Forged in Grace by Jordan E. Rosenfeld Read Free Book Online Page B

is not anything horrible, but Ma and my father, Harlan, his hair still dark and thick, Ma almost thin, bent forward over a bassinet, looking at a downy, swaddled infant. It ’s a lovely image, something that would sell diapers and stuffed animals, but images of things-as-they-used-to-be give me more of a shiver than my own charred reflection.
    I pull back, heart thudding, and Ma heaves a sigh so big I can read the resignation in it.
    “Just be careful with that girl.”
    I don ’t know if she means Marly, or if she’s talking to me, the girl I still am in her eyes, forever frozen at fifteen by a molten snap of bad luck.

    In bed that night, the house shifts noisily around me, like a restless sleeper. It is probably just the cats navigating the few unpacked pathways between and around spaces we humans cannot possibly squeeze ourselves. Dare I leave Ma to all of this? She can barely rise off the floor without my help. In an earthquake, none of us would be safe in this house, but we pay our earthquake insurance and try not to think about the big fault line that lies less than a hundred miles from here. Marly and I tempted fate a hundred times as girls, and survived. Even the fire, an ironic accident in our spate of daredevil antics, didn ’t take me out. If I stay, I’m squandering a chance. I can feel it. If I leave, I’m abandoning Ma, the only person who stayed by my side.
    But memory comes rushing in like ocean waves, taunting me.
    We hit the stretch of Drake’s Bay Boulevard where black tar road merges into inky ocean. The moon has undressed further at the shore, enhanced by a huge bonfire that shows signs of having been raging for a while already. Cars line the road, and, below us, dark silhouettes writhe to a bass beat.
    This. This is what Marly offers me.
    Parties that appear out of nowhere.
    Marly slings a ratty gray back-pack over her shoulder and grasps my hand tightly. “Isn’t this fucking awesome?” she says. Her words are full of heat. As I clutch her hand while we make our way down the hillside, I feel momentarily imbued with that essence of hers that makes strangers give her their numbers on buses and men gawk at her right past their wives.
    “ Oh wait, I forgot.” She stops and opens her pack, pulling out a small red piece of cloth that could be a bandana, it’s so small. “Put it on.”
    I clutch the shimmery spandex material in my hand and it unfurls into a tank top.
    “You’ll freeze, but it will be worth it,” she says.
    She wears a hot pink baby-doll dress, its deeply v-neck revealing ample cleavage. “Go on. No one can see us up here,” she coaxes. I look around nervously, at the ant-like people cavorting below us, and quickly pull my long-sleeve black T-shirt off. The chill ocean air raised goose bumps across my chest, my nipples hardening painfully.
    Once encased in red, I feel bolder, if not exactly transformed. I leave my soft copper waves down from the hasty bun I usually keep them in, and they tumble just barely to my shoulders. In another few minutes we scramble and thump down onto hard, wet sand.
    Wherever we look people wear face masks and capes, cat tails and white sheets. “I totally forgot about costumes,” I say. It’s Halloween night.
    “ Who fucking cares,” she says, and struts directly toward a crowd of people.
    “ How can you tell who anyone is?” I ask.
    “ It doesn’t matter,” she says. “So long as they know who you are.”
    The crowd parts to let her in, and then to let me in. And there’s dark-eyed Gabriel Diaz who will later put his fingers into my underwear, smother me in weed-scented kisses, before insulting me when I don’t put out.
    I suppose I should remember that night with shame or misery. It was the night Marly told me they’d be moving soon, the night the boy I liked rejected me. But tonight it comes into my mind viscerally, bringing the brine of ocean and the tang of beer, the smell of my own arousal, the feeling of possibility, of