Anaya

ANAYA

On the brink of adulthood, Anaya, young and reckless, escapes into the desert of western California. Broken and lost, she stumbles across a small, mystical town. There, she meets eight unusual characters that help her recover from the ghosts of her past and find that which she is seeking.

ANAYA

Devin Ladner

ANAYA

Copyright © 2016 by Devin Ladner. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

Smashwords Edition

CONTENTS

Epigraph

Begin reading ANAYA

Epigraph

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For those with too many ghosts,

light candles in dark places.

Is she here? No, she’s not. She’s gone. God, she is so gone.

I wonder how much longer I can run. I don’t know if I have many more chances to keep doing this. I don’t know how much longer I can run before it all catches up with me.

I don’t even know where I’m going, but I haven’t stopped crying since I put my foot on the gas pedal, shut the door, and threw my books and clothes in the backseat. This is not a pretty picture. What little hair I have is thrown up in a ponytail– a faded blue. Ripped shorts and whatever tank top I could find. Eyes puffy and my nose red. I’m sure there’s snot being left on any and everything I touch. And I’ve been sobbing loud. The ugly cry. God, this is so ugly.

I keep saying God like he’s listening. She/It, whatever, is listening. These are the times you say prayers– when you’ve got nothing left. These are the times we say prayers, and the prayers are rolling out. Compulsively shooting through my mind. Like a mantra. Like a tape stuck on repeat.

God, help me. God, help me. God, help me. God, help me.

And nothing. Just the sound of the wheels against the pavement. Only the sound of my painful breath as I try to remember what it’s like to inhale and exhale calmly.

I shouldn’t be driving like this. My vision is clouded and I know I’m frantic. I just need to make it to the interstate and then it’ll be open road. This thought is dismissed, though, as I feel an anxiety attack quickly approaching. I should pull over, I tell myself. Get off the goddamn road, I tell myself.

But I don’t. I just keep up with my compulsive prayers. I stare straight, and I just drive. My black fingernails shaking on the wheel. Pulling out a cigarette, I light it in hopes it’ll calm me down. Did I say I don’t know where I’m going?

I just need to get out of here. Out of Los Angeles. Out of the noise. I can’t think here. I can’t breathe here.

I’m sure time has passed, but I couldn’t tell you. Time doesn’t make much sense right now. Nothing makes much sense right now. Surviving doesn’t make much sense right now.

But eventually, the road opens, the desert lays beyond me, and I think I might shatter from the vastness of it. I could dissipate right here into the cold nights with its bright stars. Maybe, I can die here.

I pull off on the side of the road now. Bringing the car to a screeching halt, I search through my little black purse for a cigarette again. Its leather is ripped and disintegrating. Why does everything feel like a metaphor for my being right now? I pull out a Marlboro red and bring it to my lips. My hands are still shaking. I roll down the window and exhale smoke through it. Pulling my sunglasses over my eyes, I pretend it’s going to be okay.

I’ve had enough of crying. It’s only when I feel like I’m about to die do I know how to begin to feel okay. Rocking back and forth, I attempt to convince myself I’m going to be okay. When it gets this bad, I imagine I’m a tiny child. I don’t want the child to hurt so I tell her that it’s going to be alright. Coo to her that everything will be just fine.

And I do this until it stops. I do this until the sky is dark and my hands are just a slight tremble and I’m on my fifth smoke and my head is pounding from the vigorous force I used to cry.

I feel so lonely.

Where does one go from here? I’ve destroyed every solid relationship and abandoned every toxic one. I have no home because I left that, too. I can’t return to old homes because they wouldn’t recognize me, and there are too many reminders of who I’ve left behind.

Hope is a funny thing. Hope kept me from downing the remaining pills I carried. Hope kept me from blowing my brains out. And hope brought me out here. And I don’t even know why. Why, Hope? Why do you make me hold on?

Bon Iver plays on the radio. Since that day in September, I’ve played it every time heaven has left me.

I’m tired. I’m too tired to process this. I’m so tired that the driver’s seat of my beat up vehicle is sufficient to sleep in. It’s sufficient to numb out in. It’s sufficient to escape in. Restless. Irritable. Discontent. I’m all three, and all three are all me.

Tomorrow, I’ll figure this out but, for now, I need to sleep. I hate myself for needing more sleep. How many times have you done this, Anaya? How many times have you shut your eyes so that you can escape away in your dreams? And how many times has sleep even failed you?

A thousand, I’m sure. A thousand times I have laid my head down to have it give me no release.

But that’s something I can think about tomorrow. I can fix this tomorrow. Tomorrow, I can plan where I must go next, and, tomorrow, I can do some soul searching.

But right now– right now, it’s just the moon and me. And that’s okay. That’s enough. That’s enough hope to get by and to help me through the desert night. God, help me.

God, please fucking help me.

I don’t sleep. You’re there again. You always are. Your presence slipping into my subconscious.

Sometimes I think the nightmares are better. These dreams are worse. Ghosts haunt me in my dreams. The night terrors validate this nightmare I live in.

It’s been four years. Four years and my soul still remembers. You’d think after everything it would forget. It would forget things that when awake are hard to think about. The reality of them like old scars. Their faint presence etched into my skin.

It’s winter in my mind. It always is. It was your favorite. We are laying in bed in the small apartment we occupied my freshmen year of college. The sheets are a pale blue; the ceiling fan and its monotonous spinning and clicking is the only sound filling the space around us. Your arms are wrapped around the small of my back. I feel you wake, and your lips kiss my neck. As a reaction, I cave into your body, wrapping my legs around yours.

It’s not you I miss. No. I do not miss you. It’s her. I miss her the most.

That vulnerability. That trust. That comfort. What is that? She hurts to look at. She makes me sick. Because I know she is real. She was real once. She was me once.

I was nineteen, and I loved you. I loved you with the purity of a newborn, and I can’t even recall what it’s like to have your hands on my skin and not flinch from them.

I don’t think my parents ever taught me that one day you’d become calloused and changed from the winds of life and love and trials and tribulations and everything in between.

I want to touch her in my dreams. I want to hold her. It’s her lips I want to kiss. Not yours. I want to say to her, Stay right here. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t leave me. Don’t stop believing that light is stronger than darkness. You will forget him, but please do not forget what it’s like to give to him.

But she does forget. You stupid girl, you didn’t have to forget.

You awake out of bed. Removing yourself from the covers, you begin to dress for the evening. My slender fingers slip from the sheets. I’m reaching for you. Come back to bed, I say. My whines escaping like soft moans. Don’t leave me, I say.

You laugh. You used to think this was cute. We’d play this game and it used to make you fall in love with me. Do you remember this?

It doesn’t matter, and you don’t stay, but you kiss my forehead before you leave, and I smile. Wrapping my legs around the blankets you once occupied, and the sound of my even breathing starts again.

Once upon a time, I had a dream that I awoke from my bed to a voice calling my name. I searched and searched for the voice in my dream. It eventually led me to a tree, and underneath that tree sat me. It was me calling my name. A fortune teller told me that it meant I would always be seeking. I would always be looking for something I felt I had lost. I told her with whiskey breath and slurred words to go fuck herself. My girlfriend convinced me it would be fun to speak with one, but didn’t need someone else to echo back the things I already knew.

The point is, though, that dream made me believe that one day I would be able to manifest in this dream. The one of me in bed with your smell lingering on my skin. I’ve held on to the thought that one day I could curl up next to her. Remember what it was like to be that calm and be that unafraid.

Can we undo the things the past leaves on us? Can I find this girl again out here? Is she lurking in some old diner or tucked away in some simple man’s bed? Does she write poetry on napkins or hold children with the confidence that she will not fail them?

I used to think you’d save me, you know? I used to fantasize what our son would look like. Would he have your dark brown eyes and curiosity? I don’t think I ever became comfortable with the idea of birthing a girl. A girl with her mother’s fragile mentality and self-doubt. But with you, I used to think just maybe. Just maybe I could give you these children and raise them and provide some sort of stability; I could provide some sort of home.

These thoughts are polluting. They are poison to the blood. This story is not about you. Not even close. I have to remind myself of that.

But it’s been four years. It’s been four years, and this is the dream the universe gives me when I need to remember what it’s like to sleep. When I need comfort and a feeling of safety.

You weren’t safe, though. Or maybe I wasn’t. I was not safe. We were not safe.

This is the big mystery of life, isn’t it? Is fate predetermined? Is every moment in your life just where you needed to go to end up where you needed to be? Did all of this happen to lead me out in the desert? And does the desert lead to what I was always meant to find?

Or were we just fucked up people who did fucked up things? Can you change the course of destiny? Maybe we were just bad people. Just weak, sad people.

The dream dissipates, and the sun glares into my windshield. She’s gone and the morning is here and I’m hungry.

I’m hungry for food and comfort. I am starving for some substance.

I drive for a few more hours before I finally find a place to get breakfast. I’m not quite sure what the name of the town is or what part of California I am in, or even if I am still in California.

When I was younger, I always wanted to go on a road trip where you just picked left or right at every turn. I found myself playing that game as I drove further and further away from Los Angeles. There aren’t many options to do this on the open interstate, but I did it when I could. Left. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right. I continued to do this until my head became light from fatigue and hunger.

Pulling off some exit, I take a right to a place the Universe handpicked– a little diner in a small town with a population of everyone knows your secrets. I park my car outside this diner named Kit’s. The good ones are always named after someone. I reach into my dashboard and search for a pair of dark sunglasses. Hiding my eyes, I slip my purse over my shoulder and head inside the glass door. A bell rings to notify someone of my entry.

Kit’s is exactly how you would picture it. The booths are made of the material that skin sticks to during the summer. There’s a glass case in the front displaying homemade pies. Precisely five people in the entire place. Three men sitting at the bar and an older couple tucked away in a booth in the back.

A thin woman with black box dye hair flashes her crooked smile in my direction.

Have a seat anywhere, sweetie. I’ll be right with you, she tells me.

The smell of food in the air makes my stomach reply before my mouth does. It’s rumble loud. As I find a booth to sit in, I try to recall the last time I ate. I have a habit of doing this. Under stress and anxiety, my stomach doesn’t hold much down. My body will starve itself. It will do what it needs to do to die. For me, I’ve always taken it as an indicator that I am, in fact, fragile and probably would have been gone from this world long ago in a game of survival of the fittest, but in reality, it probably just means I need to stop being a little bitch and eat something.

I lay my head into my hands. Exhaling. I hear feet move in my direction. Through the palm of my hand, I see them stop right beside me. Black slip resistant shoes accompanied by polka dotted socks.

Welcome to Kit’s. My name’s Anna, and I’ll be taking care of you today. Can I get you something to drink, baby?

Without looking up, I respond, Coffee.

I hear a, Mmhmm, as Anna walks away to retrieve my coffee. She whistles while she does so. She says something to one of the men at the bar who laughs, and I realize the air here is light and cheerful.

Sometimes when you walk into a place it becomes very obvious that the energy can fluctuate easily. Sometimes a room’s feel will alter as each guest leaves and enters. Then there are places that carry a feeling no matter who comes in and out. It attracts similar hearts. The soul within the architecture, I like to say. People think I am crazy for thinking so, but there’s a reason why you don’t buy homes where deaths have taken place.

Anna returns, and she pours my coffee. She places creamer next to it.

I don’t need any. Thank you, though, I tell her.

You hungover or love sick? she asks.

This catches me off guard. I glance up and study her for the first time since I’ve entered the diner. Her face is etched with hard lines as though she’s seen some things, but her crow’s feet near her eyes lets me know that she appreciates laughter. There’s a look of real concern on her face. The woman I’m studying is studying me, and I immediately want to change my attitude. I want to change every negative feeling. When someone gives you a real look of concern, it is best to ease their worry.

I’m fine, I respond, Just a little tired.

No, you aren’t, but you’ll feel better after some food. Once you get some hot food and strong coffee, you’ll feel a little better and things won’t look so dark, deary. Give me that menu, she tells me, her hand reaching out towards me.

But I haven’t even looked yet.

You don’t need to. Give me the menu. I know exactly what you need. Trust me.

I don’t know if it was the tone she used, the tone that mothers use when they want you to listen, and they want you to listen because they’ve had more years of experience and you could not possibly know how to fix your boo-boo but they most definitely do, or if it was because I didn’t feel like putting up a fight, but I handed my menu over.

Now drink that while it’s hot. Ain’t nothing in this world God and coffee can’t fix. Hangover or heartache, the good Lord and a little caffeine’s got you covered.

Anna winks at me as she walks over to the kitchen. She leans over the window and yells to the one cook on the line, We got someone that needs a savin’. Make it good.

And good Lord, did I need a savin’.

The wonderful thing about small diners is that the food never takes too long. Within a few minutes, Anna returns with my mystery breakfast. My coffee is low and she fills it back to the brim.

Enjoy, hun, she says walking back to talk to the men at the bar.

My plate consists of cheesy eggs, two strips of bacon, buttered toast, and golden hash browns. Indeed, a perfect breakfast. Simple. People tend to underestimate simplicity.

I start to eat, taking slow bites. Trying to convince my stomach that this is important, and after the first bite, I think it understands how deprived it had been.

There’s nothing quite like breakfast food. When I was younger, if my father got the chance to choose what we would eat for dinner, we’d always get breakfast. Breakfast is always good, but it’s better at night, he would say, and it was true. At night, one can fully enjoy the greasy, buttery-ness of it all. Substantial. Filling. This breakfast reminds me of my father, and I need that.

Halfway through, though, I need a cigarette more. Removing myself from the sticky booth, I tell Anna that I’m only stepping outside to inhale cancer. This makes her laugh.

Cancer pairs nicely with chocolate pie. Save some room, she gleams.

The bell chimes on my way out. Outside, I light up a Red and decide to take in my surroundings. This is definitely a small town. Everything is spaced out and far away. A bar or two in one direction. Old dusty roads in the other.

I sit on the curb to enjoy my cigarette. Standing takes energy. Standing is never a fun position to be in when you are just trying to enjoy something.

As soon as I sit down, a truck pulls up to the diner and out of it steps a tall man with skin golden from the sun. He is young, around my age. A toothpick hangs from his mouth. He winks at me as he passes inside. The people in this town sure wink a lot. Like they know something I don’t.

I can hear his boisterous voice as he greets Anna inside. I grew up in a small town in the South, and it is nice to be surrounded by people that care to give warm greetings. Los Angeles had been difficult for me the last two years. Everyone would ask if it was culture shock to move to a large city after spending most of my life in a small town. I never knew how to answer this question. Careful as to not offend anyone, I tried explaining that the surroundings did not surprise me. The weather? Maybe a little. But the people were difficult to get used to. Money does something to people. It makes them cold. Distant. It makes them separate. Money was difficult to get used to, I’d tell them. Their faces would fall with a sadness. They understood, I think. Their own people understood the effects of money, and it bothered them. But that was that. It was frustrating to know, but that was that.

Crushing the butt of the cigarette with my black boots, I get up to go inside. As I turn, though, I bump right into the man with the golden skin. His hands quickly lift to stable me. Their calloused palms rest on each side of my forearms.

Shit. I am so sorry. You okay? he asks.

Yeah, definitely. No worries.

You sitting at that booth inside? he points to my table through the glass window.

Yep. That would be me.

The Good Lord’s Breakfast Anna calls it. I ask for it all the time. She tells me that I eat it so much because I’m probably trying to save my inevitable fate to hell, he laughs.

Well that’s nice of her, I giggle back. He’s got a pretty smile, I think. Stop that, I think immediately following the first thought. Instinctive. Reactive. Let’s not fall in love with the first person we see.

I haven’t seen you before, though. You okay?

Anna’s breakfast giving away that I’m a crazy lady out here to find salvation.

Yeah, I’m okay. Just driving through, I tell him which I don’t think is a lie. My name is Anaya.

Gillard. It’s a weird name, I know. People here call me Gil.

Well, Gil, I should probably go finish my breakfast, I say walking past him.

Yeah. Make sure you save some room for that chocolate pie. It’s where the real magic happens.

Sure thing, I reply, my hand on the handle of the door.

I don’t know how long you intend on staying in town, Miss Anaya, but you see that building about to collapse over there? his hand points to one of the bars in the distance.

I nod.

A few of us go there every Wednesday night to shoot a few games of pool. You should come by. I wouldn’t know what else to do in this town, and Anna might swear by breakfast, but I swear by the moon, he smiles.

Yeah. Maybe I will, I say back, although I know I won’t. Boys and bars. Two things that I’m running from and two things I shouldn’t be running to. He’s cute, though.

He winks once more and gets back in his truck and drives away. I watch him go, knowing I will never see him again, and this gives me the opportunity to imagine him as I want him.

He’s a good man and will make a good dad one day, I think, although I have no idea if any of this might be true. But it’s easier to think the best of people when they simply pass by. It’s easier to imagine them glorious and full of kindness when they haven’t stayed around long enough for you to see the past they’ve endured and the demons they make love to.

Back inside, I finish the rest of my breakfast. Without asking, Anna brings out a slice of homemade chocolate pie as soon as I clear my plate. That’s my girl, her appraisal bringing a smile to my face. When eating is difficult, it’s nice to have someone congratulate you for it because it is, in truth, quite the accomplishment.

The chocolate pie tastes like sex. The first sample tingling the taste buds within my cheeks. Orgasmic, delicious, you do not rush chocolate pie like this. Chocolate pie, like this, can remind you that the world has some moments of tranquility within it. Staring out the window at the disintegrating bar, one bite at a time in a slow and admiring manner, I eat my chocolate pie. For a moment, I have forgotten about the chaos I had removed myself from only hours ago. I have forgotten that I have no plan. The chatter within my head has quieted, and my body gives into exhaustion.

I will not drive tonight. No. I need sleep and pillows and cold A.C. and ice water. Tomorrow, I will move on to wherever it is I am going.

I walk over to the bar to pay for my breakfast when Anna steps outside the kitchen to inform me there is no bill.

What?

"The first time’s on the