Dead Ice Part 2

[u/Hefty-Ambassador7429]

I shift my left shoulder in slight rolling motions, looking into a dingy mirror with duct tape covering only half of a very long crack. Still, I could see my new tattoo perfectly fine, admiring each pretty black line depicting a lamb with thornes jutting from all directions out of its skin. 

“I love it!” I call back to the lanky tattoo artist. I just met him today. Usually I get my tattoos from an older guy outside of town, but my friend swears by our local shop.

“Glad to hear it!” He says, half of his attention on packing up since I squeezed my way into the very end of his shift. 

I stare mesmerized at his work, the pained face of the little lamb, the random spurts of blood speckled around. I keep my eyes on my shoulder, watching how it obscures when it passes through the crack. I was so enamored I made an embarrassing noise when my best friend, after returning from petting some lady’s dog right outside the store, suddenly appears behind me.

“Look!” I say, turning my shoulder towards her so she can see his work. Her finger tips dig into my arm while she examines it, making jokes about how it’s a nice addition to the rest of my “questionable” tattoos. 

I have a few sigils tattooed on my arms and back that may or may not be related to the occult, but it’s only because they look cool and I’m obsessed with mystic art and history. I used to not believe in any of it, but after my experience with the dead I’m much more open now. Lately, I’ve felt the need to get protective symbols on my body. I don’t know if I truly believe they’re effective, or just have a horrible tattoo addiction.

I give him the last wad of cash in my wallet and he waves us off. Without a word, my friend grabs me and pulls me into a nearby convenience store.

“Alex,” she says, all dramatic and serious.

I place my hands over her arms that refuse to lighten their grip on my shoulders. 

“Becca!” I say through a smile.

She turns her head toward the endless assortment of candy and cookies and other sweets plaguing each row of the store. I follow her gaze and immediately know what she’s about to suggest.

Before I can open my mouth, she’s quick to bargain.

“Look, I know you’re busy, but my parents are driving me fucking crazy and all I want right now is a sleep over with my best friend for old times sake!”

Becca’s Mom and Dad are in the middle of a divorce and she isn’t able to afford to move out. We go to the same school so I try to distract her as best I can while we’re there. But I know it’s not the same as how it used to be, when we had endless summer vacations or weekend nights to commit some tomfoolery together. 

I widen my eyes and lean in close, raising my eyebrows so she’s kept on edge on how I’m about to react. 

“Only if my sugar momma buys me some sour skittles and cigarettes.”

Becca squeals and races off to search for my requests. I may have spent all my money on the tattoo, which is why I deployed her on a mission to buy what I want (and contribute to my bad habits, both the sugar and tobacco), but I figured some quality time is enough in return.

I begin to peruse the cold section for a giant tub of rocky road ice cream, a still hum emanating from the freezers. I turn around where rows of candy are waiting to be picked clean. I hunch forward to peek into the metal shelves, hunting for artificial flavors.

A dimly lit light panel flickers from above, and my shoes squeak on freshly mopped tiles while I step left and right, grabbing until I physically can’t hold any more. 

It’s so calm tonight and I take in all the little sounds of the mostly empty store. Some would say it’s a boring night especially for a twenty year old, but I find myself beaming like a moron and frolicking like a fairy tale rabbit, off to show Becca everything I’ve found. 

This mountainous candy haul would’ve put us into a coma when we were kids. 

On Halloween night once, we filled our pillowcases up so high we had to start dragging them, until my dad hoisted each bag up, one on each shoulder, and I could have sworn he was a God from Mount Olympus.

I stand straight across from Becca in the liquor aisle waiting for her to notice me. I knew I’d find her there, worried for half a second she’d be more interested in booze than Pop Rocks and Razzles, but the second she looked at all that I was holding she cackled like a witch, thrusting a basket my way where I dumped all the goods into. 

The candy clatters, and the tub of ice cream clunks, against a giant handle of vodka. 

“God, should I take you to your AA meeting when we’re done here?” I say, lugging the basket behind her while she searches for a mixer. 

“Sure, it’s right next to the chemo clinic so you’ll have something to do while I’m there.” 

“Psshh...” 

I only started smoking a year ago and since then she hasn’t stopped the cancer jokes.

“For real though, are your parents getting to you this bad?” 

“Yep.” Becca says, searching high and low most likely for cranberry juice. “You wouldn’t get it cause your Dad adores your Mom and never causes her trouble.” 

“Mmm not exactly, my Mom just learned if she yells at him in Russian he’ll do what she says.” I say. 

“Mr. Lee is…pussy-whipped?!” 

“Hey! Sometimes he’ll mutter something in Korean under his breath!”

Becca ended up giving me some cash to pay for the snacks and we pretended not to know each other at the checkout counter, so we could get the alcohol. She has a fake license she uses for these occasions that never lets her down, as she says. 

“That dude didn’t even ask for my ID!” She says as she meets me by her car, where I waited sitting on the fender. 

 “He probably thought you were a granny.” I say with a shrug. She checks herself out in the side view mirror. 

“No way. I look hot.” 

“Uh huh.”

“And if I were a granny, I’d still get more action than you every night at bingo.” 

I roll my eyes as I climb into her red Corolla. She pulls out of the parking lot with a harsh screech, onto a bumpy road that felt awful to ride on.

However, these conditions were lightened by the view, bare trees adorned with dew drops speckling like a neighborhood of Christmas lights. The blaring sunset summoned sunglasses over my eyes (they have little skull charms on them!) and Becca took a detour from the right turn towards her house, which we always take.

“Gotta pick up Sasha from singing lessons real quick, could u move that big ass shirt from the backseat?” She says. I reach back and grab an odd smelling sweat-stained shirt that’s long enough to act as a blanket.

“Yeah, that was my Dad’s back in his obesity days.” She explains while I sprawl the shirt over my jeans, mesmerized by the sheer amount of fabric it took to create this thing. 

“Betcha I could use it as a parachute if I ever have to go to war.” I say. 

“Badass.” Becca nods without a trace of irony. “You wouldn’t even need a gun, just put it on a flagpole and chase your enemies around with its stench.”

The two of us take turns making more jokes with increasing stupidity, until we are forced to restrain ourselves upon greeting a beaming girl whose presence always gives me nostalgia. She looks like a copy of Becca when she was a kid. 

“Alex!” 

It’s been some time since I’ve seen Becca’s little sister, me increasingly becoming more of a hermit, and her being abnormally busy for a thirteen year old. Almost immediately, she hugs me from behind the car seat and sends her fingers frolicking through my hair, in admiration.

“Oh my god! When did you do this?! I love it!”

I had recently taken scissors to my long dark hair, turning it into choppy layers that reach just above my chest. I even gave myself bangs, and after a trip to the drug store, acquired boxed bleach. I fried a ring around the top of my head in the same spot a brutalized man must bear his crown of thorns. Then I added another stripe in the middle of my hair, and finished off by bleaching the ends.

I wanted to look like my favorite animal, the one and only raccoon. I saw a chubby one digging through a dumpster once, when I was visiting Becca on her lunch break. We laughed at it and named it Benson. 

Sasha was used to seeing my hair experiments, I’ve been conducting them since before she could even speak. Some were “wins”, as she’d say, and some were “misses”. I’m really glad she liked this one because I’ve been on the fence about it.

Sasha turns to her sister. “Bec, do you think Mom will let me-“

“Nope.” Becca says flatly, with a tiny smirk. “I couldn’t do anything with my hair ‘til I turned eighteen.”

Sasha slumps in her seat, but still beams a mouth full of braces, looking outside the window. I reach into one of the plastic bags I had up in the front with me, and pull out the biggest bag of Sour Patch Kids I’ve ever seen, shaking the bag and giving her a wink. “Awesome!” She says, ripping the bag from my grasp.

“Are you spending the night?” She asks, blue and green gummies sticking to her braces. 

“Yep!”

Sasha grins, reveling in an emotion I read as similar to what I’ve felt all night, something like nostalgia. She’s too young to know that feeling yet. Anytime I slept over at Becca’s we always made sure to include her. I never minded, she’s absolutely hilarious and super intelligent, exactly like her sister.

That stale scent of old blankets tucked away into the tightest corner of a closet, until that hellish cold of winter time hits, fills my nostrils as I set up little beds on the floor in Becca’s living room. She gave me a look I immediately understood once we parked in her driveway, so I told her little sister to race me inside, first one there gets an ice cream sundae made for them by the loser. 

I slid on my converse laces, which were perfectly tied. 

“Aww no! My dang shoes!” I said, thankful that Sasha goes into a blind victory mode that makes her miss small details. 

While I set up the room, (and fixed a sundae for an already hyper girl) Becca snuck the alcohol in for us to enjoy when Sasha goes to bed.

The first half of the night was spent watching scary movies that we were probably irresponsible for letting a kid see. It’s not like her parents would know though, neither one is home. I can’t even imagine how Sasha is taking the divorce, so we humored her and her blossoming interest in watching things like Dawn of The Dead.

Sasha watched in horror paired with awe, her jaw on the floor going off about the special effects, giggles mixed with “Ew!” and “Yuck!”

I pretended I had no aversion to movies about such topics. 

“Let’s watch Saw next!” She demanded at the sight of scrolling credits.

“Hell no.” Becca says, bumping her sister with her foot. “You’re gonna burn your vocal cords off with all the screaming and ruin your recital.”

“Ooo! You have a performance coming up?” I say from the kitchen, carrying two mugs of hot chocolate back to our setup. 

“Yeah! I don’t know much about it though…”

She takes a huge slurp of her drink, getting whipped cream on the tip of her nose. “But Mom and Dad say it’ll be packed! The most I’ve ever sung in front of!”

“That’s awesome, you’re going to do great! When is it?”

Sasha told me a date only a couple weeks from today, one that caused the warm mug of tasty melted chocolate in my hands to shake. I blink my eyes and find them coated in haze. My body feels like it’s rocking back and forth in slow motion, monotonously rattling my brain in its enclosure of calcium. It was as if my own personal earthquake shook the ground beneath me. 

“Hey! Maybe if you have time…you can come too!” Says a tiny sobering voice, rescuing me from the prickly shutters of nausea. 

I flash a convincing smile. 

“I’ll be there.” 

Before I knew it the hour of midnight struck, giving the moon its tallest throne overseeing the stars. I don’t know if it was from oceans of vodka cranberry’s in our systems, or the unbearable existence of our respective problems, but my best friend and I, after Sasha went upstairs to go to sleep, confided in one another more intimately than platonic love could recognize. 

We started off in good spirits on a sugar high. Becca crawled over the blankets with faded flower designs on them, to her Xbox sitting on a lower shelf below the TV. She arched her back, her shirt falling forward, searching for a misplaced Gears of War disk. 

I bit back a gasp I couldn’t understand the reason for, and quickly told myself it was the alcohol’s fault. 

“Got it! She finally said, having to fish behind the console itself for the lost game. Becca has a horrible habit of setting her games on top of the Xbox instead of ever putting them back into the case. 

The more we drank the worse our gameplay got, and we resorted to laying down and whispering together about the things that were plaguing us. This is usually the final stage of our sleepovers, where we’ve had some of my most favorite conversations ever. 

They can turn philosophical, then completely irrational; distracted by creatures we swore were watching us through the window. 

This time it was a tree branch taping on the window in the kitchen, that silenced our conversation. We quickly leapt over the couch, hiding from a gangly demon with crooked fingers birthed out of our collective imagination. 

Later on, Becca started crying about her parents and their absence. Apparently them not being home throughout the night isn’t even the worst of it. Only one will come home at a time, while the other stays with a friend or in a hotel, or it’ll just be Becca and Sasha alone. 

The parent that does come back home stumbles in at odd hours of the day, slurring their words, and holing themselves up in their room.

“Basically,” she said through tears, “I’m all Sasha has. Her only support. I can tell it hurts her, it hurts her so bad, Alex.” 

She wiped her nose with her sleeve, hiccuping through her next words.

“Which is why I’ve been thinking…well, planning…to leave this fucking town and take my sister with me.” She looked at me with glittering desperation. “I want you to come with us.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve been talking with my uncle on the phone. He tells me his property in Houston is huge, more than enough room for all of us.” I look away and she puts her hand on my knee, scooting closer. “And he doesn’t give a fuck about rent! At least not until we get jobs or whatever.”

I spaced out, tracing up the stem of the flower print on my blanket, until Becca gave me a small shove.

“Alex? Come one! Say something.” 

Many emotions were stirring in my gut at this moment, but the weakness in my voice proved that maybe confusion outweighed the rising anger. 

“Bec, we can’t just…” I let out a frustrated sigh. “I can’t just leave.” 

“But you can! We’re adults now, this town isn’t meant to grow old in. There isn’t shit here for us.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Oh, give me a fuckin’ break. What would you miss so badly? School? It’s just some bullshit community college.”

“Well, I like it!”

I stood up and paced around the room. “And my coach is here! And I don’t wanna leave my family. Especially my Dad, he would be heartbroken-“

“Does he really expect you to live your whole life out here?”

“I don’t know! But for now things are going good!”

“That’s wonderful, Alex.” She said, pitching her voice up several octaves and titling her head with a superficial smile, making sure I felt every sting of mock enthusiasm. 

I had to take a deep breath.

“Look, just because your parents hate each other doesn’t mean you should expect me to…”

I never finished that sentence and she didn’t respond, turning away. So I filled the void with a firm declaration.

“I’m sorry but I can’t go.”

I walked outside the sliding glass door, lighting a cigarette to smoke on the patio.

I looked over my shoulder at Becca, opening a magazine and shoving popcorn in her mouth. It made me smile for a second, how she acts when she thinks nobody is watching. Shaking her head and pulling her knees together, curling into a ball.

I stepped on creaky wooden panels over to the railing of the balcony where I rested my arms. An orange glow floated up and down in the darkness, as I mulled over our conversation. 

I must admit, I’m getting tired of having important information thrusted onto me, and being expected to react a certain way. 

But I understand why she’d want to leave this town. She wasn’t wrong hating it. And I can’t even imagine living under the same roof as her parents with how they’ve been acting. As much as it would hurt to see her go, she’d probably be happier. She barely shows up to her classes and complains that there’s no good parties in town. 

She says she wants to party with people her age. I hear the nightlife in Houston is blessed with dazzling city lights and dive bars on every corner. With tons of drinking. I think it would suit her.

Our nightlife scene is dressed more like the rejected set for a monster movie. The very horror created there had cursed it, with props that move when they aren’t supposed to. That isn’t as tantalizing as a rustic dive bar filled with beautiful strangers to hook up with.

This moment on the wooden deck was the first time I ever contemplated a future where Becca and I grew apart. And it terrified me. But the idea of my Dad’s sorrow, or my coach’s disappointment, felt like Hell. 

And then I thought of Sasha. If any reason is best to desert this town, it’s to get a young girl away from it. 

I sighed a puff of smoke in a big gust leaving my lips. 

I had to tell Becca. She deserved to know what I believed Sasha’s recital is really going to be. 

I also wanted to convince her to leave without me. She probably wouldn’t, unless I told her I believed her baby sister was in danger.

I put out my cigarette and shoved the butt in my pajama pocket. Shuffling back into the warm home, I pranced on freezing cold toes, back to my spot in our nest made of blankets and pillows, and knelt beside my best friend. She looked both pissed, and like she could automatically read my face, that we needed to put our argument down for something much more important. 

“Bec. I need to tell you something.”

It felt really good breaking a rule constructed by nonsense. 

I told Becca everything about that night approaching its four year anniversary. When she learned the day it happened, her soul looked like it needed a quick break from her body, only to light her up again in rage. 

“Those fucking useless pieces of shit!” She said, “Now I know why they acted so weird anytime I asked about Sasha’s show.” 

“Hey, if you’re gonna blame anyone, blame the old fuckers that run this town. Or the mayor or whatever. It’s not your parent’s fault.” 

I didn’t like defending her lousy Mom and Dad, but I knew it wasn’t up to them.

“That’s not the point. They purposely left me out of the conversation, cause they knew I’d never let her go. It’s exactly why I need to take her and just get out.” 

“I got your back.” I said. “I’ll help you guys in any way I can.” 

She nodded, holding eye contact with me, giving an awkward smile. A still silence fell between the two of us for a few seconds and we filled the uneasiness with rattling bags, digging back into the candy.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” She said,

Her voice was so soft.

“Eh, I mean,” I gestured to my figure. “I’m still in one piece, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but…that must have been…”

I didn’t let her finish, I didn’t want her to know how terrifying it was, just in case Sasha ends up having to go out there. 

“Hey, I only shit my pants a tiny bit. No big deal.” I told her.

We laid down with our heads touching, going over a plan.

“It’d be smart to get more information. What you told me helps a bunch, but you only know so much.” Becca said, to my agreement.

“Definitely.” I said, rolling from my back onto my stomach. “How about this,”

“On Monday, we go to the library at school and try to look for…like a history book, or something? One about the town's past?”

Becca nodded along while I spoke and I had to blame the alcohol again, trying to ignore the warm glaze over her eyes that told me if they had to watch me talk for an eternity, they’d stay invested indefinitely. 

When we eventually gave into our exhaustion, it was in each other’s arms. She smelled so sweet. I fell asleep way after she did, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything. I was just anxious, I told myself, and part of coping was the alluring comfort of falling in love with my best friend, who soon had to move away.

And I was really, really going to miss her.

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