Southern Girl

by Lukas,Renee J.

  Stephanie didn’t say anything.

  “My mom found your notes in my drawer,” Jess explained. “It was bad.” She rubbed her own arms, needing something to do with her hands.

  “Oh God, no.” Stephanie was suspended in disbelief.

  “I lost Alex, I lost you, I lost my place on the team, and I have to go away.” Jess’s odd smile dissolved. “There’s no way out.”

  Stephanie put her arm around her. “You’ll never lose me.”

  “I don’t know why.” Jess backed away. “I can’t even get why you’d wanna be talkin’ to me now. There’s a big price on your head too. I’m scared to death for you.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” Stephanie was strangely calm. Was she playing the tough role that she was so accustomed to? Jess couldn’t tell.

  “I wish I could fix this,” Jess said. “But I can’t. Anything I do will only make it worse for you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Jess gazed into her eyes. “I know. But I am sorry for what I’ve put you through and for what else may happen.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  In the bus line, someone tapped Jess’s shoulder. For a split second, she thought of Alex, how he used to do that. When she turned, it was Chip Wallace, Cobb’s younger brother, who was a senior. She sometimes had played basketball with him in the summer many years ago. The boy had been replaced with a nice-looking young man who was now obviously shaving, but she still recognized his face.

  Chip handed her an envelope. It was addressed to the Wallace house with Jess’s name on it. The name on the return address read: “Ian Adler.” The same initials as her sister’s. The address was in Valdosta, Georgia. The handwriting on the envelope wasn’t Ivy’s, but something blockier, less refined. It had to have been from her.

  “Did you tell anyone?” Jess asked.

  “No,” Chip said. “My parents wanted me to give it to you, and they weren’t gonna tell…anyone.” He gave her a knowing nod and went toward his bus.

  “Thanks!” she called after him. Apparently, the Wallaces didn’t trust her father either. Though he’d called them, they said they didn’t know where the couple had gone. Maybe they lied to protect them. For Jess, it was like finding out that one of your parents was the evil villain in a scary movie while she’d been the innocent girl being herded toward the shed with the chainsaws inside…

  She couldn’t blame herself for her naiveté. After all, her father was the same man who had taught her how to put a piece of bread on the end of a fishing pole the summer she accidentally caught a turtle. Of course they threw it back immediately and never fished in that lake again. But her memories of him were not all bad.

  She made her way in the line of cattle, or students, to get to her bus. Once she was settled in her seat near the back, she opened the letter. It was clearly from Ivy, in her handwriting, though she’d tried to disguise it in case their father had gotten his hands on it.

  She wrote: “Hi, Jess. I don’t want you to worry. Cobb has found us a really cute place on a lake. Well, near a lake. It’s about two miles from a lake, but I know it’s there and that’s all that matters. I’m going to have a baby in the spring. Cobb will make a great dad. He’s already working two jobs to support us.”

  Jess was concerned at that line. Did this mean her veterinary dream had died?

  “Please tell Mom and Daddy that I’m all right. I’m not ready to talk to them yet. I know Daddy talked to Cobb’s dad. Mr. Wallace knows where we are, but he’s promised not to tell them. Please don’t tell them how you know, either. And if I were you, I’d keep your secret from them. There’s no telling what they’d do.”

  It was too late for that admonition.

  “I’ll be in touch.—Love, Ivy.”

  Jess didn’t want to be in such a position. How could she tell their parents that Ivy was all right and not tell them how she knew? Hadn’t Ivy met their parents before? How did she not think that Jess would be interrogated mercilessly?

  “She’s okay,” Jess said simply at dinner.

  Her parents let go of their silverware.

  “Where is she?” her father asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how do you know she’s all right?” Her mother was beside herself.

  Jess gritted her teeth. “One of the Wallace boys, can’t remember which one,” she lied, “said he’d heard from her and that she wanted him to tell me she was okay and she’d be in touch.”

  “Was it Chip?” Danny asked. “I got art with him. I could find out.”

  Jess tried to silently communicate with him, a subtle hand gesture to back off, but her brother wasn’t very good at taking hints. He’d never won a game of charades in his life.

  “So that’s it, then,” her mother said. “She’ll be in touch.” There was more than a hint of anger in her voice.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” her dad said quietly before taking another forkful of pork and beans.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Fa la la. What has to go so terribly wrong that a person starts to hate Christmas carols? But Jess did, with all their cheerful bounciness. They gave her a sudden urge to shoot someone whenever they came on the radio.

  Christmas was, of course, the centerpiece of church activities in the weeks that followed—but far from a welcomed event in the Aimes household. A tree adorned with lights, wrapped presents and a fire crackling in the living room fireplace couldn’t change the fact that one person was missing.

  Throughout Christmas break, Stephanie and her mother were absent from church. This worried Jess, but she didn’t dare inquire. That would have hurt her credibility with her parents and the whole “it’s over” argument. So many times she wished she could have picked up the phone. When her parents weren’t at home, she’d look at it and think about making a call. Then paranoia took hold, and she imagined them finding Stephanie’s number on their next phone bill and having to explain that. No. She’d have to wait until school resumed if she was going to make sure Stephanie was okay.

  The Christmas church service was the worst. Her dad exclaimed about the wonder of Jesus from the pulpit. He gestured to the manger set up behind him, talked about the miracle of this birth, which Jess couldn’t help but think was also an unplanned pregnancy, sort of. The hypocrisy of her father—about which births were acceptable and which were not—was too much to swallow. Sometimes she felt physically sick, as though she would actually throw up even though she hadn’t had any dairy foods. The disgust, the contempt she felt actually made her nauseous. Making a deal with her father felt a lot like making deal with the devil, and it was taking its toll on her. The next thing that made Jess want to hurl was the overly sweet smell of Abilene Thornbush’s perfume. She was still sitting in the pew behind them, so the smell crept up on Jess, encircling her and grabbing her by the throat. Then Jess would hear the tinkling of her bracelets and heavy gold earrings, sometimes louder than the Christmas carols. All of it crowded her senses, her mind, and she wouldn’t feel like she could breathe until the last hymn was sung.

  * * *

  The first snow of the season fell that morning outside Jess’s window. As soon as she woke up, the white window light beckoned her to take a look. The familiar valley was dusted in white as more flakes blew sideways, promising to blanket the entire landscape very soon.

  Christmas break had trudged on, time dragging as heavily as her boots in the snow when she was a child. Her mother would bundle her in what felt like a straitjacket with a scarf that kept falling down, and she’d expect her to play like that.

  She fell upon the bed, exhausted before the day had begun. Now under nearly twenty-four-hour surveillance at home, she couldn’t see or speak with Stephanie under any circumstances. Jess was fearful that her father had said something to Ms. Greer, putting Stephanie in jeopardy. Like the loose rocks at the river, there was no solid footing; the ground was continuously shifting under her feet, and she didn’t know from day to day how much more
her life was going to be turned upside down.

  She closed her eyes and saw her, always there, reminding her that life could be beautiful, that they weren’t wrong together. She rose from the bed, still crazy with longing, wanting so much to touch her again…

  Getting an idea, Jess grabbed her notebook, wrote a message on one of the pages and ripped it out. Then she quickly slid on her jeans, threw on the nearest sweatshirt and grabbed her heavy coat. She couldn’t go into Ivy’s room, where she’d have the best view, because her parents had kept her door locked. It was as if they were pretending that room didn’t belong to anyone. It bothered her. She’d have to carry out her plan blindly, hoping that she could figure out what to do once she got outside.

  Her mother met her on the stairs, where Jess, in her haste, almost knocked her down.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “I’m making breakfast.”

  “I’ll be back,” Jess said.

  “Where are you going?” her father called from downstairs.

  “I was just gonna take a walk in the snow.” She shrugged. What kind of trouble did they expect her to get in?

  She made it as far as the front door leading out to the porch. As soon as she pulled it open…

  “You don’t like the cold,” her dad commented, not looking up from his newspaper.

  “Maybe I need it,” Jess answered through gritted teeth.

  Her mother was right behind her. “Be back in fifteen minutes. I want everyone at the table.”

  “Okay.” Jess felt like she’d just escaped from prison. Throughout winter break they’d questioned her every move. They’d been searching her room too. She could tell because things would be moved or askew, like her lamp pushed further away, which she hadn’t noticed until she tried to turn it on while sitting up in bed to read last night. The clothes hanging in her closet would be bunched up together, as if they’d been shoved aside, in search of something else. She wondered what they were looking for. Evidence that she was still seeing Stephanie?

  She took a few steps, breathing in the brisk air, knowing she was probably being watched through the windows. She sat on the first porch step and gave Radar the dog an obligatory pat as he rushed up to meet her. She must have been feeling desperate because she didn’t really mind his excessive stink today.

  “Ivy’ll be back soon,” Jess promised him, knowing it wasn’t true. She knew Radar missed her and was probably wondering why the wrong sister was outside today. When he heard a sound and darted around the front yard to the side of the house, she pretended to chase him; she needed to get farther away from the house. Radar was, unwittingly, the perfect accomplice for her plan, as it turned out. All she had to do was persuade him to abandon his pursuit of what looked like the backside of a bunny and follow her to the line of pine trees her dad had planted several years ago, trees that had grown so high she could sneak over the property line and, following Ivy’s secret path, run over and talk to Chip Wallace, Cobb’s brother. She could get him to make a phone call to a certain someone and no one would suspect…She could also get him to send her letter to Ivy. Her mind raced with possibilities.

  She had just crossed through the line of pines when she saw Chip out in the field with another brother and one of his sisters. She couldn’t remember how many of them there were; they were like the von Trapps.

  “Hey, Chip!” she called across the field.

  He was sluggish, making his way slowly toward her through the snow.

  “Jess!” It was her father. A chill worse than the winter wind fluttered throughout her bones.

  She pushed back part of a tree, poking her head through.

  “Yeah?” she hollered back.

  At the sight of Chip, her dad’s face donned a mask of politeness.

  “Hiya, son,” he said.

  “Hi, sir,” Chip answered.

  “Jess.” Her father was stern, no matter how nice he tried to be in front of the neighbor’s son. “Your mother wants you to wash up for breakfast.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied dutifully.

  She waited a moment until he went inside, the door closing behind him, then she rushed over to Chip, kicking up snow in her wake.

  “Chip,” Jess began urgently and a little breathlessly. “I need you to do something for me.” She glanced back at her house, while stuffing her letter into his coat pocket.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  The aromas of bacon and hazelnut coffee conjured memories of Saturday mornings from Jess’s childhood. Of course, young Jesse would have been having Froot Loops or some other pile of sugar drenched in milk while her parents drank the coffee, but the smell put her right back in her Wonder Woman pajamas on a weekend winter morning.

  At the table she decided to try a cup of coffee. But she poured heaps of sugar into it before she could give it a chance.

  “That’s not good for you,” her mother warned.

  Really? You’re worried about an extra teaspoon of sugar at a time like this? Jess noticed how much of what her parents said were warnings, everything about what not to do and not nearly as many words of encouragement or comments about the good things in life. Jess wondered if her mother had unconsciously adopted that style from her mother, who Carolyn had described as being a walking encyclopedia of dire warnings.

  Her mother passed her the plate of bacon. The sweet maple smell was intoxicating; she pulled off the longest, plumpest piece.

  “Hey,” Danny complained, frowning at the scrawny leftovers. “No fair. You get the good ones first.”

  “There’s plenty more,” their mother insisted. “No need to keep score.”

  He huffed and grabbed every last piece. Danny always thought he was being shortchanged. On his birthday, he’d get out a tape measure to make sure he was choosing the biggest piece of cake. Everyone would grow tired and annoyed until they didn’t even want any cake anymore.

  Surely Danny had noticed, Jess thought, these holiday days had been stranger than usual, an unspoken tension permeating the house. He probably figured it was all about Ivy. But didn’t he notice the twenty questions Jess got whenever she did anything?

  She watched her brother chewing and staring out the kitchen window. It was hopeless. Of course he didn’t notice. What was Danny good for, besides eating and sleeping? If only she had an ally inside the house, someone to help her execute her plan. She was halfway there, but she’d need Danny’s help. And there was the other issue of his less-than-stellar reputation for being able to keep secrets. Could she trust him?

  “What were you and the Wallace boy talkin’ about?” Her father asked as soon as he sat down.

  “Nothin’,” she answered, realizing that sounded suspicious. She’d have to do better. “He wanted to pet Radar.”

  “Oh.” Her dad took a sip from his steamy mug.

  She couldn’t tell whether or not he believed her. Did it really matter?

  “I was thinkin’ maybe he’d heard something else about Ivy.” He stared her down.

  “No, sir,” Jess said immediately. “I asked him…if he’d heard anything, but no.” She thought her performance was good. How strange it was to pretend she didn’t despise him. Every time she went into the upstairs bathroom, she’d see Ivy’s jar of seaweed night cream and feel the loss of her. Sure, the cream was gross. But it reminded her that her sister once lived there, and was still out there somewhere.

  As the dishes were being brought to the counter by the sink, it became Danny’s turn to be in the hot seat.

  “Young man,” their father began, “what did you promise your mother and me you were goin’ to do over the break?”

  “I don’t know.” Danny started to leave.

  “Get back here!” their mother yelled. “You have dishes to unload. Remember? You put the clean ones away and load the dishwasher. These chores aren’t just suggestions.” She seemed tired and short-tempered lately, which wasn’t surprising to Jess.

  Danny reluctantly turned back and shuffled over to the dishwasher, p
ulling it open. He began yanking out the plates so hard it sounded like he was going to break them.

  “Gently!” their mother yelled.

  “As I recall,” their father continued. “You were going to come up with a plan. College or…”

  “No college,” Danny said firmly. “I’m not goin’.”

  “Just like that?” His mother handed him a dishrag.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “It’s not me.” What sounded like his honest answer was treated as more of an insult to their mother.

  “Fine!” She stormed out of the room.

  “That’s fine,” his dad said. “But you have to tell us what your plan is.”

  “I don’t have a plan!” Danny was exasperated.

  “All those hours you spend in your room,” his dad said. “Surely you’ve had plenty of time to think.”

  Danny ignored him by slamming plates into the cabinet again, as loudly as he could.

  “You have till the end of the week,” his dad told him before heading upstairs to join their mother.

  “This sucks!” Danny finally exclaimed when he and Jess were alone. He held both sides of his head, hunched over the counter. “How do you stand it?”

  “I can’t,” Jess said.

  “They’re in your business every damn day. I thought it was just me, but…God. They’re both losin’ it.”

  “I know,” she said, grateful that he’d noticed. “Look, I need a huge favor.”

  “No.”

  Jess huffed. “It would really piss off Mom and Dad if they found out about it.”

  Danny looked at her, a slow grin making its way across his face. “I’m in.”

  Chapter Seventy

  “Where the hell am I goin’?” Danny couldn’t see for all the fog across the windshield.

  “Just keep headin’ straight.”