Tallie's Mark

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There were once scuffed-up Tonka trucks and one-legged G.I. Joes bungee-corded to the beds, their arms bent around beer bottles and packs of Marlboro Lights as plastic wheels skid-scuttled to the bottom of the hill. There, where the tree had fallen but not yet rotted, where next to it, the grass did not grow, Tallie carved their initials.

T + S.

On days when the stars aligned and Tallie’s mother, that control freak who hogged all the cherries for herself and for her daughters bought only cheap, less-flavorful fruits (such as apples or bananas) had to stay late for work, and Tallie’s father was off in the woods with a rifle on his shoulder (and a bullet for a turkey), and Margot was at a friend’s, and Sid just so happened to be braaaaap-braaaaap-braaaaaping nearby on his Kawasaki—then, and only then, would Tallie fold over the elastic on her skirt, and with her freshly-painted toenails walk barefoot to the mailbox and, despite having already brought the mail in earlier (and placed it on the kitchen counter), open the metal lid, and wait.

On that day when the stars aligned, Sid had ditched his dirt bike behind the Hoarder's double-wide. Grabbed Tallie by the hand and tromped her down the hill to the hardened spot of grassless ground where they'd sat with their backs against the bark blowing smoke into the sky.

On that fateful day, before Sid had slipped from her sight like a popped balloon but after he’d knifed the cap off a Bud Light and slurped foam from the mouth, he’d pulled two toy dragons from his pocket.

He’d hopped them onto Tallie’s foot and raced them up her shin, and finally, with both dragons atop Tallie’s knee, knocked the crimson one to the valley floor and declared purple the winner.

And as Sid bragged about how he’d swiped the dragons off the checkout counter while Old Hag Henry rung up the rest, Tallie daydreamed that it was night and Sid was outside her window throwing pebbles at the pane.

And when she’d flung open the screen, he’d commanded the dragon, “Extend thy purple tail as though it t’were a velvet carpet (for a famous actress or such) so m’lady may climb aboard!”

And after she’d twined her arms around Sid's waist, they’d flown into the stars, thereby escaping Tallie's parents and their House of Ridiculously Early Curfews, of which they claimed rightfully able to enforce just because she (temporarily, due to like, hello?! just graduating from freaking high school!) still lived under their roof—

Oh! Actually...before they flew into the stars, Tallie would first rattle a can of orange paint, and in giant uppercase letters, spray on her bedroom wall, SCREW YOU GUYS!!!!! with five or six or hell, maybe even seven exclamation points to make sure her parents understood exactly how much they sucked balls for holding her hostage even though (may she remind them) she was LEGALLY OLD ENOUGH! to do whatever the donkey dong she pleased.

And after they flew off for real this time, Tallie would ask Sid, could he please fly back so she could add in parenthesis (not you, Margot!!) whom she loved more than all the vivid imagery and long, flowy sentences in the world.

And as they flew off for the final time, Tallie would have Sid steer the dragon to Margot’s window and extend its tail so that Margot may also climb aboard.

And actually, now that she thought about it, Tallie should probably dismount the dragon and meet Margot halfway.

And maybe hold Margot's hand too, so she wouldn’t slip on her slightly larger left foot and impale her little sunflower seed loving heart on the pickets that surrounded their so-called home like barbed-wire around a maximum-security prison.

And once Margot was sandwiched safely between her and Sid, then they would fly into the stars for real-for real this time and live happily ever after, THE END.

Here and now in the valley, Tallie folded in the blade of Sid’s pocket knife.

Here and now in the valley, in the dirt next to the heel of Tallie’s boot, only the crimson dragon remained.

And the fallen Oak where Sid had pinned Tallie against the trunk and tongued swirls on her neck and traced his nose along her chin and sucked her bottom lip into a kiss and made his fingers into a little walking man on her knee where the champion dragon had left off and continued up her thigh to where the hem of her skirt fluttered in the summer breeze.

Here and now in the valley, she could still feel his breath behind her ear whispering, “Would you let me if I was your boyfriend?”

That day, that fateful day, Tallie had giggled. Squirmed out of Sid’s grasp, snapping twigs as she ran, hair whipping the backs of her shoulders. Sid’s echoes of laughter had chased after, playing tag against the mossy walls behind her.

Behind her and he was there.

Behind her and he was gone.

Here and now in the valley, Tallie felt for the note in her pocket. Its four corners dull from the turning and rubbing and unfolding and reading of the two words and mulling over of the two words, which obviously had no other apparent meaning than what they like literally said!!!

Come back, it said.

Come back. Come back. Come back.

And come back she had. Each and every day since that day, since that fateful day, the day the stars aligned, the best and worst day of her life, the day when Sid went poof! like a rabbit in a hat, like a rabbit down a hole, like the rabbit she’d accidentally forgotten to feed when Margot was away for softball camp.

Sid had vanished. And his parents had dressed in all black. And worn sunglasses over their dry eyes and lowered an empty casket into the ground.

Sid’s parents had clicked Withdrawal on the fundraiser website. Set sail for Fiji or whatever freaking tropical island on which Tallie hoped they’d find themselves stranded with NO FOOD OR DRINK except maybe their own brown, stinking urine after an unexpected tempest hammered its angry fist upon them for abandoning the search for their son while Tallie continued to come back to the valley again and again.

Even on this day, here and now, the day on which her own mother, who now that Tallie thought about it, seemed more like a stepmother actually, had stood in the driveway with Tallie’s learner permit (which Tallie should have gotten THREE YEARS EARLIER!! had her mother paid any attention at all) in hand, all “Take one more step and I’ll tear it in half!”

To which, Tallie had muttered, Two wrongs don’t make a right.

And though her heart had audibly scoffed at the cheesy disconnect of her spoken sentence, her legs had pivoted and begun to walk, and her ears tingled with excitement as they listened for the crrrruuuuut of paper ripping, because hearing that sound was all the permission her feet needed to run.

And run she had—like the wind, like a bird, like all the overused similes that could not be stopped unless the shirt on one’s back had met with an unexpectant stick that had been pointing straight out, as if to say in orange spraypaint, SCREW YOU TOO, TALLIE, YOU HORRIBLE DAUGHTER!!!

As if to say as her father had said earlier that month, “Please don’t come to me with any more of your mommy-daughter issues; it’s affecting your mother and my relationship.”

Ouch. That stupid stick had left a snag on the front of her button-down tank and a gash along the swell of her breast where the meat was tender in the same way the arch of a foot was tender from having never touched anything but the inside of a sock or Sid’s hands or the crimson dragon, which was still here and now in the valley in the same place Sid had left it before he disappeared.

A gust tornadoed a heap of fallen leaves and dropped them.

Tallie listened for Sid. Searched the valley walls for the fake book on a shelf—the one that when you pulled it, opened a secret passageway to somewhere else. Clicked open Sid’s blade and touched the tip to the soft side of her arm. Maybe she’d disappear too. Maybe then they’d be sorry.

“Tallie?” A voice called from the top of the valley, from behind a cascade of red curls flapping as the wind picked up again.

Tallie snapped the knife shut and hooked it on the inside of her bootstrap. She couldn't leave Margot, not like that. Geez. How had she gotten here? How had she gotten to where she could feel her fingernails clawing for an exit?

Margot tromped down the hill, tossing a softball and catching it in her glove. “Dinner’s ready.”

Tallie said nothing and did not look up until it was too late and Margot’s feet had already trampled the crimson dragon from its ETERNAL POSITION WHERE IT WAS NOT TO BE TOUCHED, and when Tallie looked up again, Margot’s mitt was in the dirt and her hands were rubbing the spot where Tallie had pushed her to the ground, and from behind the strawberry snarls, tears had welled in Margot's eyes.

Tallie took a step toward Margot. “I didn’t mean to—” A larger step backward. “I just don’t want to mess anything up. In case it happens again.”

Margot brushed off her elbows and wrapped her arms across her middle, which no longer carried the tub of fat Tallie used to blow zerberts on, back when Margot still covered her face with her hands and squealed, peek-a-boo.

Tallie pulled the note from her pocket. “He’s coming back.”

Margot eyed the ground, nudged the dirt with her toes.

Tallie watched Margot gnaw her lower lip as she sometimes did. As she had done last year upon returning from her fifth-grade field trip. Where’s my camera, Tallie had asked.

And Margot had said Skinny Stanley took it.

And after a few shakes, it was Renee who had stolen it.

And after a few pinches, there’d been an earthquake!! (Seriously, Margot? In these parts??!!??)

And finally, with Margot’s eyebrows just inches from toilet water, she’d admitted to boarding the bus and belting, Take Me Out to the Ballgame until they were all but a block from the school parking lot, where she noticed no camera strap dangling from her neck—but was pretty sure—ninety-six or eighty-seven percent probably—that it was actually hanging from the fence surrounding the giraffes or tigers, or it maybe it was in the bathroom next to the soap.

“Margot, what did you do this time, Margot…” Tallie gripped Margot’s arm, dug her nails in until Margot’s skin dented with half-moons.

Until Margot wrestled away and screamed, “I did it. I wrote the note!”

Tallie released her sister, that traitor, who was always stealing her shirts anyway and (instead of simply washing and putting them back before Tallie even discovered the thievery!!!) shoving them under her bed to rot beside dirty softball socks.

Who, with her mucky little paws was grubbing up the very shirt on Tallie's back—the only shirt Tallie owned, now that she’d run away. Miss Liar, Liar Pants on Fire, Miss I Can Explain, Miss—

The wind howled and snatched the note from Tallie’s fingers. Beneath her feet, the ground rumbled open. A crack at first, which Tallie and Margot’s toes darted over automatically (as to not break their mother’s back).

For a moment, nothing.

Then the sky screamed and the split spiderwebbed.

“What in the?!!” Margot yelled into the wind. She stepped back and back again as the earth’s jaws unhinged and devoured all that stood in its path. Devoured it not in the mind of Tallie, but in the here and now, forming a great divide—a Valley within the valley—where Tallie stood on one side and Margot on the other.

Tallie stared for a moment into the blackness below.

Then she jumped into the abyss.

-------------------------------------------

Grass.

Or something like grass.

Green like grass and blanketing the ground, but rubbery and dancing weightlessly, like hair in water. Only much thicker than hair, and sticky, like those creatures in the sea—amenome, amemone, a-nem-o-nee—like those blobs of tentacles where clownfish lived.

Above her, Sid.

Sid on a dragon.

Flying high on a dragon, gripping a set of reins connected to a bit between the dragon’s teeth. Flames torched from its nostrils as it descended, purple legs drawn out, talons extended and clawing to a halt, and oohhhhh that must’ve been some fall. Because now the dragon had folded back its wings and lifted its head to a tree where cherries the size of baseballs bulged from branches.

As the dragon nibbled the fruit, Sid released the reins and stretched his amazingly buff and perfectly sun-kissed arms and enclosed his fingers, thick and callused and manly, around—was that a freaking wizard staff???

Was this, as they said in air quotes, Hell?

Because if it was, because had Tallie known Sid would be here, looking all fine with his shirtless torso and his loin-cloth covered whatever-the-lower-half-of-the-body-was-called (she totally earned a pass on vocabulary after a fall like that!), she would have jumped a hell of a lot sooner, pun intended!

But in all seriousness, where was this place in which she laid, lay? lie? This place in which—with her limbs sprawled upon the ground and her body facing upward in a horizontal resting position—she existed, or did she???

Tallie rolled onto her stomach and—oh! Her ankle! She limped to her knees and with an outstretched hand, reached to steady herself on a nearby branch.

And as her fingertips brushed the tip of the twiggy part, it went all limp-stiff-limp-stiff like that pencil trick the boys always did during tests, then it roped around her wrist and yanked her against its trunk, sliming across her stomach as it bound her wrists above her head and made loops around each knee, pulling her legs back into quite the compromising position seeing how she was wearing the same skirt she had worn the last time she’d seen Sid.

Before Tallie’s brain could stop her lips, she screamed.

Sid’s head turned.

He tapped his staff and the dragon kneeled. Sid climbed down the purple tail and over to where Tallie hung helpless, and with a throbbing that had shifted from her ankle to between her thighs.

Sid trickled his fingers along the inside of Tallie’s leg and let them linger near the spot where she ached for him to touch, then reversed course and plunged his hand into her boot where he retrieved his pocket knife.

With one hand, Sid snapped open the blade and dragged the tip along the row of buttons where Tallie's shirt was snagged.

Tallie found herself arching her back, pushing out her chest as though it were an invitation to gut the cloth like a deer, to flick the razored edge beneath the band of her bra and take that too if he so wished.

Tallie followed Sid’s eyes as they wandered the length of her body, then made their way back up to her own, which had longed for this very moment all these days, weeks, months, the moment where, with his eyes, he would say, you came back—

Sid folded the blade back into the handle. Turned on his heels. Stomped his staff atop the earth.

The branches around Tallie’s limbs recoiled and dropped her to the trembling grass.

Sid returned to the dragon, and as he boarded its wing, reached out his hand, and in it, took another.

Not the hand attached to her arm, to Tallie’s, but to the arm of a woman who for a shirt wore only tassels like on a graduation cap, which—for god’s sake—barely covered the areola part of her nipples, and on her lower half, a fringy collection of strings, not nearly as elegant as the party streamers one purchased at the dollar store for crying out loud!! That (as Margot's catcher would say to the batter-up) cookie, that can of corn, that yakker!!!!!

That pee-drinking crapface followed Sid onto the dragon’s wing, plopped into the saddle behind him, and smoothed her hand over Sid's groin, then up to his chin, which she tilted towards her own and, with eyes locked on Tallie’s (and a little glint of light sparkling from her iris, as if to say, Look You Eighteen-Year-Old Virgin, I’ve done some real damage with this), slid her tongue—ahem tongues??!!—a smaller one on top of a normal-sized one—into his mouth.

Sid jogged the reins and the dragon spread its wings.

This place, Tallie thought as Sid and the mystery-maiden flew into the sky, leaving Tallie on her knees where her stomach lurched bile.

This place, into which she'd jumped, was some kind of hell indeed.

Tallie stumbled to her feet and tripped her way around the tree, which was still snapping at her like the turtle she'd once tried to help cross the road—and DIDN'T THAT COUNT FOR SOMETHING??!!? Didn’t that at least put her somewhere in the middle? In some type of purgatory or limbo or whatever the heck they called it?

Past the snapping tree, past a peach-colored rock, the size of a trailer, a stretch of pond shimmered beneath three crescent moons. With water so clear Tallie could see to the bottom. Where miniature metal trucks manned by men in fatigues transported objects that twinkled so brightly, Tallie swore they were stars.

Tallie sat on her knees and watched as the yellow dumpers turned their wheels in the sandy bottom, arranging themselves into a shape or a symbol or a number.

Into a Z + S.

Tallie returned to her feet, no longer certain of how even to walk, except but to place one foot in front of the other and repeat.

And as she stepped toward the gargantuan rock, which before her very eyes was changing like a hypercolor sweatshirt from pink to crimson, a set of wings unfolded and a tail unfurled. And behind the red scales, (all but hidden had the breeze not bounced them) a tuft of matching curls.