Free Almost Home by Jessica Blank

relax and no one can hurt me. Tracy’s knees-and-elbows skinny, but having her in the backseat is like sleeping curled up beside Germ: it’s always good to have someone next to you who bites. Also, with her there I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. Usually I have to squeeze my eyes shut and try really hard to take my head to Jim or Disneyland or Taco Bell: all my someplace elses are far away from the lonely sweaty cars and it takes a lot of work to get to them. But with Tracy there the someplace else is right behind me, giggling, and she turns the whole thing into one big joke that we walk away from with lunch money.
    That’s how it is with the first three, at least; but the fourth one stops for her, not me. He’s more than forty and he’s got a mustache, which is always gross. I’m thinking he’s not gonna be cool with me coming, but Tracy grabs me by the hand and pulls me in. His first question to her is “Who the hell is he?” He asks without even looking at me.
    “He’s my little brother; I’m just babysitting.” She has this way of saying the most ridiculous things like they are completely one hundred percent normal, so normal you feel stupid arguing with her or even asking questions.
    The guy just grunts and drives to an alley behind Lincoln. He puts the car in park and goes for her right away. I know I’m supposed to say funny things and distract Tracy like she does for me, but I can’t think of anything to say. Also, I can tell this guy thinks I’m invisible and that’s the only thing protecting me from getting my ass kicked. So I just slink down in the backseat as low as I can, and in my head I shrink smaller and smaller until I understand what people mean when they say “fly on the wall.” From the back the only thing I can see is Tracy’s face. She’s looking out the windshield at nothing. Her eyes have that glassy tired mean look, and there’s nothing I can do to make it funny or easier.
    When it’s over, she holds her hand out without looking at him. He sets the money on her palm like it’s a table and I can tell he wants to say something but he doesn’t. She opens the door and gets out onto the gravel.
    I have to almost run to catch up with her. She’s staring straight ahead with empty eyes; I’m afraid she’s mad at me. But when I finally get beside her, panting, she snaps her eyes out of their stare and fills them up with herself again. “Hey,” she goes, and pulls the money out of her pocket to show me. “Look, he gave me a tip.”
    “Cool,” I say, still watching to make sure she’s really here. She takes my hand and leads me toward the beach.
    We go to the biggest food stand on the whole boardwalk, the one on the corner by Muscle Beach with yellow menus painted on the outside walls, and get pizza and onion rings and fries with extra ketchup and mayonnaise. Tracy buys an extra-large Coke for us too, and we take our food up to the hill by the sand and sit down on the thin cool grass and eat. If you look north you can see the curve of Malibu; the sunset silhouettes it, dark black mountains against the burning orange sky, and the pink ocean spread out in front of it forever, glistening and moving. If you look south it’s all factories, some kind of chemical refinery: spidery towers stacked up all the way to the ocean, delicate and complicated as lace but ugly and stinky and made of hard metal. The smog browns the sunset and helicopters hover like big black bugs. While we eat, I turn my head back and forth a couple times, up at Malibu, down at Long Beach; I feel like a different person depending which direction I’m pointed. I finally settle on the mountains and finish the fries.
    When we’re done, I tell Tracy to take off her shoes and follow me north. We walk up the beach as the sun sinks and the sky turns purple, then gray, then black. By the time our feet get achy, we’re almost up by Malibu; through Venice, past Santa Monica and the Vons by the highway