Free Pretty by Jillian Lauren Page A

in town long enough to graduate, Mike?”
    Mike shrugged and didn’t tell me I should be sensible and stay, like everyone else said. Get a job as a hairdresser and find a husband.
    Mike was one of the reasons I drifted from Zion in the first place. Mike was a lapsed Catholic and his old lady passed away and she wasn’t saved. How was I supposed to look that guy in the face and tell him that I believed that Sandy was burning in hell? For that matter, how was I supposed to look myself in the face and imagine my own pop there?
    It was one of those things that I didn’t get how important it would be until later. The being-saved thing. That it wasn’t just about being saved, it was about all these other souls not being saved. Little babies in Africa with flies on their eyes who die of starvation and Gandhi and earthquake victims in China and my pop and Mike’s Sandy. And in the end I couldn’t hang. I just couldn’t hang with that. I miss the rest of it every day, but I don’t miss hell.
    Anyway I stood smoking a Virginia Slim, one hand on the bar, rag over my shoulder, and watched the band as they sound-checked. Billy Coyote was too high or drunk or something. He never even stood up off his stool and he barely lifted his head the whole time, but still, you couldn’t stop looking at him. The rest of the band was bickering and lackluster, except for Aaron. He stayed off to the side in a pool of calm as bright as a spotlight. When he put the horn to his mouth, for the first time I understood in my gut something my pop had always told me: playing the horn is really singing. Aaron played a killer solo in a nearly unrecognizable interpretation of “Dream a Little Dream,” except I pegged it on account of I sat around a jazz club every night. And I could tell Aaron’s performance was for me, the only audience. He was singing to me.
    When they were done he took a long step off the stage, pulled a baggie of weed and a package of rolling papers out of his shirt pocket, and walked up to me.
    â€œSmoke?”
    The early evening was heavy with humidity, but we went outside anyway and sat sticky on the white vinyl seats of my mother’s Camaro. We rolled the windows down and passed the joint back and forth. It was incredibly strong, not the Toledo dirt I was used to, and the world spun like a slot machine. I had to blink hard and will it to stop. I focused on the Jesus Loves You air freshener hanging from the rearview. It was my contribution, but had long since lost its scent.
    â€œCalifornia,” he said, meaning the weed. “Got it from some cat in San Francisco. That’s where I’m going when we’re done. To the Church of St. John Coltrane in San Francisco.”
    â€œThat’s funny. Me, too,” I lied. But at that moment I felt as sure of California as I was of anything. “I mean California. That’s where I’m going as soon as I’ve got enough saved.”
    â€œOh, yeah? When will that be?” he asked, with a sarcastic edge I didn’t much like.
    â€œI’ll let you know. So you can look me up when you get there.”
    The pot was too potent for me. I held on to the door handle. Breathe in. Breathe out. Brain like fuzzy sparkles. The church of who?
    â€œWhere are you going to?” he asked.
    â€œWhat?” I was confused.
    â€œAre you leaving?” he asked in a lazy kind of way, leaning his head back against the seat and smiling. “You’re gripping the door like you’re leaving.”
    â€œNo,” I replied. “I’m just hanging on.”
    â€œI get it,” he said.
    Later, after the show, he kissed me in the parking lot. I figured I was being a slut because he was leaving for Cleveland in the morning and I probably wouldn’t ever see him again. I consoled myself with the fact that I wasn’t going back to his motel room like some kind of hooker. But I wanted to kiss him to see what it