Queens of the Wild Frontier [Excerpt]

Split Lip Magazine published a flash fiction piece of mine called Dbl Helix in October 2019, written from the perspective of a character named Jaqueline Fawnley. From the germ of that flash fiction grew a full-length YA novel titled Queens of the Wild Frontier. The excerpt I’d like to share here on my website is a kind of homage to Dbl Helix, as it presents the same scene from the perspective of the other character involved in it, Angela Cordova.

At this point in the story, Angela’s father is in the custody of U.S. Border Patrol and under threat of deportation. Knowing that Jackie’s father is a lawyer, Angela has been trying to think of ways to ask Jackie to help her family out. Being assigned to work on a science project together seems like the perfect opportunity to get on her former frenemy’s good side.

Chapter Five: More Art Than Science

I was expecting a nice house, sure, but not this mansion-esque monstrosity with a ten-foot gate. Huffing and sweating, I get off my bike and imagine the gaze of startled mothers peering out their living room windows, trying to figure out what this dark haired girl with a rusted Bianchi is doing so deep in the heart of their gated community.

I call Jackie, “Hey. I’m outside.”

She doesn’t reply, but I hear shuffling and a beep.

“Uh, hello?” I say, glancing down to make sure I dialed the right number.

“Gate,” she says. I’m starting to see certain patterns in Jackie’s speech now... what I used to think was just her being weird is more likely a result of her trying to navigate around and control her stutter.

The gates magically open and I feel like I’m entering some kind of holy land. I put my bike behind one of the shrubs out of view of the street and go up to the giant double-doors, with stained glass windows, elaborate moulding, and a giant iron door-knocker. I can see Jackie’s pale face through the glass, as if she’s waiting for me to knock. Instead, I wave at her.

She jumps back, clearly unaware that I could see her, too. She pulls the big door open. “Hey,” I say, and walk in slowly. The entryway is marbled tile, with an actual cloakroom, a shoe rack, a fancy round canister for umbrellas and shoehorns. “Wow. Is this like, an antechamber?”

“W-what? N-no... It’s just the entrance.”

“Right,” I say, adjusting the backpack on my shoulder and start taking off my shoes.

“Y—you don’t have to...”

“It’s fine. This carpet looks plush as fuck, I’m not gonna live with the guilt of getting dirt on it.”

“Ait.”

“Girl! You haven’t practiced that, yet? Two syllables, remember. “Ah-ight” - contraction of “All right”. Give it some space.”

Jackie laughs in a way that I used to think was fake and mocking, but now I realize that her sitcom mom “Ha, ha, ha!” is as genuine as the crow’s feet around her eyes.

You’re cute, I think in my head. Like, weird but cute. “Do you mind if I use the bathroom? I’m going to change.”

Jackie nods and points to a door by the entrance. The bathroom is freakishly clean and startlingly bright. I take off my sweaty shirt and grimace at the sight of my skin in that awful luminescence. I pluck and pinch at my belly, which I don’t recall looking quite so cheesy in my bathroom at home... maybe because six of the eight light bulbs on the strip above the mirror are out and have never been replaced. I’m half-tempted to change my pants too and see what this light makes of my bottom, but then I remembered how Danny always talked about how I was more of a butt girl than a boobs girl and that most girls were one or the other, but that 1% were both and those were the women that became famous. A hot rage grew inside me when I remembered how I had let myself accept this categorization. How I didn’t even question it, because I was just grateful that I could be a butt girl instead of a nothing girl. And then I started thinking of the cheerleader that he cheated on me with and wondering whether she was a boob girl and I got so annoyed with myself that I splashed cold water on my face and growled into my palms.

Danny, I realized now, was the reason I only ever wore baggy shirts and sweaters. It was a strange revelation to have in Jaqueline Fawnley’s bathroom. I wondered how she thought of herself, how she looked at herself in the mirror. Jackie was not, like I had thought for so many years, a picture of perfect confidence and accomplishment. But where was she soft? Certainly not in her belly, like me.

I got out of the bathroom and saw her perched on the edge of her red leather couch, looking like a stranger in her own home. It was clear she didn’t spend much time down here. I kept my ear open for sounds coming from the kitchen or upstairs, but the place was eerily silent. “So, where’s Mami and Papi?” I asked, as casually as I could.

“M-m-m-ap. Map. That’s funny.”

“What?”

“I call them M.a.D.”

“Mom and Dingbat?”

Jackie laughs again with her goofy little “Ha, ha, ha!” and I can’t help but enjoy the fact that she seems to find my dumb jokes funny. Chavo, Gabi, and I have gotten so used to talking shit to each other that I think we forgot how to be nice.

“They’re in LA still. They r-r-r-r-rent a place up there that they stay at sometimes. Or when they want to p-p—p-party with their friends.” There was no bitterness in her voice. There wasn’t anything in her voice, really. It sounded hollow, like she was talking about a math problem.

Parents partying? It sounded like a totally different world than my own. Parents were just... parents. They worked and did groceries and made dinner and watched TV. The idea that parents could have a life of their own beyond the family home was completely unknown to me up until that moment.

Jackie pointed at the stairs and waved me over. Something about her being confident enough to guide me with her hands instead of speaking was strangely comforting. I followed her up the plush carpeted steps, enjoying the feel of the high-pile between my toes. A grey cat poked its head out from one of the rooms and looked at me.

“Oh hi there, kitty! What’s your name?”

The cat just kept staring at me, unmoving. Jackie said, “That’s Grey.”

“Grey? Really? That’s almost as bad as ‘Cat’ from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

“Why’d she name it Cat.”

I can’t tell if this is a rhetorical or a real question, but I answer anyway. “She didn’t want to get attached.”

Jackie looks at me and grins, “I name every cat I’ve owned Grey. They’re all Grey.”

“Grey, huh,” I sputter. I don’t even know what to say in response. I feel like I’m again confusing the girl for the mask, the persona for the soul inside, and I’m wondering if everything she does is just for show. Like, what if she told her parents to leave the house for the night so it only appears that she is a tragic, abandoned loner? I don’t usually question my own judgment like this, but after realizing that the only reason I thought of myself as a butt girl was because of what Danny said, it seems like nothing is stable. There are no facts, only interpretations. I think Nietzsche said that. There are no girls, only what boys make of them. I guess Angela said that.

I hope I’ll say something else, something a little more hopeful, before I get deleted from this Earth.

Once I’m in Jackie’s room proper, I look for signs of life and am relieved to see she actually has some band posters on the wall (Hole and Juliana Hatfield - a 90s fangirl like me?), a table with art supplies and drawings, a few stuffed animals in the corner, a regular looking blue-satin bedspread, some colored string lights along the border of the ceiling. There’s a sleek and shiny Apple computer next to a big printer, but for the most part it looks like a pretty average teenager’s room. On her nightstand I see incense sticks and what looks like a glass pipe sitting next to a small plastic bag with something green inside.

I can’t help but point, “Is that...?”

“Yeah.”

“Where do you get it?”

She shrugs. “It’s easy.”

Up until now I’ve felt like I’m so much more socially competent than her, but suddenly I feel like a child in comparison. I wouldn’t have any idea where to get marijuana, wouldn’t know who to talk to, how to smoke it, but here she is like she’s got street connections. Again, I’m hounded by the idea that Jackie isn’t really who she portrays herself as, and that maybe I’m the naïve one.

“Do you do, uh, any other drugs?”

“No. You want to try?”

I’m startled at the casualness with which she asks the question, but, then, she seems so at ease with it, I feel like I had made it some way bigger deal in my head than it actually is. “Uh, maybe after we work on the project. I’ve never tried so I don’t know how I’d react.”

“Sure. I’m going to take a hit if you don’t mind.”

Now I catch myself stuttering, “G-go ahead. It’s cool.” It’s like our roles are suddenly reversed and I have no idea what to make of this revolution.

There’s a confidence and competence with which she packs the pipe with a pinch of the green stuff, sets a flame to it with a flick of her lighter, and inhales. She blows the smoke out into the air and takes another hit.

“Where’s the bowl?” I ask.

She raises an eyebrow at me.

“You know, people say, ‘smoke a bowl’.”

She points at the curved indent at the tip of the pipe, where she had placed the pinch of marijuana.

“Oh my gosh. I always thought it was a literal bowl... like a bowl of cereal!”

“That would be wayyy too much. I smoke a lot, but I’d get sick if I smoked a cereal bowl’s worth.”

“Do you smoke every night?” I ask.

“No,” she pauses. “Well, uh, I didn’t. But now that I think about it...” she trails off. “I guess I do now. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t take a hit. Usually before bed. Helps me sleep.”

“What do you like about it?”

“If you haven’t noticed, it helps with my stutter.”

I start taking the supplies out of my backpack, though I’m suddenly self-conscious that the cheap stuff I got from Target is probably worthless compared to the nice set of tools she has on that art table in the corner. “But that night you came into Bel Canto you were stuttering a lot?”

“Yeah... I was nervous. That affects it, too. More than anything, really.”

“You weren’t acting nervous... I mean, you sat down right at our table.”

Jackie gets up and goes to her computer, starts clicking open some windows. I can see she’s already started the gene research. “People express being nervous in different ways.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

We start working on the science project. It feels like a strange thing to be dedicating my time to when I could be doing more research about how to get my dad out of jail, but I’m afraid that if I bring up the lawyer thing right away, Jackie might get annoyed. We decide on what size poster-board we’re going to use and what basic topics we’re going to cover, related to genes and how traits are passed on. Once I actually start drawing, my stress fades into the background. Somehow, the silence between us as we’re working isn’t uncomfortable or weird. It feels easy, like we’re both humming along in our own tune.

The contrast in our art styles is striking - my work is softer, more blended, giving the chromosomes I draw more of an illustrative, storybook quality. Jackie’s style is sharper, with higher contrast between the colors, like a graphic novel. Again, I start to feel that maybe I’m the more childish one.

We finish and Jackie again takes up the pipe. “So?”

She looks right into my eyes as she says it and again, it seems like no big deal. It’s just natural stuff from the earth, right? “Okay, sure, just show me how?”

She hands it to me and kneels by my side. “You put one finger on this little hole on the side, here. Keep it there when I light it, then let go and inhale.”

Jackie holds the lighter up above the pipe and I put it up to my lips. “Ready?”

I am.