Read Drown for Free Online Page A

slumped back or anything; they were both wide awake, bolted into their seats. I couldn’t see either of their faces and no matter how hard I tried I could not imagine their expressions. Neither of them moved. Every now and then the van was filled with the bright rush of somebody else’s headlights. Finally I said, Mami, and they both looked back, already knowing what was happening.

AURORA
     

 
     
    Earlier today me and Cut drove down to South River and bought some more smoke. The regular pickup, enough to last us the rest of the month. The Peruvian dude who hooks us up gave us a sampler of his superweed (Jewel luv it, he said) and on the way home, past the Hydrox factory, we could have sworn we smelled cookies baking right in the back seat. Cut was smelling chocolate chip but I was smoothed out on those rocky coconut ones we used to get at school.
    Holy shit, Cut said. I’m drooling all over myself.
    I looked over at him but the black stubble on his chin and neck was dry. This shit is potent, I said.
    That’s the word I’m looking for. Potent.
    Strong, I said.
    It took us four hours of TV to sort, weigh and bag the smoke. We were puffing the whole way through and by the time we were in bed we were gone. Cut’s still giggling over the cookies, and me, I’m just waiting for Aurora to show up. Fridays are good days to expect her. Fridays we always have something new and she knows it.
    We haven’t seen each other for a week. Not since she put some scratches on my arm. Fading now, like you could rub them with spit and they’d go away but when she first put them there, with her sharp-ass nails, they were long and swollen.
    Around midnight I hear her tapping on the basement window. She calls my name maybe four times before I say, I’m going out to talk to her.
    Don’t do it, Cut says. Just leave it alone.
    He’s not a fan of Aurora, never gives me the messages she leaves with him. I’ve found these notes in his pockets and under our couches. Bullshit mostly but every now and then she leaves one that makes me want to treat her better. I lie in bed some more, listening to our neighbors flush parts of themselves down a pipe. She stops tapping, maybe to smoke a cigarette or just to listen for my breathing.
    Cut rolls over. Leave it bro.
    I’m going, I say.
    She meets me at the door of the utility room, a single bulb lit behind her. I shut the door behind us and we kiss, once, on the lips, but she keeps them closed, first-date style. A few months ago Cut broke the lock to this place and now the utility room’s ours, like an extension, an office. Concrete with splotches of oil. A drain hole in the corner where we throw our cigs and condoms.
    She’s skinny—six months out of juvie and she’s skinny like a twelve-year-old.
    I want some company, she says.
    Where are the dogs?
    You know they don’t like you. She looks out the window, all tagged over with initials and fuck you ’s. It’s going to rain, she says.
    It always looks like that.
    Yeah, but this time it’s going to rain for real.
    I put my ass down on the old mattress, which stinks of pussy.
    Where’s your partner? she asks.
    He’s sleeping.
    That’s all that nigger does. She’s got the shakes—even in this light I can see that. Hard to kiss anyone like that, hard even to touch them—the flesh moves like it’s on rollers. She yanks open the drawstrings on her knapsack and pulls out cigarettes. She’s living out of her bag again, on cigarettes and dirty clothes. I see a t-shirt, a couple of tampons and those same green shorts, the thin high-cut ones I bought her last summer.
    Where you been? I ask. Haven’t seen you around.
    You know me. Yo ando más que un perro.
    Her hair is dark with water. She must have gotten herself a shower, maybe at a friend’s, maybe in an empty apartment. I know that I should dis her for being away so long, that Cut’s probably listening but I take her hand and kiss it.
    Come on, I say.
    You ain’t said nothing about the