Right now the number one thing Jodie doesn't want to think about is her brother Cody, especially when Sick Boy is involved. Jodie knows a little too much about hurt, and not enough about what counts. She blames Salton City for this, and her mother’s decision to bring them here in the first place.

Today her mother has to drive to Yuma since that's where Cody, Sick Boy, and two others were arrested yesterday. The Arizona police say one of the boys in Cody's Camaro shot an old Mexican guy sitting on the front step of his mobile. For no reason. The bullet passed through his neck and he's in critical condition down at the emergency ward. The details were unclear, but the officer Jodie’s mother spoke to said Cody was definitely involved. Eye-witnesses. Fingerprints. Proof. Jodie worries it will destroy Cody one way or another. This is what it has come to, Jodie thinks. Jodie wonders if this will bend her mother out of shape for weeks or months or years, or if she'll balance out like she normally does, or if in the end this will send her off the deep end.

Jodie isn't surprised by Cody's trouble with the law. Cody's only two years older than Jodie, and that put Jodie in the range of gossip. Borrego High has a population of four hundred students, and most of them have gone to school together all of their lives. All the skinheads and Mexicans go to class together every day, like it or not. It’s during the off hours when things happen, when trouble hustles from Borrego to Salton City.

Jodie's mother is standing in the kitchen, pouring coffee and scrambling eggs before she has to leave. She dumps powdered creamer into her coffee, mixing it with the Sweet n' Low. She sips from the mug with hesitation.

"This is the worst thing Cody's ever done," she says. "Bar none. In fact, this might be the worst thing anybody's ever done to me. Including your father. At least he didn't physically hurt anybody. That I know of."

Jodie wants to defend Cody, say that she knows Cody couldn't do something so terrible, that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But she's not so sure. Instead she nods and finishes her bowl of Crispix, and thinks about what to say in response. She wants to be careful not to say the wrong thing.

"Do you want me to come with you for company?"

Her mother doesn't turn around, and Jodie knows she's thinking about how the experience might affect her. Jodie knows her mother is considering whether she is old enough to handle the trip, if it's such a good idea.

"Yeah. I'd like that," her mother says. Jodie watches her mother turn around and smile thinly. "Thanks, Honey."

Her mother takes another sip of her coffee, flips the eggs on a plate, and turns the burner off. She splashes the eggs with Tabasco sauce, dashes pepper on top.

Driving east from San Diego there's Cuyumaca, the mountain park where Jodie and her mother went canoeing once. It's cool and green and different from the surrounding desert. She remembers how the prairie grass whipped in the mountain air. Then there's Borrego Springs where the retired folks live, and where Jodie's mother met Lucy Webb. And there's Jodie's mobile home on the edge of the Salton Sea, about two and a half hours from San Diego, in the middle of a stinking nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. Most people Jodie knows just don't want to be out there when its 115 in the summer. The desert is all around Jodie and her family is the desert, even if some farmers use vast irrigation systems to raise palm trees to sell to landscaping companies in L.A., San Diego, and Palm Springs. The Salton Sea itself is what Jodie thinks about the most. She thinks about the smell of brackish hot water, how the sea smells old, like a murky bathtub that sat around for millions of years. Sometimes Jodie likes the sea, but she doesn't like the way people handle it. The spots where the lake water runs off into drainage ditches are the worst. Jodie watches her neighbors throw their trash in it, and at times she can smell sewage brewing in the heat.

Jodie's mother chose to come to this place ten years ago because she heard Salton was going to turn into a new desert oasis, a new Palm Springs. When the family first arrived in Salton City it still had a tourist draw coming from Tucson, L.A., and Yuma, and the wharf actually rented boats and people camped by the water for the novelty of it, smell or no smell. But the tourism industry dried up over ten years ago. Now the chain link fences encircling the homes are decorated with razor wire and Beware of Dog Signs. Many of the mobile homes are abandoned and gutted, windows gashed and rusted-out cars on the white gravel baking in the sun and briny air.

Sometimes Jodie will catch her mother almost apologizing for being in Salton, but most of the time her mother sticks to her guns. She says the reason they moved out here is for the natural beauty and that she can’t see how anybody couldn't like the Salton Sea or the desert around it. "People need to learn how to appreciate barrenness," she says. "It clears out your mind." Jodie thinks appreciating is one thing, living in the desert is another story altogether.

Jodie's mother wanted to retire out there. Since she had Cody at thirty-six, and Jodie at thirty-eight, by the time she was forty three she'd had enough of the East Coast. She hated the cold for starters. And Jodie remembers her grandparents driving her mother up the wall. Back east Jodie's mother worked as a chiropractic massage therapist, and she still does on an hourly basis. Jodie's mother says she likes making people feel better. But now she mostly teaches belly dancing and ballroom dancing in Yuma. She tells Jodie it's worth the drive, and that she likes looking out over the desert as the road scrolls by. This is what she came out here for after all.

Most days Jodie can't help thinking about what their lives would be like if they were back east. She can barely remember New Jersey, but when her mother shows her pictures of her yard and house, and her father, she does feel as if she lived there once. Sometimes Jodie wonders if she misses the green and the rain, but usually she says she likes it better out in the desert. Jodie thinks of herself as an optimist.

When she's not working, Jodie’s mother likes to hang out by the sea and tan. Jodie heard some neighbors say that her mother's skin looks like leather with rhino folds. Jodie doesn't notice that as much as the dark spots on her mother's face, the way her hair always seems sweaty. She tells her mother to watch the sun, but she always blinks her crystal blue eyes at Jodie and says, "I can't help it." That’s one of Jodie’s mother’s catchphrases. "I can't help it."

Overall, it's not the drugs, or the crime, or the filthy state of the town that drags Jodie down, it's family stuff: it's Cody's problems; that her mother hasn't found love, that they all seem to lounge around wasting their brains too much; television overkill. Jodie isn't sure that her mother wants a man in her life, but if she were her mother she would. There have been a few boyfriends, of course, but nothing permanent or lasting. Alex used to come around. He was a Christian motorcyclist who lived down the street. He had a "Riding for the Son" sticker on his helmet, and he almost always dressed in sky blue denim shirts. He was friendly and to Jodie he didn't look like a typical hairy motorcyclist; instead he had sandy blonde hair and a thin mustache. He would play cards with Cody and Jodie and bring heavy metal songs about Jesus to play on the CD player. He liked to munch on microwave popcorn while they all listened to the "rock spirituals," as he called them. Jodie's mother liked him enough except for the fact that he was on the road too much. "Salton is just a place for me, not the only place," Alex would say. Once Jodie heard them arguing about who Alex loved more, Jesus or her. Alex said that was an unfair question.

Then there was Carlos, a Mexican guy who lived out in Borrego. Jodie's mother met him from a massage gig, and they hit it off right away, even if Carlos had a bad back. Jodie thought Carlos was more open than Alex, but the thing she didn't like about him is that he always wanted her mother to drive out to Borrego. This meant Jodie saw less of her mother during that time. So did Cody. Jodie liked that Carlos asked her and Cody questions, and that he brought candy and games, and that he would dance with her around the living room and watch movies with Cody. Carlos had brothers living out of their pickup truck in Chula Vista, and her mother said they got arrested on some charge or another and that Carlos had to bail them out. "He just has family problems," she said. "It can be overwhelming."

As for Jodie, her mother tried to set her up with the sons of her dancing students, even though Jodie thought her mother meddled too much. She went out with one of them once, this guy named Ritchie. She thought he was friendly at first, until he cornered her in her room and made her let him touch her breasts and French kiss. For Jodie there has to be more to a guy than that. She's happiest alone anyway. For Jodie the best part about living out in Salton City is driving west to Borrego. She agrees with her mom about that. Sometimes her mother will stop the car, pull off the side of the road. Jodie loves how in this part of California the desert is brown and yellow and lifeless, no vegetation or life at all. Jodie likes the silence. If it's not too hot, sometimes they just sit on the hood of the car and stare out over the canyons towards the mountains, listening to themselves breathe. It's the only sound.

Jodie has been worried about her brother for years. For Jodie, it all started with school. Cody would get in trouble all of the time, especially during lunch. He got into fights about once a week, and when he wasn't getting into fights he was cussing teachers out and getting sent to the principal's office. One year Cody was suspended ten times. Her mother would get pissed for a few days, and then blow it off. She would say Cody was just going through a phase, that he was trying to adjust.

Cody is not very good at keeping his mouth shut. Jodie's mother says he’s got a "high sense of justice," that he feels he always has to be right. Jodie just thinks he can't help himself sometimes, and that he's just stubborn as hell. Sometimes Jodie wonders if Cody might remember too much from back east, or if Cody was scarred by their parents arguing at night, by things falling apart. They both still talk to their father, but only once a year on Christmas Eve. Some years he'll call for birthdays.

When Cody first met Sick Boy Jodie knew it was trouble. Sick Boy dropped out of school when he turned sixteen, and began selling pot and ecstasy around Salton City. This is how he met Kyle, and Tommy, and some of the other skinheads. Then Sick Boy got a swastika tattoo on his left wrist and his name tattooed on his stomach. His real name was Darl, but he heard the name Sick Boy once, and it stuck. He shaved his head and left his mother and her sister to fend for themselves. Jodie started seeing Sick Boy with the skinheads all the time, and started hearing about their trips out at night to shoot dogs with BB guns and throw rocks at the Mexican kids from a car, and shout "dirty spic" at the adults. Cody said that almost every day Sick Boy would smoke dope and drink a pint of vodka.

Then Sick Boy started showing an interest in Cody. He would come around the Sherlin house and snap his red suspenders and tip his bowler hat and ask Jodie if she wanted to come along for a ride. Jodie always shook her head and said that she would be afraid to find out what would happen, and Sick Boy would smirk and say "that's right, that's damn right." Sometimes Jodie would tell him that she didn't have anything against blacks or Mexicans, and he'd smile and say that normally he'd call someone like her a "nigger lover," or a "spic fucker," but that he knew what she really thought deep down inside and it didn't matter what she said. "I know you, your type," he said. Then he'd grin so Jodie could see his obscene, pink gums. Then he'd lick his lips.

Jodie told her mother about him, but her mom said that she didn't know what to do about Cody, and that she felt helpless. As far as Cody was concerned, Jodie's mom said she didn't have a clue. Jodie told her that Cody was turning into a skinhead. Her mother sighed and said at least he had a group of friends. She said those boys didn't really mean anybody harm, that it was just a cover. A pose.

Cody started walking around Salton City wearing boxers and a t-shirt with a sprawling cryptic symbol emblazoned on it. Before Sick Boy entered into the picture Cody would stay up at night talking to Jodie outside of the mobile, or smoke a cigarette with her when their mother wasn't around, or walk down to the sea to hear the water lap against the crusty salt buildup. Sometimes he'd help her pick up garbage around town. But once he joined Sick Boy's gang all that stopped. He started calling Jodie "faggot-girl" regularly, and he skipped school three or four days a week, and then finally dropped out. Then one day he came back with a swastika tattoo on his neck, one even bigger than Sick Boy's.

"What would you do if you were in my shoes?"

"I'm not sure," Jodie says. This is a good question, Jodie thinks. She hasn’t thought about mothering, and she’s not sure if she would make a good mother anyway. Her mother is driving eighty-five down Route Eight. An eighteen-wheeler shimmers on the horizon.

"Maybe this will scare him. What do you think?"

Jodie says she thinks that it just might, that she hopes so. She thinks Cody is in need of some outside force exerting pressure upon him. Jodie looks out the window. She likes watching the desert subtly change tones—from tannish brown to yellowish brown. Insects splat against the windshield and her mother presses the wiper fluid lever and smears them downward. Jodie wonders what it would feel like to be an insect reduced to a stain.

"All I know is that Mexican man better not die," her mother says. "For Cody's sake. Can you imagine your brother in prison for twenty years?"

Sadly, Jodie can. She's seen the worst of her brother and now she knows he's left himself at the mercy of others. Jodie shakes her head and flips the radio on to static, and hits scan to catch any kind of distraction. She wants to help her mother, but without losing her own balance along the way. That's the difficult part, she thinks.

Her mother says she never imagined her life would turn out this way, that her ex-husband threw her one big curveball. This is the way it works, she supposes.

"Do you ever miss our old life?" she asks Jodie.

"Yes," Jodie says. "Sometimes. I guess."

"Do you think we have a happy family?"

"I'm not sure I'd call it happy," Jodie says. "It's not bad, though."

"Do you think it's possible to be content?"

Jodie shrugs, and looks at her hands.

"What am I doing wrong?"

"Cody is Cody. There's only so much you can do," Jodie says. "It'll all turn out."

Her mother flutters her eyelids, swipes the wipers over the dry windshield. Her thumb twitches on the steering wheel.

When they arrive at the Yuma detention center at the edge of town, Jodie's mother asks Jodie to stay in the car. Since it's March, it's only eighty-five degrees. Jodie can roll down the windows, and watch cars pull in and out of the parking lot. Jodie appreciates the break. Plus, the more she can shield herself from an absolute picture of her brother, the better. Jodie thinks about what the desert will look like in a month, how the blooms will create a new landscape.

Half an hour later Jodie's mother leads Cody back to the car, smacking him on the head, shouting. Jodie has never seen her so angry—even when her father left. Her fury then was at a steady simmer without truly boiling, and her father wasn't around that much anyway. Jodie's mother opens the door and Cody slumps in the backseat, his arms fisted together in a cross. He tugs at his belt buckle.

"Put your seatbelt on," Jodie’s mother says.

"Shut up." Cody scowls. "Bitch."

Jodie's mother slaps him in the face and screams that he's paying for his own bail, that he's getting a job and paying for the removal of the swastika. That's first. And no more Sick Boy—he’s out of the picture. All those bastards are.

"And you will start treating me with the respect I deserve. You little shit. You pray that poor man lives. If he dies I hope you rot in hell. You ungrateful little shit. You little shit."

For just a moment Jodie watches Cody's face slowly shift from a scowl to an undisguised look of surprise. Jodie's never heard her mother blow up like this, and she can't imagine Cody has either. But then Cody hardens his face into his skinhead mask.

"Things are going to change, Cody. That's for sure."

Aside from the sound of wind whistling through Jodie's cracked window, they ride home in silence. As they drive north on 86 Jodie watches the evaporation of Salton Sea rise and consume them in the mist. They drive right into it.

A month later and Jodie's mother has helped Cody get a job at Borrego Steak House washing dishes. Jodie overheard her tell the manager that she would be held personally responsible for his performance. Her mother also convinced Mr. Barth to give Jodie a job, even though she’s below the minimum age requirement.

"She'll help keep the other one in line."

So throughout the spring Jodie and Cody get a ride with Sick Boy's aunt Marilyn, who waits tables at the same restaurant. The first thing she says to Cody is he looks so much better without that garbage adorning his neck.

"With Adam up in Montana now, at least until the trial, things have calmed down for the best. It's good for you he left too. Should've happened a long time before. That kid is a bad seed."

Cody nods. Jodie is beginning to see positive changes in her brother. For starters, he seems to scowl less. Maybe her mother is right—a scare did him right.

During the first ride to the restaurant Marilyn talked on and on about her collection of antique soda cans and bottles. She talked about William Painter and the crown-cork bottle seal, about the first mass-produced ABM bottles, about the bob-top Hutchinson bottles, and the cone tops, about her Cliquot Club Ginger Ale can—her most valuable possession—about her 1908 Orange Crush, her 40's Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer and Grapette, her can of 7-up from 1937, her unopened 1935 RC—mint condition. Marilyn weighs over three hundred pounds; Jodie wishes she would get a new hobby. But Marilyn also tells stories about her patients when she was a nurse up in Portland, and this keeps Jodie's mind off her brother for a while. She says that one time a college student was admitted for swallowing a small sponge on a dare. Another time, two identical twins decided to attach themselves together for Halloween with super glue. Even Cody smiles at this story.

Jodie asks Marilyn why she and her sister came out to Salton City in the first place, and Marilyn tells her that her sister had a man here a few years back and when that ended they wanted to establish roots somewhere, so they just decided to stay put. Marilyn says that Lydia hasn't really found herself since, and that she sleeps all day and night. But Jodie already knew this.

"This was part of the problem with Adam, I guess."

When Mr. Barth puts them to work, Cody washes the plates and glasses and silverware and hands them to Jodie who dries them and stacks them on a table next to her. Jodie notices Cody wipe his brow a few times, but he doesn't complain. Jodie doesn't think the work is exciting, but to keep her mind occupied, she imagines what her life would be like if she lived with her father. She knows it must be normal to think about her father in this way, and it comforts her.

The most difficult parts of the job are the heat, the steam. At one point Mr. Barth gives her an extra towel for mopping her face and arms. To Jodie, he seems to be a considerate man, and the busboys that run the dishes back to Cody and the other two dishwashers are friendly. A few of the waiters tell Jodie to hurry up, but she just shrugs and does her best. She figures they are under the most pressure.

When Marilyn drives them back home Cody dozes with his head resting against the window, and Jodie peers out through the darkness. She wonders what might be looking back through the darkness at her.

One evening after dinner Jodie and Cody walk two blocks down to the sea and then along the edge of it to the pier. Jodie feels as if she can finally ask him if he shot the guy. Cody shakes his head and says it was all Sick Boy.

"That guy is crazy, and he made me crazy, too. He just put a hex on me or something," Cody says. He lifts his head and looks at the stars, rubbing his ears, and sighs. "I don't know why."

"I know, you got weird," Jodie says. Cody kicks a yellowing milk carton.

"Sick Boy got the gun and surprised us all. We were just going to do the usual, but then he said he just wanted to teach the Mexicans a different kind of lesson. That's when he shot the guy. We only got about ten miles before the cops pulled us over. Nobody wanted to do it except for him."

Jodie asks why he liked Sick Boy in the first place, and Cody says he's not sure. The only thing he does know is that Sick Boy's father ran off with a woman who they think was a Mexican. Sick Boy changed after that, Cody says. He took everything personally.

"It's the way things happen," Cody says.

For the Fourth of July their mother takes Jodie and Cody to San Diego for the fireworks display. They go out for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Gas Lamp District and eat ice cream cones and walk around. When it gets dark they find a place by the water and watch the explosions in the sky and in the reflection on San Diego Bay. Jodie sits between Cody and her mother, and Cody tells her that he’s done with the skinhead life. Jodie tells him he looks better with hair anyway.

"I just don't see the point in these people anymore. It was just something to do for awhile I guess," Cody says. Then he lies back and watches the colors.

Jodie's mother tells her that she’s almost glad that it happened, that she was jolted out of her slumber.

"It's made me a better mother," she says. "Maybe I stopped wanting to be responsible for a while. Who knows?"

"I'm not promising anything though," Cody says.

"Sure," Jodie says. Jodie wonders where Cody will be at this time next year. Even if the Mexican man lives and Sick Boy confesses, Cody could still get jail time. She can't help worrying.

Jodie tells her mother she's doing fine, and her mother points at a green and blue and orange explosion over the bay. Her mother nods her head and says for one moment she actually believes her. Not that it will last.

"Look at that," she says.

Jodie nods, closes her eyes, and lies back on the blanket next to her brother, where she can hear his breath, where she can feel the ground beneath her.