"You're welcome here at our home, whenever you want to come over," he said.
"Thanks." Nice offer, but that would be never.
"Kaia won't be needing her car for the foreseeable future. As a way to say thank you for helping her, it's yours if you'd like to drive it."
I was almost a complete idiot. I almost told him I wasn't sixteen and didn't have my license yet. But somehow I controlled myself and let him place the keys in my hand. "Thanks," I said again, staring at my own outstretched palm, then curling my fingers around the keys.
I suddenly had a hysterical mental image of myself adding the words "Uncle Dad" to the end of that thank you, and I quickly turned away, pulling my arm out of his grip. He didn't resist. I walked toward the car, but then something occurred to me. I still had a cousin—and best friend—to watch out for. "Oh, hey?" I said, turning.
His hand was on the doorknob, but he paused. "Yes?"
"Kaia's grounded, so she can't go anywhere, right?"
His eyes hardened. "Right."
"Could you make one exception? Just one, and I swear that's all I'll ever ask."
Her dad blew a short burst of air out of his mouth. "I don't know. What is it?"
"A guy named Grady is going to call. I asked him if he'd take Kaia to an Alcoholics Anonymous group for teenagers, and he said he would. Can you please let her go to that?"
He thought about it for a couple of seconds, then gave me a curt nod. "Fine."
I slid the car key into the lock. Dude, Kaia, I totally hooked you up! You are so in.
* * *
It was close to midnight by the time I got back to Mrs. Dutton's house. I parked the car in the driveway, grateful that you couldn't see her driveway from my trailer. I let myself in her house, dropped the Forever 21 bag in the sewing room, and exited out the back door, closing and locking it behind me.
I had more investigating to do. Earlier, when I'd gone through the tubs of mail in my parents' shed, I'd just been looking for official documents and cards. But there had been thousands of other pieces of mail that I'd skipped over. Maybe something in there would have a clue. A letter from a boyfriend, or a bill from a motel, anything…any scrap of information that I could dig up could be what I needed to unravel the mystery.
Had my mom really slept with her sister's husband? Was Kaia's dad my dad too? And would there be anything in that shed to prove it?
I wasn't as confident sneaking around my parents' property tonight as I had been this afternoon. My mother and sisters were night creatures. Well, except for Monica, who slept all the time. Mealtimes were pretty much the only thing that got her out of bed.
I crept across the lawn from Mrs. Dutton's house to my own, moving as silently as possible, mentally begging the dogs to ignore my scent. They huffed a couple of times in their pen, but luck was on my side, and none of them went crazy as I sidled around their enclosure.
I slipped through the back yard, barely breathing as I approached the shed, but there was no movement from the house, no banging of the back screen door. I could smell stale cigarettes, so I knew either my mom or Rachel had been around fairly recently, but there was no glow of a cigarette crossing the yard, coming to get me. It looked like I'd picked a good time to sneak over here.
I eased open the shed door and the stench of cigarette smoke hit me full in the face. No, I hadn't picked a good time after all. I'd picked a horrible time. My mom wasn't charging across the yard, coming to intercept me. She was already here.
My mother sat in the middle of a giant rat's nest of mail. It was way crazier in here than it had been when I'd left earlier, and I thought I'd wrecked the place.
"Oh, look, you're back," she drawled. She brought her cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. She pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and tapped the ashes carelessly on a pile of mail that teetered next to her.
I tried not to gag on the smoke, but I held my ground, standing in the doorway, and I didn't mess around. "Who is my father?" I blurted.
"Oh, shut up." Mom's head lolled back like she thought she was sitting on the couch or something, but there was no cushion back there to catch her head, and for a second all I saw was her exposed throat before she lost her balance and fell back against a different stack of mail behind her.
I tried again. "Is Uncle Mark my father?"
Mom reached into the haphazard pile of mail beside her and pulled out a half empty bottle of vodka and took a swig. "My bitch sister thinks so."
Oh god. Mom wasn't a drinker. But on the rare occasions that she did, you'd better watch out. I was going to have to be careful, but I couldn't show her how scared I was of her right now. I folded my arms across my chest. "So what you're saying is he's not."
Mom was in the middle of taking another drink, and vodka sprayed out of her mouth as she cackled hysterically. "And I thought cheerleaders were so stupid. Listen to you. I should have given you more credit."
I balled my hands into fists under my armpits. "Who is my father?"
"Fuck you, Baby. You think I'm just gonna tell you? After everything I've been through? You were supposed to be my ticket out of here, but no. No, no, no. You've been a life-wrecking little bitch since the day you were born."
It was hard, but I knew I had to try to let her evil words roll off me and take whatever clues I could get out of her. What had Derek said? Make her feel like the most important person in the world or something like that? I mentally shook my head. Sorry. That was never going to happen. But I could manage her. I had to know what she knew, but I couldn't let her know what I was doing. I had to keep her talking.
"Come on. I was a baby. You already had four others. How was I any different?"
Mom's eyes rolled around in her head. Whether she was rolling them on purpose or whether they were just out of control, I wasn't sure. It didn't exactly look intentional. "The way you looked at me. Like you thought you were better than me. Since the day you were born." Mom's head swayed back and forth drunkenly. "I shoulda had you scraped. I knew that fucker would screw me over, when he started up with all his crazy Jesus talk."
Holy shit. My mind immediately flew to Grady's dad. No, it couldn't be. Could it? Was that how he'd met my own father?
I tried to keep my voice from shaking as I probed that line. "So you hooked up with some religious guy and he left you when you got pregnant? You thought you'd divorce dad and marry him? But he turned out to be gay too?"
"Your father is not gay."
"Yes he is. He's dating my friend's dad."
Mom took another drag of her cigarette, and her mouth curled up into a cruel smile. "I'm not talking about my husband. I'm talking about your father."
Oh my god. Keep her talking. Keep her talking. "Okay, so he wasn't gay. But he screwed you over. So why didn't you get an abortion? Why did you keep me?"
Mom stared at the wall of the shed, but it was like she was looking through the plywood, into the past. "I thought he'd pay up. I thought he was good for it. But he just got crazier and crazier, and by the time he up and died, I was already six months along with you. It was too late."
Oh my god. She wasn't looking into the past. She was looking through the wall at Mrs. Dutton's house.
"Why didn't you give me to her?" I whispered.
"I was supposed to get fifty thousand dollars for having you. I got nothing, so she got nothing. Actually, I got less than nothing. I got you."
I crumpled to my knees and she threw the stub of her cigarette on the pile of mail in front her. I covered my eyes to try to stop the huge tears that were streaming down my face, which is probably the only thing that kept my eyelashes from being singed off when the blast of heat hit me.
I heard a whooshing noise, and I instinctively rocked backwards and fell through the doorway. I opened my eyes and screamed. The mail in front of my mom, the pile she'd spit vodka all over, had burst into flames.
My mother was screaming too, I could see her through the bright orange flames, beating at the piles of pap
er that were blazing all around her.
"Mom, get out! Get out of there!"
But it was like she couldn't hear me, or couldn't walk, or I don't know what. She just sat there, flapping and screeching, as her clothes caught fire.
I scrambled to my feet and took a step towards the doorway of the shed, but the heat drove me back. I whirled around and ran to the house, screaming for someone to call 911. I grabbed the hose that lay in a disorganized pile against the side of the trailer and wasted precious seconds trying to find the end that attached to the spigot coming from the side of the house. I finally located it and attached it, and turned the water on full blast.
I ran, dragging the hose towards the shed, my thumb pressed over the tip of the hose to make the spray stronger. I pointed it at the shed as I ran. When I was five feet away, my feet got jerked out from under me. The hose had reached its end. I pointed it at the shed, but the water pressure wasn't strong enough. I was getting the doorway wet, and maybe a couple feet beyond, but it wasn't reaching my mom.
The flames popped and snapped, and I realized that was the only sound I heard. There were no sounds of approaching sirens. And there was no more screaming.
I dropped the hose and ran back towards the house, stumbling through the back door. I ripped the phone off the wall and punched in 911, my fingers barely finding the right buttons, they were trembling so hard.
"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?"
"Fire!" I rattled off the address and I'm pretty sure the operator told me help was on the way, but I was too distracted when a bleary-eyed Monica waddled around the corner.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" she wheezed, her asthmatic voice sounding particularly tight.
"The shed's on fire. Get a bucket or something. Mom's trapped in there."
I rummaged frantically under the sink and came up with one of those two-sided pails that people are supposed to keep cleaning supplies in, but the only thing in this one was a dried up old sponge. I shook it onto the floor and I ran out the back door and over to the shed. I was filling the pail with the hose when I realized two things. One, it was a lost cause. Two, Monica hadn't followed me out the back door. I looked up and saw her face peering out the window. She looked…the phrase that crossed my mind was 'mildly interested.'
I threw the bucket of water at the shed's door and crumpled to the ground. I was still sprawled on the ground when the firemen arrived, and one of them lifted me in his arms and took me away.
TWENTY
I ended up staying at my dad's apartment for a few days after all. I hadn't thought I would, but I honestly didn’t think I could look Joanna in the face after finding out her dead husband was my father. I needed some time to process that.
It was weird, because the fact that my mother almost died…well…it really didn’t seem to be affecting me much at all. I kept waiting for a big break down, where I'd fall apart and the tears and emotions would come flooding over me, but it just didn't happen. Even for the few hours that I thought she was dead, I'd felt nothing. Joe had been the one to come pick me up at the hospital, and tell me that my mom was a couple floors above me in the intensive care unit. She'd managed to scramble backward in the shed away from the fire. The shed was already rotting, it hadn't taken much strength for her to punch a hole in the back wall and breathe enough fresh air to keep herself alive until the fire department got there and put out the flames. She had some significant burns, I guess, and had suffered from smoke inhalation, but she was alive.
I had no desire to see her. So I didn't.
I skipped a few days of school. Grady came over to visit me a couple times. Kaia couldn't come because she was grounded, but Grady told me that he had taken her to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and that it had gone well. There was a special little quirk in his smile that made me think it had gone even better than he was letting on, but I didn't press him on it. I'd pump Kaia for details as soon as I went back to school.
Grady wasn't a big gossip, so he wasn't going to fill me in on who was hooking up with who. But we still had plenty of things to talk about. I enjoyed his company, and when he said he was praying for me and my family, I didn't roll my eyes or anything. He was my friend, and I knew that mattered to him, so I was happy that he was doing it for me.
The one person I really wanted to see didn't come though.
Of course, he probably had no idea where I was. I had only just found out about my dad's secret apartment, why would I expect Derek to be able to track me down here?
I probably should have just gone to school and seen him there, but honestly, I was worried about running into Joanna. What if she was at the school dropping off stuff for driver’s ed classes or something? What was I going to say to her? 'Uh, Joanna? You know how your husband was doing some crazy things before he died? Yeah. Add one more.'
My mother had nearly died. Nobody was going to give me any crap about taking a few days off. So I did. But I yearned for Derek. His face kept popping into my mind…I could hear his laughter echo in my own heartbeats. I kept picturing the way he'd looked at me after he'd helped get Kaia into her car. Or the way his shoulders had straightened when I'd told him I wasn't Grady's girlfriend. Or the way his lightest touch sent sparks through my body.
It was late Thursday night and I was thinking about him again, picturing the way he'd grinned at me before he'd run back to make sure his house hadn't blown up. I guess it hadn't. Big gossip or not, I'm sure Grady would have told me about it if Derek's house had actually exploded. I saw Derek's grin in my mind's eye, and heard his voice…"You need me, you know where I'll be."
Where I'll be…where I'll be… Derek's voice bounced around in my head twice more before it fully struck me. The instant it did, I couldn't believe it had taken me so long to think of it. I hopped up off my dad's couch, threw on my jacket, and grabbed my car keys.
I drove to my old trailer and cut through the backyard. There was still yellow caution tape surrounding the burned out shed. I wondered if they were still investigating the fire or not, or if the caution tape was just a relic from the other night. If it was up to someone in my family to remove that stuff, it would probably be there until the apocalypse.
The dogs whined plaintively when I passed by, which was weird, they usually barked their freaking heads off. I stopped and sighed. With my mother in the hospital they were probably starving. I couldn't imagine anyone was feeding them. Dammit. I couldn't believe I was stopping to do this. I hated those mean-ass dogs, but I didn't want them to suffer. I strode to the edge of the house and grabbed the twenty-pound bag of dog food that rested against the side of the metal trailer. I carried it over to the chain link fence that surrounded the dogs' enclosure, and, grunting, I heaved it over the top.
It fell to the ground and split open, spilling dog food all over the ground. The noise was almost drowned out by the sound of scampering paws as the three dogs descended on the food pile.
"You're welcome," I said sarcastically. "Next time, maybe you'll think twice before you eat my clothes."
Turning my back on them, I walked the rest of the way across the backyard and edged into the trees that bordered the property. The woods weren't as brightly lit as they had been the last time I'd followed this trail, the moon was partially obscured by scudding clouds. But I didn't need much light, I felt like I knew the way by heart. It wasn't a difficult hike, however, when I pushed aside the long skirt-like branches of the tree my heart was pounding uncontrollably.
The fort for fairies was abandoned. I hung my head and sighed. It had been too much to hope for.
"Hey, Baby. I wondered when you'd get here." My head snapped up as Derek stepped from behind the tree's trunk and crossed over to me. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tightly. I snuggled my head against his chest. Finally, cupping my face in his hands, he kissed me, his thumbs making tiny circles on my jaw line.
We clung to each other for several minutes. We sank to the ground and cuddled at the trunk of the tree. Between lo
ng stretches of kissing, I told him everything that had happened.
He tightened his arms around me. "You're lucky to be alive." Kissing me again, his fingertips trailed down the side of my neck. "We should get you a tattoo too," he murmured.
"No thanks," I said. "I'm not Irish…at least, I don't think I am. I guess anything's possible though, huh?"
Derek laughed and kissed my throat. "Yes, anything is possible. Hey, speaking of, I watched you cheering at the game on Friday. JV's never cheered a game before that I know of. Pretty crazy, the whole varsity cheer squad getting food poisoning at the same time."
"I know, right?" Food poisoning? More like actual poisoning. But I wasn't going to correct Derek.
"You guys were awesome. Better than last year's varsity squad for sure. I couldn't keep my eyes off you. How did it feel?"
My eyes lit up. "Do you know how when you imagine that something is going to be unbelievably amazing and incredible and then it actually happens and it's like, a thousand times better than you thought it would be?"
Derek's eyes grew dark and his lips parted. He drew my face to his again and slid his hands inside my shirt. My breath caught in my throat as shivers raced up and down my spine.
His voice was a husky whisper, his lips a millimeter from mine. "Ask me that again in a couple hours."
It was a long time before we were capable of talking again.
I lay with my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. "So what should I call you?" he asked me.
I was pretty sure I must have missed a word or two over the thudding of his heart. "I don't have a cell phone, and I don't even know the number at my dad's apartment."
"No," he grinned. "Not can I call you. Cause I kind of assumed I could. You know, if you had a phone. For now, we'll have to talk at school." His grin got a little wider, sexier. "Or here."
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