California
By Coleman Bigelow
“Think of it like a wilderness retreat,” I tell Tina, as we pull rocks from the sunken hollow where we aim to sleep. “We can pretend we're on one of those adventure leadership courses and not on the lam from some overpriced rehab.” We both laugh like what the fuck are we even doing and will they still charge us if we aren’t there? And who knew California could be so fucking cold at night?
“I always wanted to do Outward Bound,” Tina says, biting her muddy fingernails. “I just wish we’d thought to bring our jackets.” She’s shivering in her thin blue t-shirt and the track marks on her arms bulge in the chill like ghoulish goosebumps. I wish we’d thought to bring something to drink, I think. But I’m always thinking about that. They’d found my flask almost immediately after check-in. There’s no law against drinking, I complained to the warden (what I call our therapist) before he explained I should concentrate less on legality and more on morality.
“So, I guess you weren’t a boy scout?” Tina laughs, spitting out bits of granola bar as we search for sticks. “And I guess you weren’t a girl scout?” I reply, pretending not to be offended. Tina stops chewing. Her gaze drifts faraway before she shakes her head. “No, but I was a Brownie.” I could go for one of those I almost joke, but ask instead if this is her first time in Cali.
As we talk, I think about my first trip to California with my dad. He’d taken me to see the redwoods. And it was on that trip he’d let me share his martini. The liquor tingling in my thirteen-year-old throat before the horizon blazed. The pelicans dipping and diving, silhouetted against a flaming orange orb that sank into the sea.
There aren’t any redwoods in this forest, but the woods are thick with the scent of sage. “That smell always makes me want to spark a j,” I say. Tina gets this big grin. “You’re not just high on life?” she asks. Then something howls in the distance and we scramble back to our roof building. I balance branches in a wonky wedge as Tina scurries to brace the base.
With her pixie haircut, Tina moves like a woodland sprite. We’d first locked eyes across our bullshit therapy circle of folding chairs during one of the warden’s endless monologues about potential—found potential and squandered potential and repercussions, and accepting expectations, and I’d watched Tina’s awesome oversized eyes rolling with dramatic disdain to which I’d responded by raising my bushy eyebrows, which are just starting to get those wiry gray hairs like my dad’s, and I’m glad for this lingering link, because when I’d finally gone to take a peek at my pallid dad before his wake, I almost hadn’t recognized him. They’d trimmed his eyebrows up so much. Like someone had taken a weedwhacker to his brow and lopped all the character out of his face.
You wanna get out of here? Tina had asked while pouring half a bottle’s worth of French Vanilla Coffeemate into her Styrofoam cup. The rest of our breaks were spent smoking and surveying the edges of the property.
But now we’ve escaped into oblivion, with no fire and no whiskey. Nothing to warm our lost souls. We should be in a bar by this point, plotting our path back to civilization, not getting ready to spend the night huddled in a timberland depression. Not worrying about being caught by rehab security or mauled by an apex predator. And not obliged to nestle close for warmth. I’m not opposed to generating some friction, but I can’t handle any lingering heat.
We kneel on the edge of our abyss, spreading out pine needles and leaves for a makeshift mattress. “You know my dad always told me you made your bed, now you have to lie in it.” Tina’s tiny hands are busy rubbing her battered arms in a kind of sad self-hug. “That’s funny,” she replies, “my mom always said you dug your grave, now you have to lie in it.”
“I guess neither of them would have been big on rehab,” I say, scratching some kind of bug bite.
Tina is breaking up a piece of decaying wood with her toe. “My mom thought rehab was for losers or dilettantes.”
“Yeah, my dad wasn’t big on the notion of therapy. A man takes care of himself and keeps things under control,” I say, in my deepest, gruffest imitation.
“Even when things are falling apart all around them,” Tina adds, sucking the chill mountain air through her teeth.
“So, do you think your mom would have been better off if she’d gotten help? Did she need it?”
“It couldn’t have hurt.”
“And what about you?”
“Do I need help?” She shrugs. “I don’t NOT need help.”
“Yeah, same,” I say, and squat to the ground, suddenly depleted.
“Maybe we can go back and pretend we never left,” Tina says, dropping to my level.
“Maybe,” I say, “but I’m not sure I remember the way back.”
THE END
Author Bio: Coleman Bigelow is a Pushcart Prize and Best MicroFiction nominated author whose work has appeared recently in 3Elements Review, Bullshit Lit, Cease, Cows, Heavy Feather Review and Reckon Review. Find more at: www.colemanbigelow.com or follow him on Twitter @colemanbigelow.