Mama. Papi. My brother and sister.
Sixty thousand dollars.
I swallow. Once. Twice. But the bile slides up and down my throat like an enraged serpent. I try to translate sixty thousand dollars into shifts worked at the Uppity Rooster and Breeze Mart but my brain won’t do the math.
“Was I wrong?” Julio says softly. “Was I wrong to tell you? That price includes getting them across the desert, you know.”
I shake my head and brace my forearms on the counter in front of me. I wonder whether this sideboard can hold me up, what with this new weight of the world on my shoulders. “How … How much do we already have saved?”
At this, Julio perks up. “We have nearly fifty thousand saved, bonita. You see how much progress we’ve already made?” There is a flash of pride in his eyes, and why shouldn’t there be? He’s the reason we’ve got even that saved up. I’m impressed. My Breeze Mart checks hardly buy groceries each week. And that’s stretching each deflated dollar to its death.
Plus, we send money home every week. So all of that savings came from Julio. He is the true slave.
Julio seems relieved to have shared this with me. As if by sharing the information, the actual accounting of it, he’s also sharing the burden of responsibility. This should feel like a privilege and I know it. Julio has deemed me fit to speak about adult things with him. He’s truly making us a team, instead of just saying it all the time. He’s bringing me into the proverbial loop. I should see it as an opportunity to prove myself.
But all I see is how much work it will be, how much work it’s already been.
And I don’t know how much longer I can do this.
But my family is worth the sacrifice.
Sixteen
Arden slips into his seat in social studies and tries not to look at Carly, who is already doing a fantastic job of pretending that he doesn’t exist. He’s come to accept this weird relationship of theirs, that they aren’t to acknowledge each other in school. She claims to not want the attention, and he can’t help but feel relieved at that. The more questions people ask him about their relationship, the more questions he would have to ask himself.
Because the truth of the matter is, he’s not sure what it all means yet. Or if it means anything more than the sum of the parts: They hang out. They cause trouble. They laugh while doing it.
Still, he can’t ignore that these past few weeks he’s felt like he’s been having an affair with life. He thought he’d been truly living before Carly Vega. He thought Amber’s death had scared life into him, had stirred up the need to do more than just exist. But he’s coming to realize that life can be lived in fractions and he has been portioning some of it out to merely existing after all, despite his best intentions.
All those nights riding around in the police car with Deputy Glass, when the conversation fell quiet and so did the incoming calls. Staring out the window as Glass drove round after round throughout town. He would have called that living; it was rare, something only an insomniac had the pleasure of seeing, the world at rest. At peace with itself.
Even when he’d devised his own entertainment, the fun was lacking by exactly half. He just didn’t know it at the time. But now he does. And he can’t stop thinking about why.
And he can’t stop thinking about why it even matters, but the answer whispers back at him almost immediately: Because what if you lose this too?
He pushes the thought aside, all thoughts in fact, until class is over and he can finally align himself with Carly in the hallway and pretend not to be talking to her. She stops at her locker to shift books and folders around, which is her version of appearing too busy to notice him.
She opens her locker and proceeds to shuffle the contents in an almost predictable way. He leans against the locker to her left. “Is this even necessary anymore?” he says, keeping his voice low. “Everyone thinks we’re a couple. Maybe we should act like one. Then all the mystery and curiosity is gone and they’ll eventually stop talking about it. Poof. No more attention. Isn’t that what you want?”
Carly raises a well-defined brow at him, briefly giving him the pleasure of looking directly into her mischievous eyes. “If they thought we were actually a couple, they’d feel obligated to talk to me and invite me to their stupid parties and sit at their secret society table at lunch. Poof. Ten times the attention. You’d put me through that?”
Yes, in a heartbeat, if it meant his friends would stop wondering if Carly Vega is taken or not. Is this what a crush feels like? “I don’t even go to their parties anymore. And I don’t eat lunch here, remember?” He still drives to Taco City, even though he’d stay and eat the palatably challenged cafeteria food if she asked him to.
But she never does.
“How can I forget that you waste five bucks a day on lunch?”
“Three ninety-nine. The special is three dollars and ninety-nine cents. Geez.”
“Speaking of three ninety-nine,” she says, slamming the locker shut. A brilliant smile shimmers across her face. “Are we still on for this afternoon?” Arden can’t help but smile himself. He promised to take her to Best Buy in Destin. She’d finally skimmed enough cream off the top of her tips to buy a laptop—without Julio ever questioning where the money had gone. Now she won’t need to borrow the school’s laptop anymore—something Arden knows means a lot to her.
“Are we ever off?”
She scowls. “Maybe I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t hide things from Julio.”
Arden rolls his eyes. Little hypocrite. She’s already hiding the fact that she cut her shifts at the Breeze Mart. “Really? You think now’s the time to grow a conscience? Besides, you’ve given him enough freaking money to buy a Lamborghini. Oh, I know,” he says, waving his hand at her. “You don’t want to talk about what he’s doing with it.” He covers her mouth with his hand, to prevent the usual well-it’s-not-your-business remark, which she says with a stinging effortlessness. It’s true, it’s not his business, but who likes hearing that? And especially in the way she says it? All hoity-toity.
His reflexive action earns them some knowing glances in the hall, and another scowl from Carly. He steps away from her then, shoving the offending hand in his jeans pocket. “Oh God, I’d better go. I think someone’s pulling a party invitation out of their pocket and we can’t have that now, can we?”
He nearly breaks into a run to get away from her, and behind him he can hear her giggling in his wake. And he decides it’s one of his favorite sounds.
* * *
Arden pulls the truck around to the front of Best Buy to pick up a beaming Carly. The box she’s holding barely fits in her arms, but when she passes it to him across the seat of his truck so she can get in, he decides it’s full of cotton balls instead of the latest and greatest technology. “Um, is the laptop in here?”
Her eyes actually sparkle. “I know, right? It’s supposed to be the lightest model. It will fit almost anywhere in my room, and Julio won’t have to know. He can keep using the old junky school computer and I can have this all to myself.”
She slams the door, something Arden has asked her not to do time and again. But this time she’s all apologetic. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m just excited is all.” And he believes her.
But before he becomes enchanted for the rest of the darkening afternoon, he has a phone call to make. He pulls into a parking spot and gives Carly a humor-me look as he dials his cell phone.
“Gulf Coast Florals” is the answer he receives.
“Hello, this is Clarence Barnes. I’d like to send a dozen roses to my sweetheart, Sherry Moss.”
There’s a long pause on the other end. Then, “The last time she received these from you, sir, she said she didn’t know who you were. Said she couldn’t accept them ever again, as she’s a married woman.”
Arden winks at Carly, who’s giving him an inquisitive look. “She might not accept them, but you’ll still be paid for delivering them, is that right?”
Another
pause. “Well. Yessir.”
“So then it’s good business for you to deliver flowers without questions and get paid for doing it. I’m sure this sort of situation has come up before, hasn’t it? Where it was a friendly admirer who wanted to show their appreciation anonymously? What the lady wants to do with the flowers is her business. Good God, man, if you can’t do this, then how do you ever survive Valentine’s Day?”
Arden can tell his mind game is working. He hears scribbling on the other end. Beside him, Carly is covering her mouth in case of a giggle. “I suppose we’ve done it before. From an anonymous gentleman, I mean. Mr. Barnes, last time I see we delivered the roses to Forty-Two Longfellow Lane, is that correct?”
Arden is delighted to hear his own address. “That’s still correct, yes.”
“And we delivered two dozen roses. Is that the standing order?” Arden checks his wallet. Since he’s been working for Uncle Cletus, he has a little more cash to go around. “That’s right. What’s that come to, about fifty bucks?”
“Delivered? Oh no, sir, that’s more like eighty dollars. Plus tax.”
Arden grins into the phone. “Anything for my sweetheart, you understand?”
A sigh resonates through the receiver. “I understand, Mr. Barnes. How would you like to pay today?”
Arden pulls out his gift card that he’d loaded money on. Gift cards can’t be traced; there’s no name on them, just good old-fashioned money. “Today will be Mastercard … er, what did you say your name was?”
“This is William, sir.”
But Arden already knows it’s William, the store owner, taking the order. He’s done it countless times with William. William is more concerned with making a sale than delivering roses to a married woman from a mysterious man. Arden reads him the card number and expiration date, and William reads back the information to him verbatim.
“Will that be all today, Mr. Barnes?”
“I think that’s quite enough, don’t you, William?”
“Indeed sir. Indeed.” William hangs up then, probably clinging to his last shred of morality.
Carly’s eyes are almost bulging out of her head. “You sent flowers to your own mother? Who is Clarence Barnes?”
Arden shrugs. “That’s for my mother to fret over, and my father to lose sleep over.” Though he doubts the great Sheriff Moss loses sleeps over anything. And his mother only called the florist at his father’s insistence because of how it looked. Secretly, he hopes she likes getting roses, even if they are from a perfect stranger.
Carly is quiet for a few minutes as he turns the truck onto Highway 98 and heads in the general direction of Roaring Brooke. “Are you trying to break up your parents?”
If he thought it could be done, then he would get his mother away from Dwayne Moss in the space of two heartbeats. But she’s become too dependent on him. “Maybe he’ll appreciate her more. He takes her for granted you know. It doesn’t hurt him one bit to think someone else might be interested in her.”
Carly laughs. “How often do you do it?”
“Every few months or so. Keeps them on their toes and whatnot.”
She gives him a sideways glance, clearly impressed. “And what is on the agenda for this evening, Moss?”
He likes it when she calls him Moss, because ever since she told him that Arden reminded her of “garden” with pink flowers, he’s been feeling slightly emasculated. Moss though? Moss sounds manly enough, he’s decided.
“Tonight we work in real estate.” He motions to the back of his truck and Carly peers through the window separating the cabin from the bed.
“For Rent signs?” she squeaks. Then she laughs. “Oh, this ought to be good.”
“I was thinking of putting them up around a few houses in Hammock Harbor.” Hammock Harbor is Arden’s own neighborhood. They’d know instantly who’d done it, but they wouldn’t have the proof.
No one would ever have the proof.
“Then I was thinking we could put City Hall up for auction. Tape a final notice on their door and everything.”
Carly shakes her head. “Lame. But no matter what we do, we wear gloves this time. And we buy fresh tape from one town over. No trail left behind. And I need something to cover up my nose. It’s a noticeable nose.”
To Arden, everything about her is noticeable. He just didn’t notice it until the night they actually met at the Breeze Mart. “You act like we’re robbing a bank or something.”
“I’m just covering our—my—bases. If Julio found out about—”
“I cannot even describe how tired I am of hearing about what Julio thinks about this and that.” But he knows the conversation is over before it starts. He knows not to press the issue further too. Carly will insist he take her home and then where will he be? Sleepless and bereft of her company. It’s in his best interest to keep her pleased. “We’ll drive over to De Leon Springs and get some latex gloves and tape. Does that make you feel better?”
“What about the signs? Did you already touch the signs without gloves?”
“You must be joking.” No evidence that gets planted will ever carry his fingerprints on them.
“It’s just that you don’t have a healthy fear of getting caught. Your daddy’s the mighty sheriff. You have too many get-out-of-jail-free cards. I don’t. I get caught, I’m screwed.”
She’s already explained to him what getting caught means. She’s busted with Julio, she now has a record, and a record gets her disqualified for all the scholarships she’s nurturing her GPA for. He gets it, he does. But they’re not going to get caught.
They pull into the Dollar Tree in De Leon Springs and purchase a few essentials for tonight’s escapades, plus some candy and soda to keep them wired. As the cashier rings up their purchases, Arden makes a mental list in his head with each item. Tape, check. Gloves, check. Flimsy toy hockey mask, check. Fake mustaches, check. Sharpie marker, check. The whole store is like one big birthday party central with every theme imaginable for the bargain price of one dollar. They split the cost—which always bothers Arden since Carly is so serious about money, or the lack thereof. But these days she seems more flush with cash than he does.
When they’re safely in the truck, Arden pulls out a file folder from the driver’s side door. In it are generically typed foreclosure forms he whipped up in the library at school. He shows them to Carly. She shakes her head. “We’re going to hell for this.”
“You believe in hell? Really, truly?”
“Don’t you?”
Arden grunts. “Isn’t God supposed to be all lovable and stuff? I mean, how fair is hell really? Say you’re a sinner—and we’re all sinners, right?—but say you’re a really bad sinner like a murderer or something and you live for ninety-nine years then you die. You sin for ninety-nine years, but you’re supposed to burn in hell for the rest of eternity for it? What kind of weird justice is that? The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.”
“Well then, where do bad people go?”
“You’re not a bad person, Carly. We’re juking people, not murdering them in their beds.”
“But, for argument’s sake. Where do they go?”
Arden considers. “They just die.”
“And good people?”
He thinks of his sister, Amber. These Southern preachers want him to believe that she’s in hell right now because she committed suicide. Because her life belonged to God and it wasn’t hers to take and all that mess. But Amber was the type of person who wouldn’t kill even the most vicious-looking spider. She’d simply scoop it up with a magazine or newspaper and set it outside. It’s just that Amber was sick. She had real-life chemical imbalances in her head. Imbalances that made her do and say weird things. Would a loving, caring God really put her in hell because she wanted to end that?
Arden doesn’t think so. “But are there really good people? Good people, through and through? Or are we all just varying versions of bad people, some trying harder to be good? In which case, we would all just die
. Everyone dies. That’s all I know.”
Carly seems to realize where his thoughts have strayed. They haven’t had the talk about Amber, and Carly seems curious about it, but in the end she changes the subject. Maybe she thinks it’s too painful a memory for him to discuss. And maybe it would be too painful, but he feels he can tell Carly anything. She won’t coddle him. She’ll be honest, whether he likes it or not. She always is.
And it’s nice. After Amber, everyone tiptoed around the subject. Gave him sympathetic looks and treated him like a porcelain version of himself. Fragile and breakable and dainty. Probably afraid he’d do what Amber did. He wished he’d had Carly back then. So she could punch him in the arm and say things like “Well, it’s not like you killed her.”
Even now, true to form, she maneuvers the conversation elsewhere. She doesn’t offer to talk about it with him. She doesn’t offer any excessive ridiculous condolences. She’s just Carly. “I’m not worried about heaven or hell really. I am worried about jail though. Jail doesn’t delight me.”
“We’re not going to jail. I mean, if we get caught, we might take a tour of the department and answer some questions and get cereal in a Styrofoam bowl and a cup of old coffee or whatever, but we’re not getting booked or charged or anything. Never happen in a million years.”
“How many times have you been caught?”
“Really caught? Like, red-handed? Once. And it was my friend’s fault. I mean, these local cops, they’re not stupid. But there’s this cop code remember? Especially when it comes to family members of other cops. Everything gets brushed under the rug.”
“Nice. So you’re going to get Lucky Charms in a Styrofoam bowl and I’m going to get a cell mate named Brutus.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. They wouldn’t put you in with a guy. You’d be in the cell block with all the prostitutes.”
She grins. “So whose house are we going to put up for rent tonight? Not all Hammock Harbor residents, I hope?”
“I was thinking the mayor’s house should go up on the market. Unless you have something more scandalous in mind?”