idea if I could be a good server or not. Now was not the time for honesty.
“Abby, I can’t risk my liquor license by putting you behind the bar. And I can’t let you be a server, ‘cause we’re in the height of season and slammed with people and I got no time to train anyone new. But I tell you what, you come back and see me when you’re eighteen, and we are less busy, and I promise I’ll try and find something for you.”
“Yeah, no problem,” I said, trying to keep a positive tone.
Bubba ushered me to the front door. “Georgie did right by you, darlin’. She was a good woman. Come see me if you need anything. God’s people need to stick together.” I didn’t know if he was talking about me or just Nan when he said ‘God’s people’. And hadn’t I just asked him for help? I nodded and smiled.
I left the bar feeling defeated.
I still desperately needed money. Once the coast was clear of Miss Thornton, and I was back living in Nan’s, I’d need to be able to feed myself—and hopefully keep the lights on. If I couldn’t get a job, I would have to resort to stealing.
Bubba’s words stuck with me as I walked down the main road between the shadows of our town’s few light posts. God’s people stick together. It actually started to make sense to me as I thought about it. If God’s people stuck together, and I was all alone, then I certainly wasn’t one of his people. As much as Nan took me to church and prayed for me, I’d never felt like I was being watched over or taken care of by some higher power. I knew then that this was because I wasn’t one of God’s people.
I probably never had been.
I walked with no destination in mind, with the new knowledge that if there actually was a God, he’d likely forgotten about me from the beginning. It wasn’t even a second after this thought crossed my mind when the ground beneath my feet started to shake, and the bulb on the light pole over me rattled out a warning. The night went dark.
What the fuck?
A single round light, brighter than any I’d ever seen on a car appeared before me, breaking through the darkness and casting away the shadows of the night around me. It sped directly toward me. The rumbling of the earth grew more violent the closer it came. The light overhead buzzed as it struggled its way back to life.
Just when I began to believe it was God himself making his presence known to me, to punish me for my blasphemous thoughts, the thunderous hell-machine that carried the light barreled past me in a blinding blur of chrome, black and blonde. The force of its stream sent me flailing into a nearby thicket of prickly bushes. It wasn’t God. It was just a fucking motorcycle. A big one for sure, but still, just a fucking motorcycle, going at least three times the speed limit.
Just my luck, I thought. I pulled myself up from the brush and bent over to pick the sand spurs and shell fragments from the skin on my calves.
Just my fucking luck.
***
The sound of my own sneezing woke me. I wasn’t surprised. It seemed that if I moved at all, I kicked up a dust bowl and the result was several earth-shattering loud sneezes in a row.
I hated dust.
I hated allergies.
And I definitely hated sneaking into the junkyard behind Frank Dunn’s Auto Body to sleep in Nan’s old truck. She had taken it there in an attempt to get it running again, but since she’d found out it would take over two-thousand dollars to make that happen, it had stayed at Frank’s, untouched for almost a year.
Past experience had taught me that the child welfare social worker types didn’t stake out kids for too long. Once they’d spent a solid twenty-four hours looking for you without any luck, they’d list you as a runaway and move on to the next unfortunate case. So I needed just one night away from Nan’s, maybe two, to make sure that meddling bitch Miss Thornton would be long gone before I went home. I checked the time on my watch. It was almost four in the morning. I figured I could get in another couple hours of undisturbed sleep, so I tucked myself in under my hoodie and closed my eyes.
I tried to ignore the dust and pretend I was home in my bed at Nan’s. I curled up and had almost drifted back to sleep when I was startled by the same thunderous sound that had knocked me to my ass earlier. Careful not to be seen, I sat up and peeked over the dashboard. The yard motion light clicked on, and I saw two figures walking around in the night. They were too far away for me to see them clearly, but I heard a feminine laugh and the click-clack of heels, so one of them was probably a woman.
I quietly sank down to the floorboard under the steering wheel and tried to make myself as small as possible. The last thing I needed was a breaking and entering charge. I think I had one of those already, anyway, and I knew that Frank Dunn wouldn’t be happy with me when he saw the trash can sized hole I’d cut in the fence in order to break into the yard.
A solid five minutes passed before the weight of the truck I was in shifted to the driver’s side, and the unmistakable sound of moaning filled the silent night.
Yes, it was definitely moaning, and it was close.
The passenger side window became a wall of black leather. Metal grommets scratched at the glass each time the figure stirred.
The moaning started moving... lower.
I crunched myself up as small as I could, trying to make myself invisible. It was still dark out and my black hoodie covered most of me, so even if whoever it was could see through the dirty window, they would hopefully think I was just a bunch of random crap piled on the floor.
The woman started to make exaggerated porn noises, larger-than-life sucking and groaning.
Flashes of unwanted memories flooded my mind before I could attempt to push them out, images of the endless parades of bruised and naked bodies writhing against anyone and anything they could find. Piles of men and women littering the stained couches and floors, smearing the dripping blood from fresh needle wounds and opening scabs of older ones onto one another as they grunted and groaned like animals. The unconscious ones in the crowd were treated no differently than the conscious. Their wide-open mouths and lifeless eyes staring beyond the popcorn ceiling weren’t reason enough to stop fucking them. They were taken turns with, until someone noticed they didn’t have a pulse. I had witnessed more than one dead body being discarded from my parent’s trailer like an empty pizza box.
Bile rose in my throat.
The last memory that burst into my head was of the night I’d gotten the scars I kept covered. A burning took over my body when I thought of the sharpness of the knife, and the crazed look in my mother’s bloodshot eyes. My chest tightened, and I willed the memory to leave, but it was too late. I tried to take a deep breath to steady myself. Instead, I inhaled a dust cloud. I tried to stifle my cough, but instead I ended up choking. The woman outside shrieked at the same time, and I braced myself to be discovered.
But, the woman only coughed and made a choking noise of her own. She cleared her throat and spat onto the pavement. “You were supposed to tell me when you were close, asshole!” she yelled. My pulse started to race. My hands were sweating.
“Oops,” A deep unapologetic voice said. He sounded amused with himself, actually. I heard the sound of a zipper closing. I was going to be sick. I felt it coming up and almost couldn’t stop it. I held my breath and placed my hand over my mouth. I heard the sound of their retreating footsteps, followed by the squealing of the fence as it slid open.
The second I heard the gate close, I opened the driver’s side door of the truck, leaned out from under the steering wheel, and vomited violently onto the pavement. My body convulsed long after there was nothing left in my stomach to expel. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
Fuck my parents, and who I am because of them, I thought.
“Don’t move, motherfucker,” a deep voice growled, followed by the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking. It sent chills down my spine and the hairs on my neck stood at attention. My heart stopped. I didn't dare breathe.
With my head still down toward the pavement, I could only see black leather boots and dark jeans. I didn’t look up. I didn’t want this guy to think I could identify him. Those were the moments when shit usually went bad in scenarios like this, I told myself. He pressed the gun to the back of my head. I could feel the cool metal even through my hood.
I closed my eyes and prepared for the end.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence.
Finally, he spoke again. “Who the fuck are you?” His voice was menacing.
I didn’t know how to respond to him. Nothing I thought of seemed like the right thing to say to a crazed man with a gun.
“Who sent you, motherfucker?” He forcefully nudged my head down with the gun until my forehead almost touched the pavement. I don’t think he was used to being ignored. Maybe, this was the way it was supposed to end. My life had always been a fight, a struggle. Maybe, I was supposed to meet my end in a junkyard without anyone left to care where I was. Maybe, I was just fighting the inevitable by even trying to stay alive.
I remained silent and left my fate to chance.
“Okay. You want to play it that way?” He yanked me forward by my hood and sent me crashing to my knees on the pavement. I barely missed the puddle of my own vomit. He stood behind me and ripped the hood off my head, taking a handful of hair with him. The tearing sensation from my scalp caused me to cry out. He stilled for a moment before coming around to kneel in front of me. His gun was still pointed at my head, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was staring at the clump of red hair he was clutching in his other hand.
When he looked up from the hair in his hand, his jaw dropped open. Our eyes met, and even in the poor light from the motion sensors, his eyes were the most brilliant shade of blue I’d ever seen.
Something deep inside me, something I thought to have been nonexistent, stirred.
He wasn’t much older than me, maybe just a few years. He was dressed in a tight black t-shirt and dark jeans. The leather jacket he wore during his earlier activities against the truck was gone. His sandy blonde hair lay in contrast to all the darkness, grown just long enough to keep tucked behind his ears. His blonde goatee and eyebrows matched. Black and grey tattoos, designs I couldn’t make out, started on top of his right hand and ran upward, covering his entire arm, disappearing under his t-shirt, emerging again out of his collar, stopping at the base of his neck.
When he spoke, the aggression from seconds before was gone. “You?” he asked in a whisper, which quickly turned to a frustrated shout. “What the fuck? I could have killed you!” The gun wasn’t pointed at me anymore. It was resting in his hands instead, like it was an accessory, as unthreatening as if he were holding his keys.
“I know,” I muttered. Part of me hoped he would have killed me. I stood up and brushed the hair from my eyes. The blonde stranger looked confused. He scratched at his goatee.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked as he tucked the gun into the back waistband of his jeans.
“Nothing. I’m not doing anything,” I said. I reached into the truck, grabbed my backpack from the seat, and started walking toward the fence. The blonde stranger kept pace beside me, eyeing the truck and then my bag.
“Are you...are you living here?” he asked. Now, he was just getting on my nerves. I didn’t know this guy. He had no right to ask about my business, gun or no gun. “Answer me. What are you doing here?” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to him.
Even with the layer of clothing in between us, my skin started to burn instantly. I shrugged out of his grip “Let me go!” I screamed. When he recognized the panic in my eyes, he did just that.
“Just tell me why you’re here,” he said, in a softer, less demanding tone. He smelled like leather and wind, and he kept rubbing his hand over his facial hair. I wondered if he always did that when he was trying to figure something out.
“Why are you here?” I asked, turning the tables on him. The best way to not answer a question was to ask one.
“This is my dad’s yard, and I’m in town running the shop out front for a while. I’m staying in the attached apartment, so technically, I live here.” He tucked his hands in his pockets the way any boy at my high school would do. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-three, but when his face was set in that hard expression, with his forehead creased and his lips set in a straight line, he looked much older.
“Shit,” I said. I was hoping he was trespassing just like me. Instead, I’d been caught—and by the fucking owner’s son no less.
I needed to get the fuck out of there.
I side-stepped him, to the left and then to the right, and he finally let me pass. I ran for the gate and tried to pry it open as fast as possible, but it was at least twelve feet high and extremely heavy. This was the reason I had cut the hole in the fence to begin with. I heaved and heaved until finally it gave way. Then I turned and found the stranger who, just moments ago, held a gun to my temple, was now helping me open the gate.
“You didn’t think you were that strong, did you?” A smirk played on his lips.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I stepped through the gate and hurried down the road.
“Hey, wait,” he called. I froze. I thought he was going to tell me he was calling the cops or his father, or someone who would end up sending me back into the devil’s lair of foster care. Instead, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?”
He hesitated. “Jake,” he finally said. He leaned up against the gate on one arm, crossing his legs at the ankles. I barely noticed I was biting my lower lip. I stopped when I realized I was openly gawking at him. He would be one hell of a good looking guy... for anyone who might like the creepy, angry, violent type.
I don’t know what compelled me to tell him my name. For all I knew, he’d use it to file the police report. “Abby,” I said as I turned again to walk away.
“Hey, Abby?” he called to me. “Next time just come through the gate. Or better yet, knock on the door.” He nodded toward the main building, and then gestured to a small garbage can hiding where I’d cut a hole in the fence. “No more cuttin’ holes, okay?”
Holy shit.
Just when I thought I could finally walk away, he had to add one more thing. “If I’d known you were sneaking in for the show, I would have made sure you had a better seat.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively and smiled. I felt the redness creep up from my neck to my cheeks. He started to slide the gate shut. I turned and ran before he had it closed, hiding the evidence of my embarrassment.
I’d never been so irritated, disgusted and intrigued by someone in all my life—and I’ve met a lot of warped motherfuckers. It was the intrigued part that had me worried the most.
Things would have been so much easier if he’d just shot me.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE FIRST THING I NOTICED when I got home was the junk, a huge pile of debris collected up in the center of the small gravel driveway. My heart fell into my stomach when the realization washed over me that it wasn’t junk. It was our lives.
Mine and Nan’s.
Our clothes, our furniture, all of our pictures and memories had been mangled and thrown into a huge heap. I climbed up the pile and knelt down in the center, running my hands over the matted red hair of Nan's favorite collectable doll she called Daphne. Nan used to tell me the doll reminded her of me. I thought it was just because of the red hair, until one day she told me otherwise.
“It’s because she’s resilient," she had said. "That doll has been through two house fires, one front yard burial by wayward dog, and an accidental toilet bowl drowning.” She leaned across the counter on her elbows and whispered, “She was saved. All Daphne needed was a little sprucing up and a good dose of love. Every single time, she would come out okay, sometimes even better than she was before.” I may have been only thirteen, but I knew she hadn’t been talking about the doll anymore.
In Nan’s own way, she was trying to explain to a thirteen year-old kid that even though life hands you a big pile of shit, you don’t have to roll around in it and make shit angels.
My version of her logic.
I climbed down the mound, still clutching Daphne in my hands. As I approached the front porch, I spotted a very official-looking bright green paper with bold lettering tacked to the screen door. I couldn’t make out the words until I was right on top of it. The paper shouted:
THIS PREMISES HAS BEEN EVICTED BY THE
CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF COURT ORDER IN REGARDS TO THE FORECLOSURE OF
4339 PINEPASS ROAD
Case #4320951212102013
First Bank of Coral Pines vs. Georgianne Margaret Ford
ENTRANCE BY ANYONE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM
THE CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE OWNERS:
FIRST BANK OF CORAL PINES
WILL BE REMOVED AND PROSECUTED
BY THE PROPER AUTHORITY
SIGNED: SHERIFF COLE FLETCHER
Special Notes: LOCKS HAVE BEEN CHANGED