“I asked first.”
“Teacher in-service,” I said. “Your turn.”
“Water pump is going.”
The pickup, a 1982 Ford F-150 XL with a five-liter, small-block, V-8 engine, was going to outlive us both. Some days he’d clean and fiddle and fuss over it like the future of the world depended on it being able to shift smoothly and not overheat.
“You should be working on the rig instead.” I nodded in the direction of the half-collapsed barn. The cab of his eighteen-wheeler had been parked there since the day we moved in. “You’ll never get the price you’re asking if you don’t.”
“Selling it as is.” He grabbed a wrench from the tool bench and slid back under the pickup.
I found the other creeper next to the trash can and rolled under the front end next to him. The smell of gas, oil, rust, and coolant relaxed me a little. The half-ton of metal above us kept us safe from everything out there. I took a deep breath and the knot in my stomach loosened.
“Another great day at school, huh?” he asked.
“Hardly,” I said. “Did you play football with Ms. Benedetti’s brother?”
“I played basketball.” He wiped the grime off a nut with his rag. “Lou Benedetti. Haven’t thought about him for years. Big kid, so uncoordinated he could barely walk. Spent most of his time on the bench.”
“You love football. Why didn’t you go out for the team?”
“Because your grandfather wanted me to,” Dad answered. “Get me a quarter-inch ratchet, will you? Ten-mil socket.”
I rolled out, found the right wrench in the tool chest, rolled back under and handed it to him.
“Why were you talking to Ms. Benedetti?” he asked. “Math?”
“She said I should ask you about partying at the quarry.”
“Boring story. Great bonfire, couple of arrests, and one knocked-out tooth. I didn’t do it, by the way.”
“Doesn’t sound boring to me.”
“There’s a lot of stories about that place. Most of them are bullshit, but a couple kids died there. Not at our party. That’s why it was considered boring.”
“Ms. Benedetti called your work number. Whoever she talked to said you quit.”
The wind blew a few dead leaves under the truck. Dad’s mouth tightened. The shrapnel scars along his jaw glowed like a fragments of bone in a bed of cold ash. “What did you tell her?”
“Did you quit or did they fire you?” I asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
His tone of voice meant that the discussion on that topic was officially closed, but he was wrong. The difference between walking out or being kicked out meant everything. Moving back here and getting a job was supposed to keep the crazy away.
“Why was she calling me?” he asked.
“Something about a Veterans Day assembly,” I said. “I forgot the other thing.”
Trish.
Saying her name out loud would be like giving him a cool, sweet glass of antifreeze to drink. It would go down with no trouble, but after a few hours, he’d get a headache and start breathing hard. His legs would cramp up, his eyes would stop working, and he’d slur his words. His organs would shut down, one after another, and he’d die all over again.
“That’s not much help,” Dad said.
“Something about paperwork,” I said. “She said she’d come here to talk to you about it if you don’t want to talk on the phone.”
“She always was a pain in the ass.” He let the loosened nut drop into his palm and removed the bolt. “I’ll call her tomorrow.”
Crap. “Then I need a favor.”
He sighed and turned his head to look at me. “What?”
“We didn’t have a teacher in-service today.”
I waited for a response. He looked back up at the engine and applied the wrench to the next nut.
“You have to call the attendance office,” I continued. “Tell them I had a doctor’s appointment.”
He whacked the nut with the handle of the wrench.
“Please, Daddy?”
A few flakes of rust landed on his face. “You promised, Hayley. We came back here so you could go to school.”
“We came back so you could get a normal job. And keep it.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“It is the same subject. You quit. Why can’t I? Let me take the GED and I’ll start online classes in January.”
“What, you’re going to be my babysitter now?”
I didn’t answer. He hit the frozen metal with the wrench over and over, rust raining on his face. The clanking sounded like a cracked bell getting ready to break into pieces.
“Well?” he demanded.
I had to change the angle of attack so he didn’t feel like I was disrespecting him.
“It’s not about babysitting you,” I said, “it’s about saving me. That place is awful. They have lockdown drills in case of a terrorist attack. Do you really want me to spend every day in a place like that? Making me go there is cruel and unusual punishment.”
The stubborn nut finally moved. He cranked it a few times with the wrench. “Spare me the Eighth Amendment.”
“I’ll make you macaroni and cheese every night for a year if you let me quit.”
He spun the nut off the bolt with his fingers. “Nonnegotiable.”
“I’ll start tonight,” I said. “Mac and cheese and mashed potatoes with bacon.”
“You’re going to school like all the other seniors.” He brushed the rust off his face. “But I’ll lie about the doctor’s appointment if you get me the vise grips and a beer.”
14
Gracie texted me at 11:30 that night:
fin wants your number
who?
adrkabl fin
no
ynot
cuz
ynotynotynot
cuzcuzcuzcucuzcuz
I’d been cyber-stalking Trish for hours. She didn’t have any social media pages, at least not public ones. I found a couple of people from her high school class trying to track her down for a reunion, but no one knew where she was. They had all tried the phone numbers and addresses that I found in Texas, Nebraska, and Tennessee, but she wasn’t to be found.
Gracie buzzed me again:
y dos he wnt yr nmbr?
dunno ask him
Trish was mentioned in her mother’s obituary from three years ago. A couple of months after that, she was arrested for drunk driving. The paper didn’t cover her trial, if there was one. She probably slithered out of that, too.
I texted Gracie:
so?
sowht
why does he want my number?
1 sec
I pulled a lighter out of the top drawer of my desk and lit a vanilla candle. The smell of mold from the wet insulation in my ceiling was getting stronger. (The roof leaked for a few weeks when we first moved in. It was going to be a while before we could afford to replace it.)
fin sez u stol hz pen
he’s a liar
he wnts it
I don’t have his pen
hes a swmr
?
finz a swimer buterfly u shuld c him nakd
the abs omg
when did you see him naked?
swm teem sutes betr thn nakd
*team
remove head from gutter, G
is he a good swimmer?
made states
he wnts yr lawrs number
lawrs?
*lawyers
I peeked out of the curtains. Dad was still in the driveway.
he wnts yr crimnl hstry
tell him I killed my last lawyer cuz he annoyed me
I slipped my finger under the flap of Trish’s envelope
and ripped it open. The sharp edge of the paper sliced into my fingertip. I swore and stuck my finger in my mouth.
he wnts 2 no if yr gay
yes
wtf??
????!!!!????
rilly????
want to go out with me?
???
chill, im not gay
???? r u shur
you’re not my type G
wats yr typ?
people who can spell
fin sez he kn spl
It was cold outside, forty degrees. My father was still out there working on his truck, in the cold, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He said he didn’t feel anything.
I pulled my finger out and looked at it under the light. The cut was invisible until I pressed my thumb just below it. Blood welled up, a wet balloon that burst and dribbled over my thumbnail and dripped onto the envelope. I pulled the letter out of the envelope, keeping it folded, and smeared my cut on it.
My phone buzzed again.
do u no how mny grls wnt fin 2 cll?
cll?
*call
g’night G zzzzzzz
I turned off the phone, opened the top drawer of my bureau, and pulled out my hunting knife from under my pile of socks. (Dad bought it for me in Wyoming when he decided that I was old enough to walk alone at night to the truck stop bathroom.) I sliced the letter into paper ribbons and stuffed them in the envelope, then carried it, along with the candle, into the bathroom. After I shut and locked the bathroom door and turned off the light and opened the window, I held the envelope into the flame of the candle and watched in the mirror as the fire ate through the paper until I had to drop it in the sink so I wouldn’t get burned.
15
My math teacher had a vendetta against me and as proof I offer the fact that I had not been told about Wednesday’s test. Or if I had been told, it was not made entirely clear exactly when the test was going to be, and the fact that we were talking Serious Test, not just a wussy quiz.
1. Find a polynomial with integer coefficients that has the following zeros: -1/3, 2, 3 + i.
2. Matthew throws a Pop-Tart at Joaquim while seated at the table for lunch. The height (in inches) of the Pop-Tart above the ground t seconds later is given by h(t) = -16t2 + 32t + 36. What is the maximum height attained by the Pop-Tart?
3. It just got worse from here to the end of the test.
* * *
All of my answers were drawings of armored unicorns. Five minutes before the period ended, the principal’s voice lectured the entire school about how badly we’d screwed up last week’s lockdown drill. I drew a bomb attached to a ticking clock under one of the unicorns.
* * *
Some guy I’d never seen before crashed into me in the crowded frenzy that was the math wing after class, sending my books to the ground and me into the lockers. His buddies, average IQ that of newly hatched turkey vultures, burst into laughter. The geometry teacher standing in her doorway looked me in the eye and then turned away.
“Need some help?” Finn knelt beside me and handed me my copy of The Odyssey.
“No.” I put the book on top of the stack and stood up.
“I can take him out if you want.”
“I doubt that.”
“Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I’m babysitting.”
I fought a smile. “A trained assassin who babysits.”
“Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet.” He paused to let a gaggle of freshman girls walk between us. “The skepticism on your face proves that my cover story is tight. That’s good, reduces the chance that civilians might be harmed.”
“Cover story? You mean the fact that you’re a skinny nerd in charge of a nonexistent newspaper?”
“In development, not nonexistent. I am almost single-handedly reviving it. Where are we walking, by the way?”
“English.” We swerved around a guy who was roughly the size and shape of a Porta-Potty.
“Ramos,” the guy growled.
“Nash,” Finn responded.
“Friend of yours?” I asked, once the guy was out of range.
“We train together. Cage fighting. You should hear him squeal when I get him in a Maynard’s Kimura hold.”
“You just made that up.”
“What?”
“Maynard’s Kimura. That’s not real.”
“It totally is.”
The bell rang just as we got to Ms. Rogak’s room.
“Wait!” He slipped between me and the door. “You promised.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You promised me an article.”
“Did not.”
“Did too, just before you ran away from my car and roughly ten minutes after you coerced me into cutting physics. ‘World of Resources at the Library,’ that’s what you promised.”
A small bell went off in my head. Duh. This was why he was bugging Gracie for my phone number last night. I’m an idiot. He wanted to harass me about the stupid article.
“I didn’t coerce you into cutting class. You offered the ride.”
“You pleaded.”
“I asked.”
“You made puppy-dog eyes. That counts as pleading.”
“I’ve never made puppy-dog eyes at anyone in my life. You’re a lunatic.”
“Gracie said you liked to tease. Hey there, Ms. Rogak. How’s Homer doing?”
“Finnegan,” said Ms. Rogak with a brief nod. “Do I have your permission to begin my class?”
“Exquisitely executed sarcasm, ma’am,” Finn said as he started to walk backward. “Well played.”
“And you, Hayley Kincain,” she said. “Were you just going to menace us from the doorway or join us?”
16
The seat I wanted in the back row was taken, but not by Brandon Something, so I grabbed the empty desk by the drafty window. Ms. Rogak pushed a button on her laptop to show a picture of a buff, tanned guy with long, gray-streaked black hair, shoving a bloody sword toward the sky, his face tilted back, his mouth open in a victory scream.
ODYSSEUS, read the caption.
Before the giggling and obnoxious comments got too loud, she pushed the button again. A tiny, old woman, dressed in a white robe, her hair covered by a long, white cloth, was kneeling on the ground, her arms wrapped around a skinny, half-naked kid who looked on the brink of death. She was holding a cup to the child’s lips.
MOTHER TERESA.
The third slide showed the two images side by side.
“Which one is the hero?” Rogak asked. “And why?”
* * *
I dozed with my eyes open the rest of the period.
17
Finn was waiting for me in the hall after class. “Did you finish the article?”
“I never said I would.” I yawned. “Besides, did you think I’d write it in class?”
“Of course.” He stayed by my side all the way down the hall. “What do you have now?”
“Gym.”
“Perfect! You’ll have it done in fifteen minutes.”
I shifted my books to my right arm so I could accidentally poke him with their sharp corners. “I’m not writing it.”
“But yesterday . . .” He paused as we merged into the traffic that flowed down the stairs. “How’s your dad, by the way?”
“Fine.” I dodged a group of onlookers who had encircled a brewing fight, then doubled my pace in the hopes of losing Finn. I would have, except for a roadblock by the cafeteria caused by the food line, which had snaked into the hall.
&n
bsp; I sniffed. Taco Day.
Finn caught up with me in a flash. “I’m glad he’s feeling better. I only need two hundred words.”
“I. Said. No!” I said.
Well, actually, I sort of screamed it.
The lunch crowd quieted and a few wide-eyed freshman boys with feather-soft baby mustaches scooted toward the walls, opening a path for me. I put my head down and jogged through.
Finn stayed at my heels. “It’s just that I really need the help,” he said. “Cleveland says the newspaper is back on the chopping block. Getting an article from an actual student-reporter might help him convince the board to leave the paper alone.”
I stopped at the girl’s locker room door. “Why don’t you write it?”
He drew back, wounded. “I’m the editor. I don’t write, I edit, with the exception of the sports section, which I write out of love, not duty. Besides—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Did you say Cleveland?”
“Yep.”
“Mr. Cleveland? Calc teacher?”
“Precalc, actually. Also algebra and trig.”
“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, Mr. Cleveland won’t let me write for the paper. He hates me. Loathes me. If I were you, I wouldn’t mention my name to him, ever. Raises his blood pressure.”
Two girls walked between us and into the locker room.
“I have to go,” I said, hand on the door. “Thanks again for the ride.”
“You’re wrong about Cleveland.” He uncapped a Sharpie, grabbed my arm, and started writing on it before I could react. “That’s my email. Two hundred words. Library resources.”
18
“What is wrong with him?” I asked, bouncing the ball on the Ping-Pong table. “And what is wrong with you?”
“Me?” Gracie asked. “I’m totally innocent.”
“Innocent?” I served the ball so hard she squealed and dove for the ground. “He won’t leave me alone! Look what he did to my arm! That’s assault.”