Scare Crow

  The second thing I learned was that I absolutely needed access to Betty’s computer because she was a stickler for rules. I knew there was no way I could sway her to search the system for Cameron. And even risking asking for something like this would have lost me my all-American-girl title.

  I had to be sneaky and quick.

  On Friday morning, the day of my fifth shift, I slipped a couple of laxatives in Betty’s extra-large morning coffee when her head was bent down to grab and show off her latest knitting piece.

  When our shift started, I stuck close to my adopted mother. This was a big day. After weeks of dodging the landlord and Hunter’s not-so-subtle inquiries, I had just cashed my advance on my paycheck so that I could finally pay for my rent and buy decent groceries. And now I was about to break into the system to get what I needed.

  After an hour or so, I was starting to lose confidence that my plan would work. But all of a sudden, I noticed Betty start to fidget on her stool. She was in the midst of a conversation with a student, crossing and uncrossing her legs, swaying from one cheek to the other. Then a look of sheer panic came across her face. Her skin started blotching, her hands clenched the edge of the counter, and her lips disappeared inside her mouth.

  The student she was supposed to be helping had kept on talking as if nothing were wrong.

  I ran to Betty’s rescue.

  “Can you take over for me, dear?” she hissed and ran away before I could even answer.

  I gave the boy over the counter my most comforting smile. “Can I help you?”

  “I was just telling the other lady that my name isn’t appearing on any of the class rosters. Some of the professors won’t even let me come into their class until they see that I really did sign up.”

  “Hm,” I said, pushing my eyebrows together. “That’s very weird.” There was nothing weird about it. I had given his account a quick once-over, and he hadn’t paid last year’s tuition. Based on the red lettering at the top, he wasn’t even a student anymore, and the length of his dirty dreadlocks told me that he probably wouldn’t be paying the establishment for this year’s tuition either.

  I winked at the boy in the dreadlocks. “Let’s see what we can do.”

  I was already out of his account. And while I clicked away furiously, he stood by and watched with an expectant grin. As if we were both about to screw the establishment together.

  As I typed Cameron James Hillard and saw it appear on the screen, I bit my lip, and my hands quieted over the keyboard.

  “Everything okay?” Dreadlocks inquired.

  “A bit dizzy,” I managed to mumble back as I pressed enter.

  “It’s the air in here. They’re trying to poison us with this recycled crap they call air. They want to keep us down. Subdued.”

  While he carried on about the government machine, I was staring at Cameron’s file. He had been enrolled as a part-time student this year and last. His tuition had, of course, been paid in full.

  He had been enrolled in two classes last year and would have been enrolled in two more classes this semester. I recognized those classes—all ones I had taken and was currently taking. The classes he had picked were the ones that were being held in the biggest auditoriums, where he could have easily gotten lost in the crowd.

  I didn’t know which was worse: the fact that he would have been sitting in class with me now, or the fact that he had been there the whole time and I had been completely oblivious to this.

  I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped typing and held on to my stomach. The boy was too engrossed in his discussion of political immorality to notice. But a hand fell upon my shoulder, and I turned to see Betty.

  “You’re ill too,” she said to me with concern on her motherly face. “It must be the flu. I’ll finish up here. You go home and get some rest.”

  I used my body to hide the screen from her and took my time getting off her seat, enough time to click my way back into Dreadlocks’ file and cover my tracks. And enough time to memorize an address.

  I left without saying good-bye to Betty. Now that I had gotten what I needed, I would probably never speak to her again. People were just that disposable to me now.

  I did go home as Betty ordered, but as soon as I got there, I grabbed Meatball and got in my car.

  I hadn’t known what I was going to find in Cameron’s file, but when I saw the address, I had immediately recognized it. It was in the other slummy part of Callister, where, with a little more money, you could rent a place that looked like a box of cereal, with a door and two windows. I suppose the people who lived in this part probably thought of themselves as better off than the folks in my neighborhood. At least they had a front yard.

  I turned into the row-housing district and eventually found the right street, where Cameron’s mother lived. I had thought about coming here many times, but I knew that, unless I went door-to-door, there was no way I would ever find the right place among these concrete multiples.

  There were kids everywhere, like the neighborhood was overrun with them. Most of them were just walking the streets, goofing around. Kids pushing babies and toddlers around in rickety strollers. Kids sitting on the sidewalk, smoking cigarettes.

  It was hard for me to imagine Cameron here, walking these streets. And yet, this was the world that he had come from. This was part of who he had been.

  I vividly remembered coming here with Cameron. I remembered how embarrassed he had been. I remembered Cameron calling me his girlfriend. And I remembered how devastated his mother had been after hearing of Rocco’s death.

  I was there to do the same—tell Cameron’s mother that she had lost another son. I assumed that Spider and Carly, the only other people who would have known about Cameron’s mother, wouldn’t have come running to tell her that they had murdered her son. But I wasn’t doing this for his mom; I was doing this for him. Because he deserved to be missed. I wanted his mother to miss him, mourn him like she had Rocco. I wanted Cameron to have the love of his mother, even if it was only in the end.

  When I stopped in front of number 65, Meatball simply sat back and growled, letting the hairs on his back spike up. There was a group of men in the yard next to number 65. They were loitering, beers in hand. But this seemed to bother the hell out of Meatball, so I left him in the car. I didn’t want him running away on me again.

  I knocked on Cameron’s mother’s front door and could hear Meatball barking at me. Surely he would pay me back for this later.

  As was the case when Cameron and I had last been there, no one answered the door. I tested the handle and let myself in. Not much had changed since I had last been there. The smell of wet clothes and cigarettes was still first to greet you at the door. The television was still on in the living room, and Cameron’s three half siblings were still sitting there sockless, staring blankly at the television.

  I cleared my throat to announce my arrival. Only one of them, the boy, glanced my way. I would have recognized those eyes anywhere. Dark brown, almost black. Cameron’s eyes. I temporarily lost my breath in the smoke-filled room.

  “Hi, um, do you remember me?” I asked the kid.

  But Cameron’s stepbrother had already lost interest and was back to watching television.

  I walked in and made my way to the kitchen—the last place I had seen her. The kitchen was still a disaster, with the lipsticked cigarettes still overflowing in the ashtray on the table. Cameron’s mother, however, wasn’t there.

  But when I heard thumps coming from upstairs and then tandem cackles, I figured out where she was and that she wasn’t alone.

  Slightly grossed out, I went back to the living room and decided to wait for the grown-ups to be done. There were boxes and bags everywhere, as though someone had just moved in. My guess was that Cameron’s mom had a new boyfriend again.

  I found a box and pushed a few bags of clothing aside and sat.

  In any other place, it would have been weird for a strange girl to invite herself in, sit, and star
e at the kids. But I couldn’t help myself. I found a little bit of Cameron and Rocco in all of them. The crazy brown hair. The slight curl in the right ear. And these kids already had that blank expression, that look of defeat that Cameron had when he had decided to end it, end us.

  I had to look away and find something else to keep my mind busy.

  I noticed the overturned pop bottles and ripped bags of chips. It was like raccoons had been through looking for any last morsel of food, however small. This family, these kids, depended on the money that Cameron would give to his mother. With him gone, there was no one to look after all of them. What would happen to them?

  All of a sudden, the noise upstairs ceased and the house went quiet, with the only noise coming from the television. And I realized that I did not want to face Cameron’s mother. I didn’t want to tell her what had happened to Cameron. Not now. Not after … what she had just been doing.

  I grabbed at my jacket and pulled the money that I had cashed from my first paycheck. I separated the money into roughly three piles and went up to the kids. I had their full attention now.

  “Don’t tell your mother,” I told them in a rush.

  Without a word, they grabbed the money and ran out the door.

  I hurried behind them, running to the car before Cameron’s mother found me.

  On the way home, I couldn’t get their faces out of my head. And it wasn’t just because they reminded me so much of Cameron and Rocco.

  The only mistake they had ever made was being born to that woman, being born into poverty, being born at all. I wanted to judge Cameron’s mother. I desperately wanted to hate her. Yet I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t that different from her.

  I had just given away all my rent and grocery money. The kids needed it, but so did I, so did the child I was carrying. Like Cameron’s mother, I was bringing into this world a child that I wouldn’t be able to take care of. I would love this child. But love wouldn’t put food in its stomach, wouldn’t protect it from the world that wanted it dead.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen Griff, and as I parked my car in the back, I realized how much I wanted him to be there. And this scared me.

  I had spent a lifetime shutting people out, telling myself that I was better off on my own. And when I had met Cameron, I hadn’t just let my guard down; I had given him my trust and my heart … despite knowing so little about him. I still hadn’t figured out how this could have happened. Why had I let myself fall so utterly in love with a man I hardly knew when, in the end, this man had ended it all and taken my heart and the rest of me with him?

  Now I had Griff. I needed his friendship and his support so badly that just the thought of losing him again would have been enough to put me over the edge.

  But I hardly knew him.

  All I knew was that he had shown up on my doorstep with a bag of cash and a note with my name and address written on it. Deep down, I thought I could trust him. But deep down, I had also once thought that Cameron would never hurt me. And he had found a way to hurt me so badly that I had been turned inside out, like a beach washed away in a hurricane.

  Obviously, my judgment was lacking.

  There were things that I needed to do before the baby came, things that I would need Griff’s help with. But at what expense? It wasn’t just about me getting hurt anymore. I had two people to worry about now.

  Griff had been sent to me for a reason, and whether or not he knew that reason, I needed to put my guard up—and keep it there.

  ****

  It seemed like the whole city was in our house when Meatball and I came through the door. I’d forgotten it was Friday, which meant that the house was party central. The last thing I needed was more people around. Maybe moving out with Griff wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  I found myself having to weave through a crowd as I went looking for Griff. The smell of beer, the loud music, the strangers trying to make small talk with me as I walked by, Meatball baring his teeth at anyone who tried to get too close, and still no Griff. It was just too much. Three people offered me a drink, one guy actually put a drink to my lips, and a girl spilled her drink on the bottom of my pants.

  I was about to go hide in my bedroom when some guy accosted me in the upstairs hallway. I’d never seen him before, but he seemed to know who I was.

  He practically shoved a piece of red rubber in my face, which made an already jumpy Meatball ready to pounce. I grabbed his collar before he could jump on the kid.

  “Your dog ate one of my boxing gloves,” the guy barked. I sighed as I realized that he was one of the new roommates and that the piece of rubber he had shoved in my face was the remainder of his boxing glove. Perfect. Great way to start the school year.

  I glared at Meatball, who had gone very quiet all of a sudden. A whole boxing glove? Really, Meatball?

  I could feel myself flush. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  But the guy wasn’t done. “He ate my brother’s bike helmet too.”

  A boy who looked like his duplicate, but wearing a different shirt, came up behind, carrying a black half-chewed strap, which I surmised was all that was left of the helmet.

  So the new roommates were twins—identical twins—and apparently, I needed to feed Meatball more than four times a day.

  “I got it for my birthday,” the new twin whined. “What am I supposed to wear on my head in the meantime?”

  By this point, everyone upstairs had stopped chattering and had started staring at us. Even Cassie was standing in her doorway, staring with the rest of them. Meatball cowered into my room, leaving me to fend off the accusers. I was mortified. I was tired. I was afraid they were going to make me get rid of Meatball. So many emotions were whirling through me that I just couldn’t handle this. I shook my head and started pacing back toward my room.

  Hunter came out of his room with a girl, oblivious to what was happening in the hall.

  “Oh, hey, Emily,” he said, “I need—”

  “I don’t have your damn rent money, Hunter. Can’t you just give me a goddamn break!”

  And Hunter stopped in his tracks, his eyes rounded and his mouth slack-jawed.

  I stormed into my room, wishing I had a door to lock myself in.

  But after a few seconds, Hunter knocked on the doorframe before coming through the curtain.

  “I was just going to tell you that I got your mail and left it on the table downstairs. And Griffin already paid your rent for the year. He even paid for half of mine and half of Joseph’s since he’s crashing in our room. I thought you knew that already.”

  I didn’t, and I wished Griff hadn’t paid my rent because I wanted to leave.

  “Is everything okay?”

  I grabbed Meatball’s leash and marched past him. “I’m fine.”

  I kept my head down as I made my way out of the house and took my bottomless-stomach monster for a long walk. Getting my mail would have to wait until I didn’t have an audience of drunkards.

  Meatball’s ears stayed flat against his head the whole time. Eventually, after the twentieth time he nudged my hand, I gave in and rubbed his sweet spot under his chin. His little tail wagged jubilantly as I forgave him, though I had no idea what I was going to do when we got kicked out.

  By the time we got back, the party had left for the school pub. I put my pajamas on and crawled under the covers, thankful for the peace and quiet.

  When I heard the front door open, I knew it was Griff just by the heaviness of his steps. I got out of bed and pulled my curtain open as he was heading into his shared accommodations.

  “Griff?”

  He paused at the door before turning around.

  I gasped.

  His face was bloody and swollen. He had a gash on his chin and over his eye. His bottom lip was puffy.

  Griff smiled, revealing bloodstained teeth.

  I put my hand to my mouth, and he put the palms of his hands out between us as a white flag.

  “Don?
??t freak out, Em. I’m fine. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “Not as bad as it looks?” I exclaimed, trying not to yell and wake up the whole house.

  He pushed me back into my room and forced me to sit down on my bed.

  “Nothing comes without a price. Not all my loan sharks were content with just getting paid back with cash.”

  “So? What? They put you in a cage and made you fight a lion?”

  To my astonishment, he nodded. “Maybe not a lion, but yeah, some of them wanted their interest paid in blood.”

  “Your blood? Griff, this is nuts.”

  “If I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be able to walk the street without having to look over my shoulder every two seconds. And you wouldn’t be safe with me.”

  I got up, made him sit on the bed, and went downstairs. I grabbed ice out of one of the beer coolers, stuffed it in a Ziploc bag, and grabbed a washcloth.

  “There has to be another way,” I said as I walked back into my room, still stunned at the state of his face.

  “There wasn’t. But don’t worry. It’s all taken care of now. I’m free and clear and don’t owe anyone anything else.”

  “That’s a small relief.”

  I sat next to him, examining his face, unsure of where to start. Griff was doing the same with my face. I wiped the blood under his nose, which sent a new stream of red flowing down.

  “Put your head back,” I ordered him and started tugging him down with a little more force than needed. He laid his head on my legs, and I brought the bag of ice to his fat lip. He stared at me while I held the ice with one hand and cleaned the blood out of his scruffy beard with the other. His hands were laced over his chest. I noticed that his knuckles were also bloodied and raw.

  “For a guy who’s in such bad shape, you don’t seem too upset about it,” I remarked.