Ugly Girls: A Novel (25 page)

“Baby Girl pushed him,” Perry said. “I didn’t touch him. We were trying to get him to leave us alone. He tried to get the gun and Baby Girl wasn’t about to let him, and now he’s at the bottom of the quarry. Dead,” she added.

“The gun?” They were pulling into the trailer park now, the streetlamps dull yellow against the black sky.

“That’s at the bottom of the quarry, too.”

The trailers were lit up against the night, each window its own TV screen, here a show about a woman at the stove, here a show about a little boy in a cape. This was home, no place for a man like Jamey, no place for a drunk like Myra, no place for a murderer like Perry. No, not a murderer. An accessory to. They passed Jamey’s trailer, the lights on but the curtains drawn, a lumpy shadow moving slowly, the TV on, not doing shit to find her son outside the confines of the trailer park. An accessory to, just as bad if not worse. Perry let it happen, didn’t bother to stop it. He had planned on killing the man himself. No place for a man like Jim, either.

JIM’S HEADLIGHTS
swept through the trailer, caught in Myra’s eyes so two yellow dots bounced around the room everywhere she looked. She fetched Dayna a glass of water, Jim and Perry walking in just as Myra was bringing it to where the girl sat.

Myra saw that Perry had been crying. She felt how she often did in the face of her child’s tears. On one side of the coin, poor thing. On the other, tough shit.

“Her daddy dropped her by,” Myra said.

“Uncle,” Dayna said.

“Says she needed to see you.”

Perry walked over and slapped her friend, her hand landing hard on the girl’s naked ear, and Myra felt pride in it, felt pride in the sureness of the hit, even as she stood to pull the girls apart, though Dayna wasn’t making no move to hit back. Myra smiled, God help her, she smiled, the coin had flipped end over end and had landed right side up.

BABY GIRL HADN’T SEEN PERRY
in days, but she looked different, like it had been years. Her face was gray and her hair was limp. Pretty Perry, Power Crotch Perry. Now here she was looking as old as Myra. Jamey stood behind her, soaking wet, his eyes burning into Baby Girl.

“Dayna didn’t do nothing,” Jim was saying. Baby Girl’s ear rung, a warmth was spreading from the back of her head to her face, but it was a girly hit, not nothing to bring anyone to her knees.

“She didn’t tell me about Jamey,” Jim said. “You did.”

Baby Girl was beginning to understand. Jim thought Perry was mad at her for snitching. But Perry had already told Jim about the quarry, it was clear, his face the color of dough. So that took care of phase one of her plan.

“We gotta make this right,” she began.

“Told you what?” Myra asked.

BABY GIRL WASN’T WEARING HER LIP LINER,
her lips thick and white. Her whole head was turning red, like invisible hands were choking her. A ghost’s hands. Jamey.

“Make it
right
?” Perry’s voice was whiny, even that was out of her control now. “
We?
I didn’t do anything. You’re the obsessed freak who brought the gun, you’re the one who pushed him over the edge.”

“No,” Baby Girl said. “I didn’t push him. He fell. And you’re the one who didn’t want to try to help him.” Baby Girl was shaking her head like a wet dog. This had been her best friend. Nights on the highway in stolen cars, passing cigarettes back and forth. How? Perry wondered. This ugly thing?

“You pushed him,” Perry said. “It was too late for us to do anything to help him.” Perry felt wild with wanting Myra and Jim to know the truth: She hadn’t killed anyone. It hadn’t been her fault.

“We have to go in after him,” Baby Girl said.

“What?” They all said it at once. Like some family out of a sitcom. Like some family.

BABY GIRL KNEW
it wouldn’t go over easy. Knew she’d have to be persuasive. Dangle a blood-soaked cutlet in front of old Baby Girl’s nose. So she pulled out the knife, Charles’s favorite knife because of the way it glinted, the one she had to hide from him under the box of crackers on a shelf way up high.

In the car on the way to Perry’s she’d rolled her window down. Let the air and the smells come in. A baptism of exhaust or some shit. Dave would be proud of her, and so would Charles. Eye for an eye.

“What?” Perry, Myra, and Jim, all at once. Like actors in the kind of shit program Charles would watch.

“We’re going in after him, Perry.” Baby Girl held the knife out like it was a sword. Aimed at all of them. “We’ll jump in and get him out and bring him to wherever you bring someone you murdered.” She walked toward Perry, holding the knife like a finger pointing her out. “We’ll say what we did.”

She could see the way Myra was looking at Jim, like,
Pull your gun, dumbass
, and Jim’s hand was curling, his arm bending, he was definitely reaching for it.

THE GUN WAS IN THE TRUCK.
In its holster under the front seat. Jim had put it there when he’d set out to find Perry. Had forgotten it in his rush to get her inside. Dayna’s hand was shaking but her grip was strong. He didn’t think she wanted to hurt no one but knew she would if he came near. He kept going for the gun, though, all muscle memory, maybe she’d think he had it on him, maybe she’d put down the knife, maybe she’d calm down when he told her he wasn’t about to have either of them confess to anyone.

The doorbell rang, and he flinched, hard enough to be embarrassed if he’d done it in front of the guys at the jail.

MYRA COULD SEE JAMEY’S MOTHER
out the screen door, holding her cane at her side.

“My boy served his time,” the woman said. “And I want you to hand him over.”

“Jesus Christ,” Myra started to say, but the woman raised her stake, and Myra got a better look at it, not a cane at all, actually. It was a gun, though Myra couldn’t tell if it was the BB gun Jamey had with him that first night, the night she’d met Pete, or a real gun.

“Those are just BBs,” Myra said, flapping her hand to dismiss it all. She wanted everyone to believe it, even Lulu. “My daddy used to shoot the stray cats up with BBs back home. Not one of them seemed to give a damn aside from a limp or a busted tail. Go on and shoot.”

The woman did, one-armed, the other arm bracing her on the stair railing. The whole screen came away, Myra watching the pane fall in and land on the dingy old rag rug she’d had at the front door forever and a day. Those weren’t no BBs. This was a shotgun, Myra almost shouted it.
A shotgun!
Like she’d gotten the answer right on some game show. The woman shot again.

IT WAS A RELIEF,
the sting that soon became a second kind of skin, skin that was all open nerves and pain and blood. Pain was a relief. It let her drop the knife, it let her go to her knees, it let her forgive them for looking at her like a dying dog instead of the human girl she was. That explosion was a bullet? Two bullets. Like they were trying to nail her shirt good and snug to her chest. Her head still intact, though. She’d be all right. She’d have done her eye for an eye without ever setting foot in that quarry. Jamey backed out the door, backed right through his momma. Ha-ha, there never was no Jamey, she always knew that.
I’ve been shot!
is what people said on TV. Funny thing to say when it’s so obvious. Her blood like burbling warm mud. She wondered could she pop out the bullets from her chest like you popped a zit. Charles would know. He’d pop it for her. Charles was her brother, Dave was her uncle, she had people. “Shit, she’s all white,” she heard someone say, though it sounded like a like a like a robot, the voice all buzz. Myra’s lips were moving, must have been her. Perry had her mouth open, wide enough to be screaming, though Baby Girl couldn’t hear no screaming. What was wrong with her ears? She was wrong. Perry was still pretty. Perry would always be pretty. She wished she’d stabbed her a little with the knife.
I’ma get mine.
Why weren’t they calling someone? She was sinking, kind of. The floor was opening up, kind of. She was wrong, those bullets weren’t no joke. She lay down. Better.
Hey
, she tried to say.
That fat thing was Jamey’s momma? Poor Jamey
, she thought, the highway empty before her, the sky a navy quilt. She pushed down on the gas. She was on her way to Charles, had to get him before that balloon got too swole. She’d save him. She’d become him. His gun his knife his bald head, only she’d go further than he ever had, ’cause this was her car. It was her car this time.

Acknowledgments

I began as a poet, pretended to write a novel in grad school, then found my home in flash fiction. Being granted the opportunity to write this novel is a gift I can never adequately repay, and I am in debt to the following wonderful people:

Emily Bell, bravest editor, who believed in me before I ever wrote the first word in this book.

Jim Rutman, who read a tiny sliver and still wanted to be my agent.

Sarah Rose Etter, an amazing friend and writer whose feedback and support made me feel less afraid.

Zach Dodson, because it all started with you, bro.

Matt Trupia, who talked me off the ledge many times.

Brian and Traci Knudson and Chad Chmielowicz, who let me take the time I needed away from work in order to focus on my writing.

My parents, whose love of reading and writing made me who I am, and who love me despite the fact that I don’t write about baskets of puppies or happy birthday parties.

My son, Parker. I live my life to make you proud.

And finally, my brilliant, beloved husband, Ben Lyon, who makes all my dreams come true.

ALSO BY LINDSAY HUNTER

Don’t Kiss Me

Daddy’s

A Note About the Author

Lindsay Hunter is the author of the story collections
Don’t Kiss Me
and
Daddy’s
. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Chicago with her husband, son, and two pit bulls.
Ugly Girls
is her first novel.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

Copyright © 2014 by Lindsay Hunter

All rights reserved

First edition, 2014

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hunter, Lindsay, 1980–

    Ugly girls / Lindsay Hunter. — First edition.

        pages    cm

    ISBN 978-0-374-53386-1 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-374-71012-5 (ebook)

    1.  Friendship—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3608.U5943 U55 2014

813'.6—dc23

2014017266

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