Dead Girl Moon (3 page)

“Football…” Grace didn’t catch on.

“Basketball. Tim and I start. How about it?”

Grace didn’t smile. Not ready for this. “I work,” she said.

The guy nodded. “You stuck up? Think you’re chill?” He waited for a response. Didn’t get one.

Grace left them standing there.

“I’m Cunneen. My man’s Tim Cassel,” he yelled at her back. “We deal with bitches.”

6

B
Y
F
EBRUARY
G
RACE HAD SETTLED
into a steady routine: school, work after, studies before bed. She was staying low-profile, making good money, and the friendlier she got with Cookie, the more dirt she heard about the town’s inner workings.

Yesterday and today winter had taken a short break and Grace enjoyed her walk home, the late-night stillness, her breath like smoke in the cold air, stars blinking through leafless branches. When she reached the trailer, she was expecting to lie down on the bed and quietly finish her homework. Wasn’t going to happen. JJ was all wound up, bopping around the small room like a puppy.

“We got a new neighbor,” JJ said, grinning.

Grace thought about the old woman across the lot. She moved? No, Gary would have said something.

JJ plopped on the bed and patted next to her for Grace to sit. As soon as she did, JJ popped up again. Grace hadn’t seen the girl this animated.

They didn’t have any classes together but she knew JJ was low-key at school, always by herself in the halls. JJ had grown up in Portland, had gone to a huge elementary school until her mom died. When she’d had to move here to Portage, she’d never really adjusted, never shared any of the cowboy culture. JJ’d complained that she wasn’t pretty enough to be courted by guys or sought by girls for their cliques. Her sports ability wasn’t glamorous. Worse, living in this trailer, this cesspool, it wasn’t like JJ could invite new friends over.

Grace remembered the afternoon she herself had arrived. JJ’d been openly glad to have a roommate nearly her age. Finally someone to talk to, and JJ could be funny, but tonight was something else. Grace thought she knew what. “A boy, right?”

“Damn straight. He’s tall and quiet, like big but gentle, but not soft, you know. Nice eyes.”

“Hey, simmer down, homegirl. How do you know all this? Did he take a personality test?”

“No, G, I just know. I spent the last hour with him at the river.”

“So he’s a fisherman? A stalker? A hobo?”

“He just got here. He’s in that place on the corner by the alley.”

“The shack behind the hardware?”

“He’s going to play football next year.”

“That explains it. Jock to jock connection.”

JJ blushed. “It’s not like that. You have to meet him…” JJ’s mood shifted as she said that and looked at Grace. Looked at her lying back on the bed now, in her dark pants and white waitress top. “Crap!” JJ seemed to want the word back but it was too late.

Grace got it.

“I won’t,” she told JJ. “I’m not even interested. Don’t want a guy. At all.”

“Doesn’t matter,” JJ said, sitting on her side of the bed, picking up her hand mirror, putting it down. “He’ll see you. And from then—” JJ stopped herself. “Anyway,” she said, “he’s cool. No, he’s real. You’ll like him.”

Grace didn’t know what to say.

JJ stretched out, turned on her reading light, picked up her book, energy gone.

7

M
ICK WOKE TO HIS DAD
tugging on his arm. The man didn’t have to say a word. Mick knew. He also knew arguing was a waste of breath.

“Ten minutes,” his father said, and then he was gone and Mick could hear him rummaging in the kitchen.

The boy scrambled up, took a deep breath, tried to get his brain working so he could check his room. First things: pulled on his jeans and a sweatshirt, got his heavy snow jacket out of the closet along with the shopping bag he always kept packed. Unplugged his CD alarm and tossed it in the bag. Tossed in the book he was reading. Looked under his bed for his magazines. Couldn’t find them. His dad must have taken them.

“C’mon!” The man walked past Mick’s door on the way to the garage.

The boy turned a complete circle. Most things he had cared about—watch, first-base mitt, his mom’s picture—had already been left and lost in earlier moves. Mick saw the souvenir bat from a Boise Hawks game they’d gone to this past summer. Took it. Good memories, good weapon. He jammed his feet in his snow boots and that made him think of his sneakers. He found them behind his door as he heard the car start. The home phone started ringing.

“Leave it!”

That reminded Mick of his cell. He found it in his shirt pocket on the chair by his bed, pulled the charger out of the wall plug and shoved it and the shirt in the shopping bag. He was sticking the cell in his jeans when he heard the garage door go up.

“Now!”

That was always the last warning. Sure enough, a car door slammed. If his dad left him … he made it to the passenger side as the car started to roll. They were out of the driveway when his damn phone rang.

“They must have gotten your number,” his dad said, holding out one hand and steering with the other, taking the corner too fast, fishtailing.

Mick put his phone in the outstretched hand and his dad threw it as far as he could out the driver’s-side window. The man felt on the seat beside him, came up with a paper sack. Pushed it at Mick. “Sandwich,” he said.

The cell phone. The only tie Mick had to the kids he’d met here. For a minute it felt like his father had ripped off Mick’s arm. If they’d been going slower Mick might have jumped from the car to look for it.

The boy wasn’t sure what time it was but the lack of neighborhood lights and the absence of traffic made early morning a good bet. He didn’t feel like eating. His stomach was rumbling like it did when he thought his dad might be arrested. Mick put the sack back on the seat, belted up, zipped his jacket all the way to the neck, and closed his eyes. Crap! He felt in his pockets. No idea where his gloves were. He sat hating himself. Stupid. The last thing he remembered was leaning against the cold window glass looking out at winking ranch lights in the meadows near the turnoff to Riggins.

*   *   *

Not such good things happen when your dad is a thief. Your mom might leave. Mick’s did. You might move way too much. Might not have any friends. You might be afraid a lot. Nervous. Like something bad could happen anytime. Like cops. And if they take your dad, then what? Where do you go? Think they could still find your mom after six or seven years? His mom hadn’t even called. Might not have kept the same name. Might be remarried. Might have a new family. A new son.

*   *   *

Mick awoke after dawn to the memory of his dad hustling them out of McCall in the dead of night. Same old thing. Something had gone wrong or somebody had ratted and the cops were onto him. So far he’d stayed a jump ahead. After a few minutes Mick caught a road sign. They were driving up Montana 135 heading toward Plains. His dad noticed him looking.

“Going to Portage,” the man said. “Couple more hours.”

To their right a dark river slid along the canyon, to their left, rocky bluffs climbed skyward. His dad said pay attention, they might spot a bighorn sheep. The man drove with both hands on the wheel, kept a constant check on the rearview mirror, didn’t break the speed limit. Couldn’t afford to be pulled over. “It’s going to be different this time,” he told Mick. “Swear.”

His father didn’t look at him but Mick thought it was kind of an apology. His dad told him he was tired of hustling, tired of nomading around. He thought he had a good job waiting for him at the Conoco in Portage. Said he’d called and set it up the week before when he’d been worried a local investigation was getting too close. He told Mick he was done “finding” things. Caused too much trouble. Never made that much money with it anyway.

Mick listened, kept looking out the window.

The past twelve months Mick had gone to three different high schools. His dad said Portage had a good one, two or three hundred kids. Mick knew something his father didn’t and Mick wasn’t going to tell. This time Mick was going to make a close friend, somebody he could stay with if his dad got in trouble again. Mick was going to have a whole junior year in one place. He was strong enough and fast enough and he was going out for sports. He was done skipping out. Better off alone if that’s the way it had to be.

An hour or so later they crossed the Salish River, tooled past the tiny airport, and drove the length of town, east to west. It was big enough to have the stores you needed, small enough to walk where you wanted to go. Main Street showed wall-to-wall colorfully painted buildings, front sidewalks shoveled clear of snow.

On their way back through, when they took any narrow street south toward the river, the paving ended quickly in a scrabble of shacks and beat-up trailers. The broken siding, patched roofs, plywood windows were a big contrast to Main Street. The town was fakey, like a movie set. Maybe that was a fit. He and his father looked right on the outside, but inside? Not so good.

8

M
ICK
’
S FATHER RENTED
THEM A PLACE
down one of those gravel alleys, a “studio,” he said. Actually it was a ramshackle room with rickety walls and no insulation, cobbled on behind Hammond’s Hardware. When they moved in, they found the pipes were clogged or frozen and the plumbing useless, but his dad had already paid cash. The deal didn’t include refunds. For a few days they would have to do their business and take spit baths after hours up at the Conoco. Until April, they’d have to wear most of their clothes all the time. That would make entering school as a new kid even harder. Mick would look and smell homeless.

*   *   *

At first they would be pretty careful. His dad had a new rule. No more phones. Didn’t trust them. Thought all the companies collaborated with law enforcement. They’d keep scanning for unmarked cars or any sign they were being watched. After a week or two they could probably relax. Mick didn’t know how much he could trust his dad’s promise, so he got to know the neighbors right away.

JJ, Janice Joplin Stovall, was the first person he met. Ran into her the second night in town when he walked from his shack across the parking area to the river. Sitting on a stump between the willows and the water, she’d been hidden from his sight line. He pushed through branches and there she was, staring up at the moon, her breath making steam. Mick thought she was a boy when he first saw her. He’d never told her that. Short, stiff dark hair, hands tucked in a vest over a black hoodie, dark jeans, high-tops. Mick was thinking halfback or safety, or even a wrestler.

He stepped toward her, rocks clacking under his weight, and she turned to look at him. She said hi. Girl, he saw then. No makeup. Smile. It struck him. She wasn’t afraid. He knew what he looked like, over two hundred pounds, bushy brown hair, scar on his face. She turned back to moon-gazing. Mick studied the river and they were still for a while.

She didn’t look at him again after that first time, but she didn’t frown or edge away. Didn’t seem like she minded his interruption. Felt like he was welcome to join her. Eventually they did a couple of those first-time things. Him, Mick Fitzhugh, just moved here, the corner place behind the hardware store. Sophomore this year. Her, JJ. The downriver trailer. High school, fourteen.

Mick looked at her more closely. Yeah, her face looked young, but something about her seemed older. Maybe her build. Like she lifted or worked out.

She told him she lived with her uncle and aunt, Gary and Tina. Said Gary repaired TVs and electronic stuff for the hardware and private customers. Said Tina didn’t work. JJ rolled her eyes. Guess there was a story to go with that. Maybe he’d hear more about Tina later. Also said Tina had a ten-year-old son, Jon. Told Mick watch out. Jon was trouble.

They were quiet again after that. In a couple of minutes she said there was one other person in the trailer. A foster girl that came a few months ago named Grace, a junior.

Mick nodded, said huh from time to time to let her know he was listening. He didn’t tell her much about himself, wouldn’t say anything that led to questions about his dad or why they moved all the time. Word gets around. His father’d drummed that into him. As for Mick, he didn’t have anything to say worth hearing. He read a lot? He wanted to play ball? That sounded lame. He couldn’t think of something he’d done that he was proud of. He could think of several things he hoped she’d never find out. Him telling her that he was ready to settle down, make this town his home? Too weird. Really, there was nothing to say.

Before they went back to their places for the night, she pointed at the moon. “This one’s the Snowcone,” she said. Mick didn’t understand. Didn’t know then that she named each one.

At the edge of the bushes, he checked the parking lot for cops before he left cover. Old habit. Silly, probably, but he was still a little gun-shy. When Mick thought about it he didn’t see how anybody could have followed them here. He knew his dad didn’t ever tell getaway plans. Always used cash. No way to trace them except for the car, and his dad had lifted Montana plates from an abandoned wreck outside of Plains.

9

W
ITHIN DAYS
M
ICK HAD MET
everyone in their compound. His front door looked across the flat dirt lot to willows edging the river. The Stovalls’ trailer sat downriver a hundred feet to the right, an old Chevy station wagon with flat tires parked to the side of its porch. Gary and his drunk wife, Tina, their son, Jon, JJ, and Grace, all squeezed in the single-wide. Gary seemed decent enough. Stoned. Did his electronic work on the foldout kitchen table. Kept his jays in a ziplock beside him along with Visine for red-eye. Mick didn’t know then that he made most of his money on weed, selling ounces out of his kitchen.

Tina was beautiful. Or had been beautiful. Now she wore housecoats, forgot to comb her hair. Slurring and sleepy whenever Mick saw her. Mostly stayed on the living room couch in easy reach of a drink and a small TV. Jon had a short daybed just to the left of the front door. Gary could work and watch him at the same time. Gary tried to keep the kid quiet with meds. Jon learned to cheek them. Made for a daily battle.