Blue grabbed her notebook.
The girl laughed. “See, like I said. Totally can’t talk at all.”
The driver’s door opened now. A skinny guy emerged. Tall, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, a tattoo of Elmer Fudd on one forearm, a shotgun wrapped in barbed wire on the other. He grinned. “You’re the shit, Florida.” He walked up to Blue. “And you, little girl, should probably hand that guitar over to me.”
She had nowhere to run other than across the park, across the road, into the lake. It was just her and Steve against the others, and Steve was already surrounded. She glanced toward the distant lake—too cold to swim, and certain to destroy the guitar, even if she could make it there. A hot prickly sweat covered her body.
She shook her head. The man laughed. “Listen, babe, you can do your whole little tough girl thing, get it out of your system, but face it. You’re outnumbered. You’re not half as tough as you think. And unlike you, I have no problem breaking that guitar in half just to spite you if you don’t hand it over. Or your boy, either. He looks even easier to mess up.”
The thought of letting go of the guitar case was as unimaginable as sticking her hand into a bonfire. She reached for her notebook.
What if I gave you my $ instead?
He raised an eyebrow. They were pale, his eyebrows, and long, the coarse runners of hair almost invisible against his skin. She couldn’t even think about the rest of his face, just those eyebrows and the way she hated them.
“How much we talking?”
Almost 60, I think.
He laughed, thin pink lips stretching to show a front tooth sharpened like a snake’s fang. “You’re funny. Sixty bucks isn’t even enough to bother blowing my nose on. Or did you mean sixty cents?” More laughter, the girl joining in.
If 60 bucks is nothing to you, get your own guitar. Why take mine?
“Why? Because I’m in the mood for it. Because that guitar might be the one thing I’ve wanted all my life—right, Florida?” The girl nodded. “Because I want you to do what I ask, and right now I’m asking you to hand over the fucking guitar. Mal?”
The man holding Steve raised his arm and tightened it against Steve’s neck. Steve’s face began to turn red, his mouth opening in little fish gasps.
“Hand over the guitar.”
The man flexed his arm further, and Steve scrabbled at his wrist with both hands. She looked down, at the handle, then handed it away, as painful as tearing the skin from her palm.
The man took the case as carelessly as if it were a block of wood. “Good girl. Let’s get going. Florida, you gonna escort our guest?”
The girl bent at the waist, one hand raised in a flourish, before shoving Blue toward the van. The man tossed the guitar case in the front and took the driver’s seat. Steve was bustled into the back with the guys. Blue and the girl ended up on the bench behind the driver.
The girl leaned back, her feet on the seat ahead, and lit a cigarette. She offered it to Blue. Blue shook her head.
“Ya don’t talk at all, huh? Like, if I put my butt out on your arm, you wouldn’t even squeak?”
Blue didn’t respond, other than to stare at her levelly. Don’t show fear, never, ever, ever, that’s what Tish would have said. Even when the thought of the red tip, the pain, the empty space where her scream should have been tied her insides in knots.
“Florida.” The girl held out her hand to Blue. Her grasp was surprisingly soft, her nails gnawed to the quick. She didn’t look older than high school, but everything about her was worn out. She wore a thick layer of makeup; there was a blood spot in the white of one eye and a puffy swelling around one of the piercings in her left ear.
“That’s Rat,” she said, shoulder lifted toward the man in front. “Those are just the boys back there.”
“Fuck you,” said one of them.
Florida laughed. “Really, they’re just walking dicks. Ain’t much more to them. What’s your name?”
Did it make a difference what Blue said? As if she’d picked up on Blue’s thoughts, Florida grinned. “Not like you can fuss about what we call you. Gonna call you Interstate, ’cause you look like you’ve been going a ways.”
Interstate. The name actually felt good.
She heard snickering from behind. When she turned to look, one of the guys was making a cupping motion at Steve’s chest while the other one laughed.
“What’s the racket, boys?” Rat didn’t look back, his attention on the road, one hand resting on the steering wheel, one on his thigh.
“This one, he’s as much a boy as I’m a pony.”
Rat shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror, there and gone in a flash. “Ya don’t say. Well, that makes things even nicer, don’t it. We got us some specialty items.”
The knots inside Blue tightened again. She chose a clean page in her notebook and wrote.
What’s the deal? Where are we going?
Florida looked at the page and laughed. “You think you and me are going be all cozy, write notes back and forth like we’re in school?”
Blue jerked her head back.
“Do you think she really has a sore throat?” Florida called to Rat.
Rat shot another glance in the mirror. “Nah. Sore throat you can still whisper. If she had a voice, she’d use it.”
Florida leaned close to her. “Thought so. Can’t even make a peep, right?” She tapped her ash out onto the floor.
It’s temporary.
Even as Blue wrote it, she knew she had no reason to trust the woman in the red dress. She could do everything right and still lose. These could be the last months of her life, and she was spending it in cold places, without Cass or any idea where she was. Without her mom, or a home.
Without anything.
The parked on a side street in front of a pawnshop. “Keep an eye on that one,” Rat said, tilting his chin toward Steve. “I got Interstate.”
Blue sized Rat up as he waited by the van door for her. Not huge, but wiry, like the guys working at Teena’s uncle’s garage. She half-expected to see a wrench in his back pocket, oil on his fingertips. There was nothing, though—only clean hands that gripped her guitar case handle too tightly for her to even think about wrestling it free.
“You give me any trouble, I got no problem with putting my foot right through this,” he said, giving it a little shake.
That was the other part of sizing someone up—deciding whether they’d actually do the things they threatened. She’d learned that from Tish, too. A swollen lip, a black eye, her laughing at the table with Mama. “So I wasn’t at my best,” she’d said. “Figured it was all talk, you know? You girls always remember that—you need to know whether the bastard saying they’re going to take a swing is actually going to swing, or if they just like to hear themselves talk.”
Rat looked like someone who’d have no problem doing anything he said. It was the way he talked, the way he studied her, as if she were an engine instead of a person. She couldn’t risk him destroying the guitar.
She followed meekly along, down a narrow alley that channeled the wind into something fierce. They stopped in front of a NO TRESPASSING sign, hung on the back door of an empty building. Rat opened it.
“After you,” he said. Blue stepped through cautiously. Florida bumped into her from behind.
“Come on, move it, don’t leave the rest of us to freeze out here.”
Inside wasn’t much warmer. There was no wind, thanks to the cardboard and duct tape covering the broken windows, but no heat, either.
They kept moving. Florida took the lead, heading to a door with a skull and crossbones spray-painted onto it.
Inside, the walls between several rooms had been broken open with a sledgehammer, leaving jagged holes to step through. A collection of space heaters, their extension cords bundled together and run through a hole in the wall, glowed red. More extension cords powered a few lamps. In one of the rooms she could see mattresses on the floor; through another were cardboard boxes full of
what looked like applesauce cups and breakfast cereal.
A pair of ragged couches sat in the corners of the room they’d entered. A flat-screen TV was mounted on one wall. One of the men turned it on to a football game.
“Get me a beer,” Rat said to him. “Florida, check our guests out.” He stepped aside. Florida took hold of Blue’s pack. Blue gripped the straps tight and held on.
Rat threw the guitar case against the wall. It hit with a thud and a jangle. She jumped toward it, but Rat caught a fistful of her hair and yanked her back. “No,” he said, flat and cold. “You don’t do things without permission. Maybe wherever you come from, you did, but not here. Give Florida your bag and don’t make a fuss. Not that you could anyway.” He laughed, delighted with his own wit. “Not that you could. You got that?”
Her scalp burned, and her face, and her mind. She wanted to punch him, and she thought about it, but he’d smash Mama’s guitar.
She heard the click of a lighter by her head. Rat pulled harder on her hair. “You see this?” He held the flame under her nose, close enough to sting. “I got no problem setting your pretty little guitar on fire and watching it burn. So we could do that, or you could behave. Take your pick.”
He was so close that she could hear the music under his skin, jangling piano, sharp and hard and piecemeal.
She loosened her hold on her straps. Florida took the pack off her back, and Rat let go of her hair. The contents didn’t look like much as Florida spread them out on the floor. Blue reached out as Florida emptied the keepsake bag, but stopped herself when she caught Rat’s look.
“What a load of crap.” Florida fingered the guitar pick, the packet of letters. She held up the training bra. “You really that flat?”
Blue kept her hands in her pockets, her face blank. Florida was looking for cracks, for someplace she could reach into and hurt Blue. The cracks were there, but if Blue didn’t react, Florida would never find them.
“Nothing good?” Rat tapped Florida’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Gonna wait and see if the others bring anyone in, but I’d say we got a good haul. Mute and a boygirl. Val always pays extra for freaks. Good for kinky shit.”
Florida kicked her shoes off and sat on the unoccupied couch. “You gotta give me something extra this time, Rat. You wouldn’t have them at all if I hadn’t found her. Right? Whatcha gonna give me?”
“Your cut, same as always. A place to live where you don’t have to peddle your ass, same as always. You got a problem with it, you can get out.” He finished off the beer, crushed the can in his fist.
Blue knew better, but she couldn’t help herself. She needed to know that the guitar was okay. She took three steps toward it and ran smack into Rat. He grabbed her shoulder, dug his fingers in until it hurt. “I didn’t say you could look at that, did I? In fact, I don’t think you asked permission. Did she?” He panned the room, eyes wide.
One of the guys on the couch said, “Didn’t hear nothing come out of her mouth.”
“That’s right. You know why? Because she can’t fucking talk. She has to write everything down.” He snagged the notebook out of her back pocket before she could stop him. “I bet we can look in here and see everything she’s said for the last, what, week? Month? Year?”
He flipped it open, read the first page he came to. “Right. You offered me money. Give it over. We’ll consider it rent.” He wiggled his fingers.
She handed it to him. Everything she had left. She’d already told him how much, couldn’t pretend otherwise. It wasn’t the money she cared about.
He grabbed her hand and twisted it to examine the ring on her finger. “Not much, is it? Not even worth the effort to pull it off your finger.” He let go.
A bauble, that’s what Tish had called it the day she gave it to Mama. But Mama had kept it on her finger through everything, right to the very end. Blue resisted the urge to touch the turquoise for fear she’d draw his attention back to it.
She took her notebook from him instead.
I gave you my $. Can I plz have my guitar?
She put the please in even though she didn’t think it belonged there. The guitar was hers; Rat had no right to touch it.
He thought otherwise. “Not yours, not anymore. You gave it to me.” He stared at her. She pressed her nails against the skin of her thumb in her pocket and stared back.
He didn’t like it. She could read it in the tightness around his nose and mouth. “Listen, I got no reason to be nice to you. You’re just a load of freight, something I’m holding until the buyer shows up. Like cattle, see, like a dumb old cow waiting in a stock car for her trip to the slaughterhouse.
“But here’s the thing. Even those stupid cows got to have manners. That’s where cattle prods come in, you know. They don’t behave, they get the daylights shocked right out of them. We could do that, right here. See those cords over there?”
She didn’t want to look, but she did, drawn irresistibly to the thick bunches of extension cords taped together, running along the floor and through the wall.
“Now, the way we get power is to just tap into it ourselves. Run our own lines. Works just fine, provided you don’t mess with things. You mess with things, well, I don’t want to think about how that might feel. Probably wouldn’t leave too much of a mark. Just on the bottom of your foot, or where your hand touched the line. Probably a nasty smell, all burned and shit.”
It’s nothing, he’s talking crap and he’s not going to hurt me. Only, she knew she was wrong.
“Here’s the deal, Interstate. I want to know what kind of cow you are—one who understands her place or one who needs a prod. Got it?” He waited for her to nod. “You want to look in that guitar case. I want to know you’ll behave. So you do what I want and I’ll let you look.”
She looked at him, her hands trembling against her thighs.
“You want to see the inside of that case, you give me a kiss.”
An involuntary step backward, one she wished she hadn’t taken as soon as she saw the flicker of cruelty. “Look at her. You’d think her lips were fricking gold.”
“Let me instead. Let her be.”
She’d forgotten Steve completely. His voice buoyed her even as she shook her head at him.
“No way. Her guitar. She needs to deal with it. Come on, either a kiss or you say good-bye to that guitar. Your choice.”
Kiss.
He crooked his finger at her and made her lean in. His breath smelled of beer, and she almost turned away. Then his lips reached hers, and his hand was on the back of her hair, and his tongue in her mouth. Control became something she’d never had, something she’d never have again, not as long as he was alive. His hand tightened against her head until she stopped trying to pull away.
Then he loosened his grip, moved his head back, and talked, voice low and intimate. “See, real nice there. Manners are all I expect. You give people what they want, they got no cause to give you trouble.” He took a step back. She wanted to spit the taste of him out on the floor and brush her teeth until her gums bled.
“You go ahead and take a look.”
The guitar. She almost didn’t want to touch it now, but she needed to know. She knelt on the floor beside it. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes as she opened the lid.
Nothing broken. She traced the veneer—smooth, hard, intact—and plucked a string. She bit her lip at the reassuring twang.
Then his hand lowered on her shoulder as he pulled her away. “No way. You bought yourself a look. That’s all. Guitar’s mine.”
She hated him. Hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone, more than she’d hated Mama in those flashes of time when she blamed her for dying. More than she’d hated Cass for leaving, Tish for vanishing. So much hate that she felt she would explode into pieces.
Mine.
He didn’t even look at the note. “You got to look. You know it’s okay. You want it to stay that way, you and your little boy-girlfriend there are gonna go in the other room and stay
nice and quiet. You cause any trouble at all, I’m gonna smash the hell out of this guitar, then see how much you light up when I plug you in. Understand?”
Blue could hear her pulse in her ears as she stood up and started toward the other room. Then she stopped. She had one chance, a long shot, but she’d take it. She scribbled five words down in her notebook. Went back and handed it to Rat. This time he looked.
His lips stretched in a satisfied grin. “Nice to meet you, Blue Riley. Still doesn’t get you that guitar, but you can take your pack with you to the other room.”
She collected her things, thinking all the while. Burn ’em down. If I don’t get my voice or my sister, you owe me that much.
I’m sorry.
She underlined it twice for good measure.
Steve wouldn’t look at the page at first. When he did, he shrugged.
Me, You’re here bc of me.
“Yeah, maybe, but who knows where I’d be.” He whispered, his voice drowned out by the TV.
Not someplace worse.
He didn’t answer. There were times when he looked a thousand years older than Blue did, times that reminded her that she knew nothing about his past and how long he’d been traveling. Traveling, as though he weren’t a kid with no money and no family, and, as far as she could tell, no friends.
Except her, and look what she’d done to him.
I’ll get us out.
He gave a jaded shrug. “You think I haven’t heard those things before, or worse?”
She touched his hand. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t seem to notice it, either. She went to her notebook instead.
My mom is dead + my dad was a sperm donor. I have my Aunt Lynne + my sister, if I can find her. That’s it.
Steve shook his head. “You don’t get it. It may not be a lot, but you have them. I don’t.”
Yours might come around.
He grimaced. “Even if they did . . . why would I want them? Why would I want people who took me in because it was their duty, not because they loved me?”
Being the girl with no parents had bought her a lot of sympathy over the years. Losing her mother brought an ocean of sad, but it didn’t erase all the ways in which Mama had loved her. Even when things sucked, she had that.
Devil and the Bluebird Page 13
