Thrust, Drag, Lift

A winter wildfire burned north of Phoenix a third day, the morning a hash of foreglow, smoke, and fog. On her backyard diving board, Cassidy Ware-Rivera chewed sticks of acid-green gum pinched from a teacher’s desk, her mouth hot with mint and synthetic sugar. Mist shrouded the space mural on the plaster of the kidney pool. She hung her heels off the board. Over summer, she’d perfected a back dive—Newton’s third law of motion, equal and opposite reaction. Now she swam inside a pea coat, her mother’s letter folded in a pocket. Things are looking up. Cass lifted her chin. A spiked-punch sky, hibiscus, blood orange, guava. Up or down? Sky or land? A few blocks west, her father’s tower crane rose above the fog-smoke. She stood on one leg. Cranes or storks? Flamingos?

Francie slid open the door and yelled, “Cassidy, let’s go!”

Cass hocked the gum. It plopped in the shallow end. Good one! Mom would have said. The wad sank—tiny but dense. She swooped up her board, thinking of fluid mechanics, the law of buoyancy, the ballast of lungs. A multitude of forces acting on the body.

In Francie’s sedan, Cass rode in front, Hayden sat strapped in a child seat in the back, holding a toy robot and a mandarin, a skim-milk sheen of sunblock on his arms. On a porch across the street, a neighbor held an ancient poodle with hot pink booties on its paws.

Francie said, “That coat is like a circus tent on you. Where’d you get it?”

“Thrift store.” Cass pulled the lapels. A pen jabbed her armpit, a pill bottle rattled.

“Color looks good,” Francie said.

Cass touched her hair. Maraschino Red. Francie worked as a stylist at Aba Vera’s salon up the street—she’d added a purple streak to her own bangs.

“You don’t have to drive me.” Cass patted her longboard deck.

“We’ll get you settled.” Francie waved to the neighbor. The old dog kept getting loose, its collar jangling as the woman called, “Nickel!” Last summer, she’d screamed at an animal control van: “Someone should punch your fucking face off!” Then, Cass couldn’t stop laughing—she and her friends would text, PYFFO, and die—but now her eyes stung as the woman buried her face in the dog’s fluff. Over winter break, Cass hadn’t answered texts.

A boy wearing a blue baseball cap came onto the neighbor’s porch. Cass’s age. She’d never seen him before. He unfolded a scooter and took off down the sidewalk.

Hayden thudded his heels into Cass’s seat. The warped-disc roof of the Coliseum rose above houses and cinderblock walls on Acacia Drive. They passed cactus strung with lights, a Santa wearing sunglasses, an inflatable snowman sagging onto gravel, warring campaign signs. Fog-smoke shrouded the Palmera Vista Historic District sign and the boathouse at the park. A crane hovered over the community college where Mom used to work.

Hayden said, “Is that Daddy’s crane?”

“Not that one. Honey, get your finger out of your nose.” Francie pointed. “He’s over on Central. See the blue flag? Wave to him.”

The car rocked as Hayden hopped in his seat. On the glass, Cass traced the tower crane’s mast and jib, the cab where Dad worked alone for twelve-hour shifts. Last night, he and Francie had an argument, about Aba snooping in the medicine chest and his late hours. He’d said, “I’m working my ass off. I don’t need to be guilted to death,” which Cass first heard as gilded. Lethal gold. Death by precious metal.

At the intersection, Hayden kicked her seat. “Cass, why is your mom in trouble?”

Cass smeared a thumbprint on the glass.

Francie said, “That’s not your business, honey.”

“But you said she got in trouble.”

Francie mouthed Sorry. “She’s just taking a little vacation.”

“Yeah.” Cass laughed. “Life’s a beach.”

She scanned the intersection. Summer places: Laundromat, Aba’s salon, pub, fabric store. At the coffee shop, people in puffy jackets and fingerless mittens hunched over laptops on the patio. She pictured them boneless, in backbends over the wrought iron chairs. Body-snatched. She cinched the coat’s sleeves over her hands. The wool smelled of stale smoke and cologne that made her think of spooked horses.

Francie said, “I’m sorry. This has been a hard time. This is a big change for us, too.”

Us. Cass clicked the door lock. “Sorry to fuck up your life.”

“Mom,” Hayden said, “she said—”

“Hayden, shh.” The opposing signal turned yellow. Francie drummed her fingers on the wheel. “I’d like to help. How can I help?”

The signal turned green. The car behind them laid on its horn.

Cass unlatched the door. Francie said, “Hey!” as Cass dropped her board and kick-pushed off. Hayden pressed his face to the glass, his finger wedged in his nose.

Before the first bell, Cass dodged Martha, who was in the parking lot doing ollies on their short board and sneaking hits off a vape pen. The boy from her street rolled up and locked his scooter to a rack. He smiled and waved. She ducked in the side entrance. She kept her headphones on between classes and ate vending machine crackers for lunch in the Physics classroom, where Ms. Vasquez said, “Like your hair, Cass,” and talked to her about Galilean velocity transformations but not a word about the coat she wouldn’t take off or the D on her last test. Students kept their mouths shut, too, but they meme’d the shit out of the footage—I CAN HAZ NARCAN and WHEN UR COMMUTE’S A KILLER. At the last bell, Cass ignored Martha and their girlfriend Leticia shouting her name.

The wind had picked up, blowing out the fog and Brown Cloud that ringed the valley, though a haze of wildfire smoke lingered to the north. The sky was so bright her jaw ached. Headphones on, she surfed the long sidewalks past stucco apartments and strip malls, ducking under olive branches. As she passed her old street and the hospital, she kept her eyes pinned on the western horizon, but the image sideswiped her: Mom splayed into the passenger side, mouth agape, as a cop jabbed naloxone into her thigh.

Almost dead? Undead? Cass bent her knees and carved the concrete. Dynamic friction, momentum. The thud of the wheels traveled up her shins. The pill bottles clattered.

Before Pierce, a twitchy music promotor—Stab, Cass and Martha called him—Mom liked to go out to see bands or for drinks, and, okay, yeah, sometimes she passed out in her clothes, or Cass would wake to a hungover bass player in the kitchen, but Mom had worked as an office assistant at the college, took ceramics classes with her tuition voucher, played records and danced while she cooked waffles for dinner. She’d taught Cass how to spit with force: pennies, gum, paper wads through straws. Until she hurt her shoulder a year ago, she’d swam laps at the Y, the sunflower tattoo on her shoulder glinting.

Cass stopped at the fabric shop. The owner let two parakeets fly loose, and their white poops pocked the aisles. Cass slipped a spool of red thread into her pocket when the owner went to the back room. At the coffee shop, Cass grabbed raw sugar packets from the fixings bar. At the laundromat, she snagged a mini-stapler from the counter while the bald bearded owner restrained an old white-haired man shouting about stolen mail. She skateboarded fast past the salon’s window to avoid the third degree from Aba or getting sucked into chores. At the Palmview Pub, she ordered a to-go soda, and when the server turned her back, loaded up on packets of ketchup, an order pad, and striped peppermint candies until her pockets bulged.

“Hey.”

She whirled around. The scooter boy. Brown like her, freckles on his nose. His curls poked out beneath his blue ballcap.

She said, “Are you following me?”

He frowned. “What? No.”

The server, a white woman about her mom’s age with short platinum hair, said, “Hey, Gusto. What’s up? How was school? You hungry?”

The boy pointed at the woman. “My cousin. And my aunt’s restaurant. I live with her, across the street from you?” He said to the woman, “Hey Lu. Can I get some fries?”

The woman—Lucia on her tag—said to Cass, “You want some too? On the house.”

Cass chewed her thumbnail. “I guess. Thanks.”

The boy slid into a booth. He held a disc of paper with strings attached to the sides. He pulled the strings and the disc whirled. Images flickered. A bird fluttering in a cage?

Cass sat across from him and pointed at the disc. “What is that?”

“Thaumatrope.” He laid it flat and showed her a drawing of a yellow canary on one side, a black cage on the other. “Pull the strings.”

Cass tugged, and the disc flipped. The laws of motion: inertia, momentum and force, action and reaction. Bird and cage merged. She heard her mother: Hey little chickadee.

He took out one with a goldfish and a bowl, a flurry of orange and blue. She stared at the blurring colors. “Your name is Gusto?”

“Gus. August. Like the month? Birth month. And a playwright. My mom’s an actor.”

“Hey, my mom’s an addict, so.” She choked out a laugh and wrapped a string around her pinkie. “I’m Cass.”

“I know.”

“How?”

“My aunt knows your grandma.” His fishbowl disc flashed. “You know, real deep undercover spy shit.”

Cass laughed, a genuine one.

Lucia dropped the fries, napkins, and two sodas. “Bon Appetit, kiddos.”

Gus squirted a mound of ketchup in the basket.

She said, “I’ve never seen you at your aunt’s.”

“I’ve only been here a couple weeks.” He dipped a fry. “Our house in California burned down in a wildfire.”

Cass coughed on a sip of soda. “Jesus. Shit. I mean, is everyone okay?”

“No one was hurt. We lost all our stuff. We have insurance, so we’re lucky. My mom works a lot out of town, so she shipped me to Constance’s while we rebuild.” He adjusted his ballcap and stared out the window. The smoke had crept in, filtered the sun.

Cass blinked away an image of Gus slumped sideways in the booth, of his cousin contorted across the cash register. “Listen, I gotta go. Nice to meet you, Gus.”

“Oh. Okay. Wait.” He held out the bird thaumatrope. “You keep it.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.” Cass put the disc in her inner pocket, next to her mom’s letter. “See you.”

Cass jumped on her board and kicked fast down the sidewalk, swerving into the park, where her parents used to take her to ride the carousel and miniature train. The loot in her pockets crackled as she carved the paths around the lagoons and channels, catching air off the bridges. The laws of physics, immutable. Except what about the anomalies, like the quantum realm and dark matter? Her wheels hit a crack. The board stopped, but she flew. Newton’s first law, a force acting upon an object in motion—whatever, fuck. She face-planted on a grass border. She flipped on her back, panting.

The crosshatch of a tower crane glinted through the olive trees. When her dad first got certified, she’d wake up screaming with dreams that his crane toppled. So he’d strapped a camera to his helmet, filmed the anchor bolts, explained foundation and ballast and wind limits. He’d climbed an enclosed ladder, stopping at platforms for safety checks. In the cab he’d shown the knobs and levers, a locker with his old band sticker, a pee jug in the corner. Then he’d scanned the city. “Look, there’s Camelback! The airport!” The sun rose over the Superstitions, and parasailers launched off Shaw Butte and South Mountain.

In the park she thought of bird cranes. The constellation Grus in the southern sky, one thousand origami granting wishes and luck. She remembered a physics lecture about birdflight. Thrust, drag, lift, weight. Like swimming. Air or water? Earth or sky? Her mother swimming laps, the arc of her elbow, the cartwheel of her feet in a flip turn, the sunflower tattoo a starfish on her shoulder. Cass held up her fingers in a peace sign—the V tan lines on her mother’s back. She imagined climbing up to the crane jib and swan diving off the end. Crane or swan? Fly or fall? She pulled out the paper disc and flipped it until the bird and cage blurred. Bird and cage, bird in cage, both at once.

Two nights later, Cass did her homework in the den that was now her bedroom, Mom’s boxes covered with a sheet, Dad’s Les Paul propped in a corner. As she finished a problem set for Physics and annotated Act II of Hamlet, she got a text from Martha and Leticia. “CWR, plz plz plz talk to us!!!” She picked up Gus’s bird thaumatrope from the desk. Okay, chickadee, I hope you come see me soon.

Another text popped up: “I want my coat back, Cassidy. I know you have it.” Stab. She blocked his number. To her friends, she wrote, “im ok. thx!!!”

The coat hung from her bedpost. Blue wool with chunky metal buttons, silk lining, a slew of pockets bulky with Cass’s loot and Stab’s shit: a black and gold pen, a wallet, keys, and two prescription bottles of pills with Mom’s name on the labels. He wanted the pills, not the coat. Which is why he wouldn’t call Dad. This was between them.

The house was quiet except for a ticking that seemed to come from inside the walls. She sat with the Les Paul on the daybed, twisting the tuning pegs.

A knock startled her. Dad stuck his head around the door.

“You in here rocking out?”

She hugged the guitar. “I like holding it.”

“You can hold it all you want.” He handed her a brown pick the color of his left eye; the right was blue.

“I’ve hardly seen you.” His brow creased beneath his widow’s peak. “How are you?”

She nodded, meaning Fine. Maybe. Up or down? Summer or winter? Yes or no? All at once? She flipped the pick in her palm.

“It’s okay if you’re not.”

She put her fingers on the A chord and strummed.

“You can talk to me. Or if not me, someone. Francie knows—.”

“I don’t want you to talk about me with her. Or about Mom.”

“Okay. I get it, I do. But she’s on your side, too. She’s trying.”

She switched to a G chord. “Have you seen her yet?”

“Not yet.” He pulled out a roll of antacids and crunched one. “We can go soon.”

Cass wasn’t sure she wanted to, afraid of her contortions and open-mouth sag. Abducted mother. Replica mother.

Dad petted her hair. “I wish you’d told me, honey.”

“I tried to help.”

“You did great.” He put his arm around her, exhaled berry from the antacid. “It’s not your fault. I should have asked.”

“I didn’t want to get her in trouble. She’s not your problem. You have your family.”

“You are my family. And Sunny and I grew up together. She’s your mom.” He patted her back. “I’m glad you’re here. So is Francie.”

He took the guitar and strummed. She shivered. She’d read a neuroscience article about the brain and music and wondered which of her lobes lit up. She studied his blue eye to see if it changed.

“It’s late.” He set the guitar in the corner and pressed the heel of his hand to her forehead like a TV preacher. “Sleep.”

*

When it was quiet, she put on the coat over her flannel pajamas. She pulled the strings on the thaumatrope and wandered the dark house, peering at photos in the hallway. Lots of Hayden and Francie. One of Aba holding Dad as a kid at a baseball game. One of Cass and Dad, thumbtacked above the A/C filter grate: camping at Canyon Lake, their hair stiff with lake water. Cass pocketed it with the letter and Gus’s disc. She stuck the guitar pick in her mouth. It clicked against her molars.

She unlocked the sliding glass door to the backyard. The wildfire had been contained, the smoke drift dissipated. A helicopter buzzed near the Coliseum. She switched on the pool lamp, unlatched the safety gate, and sat cross-legged on the diving board with her knees tucked inside the circus tent of wool. Beams from a porthole spotlighted the space mural on the plaster. Dad had painted the mural after Francie moved in four years ago, pregnant with Hayden, when Cass was eleven and split between two homes. “For both of you,” he’d said. Planets, yellow dwarf star drain, an alien’s speech bubble: “Greetings, People of Earth!” She hadn’t had the heart to tell him he’d mixed up the order, put Saturn before Jupiter. Her green gum wad lay near the sun drain. An invasive seed. Extraterrestrial waters.

Before the divorce, Mom would swim in a crawl around the pool’s curves. When Mom taught her to swim, Cass would yell, “Don’t let go!” and Mom would say, “I won’t, I’ve got you. Kick. Use your feet like paddles. Kick water, not air. Kick, kick!”

After she hurt her shoulder, Cass would find her lying by the apartment pool, immobile and slack, sunglasses on. Over Thanksgiving, the fridge had been a mess of fast-food clamshells, stale tortillas, furred beans, and sauce packets. Mom and Stab had dozed on the sofa. Cass ordered Chinese for their holiday dinner. Mom spun noodles on her plate, but soon she and Stab left to help a friend, said they’d be back in an hour. Cass had piled crusted plates in the sink. In Mom’s bedroom, she gathered musty tangled sheets, kicked Stab’s coat into a ball in the corner. Trashed the empty prescription bottles on the nightstand. She’d started laundry and texted with Martha as they hate-watched dumb sitcoms. Then Dad called. Later, when Cass came to pack clothes for Mom, Stab’s coat had still been in the corner.

On the diving board, Cass pulled out Mom’s letter and shined her phone flashlight on the paper. She skipped to the part she kept rereading.

“This definitely isn’t what I imagined when I was your age. My mother sent me to live with my dad in Phoenix that summer. He’s not a bad person, but strict, distant. I was really lonely. I’d sneak into the yard, slosh around in the irrigation water. I’d ride my bike to the record store to listen to these riot grrrls who were giving everyone the finger. Then I met your dad at the record store, and we went on a date to my first concert. Holding hands with him, on the cusp of a new century, it felt like I might be okay after all. And then I had you.

“Somedays I still feel you against my side, a ghost weight. You’d shout, Up! Up! or Down! Down! I worried I’d drop you, but I never did. Until now, I guess.

“I’ll make it right, Cass. I will. Things are looking up (I can’t imagine how they could get lower). Okay, chickadee, I hope you come see me soon.”

Cass stepped to the end of the board. If she dove in with clothes and shoes, the drag would slow the thrust. A drowned body sank, its lungs full, but corpses rose, bloated with gasses. Up, down, alive, dead. The guitar pick cut into her cheek. Traffic hummed in the distance, and a car idled in the street, engine rumbling. Shivering, she stretched her arms into an inverted V. She lifted her foot and bent her knee. Crane, stork, flamingo, swan.

A bell tinkled from the gate. Cass hopped off the board. At the gate, the puffball dog from across the street snuffled and yipped.

She stuck her hand through the bars. The dog growled but its stubby tail wagged. One pink bootie was missing. “Hey, girl, hey. Let’s get you home.” She ran to the patio for the gate key: she’d pick up the dog and carry her to Gus’s doorstep. See what happened next. But back at the gate, the dog was gone.

“Nickel,” she called, listening for the bell. Nothing. She walked to the driveway in her slippers. Gus’s house was dark. The rumble car was parked next door. Its beams caught a flash of gray in three pink booties, racing away.

Cass skateboarded under streetlamps in her socks and circus coat. No dog. A man in a robe shuffled down the sidewalk, his white hair sticking up in tufts, calling out for someone. She slowed her board and said, “Sir? Have you seen a dog?” He mumbled and waved his arms. He beelined up a driveway a few houses away.

Cass stopped outside Gus’s house. Which window was his? She stared at the darkened glass, willing him to come, this boy who gave instead of took and made her want to do the same. She opened his aunt’s mailbox and set Stab’s pen and a peppermint candy inside. She plucked a pansy from the bed below the box and tucked it behind her ear.

In her yard, she relocked the gate and pocketed the key. The pool gleamed. The gum had drifted, rested on the P of “People of Earth.” She scooped it out with the netted pole and clenched it in her palm. It still smelled of mint. She stuck it inside Stab’s wallet.

The kitchen light came on. She switched off the pool lamp and crouched next to a lounger. Up past bedtime, so what, but she didn’t want to have to explain herself. She worried Francie was sneaking out to smoke, but it was Dad. He paused at her room and touched the door. With his messy dark hair and in a t-shirt and boxers, he looked young. She guessed he was, thirty-four. Some of her friends’ parents were, like, fifty. He’d been nineteen when she was born, her mother eighteen. Emil and Sunny. Only a few years older than her.

She saw him collapsing, draped over a stool, boneless on the ceramic tile.

He tested the sliding door and shook his head as he locked it. The kitchen went dark.

She stood up. Shit.

She had the coat. If she got too cold, she’d ring the bell, face the interrogation. She curled up on the chaise and flipped the guitar pick in her palm. I thought I might be okay after all. And I then had you. So was Cass why her mother was okay, or why everything fell apart? Her mother sat upright in the driver’s seat, and then she slumped sideways.

A rustle. A tinkle. The dog! She jumped up, unsure if she’d fallen asleep. The tinkle—not a bell. The rattle and ping of the metal gate latch. She ran to the sound. Gus, she thought, a flutter in her chest. A few feet from the gate, someone said her name.

She froze. Not Gus. A deeper voice. A man. A man stood at the bars.

Wake up, she told herself. Move, move, move. Her screamed was strangled.

The man said, “Be quiet. I want to talk to you. I’ve been trying to call.”

Stab. She covered her mouth. Sweat pooled in her armpits.

“Hey, I don’t want to be here, either, but you stole my stuff. I want it back. That’s it. If you do, I won’t tell your daddy. I won’t call the cops.”

“You’re the one at a minor’s house in the middle of the night.” She clenched her fists, the pick cutting her palm. “I know what’s in the pockets. You’re not calling anyone.”

“Look, I know you blame me—

“You told them she forged the prescriptions.” She pulled out an amber bottle and shook it at him. “You lied to save yourself.”

“I wasn’t lying. You can believe what you want, but Sunny—”

“She was fine before you.” She stuck the pick in her mouth against her cheek.

He pressed his face between two bars. “Where do you think I got the oxy in the first place?” He crooked a finger. “Just give me the coat and my stuff. Then we’re done. Okay?”

She uncapped the bottle and chucked it toward the pool. Tablets scattered on the

concrete, and the canister plopped in the water.

“Give it to me!” He grabbed for her through the gate.

She flung the second bottle, his keys and wallet, sugar packets. Fear shifted to rage, propelling her to her tiptoes. His fault. He’d ruined their lives.

She spit the pick, aiming for his eye. “Someone should punch your fucking face off.”

He recoiled and jumped off the gate. “Goddamn it. That’s it.”

He disappeared, and she dug in the pockets for the gate key. When he was gone, she’d go around front, ring the bell, wake Dad to be let inside.

Except the doorbell was ringing. Lights burst on in the house. Her father stumbled out and peered through the peephole, followed by Francie. “Don’t!” she said, but he did, he opened the door. Stab stood on the porch, pointing. Dad and Francie turned. Caught.

Dad jogged toward her, Francie and Stab on his heels.

Cass couldn’t find the gate key—maybe she’d thrown it in the pool. The wall was too high to climb. Nowhere to go.

The patio flared, buzzing with light and voices and motion.

She ran through the safety fence gate to the diving board, the pills like pebbles under her socked feet. The amber bottles floated, but the wallet and keys had sunk to the mural.

“Cass!” Dad yelled. “What in the hell?”

She pulled the coat tight. “His drugs were in the pockets.”

Stab said, “They weren’t my drugs. And that coat is my dad’s, you little shit. It’s the only thing I have of his.”

“Like I care!”

“Cass.” Dad held up his hand. He pointed at Stab. “You, get the hell out of here. Now.” Stab protested but took off when Dad took a step toward him.

Dad approached the diving board. “Honey. Come here.”

Hayden was in the doorway, burrowed against Francie’s leg. He said, “Mama, what’s wrong?” She picked him up. “Come on, buddy, back to bed.”

Dad held out his hand. “Please come here. It’s okay.”

“He should have to p—.” Her teeth chattered. “Pay.”

“Come inside. You’re freezing. I should have—let’s talk about this.”

She stepped to the board’s edge. She closed her eyes and held her arms out, the coat’s sleeves bagging. Crane-winged, a body in motion, built for flight.

Instead of vaulting up into a dive, she let herself collapse. Buckled knees, jelly spine, spaghetti limbs. Body-snatched. She tumbled into the freezing water.

She registered the cold, a whiff of mint, the sensation of sinking, down, down, dragged by the weight of drenched wool and metal buttons and stolen junk.

The pool lamp snapped on. A pill bottle bobbed on the surface like a toy ship, but she kept sinking, dense and immobile. She landed on the plaster between the sun drain and Mercury, her socked feet on Venus. Her hair wavered like sea kelp.

This was water, not air. Viscous, fricative, pressurized. She butterflied her arms. Normally she’d rise but now her mass was greater than the buoyant force.

Her blurry father kneeled at the edge. He shouted her name and dove in.

She exhaled bubbles. Her lungs burned. Her vision dimmed.

Her mother rose from the dead. Zombie mother, Jesus mother.

Was this what it felt like to lose everything?

Her father grabbed her under the arms.

Air. A fanged, feral need. Up. Now.

Kick, little chickadee, her disembodied mother said.

Move your ass, Cassidy, said a voice she thought might be her own.

Her father pulled, and she pushed off with both feet, propulsive, rocketing skyward.