Our Crooked Hearts(18)

Because that was the thing, the seventh-grade incident that still made my body brace with remembered shame. Little Billy Paxton, the random sixth-grader who lived across the street, walked right up to me the second week of school. Ivy, he said, his face as sick and determined as if I were a firing squad. Will you be my girlfriend?

I’d stared at him in disbelief, both of us going redder and redder, other kids gumming up around us to watch the drama unfold. No, thank you, I’d finally said, robotically, before turning heel and fleeing for the bathroom. We hadn’t spoken again until the other night, with Nate. Not one word.

Hank blinked at me. “Man, you are ice cold. Poor Billy.”

I started to sputter, then his phone buzzed for maybe the tenth time since I’d sat down. Sighing gustily, he slid it out of his pocket. Its screen was lined with a one-way conversation, all incoming texts from his college boyfriend. Hank had a bit of a ghosting habit.

He held it up. “Go away now. I have to focus on breaking up with Jared.”

I tilted my head to read the last unanswered text in the thread. Are you being weird or am I being paranoid?

“Oh, totally,” I said. “You’ve got to pay attention when you’re breaking up with someone by text. Otherwise it would be mean.”

“For sure,” he replied, either not getting it or not taking the bait. But as I stood he reached back, wrapping a hand around my ankle.

“Hey. Ivy. I wouldn’t, like, get in Mom’s way. If I were you.”

I touched my arm, where goosebumps were rising. “What do you mean?”

He shifted, not quite looking at me. “Just let her do what she wants to do. We’ll both be out of here soon enough.”

His phone started to ring. “Now he’s calling me?” he said incredulously, waving a hand at me to go.

I went to the kitchen to splash my face from the tap. All morning I’d been running around like a kid playing detective, and I had nothing to show for any of it but this drumbeat of dread. Hank’s warning, blood on the Small Shop’s floor. Shitty Nate and Hattie Carter and the puzzling contents of a closet safe. Aunt Fee still hadn’t called.

Then I remembered the address, the one I’d found written on the old receipt. When I looked it up the most likely result was a store in a college town north of the city. A flower shop that sold books, it looked like. I called it.

“Petals and Prose,” a woman said warmly, her voice turning up into a question at the end.

“Hi! My name is … uh, sorry. I was wondering, how long has your store been at this location?”

A pause as she took all that in. “It’ll be eight years this fall.”

“Do you happen to know what was there before you?”

“We used to be a record store. Oh, let me think. Dr. Wax, it was called.”

“So that’s what was at this address twenty-five years ago?”

“No … I’m sorry, can you hold on a sec?” When she spoke again, it was muffled, directed at someone else. I listened to her talking, laughing. After a few minutes she came back.

“You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Okay. The record store was actually next door. We were vacant for a long time. Twenty-something years ago this was a place called ’Twixt and ’Tween.”

I pressed the phone to my ear. “Twicksintween? Could you spell that?”

“’Twixt and ’Tween,” she enunciated. “Like betwixt and between? You know what, I’m not the one who grew up around here. Let me pass you to the owner.”

More rustling, and a new voice came on the line. Less friendly, older. “Hello? You’re asking about store history?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

I didn’t have a lie prepared, so I told the truth. “I think my mom used to go there. To whatever your store was when she was my age.”

A brief silence. When she spoke again, her brusque voice was touched with something complex. “So she was one of Sharon’s girls.”

The house was very quiet. Just my window screen, creaking against the breeze. “That’s right,” I said. “I’m trying to get in touch with Sharon.”

Sharon’s dead, I imagined her saying. Or, Psych, you liar, I made her up! Instead she told me, “Well, go ahead and give me your name and number. No guarantees, but I’ll pass them along.”

I did, and I gave her my mom’s name, too. Then I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling, letting my thoughts flicker like leaves.





CHAPTER ELEVEN



The city

Back then

Two days after the beach, we got on the bus heading north.

It was our first time going to Marion’s place. I don’t know what Fee thought, but I’d assumed Marion was the same as us. Not donation-box poor, not eviction poor, but no money, either. She dressed like we did, grotty thrift-store clothes. She inked rings on her fingers and liner around her eyes with the same blue rollerball, and made minimum wage under the table serving fried fish fingers to construction workers and surly neighborhood types. Nobody would’ve thought she had money.

It was one of those raw, unjust spring afternoons when the air is so bright and clean it focuses the whole world like a lens, but it’s cold still and you’re shivering. Just a half-hour trip, then we stepped off the bus like we’d landed in Oz. All the lawns were fat green pincushions, all the faces well fed. The sun sliced through the clouds in tempered golden bars, like even the light got expensive when you left the city.