Free Train Wreck Girl by Sean Carswell Page B

What do you think?”
    â€œI could do without the pink.”
    Libra gives you a coy smile. “No pink? I love pink! Maybe we could just do the bathroom in pink. Or, you know what? I’ll paint my closet pink.” She raises her eyebrows and gives you a look like she’s just discovered radium.
    You find it charming. You don’t know if you’ve ever had this optimism, if you’ve ever fallen into a smile this easily. It’s fun to live vicariously through Libra’s joy.
    Libra looks down at her leg. A little cartoon birthmark seems to be growing on her ankle. She says, “I think I’m the whitest girl in Florida, but I don’t want to get a tan. Tans give you wrinkles.”
    â€œYou’re a beautiful girl,” you tell her. You reach out for her hand but forget you’re still holding the torch. The flame slices through her wrist. Her hand drops on the sheet metal platform. A hollow echo rings through the VAB. You know welding torches don’t cut through skin like this, but you’ve seen what you’ve seen. How else can you make sense of it? You reach out to tell her you’re sorry, but the torch is still in your hand. It slices through her leg, just below the hip. Her leg starts to fall. You move to wrap her in your arms. The torch won’t stop cutting. It strips her skin from her chest. Libra’s coming to pieces in front of your eyes. The platform below you starts to give and fall. Libra quick reaches for her head and pulls it off her shoulders. You and all the pieces of Libra tumble into the hole. You fly around, chasing the leg and the hand, trying to weld the skin back together, stretching it over the moist and sticky muscle beneath. The ground races up toward you. Libra’s head remains in its place three hundred feet in the air. You try to swim up there, but gravity works the same for everyone. It drags you down. You start to fall for real and do everything you can to save yourself.
    Just when vertigo is about to take over, you land in your bed on Woodland Avenue. Your sheets are covered in sweat. The green light of the smoke alarm stares down at you. All the pieces of Libra have been replaced by empty air.

13
The Face that Launched a Dozen Greyhounds
    Bart took me to Duke’s. That was the last big thing that happened on my first week back.
    He had insisted on taking me on a bar tour of Cocoa Beach. Hitting all the old joints. Re-acclimating me with my hometown. Mostly, I think he wanted to go out drinking and was happy to have a partner in crime. We ran through a series of sports bars and dive bars and crusty beach joints full of local barnacles stuck to the barstools and we ended up at a Duke’s down around 22 nd Street. The joint was actually called Duke Kahanamoku’s—after the surfing legend—but the locals couldn’t be bothered trying to learn all the syllables in Kahanamoku’s. So Duke’s.
    We walked into the tiki and bamboo and straw, and I caught a glimpse of the bartender. She was a short, tough, half-Japanese chick in baggy jeans and a tight, white tank top. She had a tattoo of a big-headed, big-eyed doll on her shoulder. The tattoo matched her just right. Who else could it be but Helen: with the face that launched a dozen Greyhounds?
    I had no idea how this scene was going to play out. I hadn’t seen Helen since a few hours before Sophie stabbed me. Last she heard from me, I’d left her house, told her I’d call her the next day, and disappeared for four years. Now, I didn’t know whether to expect a smile or a slap in the face.
    Bart pulled up a barstool. Helen saw him and smiled. She took a mug from behind the bar and started pouring him a draft. Once the tap was flowing, she looked up and saw who Bart’s friend was. She stopped the tap. “Holy fucking shit!” she said.
    I was up to the bar at this point. Helen climbed onto the beer cooler, kneeled on the bar, and leaned in