“I have work—I have a really important work call. Sorry.”
She moves as if to stop me. I freeze on the threshold, petrified. Why am I so scared? Is it because of what I did? Or is she really looking at me through crosshairs? “Did Margo put you up to this?”
My throat is dry, but my mind is confused. “I don’t know who that is.”
“This is her house, and yours—you’re living in her house.”
Stupid. That’s why this is dangerous. That’s why I can’t come back here. By wanting more, I am only guaranteeing that I will lose everything. “Oh, that Margo. I got her mixed up. I’d better go.”
“Another time.” Why does she insist?
I leave. I pass through the courtyard and hurry down the stairs. I see Michael waiting down below, but in my head I see something else: I see Lyla and me upstairs, like I have left another me behind. We are sitting down together, laughing at some little thing—the same thing—huddling closer when it gets dark until we switch the lights on, shove the shadows back.
DEMI
“You hit me,” Michael says, too loud for my liking.
Quiet, I mouth.
I unlock the door, shepherd him inside.
“Take it easy,” he says, suddenly unhurried. He hunkers back into his corner, makes himself comfortable.
“What were you thinking, running through the gate like that?”
“A red dog was chasing me.”
“If you run, dogs chase you. Stop running.” I shake out my frustration. “You can’t let her see you. She’s going to get suspicious.”
He shrugs, runs a line of heroin. “I guess you’ll have to go out and score, then,” he grunts. “Pawn things. Keep this house together.” He is really overstating his importance.
I shake my head. “It’s like you want to be seen.”
He runs another line and speaks through smoke. “She can’t see me.” He coughs. My eyes go up automatically. I hear her cross the floor. “You know what a rich person’s blind spot is? Poverty. She doesn’t have any idea what we do, how we think. Doesn’t have any idea at all.” He smokes some more. “We can use that.”
Upstairs, I was afraid of being seen for what I really am, afraid of not belonging, but Michael is right: She couldn’t see me if she wanted to, couldn’t conceive of the machinations, the lies and the crimes that got me here.
I can hang on down here as long as I can, a rat picking up scraps, while Michael takes everything, while my chance evaporates. This has been my life so far. I clung to my wild dad, and when he died, I moved from place to place, a living, breathing apology. I felt bad for who I was, for all the things I wasn’t responsible for and I lost, again and again and again.
I don’t believe that the disadvantaged can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”; they’re born without boots. But I’m not poor anymore. I have been （re）born to privilege. And I can’t let Michael or my past or my own poor-minded self keep me down.
So the next morning when Lyla insists I go for a walk with her, when she denies my refusals, I capitulate. I give in. I accept.
I need to think rich. I need to think Me.
I am blessed.
She is the blessing.
* * *
WE FOLLOW A narrow, winding road up the side of the hill. It’s not the kind of path I would ever choose. The pavement is uneven, split open at the seams. Hairpin turns all but guarantee that any car will hit you; no brake could seize in time. It sends my instincts into overdrive.
She doesn’t notice the danger. It doesn’t exist for her. We pass cars with cracked mirrors, punctures and scrapes that run from bumper to bumper, and she just chatters away about nothing.
As we walk, the pressure of recognition slowly builds. She is taking me to the lake. Does she know what happened? Does she sense it?
The path around the lake is deserted, and it’s not really a path. It’s a wide asphalt road rimmed with pipes so wide you could crawl inside; you could sleep inside if it weren’t for the thatched bars at every opening.
An asphalt road encircles the reservoir, but it’s separated from the water by a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence.
The reservoir itself is a pristine, untouched lake in the middle of a city touched by everything, touched by too much, but it is upended by a soulless dam. There is an enormous concrete ring in one end where the water drains, sucked down endlessly, that looks like the kind of place you would dump a body.
We walk along the trail together. I want to enjoy myself but can’t, which could probably be the title of my memoir. Lyla stops, smiles eerily.