Club None

II.

Duane and his blonde-haired best friend haunted her dreams. Sand scraped her window, carving pictures of pink peonies and white-stricken lips and her poor beautiful dead mother's eyes filled with plexi-glass tears. Wind screamed, lightning shattered. Her step-brother was howling at the top of his lungs and his eyes were filled with darkness, and he –

"Ellie – Jesus, Ellie –" Lavender wafted through the room as Alice entered. Her hand slid down her step-sister's shoulder, slow and careful, as she said in measured tones – "Ellie, it's me, you don't have to scream."

"I'm sorry." Ellie's voice cracked. Tears dampened her temples.

"Was it Duane?"

She turned her head away. The lightning had abated; in its absence her window was black and empty. No scratching at the panes. No Duane. Just a storm, her unborn child, and her sister. Her elbows pressed into her sides.

"No. The ocean," she said. Then: "I was drowning."

Alice smoothed hair back from her forehead. "Dreaming about water, falling, and flying are the most –"

"Common types of dreams. I know. I'm a common type of dream."

"No," her sister said. "You're living in a common place of fear."

Ellie closed her eyes. "We should be in Santa Monica by now."

Alice tugged at her shoulder. "Better – we're past that. We made it to the desert! Rowan –" the eldest, and resident "mother" of the three "– set up the stakes and the umbrella. We've got a working porch set up; I made coffee. My potted cactuses are thriving. Want to take a look?"

"Yes of course," Ellie said. "At four in the morning."

Their older sister would be thrilled. Two more night owls joining the party. Rowan hadn't been the same since leaving for University of Houston. Within three months she had changed her major from anthropology to gender studies, pierced her eyebrow, developed perpetual pouches under her eyes, and kept to a schedule ticking counterclockwise.

Ellie respected her independence. Not her methods, but – her scrambled eggs and dour black coffee, and the scones she made at midnight, studded with pecan and ripe raisins.

Alice was still tugging her shoulder.

"A little morning rendezvous never killed nobody."

Outside the air was fresh and sharp, still wet with the aftertaste of rain. Ellie leaned one hip against the doorway of the camper and examined the stars. The sky was a dim, soft black, clouds faded navy. Desert sand stretched in all directions. A smattering of scraggly, low brush littered the ground. Campers popped up like June bugs, roofs sun-streaked, windows rolled open. Tires tracks stamped the fresh ground.

Blinking, Ellie wiped the sweat off her forehead and tugged her tank top down over her swollen stomach. Wind caught and pierced the last tendrils from her fog of nightmares.

"Isn't it beautiful?" her step-sister came up behind her and rested her chin on Ellie's shoulder. "At night this place will hop and glow and freak. It'll be glorious, dearest. Reckless indulgence – just what the doctor ordered."

"I'm not drinking," Ellie said. "I won't drink, I don't want to drink, and I can't drink."

Alice kissed her cheek, quick as a darting cobweb. "I'll only push as far as you push back."

Which is exactly what she had said about Frederick. Push, don't push back. Pull, don't pull Duane into the undertow. Shove too hard, and they all fell down.

There had been far less pushing and pulling and shoving and stretching since the pregnancy. Less turmoil, more tension. Alice watched Ellie who watched Rowan who watched the stars, and the three of them had tip-toed around both Duane's altercations and this unfortunate side effect.

Together they waited for the sun to stretch its long yellow fingers across the campsite. Strangers unpacked cardboard boxes and fluorescent tents, shouting and laughing, shuffling across the ground or sashaying through half-open door flaps. From the kitchen, Rowan burned the hash browns, swearing and slamming pans. Black smoke bit into their mood, settled heavy in their mouths.

In the bathroom Ellie's cell phone buzzed across the lip of the sink, screen blinking with the name she refused to read.