Real Bad Things(30)
“Go. It’s okay,” she said, patting his arm in a warm manner and smiling and intonating like she meant the words. “I don’t have much of an appetite, to be honest.” She turned away from him lest her efforts failed to hide her disappointment.
Instead of walking down the aisle and toward the back of the cemetery, where a mob of mourners huddled inside and around the barrier of the tent, she made a beeline for the front, past Chuck’s pedestal, where few people had wandered.
She escaped the tent’s shade and felt the sun on her back, a welcome reprieve despite the continued heat wave. She’d almost made it to her previous hovering spot where she’d first greeted Jason when she felt a sharp push at her back.
Before she had time to turn and identify the culprit, her cheek stung like she’d been hit with a wooden paddle spiked with nails.
She swatted at the person but soon was on the ground. Feet surrounded her. Kicks, too quick, too many to avoid.
Her stomach flared with pain.
She rolled onto her back, kicking wildly and protecting her head, a tactic she’d learned in juvie when there was no point trying to fend off a horde of angry girls bent on her destruction for no reason other than she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her ears fuzzed from adrenaline. Confusion. What the fuck is happening?
Feral grunts.
Nails in her scalp. Feet in her face. Pain and appendages everywhere.
Until they weren’t.
Air lashed her face. Cooled the sweat that had gathered. A firm hand gripped her under each arm and easily lifted her off the ground. She felt like a kid again, being lifted out of a playground melee by an adult, her feet barely touching the ground. Whisked away to safety, but not before she caught a glimpse of her attackers. The Ingrams. Faces red with rage, hair aswarm around their heads. Wow, had she been wrong about them.
Then she spotted Diane, standing in a large circle of onlookers, cameras flashing, boom mics hovering, people she hadn’t noticed before holding on to the Ingram clan as they lashed out and tried to pull free. Diane, like in one of those reels where the world moves frantically around a stationary object, stared at Jane in silence, not moving, not emoting. Nothing.
“Go!” Jason yelled behind them. “Get them out of here.”
After stumbling through a gauntlet of headstones, they rested near a large weatherworn column someone had erected in centuries past, the family name barely legible. Jane spit blood near a tree that provided them with shade and wiped at her mouth.
“It’s not that bad,” Jason said, anticipating her reaction now that she had a moment to process what had just happened. “I don’t think they got more than one or two hits. But if you need me to take you to a—”
“No. It’s fine,” she said, not wanting to appear any more weak or soft than she already felt. “I don’t blame them.”
“Why would you? Ingrams are gonna Ingram.” He crossed his arms, face stern like a million school principals who wanted to know why she kept getting into fights. “What did you think would happen, showing up to his funeral?” When she didn’t answer, he shook his head again and pulled a bleach-white handkerchief out of his pocket. “This is some redneck shit.”
“Sopp o ropp ropp yop,” she said.
Jason rolled his eyes at their childhood language but offered her a brief smile. “You’re a mess.” He proceeded to gently wipe at her face and smooth her hair. She doubted it would do any good, but the attention felt nice.
When he finished, he folded the handkerchief into a new square so that hardly any of her blood could be seen and then tucked it into his pocket. She chanced a look behind her, half expecting pitchforks and fists raised to chase the monster out of town. But the crowd had turned their attention to Diane, who reveled in the spotlight, placing a tissue to her eyes and nose, nodding along as reporters scribbled or thrust their mics toward her face.
“Sorry about dinner,” he said. “I do have work. But this is just . . . a lot.”
She nodded and smiled even though she hated being considered “a lot” along with Diane. “Shit, I wouldn’t want to have dinner with us either. All she does is glare at me and remind me that I’m going to jail.” She laughed. He didn’t.
Jane had thought she’d known what to expect coming back to Maud. She’d been through all this before. But nothing could have prepared her for facing everything as an adult. Back then, all she’d focused on was survival. Just get through the day. Now, with time and maturity and true crime shows and books available to her twenty-four seven, she realized how much her teenage brain had protected her from the trauma and severity of the consequences of her confession.
They waited, awkwardly, as the crowd thinned. Unaccustomed to adult conversation with each other, they stayed silent. She hadn’t eaten breakfast, unless the toothpaste she accidentally swallowed counted. Her stomach growled in complaint. He pulled a pack of what looked like candy out of his pocket and offered her some. She examined the package. Energy beans.
Jane took the offering. Tasted like jelly beans mixed with Sour Patch Kids. She nudged her head toward Diane. “You see her much?”
He chewed and paused before answering. “No. Not really.” Maybe he’d finally realized that Good Mom had done the very least of a very low bar.
While they waited for people to leave, she tried to normalize and pretend that she hadn’t just gotten the shit kicked out of her in front of everyone in a cemetery and that it’d be plastered on TVs and cell phones that night. She blotted her nose with her sleeve, and Jason shifted uncomfortably, gaze trained elsewhere. They briefly caught up as much as they knew how—the weather and basic, nonconfessional life updates. He had a job; she did not. He had a house; she did not. Neither of them was dating anyone. She avoided the word girlfriend in case he preferred men or no one at all.