia looks down at her desk. “I was just wondering. My other English teacher said you can’t.”

“I’m sorry; let me show you how to do it,” I say. And then I try to demonstrate how to begin a sentence with “because,” but my purple whiteboard pen gets fainter and fainter and disappears entirely at the end of: “Because the cat was hungr—”

“Sorry,” I repeat, “I’ll e-mail you a handout about all this.”

My students look back at me, blank and disbelieving.

At the end of class, I collect a new batch of papers and add it to the file folder bulging with last week’s papers.

On the way home, my steering wheel starts making a moaning sound, punctuated by a sharp squeal on tight turns. The steering gets less and less responsive as I make my way past the stoplight by the Ben Lomond Market and onto Love Creek Road. My headlights catch the red memorial toy box at the mudslide where those little boys died in the 1980s and were never found. As I pass the memorial, I see that someone has arranged a group of dolls in a semicircle as though they are holding a little class. I leave the paved part of Love Creek behind and rumble along the narrow stream canyon, my steering column bleating and my car bottoming out on the dirt road.

The house smells of old milk. I put half a burrito I saved from lunch in the microwave and check e-mail. In the four hours since I last looked, I’ve received forty-three new messages, mostly about campus events and items — a flash drive, a stack of papers, a jacket — left behind by faculty in classrooms. I have the usual absent-student-excuse e-mails, and then I see a subject line, Probation Check — Important.

It’s Frank’s probation officer, a woman named Lindsey Johnson, doing a “routine evaluation.” She asks me to answer a few questions:

Has Mr. Gonzalo missed any classes? If so, how many? (Please provide dates.)

How would you characterize Mr. Gonzalo’s behavior as a student in your class?

Finally, do you have any concerns about Mr. Gonzalo that you would like to share?

I am overcome, for a moment, by a sense of relief, as though I had been in a dark room but found, finally, a rectangle of light around an unlocked door. I’ll unburden myself to Lindsey Johnson, a sensible-sounding person — a professional — who will know exactly what to do about Frank’s paper, about the pressure he’s putting on me to pass him, about his intimidating e-mail.

But then I remember Frank’s gang. I can’t tell Ms. Johnson the truth.

I click out of her e-mail and scan my inbox. I have an e-mail from Frank. Dear Miss Janet, I need to talk to your office hours ASAP that is about some new issues.

The smell of my microwaved burrito turns sickeningly sweet. I throw it away and stare into the garbage. My mind scurries through a pile of thoughts — a man being stabbed, Frank e-mailing me, Frank coming to my office hours, what it would feel like to be stabbed in the stomach. I think the word “spleen” and feel like throwing up. I wonder if it would hurt, or would it just feel wrong and... final?

Too agitated to go to bed, I start cleaning the house. Things keep slipping more and more out of my control. If I could just get organized, I’d be able to think clearly. I do the dishes. I try to take out the garbage, but the bag rips when I remove it from the bin, leaving a pile of to-go containers and toilet paper rolls and coffee grounds on the kitchen floor. I can’t find another bag to collect the spilled garbage, so I shovel it into small plastic grocery bags which drip as I carry them to the bin outside. I mop up the drips with my last few paper towels and a handful of bunched-up toilet paper and give up on cleaning. I sit down to grade papers.

I wake up with my neck in knots. I’d drifted off sometime in the early morning with the lights on. Essays are scattered around my chair. A few are graded. I hear songbirds outside and a squirrel chirruping some argument. Through the window, cobwebs of fog are dissipating around the redwood branches. The sun is already up.

I check my phone. It’s 8:48, and I’ve missed my Cabrillo class. I call the division office and tell Ana Ling, the division assistant, that my car broke down on the way to campus. I hate lying to Ana, and her friendly voice over the phone makes me want to cry. For the first time this semester, I wish I were in my class teaching that day’s lesson on proper use of citations.

I take a long shower and make coffee before turning on my computer. In my e-mail is another message from Frank. This one says: Please call when you can earliest convenience. He includes his phone number.

I call. He answers with an out-of-breath, “Hello.”

“Hi, Frank.” I try to sound friendly and casual. “What’s going on?”

A low bass thumps in the background. A dog yaps. “Be quiet,” he calls out to — I assume — the dog, which keeps barking. “It’s just... so, I need some help,” he says. “You know how hard I’m trying to better myself, you know, for my family, and for being an example and everything, and, you know, getting out of the group and getting on with my life. I want to be a citizen, productive — so what I’m saying is, my probation officer, Ms. Johnson, she’s always on my ass — my butt, if you can excuse my language — and I need you to just tell her I haven’t missed any classes because of all of my medical emergencies — she doesn’t buy it even though I have doctors’ notes.”

I stare at the papers on the floor. “So you want me to lie to your probation officer?”

“Well, it’s not really lying because I have been in class when I’m not having a medical emergency. It’s just my stomach, I need to go to the bathroom with that, and I can’t come to school. But she doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’m off doing something else. And I have to account for my time with her because of the level of supervisory situation I’m under with the probation office... Are you on campus right now? I can meet you to talk about this furthermore.”

I tell him about my car.

“Oh, yeah, I know, I saw you had that old Honda-Accord, 1992? I figured it wouldn’t last much longer. You need a new car? I can find you one, I know a guy.”

“No, I don’t need a new car. It’s just the steering.”

“Okay, you know, I have a buddy over on your side of the hill in Live Oak. He has a lot of cars he fixes up.” The dog erupts again into a scream of barks. “Baby,” he calls out to someone, “can you get her to shut up? Okay, sorry about that. So, I just need you to tell her the truth, tell her I’ve been a good student. Just don’t tell her I was absent.”

I leave my car with my mechanic in Felton and walk to the White Raven café. I feel dizzy and cold. My neck aches from sleeping in my chair and my fingers tingle. I wrap my sweater tightly around my chest. This is the first time all semester I’ve had time on my hands — time to kill. I laugh, because it really is a funny phrase.

I get a text from Frank: “Please remember what we discussed in this morning. And please keep my paper contents conference.” I assume he means “confidential.”

I pass a group of teenage girls huddling over a phone in front of Redwood Pizza. They’re wearing knotted hemp jewelry. One looks up and smiles. I see how I must look to her, so old, with my long gray hair wisping around my head, my baggy clothes. She has no idea that she’ll be old one day too, if she’s lucky. Like everyone else over fifty, I have been lucky.

I order a bagel and tea at the café. When I return to my table, I have a voice mail from Frank.

“Hi, Professor Janet—” I can hear the dog again in the background. It sounds like a poodle or a Maltese. “I was wondering if you could forward me the e-mail you send to Johnson so I can make sure she tells the truth about it. Sometimes she lies about — Hey, can you shut that dog up?” His voice is sharp and piercing.

I hear a woman mumble something softly, then a painful yelp.

“Yeah, sorry about that, so Johnson sometimes lies about me to her supervisors about what I’m doing, and I don’t want to get in any more trouble.” The barking turns into a whining with a pitiful rhythm to it, like the dog is trying to sound out words.

The White Raven is playing Peruvian pipe music, and the place smells like incense and French roast. The contrast between the world I’m sitting in and the one I just heard through my phone makes both seem unreal.

I take out my laptop and compose an e-mail to Lindsey Johnson:

I send the e-mail, then copy and paste it into a separate message to Frank. I don’t want to risk forwarding it and having him accidentally reply to Lindsey Johnson. I check my sent mail to make sure both went out. Relief. This is not my problem. Frank’s story is not my story. I have my own life to deal with.

I call my mechanic for an update. The repair will cost $360. I’m down this semester to seven classes from my usual eight, and my credit card balance has crept above $4,000, close to my limit. I start calculating the rest of the month. I get paid again in six days, and I should still have a couple of hundred left in credit after I pay for my car. And there’s a little cushion left in checking if I pay my PG&E late.

I eat my bagel and order a salad. For the first time today, I’m famished. Before I leave the café, I get a cookie.

On the way home from my afternoon class, I check the mailbox at the base of our driveway. There’s an overdue notice for my Visa, though I’m sure I paid it online. There is also a white envelope with my address lettered in gold. Inside is a Safeway gift card for $200 and a note that says, “Thank you for you’re help. Sincerely, Frank.”

I can’t take a gift in exchange for lying to Frank’s probation officer. I remember my diminishing checking account balance and think about what I could buy at Safeway with $200 — some good cheese, wine, salmon. It dawns on me how humiliating it is to be bribed by a gang member with food.

I’m supposed to catch up on grading, but I waste time reading the Huffington Post’s “Wellness” section, which has two articles on lifestyle choices that reduce stress. Dogs and exercise, and exercising with dogs, are supposed to be helpful. I think about the squeal of the dog crying in the background during Frank’s last voice mail. I click out of the article.

Before I settle in to grade, I check e-mail. Lindsey Johnson has written to thank me for the information I sent her about Frank and to ask to set up a phone appointment for “a few follow-up questions.”

I make a quick decision to delete the e-mail. I did what I needed to do. I sent the e-mail Frank wanted me to send. I didn’t tell anyone about his paper. I don’t need to do anything else. Before I can change my mind, I go into my deleted mail and delete Lindsey Johnson’s e-mail one final time. I then delete her original e-mail, my reply, and all of the e-mails from Frank.

Monday is Halloween. I wake up long before dawn. I sip coffee and browse the news, which is peppered with local ghost stories. There is one about Love Creek Road, but it’s just a reminder of the mudslide tragedy, not a ghost story.

In the San Jose Mercury News “Crime & Courts” section is the headline, “Gang Leader Arrested for Probation Violation, Weapons.”

Frank’s mugshot looms over the article. His hair looks greasy. His round face wears a slight smile.

I close the computer and turn on my phone. I have a text Zia sent to me and Ben. She made it to the top percentile in her torts exam. I text back, “Congratulations,” then pace around my house. I could call Frank to tell him I saw the article, offer sympathy, let him know I tried my best to help him with his probation officer. Or I could contact Lindsey Johnson and confess my lie. But I decide it’s better to act like nothing has happened. Lindsey Johnson can’t help me with Frank. No one can.

I watch the sky lighten outside. I figure Frank thinks I did everything I could to protect him from Lindsey’s suspicions. He has no way of knowing that I ignored her request to ask me more questions.

My classes are sparsely attended. Some of my students show up in full Halloween costumes, a few wear fuzzy ears, funny hats, face paint. Colleagues at all three schools joke and gossip by the mailboxes, but I avoid them.

A few of my evening students at SJCC are excited to talk about an essay I had them read about why so many people believe in ghosts. The conversation digresses when Yesenia, wearing fuchsia wings and twirling a glittery wand, tells the class about an episode of Ghost Hunters where they record a voice saying, “They killed us all.”

“It’s not a belief,” Yesenia says. “It’s a real event.”

Jorge, whose first essay attempted to prove the existence of God, tells Elena that ghosts aren’t in the Bible and are against God.

George, a cigar and science-fiction enthusiast, whispers, “They killed us all,” and laughs.

One of my students, Neda, a young Baha’i woman from Iran, says, “It’s why there is freedom of religion. Yesenia can believe in ghosts if she wishes.”

“Yes,” I say, “I believe that’s true.”

Tatiana, who has slept through most of the class, lifts up her black-hooded head and asks if I’ve given back the papers yet.

“No,” I say. “Sorry.”

She rolls her mascara’d eyes. “When will we get our papers back?”

“Soon,” I say.

The moon is a dim shard over the parking lot. A faculty member dressed as Willy Wonka walks past me and waves with his top hat before getting into his car and driving away. Mine is the last car in the lot. I hurry toward it, and another car pulls in and drives slowly toward me.

“Miss! Miss Janet!” It’s Frank calling from an open window. I can see his thick hand waving.

I pretend I don’t notice him and toss my books, my papers, and myself into the car. My tires squeal as I pull out of my parking spot and then make a sharp turn onto Moorpark. I take the freeway entrance so fast I feel the car pull to the left. I slow down and look in the rearview mirror. All I see is the usual anonymous flow of white lights behind me.

My GPS insists I take Bear Creek Road, so I exit Highway 17 and begin the winding journey up the mountain. A tailgater appears behind my car with its high beams blinding me. Frank’s following me, I think. But I remind myself that I am usually tailgated on Bear Creek. The driver will probably turn off any minute.

The tailgating continues. I speed up. The driver behind me speeds up. I see a small road up ahead, pull out onto it. The tailgater speeds past me. I start on my way once more.

In a few minutes, I’m being tailgated again. The driver slows down and brakes, then careens forward toward me, off again, then forward. I look straight ahead to ignore the brights that keep rushing my bumper. The driver stays behind me till Boulder Creek when I pull over at the New Leaf Market parking lot and let the car pass.

I make my way down Highway 9 through Boulder Creek. Joe’s Bar and the brewery are open, but no one is lingering out in front.

As I pass the shuttered Brookdale Lodge, a black car pulls out behind me. It stays close, honks, backs off, gets close again, flashes its lights. I accelerate and swerve on a curve, nearly hitting a car in the narrow oncoming lane.

I speed faster. My steering wheel makes a whimpering sound on the curves, the sound of Frank’s yelping dog.

I turn left onto Love Creek Road. The car stays behind me. I skid past the toy box at the slide. The dolls are scattered in the road. I drive over them. One gets caught up in the wheel and bleats sickeningly.

My phone buzzes again, startles me, and my foot slips off the accelerator. I am losing control, but I’m afraid to slow down.

I’ll drive to my nearest neighbors, the Burmese cat breeders. I often see their lights on late. If that car keeps following, I’ll yell for them to call the police.

Love Creek forks uphill to the right where the pavement ends. My phone buzzes, and I reach for it. A text from Frank. I see the word “probation,” and my car fishtails. The back wheels leave the road. The car pauses before falling, then tumbles upside down and onto its side. It happens slowly and — somehow — carefully.

My headlights shine into the oak brush. There is blood in my hair. I’m covered in student papers that were in the passenger seat. I unbuckle my seat belt and try to sit up. Something is holding me down. I grab the steering wheel and try to pull myself up toward the passenger-side door above me, but I don’t have any strength.

A shadow moves outside. It stops. I say, “Help.” My voice is barely audible.

The shadow gets closer. I hear a man say something, and then I realize the radio has turned on. Calm, low voices are murmuring on NPR, though another station is coming in too, with music and static over the voices. My phone buzzes. I tell my hand to reach for it. My hand doesn’t move.

I hear, “Miss! Miss!” The shadow? Or is it just the radio?

I want to see who is standing there on the other side of my cracked windshield. I can’t see anything. The headlights are out. My phone buzzes and buzzes like a trapped insect skimming a windowpane.

“Miss? Miss?”

Possessed by Naomi Hirahara

Mount Hermon

It was cabin time: sharing and praying. Karen Abe was sitting on the floor when one of the girls got up from the circle and stared out from the wire netting of their open-air windows.

“I think something’s going on in Twenty-One,” she said.

A chill went up Karen’s spine. Lisa Tanizaki was in Cabin Twenty-One. They were best friends — or at least that’s what other people at Paradise Park Camp would say. They lived three blocks away from each other in the San Fernando Valley, and had always gone to New Hope Church. Every summer they went to a Japanese American Christian camp here in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Karen was assigned Cabin Twenty with Rachel Kubota from their same school, plus four girls from Monterey Park, whom she referred to as the Lukewarms — and their cabin leader, Wendy Kanegoe, a sophomore at Cal State LA.

Wendy tried to call the Lukewarm back to the circle and focus. But then she also rose and looked outside. The rest of them followed, Karen at the rear, leaving their Living Bibles and the tan-covered four-scripture law tracks on the ratty carpet.

Every light was on in cabin Twenty-One. It glowed yellow with a tinge of algae green. Outside, flashlights from spectators blazed dots in the darkness. Karen inhaled the grapefruit burn of Douglas fir and smoke from the nearby campfire.

“Some girl’s getting exorcized,” a chubby boy in shorts called out from the dirt pathway. He was new to camp. Karen had heard that he had just accepted Christ at group worship last night.

The Lukewarms squealed and gathered tightly as if that would keep them safe.

The boy waited a few minutes as if he expected them to join him. When no one did, he disappeared across the way to see what was happening.

“The Catholics call it exorcism, but Christians don’t,” Rachel said. Rachel’s father was the minister of New Hope. Lisa’s grandparents had been in the same World War II camp as Rachel’s.

“If you’re born again, you can’t be demon-possessed,” Wendy assured them. “The Devil has no hold on you.” Wendy, always the good cabin leader, was steady and calm.

“But you can be oppressed,” Rachel said.

“What does that mean?” a Lukewarm asked.

“That a demon can attach to you,” Karen said. “They can’t take over, but they can still bother you. They can enter through a weak spot.”

Rachel squinted her eyes as if she was reassessing Karen’s level of spirituality.

Before Karen could say anything more, the chubby boy in shorts was back standing in front of their cabin. She began to realize that he had a crush on someone in the cabin.

“It’s Lisa Tanizaki,” the boy called out. “They want Karen Abe to come to Cabin Twenty-One.”

“Why?” Karen tightened her fists. The boy said her name as if he knew her. He didn’t know her.

“You’re her best friend, right? They think you can help.”

The Lukewarms made room for Karen to get through the door.

“I’ll go with you,” Wendy said, pressing lightly on her elbow.

“And I’ll take care of things here,” Rachel volunteered.

What a kiss-ass, Karen thought.

Wendy wrapped Karen’s hand around the crook of her arm and together they walked down the stairs of the cabin, the screen door flapping behind them.

As they crossed the dirt walkway, something crackled and then landed on her white long-sleeve T-shirt. “Shit! What is that?” Karen felt her throat closing up. She hated bugs, especially spiders and cockroaches. But this one was worse because she didn’t know what it was.

The boy pointed his flashlight at Karen’s T-shirt. It was about an inch long with six legs and white stripes on its back. “Oh, it’s a Mount Hermon june beetle. I think they’re endangered.”

Of course this nerd would know about bugs. “God, get it off me!”

The boy started slapping at her body, even grazing her breasts in their A-cup bra. Karen pushed him away.

“It’s okay.” Wendy put herself between the two campers. “They don’t bite.”

They examined Karen’s T-shirt with Wendy’s soft flashlight. No bug.

“What is wrong with you?” Karen frowned at the new boy. His bare legs were caked with a layer of pink.

“It’s just calamine lotion. Got into some poison oak today.”

You better not’ve given me your poison oak, Karen thought to herself. She silently swore at him, noticing Wendy giving her a sideways glance.

The three of them continued walking through the crowd of high school campers, most of them in college sweatshirts, their faces frozen. Someone murmured that the local hospital had been called and an ambulance was on its way.

They were greeted at the door of Cabin Twenty-One by its cabin leader, a skinny young woman with her hair tied back in a ponytail. Karen recognized her as Wendy’s good friend Tammy. The two leaders awkwardly embraced, their stiff, thin bodies knocking together.

Karen continued through the porch to the bunkbeds. The room smelled of barf, and Karen stifled a retch.

There were grown-ups surrounding the far bunkbeds. Camp admins, all men in polo shirts embroidered with the camp Christian cross ablaze above a redwood tree, were absorbed in their walkie-talkies. As they quickly huddled for an impromptu meeting, the view to the bottom bunk opened. From a distance, Lisa Tanizaki looked like sleeping beauty in her baby-blue UCLA T-shirt.

But as Karen got closer, she saw there were streaks of vomit on Lisa’s cheek. Her eyes were half-open, as if she was watching everything transpire in front of her.

“No, young lady, you’ll have to stay in the other room,” a walkie-talkie man stopped Karen. She looked down and saw a dark circle on the rug.

“I’m her friend. Karen Abe. I was told to come here.”

“We’ll get you when we need you,” he said, practically pushing her back out onto the enclosed porch.

“Lisa was acting weird, like she was high,” a voice said from a corner of the porch.

In the dark, Karen spied someone else from New Hope: Jacob Conner. He was hapa, half and half. In certain contexts he looked more white, in others, Japanese. Here he seemed otherworldly. An elf. An angel.

“What are you doing here?”

Jacob paused before answering. “Lisa forgot her jacket in the hall after worship. I was here to bring it back.”

That’s a lame excuse. Weren’t you here to spy on her, make sure she kept her mouth shut?

Cabin Twenty-One leader Tammy’s back was turned toward them, but Karen could still overhear her talking to Wendy: “Her body got all stiff like a board. She was grinding her teeth.”

“Sounds like The Exorcist to me,” the poison-oak boy said to Jacob and Karen. “You know, there are Satan worshippers up here in these mountains.”

The back of Karen’s neck tingled like when a tine of a fork accidentally hit the middle of a cavity.

“Shut up, Carl,” said Jacob. He was acting tough, but Karen saw right through it.

“No, really. I even saw something when I was hiking around Mount Hermon.”

Karen’s body lurched. So this stupid boy Carl was in Mount Hermon today too; did he see anything?

Carl couldn’t shut up: “I went to this clearing and there was a pentagram carved into the rock floor. And stones piled up at each point of the star.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Jacob scoffed, as if he were trying to convince himself.

“And this dark mark in the middle of it. I think it was blood.”

He’s so full of shit. Karen turned her back and gestured for Jacob to do the same.

Rachel walked up onto the porch in a Stanford beanie. “Is Lisa still alive?”

What a question to ask, thought Karen. “Of course, she’s alive. An ambulance is coming for her.”

“Since I’ve known Lisa the longest, I thought you might want my input,” Rachel said, as if she was making some kind of public announcement.

What a bitch, Karen thought. Just because their grandparents were interned together, that didn’t mean anything.

The two camp leaders turned to listen. “Whatever information you may have, Rachel, please share,” Wendy said.

“If you ask me, Lisa hasn’t been herself. At our last youth praise meeting, Lisa usually helps lead worship, but she said that she couldn’t do it. She sat in the back of the church. I mean, just sat there. She didn’t sing or anything.”

Karen remembered that night. She was, in fact, relieved that Lisa wasn’t up there in front, hogging the spotlight. Jacob had sat right next to Karen in the third row of the padded pews, for the very first time. The side of his thigh grazed hers. Karen was so self-conscious, she only mouthed the lyrics to the praise songs.

“Maybe Lisa was just feeling sick?” Wendy said.

“But then she dropped out of the worship team for camp too. Something was definitely going on with her.” Rachel took a deep breath. “Maybe Karen would know. Because the two of them took a walk to Mount Hermon during our afternoon free time today.”

Jacob’s head jerked up. “You spent time with her today, Karen?” His voice sounded strange. On edge.

“How did Lisa seem?” Wendy asked.

“The same. Like always.” Karen tried to keep her voice light and normal.

“I mean, I hate to ask something like this, but was she taking any kind of drug?” Tammy stuffed her hands in her front sweatshirt pouch.

“Absolutely not,” said Rachel.

As if she would know, thought Karen.

Tammy kept her gaze on Karen. “Because it would really help Lisa now.”

“No, no drugs,” said Karen. “As far as I know.”

“Maybe a problem at home?”

“No,” Miss Know-It-All Rachel said.

“I don’t know her that well,” Tammy said, “but she’s been super quiet. She asked me to pray for her tonight, but she wouldn’t tell me for what. We even got cooking oil from the kitchen to anoint her. And that’s when all the trouble happened.”

Tammy took her hands out of her pockets and started to cry. Wendy put an arm around her. The campers hung their heads. They didn’t know what to do with a college person’s tears.

Karen took a deep breath. She didn’t know how the words reached her lips, but they dripped out like fresh honey: “You know, I think we saw that pentagram up there. Lisa was checking it out. She was really fascinated by it.” She now had the attention of everyone on the porch.

“You mean you think that Lisa is demon-possessed?” the chubby boy said, almost ecstatic.

“It’s just that Lisa really started acting weird after she saw that pentagram. That’s all I’m saying.”

An ambulance siren pierced the hum of the insects outside. It stopped and restarted. Help had arrived.

Lisa hadn’t been herself, all right. Karen knew it. But she took full advantage of it.

In fact, in the caravan from the Valley to Santa Cruz, Lisa volunteered to ride in a van with one of the parents and the camp supplies. Why would she do that? Karen got a backseat with Jacob and his best friend in the second car. It was pure heaven. She got to be with Jacob for six uninterrupted hours and that was all that mattered.

Jacob’s friend held his pillow to his chest and immediately fell asleep. Most of the drive, Jacob and Karen took turns trying to throw Doritos in the boy’s open mouth. It was hilarious.

After hours on the road, Karen felt that the old Karen was fading away. Wasn’t that even in the Bible? New wine in new wineskins. Her old wineskin — the less popular one, less smart, less pretty — was blowing away. New Karen had everything going on.

When they arrived at camp, Karen was relieved to see that she wouldn’t be sharing a cabin with Lisa. More distance, more independence. More time alone with Jacob, maybe.

Lisa cornered her in the dining room. Karen was still holding her breakfast tray. “Go for a walk with me during free time.” It was a command, not a request.

That was the last thing Karen wanted to do, but Lisa had blindsided her so early in the morning. All Karen could do was nod her head yes.

On their walk, Lisa took the lead, like always. She was smaller than Karen, more nimble. She jumped up and down from rocks with ease. A damn billy goat.

Finally, when they reached a clearing, Lisa stopped dead in her tracks and turned around. “I need to tell you something.”

Karen felt unsteady. Ordinarily she would relish hearing some stain, some sin in Lisa’s life, whether it was true or not. To hear it directly from Lisa herself, though. There was no pleasure in that.

“I was raped by Jacob Connor.”

Karen’s first inclination was to laugh. What a stupid practical joke. But then Lisa didn’t laugh back.

“When?” She was barely able to speak.

“After the car wash fundraiser. A month ago.”

Somehow that didn’t surprise Karen. She noticed how chummy-chummy they’d been. Goofing around and spraying water on each other. Karen was burning with jealousy and left the fundraiser early. “Who knows about this?” she asked.

Lisa started crying. She never cried. There were two dark smudges on her forehead like the ones on the Japanese empress doll in Karen’s grandmother’s house.

“Just you, now. And Jesus.”

This is the biggest sack of horseshit ever.

“I spoke to Jesus. Really, I did. During this morning’s quiet time.” A breeze moved up the mountain, whipping Lisa’s black silk hair over her face. “He told me that I need to talk to my parents; that He would take care of me through all of this.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“Everything. I have to.”

“You’re not going to mention Jacob, right?”

“He did it to me. He raped me.”

“But you’ll ruin his life.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that. He raped me.”

Lisa never swore either. And to hear the F-word from her mouth in the quietness of Mount Hermon jarred Karen. “C’mon, he didn’t rape-rape you. How can you be so awful?”

“Yes, he did. I didn’t want to do it. I had never done it before. I told him to stop.”

Karen couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t imagine that Jacob had such insatiable passion for Lisa. “You’re the one who kept throwing yourself at him that day. I saw you at the car wash fundraiser. I remember. You were in your cutoffs. You weren’t even wearing any underwear.”

“What, are you saying that it was my fault?”

“I’m not sure. I would’ve known.”

It was Lisa’s turn to look incredulous. “And why’s that? Because of your crush on Jacob? Everyone knows you like him, Karen. I wanted to tell you first because I didn’t want you to hear this from someone else. You know, he even makes fun of you liking him.”

Karen’s anger flip-flopped into shame. No, that couldn’t be true. Beautiful Jacob with his lean swimmer’s body, his long hair tinged light brown from sun. Jacob, who Karen imagined kissing every single night.

“You are such a bitch!” Karen saw the pile of stones in the clearing, calling her to action like David facing Goliath. She scooped one up and threw it as hard as she could at Lisa’s face. Lisa expertly moved to avoid contact, but her shoes hit some gravel and she lost her footing. She fell headfirst against a boulder.

And there she lay.

For a second, Karen was frozen in place. She looked around her. Were there any witnesses? A crow called out to another crow in the tall pine trees. Were they reporting what happened? And then there was God. He had seen it.

“Jesus, please,” she prayed. “Let her be okay.”

She kneeled over her friend’s body. “Lisa.” She could barely say her name. What if she killed her? And then again, louder, “Lisa?” Air was still coming out of her friend’s delicate nostrils.

She gently lifted Lisa’s head, her hair streaming behind like a black veil, and surprisingly there was no blood, no evidence of the collision with the ground. Lisa’s eyes were closed and there was a tiny bit of foam at the corner of her mouth. Karen wished she had brought her canteen.

“Dear Lord, please. I’ll do anything. I’ll be a better person. Just heal Lisa.”

A crow cawed again, and miraculously, Lisa’s eyes fluttered open.

“Oh my gosh, are you okay?”

“What happened?” Lisa squinted and frowned, pulling herself up by her elbows.

No, can it really be true? Has she forgotten?

“You slipped and hit your head. Maybe it’s the altitude. I think it got to you.” She helped Lisa to her feet.

“That was really weird.”

“What do you remember?”

“Just that we were walking up the hill.” Lisa’s eyes got big. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“Not now,” Karen said. “Later tonight, okay?”

Lisa reluctantly nodded, and although a bit wobbly, she took the lead again. Walking behind her, Karen said silently: Thank you, Jesus.

“Let’s pray for Lisa,” Wendy instructed, as the paramedics strapped Lisa onto a gurney.

The Lukewarms had arrived and were sobbing, their noses red like cartoon bunnies. They all smelled death in the room.

All arms were extended toward Lisa’s body. Karen didn’t want to. Stupid poison-oak boy, with his pink legs, stood right next to her. Jacob on her other side. His whole body, especially his hands, seemed to be shaking, but no one else noticed.

What was that on her sleeve? The striped beetle again. Karen wanted to scream, but she didn’t. Instead she swallowed her cry, closed her eyes, and extended her arm.