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right after Mom started drinking her special He and Roman used the chapel some nights
water. She wanted to know what that kind to play guitar, the acoustics were majestic.
of happy felt like. The special water burned With Ray’s father in Hawaii he was less
her tongue with a venomous bite. She’d spit hesitant to have other people come by.
it out all over herself, unaware that she’d
just acquired a taste for it. She’d gone and It was a warm summer night of rye for some
cleaned herself up while Mom and Dad and mushrooms for others; their buzzes
argued over watching their glasses. Mom lessened at the later hour. Ray and Roman
and Dad fought so much that Dad was in began drinking around 8PM, around the
and out of the house until the last fight, time Esther, Carlota, Josephine, and Lily
when he was just out, and went back to the joined them, just beginning to peak.
island. She bounced between the island
and the cul-de-sac. Too bad she spent that “No,” recited everyone else in near perfect
winter there when she was seventeen. She’d unison, looking around.
never forget the day she arrived. She’d tied
his tourniquet that night. “I’ll go look for her,” said Lily.
“You wanna try?” he asked her, thumb on She walked across the street, through the
the plunger. small convenience store parking lot, into the
darkness of the baseball field. She searched
“What d’you mean by try, Dad?” the dugouts, softly calling Esther’s name.
Perplexed, she went back to the road.
He motioned with his drooping head to the
baggie on the table next to him. “Did you find her?” called Carlota from the
front of the church.
“Try’s when you’ve got nothin’ t’lose.”
“No,” Lily called back. “Where the fuck is
― she?”
The lot across the street was washed out in “I’m right here. You walked past me like,
orange light from the lamp on an electrical three times,” emerged a voice from the
pole. Midnight on Barlow’s was quiet; no flowerbed several feet to Lily’s left.
cars sounded nearby, no noises from animals
echoed in the distance, all she heard was the “What’re you doing?”
chatter of the rest of the group behind her and
the wispy whoosh of the breeze. She turned “Just lying in the flowers.”
back around. “Hey, does anyone know where
Esther went?” “You’re a real Alice right now.”
They’d taken a smoke break out in front of “That’s the point. I just want to lay in the flowers
the church. Its steeple towered above them. and look at the stars.” Down the rabbit hole was
Ray’s father was the after-hours caretaker; better than the dregs of the island. She was glad
their house was on the lot right next door. she was neither there nor the cul-de- sac.
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