Gunfire

Prelude. Ambulance.

Prelude / Ambulance.

There wasn't a time Indiana didn't have a brother. By the time her eyes opened, he was already there, but there's so little time between them, she also can't remember a time before him. Their origins blur, so different and so similar, into a single birth between them and so between them is a world and its beginning.

She tells herself there's not a world without her brother in it. She tells herself she'd follow him anywhere to keep the world from ending. But she doesn't feel that way anymore because she's already failed. They've lost their minds out here. Jesse plays a single guitar riff and everything is over. Everyone's already asleep. Everyone's already left them.

It's June when Indiana hears them, ringing and ringing and ringing. Ringing of sirens, blue and white flooding her window and invading underneath the black smudging her eyelids. The ringing of Rafe Cameron's ears, bloody. Everyone in the Cut could hear it. So could everyone else. When she hears it, she's in love with a boy.

The boy with tired eyes who sets himself aflame every day. He moves like winter, and his star-map skin and cacophony laugh, she can't tell him that his smile makes her feel a little less alone. His chapped lips unravel her and before him, she didn't know that poetry could exist so violently in a pair of cold hands that cradle her like fine china. He is Icarus's shoulder blades, he is Prometheus's calloused hands. Demeter in the wet dark of night, searching. Hephaestus and his bruised bones. Orpheus walking so close behind, so close you can feel the heat of his breath on the back of your neck. He thinks he is a god. "I never cry," he says. But when he explodes, he explodes, and when the time is right he drowns in the saltwater with the rest of us, with his sister. He's Rafe Cameron.

She'll find it all out soon enough. How he's bad with names, bad with vulnerability, but he smells like Smirnoff Raspberry and sand. How he acts tough, but he's secretly soft like her. He shaved his head last summer and cuts his heart out of his warm chest every day, watches it pulsing there, raw, in spite of it all. "I'm not afraid of anything," he says, but he's afraid of his father, just like she is. He wants to fly, but his wings don't spread like they used to. Maybe someone's torn them, maybe he's hit the window.

And just because you're afraid of your father doesn't mean you don't want him to be proud of you.

But I can't ramble enough about Rafe Cameron. It's the end of June when Indiana jolts awake from sirens and lights in the middle of the night. Her father isn't anywhere in the house. His car is gone. Christie is supposed to be in California still, but she flew home yesterday morning. She isn't in her bed and her duvet's been thrown on the carpet. Indiana almost realizes what happened, because she's turning the key in her truck before she even understands she's awake.

Her face is blank while she drives. People are yelling, everything is so loud. Neighbors are sleepily stumbling out to their porches. She knows Jesse did something. It's always about something Jesse did.

She rolls down her windows, she hears her last name. A girl is wailing. It's not her sister, it's someone else's sister. She parks, there is a bright light shining in familiar faces, people are huddling in a big circle around them. Her sister is clinging to the side of her father, like she's still a helpless child. She hates Jesse for whatever he did. But that's his job. Her father is trying not to look like a monster, like a beast full of hatred, veins pulsing through his forehead.

They all stare as she steps out of the truck. Her high beams are on, she can see everything. There are whispers. She can see all of Jesse's friends watching, keeping their distance from Rafe's family. JJ Maybank has a bruise on his cheek. They look at each other, faces blank and eyes mean. She asks a woman standing by her truck what her brother did. There are rumors of Rafe Cameron buying iced coffee and cigarettes at the gas station. Did you see his chapped lips, did you see his bruised knees, did you see how beautiful-sharp his cheekbones looked under the fluorescents? Did you see how heavenly he looked wiping away condensation with his slender fingers?

Jesse Dixon punched Rafe Cameron in the throat in the gas station. Rafe is knocked out, being cradled by the bed of an ambulance. Ward Cameron hands Shoupe a bill, and nothing happens to Rafe. Jesse is being pushed against the back of a police car. Jesse's face is being shoved into the dust of the metal. Christie winces. Mr. Dixon bites his tongue. Indiana grabs Christie from her father's arm. They stare at each other, breathing hard with tears in their eyes.

"When are you telling your mom?" She asks Christie. She doesn't respond. It's sweltering. The ambulance is driving away now. Jesse groans, his wrists red and chafing against the cuffs. He glares at the crowd when they toss him in the back seat. Not once does he look at his sisters. It's not his first felony, he hangs out with JJ Maybank. The police car drives away. Indiana has to drag a sobbing Christie away from the scene and into the truck.

Neighbors go inside, civilians walk away with a sigh. "Fuckin' Dixon," they grumble under their breath.

The house felt empty that summer. Three kids in a swimming pool turned into two kids. And when Christie leaves in a few weeks, it will turn into one kid. One daughter left behind. Everyone asleep, world over. Jesse likes prison. It's better to him than home is. Indiana has nowhere to go anymore. She hopes Rafe Cameron will still be hers by the morning, but she knows he won't be. He probably never was. Definitely.

Who does she think she is, running around with a Kook? The truth is, she was so hungry. It was a year ago, a summer of irises, crushed olives, gold honey, and wine. Hips, hands, shoulder blades. Distant torches and distant shouts. Running, running, running into the dark. His warm, crooked teeth skim over her pulse and in the name of every deathless god, she was hungry.

But the ambulance that left the gas station symbolized the end of Rafe Cameron for Indiana Dixon. At least for a while. He and his crooked teeth, his godlike figure, they move the stars for no one. She prays to him. She sees him in Kildare with a brunette, a pretty girl. Delicate features. She can see that. She can see Rafe falling for someone whose whole body sings delicate. She makes herself throw up until it's hard to breathe. Until she blacks out.

She's so lonely this summer. She'll kiss a lot of boys to replace Rafe Cameron. She'll kiss Weston Kelley, a dirty boy with red under his fingernails. She'll kiss JJ Maybank. She'll keep getting Jesse into trouble. It's his job after all.