After six days burning, the Mesa Fire merged with the Jamul Fire, and the air quality got so bad—something over 300 AQI, I think—that the county let everyone out of school before lunch, the expectation being that we’d go home and watch TV in front of the HEPA filters we’d become accustomed to since—I dunno, since those climate terrorists blew up the fucking Colorado River Aqueduct and collapsed the San Vincente Reservoir.
When the San Diego County Health Department called Principal Garcia that morning and Ms. Vernor let us out of Algebra in the middle of a practice test, Analise and I didn’t go home. Being at home was worse than being at school, but for different reasons. We smoked a joint behind the modular classrooms and then drove my purple Sentra—sweet Margo—up to the circular parking lot at the top of Mount Helix, where we sat in front of the air conditioner and drew fake tattoos on each other’s arms until we got goosebumps and the gas light went on. Honestly? My drawing of Betty Boop looked more like a drunk Bob Ross, but Analise was such a good artist, it didn’t take long for them to use the freckles on my arm to draw this sloth on a tree branch—a fucking masterpiece.
“How do you tell when a sloth is sleeping or awake?” I asked them, and then, seeing the orange light next to the fuel gauge, “Oh, shit, Margo’s about to tap out.”
“I can’t go home,” Analise groaned, chewing hard on the plastic pen cap. “One of the twins got thirsty in the middle of the night and spilled a gallon of water on the kitchen floor. My mom went ape shit. She’s fucking homicidal right now. I just can’t.”
“I can’t go home either,” I said. I would make up any excuse to spend every waking moment with Analise. They made me feel so good. So awake. We’d been friends for forever. Our moms worked together at the Ralph’s deli until we were in second grade and my mom decided being a mom and smoking crystal weren’t compatible.
“It’s better without my dad,” Analise reassured me.
People thought we were twins. Inseparable. Everything changed sophomore year. There were more fires. Less water. Analise came out and started hooking up with their twin brothers’ babysitter. I was gutted, spending the night at their house every weekend, using their shampoo, borrowing their sweatshirts. Every time I thought about Analise, I pictured them putting on Chapstick, in slow-motion.
I turned Margo off and set the emergency break. We crossed the parking lot and climbed the stone steps to the top of an amphitheater where we used to be able to see everything— Tijuana, Catalina, Palomar Mountain. We sat on a ledge facing El Cajon and watched the smoke from Cuyamaca approach the thunderheads over the Anza Borrego Desert.
Analise rested their head on my shoulder. They were wearing the white jasmine lotion I’d bought them from Bath and Body Works. “I’m so thirsty,” Analise said, and then, swatting a mosquito, “Them, too. See?”
“Ration day’s tomorrow,” I said. “I can drive you and the twins if your mom’s working and you need a ride.”
Analise sighed, “Tomorrow is like a week from now.”
I didn’t tell Analise about the booze I had in my bag yet because I knew what had happened with them and the babysitter at the beach last summer. I didn’t know what Analise would say, so I sat there in that heavy silence we’d been sharing since the river exploded and the water rationing started and the desert began to reclaim itself, acre by acre, melting away real estate from Rancho Santa Fe to Balboa Park.
“Remember your tenth birthday party?” Analise asked. Their head felt so good on my shoulder, I could feel myself falling asleep.
“No,” I mumbled.
“Maybe it was my birthday—” Some rocks tumbled down the amphitheater behind us. Even the echoes were dry. “We ran through the sprinklers all day and got so sunburned we couldn’t sleep.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Your mom made like fifty gallons of horchata and we drank so much we ended up peeing through our swimsuits all over the yard.”
Analise clicked their tongue and sat up, narrow-eyed through a curtain of black bangs. I could tell they were still kinda stoned. “That’s some nasty shit, Talia.” Then, “I never did that.”
“Yes, you did,” I said. “You just won’t admit it. Why bring it up if you’re going to remember it all wrong?”
Analise started chewing on their shirt, something a lot of kids did when they were thirsty. A lot of us fucked up our school uniforms that way, so some of the kids had been bringing pacifiers on lanyards to school and the teachers actually allowed it.
“I was just thinking about it,” Analise said, laying their head back on my shoulder. “The way the hose water smelled. I used to think it stunk, but now…I’d kill for a Pepsi.”
“I would suck something nasty for a Capri Sun,” I said.
“Same,” Analise groaned, and we both laughed until our throats hurt. For a second, the smoke over the valley almost looked like rainclouds.
As Analise popped open a tube of Chapstick, I dug the Nalgene half full of Cuervo and tomato juice out of my backpack. Analise’s eyes lit up.
“Hi, friend,” they said. “Or shall I call you hero?”
“My dad’ll kill me,” I said, even though we both knew my dad had never threatened my life, never left burns on my legs like Analise’s mom had, “but you’re worth dying for.”
The relief in drinking—in opening our mouths, in the filling and laughter, and in the way they kissed my sweaty cheek like we were soulmates watching the world end itself so that it could start again, start better? It made the thirst worth it. It made the smoke disappear. ◆
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