Getting Rid of Gloria

I've heard of quarter life crises. They're like midlife crises, but earlier. I have been putting serious thought into whether or not I'm having one. I've had to admit to myself that the answer is "no", as much as I would like to be able to define myself that easily.
An apple with three bites taken out of it and half a bottle of nail polish rattled across my dashboard as I-70 took a turn. The windows were cracked open but the dash was so hot I could smell the apple baking.  
I eyed Gloria furtively in the rearview mirror.
It wasn't easy to get a good, inconspicuous glimpse at her through her boxes, bags and other luggage. They swayed and fluttered across my field of view, stacked on every unoccupied seat like Paul Bunyan's pancakes.
She was a very different color than she had been when she was sixteen. Her older brother Sam referred to the hue as "tanorexic." It was impossible to tell if the dark gold of the legs protruding from the backseat almost passed my arm rest was somehow natural or if it had been painted on.
Years ago, during the sticky, buggy nights of girls' camp, I had been a junior councilor responsible for Gloria along with my own little sister and half a dozen other twelve year olds. She had been short then, and even in her early teens full of baby fat. All the other junior counselors fawned over her and gave her "cute as a button" awards scribbled with glitter onto paper plates.
That was still more or less her description the last time I saw her, five years ago. Now she was some sort of a giant, unnaturally colored swimsuit model with Paris Hilton lenses for eyes. She looked out of place in the back of my cramped, red, down-on-her-luck Sonata.
The juxtaposition made it seem very clear to me: there was nothing "quarter" about it. My whole life has been a constant string of crises: emotional, financial, identity, fashion, academic, mental. You name it. Or else, as I was beginning to suspect, one long single one. Because they didn't resolve. They all just sort of blurred in together.
I had picked her up in Columbia, Kansas. She was moving back in with her parents, who now lived in Kittery, Maine. We had loaded her things into my car and I had asked her how she had liked it there. She said she hadn't much. Then she climbed into the back seat and put in ear buds. She had sat silent, chewing gum, for the last seven hours.
The Gloria I had known was rarely silent; certainly never seven hours' worth of silent. Why did she have to sit in the back? What was wrong with the passenger seat?
The autumn before they moved, she, Sam, and I took some friends out to the cornfield behind their house. It was the perfect place to play hide-n-seek.
The dry, rickety green stalks made it impossible to see more than one narrow row at a time. You had to rely on the sound of dirt muffled footsteps or the whisper of papery leaves on skin. We spooked ourselves. My little brother had been the last one to base.
"Wait… you're all here?" asked Mark, just twelve years old.
"Yeah! We've been waiting on you!" shrieked Gloria.
Mark's blue eyes grew wide. "But I was just sneaking up on someone out there!"
For a moment we all stood in a circle, eyebrows arched at each other, ears straining out into the field.
"Who could be out there?" we whispered to one another.
"Every man for himself!" screamed Gloria suddenly. We took off running in every direction, all of us, laughing like wild dogs, the saw-edged leaves biting into our arms and legs and faces.
Gloria was not the fastest runner. She just had to keep from being the slowest. I was behind her when she tackled Mark. She took a flying leap at his back as he sprinted away. They crashed into a wall of corn, but somehow she was up first, leaving him to get his bearings as she sped off. She made a dive through two rows of corn to body slam Sam. Then it was Ris, my sister. Then Chris, then Amanda, all left behind for the cornfield serial killer to deal with as he pleased.
Finally, Gloria's ankles got tangled in some fallen stalks and she hit the dirt, struggling fitfully and screaming "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!"  
We all brushed the dirt and off and pushed through the stalks to gather around her, laughing. We loved her.
Of course, if she were to have such a psychotic break now she would pulverize me. Somehow, she got to be both "can-do-no-wrong cute" and "not-yet-a-raisin supermodel." I had never gotten to be either of the two.
I was a little intimidated by Gloria.
I wanted her out of my car.
My phone rang. I glanced around the road. I wasn't sure what the cellphone laws in this state were. Or which state we were in, exactly. That's plausible deniability, right? I answered it.
"Cin?"
"Sam!" I could never help but grin when I heard his voice "I've got your sister."
"Good! I couldn't get a hold of her." I eyed the rearview again. Gloria was still fiddling with her phone.
"Where are you guys right now?"
"I think we're in Indiana already."
"'Bout when are you getting into Maine?"
"Well, we're making good time, but it depends how long I can hold out." My neck cramped up just to make the point. "Probably late tomorrow night. Maybe the morning after that. Will you be there?"
"Yep. I'm packing right now. I'll be on my way up day after tomorrow."
"How were finals?"
"Meh."
"Oh well. Now it's summer!" I gripped the steering wheel tight. I hadn't seen Sam in three years. With Gloria there, this was going to be just like the old days!
"Risk! Get down! Oh, he just slimed me." Risk was Sam's two year old Great Dane. The dog was huge, white and deaf. He couldn't hear a thing so Sam spent an inordinate amount of time yelling at him. I held the phone away from my ear, as if the dog could smear drool over me too, but Sam's voice lowered suspiciously. "Hey, can she hear me?"
"Nope!" I replied super enthusiastically so it didn't sound like a conspiracy.
"Does-does she know yet? Have you told her I told you?"
"Nope. Thought you were going to do that."
"Well, maybe no one has to."
"Maybe…" I hoped he could hear my eyebrows creasing in doubt.
His laugh sounded over the bitty speaker. "Is she driving you crazy yet?"
"No. She's just hanging out in the back there. You want to talk to her?"
"No. Not unless she wants to talk to me. YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME GLORIA?" he yelled.
"Gloria, you want to talk to Sam?"
"Meh." She shrugged.
"Not in particular, Sam."
"Okay. See you tomorrow night."
"Say hi to Risk for me."
I hung up. I was alone with Gloria again. The Sonata rumbled and rattled beneath us. Air rushed by the partially peeled down windows.   
"I'm turning on the radio," Gloria said. She sat forward, reached through the front seats, and twisted at the radio knobs.
It came on. I was a little surprised and more than a little proud. The Sonata had trouble with that sometimes, but most everything still worked better than the air conditioner.
"I've got some CDs too," I offered. The radio fuzzed through several stations.
"The only thing that comes in is country," Gloria said in disgust.
"I've got a couple of CDs."
"I don't like country music."
"Really? It's not all bad. What about Taylor Swift?"
"I hate Taylor Swift."
"Oh," I would have guessed that she liked Taylor Swift. She liked Avril Levigne, once upon a time. I reached around Gloria's stuff and felt for the glove compartment. I found the handle and flicked it open.  There was a stack of brown Tacobell napkins, a melted Twix bar, and two CDs: The Eagles and Taylor Swift. I gave up.
Gloria paused on a station. It took me a moment to identify the music as rap. The reception was so fuzzy we couldn't hear the lyrics. I couldn't decide if that was good or bad.
Gloria cranked it up.  
A large blue sign crested the horizon and loomed above the scrubby grass beside the road. Rest Stop 10 Miles.

Picnic tables dotted Indiana grass so dry and yellow that it made the day feel even hotter. The buildings had some trees hanging over them though, and all in all, it was as inviting as a public restroom could conceivably be.
Four or five tractor trailers were parked in the four o clock shade and I pulled up not too far away, trying to squeeze the Sonata under the same shadowy pool. I opened my door and groaned as I slid stiffly out into a standing position. Both legs were completely numb from the vibration of the car. The entire back of my shirt was damp.
Gloria was still in the car, painted toenails hanging out the window. She had been driving for almost as long as I had that day. She seemed impervious to it. She was texting someone. I turned away and did some stretches. It was a moment before I turned back again.
"Gloria? Gloria!" I whispered. "What are you doing?"
She was outside the car, hoisting herself up onto the sideboard of the nearest abandoned semi. The huge, red, fiberglass cab dwarfed even her. She could hear me. It didn't matter.
The keys to the truck must have still been in the ignition on the driver's side. The radio was playing softly through the open passenger window. Gloria peered in. She gave the door handle a yank.
I glanced around quickly. The trucker had to be nearby if the engine was still running. A tie-dye clad teen passed by us with a scruffy dog. Then I noticed a large man up against the building. He was facing away from us, towards the wall. His stained grey shirt was sweatier than mine. His arms and shoulders were jerking up and down as he spoke loudly into what must have been a phone buried in his beard. Several profane words drifted towards me on the summer breeze.
"Gloria, what if it's his truck?" I hissed. "Gloria!"
Gloria was reaching through the opened window. She strained up onto her sandaled toes. A long golden leg floated up into the air to balance her.
"Gloria, if it's him he's already… quite upset."
She was shimmying further into the window, neither foot touching anything anymore. My hand drifted to my door, then away again. I didn't want to make any noise.
"Gloria! Where is he? I don't see the trucker! I can't hear him." I glanced around for the angry man. I had a sickening feeling that he was on the other side of his truck ready to hop in.
The truck's radio blasted. Every muscle in my body tensed, sending me at least four inches into the air. The music shut off. Gloria slid slowly back out the window like smug molasses.  
"I hate country music."
I blinked at her for a moment. The owner of the truck did not appear. I pocketed the keys of my own car and wandered up toward the bathrooms.
Just after the first Pirates of the Caribbean came out, Sam and I were hanging out in their kitchen when Gloria got home from school. She waltzed in with an enormous green dumdum in her mouth, her sizable lips stained green. She had shop lifted it from the middle school cafeteria. Because she was a pirate. For that, she declared, she was our captain.
In some freakish way, it had worked. We called ourselves "The Pirates of the Finger Lakes" after that. Ris was first mate because she never agreed with the Captain. Mark was a stow-away, water demon because he was short and liked wading in the creek. Sam was our wealthy financier because working at The Coffee Stop he was the only one of us with a job at the time.  I was boatswain because I liked tinkering with things. And Gloria was the "Cap'y G" who never failed to lead us astray. Much too young for pubs, we rioted at the nearest pizzerias. Sometimes McDonalds.
The sounds of flushing water and hand driers echoed through the cement building. It was cool and shady as I approached.  I tried to count the footsteps I heard inside, guess how many people were in there. It was no use. There was no way to tell how many were echoing over from the men's room.
I don't have anything against people. I like people. I just hate meeting people. You can only ever go so long without introducing yourself. Then you have to somehow make "unemployed, not dating" sound happy and confident.
I didn't really expect to be introducing myself to anyone in the restroom. But if my memory served me, the chances of meeting pregnant panhandlers in floor length floral dress were greatly increased at interstate rest stops. It evoked the same kind of anxiety.
I turned into the doorway.
"Hi," said the panhandler.
"Hi…" I said. I wasn't sure exactly how to address her. She was even shorter and finer boned than I was or she would have been scary. She wore a mish-mash of strange clothing. An old, ratty green beach towel covered her head. I couldn't see her face at all.
"Do you have any change?" she asked.
"Uhh…" I doubtfully checked my jeans pockets. I found two ones and a couple coins. That was all the cash I had to my name. But I handed it over. Maybe it would go toward a new towel.
She stretched out a hand, encased in an elbow length yellow cleaning glove. I dropped the change into the rubber.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're…" a lot of interesting adjectives occurred to me, "welcome." I closed myself into the furthest stall. It occurred to me then that the main point of going to the rest room was to wash my face. Actually, it was to escape Gloria. Either way, I didn't really need the dirty, poetry inscribed stall. I sighed.
When I stepped out to wash my hands the panhandler was gone. I was alone and birdsong could be heard outside the small rectangular window set near the ceiling. I splashed my face and watched it drip in the mirror. I had long since given up wearing makeup in the heat. My skin had darkened just a shade, which was a big accomplishment for pasty little me. It made my hair and eyes seem that much lighter in comparison. I couldn't tell if the drive from New York to Kansas had tanned one side of me more than the other, but hoped the drive to Maine would even out any damage. My short hair stuck out in all directions, enjoying the humidity. All in all not bad for living in a car for four days.
"HEY! GET AWAY FROM MY TRUCK!"
I jumped so hard I thought I was going to have an out of body experience. My old ripped out sneakers couldn't get traction as I sprinted for the door. I came skidding out of the bathrooms to find Gloria staring impassively through thick sunglasses at the trucker bearing down on her like a grizzly.
"Okay, fine. It was an accident. I don't care about your stupid truck," she said with prim acidity.
"MY WIFE JUST LEFT ME, AND YOU THINK YOU CAN-" I didn't catch the rest of it. I was distracted by the flecks of spittle flying from his hairy lips.
"I don't know what you think I did."
"Hey sir," the tie-dye themed teenager called urgently from one of the picnic tables, yards away. All eyes flew to him. He seemed to regret calling attention to himself. "Are-are these your keys on our grill? I- I think they're burning."
For a split second I thought Gloria was going to get punched. I gave an ineffectual leap forward, but he had only growled and barreled towards the kid and the grill.
Gloria and I both dived for the Sonata. We flung open the doors and shot into the seats, Gloria knocking her luggage flying from the passenger seat. If the road hadn't been so gravelly I would have peeled out on the way back to the freeway.
We gasped the air rushing in through the windows like landed carp. The rest stop fell away behind us. At least, I imagined it did. It was difficult to see with Gloria's old towels stacked in the back seat. I could see an enormous blue metallic arc rise slowly from the horizon like a small sun. It spanned the freeway. A sign as wide as the road hung from it. Welcome to Ohio.
I thought of Gloria staring down the irate truck driver. I started to giggle. It was an angry, incredulous giggle, but it was a giggle. Gloria began to giggle too. Even the Sonata rumbled in fits for several long moments.
"Where are we going?" came a voice from behind me. I caught sight of a rubber glove in the back seat. I jerked the Sonata to the left at 75 miles an hour before I recovered.
"Ahhhhhh!"
"Cindy! Shut up!"
"I mean you no harm."
"Who are you?"
"I am-"
"Why are you in my car?"
"Oh, I told her we might have some food in the back seat."
"Gloria!"
"You do not." The Hawaiian floral print of the towel nodded when she talked. Yellow rubber gloves sat folded in a lap made of a crape skirt over an old pair of boy's overalls. Two left cowboy boots peeked out from under the ripped cuffs. Not an inch of skin was showing. I couldn't have even guessed at her race.
"Did you know she was there the whole time?" I demanded.
"Yeah," said Gloria in her lying voice.
"Oh my gosh! This is kidnapping! We just crossed state lines! We're going to prison for the rest of-"
"Cindy, shut up!"
"I am NTL," said the panhandler. "I am a space alien."
The Sonata had the floor for a few minutes.
"Do you, um, want me to take you back?" I asked.
"We can't," said Gloria, without looking up from her phone. "That guy will still be there."
"Well…we're headed east…" I offered. I didn't say for how long. I didn't want to offer her a ride all the way to Maine. The Sonata was taking on an interesting smell.
"We're going to Maine," announced Gloria.
"Maine sounds good," said NTL.
"I have to go to the bathroom," said Gloria.

I leaned up against the hood while Gloria strode into the gas station. I wanted to ask how she was feeling, make sure she was okay. But I couldn't. There was that small matter I wasn't supposed to know about. How was I supposed to take care of her?
NTL hopped out of the backseat. Her two left cowboy boots reminded me strongly of some little boys I used to babysit. She came around beside me and pulled something small and round out of the pocket on her chest.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It is an antenna topper. Gloria gave it to me." She tiptoed, reached up, and pushed it onto the tip of the Sonata's antenna with what must have been thin delicate fingers under the rubber. The ball looked like it might have been a skull, years ago. Now it was weathered and grey, like the trucker had been.
"Poor guy," I said.
"I think it looks like a spaceship," said N.   
Gloria came out of the gas station smelling like cigarettes, a package of Twinkies and a box of Ibuprofen in hand.
"Do you feel alright?" I asked her, eyeing the box.  
"Yeah. Why?" she asked.

At 10:30 I was standing in the square parking lot of a cheap motel. Gloria had rented a room with double twin beds and we had ordered pizza. N had contributed a familiar two dollars and forty two cents, pulled three pieces under her towel and wondered off into the night.
Gloria had called her mom. The air conditioning was heavenly, but I had dragged myself back out to the car. I need privacy, to call Sam.
"Hello?" he answered.
"Sam, you have got to tell Gloria that I know. What if she needs a doctor and doesn't want to tell me?
"She hasn't told you yet?"
"No, Sam." I ran a pizza scented hand down my face. "She's not going to. You know we're not close anymore. You know the things I've said about abortions."
"If…No, Risk. If she doesn't want you to know, maybe you can just pretend you don't know. It's only one more day's drive. If she feels sick you can take her to a hospital but if not, why should she know?"
"It doesn't feel honest anymore."
"Like Gloria cares about honesty."
I got off the phone and sighed. It was his neck on the line, for telling me in the first place. I opened the Sonata's passenger door and sat in the seat with my feet on the pavement, digesting the story that was Gloria.
N appeared under the light of a street lamp, poking around some dumpsters, and toting a dirty umbrella I hadn't seen before.
"Who were you talking to?" she said as she ambled up.
"That was Sam. My best friend since we were ten. Gloria's big brother."
"Are you and Gloria friends, then?"
I was quiet for a moment. I got that uncomfortable feeling I get when people are really listening to me. The question was even more uncomfortable. I thought for a moment. How do you describe? I held a bachelors is writing. I spent four years studying the art of weaving words together to capture the subtle nuances of human emotion.
"It's like… we used to be like sisters. Now, I'm still her brother's sister…I want to be- maybe she thinks I'm judging her … If I can't tell her I'm not judging her, how'll we-? It all just feels so yucky…"
I dropped my forehead against the dashboard in miserable defeat.
"That sounds complicated."
"What about you? Have you always…been an alien?"
"No. Well, yes. But I used to think I was a girl from Boston."
"I don't know, N." I ventured with a smile. "You feel pretty human to me."
"Well, maybe I am a sort of hybrid. There are a lot of those running around."
I slept on the floor and let N have the other bed.

The next morning was overcast. We pulled out at 7:00 AM. It was too early for rap or classic rock so we left the radio off. The apple on the dashboard was almost brown going on black now. I made a mental note to throw it out the first place that wouldn't consider it littering. I assumed Gloria was quiet because she was still mostly asleep. But as the day wore on toward twelve o clock I began to wonder if I wasn't in for the silent treatment again.
The Gloria I knew was not silent very often. There had been long afternoons that we had spent silent in the tree house, surrounded by leaves, the canopy above us dyed a patchwork of green by light and shadow. I was sixteen and wanted to build a tree house more than I wanted a car. Gloria was fourteen and was even more avid to work on it than I was. Sam, Ris, and Mark helped on it too, it was true, but Gloria and I clocked the most hours. Armed each with her father's hammer and with a giant M&M bag between us we hiked to the woods early in the mornings, forgot lunch, and stayed out until the evenings.
She would hold a nail between chubby fingers; her face passive in concentration as she made the forest ring with the slap of wooden board against living tree. At those times, blotches of light and shade danced across her like butterflies. Breezes tousled the tree tops and the one we were in would sway under us. We only needed our bare feet to hold on. We had great plans for that tree house. When she was quiet, I knew she was concentrating, designing.
What was she thinking right now? Aside from the fact that Sam hadn't liked her boyfriend, and I trusted Sam's judgment of character, I knew nothing about the circumstances around Gloria's abortion. It must have been hard. She was leaving everything and everyone behind her.  
"You want to go to a mall for lunch?" she asked without looking up from her cell phone.
"Yeah, okay," I said, caught off guard by the fact that she wanted to talk to me.
"N?" she asked.
"Yes."
"We'll have to do it fast though," I said. "I don't want to be driving all night."
"There's one just off the freeway in about half an hour," she said.
"Okay," I said again. There would be a food court. We could walk around some. She guided us off the interstate.
The mall was close enough to the interstate exit. But it was a gloomy Sunday in June and everyone else in a two state radius seemed to have gotten the same idea we had. We cruised around for ten minutes before it became undeniable that parking was an impossibility.
Gloria didn't say much. She slumped against her window, her wrist curled above her head, and looked like she was waiting for the rain.
"They have a shuttle to more parking," I said. "Why don't I let you and N off here and go off site to somewhere. I'll meet you back here in fifteen minutes or so. You can find a good place to eat, do some window shopping."
She didn't make eye contact. She just nodded and got out.
It took me longer than fifteen minutes just to find the off-site parking. By now the clouds were looking unfriendly. I brushed the Cheetos off my favorite hoodie and pulled it out from where it was wadded into the seat. I grabbed N's dirty umbrella, just in case, before I scurried to wait for the shuttle.
A man caught my eye as the shuttle rumbled up. He was looking out across the road, looking very lost in thought. I studied him as long as he wasn't looking. He was very cute. He hesitated a moment to let me step on before him.
"Thanks," I said and he smiled.
I sat towards the front. The seats of the shuttle were a fuzzy kind of fabric, a deep red with little black lines and triangles in a mind numbingly busy pattern. There was an odd dark stain on mine that I tried not to notice as I sat down. The whole place smelled faintly of alcohol and body odor, but the window in front of me was open just a crack. Fresh air streamed by me. It began to rain, and things started to smell like wet grass.
In reality, I didn't mind riding buses. Once I could reconcile myself to the time it was going to take, I enjoyed the fact that it was less work than driving. On a bus, no matter how many things in your life are going to pot, one of them is taking care of its self and all you have to do is sit there.
I laid the umbrella down beside me, careful not to infringe on the other seat, though no one sat beside me. I let my purse slip off my shoulder and fall into my lap. Sheltered from the rainy drafts the day was still warm. I climbed out of my hoodie and left it in folds around my waist. I cuddled backwards into it. Gloria was not here. N was not here. I was alone. I had built a safe little nest of me that no one and nothing was going to penetrate.
The bus sluggishly made its stops every two blocks. I didn't mind. I kept the guy that had gotten on behind me in the corner of my eye. He had sat towards the back. I wanted to see where he got off, maybe pass him a smile. The city passed by slowly out the window, new and wet and summer bright.
At one stop half the population of the shuttle seemed to get to its feet and wait in line to file out into a business park. A quick glance thrown over my shoulder revealed the man rising to his feet, hoisting the backpack onto his shoulder. I hoped he would glance back once he passed me. I would be ready.
But as people jostled past the umbrella on the edge of my seat someone reached over it and slipped a note into my lap. It was him! He pretended nothing had happened for a few steps, then looked back at me until he passed the folded doors and they hissed closed after him.
I beamed at him the whole time.
This was instant mutual attraction, just like in the movies. I was just passing through, so it would have absolutely no lasting consequences, just like in the movies. I had got a phone number! Yes!
As he stepped down and out of sight, I opened the little torn and folded message. I hoped he had remembered to put his name. I wouldn't know how to address him if I called.
The white leaf pulled open. In wobbly, bus-written letters it said:
I think you're really pretty.
The rest of the sheet was blank. There was no phone number. There was no name. The paper began to tremble in my hand. My safe little nest lay in cinders around me.
It didn't ask for a call. It didn't ask for a date. It didn't ask anything of me. He just wanted me to know that…
I looked out the window for him, shivering. The bus lurched forward, gasping out high pitched squeals. I'm not sure that in that moment I would have recognized him anyway.
I was remembering that night, the last night I had trusted Gloria. It had been the middle of summer, just before she moved. Even after the sun fell it was too hot to sleep well, but we all donned hoodies and sweatshirts, our summer-bare skin feeling vulnerable to the dew and mosquitos.
The bonfire was at my house. Gloria and Sam were there, Chris and Andrea, Mark and Ris with a few of their friends, most mutual. The white smoke smelled of s'mores and hotdogs. The radio in the house blasted Greenday's version of "Single Women" at us out the windows.  
Gloria couldn't spare a cordial word for me, or Mark, or Ris. She had new friends here to hang out with. "New" in the sense that they'd never hung out before and wouldn't after. I knew she didn't give, Andrea for example, the time of day at school. Tonight, though, they were all inseparable.
Years later Andrea declared she was lesbian. I was never very convinced, but maybe she was hoping to gain something by sticking to Gloria like hot, chewed gum, giggling and throwing knowing glances at me through the flames.
I remember their silhouettes, all I could see through the screen of fire-lit smoke that drifted away from the bonfire with every turn in the wind. I remember Gloria's short stout outline, and Andrea's slender one, both bulky with hoodies, in capris and flip flops, all rendered in greys, as they slipped away from the light to the little oak tree that stood thin, black and whispering above them.  
"Well, why don't you like them anymore?" I heard Andrea giggle. They weren't trying to be quite. That wasn't the point.
Gloria brought a stubby hand up to her face. Andrea bent a curly head down closer. I didn't hear anything after that.
I leaned back, turned my hotdog, and pretended I wasn't aware of them at all. What more could I do? I was almost eighteen. I count that as the day my childhood ended. It was the day I stopped trusting people.
The next stop happened to be the mall. I staggered out of the bus, pulling on my ratty hoodie, running my hand through my maybe-combed-today hair, and licking at my two day old lipstick job. The perplexing little slip of paper was clutched inside my hand.
Gloria wasn't there. I tried her cell phone. She didn't answer. I wandered toward the food court. She wasn't there either. I texted her and ordered some Chinese. I sat at one of the tables and ate alone. Gloria didn't answer or show up. It occurred to me to be worried, but I remembered her silence in the car. Whatever was going on she was doing on purpose. The hours ticked by.
I wandered the mall on foot. Every step I took air conditioned my feet. The soles of my sneakers weren't perfectly connected with the tops of them anymore. I considered going shoe shopping, but had the suspicion that after this trip, I probably wouldn't even be able to come up with the $25 minimum payment for my Old Navy card. I buried my fists in my empty pockets and I kept my eye out for Gloria, but it was a busy day, and a three story mall. She wasn't going to be found until she wanted it.
N, however, stuck out a little. I found her going through a large garbage receptacle in front of Sears.
"You're going to get kicked out of here," I told her as I came up from behind. She didn't stop searching through the garbage, but she did straighten up a little and start muttering softly over her shoulder. I stopped. It looked like she was having a conversation with someone invisible beside her.
"Um…N? Are you okay?"
"Oh! Hi Cindy," she said sheepishly, turning around. "I am fine. That is just what I do when I do not want people to talk to me."
"Do you know where Gloria's got to?"
"No. I thought you had left me here, actually."
"We've still got twelve hours to Maine. At this rate…"
"She is probably here somewhere. You should be patient with her. She had an abortion just a little while ago. I do not think she is at peace with it."
I stared at her. She stood nonchalantly, angular figure enveloped in clothing a three year old Neanderthal would have selected, one arm still in the dumpster.  
"You?" I didn't want to sound angry at her. I wasn't angry at N in particular. Just at everything in general. But I couldn't stop my voice rising and scratching at my throat. "She told you?"
"You knew."
"Of course I knew! Why do you think I left at the drop of a hat and drove halfway across the country?" I flapped my arms like an angry toddler, right there between Sears and some sort of pet store. If people paused to gawk I didn't notice. "I sure didn't do it for her company!"
"What's she got against me all of the sudden?" I had asked Sam, so many times after the bonfire. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No. She's just Gloria. You don't want to know."
I'm a woman, Sam, I wanted to say. When my little sister suddenly starts to hate me I need to know the reason. I didn't say anything more. I didn't want to sound desperate. I was desperate. But I didn't want to sound it.
I sat on a bench and listened to the ambience of the mall; so many footsteps and voices echoing off the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. I tapped my ripped out sneakers on the maroon floor tiles a few times. When I looked up, N was sitting beside me. I would have taken off if I were her.
"Sorry, N," I said.
"We should go find Gloria," she answered.
So N and I window shopped for about an hour. I called Sam and left a message telling him we weren't going to make it anytime soon. Gloria never called or texted back.
When we found her it was by accident. She was holding two or three shopping bags and staring vacantly into a window. I approached her, but hung back for a second.
I wanted to see what she was staring at. Inside the store, on the other side of the window, past the mannequins on display, there was a little boy. He was barely taller than his mother's kneecaps. He was squatting down precariously; intent on picking up bottle cap that was on the floor. The pudgy little fingers just didn't have the coordination to do it, but he kept trying.
Gloria was still, and quiet. Some sort of showmanship seemed to fall off her shoulders. She looked like a woman rather than a girl, real rather than larger than life. Calm, graceful even. Like somebody's mom.
I shuddered and glanced at the dirty grouting between the floor tiles. I had seen a dead woman; a woman Gloria would never be. She could become a mom someday. But there was a particular person's mom that she was never going to be.
"Oh," I heard Gloria say. She used such a tone of voice I knew it meant she had seen us.
We got four more hours of driving in before I called it a night. We gave the credit card to N and from the car we watched the hotel manager's face as she rented a room.
"You're mom really wanted you for lunch tomorrow Gloria. We can still make it if we leave around 4:00 AM tomorrow."
"Mmmm," she grunted in response. It was now or never.
"If you need to take some alone time, you can just tell me, okay?"
She glared at me in the dark. She knew what was coming.
"Sam told me." Gloria stared out the windshield.
I felt sick. I had always assumed Gloria actually did have a moral compass buried in there somewhere, and that it was wired more or less similar to mine. But maybe Sam was right, and I was mistaken on one account or the other. Maybe she didn't need anyone to understand. Maybe she was just embarrassed and I should have kept my giant mouth shut.
After the bonfire, I had known it was bad between Gloria and me, but I didn't imagine how bad. Even Gloria, I thought, couldn't let a sisterhood die like some sort of petty high-school feud.
"Let's take her something," proposed my mother, at the end of a Saturday shopping trip.
"Will that help? Won't I just look kind of desperate?" I asked, breaking my moody silence.
"It lets her know you were thinking of her."
Our exhaust filled their garage as our car idled. The ice cream slowly froze the inside of my fingers as I carefully rapped my knuckles on their door.
Gloria opened it. She saw me and yelled "Sam!" over her shoulder.
"We can't stay," I said, before she could turn her back and disappear. Sam appeared at her shoulder and pushed his way into the garage to wave at my mom in the car.
"We've got to get home, but we brought you these. We were thinking of you." I pushed the Blizzard into her hand. It was M&M, her favorite and mine. Sam laughed in delight as I handed him his Oreo. Laughing was his reaction to most things. It echoed beautifully around the cement garage.
Gloria didn't say a word. She was still blinking in the doorway as we pulled out, clutching the ice cream in both hands.
This is how I apologize when I don't know what I've done wrong, I thought. She had looked like she would accept.  
"Gloria," I said softly, letting my head lull on the head rest and my temple pulse painfully with fatigue. "You're my sister. I think of you as my sister. You know that." My voice cracked, but hopefully she just mistook it for the hoarseness of a whisper. "I wanted to be here in case it was hard. In case you needed someone."
I looked at her face. She was looking stonily out the windshield. In the dark I could only see her silhouette. A light grey line of light outlined huge lips, the baby doll cheekbones and an upturned nose.
I couldn't read her. Just like it always, always had been; I knew there were torrents of thought rushing around her head. And I had no way of guessing what they might be, or where I stood. I didn't even know if she had heard me.
I reached for the keys so I could park closer to the building, take her right to the door. As I reached, I heard her sniffle. I wasn't sure, at first, that my ears weren't deceiving me. But she looked away, her brows creasing in anger, and began to cry. For a moment she cried in angry, staccato gasps. Then she broke down into inconsolable sobs. Her posture crumpled, every joint and limb moved inwards, as if she were trying to block a blow. There she shook, silent except for the involuntary gasps and sighs that hissed into the dark.
I was hugging her before I stopped to ask myself if she wanted it or not. I had one knee on the armrest between the seats and I was ducking my head uncomfortably against the ceiling. I was always surprised by how hot her skin felt when she was upset. I felt hot tears and mascara run into the crook of my elbow.
This was what I had come for: in case Gloria, with all her fronts and fits, wouldn't be able to break down in front of Sam, would have to appear unabashed in front of her mom. In case I was the only person in the whole world she cared little enough about to let hold her while she mourned.
She cried for a long time. My muscles cramped and I felt awkward, but I didn't dare let go until she sat up again. I drew back. She wiped her face. I turned the keys and brought us up close to the building. Wordlessly she disappeared inside.
I hoped she knew how much I missed her.
When I locked the Sonata and came in N was asleep on the floor and Gloria was already in the shower. But I knew the air was clear now. I felt I could breathe better as I fell asleep.
She hadn't accepted it though, my ice cream apology. She and Sam were moving in two weeks and every time she said she would come over Sam showed up by himself. Every time she said I could come over she was gone when I got there.
One Friday I arrived on foot, wiping the sweat from my forehead, to find Sam raiding the fridge, House playing in the next room. We were supposed to walk into town.
"Gloria coming?" I asked, helping myself to some water.
"I don't think so. She's sleeping."
"You mean she's here?" She had explicitly told me she would come with us over the phone, so I assumed she wouldn't be home.
"I'm going to go get her," I said.
"I don't think she's coming. She told some friends to pick her up in a few minutes."
"She told me she was coming with us this morning." I took off toward the stairs. I didn't have to look back at Sam. I knew what look was on his face. The downcast eyes, the pulled mouth, the little sigh-nod that said: I wish you would just accept it. I was angry at him for it. At his mom too, for the way she had taken to sighing when I called and asked for Gloria. If my friendship wasn't worth dirt anymore one of them could at least tell me why.
I thundered up the steps. I reached Gloria's room. I was at least more important than a four o'clock cat nap. Her door was open so I peeked around it. She was out cold under her ancient Lion King blanket. I knocked on the door but she always slept like the dead.  
"Gloria!" I took a running leap. "Wake up!" I screamed, already in the air. I bounced her awake, laughing as I saw her eyes fly open in sleepy shock. It was something we would have done as kids, just the sort of reckless abandon that Gloria had mastered and used every day of her life.
I saw her surprise morph into horror and disgust as she woke up. I kept bouncing, laughing at the look on her face.
"Are you coming into town with us?" I gasped.
Gloria rolled out of the bed and left the room. I collapsed into a sitting position, snickering.
"Gloria! Your ride is here!" called Sam from downstairs. I think that was the last time I spoke to her for five years.
All three of us were shivering with sleep as we left the motel. It was as dark as it had been in the night, but it was cold now, the air was sharp and clear. The city lights seemed unnaturally bright as we passed them by and made our way to Interstate 90.
The freeway left the city and plunged into rural farm land, the areas beside the road became open and grassy. I could see the beginning of the Pennsylvanian forests.
I saw the reflective cluster of eyes that stood about human height, moving toward the road, but going 70 miles an hour, I didn't see them soon enough. They moved fluidly, rapidly. We were going too fast for me to hit the brake. I just gasped and took my foot off the gas, tried to steer straight.
There was a flurry of hooves and white tales all around us. Enormous tan bodies, tipped with graceful black noses seemed to fly around the Sonata, glowing supernaturally in the headlights. I felt the Sonata rock as it was hit at high speed. Then they were gone, before any of us even had the chance to scream.
Gloria screamed late. So did the Sonata. A high pitched rasping sound was coming from the engine. I pulled over and turned it off.
"Is there a dead deer?" asked N. "I do not want to see it. It will remind me of Roswell."
I got out. I couldn't help glancing around for the corpse of a deer first. You just don't want to be surprised by that sort of thing. There was no sign of one. It must have survived long enough to limp off the road at least.
I looked at the Sonata. There was a burst of pink showing on the horizon but there was no light yet. All I had were my headlights to see by. N got out of the back seat as I blindly opened the hood.
"Do you need help?"
"Do you know anything about cars?"
"I am a rocket scientist." I shaded my eyes against the headlights. There was a dent visible in the hood, like one had come down right on top of it. Maybe it had.
"Do you have a flashlight?" asked N.
"No," I said. "I meant to grab one when I left home and I just didn't."
N came around and opened the hood. It was black inside, made worse by the headlights beaming out from under it. I knocked on Gloria's window.
"We need your hand mirror," I said. Gloria got out and stood beside the hood. I took her hand mirror and backed up into the headlights, raising it above my head a little.
"Does this work at all, N?" I asked, reflecting a small patch of headlight back onto the engine.  
I hadn't grabbed my flashlight when I had left home because it was in the top drawer of my dresser. The top drawer of my dresser was almost impossible to open. It was wedged shut with little odds and ends like flashlights but mostly with papers: little mud stained booklets of songs from girls camp, pictures from when Sam and Gloria and I had our auras read all three at once by the machine in the arcade, yearbook photos, a picture of Sam's old dog, goofy notes we had scribbled to each other on napkins at Friendlies, a to-do-list we had made for one summer, a comic Gloria had drawn of me losing to her at checkers, twigs from trees we used to climb, speckled beads that Gloria and I had pretended were fairy seeing stones, smooth rocks from the creek bed where she and Sam had played fish baseball, bracelets we had made of colored thread and a broken plastic whistle Gloria had shop lifted for me. I wouldn't have been able to find the flashlight.
I thought of all that Gloria had given up; just so she could remain the same person she had been for a little longer. How was I any different?
Everything had to change. Sometimes, even people.
There was only one woman on this whole car trip unafraid to become something different than what she had been.
Her towel flapped in the predawn breeze. "Not really. Move it to the left," she called. "I think something just fell against a belt." I moved the mirror the best I could to throw light where she was looking. As she concentrated, the towel slipped off her head and fell around her shoulders like a shawl, revealing a dark, angular face and curly masses of dark hair.
Gravel crunched on the road behind us and we were bathed in even more headlights. A state trooper approached with his flashlight.
"Are you ladies okay?" he asked.
"We hit a deer," I explained. Gloria sat cross legged on the ground as he and N inspected my Sonata. I sat in the driver's seat and turned the key when they told me to. Dew was glittering in dazzling pearls from the red fiberglass skin of my car and bobbing on every blade of grass by the road when we were done. The Sonata purred. That is, she wheezed, but it was the same old wheeze as normal.
N and I shook the trooper's hand as he left.
"You're looking kind of human," I said as we watched him walk back to his cruiser.
"Well," she said. "Maybe I am more like an abductee then a hybrid…"
The black and white car pulled around us slowly, back onto the road. As it slowly picked up speed, a large rock "tinked" sharply against its back window. I turned to look at Gloria with wide "you-want-to-get-arrested?" eyes. She was picking up another rock. I stepped between her and the police car. It hit me on the back of my head. The police car didn't turn around.
I clutched the back of my head and got into the car. N did too. I was hoping Gloria wouldn't get to her door by the time I could get out of park but she hustled. She wasn't stupid. We drove in silence for a few moments.
"You know, Gloria," I said, "it's not your harassing truck drivers or kidnapping homeless people or throwing stuff at cops that I mind. I actually even kind of respect some of that, strangely. It's the fact that you don't care what happens to me when you do. Or N."
Another moment of silence passed.
"You don't have any response to that?" I asked, incredulity squeaking in my voice.
"We are not friends," she said.
I agreed with her. Before I remembered that more than anything I wanted to be sisters again, before I remembered all of the times we had spent as children, the simple truth of the short sentence struck me.
Gloria and I were not friends. We hadn't been friends for probably more than a decade.
"You're right." I whispered.
I exited the freeway. I came to a little town. The little town had a little hotel by the road. I parked and shut off the Sonata. I got out and unloaded the trunk onto the curb. I unloaded the backseat.
"What are you doing?" demanded Gloria, her bronze face flushing red. She flushed very red when she was angry.
"You said it yourself Gloria. We're not friends. You wouldn't say we were family, would you?"
"You're-  What?"
"I don't know what it is I'm doing here."
"You're taking me to Maine!"
"I don't think you even want to go Maine. Surely if you had really wanted to go you could have scared up someone you liked enough not to throw rocks at. I can't really be the only person in the world willing to drop everything for you."
"You can't just leave me here!"
"I can." The last of her stuff was on the curb. I rolled the rotten apple out into the gutter for good measure. Gloria was standing beside her things, staring down at me with narrowed green eyes. I had been through too much to be intimidated.
"I wish you the best, Gloria. I really do."
I got in the Sonata. It rumbled to life and I pulled away from the curb. Without the luggage it accelerated easily. The little space almost seemed roomy. I could actually see out the rearview mirror. It saw Gloria on the curb, fists clenched, shrinking slowly into the past.
N rolled down her window. "Live long, and prosper," she called back solemnly.  
"Moment of truth," I said. "Time to find out if that voice on the phone is still my best friend." I flicked through my contact list until I found the picture of the huge, drooling white dog.
"Hello?"
"Sam? I just left your sister on a curb in northern Pennsylvania." There was a moment of silence. My hand shook. Then Sam's laughter pealed over the phone.
"Hahaha! Oh, Risk, yuck! Hahaha!"
"You're not mad?"
"No! I would have done that days ago! Hey, Mom and Dad don't want to see me. Long as Gloria's going to be late, want to meet up in Philly?"
"What about you, N?" I asked as I hung up. "Are we friends?"
"Are you going to leave me on a curb if I say no?"
"No. You get a free pass to Philadelphia for being another of Gloria's abductees."
"In that case," she clamored over the arm rest into the passenger seat, "yes. We are friends."
"Are you still an alien?"
"Well, maybe I'm more like a girl who just went through a really bad break up."