Joyce Carol Oates by After the Wreck I Picked Myself Up Spread My Wings; Flew Away

Author:After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings; Flew Away
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780061756153
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

23

“Baby, come on.”

Trina is laughing at me. The look on my face. The dazed way I’m blinking and staring.

Thinking: Trina Holland lives here? In this house?

Trina laughs just a little impatiently. Pinches me like to wake me up. My head’s still ringing from high-decibel Metallica pounding inside T-Man’s SUV. My eyes are still watery from so much cigarette smoke. And I’m trying not to hiccup from the beer. This house Trina says casually is hers is so surprising to me, so awesome I guess I can’t believe it, almost. All this while thinking Trina Holland is what Ryan calls trailer trash, and it turns out that the Hollands’ house is twice the size of the McCartys’ house—and the Moellers’—and much more expensive.

I guess I’d been picking up that Trina isn’t what you’d call poor. From remarks she’s made, the kind of spoiled-sounding things a rich girl might say, and the fact that some of Trina’s things are expensive, like her boots, which are actual leather, not fake, her wristwatch she keeps losing, her wallet.

We’re walking up the driveway to Trina’s house. T-Man has let us out on the street. After school we’d been hanging out at the mall with Kiki Weaver, but Kiki’s mom came to pick her up, saying we should come with her too, she’d drive us both home, but Trina wasn’t in the mood, so luckily we ran into T-Man and his friends. T-Man drives his SUV so fast, laughs, swerving into somebody else’s lane and cutting them off, I’m in the backseat, jamming my fists against my mouth, not wanting anybody to know how scared I am, how I’m thinking: They don’t know. They don’t know what it is like when the vehicle you are riding in begins to lose control, swerves, and crashes, and when screaming is so raw in your throat, it feels like flame. And that half second when you begin to know you have lost control but can’t get it back. My friends don’t know.

It’s cold tonight. Our breaths are steaming. There’s snow everywhere, but out here by the golf course, on Trina’s street with the fancy name, Palmer Woods Pass, there’s more snow than in town, now in the dusk it looks sort of bluish, long, graceful hills like dunes, like something sculpted. And Trina’s house she doesn’t so much as glance at is so beautiful. From the street you can see Christmas lights winking inside: white and blue. A tall Christmas tree in the front window like a display window. Every house I’ve seen on Palmer Woods Pass is large like the Hollands’ house and new-looking, lavishly decorated for Christmas, so it looks like they’re floating in an ocean of snow.

I tell Trina her house is beautiful. Trina mumbles what sounds like “Sure.” Like she’s embarrassed or—who knows why?—pissed at me.

Maybe because it’s so obvious? That the house Trina lives in is beautiful? It’s like “Well, duh,” Trina wants me to know.

Or maybe Trina is embarrassed she’s a rich man’s daughter.

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