Merge/Collide by Kaye Branch

“You’ve got to get back!” Ms. Wyatt yelled, facing Kira but close enough to the open door that someone might walk by and assume disaster when Kira knew her English teacher’s tone implied only displeasure and she had no desire to please her English teacher. Especially not on that day, when she’d come in dressed like a teenager in a tight cerise polo shirt, khaki mini-skirt and a pair of two-inch patent leather high heels that served as the only professional aspect of her ensemble. She’d tapped her left heel during class, waiting to kick them off for white tennis shoes and go to a country club where she would vie for the attention of a millionaire, seeking a last name she could drop for privileges. After earning a degree from Stanford, working as a high-profile journalist, obtaining a master’s in education at Berkeley and working a position at a high profile prep school, she needed only a husband, so she could rest.

“Back to what?” Kira asked, searching for the dedication that the school’s brochure had promised her.

Ms. Wyatt sighed. “To applying yourself.”

“To what? My grades haven’t changed. Last week, you gave me my eighth percent score on your eighth quiz.”

“Yes, but you were intoxicated. I would have pulled you aside then, but I assumed you’d be more receptive sober.”

Kira shrugged. “I drank more today.”

     Ms. Wyatt looked shocked and Kira examined her, wondering how many things her teacher tuned out. “Well, I was your age not so long ago and I remember very clearly telling lies just to look cool. It took me years to learn that top students, like I was and like you are now, should never lie because they have a responsibility to lead their peers.”

     If Ms. Wyatt had ever paid attention, she would have noticed that Kira’s peers never followed her. Even sober, she scared them.

     “What is this- a horse race? I can gallop drunk. That’s not an issue, but if you’re looking for conduct, it’s just too bad I’m the best this school could afford.”

     “You are not an animal and this school didn’t buy you! We are here for your future. Any other school could provide you with an education, but this program will mold you into the best person you could be in and outside of your profession. I really wish I’d had it growing up. I succeeded, yes, but I had to do it on my own with no one to guide me.”

     “I don’t need a guide because there’s no direction left to go in. My family’s done it all. My mother was a beauty queen, my father’s a billionaire and my sister is the beauty queen turned professional. Success is relative, based on what the past generations of someone’s family have done and no matter what I’ll be taken care of and no matter what, I can’t succeed.”

     “We all have to work in life.”

     “For what?”

     Kira took the flask from her uniform jacket, opened it and brought it to her lips, expecting another spiel.

     “I’m going to do you a favor and assume that’s water,” Ms. Wyatt said. “I really have to get going.”

     She couldn’t miss the country club. If it hadn’t been for the alcohol, she would have missed Kira, absent parents and all.

**

     “Don’t worry honey,” Estelle said in the tone Faye thought she’d graduated from when she’d turned thirteen in the previous August. “Your mother will get here soon.”

     Estelle, one of the more compassionate instructors, darted into the studio before Faye could reply. Estelle was preparing for college dance auditions in addition to the end of the year recital, leaving her with little time to care, even about Faye, who had to worry about a drug over-dose every time her mother was late. Even if she cared, there was nothing Estelle could have told her because Estelle would go home to a mother who would re-heat dinner in a kitchen covered with her kindergarten art work and ask her how her day went. Drug addiction existed in Estelle’s household only on a television screen. Or so Faye assumed. She’d never seen Estelle’s mother. For all she knew, Estelle was an orphan.

**

     “I never lie,” Kira said, swishing her screwdriver in her left hand.

     “You sure?” the dark-haired acne-covered man in a college sweatshirt seated at her right, between her and an empty stool, asked. “How old are you?”

     “Fifteen.”

     “Then you’re underage and you shouldn’t be here.”

     “Who do you think you are? My dad?”

     Empty stools meant he wanted to talk with her. To sleep with her or save her or both, Kira imagined, if she’d let him. She knew the drill.

     “Listen,” he said, turning to her. Kira met his gaze dead-on. The sooner he realized that she was just as human as he was, the sooner he’d give up. “You have no idea what you’re messing with. I would give anything to go back to fifteen.”

     “If you did, you’d still end up alone in a bar on Friday night.”

     He sputtered. “Well, women shouldn’t go to bars alone. As a rule. Do it now and you’ll end up someplace worse.”

     Kira shrugged. “I’m already in hell.” She finished her screwdriver in a single noisy gulp.

**

     Faye’s father arrived to collect Faye forty-five minutes after the end of her class. He told her two things in a rushed tone: he was on his dinner break, so they had to hurry and not to worry about her mother.

     In the studio, when Jewel, Faye’s instructor and Julie to all but her students, asked if they had plans for the weekend, Faye shook her head because she had plans but they weren’t worth sharing. She’d stashed chocolates, an unspeakable offense for an already overweight thirteen-year-old, and taken an R-rated movie, a contemporary movie that stole conventions from the film noir genre, from her father’s study.

     Watching the movie while eating chocolates didn’t distract Faye from her mother or the social commentary on screen. Men were old and grizzled or young and dashing. The older men served as role models for the younger men while the women were gorgeous wives or stunning femme fatales

with names like Jewel.

     If she told her, Jewel, who was only three years older than Faye, but a role model, would tell her that hard work was all that mattered. She could get ahead with what she had if she tried. But Jewel wouldn’t divulge her plans for the weekend, which Faye knew, included nothing but dance or mention that she didn’t have a boyfriend. Jewel’s students should idolize and not pity her.

**

     Kira’s would-be savior looked up when she passed the bartender a wad of twenty-dollar bills.

     “Going somewhere?” he asked in the stern intonation of a sitcom father.

     “After-hours hub.”

     “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

     “With you? Never!”

     “I’m only trying to help.”

     “And get laid.”

     Kira snatched a cigarette from the mouth of the man at her left. He looked at her then lit another one without a word. The prettiest girl at the bar could take.

     “Don’t do that!” Kira’s savior yelled. “It’s stealing!”

     “Stop me.”

     Kira walked into the parking lot and pulled her car keys from her Italian leather messenger bag with her right hand while holding the cigarette in her left. She brought the cigarette to her lips to unlock the door on the driver’s side of her mother’s Corvette then used both hands to rest her messenger bag on the front seat.

     Kira mulled while she finished the cigarette. If her would-be savior cared, she surmised, he wouldn’t have let her into the car. If women like Ms. Wyatt, who could support, hadn’t rejected men like him, who were trying to make themselves into someone for older men who inspired awe, he would have left her alone.

When Kira reached the end of the cigarette, she threw the butt of the cigarette into the parking lot, keyed the ignition and dialed Dr. DiChitto’s number into her cell phone, wondering if her rescuer would end up like him, a doctor with a drug-addict wife.

“Hello?” asked Faye, Dr. DiChitto’s unfortunate daughter.

“Hi,” Kira said with her eyes locked on the rearview mirror as she backed up. “Can I speak to your dad?”

     “Sure. May I ask who’s calling?”

     “Kira Ross. I’m calling regarding Jenaya Amethyst’s appointment tomorrow morning.”

     “Could you hold on a minute please?”

     “Sure thing.”

     Kira used the moment to merge onto the freeway. She didn’t have her license, but she knew tight spaces. As Dr. DiChitto greeted her, she merged into the fast lane.

**

     Kira shook Jenna awake. When she opened her eyes, she looked at Kira, trusting, like a child although Kira was younger.

     “What’s going on?” Jenna asked.

     “You’re going to see a doctor today.”

     Jenna blinked and the trust evaporated. She just looked lost.

     She followed Kira to her Corvette anyway. While she’d kept her looks, Jenna’s mind was fading as a response to disease and drug use. They weren’t friends but Jenna had to trust someone.

Jenna shot heroin as Kira drove to the address she’d gotten over the phone. She expected an office building with at least a few protestors, but found a nondescript warehouse instead.
     After she’d parked, Kira extracted Jenna from the front seat with a single tug and walked her to the door where Dr. DiChitto greeted them, smiling.

“Kira,” he said.

Kira wondered why and pointed at Jenna. “Her appointment.”

“Aren’t you a good friend?”

“I’m not. She’s in deep shit.” Jenna smiled, demonstrating the only social grace she’d remembered from her social workers. “She’s pregnant, HIV-positive, schizophrenic and unsure of the father.”

“Greene.” Dr. DiChitto knew Greene, but Jenna didn’t know that.

“Could be,” Kira said.

“How far along?” Dr. DiChitto asked Jenna.

“Six weeks,” Kira replied for Jenna.

“I see. I’ll get you started right away.”

**

     Kira found Faye in the waiting room, which was marked off by a set of curtains with a stamp for a local hospital on them. Faye was doing her homework, a textbook open on her lap in a folding chair.

     “Hey,” Kira said, taking a seat.”

     Faye looked up. “Kira Ross?”

     “You knew I was coming. I called last night.”

     “Girls don’t usually come with other girls.”

     “She’s desperate.”

     “Why?”

     “She isn’t strong like you.”

     “I’m not strong; I’m invisible.”

     “Invisibility is a rare and amazing trait in children from broken homes-.” Kira was cut off by a gunshot. As Faye vomited, sensing that life as she knew it would end, Kira leaned in, pulled back Faye’s hair and whispered: “Keep going.”