“For Sure it’s a Jacked-Up World” originally appeared in issue 18.2 of The Cincinnati Review.
The same spring my sister Kaylee was naked in Hustler, coyotes came down from the hills knocking over garbage cans and killing people’s pets. One morning the Vasquezes next door found their cat under the hedges, and you should have heard Mrs. Vasquez howl. I went out to look, but all that was left was a pile of guts. After that Dad told me that even though we were already being careful not to let Nacho outside, we were going to have to be extra careful now. That idiot cat would be like winning the lotto for some hungry coyote.
Kaylee had left Scottsdale after a big fight with Dad and Maryanne, and we didn’t hear anything from her for a while—which to me was the worst part, not knowing where she was or how she was doing—but then one day there she was in this magazine. It’s not like it was some big secret, though, that she’d do it with pretty much anyone. Stoners, losery dudes, even this one guy Brad who everyone thought was gay. Dad and Maryanne tried their best to move past it, but you could see how it hurt them. Personally, I didn’t care, except that every guy at school had a copy of that Hustler, and for months they wouldn’t shut up about it.
One day in class Josh Mason asked when it was going to be my turn to take naked pictures, so I hit him in the mouth as hard as I could, which in a situation like that is basically your only option. I got a two-week suspension, and as part of my punishment Dad made me study for two hours every night so I wouldn’t fall behind. One night I heard the coyotes howling up in the hills behind our street, and when I looked out my window, I saw Mr. Vasquez sitting in his yard holding a rifle and drinking a beer.
“Are you gonna shoot them?” I asked.
“You can’t just trap the sons of bitches and let ’em go out in the desert. They’ll come back. It’s a scientific fact that coyotes can hold grudges. Besides, Jim Whiskers deserves justice.” Then he took a long drink of beer and said, “So how about that sister of yours?” I slammed the window shut but could still hear him out there chuckling. Then later after everyone was asleep I went and keyed the shit out of his dumb F-250 with the sticker in the window of Calvin praying.
Principal Vickie called Dad, Maryanne, and me in for a conference before he’d let me back into school and more or less said that our whole family was loose in the morals department. Which first of all, fuck him, and second of all, caused Maryanne to drag us all to church the next Sunday due to the shame of it. We’d never been to church, and I wondered how she decided which one to go to, if she opened the phone book and threw a dart or what. And what kind of Christians were we even? She made a big deal about what dress I should wear and how I should do my hair. “If you embarrass me, Zoey, so help me,” she said as we were driving out to World of Faith Ministries, which was this huge gleaming building that looked like a castle off the freeway next to Randy’s Waterslide Kingdom. I thought that was funny because Randy’s also had this castle-looking building called Rockingham Palace with a water slide looping through it, which was 100% the best ride there. Walking across the church parking lot, the heat coming up in waves from the asphalt, you could hear the speakers from Randy’s blaring Q95.5 and all the people screaming on the rides, and I knew for sure it was a jacked-up world if God made you sit in church on a beautiful day just because you punched Josh Mason totally justifiably in the mouth.
Inside, they had the AC blasting at least. The place was huge and looked like you’d imagine a mall in Heaven would look like. Since we were new, the lady greeting people at the door gave us special seats right up front. I was used to people talking badly about us, but when I looked around, all I saw was tons of huge smiles beaming our way, which at least made me not worry about Dad. The pastor came out onstage in a shiny suit instead of pastor clothes. His name was Pas- tor Lacey, and his wife, Mrs. Lacey, was sitting at the end of our aisle, nodding her head and waving her arms while he did his sermon. They both had their hair done up in this way that looked like shapes of water frozen into place, like here was a wave, here was a waterfall. There was singing and praying, and some people even cried when Pastor Lacey told the story of how Jesus commanded a storm to be calm and how the storm immediately withered away, which he said was also a great metaphor for whatever troubled us. How anything bad would also wither away in the face of Jesus’s love. I could tell that Maryanne was really impressed by everything because her eyes were all big and blank, which was her go-to look of approval.
Afterward, when everyone was shaking hands and wishing each other a Christ-like week, some of the other families came over and welcomed us to the church. Maryanne was super into it and volunteered right away to help with a bake sale. A guy with a huge mustache invited Dad to play golf, and a kid around my age named Eli came over and told me he played drums in the church’s rock band and asked if I wanted to watch them rehearse. It was funny how they called it a rock band, like, We have a rock band that plays rock music! “All to glorify Him,” he said and looked up at the ceiling. His whole family was wearing matching white TruthSoul button-downs. He had this one messed-up shriveled hand that he kept close to his chest, which made him look like an old lady saying “Oh my” because she was shocked at something.
I went with Eli and got some Energy Slams from an Energy Slam- only fridge in the Electric Teens Youth Fellowship Lounge and then watched his band play lame versions of real songs where all the words were about Jesus instead of the regular words. Like, when they played “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” it was, With the lights on, it’s much safer. See us kneeling, always praying. It seemed weird for Eli to be playing drums with a drumstick wedged in his little hand, but he swatted around with this crazy look of concentration, and I guess he got by all right even though as a band they majorly sucked. They took it so seriously, which made it sort of funny, but I guess that’s the thing about Christians. They go through life looking supremely uncool to the rest of us, and either they don’t know it or else they don’t care. And if they don’t care, then that’s actually pretty cool. And anyway, drums were probably the only thing he could have played. Like, the guitar? Not happening.
That one Sunday was all it took for Maryanne to be hooked. Soon she was doing the pancake breakfasts and running the emails, and it wasn’t long before she was on the fundraising committee and wearing power suits all the time. Dad not as much, but he was getting the glad hand too. Rotary lunches at Chesney’s Prime Rib and going to the nicer driving range instead of the shitty one out by the heliport. It all seemed pretty dumb to me, but they weren’t as depressed for a change, so how could that be a bad thing? But then they got it in their heads that I truly needed the Electric Teens Youth Fellowship in my life and basically forced me into it. Every Sunday after regular church it was an hour of Bible study, then the youth pastors, Amy Jo and Craig, would have us repeat purity pledges, and finally we’d spend some time thinking up ways to raise money for starving kids in China or wherever. Then at the end Eli’s rock band, which was called Resist the Urge, would rehearse, with all the other kids jamming along on tambourines, which made it even worse, and Amy Jo sometimes flipping the light switch on and off for an enhanced rocking atmosphere.
Eli was the cool kid there, which, trust me, was not saying much, but everyone mooned over him like the whole thing was just some Eli fan club. He seemed to like me, though, which I didn’t really under- stand or enjoy, especially when he’d want to talk one-on-one with me about Jesus. His eyes would get all tiny, and he’d suck his teeth and rub his hand around in those weird circles, but it got me a kind of respect there, even from Amy Jo and Craig. Not that that was necessary, because in addition to everyone being pretty lame and out of touch, they were all 100% crazy nice, and no one, not ever, mentioned Kaylee.
One Sunday Pastor Lacey asked if I could chat with him for a bit. I’d never talked alone with him before and thought Maryanne would be impressed by how I was taking an active interest—she loved it when people took an active interest in things—and would maybe lay off a bit about going to Electric Teens. We sat in his super-fancy office, and he said, “Zoey, this is my sanctuary,” sweeping his hands out over his desk to gesture at the waterfall sculpture with the crystal cross on top, the thick white rug, and his ocean-sounds machine. He said, “Whatever we discuss here will not leave this room. You understand?” I told him I did, and he put his hands together like he was about to pray. “Forgive me if I’m bringing up anything unpleasant,” he said, “but your stepmother has confided in me that you’ve had some troubles at school.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off his hair. Close up like that under the soft lights shining down on him, it was even better than seeing it onstage. It swept back from his forehead into these dark swirls, and the light catching in it made it glitter and dance like you were looking at the sun through a T-shirt pulled over your head. He said Maryanne had told him about Kaylee, how she didn’t know if the family would ever recover.
“Sin and vice are all around us,” he said. “They can live within our own hearts as easily as in perverted magazines. World of Faith is a family, is where I’m coming from, and what afflicts a member of my flock likewise pains me. So if anytime you want to dialogue or interface, this door of mine, well, open-door policy, eh?”
That night I went in the backyard, mad about what an asshole Pastor Lacey had turned out to be. Sitting there in his nice office, I realized he was just another guy wanting to talk about my sister. The coyotes were howling wilder than ever. Nacho was trying to get out of the house, scratching at the window screen like an idiot. Did he want to get killed or something? No one in the neighborhood was letting their cats out anymore, and they’d been bungeeing their garbage-can lids, and it made me think about how hungry the coyotes must have been. Probably reduced to chasing rats. Thinking about that, I got even madder, so I went for a walk. Over on East Desert Cove people had pulled out their garbage cans to get picked up the next morning, and before I even thought about it I took off the bungee cords and kicked the cans all over, punting garbage down the street and howling. Maybe I was hoping the coyotes would come and find some food, I don’t know. When the porch lights came on, I took off running.
Passing P&S Liquor, I realized how hungry I was, so I went in to buy a bag of Flamin’ Stix. There was a Hustler in the magazine rack by the door, not the one with Kaylee, just a random one. I grabbed it and ran. The guy yelled but didn’t chase me. I ran all the way home with it rolled up like a club in my hand and locked myself in my room. I’d seen the actual naked pictures of Kaylee, but I hadn’t looked at them, not really. When people showed them around at school, they’d only been something to embarrass me, like it was me they were staring at and laughing about. This will sound weird, but I took a picture of Kaylee from an old photo album and cut out her head and then held it over the girls’ heads in the Hustler. I did it because I had to see her for myself, not with other people around, just my sister and me. At first I had that same feeling again, like I needed to punch someone, but I kept looking, staring at those girls with my sister’s face, at their bodies that people said were supposed to be private. After a while the pictures became only tiny dots printed on paper. Those pictures, and the ones of Kaylee, they became just plain things to me, like looking at anything else—hills or puppies or a furniture catalog—and I wondered how anyone could think this was bad or shameful. They were only doing what they needed to do, or what they thought they needed to do, and so, what reason did anyone have to look down on them? But even if people did look down on them, even if it was unfair, how was that my problem? All I could see was dots arranged so that they showed Kaylee’s face smiling at me. The picture I’d cut her head out of was from Christmas, and in it she was looking at the camera and holding up a sweater, and then afterward we ate cereal and watched TV and Maryanne had Christmas music on, and it was just a really good day.
When I got home from school a few days later, Lacey was in the living room sitting on the love seat with a tray of Cheezola and crackers in front of him. Maryanne was on the sofa with her knees pressed together, concentrating really hard playing a sad song on her piccolo, which she sometimes did when fancy people were at the house. She stopped playing when she saw me, and said, “Zoey, Pastor Lacey has come to help your father and I reach out to your sister.” Then he was up shaking my hand all serious, holding my hand in both his sweaty ones.
“When your father gets home,” he said, “we’re going to call Kaylee and offer her Christ’s own forgiveness.” I thought about showing them the Hustler and telling them none of it mattered, but I didn’t even care anymore.
When Dad got back, Lacey said we should take a moment to pray for guidance and understanding, so we kneeled right there in the living room. “Lord,” he said, looking up at the ceiling fan, “we ask you to reunite this family rent asunder by waywardness. Renew their love, strengthen their bonds, and let them cleave unto your bosom. Amen.”
Then Dad dialed the number that Kaylee had left on our voice mail the only time she called, and a minute later he was crying like crazy, and every time he stopped to catch his breath you could hear over the phone how Kaylee was crying too while they took turns apologizing. Dad passed the phone to Maryanne, who was already on the verge of tears and having to fan her face just from watching, and soon they were both sobbing into the phone together.
“Zoey misses you too,” Dad said, nodding at me, smiling, his eyes all red and glassy. I put the phone up to my ear and listened to Kaylee tell me she missed me and that she couldn’t wait to come home, but all I could do was swallow hard and go Uh huh because hearing her voice made my throat swell up.
After that Dad and Maryanne were probably as happy as I’d ever seen them. They hugged all the time and kept saying how excited they were for us to be a family again. Dad sent Kaylee a plane ticket and put the date on the calendar in the kitchen and each morning crossed off another square, smiling and telling me that wasn’t this great, weren’t we lucky to have been given the miracle of second chances? I guess I was happy that they were happy, and of course that Kaylee was coming home, but it was also typical. Kaylee had always been able to make you feel like you were the only person in the world without even really doing anything. Not that that was bad, but even if she hadn’t meant to, she’d done something that had hurt Dad and Maryanne, and now just by letting them buy her a plane ticket she was bringing them this crazy joy. How was that fair?
Eli was still going out of his way to talk to me at church. It was weird how popular he was. Everyone there just loved him so much. If I’m being honest, I think it was because of his messed-up hand. If he went to my school with a deformed hand like that? He’d get made fun of so hard he’d probably kill himself. Maybe that’s why he was so into church. Who knows. But he kept talking to me, and after a while I got the idea that maybe he liked me, which gave me a knot in my stomach because even though I wasn’t one of those people who’d make fun of his hand, the thought of him trying to kiss me or touch me with it made me want to throw up. I’m sorry if that sounds terrible, but it’s true.
The night before Kaylee was supposed to come home, I went walking through the neighborhood again. At the canyon at the end of our street I found two coyotes rooting around, eating something with these gross tearing noises. I watched for a while until there was another noise behind me that I thought might be more coyotes, but when I turned around, it was Eli standing in between two parked cars. We stood looking at each other for a minute, not saying anything, neither of us moving. Then the tearing noises stopped, and I turned back to see the coyotes running off up the hill, and a second later Eli ran away too. And then it was just me alone with whatever dead thing the coyotes had left behind.
The next morning I sat in the back seat of the Solara with Maryanne, and we all drove to the airport. She’d spent a long time doing her hair. Lacey came too. He was up front with Dad, talking about how we were doing Christ’s work. At the arrivals gate he stood with us and patted Dad’s back; then when Kaylee came out, it was waterworks all over again. She had all her things with her, which was not much, and Dad and I each carried a bag out to the car for her. Driving home, none of us really knew what to say.
“We’re so glad you’re home, sweetheart,” Dad said after a while.
“What’s that, Dad?” Kaylee said, leaning forward from where she was sitting in between me and Maryanne.
“It’s so good that you’re home,” he said.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Lacey said.
“Isn’t that the truth,” Maryanne said.
Everyone was quiet again, and Kaylee put her arm around me and pulled me close, tucking her face into my hair, and I could feel her breath hot on my scalp while the AC from the center console blew cold onto my knees.
At first it was weird having her back. Her and Dad and Maryanne were so polite all the time, smiling and doing each other little favors. Like, if she’d bring Dad a cup of tea, he’d sit there shaking his head like she was the most thoughtful person in the world for realizing that he might want a cup of tea and then going to all the trouble of bringing him one. She sat on my bed one night and said she felt bad for not being there for me but that it would be different now. She asked me to tell her everything she’d missed. I didn’t know where to start, so I told her about the Vasquezes’ cat.
“Ew, not that,” she said. “Tell me about you. What’s been going on?” “We go to church now.”
“I was wondering who that guy at the airport was. Duh. Dad says you go to the teen group?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Electric Teens.”
“Kind of a dumb name,” she said. “Like, ZAP!” We both laughed,
and I imagined Amy Jo and Craig reading us a secret Bible verse where Jesus taught teenagers in olden times how to shoot lightning from their fingers. “What’s it like?” she asked.
“I don’t know. There’s this guy Eli who’s a total stalker. He’s in a band.”
“A band! That’s cool. Does he like you? Are you gonna be his girl- friend?”
“He’s got a claw hand.”
“A what?”
“Like, his hand is all messed up.”
“Gross,” she said and then twisted up her fingers like her hand was deformed and started grabbing at me with it. “Come here and let me cop a feel!” she said.
I told her to stop, but she kept doing it, laughing and speaking in this weird troll voice even though Eli had a totally normal voice. “The claw’s gonna get you!” Finally I yelled at her to cut it out and got up off the bed. “Jeez,” she said, “sorry. I was only kidding, Zoey. I’m sure he’s cool.”
The next Sunday I was eating a pizza bagel in the Youth Fellowship Lounge, waiting for Kaylee, Dad, and Maryanne. When they came in, Dad said, “How do you like that, Zoey? Your sister is Pastor Lacey’s new office assistant!”
I guess she needed a job, but with Kaylee working for Lacey, Dad with his Bible study for business owners meetings, Maryanne doing emails and fundraising and her twice-a-week ladies prayer meetings, and me in Electric Teens, the whole family was getting pretty churchy. It’s like if one thing changes, it’s no big deal, but then it’s another and another, and soon nothing’s the same. But that’s how it was, and soon we all got more or less used to it, to having Kaylee back, to this all being somehow normal.
One Wednesday night we had an Electric Teens meeting to work on a mood board for the interfaith carnival that was coming up. I went to the bathroom, and then because I was in no rush to get back, I wandered around for a while. Being alone there at night, going through all those empty rooms and hallways felt strange, like the church was changed without people in it, but instead of feeling empty it was filled with something else. Walking past Lacey’s office, I thought I’d go inside, maybe sit at his desk to see how it felt. I opened the door just a bit, and there he was lying on the rug in only his underwear with whale songs coming from the ocean-sounds machine. For a second I didn’t under- stand what I was seeing. Maybe I went temporarily stupid while I tried to put it together in my head in a way that made sense, but all I could think was Wow, Lacey’s really pale. His chest and stomach and legs were this pinkish color where you could see all his veins underneath. There was no hair anywhere on his body, and he had these floppy boobs that drooped down his sides, which made him seem like some kind of old baby. But the hair on his head was still perfect. And there lying next to him was Kaylee, also in her underwear, tan and beautiful, her dark hair fanned out on the white rug like an explosion. They weren’t even touching each other, only lying there not doing anything while the whales moaned. But then they noticed me and freaked out, scrambling to cover themselves.
“Zoey, wait,” Kaylee yelled but she was so far behind me already.
I knew then that everything would be like it had been before Kaylee left. She would keep doing whatever she wanted to, but now even the people at church who’d been so nice to us would say bad things about her, say that she was bad, that I was bad just for being her sister. Dad would get that way again, like he’d been after she left and he found out about the Hustler. Whatever she and Lacey were doing, everyone would blame her for it. It wasn’t fair, but that’s how it would be. I ran down the street until my legs and chest burned, and then sat down at a bus stop to catch my breath. There was no moon, just this dull blackness. When the bus came, I got on it, and it passed an empty parking lot with a single streetlight glowing in the center, and there was a coyote standing under the lamp looking up at it, probably wondering if it was the moon, if it needed to be howled at. Then I remembered it was wolves that howled at the moon and maybe coyotes didn’t, and then the bus kept going. Maybe it hadn’t even been a coyote at all. Maybe it was just some dumb dog that couldn’t tell a streetlight from the moon.
When I got home, Dad and Maryanne were out to dinner, which I was glad for, but then a few minutes later Kaylee got back and found me in my closet, where I was punching drywall. “It’s not what you think,” she said. “It’s complicated. Pastor Lacey’s just confused and sad. We don’t fuck. I swear to God we don’t. He’s sad, and no one understands him. We help each other.”
“What do you mean you help each other?” I asked her.
“A few weeks after I started working for Pastor Lacey,” she said, “I went into his office before service, and he was sitting on the floor crying. He said he was too scared to come out. He begged me to sit with him for a while, so I did. He kept crying, and I put my arms around him to calm him down, and little by little he stopped. Then he went out and did the service. He needs someone he can be that way in front of. He doesn’t judge me. He’s not embarrassed of me. What’s so bad about that, Zoey?”
Then she started to cry. Little sobs at first, like hiccups while she was talking, but soon it was this full-on wailing and she was grabbing me, pulling me not just over to her but into her, saying how sorry she was for everything, begging me not to think she was a bad person, hold- ing onto me like if she let go, she might drown. Then she told me that I had to pray with her and ask Jesus to open my heart to forgiveness and love like she had done, that we had to do this together because it was the only thing that mattered anymore. She knew I could do it because she had done it, and if she could do it, then anyone could.
“You have to pray with me,” she said, “Please don’t hate me or Pas- tor Lacey.”
I was so mad, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice. I told her I’d do it. How could I not? I thought of how it must have been for her after she left. I guess I wasn’t mad at her. She looked so sad and afraid, her face all red and puffy—how could you be mad at someone like that? I was mad at all the unfairness. So I prayed with her. Rocking back and forth on the bed with her, I prayed for Kaylee to be okay, for no one to blame her or be mad at her. For things to just be fair for once.
That Sunday we went to church as usual. Kaylee told me how proud she was of me for having all this new love in my heart. She’d let Lacey know that I understood everything and would keep their secret. When it was time for his sermon, he stood there in front of everyone, and these beautiful words came out. It all seemed so easy for him. If it took so much effort to say these words about love and charity, how did he make it seem so easy? Which was the real Lacey, this one standing up there or the one on the floor of his office with my sister? All the families had their faces turned up to him, everyone smiling and nodding along, everyone saying Amen when they were supposed to. None of them knew anything. Not even Mrs. Lacey, in front as always, hands raised, eyes closed, Amening too.
Before the benediction he made an announcement. “We all know our neighbors the Carrolls, Lindsay and Bob.” Everyone looked to where they were sitting up front with Mrs. Lacey in the special seats, Mrs. Carroll sort of hunched over and Mr. Carroll with his arm around her.
“Last night coyotes killed their two beloved dogs, Trixie and Gumball,” Lacey said. “Their remains were found in the churchyard this morning.” People gasped. “Animal Control has sent me an email asking that I remind everyone to please keep house pets inside and to secure all trash cans. Let us pray that Lindsay and Bob find solace after this loss.”
Then he stopped talking and just stood there for a while breathing into the microphone. In and out, wheezy and hollow sounding. I tried not listening, but the more I tried, the louder his breathing got, and soon it was like the wind was howling through the church, and all I could think was how it was blowing across the earth all the time in so many directions, blowing and blowing, and how even if it was emptying out from one place, it was already filling another.
As we were leaving, Lacey came over to us. He stood in between Dad and Maryanne, put his arms around them, and smiled all big, but there was none of that in his eyes. “I’m so happy to be here with you. We’re all God’s creatures, one family, and that just means the world to me,” he said, looking right at me, never away for even a second.
When we got home, there was a van from Animal Control outside the Vasquezes’. Dad and Maryanne went inside when Mr. Vasquez came out of his yard along with a guy who was carrying a trap. There was a little baby coyote in it. I asked the guy what he was going to do with it.
“We’re supposed to put them down,” he said. “Public nuisance and all.”
“Goddamn right,” Mr. Vasquez said, giving me the eye as if he knew it was me that had keyed his truck.
“What did he ever do to you?” I asked the guy.
“Me personally?” he said. “Hell, nothing. Little runt like that? But rules being rules, and probably he’s rabid, statistically speaking, you can’t take chances. Imagine if you had a cat, or even a toddler, since coy- otes could 100% take down an untended toddler, and it came down to, like, toddler vs. coyote, one’s gonna die, and it’s your call. You wouldn’t bat an eye.” But then Mr. Vasquez went inside, and the guy said, “Look, I’m not gonna put him down. I know I’m supposed to, but between you and me I’m just gonna drive him out a ways and let him go. You okay with that?” I nodded. “Cool,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
He put the coyote into the van and went back into the Vasquezes’ yard with an empty trap. I beamed some good vibes at the baby coyote, telling it, See, we are not all bad! Soon you’ll be back with your family, or if not with your family exactly, at least with other coyotes. There was a box of rat poison next to the trap, and before I knew what I was doing I grabbed it and ran inside.
I stayed in my room the rest of the afternoon staring at that box of poison. I stared so long that after a while it seemed like it wasn’t even me that came up with the idea, that it was something that already existed and just needed my help. Later, Dad and Maryanne went out and Kaylee was still at church, so I had the house to myself. I looked up a cookie recipe and baked a batch with a spoonful of poison in it. I thought I’d give the cookies to Lacey to show him that everything was cool between us. That we were a family. I definitely didn’t want him to die, just maybe for him to get sick, to feel some of what I was feeling. I put the cookies into a big Ziploc and hid it under my bed to save them for the right time. Then I went into the living room to watch TV.
Later I heard Nacho meowing like he wanted to get outside. I yelled for him to shut up, but then I heard him barfing. I found the Ziploc pulled out from under my bed and ripped open. There were bits of cookie all over the carpet and a trail of barf leading into my closet. Nacho was inside making these small pathetic noises. I tried to pull him out, but he hissed and scratched at me, and then he was dead. I picked him up and was surprised to be so grossed out by him. He’d been my cat, but now he was just this thing, not even really a cat anymore. I felt bad seeing him like that and knowing it was my fault, but I didn’t mean for it to happen, and really, he was dead because of Lacey. I put him in an old shoebox and got some dishwashing gloves and paper towels to clean up the barf.
What I did next doesn’t make a lot of sense when I think about it now. I can’t honestly explain what made me do it, but while it was happening, while I was doing it, it seemed like my only option. That’s the best explanation I can give. I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and took the shoebox into the yard and what I did was cut open Nacho’s throat. I figured I’d tell Dad and Maryanne and Kaylee that he ran out when I opened the screen door, and before I could catch him, a coyote had come out of the bushes and grabbed him. I’d say that I tried to save him, but the coyote bit me too. Maybe I’d even cut myself a little to make it believable. And even though I was hurt, possibly infected with rabies, I still chased the coyote away with a broom or something, trying to save Nacho, but it had been too late. I was sad because he was dead, I knew that much even while I was doing all this, but I’d find a way to make Dad and Maryanne understand that the coyote hadn’t meant any harm. It was just trying to find food. Wasn’t that only natural?
I heard a car in the driveway, so I finished up real quick and left Nacho on the patio. I washed my hands and went out front, but it wasn’t Dad and Maryanne or Kaylee, it was Eli sitting in the driveway in a huge white SUV, and when I came to the door, he looked at me and smiled. I’d been ready to cry, to really put on a show, but seeing him there looking so happy just to see me, I didn’t want to do that anymore. I walked over and got in the car with him. There was no music playing, no AC, and we sat there with the windows open, not saying anything, letting the tiniest breeze move through us. I looked over at him, at his claw hand, and it didn’t seem gross to me anymore. It separated him from other people, but maybe that was good. I saw it as a wild, animal kind of thing now, and maybe that’s what he was too.
The coyotes were howling again. This time of day, evening, was the only good time in Scottsdale, when the heat finally died down a bit and there were long purple shadows and sometimes even a cool wind. For about two hours it stopped mattering that it was a desert, and there was a kind of magic in it. You could even almost forget that we weren’t supposed to live here. This was the coyotes’ home, and we had pushed our way in, put in lawn sprinklers and air conditioning, and made them into our enemy. I guess they needed some repayment for that.