Ceremony of Flies by Kate Jonez

thin as the black rider. He looks starved to the point that he resembles a purse with bones. He doesn’t look like a living thing. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I fed him even once…except the ice cream. I am going to cry. I am crying. It doesn’t matter now. The white rider wears a vest with a blood red X painted or stitched on his chest. His arms, pocked and mangled by scars, carry Harvey gently like he’s broken, like I broke him. Flies swarm around them. Around us all. I can’t describe the color of the rider who hoists me onto his bike. I can’t pin down the name of it. It’s watery like champagne, not green, not gray. It’s pale. That’s not a color.
    I ride on the bike of an indescribable color. It feels like riding a horse. I know it isn’t, but the bumps feel like gallops. I think I may have faded in and out for a while as I cling to the rider. Time moves fast, slow, fast again.
    They saved us—are saving us—as much as that’s still possible. I trust them. I have no other choice. I can see the limp bodies of Baldy and Harvey and Rex draped over the other riders. I wonder where they are taking us. I wonder about this for as long as I can.

 
     
     
    The Salton Sea
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Located directly on the San Andreas Fault in California’s Coachella Valley, the Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheicEndorheic basin. Created in 1905 when a flood overwhelmed the California Development Company’s efforts to divert the Colorado River, the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California. Although it varies depending on rainfall and runoff, the sea is approximately 525 square miles. The salinity of the lake, at 44 grams per liter, is greater than the Pacific Ocean. Because it has no outlet, salinity increases 1 percent per year.
    In the 1950s, the resort towns of Salton City, Desert Shores and Bombay Beach enjoyed an influx of visitors. In less than a decade, fertilizer runoff and increasing salinity produced ideal conditions for algae bloom. The elevated bacterial levels caused by the bloom resulted in perennial fish and wildlife die-off. The combination of summer temperatures that often reach 120 degrees, foul smells of algae die-off detectable for hundreds of miles, and a series of floods that destroyed most of the tourist attractions encouraged people to find other recreational waters. The towns on the shore of the Salton Sea became and remain ghost towns.

 
     
     
    13
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Once I tried to cook a whole fish in foil on the grill. The fish was expensive. I went to a fish market to buy it. The guy behind the counter wrapped it in white waxy paper. I bought all sorts of special herbs and a whole case of champagne. I stole a credit card. It was the first time I ever did. I wanted to make a special celebration dinner for Joey’s birthday because he was having a really bad go of things. At the time, I’m pretty sure I convinced myself I was planning a party. I was going to call up everyone we went to school with and invite them over. But honestly I think I knew all along it was only ever going to be just us two. There was no way we could ever go back there. Not after what Joey did. Our friends were dead to us. That old life was gone for good. In retrospect, buying the case of champagne was probably where I made my first mistake. The second was drinking it with an Oxy chaser. I can’t reliably recount what happened that weekend. But the next day that I can remember was after Joey was gone. That day I lifted the cover on the grill. The fish I bought for us looked up at me with milky maggot-filled eyes.
    I smell that very same smell now. I’m afraid to open my eyes because I have no idea where I could possibly be and the smell is not a good sign. My head is resting on someone’s chest. If I had to guess, I would say I’m lying on Rex’s chest. I want to hold on as tight as I can because I know him. If I think too much about it, I’m going to come to the