Page 37 of Jagged Line Paradise

I give Mom a quick wipe down and make a mental note to get her in the shower later. I don’t have time right now. I have to be at the community center to teach an art class in less than an hour, and if I don’t give myself a break first, I’m going to end up climbing back into bed and cancellingagain.

I can feel my depression creep in like a venomous dark spider, crawling out from the deepest corners of my mind, the place where I try to hide the worst moments of my life. I can keep the spiders in their webs for a few hours at a time, but they always slink back out.

It hits me without warning every once in a while, as if a spotlight flips on inside my mind and scares dozens of them out of their dark corners. They come scattering out of hiding with such swiftness that they quickly take over my mind, overwhelming me with melancholy.

Those days are the worst because I can hardly get myself out of bed, let alone care for my mother. Somehow, I manage—because I have to—but those days make me wish I didn’t have to open my eyes at all.

The heat and the sunlight always seem to help a little bit, though. And since I’m already standing, it’s easier to get myself outside now than it will be if I let myself sit and rest inside. I quickly tell my mom that Louisa will be over in thirty minutes and that I’ll be back later. Louisa is a nursing aid that Mack hired to keep me working for him, knowing I struggled with guilt over my mother’s care while on the job.

I pop into my room to grab my fabric crossbody hobo bag, and I leave before I can talk myself out of it. The screen door swings shut behind me. I decide to take a walk up to the bluff, hoping some time alone there will help me clear my head.

No. That’s a bad idea.

I always think it sounds like a good idea and it never is. It just reminds me of my eighteenth birthday. It reminds me of Andrés Hernandez—how everything was so perfect that night and then went so terribly, terribly wrong.

I shake my head, sad over the memories. I still feel damaged from what happened to me with the Canyon Carver. I still feel angry at Andrés for leaving me behind. I’m still broken-hearted that the spot that was once my favorite place to sit and think has become a place that brings me nothing but sorrow.

I look across the rows of trailers and manufactured homes in Paradise Park to where the bluff rises, not so far away. I see that the dirt on the ledge has kicked-up, creating a sort of dusty fog. It’s the same sort of dusty fog I’d see when a car drives along the dirt road down here beneath the bluff.

That’s unusual.

There’s a semi-clear path from the far-side of the slope behind the bluff that I suppose a car could drive up to reach the top. I always walk up the hill from this side, at the bottom of Paradise Park. A car couldn’t go that way since that slope is spotted with cacti and plants that would block the path for a vehicle. I’m not sure why anyone would want to drive up there, though. It’s curious, really.

My head falls to the side as I watch the dusty fog thicken, as the front grill of a black SUV peeks into view. It comes to a quick stop, back far enough from the bluff’s edge to park safely. I watch as three people exit the over- sized vehicle and my eyes squint at what I’m seeing in the distance.

There’s a woman, maybe around my age. Her blond hair is sloppily tied into a tangled bun on the top of her head and dark sunglasses shade her eyes. There’s also a rather large man with quite the beer gut, older, probably balding, though it’s hard to tell from this far away. He pulls some items from the vehicle and starts to set up a tripod and camera.

What is going on?

A third man walks straight to the edge and stops. He looks sleek but overdressed in a perfectly tailored navy suit. My eyes follow the line of him, from bottom to top, and halfway up, my body stops functioning—organs failing, heart stopping, brain stuttering.

I know who it is.

I know before my eyes meet his chin, his perfectly square jawline, his hardened grin, his slightly crooked and perfectly masculine nose. And though I can’t see the color of his eyes from here, the darkness of them cuts across the sunlight of midday and shadows everything.

His raven hair is styled neatly instead of ruffled and unkempt the way I remember it. I remember it was thick and soft and felt like silk between my fingertips.

How can a decade-old memory of touching his hair make my stomach fliplike that?

Andrés.

Andrés Hernandez has come back to Sunrise Valley.

His head snaps the moment I say his name in my mind, as if he could sense my small, feeble presence down below, watching him. I know he can see me from where he’s standing. It wouldn’t be obvious that it’s me aside from the fact that I’m standing in front of my mother’s silver trailer—the only silver trailer in the park—and my hair is a rather distinct color compared to the usual blonds and browns and grays of most everyone else. I feel as though I’m on display. I feel small and weak, and he looks so strong and sharp and successful.

I swallow as my nerves get the best of me. I feel like shrinking, going back inside, and hiding until he leaves. I take a step backward, but then he turns, his attention drawn away by the blond who calls him back toward the car, and I snap out of whatever trance I was trapped in.

My heart starts beating again and it pounds in double time as anger replaces my weakness. I’m angry with him, and I have been for a long time. I’m furious that he would return, that he’d come back to this town at all. And all the worse that he’d go up there, to our spot on the bluff and...do what?

What is he doing here?

Did hecome to see me?

I glance over at the camera being set up, and suddenly, it hits me. A producer tried to contact me about a documentary. She had mentioned Andrés. I ignored the calls and the message, but I guess it didn’t matter.

He’s here filming a documentary.

He’s here to exploit me, to tell a story that doesn’t belong to him.

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