“You’re not on the dance team,” Mrs. Danvers said.
“I’m going to be,” Pinny said. “After tryouts next week.”
Careena never used to talk to her, but right before Careena became the president, that changed. On account of Pinny being so helpful handing out the VOTE FOR CAREENA buttons and all. Careena walked with her in the hallways. She gave her jobs to do. Careena needed her. “I’d be lost without you, Pinny,” she’d told her. “Honestly.”
“But I could always find you,” Pinny told her. “ ’Cause of your shoes.” Careena had more shoes than anybody she’d ever met. She wore a different pair practically every day. Pinny had tons of photos of Careena’s shoes, and she knew them all by heart. Careena was pretty, too, the way Pinny remembered Mama being. A sparkle sort of pretty that made other kids look at her and smile. Like she was a flower and they were the bees. Flowers like Careena had lots of friends. Pinny thought she was one of them.
Not the sorts of “friends” the special-ed kids always had, either. Principal Tate made announcements about those kinds every week.
“Don’t forget, people,” the intercom ordered, “our fellow students in Room 305 deserve our hellos in the hallways. Eat lunch with them, invite them to the movies, be their friends. They are part of the student body.”
What part? Pinny wondered. Not the eyes, the smile, the hair. Not a part people noticed much. More like…a belly button. There, but usually tucked under something and forgotten about.
Pinny got “hi”s in the hallways, but no phone calls after school. She worked with other kids on the school paper, but never got asked to the movies. She wasn’t a friend kids shared secrets with. When people called her “friend,” they meant the belly-button Room 305 kind. They called her “friend” because they had to. Not Careena, though. She meant it.
And after Careena came to her birthday, after Pinny made dance team, Pinny would have more real friends, ’cause then Careena’s friends would be hers, too.
She’d given the invitation to Careena in the cafeteria, right when she was talking to Principal Tate about the dance-team tryouts.
“The party’s this Saturday,” Pinny told her. “I made the invitations myself.” She pointed to the cutouts she’d made of Dorothy’s shoes. The red glitter she’d used was rubbing off a little. “Want to come?”
“Oh, wow, Pinny. This looks fun.” Careena’s cheeks pinked right up as she brushed some red glitter off her shirt. “I have to check the date. I have some stuff coming up—”
“How nice, Pinny!” Principal Tate jumped in. “Careena’s such an exemplary leader at our school, and after all the hard work you two did together on her campaign, I’m sure she’d love to.” He looked at Careena. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Um…” Careena gave her shiny smile. “Sure. Sounds fun!”
On the day of the party, Pinny waited for the doorbell. She waited until the pizza Mrs. Danvers made got cold and chewy, until the Wizard of Oz DVD played four times in a row. The doorbell rang late, and when Pinny opened the door, Mrs. Baddour was standing there.
“Happy birthday, Chopine!” Mrs. Baddour smiled. “I came by to drop this off for you.” She placed a present in Pinny’s hands. “We had a, um, family function today. It came up suddenly…you know how it is. Careena’s so sorry to miss your party, though.” She stepped off the porch, waving. “I hope everyone else had a great time!”
“No one else came,” Pinny said. Of course, Ray, Nancy, Mrs. Danvers, and the other Smokebushers were at the party, but they had to be. They lived there.
That was when Pity showed up, squashing Mrs. Baddour’s cheeks into dried red apples. She looked at Pinny the way she’d look at a dead dog flattened on the road.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she croaked. “If I’d known…” She sighed, then smiled sunnier than before. “Well, I’m sure Mrs. Danvers made you a delicious cake.” She checked her watch. “I must run. I’m late—”
Pinny shut the door on the rest of her words.
When she turned around, Ray was in the hall, holding two plates of cake.
“I heard.” She shrugged. “It’s like drowning in a bucket of cat piss. It stinks, and there’s no way out.”
Pinny wrinkled her nose, giggling through her tears. That’s what she loved about Ray. Ray was no faker. She didn’t try to convince Pinny that she wasn’t a lousy belly button. She only told her how much it stunk to be one.
“I’m still trying out for dance,” Pinny said forcefully, wiping her eyes. “Careena will see how good I am, and then…”
Then what? Pinny didn’t know. She wasn’t ready to quit, that much she knew. Ray handed her the cake.
“Come on,” Ray said. “You know I hate The Wizard of Oz. But today, for you and only you, I’ll watch it.”
Pinny smiled. She’d been wrong. A friend had turned up at her party after all. Ray.
That was the Ray from the birthday party, though. Not the Ray steaming ahead of her on the sidewalk right now. That other, kinder Ray was in there, but she didn’t pop out much these days. And Pinny was getting downright tired of waiting for her to come back.
RAY
She found the campsite by accident. She’d been walking for several hours, drifting down streets without seeing them. Furious, but emptied out of fight. No money. No money. No money. Two words that pounded through her head, and no way to get rid of them.
Pinny was somewhere behind her, her footsteps keeping a safe distance. A good thing, too. Because Ray didn’t trust herself right now.
Her burning feet finally forced her to stop, and when she did, she blinked, taking in her surroundings for the first time since they’d left the Opry. There was a freeway to her left, humming with traffic, but the street they were on was less congested than the downtown area they’d been in before. Ahead of them, a sign sticking up from a brick column read JAMBOREE CAMPGROUND. An overstuffed cartoon bear wearing a cowboy hat pointed down a lane bordered by trees. RVs and tents dotted the campground, which was crowded enough that they stood a chance of sneaking in unnoticed.
“Follow me,” Ray said to Pinny. “And don’t say a word to anybody.”
Ray skirted the welcome center, thankful there weren’t any campsite employees hovering near the entrance. She steered away from the main buildings and sites bustling with families, where parents might get curious about two girls on their own. Farther back were remoter sites, where the trees thickened and RVs had planters and recliners alongside them. She took this as a hopeful sign that these RVs “lived here” permanently, and that this part of the campground wasn’t monitored as closely.
A small, empty site butted up against the tree line on one side and a rusted RV on the other.
“Here,” she said, and began setting up Mrs. Danvers’s tent. Pinny sat on the ground a few feet away, watching, but Ray avoided her gaze. She wanted Pinny to stay angry with her. In the end, it would be easier that way.
She was kicking the last stake into the ground when a voice behind her said, “Well, what do we have here? Two lovely little ladies for new neighbors. It’s my lucky day.”
She turned to see a bristly, leather-faced man in snakeskin boots and a sweat-stained T-shirt. His smile oozed across his lips, making Ray’s skin crawl.
“I’m JT.” He extended his hand while his eyes started at her feet and worked their way up, stopping in all the wrong places.
Ray held up her palms in a helpless gesture. “Sorry.” She shrugged. “Dirty.”
But Pinny grabbed his hand. “I’m Pinny and this is Ray,” she said with a smile that Ray wished she could’ve stopped. “I love your boots.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Genuine cottonmouth. A four-footer. I have his head on my hat in there.” He nodded toward his trailer.
“Really?” Pinny gaped. “You killed him yourself?”
“Yes, ma’am,” JT said proudly. “Had to. Found him in the shower one morning. It was him or me.” He winked.
“Wow,” Pinny said, awestru
ck. “I have to get a picture of these.” She grabbed her camera, but Ray stopped her.
“Pinny,” Ray said. “We should go find the bathrooms….” It was the best she could come up with to end the chitchat before Pinny got too friendly.
“Oh, you can use the one in my trailer if you need to.” JT smiled. “Everyone’s like family here.”
“No thanks,” Ray said quickly, her insides squirming. “We wanted to check out the rest of the campground anyway….”
Her voice died as a tan car wielding a JAMBOREE banner pulled up and a security guard climbed out of it.
“Hey, JT,” the guard said. He smiled friendly enough, but his eyes were focused on their tent. “Girls.” He tipped his hat, then shifted his gaze to Ray. “Did you miss the welcome center on your way in? I don’t recall you paying for your stay.”
Ray opened her mouth, lies ready. But before she could utter a sound, JT was talking, nice and easy. “That’s my fault, Earl,” he said. “I was so excited about my nieces coming to visit that I forgot to swing by to get them squared away.”
“Your…nieces?” the guard repeated doubtfully.
JT nodded. “My sister dropped them off earlier. Guess it was before your shift started.” He clapped a hand down on Earl’s shoulder. “It’s a mite early, but we’re fixin’ to sit down to some barbecue. Got to eat before I go to work downtown. Could I drop the money off tomorrow with my rent? I figured that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Course not,” Earl bumbled. “No problem. Only doing my job. You know how it is. There was a break-in at the Opry during the blackout. Some punk kids spent the night inside, looks like.”
“Really?” JT raised an eyebrow. “Any damage?”
Earl shook his head. “Nope, not that anybody can see. Old Charlie didn’t get a good enough look at ’em to do anything. Just put the word out to watch for strays.” He looked at Ray and Pinny long and hard, then smiled, as if he wasn’t sure what he believed but wasn’t about to challenge JT. “You gals enjoy your visit with your uncle, now.”
“We will!” Pinny waved as Earl drove away, and Ray could guess what she was thinking. A sister and an uncle in two days’ time! Jackpot!
“See?” JT’s eyes steadied on Ray’s. “Like family.”
“We…we don’t have any money.” Her face burned.
“I figured as much. I recognize fellow nomads when I see them. I wouldn’t be where I am unless somebody did me a favor once, so don’t you worry about it.” He clapped his hands loudly and rubbed them together. “Now, how ’bout that barbecue? You girls look hungry.”
“Starving!” Pinny piped up.
“Then you’ve got a feast coming your way,” he declared before disappearing into the trailer.
“Isn’t he nice?” Pinny looked after him. “He smells like sardines, but he’s nice.”
Ray opened her mouth to argue, then shut it again. She didn’t like JT, and no way in hell did she trust him. It didn’t matter, though. She’d only be here for one night, and she hadn’t been planning to sleep anyway. Not after what happened last night.
JT reappeared with paper plates piled high with pulled-pork po’boys, and for the next half hour, the three of them ate in happy camaraderie. Ray wished Pinny wouldn’t gab the way she did, spilling their business to JT like he really was their long-lost uncle. But that didn’t matter much either. Not anymore. And even she had to admit the barbecue was delicious.
Once they finished eating, JT announced that he had to go downtown to sell some of his snake merchandise.
“I won’t be back till late,” he said. “You’re welcome to join me for breakfast in the morning. I cook a mean omelet.”
Ray was relieved to see him go, but the second his truck disappeared, a tense silence wedged its way between her and Pinny. Later when it got dark, they squeezed into the cramped tent and spread out the sleeping bag like a makeshift mattress underneath them. Ray bit her tongue when Pinny used the better part of a corner for the creation of her nightly shoe-and-watch shrine. Ray even scrunched down so her head wouldn’t knock the Mary Janes and screw up their “hugging.” She could do that much for Pinny, as a parting gift.
The heat was stifling, but every once in a while, a breeze blew, cooling things off enough to be bearable. Ray lay still, listening for Pinny’s snore to start. It didn’t, and after a few minutes, there was a soft whisper.
“Ray? Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
There was a sigh, and then, “I’m sorry. About the money. My numbers just get…mixed up sometimes.”
“I know. I’m sorry, too. About what I said.”
“Hey!” Pinny nudged her grudgingly. “I can’t forget it if you bring it up!”
Ray snorted a laugh. “Right.”
“Anyway, you didn’t mean it,” Pinny said. “It was only your mad side….It wasn’t you.”
“God, Pinny!” Ray threw up her hands. “I don’t have some…secret sap identity. I’m never going to turn into Glenda the Good.”
“Maybe not. But you can’t stop me from waiting for it.” Pinny shifted, and Ray was sure she was smiling in the dark. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
Ray clenched her eyes shut against the guilt squeezing her heart. “I am too,” she whispered.
Then she waited, barely breathing, barely moving. When Pinny’s breath grew deeper and smoother, she eased herself off the sleeping bag and grabbed her stuff. Tearing a page from her music notebook, she wrote the phone numbers for Smokebush and the police. Then she added instructions for what Pinny should do when she woke up in the morning.
Go straight to the welcome center. Call the police, then Mrs. Danvers. Wait for someone to come and take you back to Jaynis.
It was as simple as that. Pinny would do it. She’d have to do it. Because by then, Ray would be long gone.
DALYA
Henry was waiting for her at school the next afternoon. His eyes seemed to have hardened overnight, and his face had a determination that she found frightening and flattering all at once. Her mind told her to walk right past him, to make Mrs. Ashbury’s lies about her seem true. But her heart made that impossible.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Dalya said, with much less conviction than she’d intended.
“You shouldn’t have left,” he said. “And don’t try to tell me it was your idea.”
Dalya stared at the ground, but her trembling lip gave her away, and an instant later, he’d wrapped her in his arms. She wanted to bury her face in his shoulder, to never move again. Instead, she pulled herself away.
“I need to go.” She turned, but he caught her arm.
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” It was a plea. “They don’t have to win. I can move out, quit school. We can be together.”
“How?” she asked. She knew he didn’t have the answer, and neither did she.
He gripped her hands like lifelines, so tightly his pulse seemed to beat in her own skin. “We can go someplace where it doesn’t matter what we are, or who we are.”
“I’ve stopped believing in places like that,” Dalya said, and as soon as she did, she felt her soul aging. She wanted to swallow the words back down, but it was too late for that.
“Please.” His voice shook. “I can be a good person with you. You’ll make me better than I am.”
His heart beat in her hands, and hers matched it, with certainty, like it had always belonged there. Even though she’d never experienced it before, she recognized what she saw reflected in his eyes, because she felt it, too. This was love. The rare kind that never comes for most people, and only once for those lucky enough to find it. The passionate, hungry kind that could make people great, or destroy them. But there was anger in his eyes, too. Too much of it, hovering, ready to consume everything else. Because of the anger, she knew what he asked was impossible.
If she took it on, with the griefs already in her own heart, she might become all anger, too. Her heart was probably beyond repair, but she wasn�
�t ready to give up on it entirely.
“I—I’m…not strong enough,” she stammered. “Not for both of us. I can’t.”
A shadow spread across his face, and he threw her hands back at her. “You don’t know what I’ll become.”
“You’ll become whatever you choose.” Her heart strained against its cage, but stayed in it, barely. “You can be just as good without me. Maybe even better.”
“You’re wrong,” he whispered. Grief twisted his features, and a single sob escaped his throat.
He climbed into the back of the Ashburys’ car and left without another word. She’d hurt him badly, maybe even irreparably, and fear gripped her as she watched him go.
DANIEL
Danny loved the brokenness of abandoned things. He didn’t know why Officer Newton couldn’t understand that. Here he was, in the back of the squad car again, slumped down in the seat, waiting for his house to come into view. The first time he’d ridden in the squad car, Officer Newton had flashed the lights and turned on the siren for him. Not anymore. Today, his frown stretched the entire length of the rearview mirror.
Luckily, Danny had hidden the pale pink shoes before Officer Newton picked him up. They were safe at the bottom of his backpack right now. He’d been walking home from school when he saw them. He’d dug through the Dumpsters near the trailer park first, but finding nothing but rotten food, he’d decided to give Highway 10 a try. People were forever tossing stuff out car windows. He’d spotted the shoes between two cactuses by Exit 18. That dust kicked up from passing cars coated their tiny, fragile flowers and pearls infuriated him. How could anything so precious get thrown away? They were perfect in every way, and he had to have them.
He’d gotten lucky and found a wedding dress, too. It was tattered, but he could see it had once been beautiful. He’d been holding it when Officer Newton had pulled onto the shoulder beside him. Now the dress sat in the front seat next to Officer Newton, held hostage.
“All right, Danny.” Officer Newton stopped the car alongside the curb. “Let’s get you inside.”
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