Blaze Read online

  "Nobody cares, Brick." I don't know why I'm here, only that this is what we do every Friday night, rain or shine. Park ourselves in public with bullets of cheap beer, living the worst lines of a top forty country song.

  "What the hell, dude? You have something more important on your mind than Kendra's victory lap dance?"

  "Maybe," I say. This is my go-to response to any question from Brick since we were kids. "Want to rob a bank?" Maybe. "Want to cut third period?" Maybe. "Want to go fishing in a lightning storm?" Maybe.

  I don't ever tell Brick what's on my mind. That I don't look at girls like I'm supposed to, I don't have porno mags under my mattress, I don't randomly hook-up. That I'm waiting for the girl of my dream, and only her. And I certainly don't tell him that tonight, I found and lost her. Brick is like our hometown, basic AF. What you see is what you get. I accept this. Better to settle for a loyal meathead who has my back than to wear a target, since I'm never getting out of Louisiana in this lifetime.

  "Ford! You are so not passing out dude." Brick pushes his face into mine wearing a manic grin that can turn on a dime, from exuberant to ugly.

  I'm not drunk. If I'm being honest, I have never been drunk. Brick's yet to figure out I nurse my way through half a beer while my buddies chug down easily a case between them. Even sober I'm beyond ready to pass out from exhaustion, from exhilaration. I'll find her again in my dream, I pledge. But I don't.

  I find my head in her lap when I wake, shivering in the early dawn, groping for my letterman's jacket. From the assault of snores in every direction, I'm betting Brick and the other guys are passed out cold in puddles of beer I didn't drink, floating with butts of blunts I didn't smoke. The smell of jasmine swirls around me. I don't dare open my eyes, not yet.

  Gotta Love A Mama’s Boy

  BLAZE

  "Breakfast in bed? Biscuits and gravy. Sausage, I think." I dangle a greasy bag inches from #22's nose, a cross between Harry Styles and the Harry formerly known as Prince. What else is a girl to do when she stumbles on the hometown hero crumpled on a bench, in a heap of broken bottles and cracked vape pods? You feed him breakfast, obviously.

  "You have nice eyes," he whispers, lips cracked with dried saliva, eyes still closed.

  I'm wearing Minnie Mouse shades, on account of my vampiric sleep cycle. Underneath, my eyes are pure Gigi - an unreliable shade of gray that deepens depending on the level of crap I deal with. Poet swears I have a fleck of gold in the center of my irises, I can't see it. She says the light has to be right.

  "Eat, dummy." I harpoon his bicep with a spork. #22 catches it mid-jab, bolting upright with a groan. He wolfs the food down and I volunteer my sleeve as a napkin.

  Grinning, #22 stares into the sun without shielding his eyes until it tells him something in a language I don't speak. “It’s six a.m.”

  "Is there anyone who might be slightly curious where you are?"

  "Franny? Honestly, she's more worried if I'll pick up milk on my way home. What about you?"

  "Nope." Poet knows better than to expect me back this soon. She'll cover for me if Cannon comes to our tent hunting for round two of our family shitshow. I catalog #22's features: unjustly long lashes, popping freckles, dimples for days. I bet it’s a rare girl who turns away from her own reflection in his eyes. I am not that girl.

  I am the girl forgetting how to form syllables. I am the girl thinking way too far ahead. I am the girl wondering if he'll know I'm worth the work. I am the girl hoping he'll do all the right things instead of saying them.

  "Would it be weird to ask where I am?" It would be more weird to confess I rarely know my own geographic location, weirder still to let him know why. Living the circus life means keeping our identities under wraps, small-minded people are a job hazard.

  He wobbles over to a crumbling fountain and dunks his head under the stream of water. Shaking like a dog, he answers. "Louisiana."

  I arch my eyebrow, noting the orchards in all directions. “Really? There's a suspicious lack of bayou."

  "Missouri," he bats back, enjoying my confusion. "Welcome to Louisiana, Missouri." #22 reaches for my hand. "Ford. Allow me to show you around the place." #22 points toward the Antebellum neighborhood I discovered last night. “Would you believe that’s the rich part of town? Over that way is the Mississippi."

  "Because the more Mason-Dixon state names the better?" I quip.

  "Pretty much. You like apples?" The smile, the teeth, the whole damn everything about this guy is killing me.

  I hate apples. "Sure."

  "Basically, the rest of Louisiana is orchard. I can name all thirty-six varietals by category. Quiz me."

  “I trust you. What about beyond the train tracks?”

  #22 freezes, stammering, "Rollercoaster Road." His reaction prompts me to assume that’s the local hook-up spot.

  "So, who’s Franny?" The name jolts him back into the moment, and he levels up the awkward factor.

  "Franny, yeah! Mom's amazing. You should meet her." A raspberry flush spreads from the back of his neck to his cheeks, the toes of his black Chucks scuffing back and forth on the pavement. “Too soon?”

  "Not if you mean it," I wait for him to back out of the invite.

  "I mean it. When I saw you in the gym, it was the second most exciting moment of my life."

  "What was the first?"

  “Now.”

  I need to put some distance between my heart and #22. Hands on my hips in what Poet calls my Rosie the Riveter pose, I barely find my chill. "I never meet mothers on the first date."

  “That's a yes to a date?"

  He's nuts, this farm boy of mine -when did he become mine? I flash back to poking him with a spork. Yup, that's when. “Okay.”

  "He's universally hot?" Poet shoots me skeptical side eye. In the history of our friendship, we've yet to agree on how hot any guy is. It's a good thing our tastes are so different, no risk of us crushing on the same boy at once.

  "Universally," I nod, miming my hand on a Bible.

  I'm auditioning my fifth outfit in preparation for my date with #22. Every stitch of clothing I own is strewn about the tent I share with Poet, and I still have no idea what vibe to go for. My current look screams part stripper, part sorority girl - tight sweater, distressed denim leggings, heels with four-inch stems that put me at five foot six. Poet snaps her fingers to cue my cat walk, whistling in approval. "Yaaassss!"

  I collapse on her sleeping cot, leaning my head on her shoulder. She's more mother than sister, way past best friend. Poet's watched over me since the moment she set foot in camp five years ago, to pitch herself to Cannon as the Wild Big Top's picture gallery. Taken by the complexity and volume of her ink, Cannon hired her on the spot. Her EMT certification didn't hurt either. Our first night as roommates, undressing for bed, I noticed no blank area larger than an inch remained on Poet's velvet skin. "You can look," she offered sweetly. "Everyone else does."

  Sometimes I ask her to tell me the tales behind her tattoos. My favorite is a florid mermaid, escaping the clutches of seaweed on her shoulder. I know better than to ask about the stories her ink doesn't tell. "You're fabulous," Poet coos, stroking my hair. "This boy will drop to his knees and worship you like the goddess you are," she teases. "Now let's get your beauty going."

  Poet pulls me over to her glam station. She's rigged a vanity, placing mirrors at strategic angles under lights adjustable for any scenario. I plant myself on the mohair pouf, and after submitting to a flurry of brushes and sponges I emerge with a subtle smokey eye, expert contouring of the defined bone structure I inherited from Gigi, and highlights tinting the glow that never left after my morning with #22.

  "Up?" Poet weaves the cascade of my curls into a braid crown when Cannon charges in, irate. Maybe from last night's argument, more likely he woke up like this.

  "Good thing neither of us is changing," I jab. Cannon has zero respect for the concept of privacy.

  He either ignores, or doesn't, hear me. "The fire gear is mi
ssing."

  "You mean Gigi's fire gear?"

  Cannon nods tersely, practically electrified with stress.

  "Yeah, I've got it. Mystery solved."

  His mouth fills like a bubble ripe for popping. "You will return it immediately, Blaze.”

  "No."

  Poet understands the ticking bomb between Cannon and I, and floats me a life raft. "Isn't there someplace you need to be, sweet girl?”

  I'm not finished with Cannon yet. "The safety equipment is for my act, which is fantastic by the way, whether you decide to put me on the damn bill or not."

  Pushing past him, he grabs my elbow to anchor me with a warning. "If you refuse to protect yourself Blaze, I will."

  With a movement stronger than I knew I was capable of, I jerk my arm back and stride out with Poet's words floating after me out into the balmy night:

  "Cannon, one of these days Blaze might not come back."

  All My Friends Suck

  FORD

  Through the crack in her bedroom door, I check to see if Mom's awake. She is. I nudge my way in with the steel toe of my work boot, balancing our dinner on a tray which like my desk and most things we own, Franny made with her own two hands.

  She's so tiny in the four-poster bed, though I see the grit of armor Franny wears, even if the doctors don't. Six months ago she almost died, smothered by cancer invading her reproductive system. At first Mom was like a barely-there barn kitten, struggling to drink from a straw. The plastic cut her lips, so I got her paper. "Greener, too," she'd smiled. If there’s a bright side, she’ll find it. Mom's beating the big C surprised everyone except me. I never believed a future without Franny was a real thing, having a front row seat to the hell she’s walked through to be my mom.

  "I know you're over soup, right?" I hand her a spoon, spreading out a cloth napkin.

  "You have no idea. Yet I'm also starving, so thank you, kiddo.” She devours her food, I'm grateful she's hungry if slightly embarrassed I can't prepare anything that doesn't involve an Instapot.

  I force myself to take my nine hundred forty-second bite of beef broth with barley, cooling the piping hot liquid inside my cheeks. Mom serves me her spill it glare."What?"

  "You tell me, son."

  It's pointless for me to keep anything from her, always has been. "I met her, I mean, I met a girl."

  "Okay. What else?"

  "I'm taking her out later, to the shack." As I say it, I realize what an epically crap decision it is.

  Mom makes a sour face. "Why would you do that?”

  The shack is what it sounds like, a mishmash of spare lumber held together by poor engineering and testosterone. When we were kids Brick and I built it as a fort in the pocket of swamp bordering our family farms, upgrading it in high school to a poker den. With Franny getting sick I haven't showed my face there in months. Our weekly game's tonight. I shrug. "I'm a man of limited options."

  Franny doesn't hate Brick, but she doesn't not hate him either. She calls him my plus-one to parties I should sit out. She's not wrong. I toss her the TV remote after turning on The Bachelor, which Mom is oddly obsessed with. Immediately she begins advising the contestants. "He's so not there for the right reasons, girl!"

  I'm more than fine with skipping this episode.

  Our family's farm is the centerpiece of Louisiana's orchards, thanks to Franny. Mom turned the second-story open veranda into her bedroom. Downstairs, she put in a wraparound porch so no matter where she worked, I played just outside a door or window. The crown jewel is the blacksmith lodge resurrected from ruins, rebuilt stone by stone by Franny the summer before I started middle school.

  One morning she sat my oatmeal down, refilled my mug of tea, and said she had An Announcement. "I'm going back to work."

  "You already work." Then Mom showed me her studio for the first time and I understood. I am the son of an artist.

  I kick my heel up behind me, bracing against the door of the blacksmith lodge. Fact: if I appear cool, I'll seem less weird. Fact: I'm nothing close to cool when Blaze comes striding out of the shadows. My mouth opens and shuts, nothing comes out. I'm officially an idiot for this chick.

  "Hey, #22." Her fingers wave in a flash of delicate gold bands above and below every knuckle.

  "Hey. I wanna show you something." I pull Blaze inside, lighting a hurricane lamp. The flame bounces off mom's metal work, sparking trails of color in dusty beams of light.

  Blaze is fascinated, running her palms over edges, plates, gears, contours. "This is amazing."

  I chuckle. "This is Franny."

  "The famous Franny." Tough to tell if Blaze is mocking me. I'll be the first to admit I'm a mama's boy, knowing one hundred percent it's not a good look.

  I get defensive. "She almost died giving birth to me, there." I point at the farmhouse through an enormous stained-glass pane, to Franny's window, where Chris Harrison's announcing the final rose.

  "Heavy trip to lay on a kid."

  I decide Blaze isn't messing with me. "I guess so. Thing is, she never plays that card."

  "I'd be better with moms, if mine wasn't dead. I mean, probably." She laughs. "That got dark quick.” Blaze catches me staring. I'm not convinced she's really here, this is really us, and not my dream. "I was told there would be a date? I mean, we absolutely can chat about your mom all night if you want, #22, but I feel like that's well-covered territory."

  I nod. "Let's bounce."

  The shack's a quarter-mile ramble on foot, down a well-trodden narrow path. The distance between my family's farm and Brick's clocks in at six minutes. Blaze's spike heels turn the trip into bush-whacking. After almost an hour, we're greeted by hollers of country boys at their worst. She tugs the belt loops of my Levis, and I reassure her. "No worries. These guys are cool."

  Blaze looks unconvinced, rightly so. "Cool guys are not my favorite."

  I take her hand - the most natural thing in the world, I've done it thousands of times in my dream. "I got you." I squeeze her fingers, hoping the better Brick prevails this evening. I’m not optimistic. Blaze tests the plank stairs. "Careful of splinters, may I?" She nods, so I lift her up the top step.

  When I swing the door open my biggest fears materialize in a swirl of smoke and slurs. The stench of chew oozes off the floor.

  "Ford! Where you been? You late mother -" Brick stops short, examining Blaze like an intruder. “Fellas, we have a lady joining us. Let's make her welcome." His tilting chair slams to the floor, the whole place shakes and he kicks a stool at us. "There's one seat left, figure it out."

  "Gentlemen first," Blaze gallantly presents the seat to me. Before I can protest, she pushes me down, sliding easily on my unsuspecting lap. When was the last time I had a girl this close to me? Never.

  "What's your game?" taunts Brick, rewarded by a round of grotesque guffaws.

  "I don't play, but I'm told five card stud can be interesting." Is it my imagination, or is Blaze holding her own?

  "Deal me in," I say, offering a silent prayer for Brick to behave himself.

  Brick smirks. "Ladies choice, five card stud it is." The deck flies into surprisingly neat piles. Surly Louisiana boys take poker as serious as a heart attack. "No peeking," he chides.

  "She said she doesn't play," I remind him.

  "Right, boys. The lady doesn't play." Brick spits tobacco within an inch of Blaze's arm.

  "Bro. Chill." I shoot Brick a warning. He takes a long swig from a ceramic jug, passing it next to Blaze, who swallows the Brick’s family moonshine evenly. Not one tear springs to her gray eyes. I wipe my own in sympathy for her throat.

  Brick whistles. "That'll grow you a pair.”

  Blaze circles an arm around my neck, holding it down all on her own.

  "You gonna fold or what, asshole?" Brick ups the action by fifty bucks.

  "He doesn't got jack, #22.” Blaze produces a c-note, mad dogging Brick as the bill lands in the pot. "Let's see em."

  Brick flips over the table instead of his hand, the
deck fluttering to the floor and chips flying everywhere. "You dumb bitch! I want her out of here, Ford."

  Like a shot, Blaze's closed fist connects squarely with Brick's jaw. She doesn't drop him, just proves he's sloppy and shamed. He shakes a finger, then lunges at us like an animal. We bolt out the door in time to witness the shack collapse into a pile of splinters, and I follow Blaze into the darkness, away from a life I never realized I hated.

  Worst First Date Ever

  BLAZE

  #22’s not said a single word since we walked away from Brick and his buddies, crossing over decrepit asphalt of a utilitarian bridge span into Louisiana. I keep quiet too, because what is there to say after I punched his best bro? Finally, I can't stand the silence any longer. "Nice bridge."

  "We're a one-bridge town, but the Champion Clark is all we need." Hard to tell if he's proud, or putting me off. For the first time, I can't read the boy.

  I scan #22’s features for second thoughts about our date. About me. Best to get it over sooner rather than later if he's going to bolt. We stop to look out over the Mississippi. "You gonna jump or what, #22?"

  "Seriously?" He cocks his head, adorable.

  "If you're gonna so am I." Now he grins, offering me his hand. I take it. "Look, I get it. I'm not everyone's jam. I'm..." Searching for the right word to let #22 off the hook without undercutting my self-worth, I blurt out, "Extra."

  "Extra doesn't begin to cover it," He laughs. "It's a decent start, and we are nowhere finished." Squeezing my hand, a ripple of reassurance pulses from his heart to mine.

  "So, where do you kids go to get into trouble around here when you're not rumbling in poker shacks?" This feels like the most nonchalant pass I can make.

  #22 points at the far river bank. "Wanna check it out?"