Hot and still and dry. Earthquake weather. You know all about earthquakes. You can’t predict them but you know that they’ll come, and it happens mostly in the middle of the night. By the time you’re awake, the coppery taste of fear in your mouth, it’s nearly over.
The bed is shaking, and your eyes flash open. You hear the panting, see his silhouette in the darkness against the wooden shutters. The bed jiggles, rhythmic and quickening. Your legs are pinned. You squeeze your eyes tight; dig your fingernails into your palms. You hear the tick of the clock, a far off siren.
The weight lifts. You smell sour bleach. Your jaw aches. Warm stickiness on your thigh.
Get out, you finally whisper in the darkness. You try to make your voice stop shaking. Please.
Don’t tell, he says, his voice slurry. You know what’ll happen if you do.
The door clicks and you gallop to the bathroom. You stand under the stream of scalding water, blasting your body, front, then back, then front again. Eyes squinched shut, you scrub with the soapy washcloth until your skin is on fire. You gulp hot water.
In the morning, you come downstairs dressed in old corduroys and your Frampton Comes Alive t-shirt. Go put on a bra, your stepmother says. Uncle Shane gets up and refills his coffee. Your dad ruffles the newspaper. Your stepmother hollers over her shoulder for her son to get the hell out of bed. Drink up your Instant Breakfast, she says, her lipsticked mouth tight.
After school, she comes into your room, arms bulging with laundry. Jethro Tull blares in your headphones. Clean up this mess, she says, and you flip your pillow back onto the bed. She nudges the bedspread on the floor with the toe of her sandal. Looks like an earthquake hit this place. She leaves in a cloud of Poison.
No one ever feels them, the small tremors. The ones that don’t even crack the plaster, that scarcely tilt the paintings. Things are just a hair off center, not like you’d notice. They’re only little earthquakes. The world doesn’t crack open, like in the movies, yawning wide, threatening to swallow you whole.
Outside, the sun sinks, bloody red in the hot LA smog. Earthquake weather. You turn up the music, and curl up on the hard floor. Soon it’ll be night. You tug the dirty bedspread up and over your head. Duck and cover.
