Yara by Tamara Faith Berger

Author:Tamara Faith Berger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coach House Books

* * *

Tal’s house was a bunker. Picture windows jutted out. Black vines decorated the second storey of brick.

‘Home sveet home,’ Alan said, popping the trunk.

The vines looked half like lace, half like desiccated veins. The porch was supported by two fake marble pillars, sausage pink. Across the street, kids rode their bikes in figure eights.

‘Tali,’ they screamed, ‘when will you babysit us?’

Alan put on Tal’s backpack and spun around in a circle for laughs. Gabby linked arms with Tal and they walked up the steps of the front porch. I followed, keeping my backpack on like a shell.

‘Tal will show you Josh’s room,’ Gabby said, inside the hallway, rifling through a velvet-lined box of papers and mail. ‘We’ll have a feast of dumplings. Yara, are you vegetarian?’

A light fixture hung from the ceiling, with triangular wires.

‘Not to worry, Yara. There are oodles of veggie options here!’

She kept repeating my name. It made me feel weird. I followed Tal up the stairs, along a carpeted hallway. We walked past a bathroom and then down a few steps. My toes were numb from the car.

‘Are your parents upset that I’m here?’

‘Oh my God. No! Why would you think that?’

‘Sorry,’ I said.

Her brother’s bedroom was sunken. It seemed like a second-floor wing. There was a poster of green skulls over the desk and a massive computer screen.

Treachery, deportation, I felt reams of guilt.

‘It’s clean,’ Tal said, pointing to the king-sized, four-poster bed. ‘Do not worry about my parents, okay?’

‘Can I use his computer?’

‘Of course. You can do whatever you want.’

I wanted to take back the tape that I’d sent her. I wanted to find myself on Usenet.

‘My mother says we can do our laundry either now or later, okay?’

Josh’s bed was made up with a flattened brown quilt. I walked to the window. I thought of the other Josh – the one fucking onscreen.

‘Listen to me, Yara, here you don’t need to worry about anything.’

I needed to worry. Guilt corroded my gut. I was somewhere in that massive, endless computer where girls humped and sucked and had sex.

‘Did you send it?’ Tal asked, breathless.

I nodded yes.

‘Oh my God, good. That’s amazing, Yara. Don’t you feel relieved?’

I was supposed to be home tomorrow for my girlfriend’s birthday.

There were at least three tapes of me now out there in the world. I was multiplied like Josh Dee and his girls. All through the world, all these fuckers fucking …

You don’t shoot sex once. You do it again and again.

Suddenly, Tal pulled me in for a hug. She moved us side to side. I knew Tal believed everything would work out fine. Tal believed things would work out in her life and things would work out in mine.

‘Come on, Yara. I thought you were mad.’

‘I’m not,’ I said, resting my cheek on her neck.

‘I guess you just need to settle in a bit, right?’

I felt a lump in my throat that I didn’t expect.

‘Can you tell me her name?’

Girlfriend, I thought.

‘Yara, please. I just want to know who she is.

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