Any Red-Blooded Girl

  ****

  Dr. Harvey Lassiter is the closest thing I’ve got to a parent nowadays, because as hard as Orv and Denise try, I’m not sure they’ve got it in ‘em.

  I fly over to Harvey’s shop on my Target-special Schwinn, jam on its brakes and squeal its tires to a dusty stop. At a chunky metal rack out front, I chain it up.

  A little bell over the door jingles merrily as I rumble inside. “Hey, kiddo,” Dr. Lassiter says with an open smile. He doesn’t even have to look up from the jumble of tools and bicycle parts on the carpet in front of him to know it’s me. “Hope you’re ready to roll up your sleeves today.”

  Dr. Lassiter—Harvey, as he insists I call him—is sixty-something years old with a full head of silver-white hair (the only feature that makes him look his age) and a trim, sinewy build. He used to be the principal of Industry High, where I landed in his office because of a schoolyard brawl I decided to win. A month later, he caught Noah Rice screwing me in the janitor’s closet. We both got a week of in-school suspension.

  Harvey retired in June. The same week, he opened The Pit, a bicycle sales and repair shop in Industry’s shuttered downtown. Besides The Pit, three other establishments survive on this strip of baked earth: a payday loan store, a liquor emporium, and a Baptist church.

  “Whatcha got for me?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant. The phrase “roll up your sleeves” has me hoping Harvey’s going to let me do more than spiff up displays or punch sales into the computer.

  “I need you to design some fliers,” he tells me. “I tried to do a mockup, but it didn’t go very well, I’m afraid.” He frowns, gestures at the counter. “Have a look-see.”

  I wander toward the register, dip my hand in a fishbowl of Milky Ways and pull one out. “A race?” I say, more to myself than Harvey, as I eye the stick-figure drawing he’s scrawled across the back of a paper grocery sack. I peel the wrapper from the candy and pop it (the candy, not the wrapper) in my mouth. As I chew, I gurgle, “You’re having…a bike race?”

  “Not until spring,” he says. “I want to give folks a long lead-time, so they can train. Plus, I’ve gotta iron out some kinks with the town clerk. Permits and such.” A slippery grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, as if he knows what I’m about to say next.

  “Can I…?” I ask, tucking my lip under my teeth. “Do you think I’d be able to…?”

  He shrugs. “No reason why you couldn’t,” he says optimistically. “But this is going to be a pretty rigorous affair. Not for the faint of heart.”

  The paper sack advertisement, in its charming, childish way, informs me that competitors in The Pit’s inaugural “Yo-Yo” race will zing from Industry to Desolation, North Carolina and back (hence, the Yo-Yo moniker, I assume). “How far is it?” I wonder aloud. With just one car and forever-limited gasoline, Orv, Denise, and I seldom venture beyond a three-mile radius from home.

  “Twenty-four miles and some change,” Harvey says. “Clocked it myself the other day. Of course, I’ll have to get a more precise measurement before the starting gun blazes.”

  There’s a tub of art supplies jammed in the back of the closet in The Pit’s grubby office, including a quality array of acrylic paints I hauled down here myself (a final gift from Gramp) and used to decorate the display windows with exploding fireworks and lopsided, wavy American flags. That was back on Independence Day, and the damn paintings are still there. You’d almost think this place is too busy for me to take them down.

  I duck out and return with the tub balanced on my hip, its handles digging into a roll of flab around my midsection and compressing my liver. “What about the windows?” I ask. I shuffle over to the bigger of the two panes and struggle to tuck the tub into a corner, where the few customers we get in this place won’t be bound to trip over it. “I could paint a sign up here.” I give the glass a friendly tap. “Something eye-catching and colorful. A kid on a bike, walking the dog?” I suggest, referencing the yo-yo trick.

  Harvey shakes his head, smirks as if I’m the smartest person he’s ever known. “That’s why you get the big bucks,” he says, and we both laugh.

  Harvey doesn’t pay me in money. He can’t afford to. Instead, he keeps the fishbowl stocked with candy and slips me a few cans of cat food here and there, which I pass along to Buttercup.

  The truth is, Buttercup is about as much of a stray as I am, since he’s always welcome at our falling-down door. (Not inside, though. Orv claims to be allergic.) At least the cat’s got people who care about him, I figure, even if they’re not the ones who are supposed to.