She drew back as though he’d slapped her. “Like you’re Captain Responsible. You live in a fucking dumpster.”
“My dumpster. You don’t see me knocking on doors asking other people for hundreds of dollars to clean up my messes. Jesus, Noel…” He wanted to hug her and talk it out, but neither of them was in the right state of mind.
And she wanted to get an abortion… that wasn’t a decision to rush into. He’d never felt more unprepared to handle a situation in his life. Well, that wasn’t completely true. He never expected his parents to both die so suddenly. Would he ever catch a break?
Her lips tightened and she blinked. Her blue irises shimmered in the dim, smoky lighting. He needed to know who the father was. Someone was going to have to man up here. “Who’s the father?”
“It’s none of your business! Can you just give me the damn money? I won’t ask again.”
“Oh.” He made an expression of feigned panic. “Won’t you? Won’t you ask me again for four hundred dollars?”
“You’re an asshole,” she whispered.
“Rather be an asshole than some douche that knocks up a young girl and can’t be held responsible for his own mess. You better produce a name if you expect anything in return from me.”
He was pissed. She had some nerve coming in here acting superior and what not, begging for money, knocked up with some loser’s kid. Fuck, she was his baby sister. He didn’t want to think of her having sex, but what the hell…she was pregnant! She’d been his responsibility for too long. Someone needed to answer for this. She had her whole life ahead of her.
He was totally unprepared when she lunged at him. Open palmed slaps rained down on him over her shrill screams and cries. “You fucking asshole!”
“Yo!” One of the guys finally ripped her off of him. Sims. His gangly arms restrained her wild blows as he held her back and dragged her to the door.
“I hate you!” she screamed.
Shane dabbed his thumb to the corner of his mouth. When he drew it away blood showed on the pad of his finger. Her words hurt more than anything else. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me? What’s wrong with you? I’m your sister!”
And he was supposed to protect her! He was furious with her, furious with himself, furious with the bastard that knocked her up, furious with the entire fucking world. But this shit was unacceptable. She was acting insane. His head was pounding and the words left his mouth before he could reel them back in. “Get the fuck out of my home. Go ask your loser baby daddy for money. You’re his problem, not mine.”
“Fuck you, Shane! Fuck you! Mommy and Daddy are probably rolling in their graves looking at what you’ve become. You’re nothing but a fucking loser!”
Sims dragged her outside and the door slammed. Chest heaving, harsh breath panted past his bloody lip.
“What the fuck?” Duce stared, pie-eyed, beside him on the couch.
Shane yanked the bottle from his friend’s hand and took a swig. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he growled at the burn working its way to his belly and swallowed another mouthful. He’d deal with this in the morning. He knew he’d somehow find the money she needed. But first he had to make sure she was one hundred percent certain of her decision. It was a life altering one she needed to really think about. Right now he needed to fucking escape. “Someone put the music back on and hand me my guitar.”
That quick, the music returned, his guitar filled his arms, and the evening continued as if nothing happened. But something had definitely happened. His worry for Noel seemed to sober him, but he couldn’t deal. He doubled his efforts to wash the nightmare of his life away with sour booze and forced laughter.
He drank until he forgot about his sister, forgot about her problems, and forgot about how accurate her words likely were. He was a loser. She needed him and no matter how pissed he was, he needed to help her. Problem was, he didn’t know where to get the money she needed or the first thing about babies if she decided to keep it.
* * * *
Shane’s body screamed in protest as he tried to twist in his sleep. Was something wet? He squinted into the dim filter of light streaming through the fallen venetian blinds. Duce slept, sprawled on the chair beside the flickering TV, a plate of something runny balanced precariously on his broad chest.
Shane’s back protested as he sat up. A waterfall of empty cans clattered to the floor causing his friend to grumble in his sleep. Shane gripped his head as he tried to find his equilibrium and fought the urge to puke. What time was it?
After digging the heels of his palms into his eye sockets he reached into his pocket for his phone. It was dead.
“What time is it?” he asked Duce in a hoarse voice.
Duce started, sucking a snore deep into his lungs and coughing out of his sleep. “What? Is it my hit?”
Shane frowned and stood, not waiting for Duce to come around. His place was trashed, which was nothing unusual for, well, any day of the week. Jesus, who was gonna clean up this mess?
Shuffling on bare feet to the kitchenette he squinted at the oven clock. 1:32. Shit. It was already afternoon. “Duce, get up. It’s late.”
“I’m up. I’m up. I’m up.” He rolled onto his side, which was quite ridiculous being that Duce was around two hundred and fifty pounds and the chair he sat on was swallowed by one thigh alone.
Shane opened the fridge and pushed the straggler beers to the side. His fingers folded around an open Gatorade and he brought it to his lips, drinking greedily. Man, he was wasted last night.
His brain played over the evening and his gut twisted when he recalled Noel’s little visit. God damn it, he didn’t have the energy to deal with that shit today. But since their parents died, it had just been the two of them. He needed to figure out how to get her money, but first he needed to find out whose ass he needed to kick for putting her in her current situation.
He sighed. Noel wasn’t like him. She was smart. She was working on an associate’s degree from the community college and had some scholarships lined up for the next semester. These new friends of hers were fucking up her future and he needed to really sit down with her and make her understand they were no good. The tough love wasn’t working. He wished he was better at talking about shit like this.
They’d end up fighting—bad fighting—but rather than get frustrated and walk away angry again, he’d tough it out until she wised up. He loved her. She was all he had. He’d given up so much to make sure one of them had a shot at a decent life. It was a no brainer making sure she was the one. If she didn’t get away from those losers she’d end up just like them and all his sacrifices would have been for nothing.
“Come on, Duce, get up. I need you to give me a lift to Lakota.”
Duce opened his eyes, stretched, farted, and sniffed the plate on his chest. “What do we gotta go there for?”
“I need to find Noel. I gotta find out who’s responsible and then I need to kick someone’s ass. After that I gotta figure out a way to get four hundred dollars so she can fix this or figure out how to get way more money than that and convince her to keep it.”
“You think she’s gonna tell you? Dude, were you not here last night when she freaked? I think if any ass kickery is happening it’s gonna be your little sister kicking yours. She was fucking fuming when she left.”
Shane tried to recall what was said, but his memory was a fun house mirror. He remembered her attacking him and screaming, but couldn’t recall exactly what she’d said. His gut knotted uncomfortably as he remembered the way he spoke to her. Fuck. They needed to figure out how to be a family again, but first he needed to find her.
Hiding his concern, he shrugged. “She can be pissed all she wants. I’m not giving her a cent until I have a name.” And he needed to be certain she was sure about her choices. There were other options. Even if she didn’t keep the baby, maybe someone else would want it. He didn’t want his little sister haunted by hasty choices.
Duce tossed the p
late on the coffee table. A few cans fell to the floor. “Where’re you going to get money like that? You’ve been saving up to fix the truck for weeks.”
“I’ll figure something out. Come on.”
They cleaned themselves up and quickly filled a trash bag with garbage, tossing it outside the door of the trailer. That was a slight improvement. If he could get the beer and weed stink out of his home he’d be good. “Crack that window to let some air in while we’re gone.”
Duce did as he asked and paused when Shane returned from the bedroom. “Seriously, man…what are you doing with the bat?”
“I told you. I’m kicking someone’s ass.”
Duce shook his head, stepped closer, and pried the Louisville out of his friend’s hand. “No, man. You know better than that.”
Duce was an odd guy. Of all his friends he was the dumbest, but at the same time he was also the most level headed and sometimes smartest. He was the diplomat. So long as they kept him fed, he’d do anything for any one of them.
They climbed into Duce’s Ford Focus, which, due to his friend’s generous size, was more like driving around in a roller skate. Sunny Acres, the mobile community Shane lived in, was about ten miles from Lakota. Neither would be considered nice neighborhoods. One was a ghetto and one was ready to order aluminum homes for good ol’ lower class like himself.
He supposed he was what some might call white trash, but that wasn’t the way it would always be. He’d once had a beautiful home and a decent future promised to him. When life got hard, he’d tried his best, but he was just a kid. He’d fucked up a lot, thinking he was doing right. This place, Sunny Acres, this was just a pit stop. Eventually his hard work would pay off and he’d get the hell out of there. He needed to believe that or else he wouldn’t have the strength to keep on going.
For a guy who’d been on his own since he was seventeen with an eleven-year-old sister to raise, he figured he was doing all right. Although Noel had always been sort of a self-sufficient kid, she still needed food and clothes, the likes of which he was supposed to provide.
Noel begged him not to let her go into the system. It was no easy task to get custody of his sister when he turned eighteen. The months leading up to his eighteenth birthday were hell. They’d just lost their parents, their home was temporarily held up with estate paperwork neither he nor Noel understood, and they’d gone to two different foster families. He never thought after going through so much to be together, they’d end up treating each other the way they had over the past few months. Something definitely had to change.
He didn’t think about how hard it would be to raise Noel. All he focused on was holding on to the family he had left. There were some services that helped them along the way, but he was an adult and she was a kid. So much fell on his shoulders once he took on the role of guardian.
After the will was cleared up, they’d held onto their parent’s house for a few years before the bank foreclosed on it. Then they’d moved to an apartment in Lakota. Shane hated it there, but it was all he could afford at the time. He felt responsible for unintentionally introducing her to the people she met in Lakota and now called friends.
He worked his ass off, flipping burgers and finally caught a break getting hooked up with a construction company. Pouring concrete paid good, but the work only held out as long as the weather did. Winters were always tough.
Once he’d saved up enough money he’d bought a trailer in Sunny Acres. All he had to worry about was lot rent, which was about a third of what he paid in rent for their apartment. However, by that time Noel was already graduating high school and free to do as she pleased.
He didn’t approve of her friends in Lakota. She chose to stay there and if not for her cell phone, he wouldn’t have been able to find her half the time.
It was difficult for Shane to watch her date, knowing she could do so much better than some guy working a double o ’seven job she couldn’t answer for. This was supposed to be a phase, not the path her life followed. He’d tried so hard to give her as many opportunities as he could. He wanted his parents to look down on them and be proud. This was not where he expected her life to go.
When they reached Lakota, Duce drove them to Tracy’s house, Noel’s best friend, but Tracy claimed she hadn’t seen Noel in over a week. They drove to two other friends’ houses. Neither had heard from Noel in days, but one suggested they visit a guy named Davis Charles who lived over by the post office.
Duce drove them to the guy’s house and Shane got out to knock on the door. His body pulsed with tension. In situations like this things could escalate quickly and he was prepared for anything. Who knew if she’d lied and actually gone to the father, but the father tossed her out on her ass? His jaw clenched as he tried to distract the rage percolating inside of him. This may not be the father at all. He needed to play it cool in order to get some answers.
His knuckles rapped on the door again as he distracted himself with his surroundings. The house was a duplex, brick on one side, yellow siding on the other. Why did people do that? If someone shared a house wouldn’t they want it to match?
A thin, disheveled woman opened the door with a runny nosed toddler hanging on her hip. “Can I help you?” There was no welcome in her tone.
“Uh, yeah. I’m looking for Davis Charles.”
“What you want with Davis? He ain’t got no money if that’s what this is about.”
“I need to ask him something.”
She pursed her full lips and eyed him skeptically. “Fine, but I gots kids in here. You start fighting and I’m gonna call the cops, ya hear?”
He nodded.
She turned. “Davis! You got some people here to see you.”
The door slammed in their faces. “Wholesome neighborhood,” Duce commented under his breath.
The door opened and a tall, shirtless man stared down at them. He was tall, but skinny. “Who are you?”
“I’m Shane Martin. I’m trying to find my sister, Noel.”
“Well, Noel ain’t here. You probably find her over at Dan Nucci’s place.”
“Where’s Dan live?”
Davis gave them directions and they hopped back in the roller skate and continued their search. But Dan Nucci didn’t know where Noel was. Neither did his friend Mark Shields, or his friend Lauren Coats. It seemed everyone had an idea, but none of them panned out.
As it started getting dark, Shane dialed his sister’s number for the hundredth time, only to have it go to voicemail.
“I gotta eat, Shane. I’m wilting away to nothing over here. And I’m almost out of gas.” Duce had done nothing but complain for the last hour.
They fueled up at a local station closer to Sunny Acres. While Duce wolfed down three hot dogs, Shane scrolled through his contacts and texted anyone who might know where Noel was hiding. No one had seen her since last night.
“She’ll turn up, dude. She’s probably out with her girls somewhere, licking her wounds.”
Duce’s words were poor comfort. Regardless of her age, Noel was his responsibility. He’d let her go her own way for the most part, because no one told him how to live when he was seventeen and she deserved the same. But he always looked out for her. Over the last three years, as she’d become an adult, guilt seeped in for his lack of guidance. Not that his opinions were always welcomed, but he hadn’t been there for her the way he could have been.
Truth be told, he’d sort of let his own life go adrift. Work had been sparse, money tight, and at the end of the week all he wanted to do was drink his worries away.
Shane untied his ponytail and ran his fingers through his dark, shoulder length hair, tying it back off his neck again. He had a gig tomorrow night and needed to find her before then or he’d have to cancel. Without his truck running and his friends holding nine to five jobs, he’d be limited to searching for her at night. His worry took a back seat to the surge of irritation. Her little disappearing act was going to cost him more money if she didn’t turn up soon
.
“Should we head back?” Duce asked as he crumpled up his wrapper and tossed it in the back of the roller skate.
Shane dialed again and cursed when it went straight to voicemail. He was out of ideas. Where the fuck could she be? Sighing, he said, “Yeah, I guess.”
Duce started the car and backed out of the gas station. The thing buzzed down the highway as if powered by Duracell.
When Duce dropped him off, he entered his trailer and winced. It smelled like pot, piss, and beer. Rather than zone out on the couch like he usually would, Shane grabbed another trash bag and began cleaning up. He was anxious and it would only get worse if he sat around. He filled five big trash bags before the place looked decent again. The smell had dissipated, but wasn’t completely gone.
He’d opened the small windows to let in some air and worked himself into a sweat. Filling a bucket with soapy water, he began scrubbing down the cabinets and walls. The water was black before he reached the living room.
Shane ended up passing out sometime after three in the morning. His last thoughts were of Noel. He hoped, if she wasn’t speaking to him, she at least had a good friend with her. He’d figure out a way to get her the money if that’s what she really wanted, but he wanted to talk to her first, make sure she understood what this could do to a girl.
He didn’t want her going through this alone. It made him sick to think of what their relationship had become and how careless he’d been last night when she needed him. She undoubtedly was pissed with him, but no way was anyone more furious with him than himself. He’d find her. Tomorrow he’d find her and they’d work it all out.
Chapter One
May
“No, I’m definitely in. I just gotta run home and change. I’ll meet you down at Bailey’s in about an hour.” Shane drove his truck down the dusty main road of Sunny Acres toward his trailer.
Duce’s voice came over the phone. “Sims is already there. He said that girl, Sue, with the big lips is there.”