“Sorry,” I say. Tears spill down my cheeks. Throw-up tears; the kind you can’t stop.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to—”
“I’m okay,” I say.
His fingers are on my elbow, urging me toward the road. “No. Let’s go back to your house.”
“I’m fine. This is important.”
He rocks back and forth on his heels. Bodee in motion is like a silent film. Words without the words.
“I’m not asking you to go in there,” he says.
“Too bad. I’m going.” Channeling brave. “Tell me what you need, or I’ll go in there and rummage around until I find something.”
Bodee shouldn’t know me well enough to understand he’s lost the argument, but he caves. “Okay. A diamond earring. My mother’s. It should be in the bathroom beyond the kitchen.” The key he takes out of his pocket is warm, like he’s had it in his palm all day.
“You got it.”
The back steps bend with my weight. I focus only on the lock. I’ve got my closet if I need to retreat from thoughts about me. This is about Bodee and his one request.
The door opens and I walk into their small kitchen.
“Oh, Jesus,” I say.
It’s a prayer, not a curse. This is the crime scene. There’s no blood. Mr. Lennox squeezed the life out of his wife. But as I take in the broken dishes, the spilled food and turned-over furniture, there’s no doubt that she put up one hell of a fight.
I tiptoe through the broken room and wonder if this kitchen ever served up happiness. Toast with peanut butter. Waffles and syrup. Hamburgers. Mac and cheese.
Probably not, I think, and swallow the bile in my mouth.
The bathroom is small. There’s no jewelry box among the soap and toothbrushes on the vanity. I don’t suppose monsters dote on their wives enough to buy them special things. Mr. Lennox probably never bothered.
The metal medicine cabinet squeaks as I force its hinges. My heart, which has been racing, jerks with pain. The shelves are practically bare. Two bottles of aspirin, a small bottle of Midol, some antiseptic, some bandages. A few odds and ends of makeup: foundation, some powder, a nearly empty tube of concealer. A pill organizer.
Oh God, this is her cover-up kit.
These few items kept her secret and hid her lies. They were her Binky the Elephant and her football cards. Her air vent in the bedroom ceiling.
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up, I pray.
Instinct screams at me to shut the cabinet and get out of the house, but I have to find the earring. I touch the items and slide them around. And feel I am vandalizing the soul of Mrs. Lennox. I open the pill organizer and hope the earring is in one of the daily compartments. But there’s nothing. Where could I hide something so Mr. Lennox wouldn’t find it? I twist the lid off the bottle of Midol and see a sparkle.
“Thank God.”
The earring is in my pocket, and I’m back in the kitchen in a flash. I am almost through the door when I see the little boxes. They come with me. Bodee needs them as much as he needs the earring.
Outside, Bodee’s stuffing a tent into a nylon bag. He has a sleeping bag and an extra duffel.
“I got all my stuff,” he says without looking up.
All his stuff? Wow.
I could make a list a mile long of what he will need but doesn’t have. Like a jacket. A hat. Boots.
His mother.
“I found the earring. And I got you these from the kitchen.” I hold out the five little boxes of Kool-Aid.
And Bodee smiles.
Really smiles. Teeth and all. (They’re straight.)
And even though I have thrown up, walked through a crime scene, and rooted through the remainder of Mrs. Lennox’s life, I smile too.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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chapter 6
WHEN Bodee and I reach the house, towing his tent and everything he owns like we’re Tom and Huck, Kayla and Craig are sitting in the front porch swing.
“Y’all walk?” Kayla asks.
“Nope,” I say.
“Always so sarcastic.”
“Learned from the best,” I say, and give her a smile.
She nods and pats herself on the back and gives me a little bow. “Thank you. Thank you,” she says. “Hey, where are Heather and Liz?”
I put on my best psychic pose and answer, “Heather just called Collie and asked him to make out with her at Freeman Lake, and Liz is practicing her ninja moves.”
“Oh, shut up.” Kayla tosses a pebble from the potted plant in my direction and then kisses Craig.
Craig’s face can’t contain his smile.
“You look like one of those clowns who sell porn on the side. A little too happy,” I tell him.
“Bodee, tell her to be nice,” Kayla says. “A girl only has this kind of day once in her life. Guess what’s happened?”
Bodee doesn’t exactly look full of guesses, but I decide he needs a full dose of Littrell sister reality. “Okay, let’s see. You got the gas pump to stop on exactly forty dollars again, Kay? Or the Sik Purse is carrying your shade of lipstick now?” I say only the letters that light up on the sign at Kayla’s favorite Rickman boutique. “Wait; I know—”
“You’re such a beast.” Kayla untangles her body from Craig’s to sit up in the swing. “This is why you never keep a boyfriend longer than a day.”
“I don’t need a boyfriend.”
“Every girl needs a boyfriend. Especially in Rickman,” Kayla says.
“The only girls who need boyfriends in Rickman are the ones who never want to leave,” I say. My mother and grandmother were bound to the ground on which they were born because of boys. That won’t be me. I’ll find another zip code to live in someday.
“You wouldn’t know what you needed if it bit you in both ass cheeks. What kind of girl blows off Dane Winters?”
“Kayla,” Craig says.
“Don’t Kayla me,” she says. “She’s the one who got snippy.”
Craig kisses her ear and whispers just loud enough for me to hear. “Babe, she’s just jerking your chain. Let it go.”
Kayla pouts and gets another kiss and grope. Bodee will stare a third hole in his sneakers before I can get him inside. Time to give her what she wants. “Come on, KayKay. Tell us what amazing thing happened today.” I overdo the enthusiasm, but she doesn’t notice.
“You really wanna know?” she asks. Man. It’s like the previous argument happened on a different day or a different planet. It’s one of Kayla’s charms. She’s bitchy, but only for minutes at a time. After which she seems unable to recall she was ever bitchy. I love this about my sister, in fact, and wish I had a little dose of it myself. Unfortunately, I recall all the crappy stuff I do. And the little ghosts of words I’ve said return to haunt me.
And the ones I didn’t say.
“Y’all like this all the time?” Bodee mumbles.
I nod, as Craig, still wearing the freaky smile, asks, “Can you keep a secret?”
“Pretty sure I can,” I say.
But then I understand before either of them answers. Just from the expression on Craig’s face, I know.
Because Craig is looking at Kayla the same way he did when he arrived to escort my sister to their first homecoming dance. (I was six.) Like he did when he came to pick her up for prom. (Seven.) Like the day he left for college to play football and she stayed behind at Rickman Community College to work at the bank with Dad. (Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.) And when he moved back after grad school to take a teaching job. (Fourteen.) So, for the better part of my life, Craig has looked at Kayla as if she has the power to take the Big Dipper right out of the night sky and insert those same stars in his eyes.
He loves her.
Kayla squeals the words I already know, “We’re engaged!” She and Craig skip down the steps, and she wraps me in a hard hug that makes me
gasp.
“You’ll stand up with me. Right next to me, Lex.”
Suddenly, there’s a lump in my throat. “Okay.” I peel myself away from Kayla and say, “Tell us the whole story.”
And then they do. Except there isn’t one really.
Because couples don’t get engaged on Wednesdays. (Unless Valentine’s Day or Christmas happens to fall on Wednesday, which makes an engagement perfectly acceptable.) A guy shouldn’t pop the question at Mr. Hoback’s Apple Festival and Corn Maze right after he’s bought a candied apple with extra nuts. Usually there’s a story. A romantic one.
There are rules for this sort of thing. Expectations. Every girl in Rickman knows them, and every guy should too.
Except, it appears, Kayla and Craig.
Lame.
Even lamer, their nonstory is absolutely precious. And simply Rickman County. Like them.
“So it was just time to make it official?” I say, after Kayla rattles on about the hay wagon and the candied apple.
“Yeah.” She strokes Craig’s chest, and I swear he purrs. “We decided we can’t wait another minute to be engaged.”
Craig looks like his football team has won the state championship. “So, uh, Lex, do we have your blessing?”
“Blessings are for dads,” I say. “I’m just glad you have to replace that promise ring. Kayla’s finger is permanently green.” I laugh.
“Hey, not fair. I was eighteen, and it was all I could afford.” Craig gives me a shoulder punch, his favorite form of affection, and looks down at Kayla with adoring eyes. “She’ll have a real ring as soon as we talk to your parents.”
“Well, shouldn’t be a prob for you.” I repeat the words Mom uses all the time, “You’re practically family.”
“He is. Isn’t he?” Kayla beams.
My sister is radiant. The thought is like a flaming brand applied to my heart. I’m not jealous of her thick, dark hair that’s always straight and the eyelashes she seems to have in triplicate. I’m especially not jealous of her relationship with Craig. I don’t want to be Kayla, and I don’t want what she has. But I wish she wasn’t the physical standard by which I measure myself.
“Bodee, we’ll soon be saying the same thing about you, man,” Craig says.
“What does that mean?” I snap.
“I only meant he lives here now, Lex. You know how your mom and dad are. That makes him practically family.” Craig gives Bodee an easy smile. “This is like the best family in the world. Don’t you think?” Craig asks him.
Bodee drops his tent in the driveway and scratches behind his ear. A blue strand of hair hidden behind a bold stripe of red is now visible. He doesn’t bother to fix it. His hairstyle doesn’t matter to him, and a week ago it didn’t matter to me. But now, I want to smooth it down for him. Want to offer him words so they don’t look so painful on his lips. Want to give him lyrics the way I do with the Captain.
“I had a family,” Bodee says.
And then there’s nothing to say.
Bodee lifts the tent, swipes the gravel dust off, and slips into the house like a ghost. Even the front door, which usually squeaks, is quiet. Bodee’s loss is so unimaginable that it squeezes my heart. And from the looks of it, Craig and Kayla are disturbed too.
“Craig, you have to help him,” Kayla says.
“I don’t think he’s ready for help yet, Kay. It hasn’t even been a week. But maybe I can do something,” Craig says.
“Don’t. Please,” I say to both of them. “You can’t buy him some new wardrobe or cut his hair and make it all happy. His mom’s dead. His dad killed her. No matter how badly you want it, there’s no magical cure that makes it go away. Sometimes life just sucks.” At some point, maybe I forget the speech is about Bodee. “So do Bodee a favor and get on with your giddy little love story and leave him alone. He doesn’t need fixing.”
I leave the newly engaged couple, slack-jawed and wide-eyed with astonishment, and contrast Bodee’s quiet entrance by slamming the front door. Stomping the entire way, I climb the steps to the bonus room.
Bodee’s room.
He’s sitting on the edge of the twin bed, which Dad has decked out with the only available twin linens in our house. Mom will be horrified when she realizes Dad has rummaged in the attic and found my old Cinderella comforter. Bodee sleeping beneath the yellow princess is almost more than I can bear.
“I was rude,” he says.
“Stand up,” I tell him.
He stands, and in one motion I flip Cinderella over so the plain yellow plaid side is faceup. “Better. And you are never rude.”
Bodee Lennox is never really anything. I’ll bet most kids in our class didn’t know his name before the murder. And yet his face is not expressionless the way I once thought. That slight twitch of lips, a little half grin, says more than Heather does in a week. But the full-teeth smile, the one I saw today at his house, is like a work of Tolstoy.
He’s not smiling now. “I shouldn’t have left like that. Mr. Tanner was being nice.”
“Yeah, but Mr. Tanner should have thought before he said something so insensitive. Bodee, you know we’re not trying to replace your family. Mom and Dad know they can’t fix this for you. I know it. We just want . . . I just want this year to be . . . easier from here.”
He is silent for a moment, and then he nods. “I want that . . . for you, too.”
There’s so much to say in return. Like telling him my pain is nothing compared to his. Like asking how he sees things about me when no one else can. But words will only make me more vulnerable, so I say, “Me too,” and leave it at that.
I’d hug Bodee if I could. A friendly hug. And maybe if he wasn’t hibernating in a den of grief, he’d hug me back. As I stand there not hugging him, I think if we were normal teenagers we’d probably squeeze each other and sigh, and let our hands roam around until we had a knockin’ boots of a one-afternoon-stand before supper and then never speak of it again.
But we’re not normal. At least I’m not, and I’d bet on the ponies he’s not either. And I don’t feel the urge to touch his fuzzy, can’t-grow-a-real-beard face. Or run my hands through his Kool-Aid hair. But I like him in this room. Like him in my house.
Instead I say, “I can help you put your stuff away.”
Bodee nods; it’s his typical wordless assent.
I stack the tent and the sleeping bag in the corner of the closet while Bodee unzips his duffel. This is not a job for two, but I’m not ready to leave.
“Won’t take long,” he says.
I reach for his worn copy of Hatchet. “God, I loved this book. Where do you want it?” I ask.
“Under the pillow,” he answers.
Bodee removes his underwear from the bag so quickly the stack tumbles into a disheveled pile. I’m not supposed to have seen, so I hold the book and fumble with his pillow until I’m sure he’s finished. It’s weird how something as ordinary as white boxers turn a face red.
“I can hang those up,” I say when he pulls the khaki slacks from the bag.
The tie, still knotted as I saw it last, a wrinkled white shirt, and pants come to me in a ball. They haven’t been washed, and I can smell the earth and sweat of last Saturday on them.
“Why don’t I wash these first?”
“I’ll do it once I buy detergent.”
“You’re not buying detergent. It like, well, comes with the house. Like my shower soap and blue shampoo. And dinner.”
Bodee tucks the strand of blue hair back, the one that’s been driving me crazy, and says, “And rides to school?”
“Yes, and rides to school. And anything else you need.”
An indeterminable number of white T-shirts, three pair of jeans, some socks, and the five boxes of Kool-Aid from the kitchen counter are the only other items he removes from the bag before shoving it under the bed.
“That’s it,” he says. “Told you it wouldn’t take long.”
Guilt doesn’t stab at me, but it pokes at a place b
etween my ribs.
I want to see him smile again.
“So”—I scroll my finger down the boxes of Kool-Aid he’s balanced on the windowsill—“what shade you going with tomorrow?”
“Sugar-free grape.”
“You ever wear the lemonade?”
“Nah, too much like the natural,” he says. “That was for drinking.”
“Your mom bought them for you?”
This time there’s no nod, but there are tears in his eyes. “She was . . . the best.”
Now there are tears in my eyes. Bodee’s emotions are as shareable as candy in a bowl. “I’ll make you a promise, Bodee. Long as you’re with my family, you won’t run out of Kool-Aid.”
He blinks up at me. “And I promise you, I’ll stop whoever’s hurting you.”
I stand there barely breathing, and he says something that sounds like, “Even if it’s you,” but the words are mumbled, and I can’t be sure I’ve heard them right.
If he were Heather or Liz, I’d deny this completely. But I can’t lie to him. Not after today and his kitchen and the Kool-Aid on the counter and his tent and the stack of tumbled-over underwear on the bonus room floor. We’re already more than the sum of my lies. So I just breathe and look away, trying not to lie with my face, but to stand in the presence of the truth.
It hurts.
There’s complete silence until I say, “See you at dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Make a pile and I’ll throw your clothes in to wash,” I say.
“Okay.”
“I’ll have Dad take us to the store tomorrow in case you need something.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t say anything about Kayla and Craig and the engagement.” This reminder is pointless, since he rarely speaks unless spoken to.
“Okay.”
“Okay” has become the new hey, I realize, as I leave him with wrong-side-up Cinderella.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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