The motel’s not such a bad little stopping point. I’ve been in way worse for way longer, so I’m not complaining. It looks clean, and there’s no weird smell. My mind goes back to Alexis and her comments about her aunt. I can’t help but laugh to myself, imagining those horrible pieces of furniture as the focal point of their little house.
As I’m shaking my head at the thought, I cross to the bathroom and tip the neck of my beer toward the sink, watching as the amber liquid flows down the drain. How many beers have I poured out when the nights wound down? Hundreds? Thousands?
My eyes drift toward the mirror, and I study what I see there. A little pink tonight due to the unfortunate encounter with the cat couch, but sky blue, merging into darker blue at the edges. Remarkably like my dad’s, with the exception of the brown specks embedded here and there to add a hint of something else. God’s private joke to remind him that I’m my mother’s son, Dad always said. Because she’s full of it, and a little of that spilled over into me.
Focusing back on the bottle, I tip it once more to make sure it’s empty and then place it in the trash can. Nobody back home would believe for a second that I’ve never had a beer. “I’ve seen him drinking almost every weekend,” they’d probably say. It would be almost true, because they’ve seen me with bottles of nearly everything. And those bottles have touched my lips, but the liquids inside never go any further.
It might be the only secret I have left.
Something draws me from a dead sleep, and I lay in the stillness, trying to figure out why I’m suddenly so alert. Then I hear a whimper in the next room, and I know she’s back. She should have known to wait until morning, but she never learns. It seems like she should be able to figure out, if my thirteen-year-old brain can grasp it.
She’ll tell me tomorrow that she had nowhere to go. Whoever the guy is will have kicked her out, and so she’s back. I won’t remind her that she’s married to Dad, and whether or not he deserves her or she deserves him, it’s a fact they both need to acknowledge.
I move to the door and quietly pull it open, just enough so I can peer into the room and make sure they’re both upright. Mom’s sprawled across the floor with the mark of Dad’s handprint on her cheek. Dad has his head in one hand, sitting on the worn-out recliner, a fifth of whiskey against his knee.
They’re both thinking they deserve it. I’m not sure how I know this, but it’s clear as day. He thinks she has every right to run around on him because he can’t manage to face the day without liquor running through his veins, and she thinks he has every right to hit her because she can’t remain faithful to him.
They’ll be the talk of the town tomorrow, because things spread quickly in this trailer park. If they woke me from a dead sleep, they surely alerted the neighbors as well.
Not that they aren’t the talk of the park normally, on any given day. Mom’s forty-two and Dad’s thirty-one, which makes for some fascinating gossip, since he was barely eighteen when I was born. If a comment can be made, I’ve heard it and then some.
I watch them for a while, to make sure he keeps breathing and she eventually stands up. Both of them do, so I doze off.
When I come alert again, I’m sitting on the front step of the trailer, a rickety makeshift wooden contrapment that might fold up right under me. Abby James rides her bike up in front of my place, pausing to glance back at her friends. Three of them wait where she left them, standing in a row, like she’s on a dare of some sort. She probably is, so I wait for the taunting.
“What gives, Jacob? Where’d your dad go?”
“He’s at work, just like he always is.”
“My dad said your dad got fired from the plant, and he ain’t got no work to do. He’s sitting down at the bar drinkin’.”
Abby’s no better off than me, really, except I haven’t heard about her parents trying to kill each other. Her clothes aren’t finer than mine, and she’s doesn’t have good grades at school. She might be kind of cute if she weren’t so nasty, but her attitude makes that impossible to see.
“If your dad knows everything, why’re you asking me?”
“‘Cause your dad done said your mom’s taking you away with her, to live with her relatives in South Carolina.”
It bothers me that she knows my business, but I’m not going to deny the facts.
“True enough. We’re going to find better.”
“Ain’t gonna be no better, just different. Anyway, you’ll be back here soon enough.”
She tilts her head at me when she says that, just enough to make me think she might miss me when I’m gone.
“Why do you say that?”
“‘Cause she won’t want you long, either. Don’t nobody want you, Jake McAuliffe.”
She has the nerve to smile at me before she rides off to her friends, and as they stare at me and giggle behind their hands, I make a vow to myself right then and there:
Someday I’ll make you want me, each of you. I’ll start with Abby and then I’ll go down the line, wiping the smug grins off each of your faces.
Long fingers wrap around my shoulder, accompanied by my mom’s voice. “Jake?”
Bolting upright, my breath comes out in a panic as I focus on the small motel room. I force myself to try to focus on the walls of the room as I wipe the sweat from my forehead. It’s been forever since I had a dream about my mother, or even allowed myself to think about her. She hadn’t really wanted me, just like Abby said. When granny got sick, I was right back with my dad.
But I did make Abby want me, along with every single one of her friends. And lots of other girls, just to prove a point.
The only one I couldn’t make want me was Camdyn, and that was because I refused to hurt Parker.
Otherwise, maybe I could have… Maybe.
Chapter Six
Alexis
There’s a company in Louisville that will come to your house and take anything you don’t want, and as soon as Jake drove off in his truck, I contacted them about the couches. I’m not entirely certain why I did it. There’s the fact that they look like they belong on the set of Golden Girls, and the added bonus that they smell like they’ve been doused with every bottle of perfume those fragrance testers at the mall have in stock.
Truth be told, though, I would feel slightly guilty about having them in here, knowing that they would mean Jake could never come inside the house due to the cat allergy. It might present me with an unexpected blessing, although I would despise myself a little.
But they really were ugly.
By the time I manage to unload the trailer, it’s eleven o’clock. It might have been easier to wait until Jake comes back tomorrow, but I’m indebted to him enough already and I don’t like the feeling. Besides, I don’t have a wealth of belongings. Those couches were to be my main furniture.
The mattress for my bed was the hardest thing to get inside, mostly because it was awkward, but I did it. I’m a lot stronger than Jake gives me credit for, or really anybody else for that matter.
Since there’s nothing left for Jake to do, I’m hoping he’ll show up tomorrow and tell us goodbye. There’s nothing for him here, and he doesn’t really care about Bailey. Not enough to follow her across state lines, at least.
The boxes are still sitting around the house unopened, except for the one with Hoppy. Bailey insisted that he be released from the box the minute I started unloading. She cared more about that rabbit than sheets for her bed or locating her toothbrush. Not that finding her bedding mattered in the least. She’s currently curled up against me on my own bed, because she’s scared to stay in a house without Gump.
I could pretend that her feeling of security coming from my dad doesn’t bother me, but I won’t. My parents have been the absolute best gift God ever gave me, right up until I had Bailey, but they’re too parental. They totally overshadow me with their proud gazes, loving statements, and the ability to say “no” just by lifting their eyebrows. They’re such perfectly wonderful parents that I pale i
n comparison, and not by a small margin either.
Sometimes I feel like those kids in that movie where their dad shrank them. Things are going on around me, and I’m leaping up and down, waving my arms, screaming. “I’m here! I’m here! Can’t you hear me?”
No one ever does.
Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much earlier when she jumped as soon as Jake gave the order.
Or maybe it’s just because I’ve always been invisible, and it’s finally getting on my last nerve.
“Jay go home?” Bailey asks, picking at the fuzz on her blanket.
Did Jake go home? That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one. I’d imagine Jake is probably at some seedy bar at the moment, trying to figure out which prey he’ll go after.
“Sure,” I say noncommittally, not loving the idea of lying to my daughter. “Hey, did you ask Hoppy what he thinks of the house?”
“Didn’t ask him,” she answers. Her melancholy threatens to spill over to me, and I definitely don’t need both of us sitting here acting mushy about missing Gump.
“Well, let’s ask him.” I gently remove Hoppy from her hands and hold him at attention in front of her, his feet resting against her abdomen. “So, Hoppy, what do you think of our new home?”
Clearing my throat, I attempt to prepare my best rabbit voice. I’ve perfected it in the past few months: a little throaty, deeper than my own, with a hint of a lisp. It’s most likely the opposite of how a real rabbit would sound, but it works for us.
“Well, in actuality Miss Bailey of the Jennings, I was a tad bit on the worried side, but let me tell you…this house is THE BOMB.”
Hoppy’s hands travel in opposite directions, as though there is an explosion happening as we speak, and Bailey giggles.
“Why?”
Why? Hmm…why?
“Because…you live on the coolest street in the entire cool world. As soon as I saw the name, I got cold shivers all up and down my back.” He shakes for effect, and she smiles up at me. “Wonder Lane. It sounds just like that book your mom’s been reading to you. Tomorrow I’m going to do some poking around to see if I can find the rabbit hole. I just know there’s going to be a load of ridiculous, wonderful things here.”
“Can I go in the hole with you?”
“Do you think I could even imagine going in without you? What would be the fun in that?”
She stretches her arms out to take him and pulls him against her, rubbing his worn-out face on her cheek.
“Thank you Hoppy.”
Settling beside her, I allow the warmth of her arm to press against mine as I stare up at the ceiling. It’s beyond bizarre, I know, because I am Hoppy, but…
Just once, I wish it was thank you Mommy.
Bailey drifts to sleep without much effort, and I lie awake staring at the blank wall and wondering if this will ever feel like home. It should feel like a beginning, but instead it reminds me that nothing is as I expected. That empty space couldn’t be more appalling if it was a giant billboard that said, “Welcome to your second choice.”
Is it even a second choice? It feels like a fifteenth, or a four hundred fifty-seventh.
Easing myself off the mattress, I mindlessly begin unpacking some of my belongings, looking past the few dishes I own to concentrate on the quieter-to-unpack options—clothes, shoes, towels. As I pull one of my shirts out and smooth it across my leg, a familiar black book catches my eye.
Hundreds of memories compete for my attention, mostly good and the majority benign. Faces I haven’t considered in a while, standing near my locker, laughing about their weekends or something that was just said.
They all start to fade as one moves into focus. Cody Hewitt, sitting right in front of a seventeen-year-old version of myself. His dark, wavy hair is always too long in the back, and he has that spot to the right that curls toward his ear. I’m glad it curls like that, because otherwise I wouldn’t know that he has that one solitary freckle on his neck.
He turns around when the teacher isn’t looking, mouthing the words “help me” as he offers a crooked grin. His teeth are perfectly straight, with the exception of one of the bottom incisors that sits slightly higher than the others.
Just like every other time he’s ever focused those hazel eyes on me, I can physically feel the blood traveling through my veins. I’m pretty sure he’s the most attractive male to ever walk the planet. I’ve believed that to be the case since the seventh grade. The only two people I have ever admitted that to are Heather and my best friend Sadie, and neither one of them was in agreement.
It’s not my fault they have bad taste.
Somehow Cody and I always end up in math classes together. It’s quite a puzzle, because he doesn’t seem to be great in math. In every single class we’ve shared, he’s parked himself directly in front of me, and without exception he winds up turning around to beg for my assistance. Heather says he follows me around because he’s secretly infatuated with me, and he doesn’t even know it himself.
I doubt that’s the case.
Cody can consistently catch even the most imperfect spirals on the football field. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one on the sidelines who notices every move of the average-build tight end. Every other cheerleader on the squad wants to be noticed by our quarterback, as though confirming the cliché to be a fact of nature. Brad Travis knows they’re looking at him, and he gives them all their slivers of his attention, one at a time.
Heather joined the cheerleading squad because she wants to be the center of all the attention, both on the field and off, but I joined just to be near Cody. Four years I’ve performed chants and dances and high kicks and tried to get the crowd going all so I could stand next to the sidelines and see him a little clearer.
Cody Hewitt is the main reason I love football.
He’s the reason for a lot of things, really.
Looking at the front of that yearbook and then glancing at my beautiful daughter, it fully hits me: It’s his fault I’m here almost as much as it is my own.
A quick glance at my phone tells me that it’s one o’clock in the morning. There are plenty of things I could blame for my sleeplessness: different surroundings, anxiousness about my new job, unease about Bailey’s situation here, or even that gas station burrito I had a few hours ago. They’re all smokescreens, though, because the fact is I unleashed a few ghosts when I was staring at that yearbook.
It does me no favors to think about the girl I was then, all wide-eyed innocence and blind trust. When I think about the time wasted, down on my knees, elbows resting on my bed as I pleaded for Cody... Daydreamed about Cody. Made sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that God knew I wanted nothing but Cody.
My dad’s sermons probably went in one of Heather’s ears and out the other, but I listened with my whole heart because I knew about the red and I was determined to stay away from it if at all possible. Lying equaled red. Unkindness equaled red. Disobeying our parents and putting on makeup in the girls’ bathroom at school equaled red, as I tried to tell Heather countless times.
When I was in the eighth grade, Dad stood in front of the church and said something that changed my entire outlook. I’d spent my entire life to that point avoiding doing wrong because I didn’t want to feel the condemnation, but there was more. Dad said if you delighted yourself in the ways of the Lord, He would give you the desires of your heart. Translation in my fourteen-year-old mind: Do what God wants, and Cody will want to be my boyfriend. Fall in love with me. Marry me even.
That’s what I began praying about my situation, as earnestly as possible for a junior high girl. “Guard my heart and keep me on the right path. Help me be the girl You’ve designed me to be. Please watch over Cody and keep him on the right path, too, so he can someday be mine. And if it could happen tomorrow, that would be spectacular.”
Every day I would admire him, from afar on the bad days and from close up on the good days. He would talk to me, tease me, sit with me at lunch, and I’d feel certa
in that it was going to happen any second. And every night I would make sure I reiterated my request to God, just in case He got busy in the last twenty-four hours and lost track.
Freshman year I saw Cody holding hands with Mindy Thomas after third hour English, and I flung open my locker, pretending to be looking for something while they strolled past me. It was the first time I had ever been tardy, and Mr. Samuels didn’t even look crossways at me when I entered fourth hour Algebra ten minutes late. Cody did, though. He turned around in his seat and asked me if I was alright. What was I supposed to say? You just ripped out my heart and stomped on it? I told him I wasn’t feeling well, and he told me he was sorry. He asked if there was something he could do. My heart wanted to say break up with Mindy, but my brain knew better than to mouth the words.
The fling with Mindy was short-lived, for which I was glad and felt slightly vindicated. Cody was never going to be happy with anyone but me; I was certain of that fact. He still didn’t have the instructions from God, though, because that January I walked around the side of the bus just in time to see him locking lips with Jen Mitchell—the rudest, most condescending girl in our entire class. They were an item until the end of the school year, and then parted ways in the summer.
Sophomore year Cody showed up the first day attached at the hip to a girl named Constance Martinez. She moved into town over the summer, and luckily for him they were in the same neck of the woods. Constance was rather sweet, slim and small-statured with a mess of black hair and a slight Hispanic accent. She had no trouble making friends in our small town, and was genuinely liked by everyone.
Curiouser (Girls of Wonder Lane Book 3) Page 4
