Delayed Reactions
by Jennifer Vilchez
Now her sister was missing. After skipping her rehabs, sneaking out windows in the middle of the night, mama finding her passed out on the porch with the keys in the doorknob and her Dodge's door wide open, throwing fits when hearing maybe just maybe she does have a problem, this was the finale that somehow nobody expected but Sandra had been talking about since those two were on-and-off this past year. She always knew Parker had it in him. Got her little sister Elena hooked on that trash, completely reeled her in, then took her away to let her fry.
Lighting a cigarette while getting out the door, Sandra kicks over some empty soda cans and stares off across the yard while leaning over the porch railing. Mama is wailing inside. Sandra shakes her head, looks down to her black sneakers, smooths out the wrinkles in her polka dot dress, combs her hand through her shoulder-length tangled waves before adjusting her smudged glasses on her small freckled nose. She flicks the butt, stares blankly at the small line of gray smoke dance away into nothingness. She scratches her elbows, arranges the silver bangles on her wrists, picks at her uneven mostly broken nails. Sandra and Elena used to get their nails done every other Saturday at the salon near the Kmart. But that felt like ages ago, before all the fighting, before all the partying, back when they really were just a bunch of kids trying to grow up too fast. Mama hadn’t stopped crying since Elena’s phone went straight to voicemail four days ago. Dad walked around as if he had become deaf and dumb unable to console mama, unable to tell her where their baby was. It is so hard to keep secrets from those you love, or so they say, but to share the truth about Elena would only devastate them further. Sandra wished she had at least told her little sister everything, now it was too late.
Sandra's sister never knew that she and Parker had been together, back when they were all Mustangs and cared about the junior varsity team because that was the only thing to do on Friday nights in Sequoia Grove. That seemed so long ago. Parker's head and reputation wasn’t so large then. Everyone called him Andy, the teachers Andrew. Both always sat in the back of the class. He was sweet then but he had no interest in Fitzgerald, WWII or watersheds. She would let him copy the algebra homework she always finished. He liked her crooked teeth. She couldn’t understand why the insistence on keeping his high tops so white. By the end of the sophomore year they would meet behind the pizza kiosk during fifth period when they were supposedly out collecting pine cones for Environmental Science. Sandra was Parker’s first, but according to him, he had been proudly around the block and then some way before them practicing overly lubricated kisses against a graffiti- and gum-riddled wall. He never admitted it but Sandra was Parker's first-everything. He used to tremble when his hands would feel her then try to distract her with some story about who he jumped yesterday or the creepy old guy in the orange vest at the donut shop who must be an undercover. He was good at telling bad stories but she almost loved him anyways. What the unlikely pair had together was this secret and there was nothing that made their hearts race like meeting eyes and half smiles in the corridors or rendezvous in the bathrooms before his after-school transactions at the bus stop or her shift at the dry-cleaners.
Eventually Parker began to believe his own stories and went from a saggy pants wannabe into a real slimy silver chained Don Juan. They didn't meet up as much by the end of senior year but he never stopped gazing at her, even with another girl on his arm. Sometime after graduation, they had run into each other at the movies and shared a plastic pint of discount vodka and Sunny-D near the bathrooms. She had heard he had gotten into dealing drugs but she imagined it was still just the dime-bags of green he hustled back at lunchtime. Parker asked her to meet him at the last lamp post of the parking lot. Sandra went over, and there he was on a bench smiling underneath the milky hue. Hoping to have a nostalgic reunion, she sat close, thighs touching. She leaned on his shoulder, let her hair brush against the uneven stubble of his undeveloped beard. He began to put his other arm around her when suddenly he slips one hand down her shirt and moves the other towards the fly of her pants. His hands didn't tremble anymore, they were fast, cold, steady, calculated. She couldn’t push him off so she pretended to give in and then spat in his mouth. He jumped back, lifted his right hand in her direction. She got up, grabbed her keys and threatened to stab him in the balls. He called her a stuck up bitch. She told him to stay the fuck away. He said Elena had liked his moves then walked off. Sandra’s face had never switched from raging red to fainting white so quickly. From then on, the only secret they shared was mutual disgust.
~
Sandra looked past the yard to the driveway where her dad’s old green sedan with a faded Bolivian flag crookedly stuck on the rear window. She walks towards the car, orbits it slowly. The keys dangle from the ignition. The last time her GPS located Elena’s phone was somewhere out by Tracy. There was only one fucking reason people went out to Tracy, once there you normally don't come back. Only about a two hours drive if you take the bridge, Sandra thought. She had to get Elena back. This asshole was going to burn.
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