The Last Days of California by Mary Miller

Author:Mary Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liveright
Published: 2013-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

Almost to our room, I hit my head on the low branch of a tree. The boys were still laughing—not at me, they hadn’t seen me—but I felt it in my throat, my chest. Boys would always laugh at me. They’d never want me.

Elise parted my hair to take a look. “You’re fine,” she said.

She opened the door, and we immediately peeled off our swimsuits and soaked them in the sink like our mother taught us. I put on a clean pair of panties and a tank top, left a pair of shorts on top of my bag. Elise sat on her bed and cleaned out her purse; it was full of trash: wrappers and receipts, a pebble she launched across the room.

“Do you want anything from the vending machine?” she asked.

“A Kit Kat,” I said, “And some Lay’s—no barbeque.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said, closing the door behind her.

I drank a mug of water and then another. I’d be up all night peeing. I was always doing stuff that I immediately regretted. I checked my head in the mirror but couldn’t see anything. When I pressed, though, I could feel my pulse, a strange alien thing. Then I backed up until I had a view of my body. If I kept my legs slightly apart, there was a tiny triangle of light that peeked through. I wanted to starve myself until the space grew larger and larger, until I was the skinniest, most beautiful girl in the world.

Elise came back with two bags of Lay’s, a Kit Kat, and some Famous Amos cookies. We sat on her bed and ate everything, fast, and then I got in my own bed and watched her brush her hair. She could have been in a hair commercial, trying to convince me that Suave or some other cheap shampoo was responsible. I hated those commercials; there was no shampoo in the world that could make my hair look like that.

When she was finished, she picked up the remote and changed the channels until she came to a documentary on the Appalachian Trail, the camera panning over the mountains. It was over 2,100 miles long and went from Georgia all the way to Maine. From above, it looked treacherous, just a little path running over the mountains. We decided that one day we’d hike it together. We’d hike the entire thing, and we’d have trail names that started with “Moon” and “Rain,” like the girls in the documentary.

“I smoked too much,” Elise said. “My heart’s beating so fast.”

“You should stop smoking.”

“Maybe I will, but not for the baby.” She turned away from me and said, “I’m not going to ever be a mother. I’d be a terrible mother.”

“You’d be a good mother,” I said, but I didn’t know if she’d be a good mother or not. She liked to go to parties and drive around with her friends.

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