Virgin Territory by James Lecesne Read Free Book Online Page B

together like a puzzle. Either way, it seems as though someone has gone to a lot of trouble to create a sidewalk in a place where there isn’t that much foot traffic. Occasionally, you can spot a lone jogger or a woman who’s out for a walk with her tiny dog, but mostly the walkways are just for show. If people go out, they go out in their cars.
    “Get in!”
he yells. Then, “You just gonna ignore me? That it? Am I going to spend the rest of my life just driving around looking for family members who have gone crazy? Haven’t I gone through enough already today without you giving me crap?”
    Why does everything always end up being about him? Never mind. I focus on the plant life. Most of the plants in Florida are pointy and sharp. Even the flowers will poke you in the eye and blind you if you dare to get too close.
    “Look,” Doug says. “I really don’t have time for this.”
    He’s inching the car alongside the curb and at the sametime leaning over to talk to me through the open passenger-side window. He’s steering with one hand, looking up ahead to make sure he isn’t mowing down anybody’s mailbox. Every once in a while, his tires scrape the curb. I keep moving forward as though I’m having a wonderful life.
    “I’ve got an idea,” he offers, trying a new approach. “How about we find Marie, and then we all go and eat somewhere. The Dairy Queen. How about that? Wouldn’t you like to go to the Dairy Queen?”
    There. I’ve done it. I’ve gotten him to stop thinking about our nonexistent future. He’s in the moment, making sense, thinking about dinner. I am no longer Pluto.
    I pause to look at a perfectly twilit Jupiter. I don’t know much about the future, about what I might do or where I might live when I grow up, but I make a promise to myself:
I will never live anywhere that looks like this
. Why? Because this whole town is a fancy trick to make you think that everything’s fine when we all know that everything’s
not
fine. And even if everything
is
fine, it only seems that way. If you wait a minute, it won’t be. In a flash, everything will change, and you will be so shocked by the suddenness of the change that you will never get over it.

    After an hour of riding around and not finding Marie, Doug is speaking to the police on his cell, reporting her missing. This iswhat we do. Mostly, it’s him who makes the call, but I’ve done it once or twice. We’ve become regulars, and the cops keep pictures of Marie in their glove compartments. We know a few of them on a first-name basis. Today, Officer Mike tells Doug that there’s nothing else for us to do but wait, so Doug hangs up and we continue eating our dinner at the Dairy Queen, just the two of us. We down our burgers and black-and-white Blizzards, and when the time is right, I ask Doug to drive me to the Spring Hill clubhouse.
    “At this hour?” he says, fishing for more information.
    “If you must know, I need my caddy clothes,” I reply, making myself sound like a parent. “I’ve got to wash them, or people’ll start complaining that I smell like a dirty gym sock.”
    What I don’t tell Doug is that the next time I run into Angela, I don’t want to smell like a dirty gym sock. I want to be—like Walt Whitman grass—a scented gift.
    We turn the corner and come smack up against a crowd of about a hundred people standing in the street outside the clubhouse. Doug opens his mouth and lets out an incredulous “Whoa.” How is it possible that Doug hasn’t heard a single story about the Blessed Virgin Mary’s appearance in Jupiter? Everyone in town has been talking about it nonstop, and there have been reports on the TV and pictures in all the local papers. The people are holding candles, singing songs, and swaying back and forth like the swell of the sea against a breakwater. It’s an impressive sight. Doug is at a loss; he can’t figure out what’s going on. As I bring him up to speed, I feel like a tour guide.
    “I mean,