I ripped the eviction notice from the door and sat down on the rickety wooden steps of the porch. They creaked and groaned under my every move, making me feel as unwelcome as the paper I clutched. I turned it over and over, hoping to see a “gotcha”, or some other punch line—maybe even a loophole that would make it all go away.
There weren’t any.
This one little piece of highlighter green paper just determined everything, and that everything, was that I had nothing.
Why hadn’t Nan told me she was losing her house? I could have helped. I would have quit school and gotten a job.
I’d just answered my own fucking question.
Of course she didn't tell me. She wanted me to graduate. She said it all the time, every day if she could squeeze it in. It was like the woman had a one-track mind. “Do you want pie—graduate from high school.”
“The sun is sure beating down today—graduate from high school.”
“I sure miss your Popop—graduate from high school.”
I think Nan believed that as long as I had a high school diploma my life would somehow end up okay.
With the letter of doom in one hand and the Daphne doll in the other, Nan’s obsession with me graduating from high school was laughable, in a sad, twisted kind of way.
Nan had gotten her wish. I had graduated and received my high school diploma.
I know she couldn’t ever have imagined I wouldn't have anywhere to hang it.
***
I went around back and grabbed a blue tarp from the toolbox on the dock and draped it over the mound on the driveway in case of rain. As I finished covering the contents of mine and Nan’s life together, Sheriff Fletcher pulled up along the road in his police cruiser. He didn't bother getting out. I’d have sworn if someone were murdered, he’d probably have just snapped a picture of the crime scene with his phone without so much as stopping the car on his way to Bubba’s.
Sheriff Fletcher rolled down his window. "Thanks for the heads up," I spat at him. After all, it was his official signature gracing the bottom of the eviction notice.
"Darlin', we don't get no advance notice on these things. They’re sent to us from the state with orders to carry out the eviction on the same day. I didn't know until yesterday morning it was your Nan's house we was guttin’ up.” He paused. “It’s not like I could’ve gotten a hold of you anyway. Seems you up and disappeared on us." Gruff and unapologetic. Same as every other day.
"I assume by that comment that Dan has stopped by to see you?" I asked as I finished tucking the tarp under the bottom of the mound in case the rain decided it wanted to seep through the sides.
"Who?"
"Miss Thornton," I clarified.
"Oh yeah. Told her the truth, that I didn't know where you was. She'll be back soon, though, so you might want to figure out what your plan is." Sheriff Fletcher offered no assistance, but he also didn’t haul me back to Miss Thornton. For that, I was grateful.
"I'll have Owen help you move some of that shit." He grumbled, waving to the crap in the driveway. He pulled out his cell phone and mumbled into the receiver before clicking it shut. He put the cruiser in drive, but before the car moved three feet he stopped again and leaned out the window. "You got any green on ya?" he asked, not bothering to look around to see who might hear him.
“Sorry, that whole keeping myself fed and sheltered thing has really been a drag these past few weeks.” I may have been grateful, but I sure as shit wasn’t sharing the last of my weed with him.
The sheriff rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively. “See you ‘round, kid,” he muttered. Then he was gone.
A half -hour later, I was lying on the small patch of grass you could hardly call a front lawn, my legs crossed at the ankles, dreaming of a time not long ago when Nan had first taken me in. We were sitting in the living room, and she was working on her knitting.
"What are your dreams, Abby?" Nan asked. When she saw how confused I was, she clarified the question. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I’d never been asked that before, so naturally I’d never thought about the answer. I’d thought a lot about running away, but my dreams for my life had never gone beyond getting away from my parents, then from foster care, then from the memories that plagued me. I never dreamed about what I’d do afterward.
Getting away had become my everything.
My dreams were of being left alone.
When I didn't answer Nan, she said, "Any answer is a good answer, Abby."
I told her the first thing that came to my bitter mind. "Dad always said I wasn't good for nothin' so I guess that’s what I’m gonna do: nothin’." Hope had been stripped from me at every minute of every hour of every day for my entire life.
Nan had tried to give it back to me.
She shook her head. "No honey, your Daddy was a sick man. He didn't know what he was sayin’. You’re a beautiful young lady, and you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You can be a singer, a dancer, a doctor, a lawyer—even the president." I thought she was lying to me. I got angry. Why would she tell me I could be anything when we both knew it wasn’t true?
I was so full of rage. I remember sweeping my arm across the kitchen table, sending the glass vase in the center crashing to the floor in one quick motion. It shattered around my legs, the shards cutting into my feet and toes.
"You don't gotta lie to me!" I screamed, and I continued screaming until my throat was raw. Nan tried to wrap me up in a hug, and I just got louder. Her touch burned my skin. But, Nan didn’t know about the burning then.
She didn’t know she was hurting me.
I’d struggled against Nan, but I was so much smaller than she was. She wrestled me to the ground while whispering her brand of loving reassurance in my ear. How much she loved me. How much she believed in me. "You can do anything, baby girl. I promise, I will never lie to you. You are bright and beautiful and resilient. You can do anything." She repeated those words until my muscles relaxed and I fell asleep in her arms on the kitchen floor. The fire in me hadn’t died.
I had just given in to the flames.
It was my first and only hug.
Ever.
It was the first time I’d ever felt loved, or even worthy of love. I was both elated and frightened by the intensity of it all. I had wondered how people with more than one person to love walked around all day without falling over from the weight of their emotions.
That very day I had fallen in love with my grandmother.
"Abby? You dead?" A voice asked, casting a shadow over me, bringing me out of my daydream and back into the present. I kept my eyes closed.
"Yes,” I said. “I'm dead." I might as well have been.
"Well, you look awfully cute for a dead girl."
“Thanks, Owen.” I sat up, shading my eyes with my hands. The afternoon sun peaked around Owen, framing him in a full-body halo.
"What’re you doing down there?" Owen asked.
"Nothing that matters,” I answered. “What are you doing here?"
Owen stared down at me with the same grin he always had plastered on his face. I swear his cheeks must hurt at the end of the day. "Uncle Cole called and asked if I could come give you a hand with your…" He looked over to the tarp. “Crap?”
"Owen, I would love for you to help me. There’s a huge problem, though, one your kind uncle didn’t think much of before carrying out the eviction.” I was starting to shout. Owen didn't deserve my wrath, but I couldn't help what was coming out.
"And what problem is that?"
“I don’t have anywhere to take it!” I threw my arms up in defeat before hanging my head between my knees.
Owen sat down next to me. "Well," he said, lighting a cigarette, "as I see it you have two options." He took a drag and turned his head to the side to blow the smoke away from me.
"And what might those be?” I asked, talking from between my knees.
"You could either sit around here and have a first class pity party for yourself or you could come and have some drinks tonight at the woods party with me and think about all this—” he motioned to the tarp and the boards on the windows “—tomorrow. Seems like you got it all waterproofed and whatnot, so what's one night? Besides, you look like you could use a little time to forget.”
“That’s probably not the best idea, Owen.” It was an awful idea, actually. I hadn’t avoided being social my entire life for the fun of it, or because I thought I didn’t belong. I avoided them because I knew I didn’t belong. Not only in the town, not only with the kids from my high school.
I didn’t belong anywhere.
“Well, what else you gonna do? Stare at this shit all night until it magically does something different other than be a pile of shit?”
Would it be so bad to pretend for one night I wasn’t the punch line in some universal joke being told at my expense?
“Fine,” I said, giving in. I could think about all this later. I mean, what were my other options anyway?
Did I even have any?
"Well come on, then!" Owen looked like a kid on Christmas morning as he hustled over to his truck and opened the passenger door for me. I stood and brushed the grass from my legs. This time, Owen didn’t offer to help me up. He knew I could do it on my own. And he wasn’t looking for an excuse to touch me, which made me feel better about hanging out with him.
I’d use the night out the same way I’d been using Nan’s scotch, as a way to forget, a way to slip into a state of numbness, even if it was just for a little while.
Maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad after all?
***
Smoke rose from the fire in the center of the clearing, hissing like snakes being charmed. It crackled and popped, growing larger and reaching further into the night sky. A shorter boy wearing a white cowboy hat stood just outside the flames, feeding it dried brush and branches. Trucks of all makes and models formed a wagon-wheel, parked with their tailgates facing inward toward the fire. One of the larger trucks held a keg and a huge bag of red Solo cups, while another had all its windows down and was blaring country music from one of the local stations. Groups of girls or couples with their arms around one another occupied most of the tailgates. A group of guys gathered by the keg, talking loudly about truck tires and challenging each other to a game of ‘who can drink more’.
Why on earth did I agree to come here? I thought. I tugged on the long sleeves of my hoodie, pulling them over my wrists. It was a nervous habit. Owen must have been reading my mind, because he stepped away from his man-groupies by the keg and came over to where I sat on the open tailgate of his truck.
“You look like you could use a beer,” he said, offering me a cup.
I took it from him and downed most of it in one gulp.
I was going to need much, much more.
“Thanks,” I said. I gave him my best fake smile. Careful not to spill his own beer, Owen hopped up onto the tailgate in one fluid motion, taking a seat next to me. “You don’t have to be afraid of these folks, you know. Most of them you’ve gone to school with for a long time.” He tried to playfully nudge me with his elbow, but I dodged the contact.
I looked around the fire at the people I had known for years, but really didn’t know at all. Each time I made eye contact with a new person it was met with sneers and whispers.
I held my empty cup out to Owen. “Maybe, I’m just not a group person,” I offered. Or maybe I had nothing in common with these people besides a zip code—although considering I’d just become homeless, I was without a zip code, too. Technically, we didn’t share shit anymore.
I needed more beer.
Being drunk was the only way I wasn’t going to scratch the skin off my face from being so damned uncomfortable, surrounded by all of them. Owen happily obliged and kept the beer flowing all night.
A few hours later and too many beers to count, couples started pairing off and disappearing into the woods. Trucks, which just hours ago brought in fresh-faced kids ready to party, now left with the disheveled remnants of those same kids. Limp, passed-out bodies tangled together in the cabs and beds.
There were only a few handfuls of party-goers left. I sat on a log swaying to the music being played on a guitar by a younger kid named Will. I’d spent the last couple hours listening to him play while trying to stump him with my requests. Whether I asked him to play Garth Brooks or Offspring, he just laughed and started playing. I think he was as amused as I was.
Owen came over to me frequently, keeping my beer cup full. But, he spent most of his time chatting with his friends on the other side of the fire. None of them had bothered to say a word to me, but every so often, I would catch Owen staring at me through the flames.
When I felt the space on the log next to me shift, I assumed Owen had come back and brought me round number…I lost count. “Thanks,” I said, reaching out to take my cup from him without taking my eyes off Will. He was on the second chorus of “Criminal” by Fiona Apple. The kid should’ve tried out for one of those TV talent shows.
“You’re welcome.” The voice wasn’t Owen’s. A shiver of recognition crept up my spine. When I turned around, I came face to face with the beautiful blue-eyed psychopath from the junkyard.
Had I just thought of him as being beautiful?
Yep.
Jake was still dressed in head-to-toe black, in a tight t-shirt and jeans. He wasn’t wearing his leather jacket. His tattoos seemed to glisten under the light of the moon. As opposed to the moment when he was threatening my life, he looked much more relaxed this time around. Maybe, it was an illusion resulting from the firelight casting shadows on his face. No, it wasn’t the fire, I realized.
He really was beautiful.
He pushed his hair behind his ears and ran a hand down his goatee. “Hi, Abby,” he said, like we were old friends.
What was I supposed to say to this guy? He’d caught me sleeping in his dad’s junkyard. He’d held a gun to my head. Hey how ‘bout dem Jets, didn’t exactly feel like the way to start the conversation either.
My stomach flip-flopped as if I were falling.
I straightened my shoulders and pushed away the thoughts I was having about his looks and the circumstances under which we met. “You packing tonight?” I asked him. I turned back around and pretended to focus my attentions back on Will, who was just starting on the first notes of Colt Ford’s, “Riding Through The Country”.
Then, I hiccupped.
I felt the redness of my embarrassment creeping up my cheeks. I couldn’t look back at him. I could hear him laughing, and not just a giggle, but very full, very deep laughter. He slid in closer, his lips a breath away from my ear when he whispered, “I’m always packing, Bee.” His tone turned very serious. The way he’d said my name caused the hairs on my neck to stand at attention.
Did he just call me Bee?
“Jake! You made it!” A girl wearing tight jeans and a scrap of a tank top ran up to Jake and threw herself into his lap.
“Alissa,” he said sternly, “I’m talking with Abby. Go wait with Jessica ‘til I’m done.” He wasn’t angry, but his tone was firm. He made it clear that he was having a conversation with me, and the bimbo wasn’t invited.
Alissa looked me up and down and with disapproving eyes. She scrunched up her nose. “Why are you wasting your time with her, Jake? She ain’t nothin’ but a freak ‘round here. Did you know that no one has ever seen her wear nothin’ but sweatshirts and long sleeves—even on them hotter than hell days?” She glared at me, and I glared back. “Yeah, she’s hiding something under there all right. It might be a hump or something. Stacey says she hides pregnancies and sells the babies on eBay. Personally, I think maybe she’s got scales or something under there. Or something even more hideous.”
She was getting closer, in both idea and distance.
Alissa reached over and punctuated her comment by lifting up the hem of my hoodie, exaggerating her movements to peer under it. I yanked it back down before she or anyone else could see anything. I grabbed her wrist and squeezed until she released my shirt, ignoring the fire building in my palm as I crushed her in my grasp.
She gasped and stared at me in wide-eyed shock.
“What was that Alissa?” I asked her.
She tried to wriggle out of my grip, but one thing I’d learned in my life was that hatred and adrenaline make people much stronger then they look. She may have been taller than me and outweighed me by at least twenty pounds, but at full boil, I could take her down with just a few blows.
Lucky for her, I was only on a simmer.
“Did you say something about the clothes I wear, bitch? Because honestly, I’d much rather be known as the girl who wears sweatshirts than the vagina most likely to be recognized in a line up.” People had gathered around to watch us. I didn’t care. “Did you ever stop to think that it might be whores like you who put every nasty bit of their ugly shit out on display for the world to see that disgust me so much I feel the need to cover myself up so I don’t wind up single, with seven kids, barhopping every night when I’m well into my sixties?” I gave her a sweet fake smile. “Oh wait, I forgot to ask you: how are your grandmama and mama doing these days?” Her glare became even more evil. I pulled on her wrist, and when she tugged back, I released her, sending her falling to the