I settle into the new couch, which is quite upscale.
“Who’s Sally again?”
She pulls her unnaturally bronze hair off her face and glances around. She finds a ponytail holder and shoves her hair through it. “Sally’s a neighbor. Has a kid.”
“A boy?”
Mom shakes her head. “Teen daughter—a real handful.”
Anyone who is deemed “a real handful” by Pearletta Vee Lilly must be pretty far gone. I brush my overgrown, sweaty bangs out of my eyes, wishing Mom had more powerful air conditioning. The heat only adds to my irritation at the world in general for letting kids run wild. “Well, the person who has that little blond boy needs to keep better tabs on him. I nearly ran into him out there!”
“He lives with his grandma. It’s sad—his momma left him for drugs. Sally thinks her girl’s on them, too.”
I actually don’t want to know that drugs are still running rampant in this park. I don’t want to know they’ve claimed more young victims, like the teen addicts my mom used to deal her prescription meds to. But at least Mom is finally talking like drugs are the enemy, so apparently her prison time wasn’t in vain.
“I hate to hear that,” I say.
Mom lumbers over to the kitchen. “I need to get something to eat before we go. The realtor, Samuel, will be coming to pick us up.”
From her emphasis on his name, I figure she finds the man attractive. My mom finds most men attractive.
She’s just whipped up a peanut-butter sandwich when her front door begins to shake with a frantic knocking.
“I’ll get it,” I say, hoping the little boy hasn’t gotten run over. I stride over in two steps and throw the door open. “Yes?”
The man in front of me is in his forties and somewhat handsome. But his eyes dart past me, scanning the living room for something.
His words are punctuated with urgency. “You have to help. You have to call the police. Outside your trailer. There’s a dead boy.”
End of Sample
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Trial by Twelve Page 19
