“The deal is All-You-Can-Eat, jagoff. What are you trying to order, Half-of-What-You-Can-Eat?”
“He’s trying to order Half-of-What-it-Costs.”
Ana etched a star into her scratchpad, waiting for these guys to order. She didn’t mind their bickering. This show was mostly for her benefit, she knew, and besides, they were great tippers. Plus, she’d gotten higher than usual before her shift, and morning weed made her ruminative. Or was it remunerative. Ruinative? Oh Spanish baritone, where were you when she needed you?
Her body was at the table, but her mind drifted back to the farmhouse. That shit her father had pulled—a new low. Rock bottom? She didn’t dare hope, not again. Because what if there was no bottom? What if it was just sink and sink and sink? At what point was it not safe for him to be alone? At what point was it not safe for her to be around him?
The crude face smeared on the doors of the armoire. The crack of the rifle shot. Were they already at that point?
“IU’s a good school,” said someone at the long table. “Nice town, good basketball team. Cheap tuition.”
“You’ve got a funny definition of cheap.”
“Relatively speaking! It’s—”
“Relative, my ass,” interrupted Vernon, the oldest of the Liars. Over eighty, took no meds, wore no glasses or hearing aids. He credited his robust health to a daily regimen of cod liver oil, lemon juice, and unwashed greens from his garden, which combined to produce massive amounts of bile that incinerated hostile microbes. “Lava is cool compared to the sun,” he said, “but it’ll still burn your ass up.”
Ana doodled an alligator on her pad. Maybe her father wasn’t as bad as he seemed. What if he was faking? He did think Zeeshan was coming, but could he be playing up his paranoia to scare her away? Back when they played Liar’s Poker, she could never tell when he was bluffing.
“IU’s too big.” This from Little Mike, a lanky man with an Adam’s Apple that stuck out like he’d swallowed a baby hatchet. His name wasn’t meant to be ironic, though; he was little compared to Big Mike, who filled up a pair of XXXL overalls at the end of the table. Big Mike was a quiet man, although Ana didn’t know if that was his natural temperament or if he was just tired. Unlike everyone else in the diner, Big Mike was at the end of his workday. He was the night watchman at the salvage yard called Truck Parts, which was locally famous for its huge sign that was so chipped and faded that it appeared to read Truck Farts.
Little Mike said, “Plus the team’s on the fade. Kids don’t want to play for Bobby Knight anymore. She should go somewhere small.”
“Like where, St. Joe’s?”
Ana stopped doodling. Were they talking about her? When did they get on that subject?
“Why not St. Joe’s?” said Little Mike. “Small classes, plenty of personalized attention—”
“Yeah, from you. You want her to go to St. Joe’s because it’s a mile away. You just want to keep her pretty face around here another four years.”
Comments like that had embarrassed her in the summer, but not anymore. These guys were, to use an SAT word, avuncular. Only the most avuncular motherfucker would call her pretty anymore. Early in the summer she had tried to keep up her appearance, stashing a caboodle behind the counter, but, hey, you try putting on foundation after jogging five miles in ninety percent humidity. Nowadays Ana settled for washing her face in the bathroom sink and pulling her hair into a ratty ponytail. And, okay, putting on a little eyeliner (she wasn’t a cavewoman), but that was as far as she went.
Pastor Jim set down his coffee. “Where do you want to go, Ana?”
Well. She looked up, considering. The old florescent tubes gave a yolky cast to the linoleum floor and the dingy white countertop. She liked this job. Her routine was the same every day. Show up fifteen minutes early, share a joint with Karen out by the dumpster, listen to her rhapsodize about the tight buns on Luis, the cook, and how she plans to shuck his jeans like a cornhusk as soon as the chemo stops killing her sex drive. Walk in the back of the diner, where it was warm and bright and filled with the smell of baking bread and the tinny sound of cumbia music. Warm up with a cup of coffee, muddy with cream and sugar. Crack open one of Luis’s biscuits, crusty-dusty on the outside, soft and clumpy inside, steam coming up like a prayer.
Still: she didn’t want to stay in Morocco. You can be grateful for an oasis even as you dream about getting the hell out of the desert. The Liars’ question—Where do you want to go?—usually summoned a daydream of herself on a blanket in a grassy quad, or under a green-shaded lamp in a library, or begoggled in a chemistry lab.
But now? Ana couldn’t picture any of those things. All she could see was a girl standing at this long table, like she was watching herself through the security camera mounted over the cash register. The girl wore ripped jeans and an old thermal undershirt with a flannel tied around her waist. Rich kids called this look grunge; Ana called it church basement sale.
She forced a smile. “Ask me tomorrow.”
The Liars groaned, except for Little Mike. He raised his mug in a kind of toast. “To be continued,” he said.
Her fear exactly.
* * *
Homeroom, study hall (read: nap), lunch at 10:15, followed by about twelve Scantron tests, and then Ana was on her way back to the farmhouse. Not running this time, but riding the bus. In most towns, riding the cheesewagon in high school was verboten, the antidote to cool, and Morocco was no exception. Logan, this kid at school—okay, her “friend”—had emphasized this point in September when he offered her a ride after school. He said, “You know the bus is, like, rolling exile.”
“I know.”
“Social suicide with home delivery.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
In this little town, everyone knew Logan as the kid whose brother caught him watching gay porn. If anyone was a local expert in becoming an outcast, it was Logan.
“I believe you,” she said.
Being an untouchable sounded fine to Ana. A little distance from nosy questions and prying eyes? Sign her up. Besides, who knew how her father would react to a strange car rolling up their driveway? Thanks but no thanks, Logan, she would ride the queso express.
To her surprise, she enjoyed the bus. Well, enjoyed might be a little strong, but she could depend on the ride home from school to be the easiest part of her day. It was the Pax Anana. Twenty-six minutes of blessed nothingness. No coffee pots, no Trig or Chem or Econ, no laundry, no dishes. Nothing to do but lay her cheek on a red vinyl seat that smelled vaguely of body odor when it got warm, as it did on this particular autumn day with the sun pouring in the windows, turning the bus into a mobile hothouse of zombified teens.
When Ana got to the farmhouse that afternoon—it wasn’t home to her; it would never be home—she was stupefied by warmth and weariness, which was as close to peace as she got anymore. Her mind was quiet as she started up the long driveway, and it was still quiet when she reached the oak. This time she didn’t beg her father to come into the house. Didn’t bring out a bowl of hot oatmeal to eat at the base of the tree, imagining the steam drifting upward in cartoon tendrils to hook him by the nose and spirit him down to earth. Didn’t brandish a butcher’s knife, swearing that if he didn’t come down this instant, she would coat this tree in his blood. Her hands were empty and so was her mind, and that’s when a new idea came to her.
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.
* * *
When Ana hooked her hands on a low bough, Ben tried to say Don’t, but his voice was rusty from disuse and it came out as a croak. By the time he cleared his throat, she was already