“This place is a dump,” she said bluntly, pushing past King. She looked around the room as King shut the door, latched it, and took another peek out the window.
“Any possibility you were followed?” King asked. She ignored him, flitting about the room like a fly trying to find an open window.
“Do you know how many people a year contract diseases from places like this?” she asked, eyeing the bathroom with a look of pure disgust. “Statistically, given the age of the motel and approximate patronage—based, of course, on available parking spaces and number of maid carts in the hallway—there is essentially not a single spot of this room, or any of the other rooms in this building, that hasn’t at one time or another been defiled by semen or fecal matter.” It’s like she didn’t breathe between sentences.
She walked around the room, appraising everything from the chord leading up to the lamp to the base boards. She wasn’t much older than I was. “Did you know that two thirds of all cases of food poisoning aren’t actually food poisoning at all, but just the side effect of some little murderous, single-celled, bullshit organism waiting on your hands to jump onto your food and then into your mouth and digestive track to cause you, if you’re lucky, hours of indigestion and spastic colon problems, and if you’re not lucky, your sudden and untimely demise?” She shook her head. “Death by diarrhea.”
I was getting a headache.
Country-slow was a term I was sure was invented in Jessep, where life moved along slower than a tractor driving down the main road. This girl was motoring around the room at such a high rate of speed that she looked and sounded like she was stuck in fast forward.
“Rage!” King snapped. The girl spun around from where she was inspecting the doorframe of the bathroom. “Do you think you were followed?” he repeated.
The girl scoffed as if what King was suggesting was impossible. “If I were being followed, I would have thrown them off. If I were being followed, I wouldn’t be standing in this disgusting motel room right now wondering what microbial being is going to do me in.” She rested her hands on the strap of the bright blue duffle bag slung across her shoulder, that read LEE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL across it in big white block lettering. She looked up at the old popcorn ceiling. “You know me better than that.”
“Your name is Rage?” I asked, trying not sound as surprised and confused as I was. She was barely over five feet tall. She wore a pink fitted T-shirt that said something about wearing pink on Wednesdays, cutoff white shorts, and white Keds. “Are you a friend of Bear’s?” I asked, trying to put together what the fuck was going on.
The girl turned her attentions from King to me like she was just realizing I was in the room. She looked me over and smiled sweetly. It wasn’t the kind of smile that screamed friendly or outgoing as her casual attire and perky personality would suggest. This was a pageant smile. A rehearsed smile.
Badly rehearsed.
She looked as if she were in pain.
Rage moved back to the door and opened it. I thought at first that she was leaving but she unhooked the plastic do-not-disturb sign hanging from the inside of the door and moved it to the outside, before closing it again and turning back toward us. “Yes, my name is Rage, and no I’m not a friend of Bear’s. I’m a friend of whoever pays me the most, which right now is King and Bear.” She pointed her thumb to King. “And by the way, Rage is short for Ragina.”
“No, it’s not,” King said, calling her out.
“Okay, it’s not,” she said, dropping the fake smile. “The truth is that my name might or might not have something to do with a possible minor-to-major extreme anger management issue I may or may not have had at one point, or possibly still have now.”
I looked at her but didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t. I was stunned into silence.
“We aren’t staying here are we? I’m not a fucking gross biker. I can’t just snuggle up and sleep in a bed that I know is breeding living and breathing organisms and is full of crusted leftovers of failed impregnations.” She shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on the fucking towels.
“You sleep now?” King asked.
“No,” Rage answered flatly, still searching the ceiling. She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I should tell you I was being followed so I can get the heck out of this Bates motel situation over here.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, I see mold!” she exclaimed, pointing to a few black specs around a crack in the corner by the door. She bent over at the waist and put her hands around her throat like she was suddenly suffocating. Each intake of air sounded like a very loud, very phlegmy struggle to breathe. “I can’t breathe. The mold triggered my asthma. I’m having an attack! I need my inhaler!”
“What can I do?” I asked, springing up and over to her, in hopes of saving her life.
“The warehouse explosion in Ocala. That you?” King asked, unfazed by Rage’s predicament.
Rage stood up straight and smiled, and I had to lean to the left in order to avoid being whipped by her ponytail. Her asthma attack suddenly forgotten and her eyes turned dark, her pupils grew large, like she’d just snorted a line of something. “That was beautiful wasn’t it?” she said excitedly, jumping up and down, clapping her hands together. “My best work yet. A symphony if you will. It was magical.”
“You blew up a building, Rage. You’re not fucking Mozart,” King said sarcastically.
She looked off dreamily into the distance. “Mozart was a visionary. His brain saw things, the world, differently.” She raised and lowered her arms, holding an imaginary baton as if like she were a conductor, instructing her orchestra, “And so do I.”
It was King’s turn to roll his eyes.
Rage dropped her arms and tapped her foot. She held her bag tightly to her chest. “I don’t know you, but unfortunately if we stay here any longer, I am going to blow up this fucking motel, and you might be collateral damage if that happens, and I super love your hair so that would be a real shame, since I’ve been put in charge of keeping you safe and all.”
“Her?” I asked King, not caring if she could hear me. King’s knuckles were white and it looked as if it pained him not to set the girl in her place after she’d insulted him.
“Oh. My. Shit,” Rage exclaimed. “I think some of the mold in the corner just moved. Let’s motor before I decide that babysitting Jem over here is a really fucking bad idea.”
King opened the door and we filed out.
“This is going to be fun!” she announced sarcastically, as she got into the truck and tossed her bag to King who set it in the truck bed. She shifted to the middle as I got in beside her and we headed off to Jessep.
Bear was in jail for me, because of me. If he wanted me to go home and he wanted Barbarian Barbie to accompany me, then I would do it.
Rage popped her gum in my ear, and I bit my lip to the point of almost drawing blood. “It smells like sweat in here,” she complained, turning all the air conditioning vents toward herself.
Trust, I reminded myself.
After all, it wasn’t like it was going to be that long.
I mean, it couldn’t be that long because Bear was going to get out soon and everything would be okay.
I started saying it over and over again. By the time we breezed into Jessep it almost sounded believable.
Almost.
CHAPTER NINE
Thia
It was another lifetime ago when I was last in Jessep. At least that’s how it seemed, although in reality it hadn’t been very long at all.
Yet the stench of rotting oranges was more pungent than I remembered, so strong that Rage covered her mouth too just as we passed the WELCOME TO JESSEP sign. If possible, the dirt roads had gotten even harder to navigate, as evidenced by the truck bouncing from side to side as I tried—and failed—to dodge crater-like potholes and large rocks.
Home.
Is that still what this place was?
It didn’t feel that way.
We passed the small cross on the side of the road marking where Kevin Little rolled his John Deer, trapping himself under the shallow water of a retention ditch. I never knew Kevin, but I knew his family. The cross had been there for as long as I could remember. Wilted wild flowers were piled up on the ground around it. Limp balloons tangled with each other, the strings were probably the only thing holding the warped wood upright.
That cross used to be the first sign that I was coming home. It was the first thing to give me that warm and fuzzy feeling of familiarity whenever I turned off the main road and onto the first dirt road that lead into Jessep.
Coming into town this time was different.
It seemed familiar, but it no longer felt like home.
I don’t know when that happened. Was it when my parents died and I skipped town? Was it before that and I just hadn’t noticed?
In Jessep, the children of farmers either became farmers themselves or married farmers. I’d known from very early on that it would fall on me to take over Andrews Grove. It was all I knew. It wasn’t that I liked the idea. I never really even thought about it as a like or dislike. It wasn’t a choice. It was just what was going to happen. There were no plans for my college education. The closest thing to college I would ever hope to get was a few nighttime business classes and certification courses held every few months in the cafeteria of the combined elementary/middle school.
But then my parents checked out, and I was running the grove before I could even sign up for the courses. I tried my best with the knowledge I knew from growing up in the grove to save it, but it all went to shit so fast, it was like I blinked and it was all over.
I’d failed.
* * *
“I don’t want to go in there,” I said, staring at the front porch.
“I had the power turned back on,” King said, misunderstanding my reasoning’s for not wanting to go into the little house of horrors of my past. Rage on the other hand skipped up the steps and kicked open the front door, disappearing inside.
“It smells in here,” she shouted, making a long and loud gagging noise.
“Is she really the one you guys wanted to watch out for me?” I asked King. “I mean, I know you said she blew up a building but are you sure she wasn’t just trying to deodorize the place or something? She seems to have a thing about smells.”
“Don’t let the pink fool you,” he said, his voice deep and hard. “That tiny psycho germaphobe in there is the deadliest fucking person, well, maybe second deadliest, I’ve ever known and it’s because she doesn’t take sides. She has no conscience. It’s good that we got to her before Chop did or you’d be meeting a whole other side to Rage. One that ends up with you not breathing.”
“Oh,” I muttered, not sure if I should be happy or sad about Bear choosing to leave me in the care of Rambo, prom queen edition. King strode up to the porch and shouted something to Rage who appeared again in the doorway, twirling the end of her ponytail.
“Ray or I will call to check on you,” King stated as he walked right past me and got back into the truck. Within seconds he’d already backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the road. I couldn’t see the truck but I could make out the dust billowing behind his truck and over the trees as King made his way out of Jessep.
I glanced up at Rage who pressed her lips together and frowned. I couldn’t help but wish I was still in that truck with him.
I shuffled up to the house but stopped just short of the broken down deteriorating steps.
“You shoot?” Rage asked, holding up one of my first place blue ribbons.
“Yeah. A bit.”
“Wanna have a little competition?” she asked with a mischievous smile, pulling two guns from her duffle bag.
Rage may be able to blow up buildings and if what King said was true, a lot more than that. But in a shooting competition I had a strong doubt that she could beat me and maybe a little distraction from reality was what I needed. After all, I had no idea how much time we had on our hands.
“Okay,” I said, pointing behind her. “There’s a fence on the back of the property. Might still be some of my old targets out there—”
“Nope. Not exactly what I had in mind,” Rage interrupted, checking her reflection in the chrome of one of her guns. She tossed me the other which I thankfully caught. “Come on,” she said, heading back up into the house.
“I can’t,” I said, twisting Bear’s ring in my hand.
Rage narrowed her eyes at me, “I figured that when I saw the look on your face when we first pulled up, but I have an idea. At least come up the steps.”
Reluctantly, I took the steps slowly, one by one, cringing with each familiar creak. I stopped “What bothers you most about this place?” Rage asked from the other side of the screen.
“Everything,” I admitted.
“Be more specific,” Rage said, letting out an exasperated sigh. “I already know that it holds some bad memories, yada yada, killed your parents here, yada yada.”
“Something tells me the last one wasn’t exactly a guess.”
Rage smiled sheepishly. “I know everything about everything.”
“Good to know.”
“So tell me what you hate about it. You know, besides the obvious, being-a-shit-hole, reason.”
“Well,” I started. “I hate that this is where my brother died, but I was young, so what I really hate is that my mother never changed his room or got rid of any of his stuff. It was like a ghost lived with us, one she liked better than me or my dad.”
“Keep going,” Rage said. “Close your eyes.” I did as she said and the images of all that was wrong with that place flooded my mind. I heard the squeak of the screen door open and started to open my eyes again. “Keep them shut,” she ordered.
I took a deep breath. “I hate the family portrait in the living room because my mom had it painted by one of her friends years after my brother died and instead of it being of the three of us my mom had my brother painted in. I loved my brother, and we had lots of pictures of him all around the house and I loved them all, but I felt like it was a slap in the face to me and my dad. We were alive, yet she treated us like we were the ones who were dead.”
“Good,” Rage said, tugging on my arm, making me take a step forward. “More.”
“I hate the rocking chair in my brother’s room where she was sitting when I realized she killed my dad. I hate that I know the exact place in my parents’ room where my father died. I hate the table in the kitchen where we had Sunday dinner and would all smile and talk about our days like there was nothing wrong. Those weren’t dinners. Those were lies.”
I felt another tug and took another step. “Okay, good. Now open your eyes.” I did.
“Wow,” I said. I was standing in the middle of the living room. “How did you do that?” I asked, noticing the panicked feeling was gone.
Rage replied with, “Because recently someone taught me how to overcome a fear, and I thought maybe I could pass that along to you.”
“Yeah, but how?”
“Easy peasy,” Rage said. Turning suddenly she aimed her gun at the family portrait hanging above the mantle of the little fireplace in the living room and fired, shattering the glass, sending it raining down to the floor, leaving a dusty rectangular mark on the wall where it had hung. She turned back around. “You take the power back.”
It was like suddenly something inside of me broke and without thinking I took a step past Rage, walking around the broken portrait in the living room in complete and total awe. “Yes,” I said, looking back up to Rage. “Let’s do it.”
Rage and I spent the rest of the afternoon making a competition of setting up vases, photos, stuffed animals, plates, and other objects of my hatred, taking turns obliterating each and every one of them.
Neither one of us missed a single shot.
“Have you ever missed?” Rage asked from her perch on the counter, as she watched me sweep glass into a dust pan.
“Yes,” I admitted, remembering the park and how I almost got Bear and I killed because I hit Mono’s shoulder instead of his chest. “Once, maybe twice.”
Only when shooting at people.
“You?”
Rage swung her legs back and forth and scrunched up her little nose. “Just once, although I’m starting to think I did it on purpose.”
We were both quiet after that as I cleaned up the mess, and Rage cleaned her guns. She’d been right. In order to overcome my fear I had to take the power back, which meant I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing when it came to my fear of losing Bear.