“It’s okay.” Happy’s smiley mask is back on again. “It’s kind of there. You can’t not look at it.”
“Do you know what it is?” I whisper. “A boy or a girl?”
Happy shakes her head. “I hope it’s a boy. Things would be easier for him.” She points back at her stomach. “He won’t end up like this.”
Lots of men wear boots. And this is Clairmont. It’s muddy. If I didn’t walk through a bunch of puddles on the way home, my shoes would always be covered in mud. It’s totally plausible—barely even a coincidence—that Drake would be wearing muddy boots.
The school nurse is holding the wad of tissues and masking tape I used to cover the slash on my ankle. She stares at me.
“Sorry? What?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes. “How’d this happen?”
I shrug. “I’m a klutz. I tripped.” She knows I’m lying. I force a smile. I’m worn to the bone. I couldn’t tell Mom what happened, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stand at the bus stop without glancing over my shoulder every ten seconds.
She clicks her tongue and shakes her head but rinses my ankle with saline and places a sterile bandage over it.
She presses extra bandages into my hand. “Keep it clean. If it starts to look infected, come back right away. And no dance team for a couple of days.”
I nod. I couldn’t dance right now even if my ankle were fine.
—
Jordan jumps up from the table when he sees my gray-tinged, hollowed-out face and limping body. I grab the coffee and chug it. “Will you give me a ride home?” I don’t wait for him to answer before turning and walking back to the door. The girl with the diamond in her nose stares at me. Our eyes meet. She gets it. My warning to her.
Jordan leans against the side of his blue soft-top Jeep in the drizzle. He opens the door for me. I climb inside and wince as my ankle taps the seat. He gets in, and I wait for him to ask me what happened. He doesn’t. Maybe Drake told him something. Or maybe he’s just giving me space. I like that.
He drives to Bluebird Estates without prompting me for directions. “Do you live around here?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, on one of the islands.” He waves a hand dismissively.
“Oh.” I sink down into the seat. We’re inland. There’s no water nearby. I feel my adrenaline rise. Why would he hang around No Limit in the bad part of Clairmont when he had to have passed a hundred nicer stores to get here?
After last night in the woods, I don’t feel like I can trust anyone. I glance down at his feet. He’s wearing canvas tennis shoes. They’re perfectly clean.
When we pull into the parking lot of Bluebird Estates, a cleansing relief washes over me. I need to get out of this Jeep.
He reaches for my arm. “Please, Kayla. I want to talk to you.” His fingers wrap around my wrist gently. He’s letting me know I can pull away. He’ll let me leave.
I open the door a crack as a compromise. The dome light goes on. Shadows create black holes where his eyes should be. I take my arm back, but I stay in the car.
“I used to live in a place like this in Florida. When I was little we lived in a house. Then my mom got sick. My dad worked in a factory, but he didn’t make enough to cover the medical bills. We lost the house and pretty much everything else.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, but I can see the pain on his face twisting his profile.
“We ended up living off the government. Mom got better. She was able to go back to work. Her first week back, Dad’s accident happened.” His voice cracks. It’s raining hard outside. I close the door all the way.
He’s quiet for a long time. I want to ask, but I don’t. I understand some things are too hard to talk about. When anyone has asked me about the night I was five and got taken away for the second time, I shake my head and change the subject.
He takes a deep breath. “The police came looking for Mom. I was twelve. I’ll never forget that moment before I opened the door. I was eating ice cream and watching some stupid cartoon. The cops wouldn’t tell me what they wanted. They asked me over and over again where Mom was. She worked as a nurse in the hospital. By the time they found her, she already knew.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. During his story, I couldn’t help but lean toward him. Our shoulders are almost touching.
“A million lawyers came out of the woodwork trying to convince Mom to sue. They said the factory’s safety record was abysmal. It was our chance to teach them a lesson. But Mom couldn’t see through her grief. She gave up. I had to make our meals, wash the clothes, and go to the store.
“When the factory offered her a big check, she took it. But the ghost of Dad was everywhere. Mom couldn’t cope. She sent me to my uncle’s house, and she left. Months later, she called and said she was living in a big house on an island. I was just starting high school then, and I didn’t want to leave my friends.
“My uncle’s a good guy, but he doesn’t know anything about kids. He made sure I was fed and had what I needed, but other than that, I was on my own.”
He points at Bluebird Estates. “This is more my home than the island. Mom thought moving far away and buying a huge house would make things better. But she works six shifts a week, and I can’t stay in that blood money house. Places like this remind me of a time when we were all together. We didn’t have much, but we were a family.”
He rubs his eyes. Overwhelming sadness and sympathy fill me. My story is different, but I understand in my core what he’s feeling. I reach for his hand and cover it with mine. He flips his palm over, and our fingers intertwine.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to lay all that on you.”
“I’m glad you did.” And I am. I feel like we’re equals now. In this world facing our demons together. It’s too late for me to let go of him now.
But there is something I have to ask after what happened last night. “Who’s Drake?”
He’s alarmed by the question. Maybe even jealous. My heart lifts in my chest.
“We were friends in high school. Right after I moved here, his mom kicked him out. He had nowhere to go, so he made his way to Clairmont. He’s staying with me until he can get his life sorted out.”
“Oh,” I say, and focus on our hands. Drake saved me from spending the night weeping on the sidewalk of No Limit. If Jordan doesn’t already know, I’m not going to out Drake as a dealer.
“I should go.” I don’t want to, but the last twenty-four hours weigh on me. I need to sleep. I need to figure out how to do all the things I have to while still keeping Jordan in my life.
Jordan grips my hand and gazes out his window. “I’m going back to Florida for a few days to help my uncle with something.”
He turns to me. In the darkness of the Jeep and the dim glow of Bluebird Estates, his eyes have character. They sparkle with flecks of otherwise-hidden gold. “I’ll be back on Saturday. Will you be okay?”
Panic surges through me. I glance over my shoulder into the dark woods surrounding Bluebird Estates. I don’t want him to worry, so I give him my bright Clairmont Explorers Dance Team smile. “Yeah, I have a ride for the rest of the week.”
I open the door, reilluminating the dome light. The gold in his eyes disappears. They’re plain muddy brown again. He pulls my arm into him before letting go. “I’m glad we met.”
“Me too.”
—
I use Paige’s phone to call in sick to No Limit. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve watched the news every day. They haven’t caught him. The man in black is still out there. The thought of passing through those woods again by myself makes my vision go blurry and my breath quicken.
My ankle hurts. I skip dance team and ride the bus home. And I sit in my tiny room in Bluebird Estates and listen to toilets flush and bass pound and the neighbors fight.
I tell Mom I have a cold. She comes in and out looking concerned, offering me things, like I’m an invited guest. At dinnertime, she brings me a bologna sandwich on white bread with may
onnaise. The food stamper special. We don’t pay rent on this dump, the utilities are taken care of, and the government covers the cost of the generic food I bring home from No Limit.
We’re parasites.
I choke down the sandwich, only because Mom is watching, proud of herself for doing something motherly. She wishes she were the kind of mother who bustled around in an apron making pancakes and cherry pies.
I would rather she take out the trash.
A woman comes out of Finn’s as I’m opening the trash chute. Her hair’s frizzed up and sprayed. Her tight top isn’t able to contain her sagging boobs. Her miniskirt’s still pushed up in the back. She pulls it down. Her eyes travel from the top of my head down to my feet and back up again. She sneers. “This the girl, Finny?” she calls into the apartment behind her.
Finn steps out wearing only boxers. “Yeah, that’s her.”
I’m trapped between them and the stairs. The only place to go is down.
“She’s kind of fat,” I hear the woman say as I turn the corner.
Calling it a lobby makes it sound like it should have squishy chairs, a front desk, and a doorman. It’s actually a small entrance that smells like pee. The open mouths of broken mailboxes yawn against the wall. The first-floor hallway shoots off from both sides. Some of the lighting is out; some of it blinks uncontrollably. This place is a death trap. Someday, it will either collapse or catch fire and take us all down with it.
I flatten myself into a dark corner until I hear the woman’s spiked heels on the stairs. Her pupils are dilated. She sways back and forth, like she’s fighting a heavy wind. Tomorrow, this whole night will have been erased from her memory.
She walks with a pseudoseductive swing of the hips to a car parked on the street. I step out of my hiding place and up to the glass. It’s a black Camaro. Of course it is. Does Drake think he’s smarter than the narcs? The hooker leans into the front window. Her skirt rides up to reveal a red thong underneath. Drake palms her something. She steps back, satisfied, and stumbles toward the woods.
I march out the front door. Drake shouldn’t treat Jordan like this. Jordan took him in. He shouldn’t repay that kindness by dealing drugs.
Drake is watching the hooker disappear into the trees when I knock hard on the window. He jumps.
As the window lowers, I place my hands in clear sight on top of the car. If the narcs are watching, I don’t want them trying to bust me.
“Kayla,” Drake says curtly. I examine his eyes to see if he’s high. I don’t find any signs. I’ve never seen any signs that he takes the drugs he sells.
“Are you trying to get caught?” I snap.
“Caught doing what?”
“Seriously? I just watched you palm something to that hooker. All of Bluebird Estates saw it.”
He sighs. “Don’t worry about it, Kayla.”
“Yeah, right,” I scoff. “What if Jordan finds out? You live in his house. What if you get him busted too?” I’m so mad I could burst into tears.
Drake turns his head and examines me. “You really care about him, don’t you?”
I nod. My cheeks tighten. I blink rapidly. I’m not going to cry in front of Drake.
He sighs again. “Okay, Kayla. If it will make you feel more comfortable. No more drugs.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Really,” he says, and flashes me a little boy grin that sends my memory right back to the old Finn again.
It almost makes me believe him.
—
“Kayla, Kayla, Kayla.” Albert shakes his head. I sit in a hard plastic chair in his immaculate office. He stands over me with crossed arms. “You called in sick three days in a row. I’m gonna need a doctor’s note.”
“I don’t have one.” I look down at the cheap throw rug covering a stain in the even cheaper carpet.
He sighs. “That’s strike two.”
—
A jogger finds the rapidly decomposing body of Finn’s hooker a week later. The story’s buried in the second half of the news. Another lost soul dying alone in the woods. The cops think it’s an overdose. With all their resources tied up looking for the attacker of those two girls, the hooker is not worthy of an investigation.
My fingers pluck a chip from Happy’s plate. My teeth chew. Salt coats my tongue.
It’s one tiny thing. No one will ever know. I’ve been a model citizen. I check the black monster a hundred times a day. When it blinks, I take care of it. I don’t wait. I don’t play chicken.
It’s not even a thing, really.
I take another chip.
It won’t be much of a risk. I will be in public. I will be doing what people do. It will be normal. Everyone goes on Facebook, and I have to know. I have to know what has happened without me. What I’ve missed.
I realize it’s quiet. Happy’s fork dangles in midair in front of her mouth. Tomás watches me from over his phone. Adrian stands frozen by the table, holding a water pitcher.
The chip shreds my throat.
—
The San Justo public library smells funny. Like too many bodies and books with dirt glued to their plastic wrappers by decades of children’s snot. I hunt through my wallet for the library card I don’t remember getting. But it’s there. Shiny and brand-new.
I glance around. It’s after school, so the library is full of people. Mothers with huge bags of books browse Thanksgiving displays while their uncooperative kids flop around behind them. A few people I recognize from school flirt at tables while they pretend to do their homework. Middle schoolers sock one another in the arms until a librarian scolds them.
Most of the computers are full, but I find an empty one at the end of a row. The guy behind me is playing solitaire. The guy to my right—acne-scarred face, bad teeth—is pursuing smiling, fake women on a dating site. He looks over at me. I snap my eyes down.
I turn my screen ever so slightly away from him. A librarian organizing books on a cart gives me a dirty look. I turn the screen back. I wait for her to say something. To stomp over, hit the power button on the computer, and demand I leave. She stops paying attention to me. Soon, no one is paying attention. I’m invisible.
I log in with my library card number and open the browser. To spite my face, a smile creeps across my lips.
For twenty minutes, I fill my head with everything I want to know. My insides feel glee and despair in equal parts, mixed together to form a paste that coats my internal organs.
Thirty minutes. I go deeper and deeper. The man on the dating site leaves, frustration evident in his gait. The chair next to me pulls out. I’m too wrapped up in getting away with it to notice who sits down next to me.
“Whatcha doing, Sport?”
I calmly, despite the way my heart thrums, click the browser closed.
I turn and look Teddy in the eye. Thirty minutes of freedom has made me cocky. “Homework.”
“Sure, homework,” he says, nodding. “For what class?”
“Life Skills.” My voice is steady. It gives me a thrill.
He shakes his head. “They consider Facebook a life skill? Well, that makes me feel old.” He laughs and shoots the librarian, whose attention is now focused squarely on us, an aw shucks grin.
“What are you doing here?” My gaze goes down. My shoulders slump.
He taps a gardening book on the table next to the keyboard. “Your mother was saying she thought some flowers in front would be nice. I told her I’d find something that would be pretty.”
He stands up. “You want a ride home?”
My head shakes even though my legs yearn for any escape from having to walk the two miles over unfamiliar terrain.
“See you later.” He points the gardening book at me like it’s a threat.
—
My house glows like a beacon in a wasteland. Sickly, sticky bushes still in their nursery pots stand guard by the front door.
I go inside. Mom is flushed and humming softly in the kitchen. I stop in the doorway and d
rop my backpack.
On a rickety, secondhand desk, sits a computer. An old colossus tethered to the wall. The chunky monitor points toward the kitchen, allowing for free viewing from everywhere in the room.
Mom hurries over and places her hand on the contraption, like it’s a prizewinning steer—hesitantly, but beaming with pride.
“Teddy had an old one lying around. Now you won’t have to go to the library to do your homework.”
She waits for me to share her enthusiasm. I don’t. “And did you see the bushes out front? Teddy’s going to plant them this weekend. This is what they will look like in the spring.” She flips open the library’s gardening book and shoves it in front of my nose. Her finger points to a spindly plant with dusty green leaves and cone-like magenta flowers.
Her eyes search my face. “Nice,” I say. Every muscle in her body relaxes.
“I’m making dinner.” She dances back into the kitchen.
“Okay.” I wander to my room to deal with the black monster. It’s flashing. It has been from the second I walked out of the library.
I press the call button. It rings twice. There’s a party on the other end. Staticky chatter, silver clanking, crystal ringing, a woman’s high-pitched laugh. It fades away.
“I thought we had a deal, Betsy.”
“We do,” I say. “It has only been like forty-five minutes since you called.”
He clucks at me. I know he’s shaking his head in disappointment. “You logged into Facebook? What are people going to think when they see a dead girl logged into Facebook?”
“I was careful. No one saw, no one knows I was on there.” I have that pleading whine I hate so much in my voice.
“Speaking of getting caught, your ID,” he says, referring to the piece of untouched plastic in my wallet that declares me to be Betsy Hopewell, sixteen, resident of San Justo, Texas, and qualified driver, “has been deleted from the system.” He lets it roll off his tongue, as if he’s licking an ice cream spoon.
“You don’t exist.” He laughs. “If the cops run it, they’ll come back with nothing. They’ll have to use fingerprints to identify you. They have this big database.” In my mind, I see him waving his hand through the air to demonstrate how big. “And you are entered there as a fugitive.”
The Truth Beneath the Lies Page 8
