Last Friday night we’re dressed like dolls. Paint red circles on my cheeks and black Twiggy spider legs under my eyes. Ruby’s smoking a blunt through the big bunny head, Donnie Darko in hot pink knee-high Converse. It’s so filthy I can’t even remember what color it was when she walked out of Hot Topic with it stuffed in her galaxy Jansport.
Last Friday night in the Inland Empire: car fumes and dust and tumbleweed. Feels like the hour before closing at Chuck-E-Cheese. Feels like standing against the wall at the winter formal in a discount Charlotte Russe dress. Feels like hospital waiting room fluorescent lights Ruby pumped full of Naloxone mom and dad down the hall arguing: send her back to rehab or risk the house being set on fire again.
Last Friday night in Lara Flynn’s front yard. Dumb stuck-up cunt thinks she’s better than everyone. Ruby’s standing outside her bedroom window waiting for the right moment as Lara flat irons her dumb hair. Like a Palomino’s tail. Okay, now: slingshot cage-free large brown egg against the glass. SPLAT—Lara’s dumb slender neck swivels around and she sees the bunny head and she’s screaming, dumb face framed by gooey chicken membrane and we’re dying and flying down the road clutching our ribs.
Last Friday night on the corner of that house where the homecoming king OD’d on what he thought was MDMA but according to the toxicology report turned out to be some rare designer drug traced to a defunct lab in Sweden. We weren’t invited to the party but we heard about it the next morning over the PA. His mom wore D.A.R.E shirts to every football game after that.
Last Friday night we’re still buckled over in tears, bony bodies collapsed on cement when the howling starts. Metal and flesh hurtles toward us, boys piled into the bed of an F-150 armed with Nerf guns. As they pass, point their guns at us and fire.
Rains blue foam pellets.
Shield Ruby's body with mine.
Hold my sister tight.
Wait until the truck dissolves into the cluster grid of lights in the distance, flickering in the dark like a circuit board.
