What We Saw(47)

Christy groans. “Yes, your knight in shining armor is practically perfect in every way.” She lies on her back, both hands on her right calf, pulling her knee toward her chest. “Also, we’re not talking about our dads. We’re talking about a bunch of high school goofballs.”

“Dooney and his gang aren’t ‘goofballs,’” Lindsey says. “They’re creeps.”

I frown. “Ben isn’t a creep.” It comes out defensive.

“Sorry.” Lindsey means it. “I just think you should tell Will to be careful. He clearly thinks Ben and Dooney are the bee’s knees.”

Christy and Rachel start giggles when she says this. I can’t help but laugh myself. “The what?” I ask.

Lindsey laughs with us. “The bee’s knees?”

“Oh my god,” chortles Christy. “Who are you right now? My grandpa?”

Rachel stands up. “Well, thanks for the memories, you guys. See you on Monday.”

She has to drop Christy off and pick up her sisters from a birthday party. Lindsey and I watch them pull out of the parking lot, driving past the news vans that still linger by the front entrance.

“Will acted like I was a huge wet blanket because I didn’t want him ranking the girls in his class. It was like I was this big . . .” I search for the right word.

“Bitch?” Lindsey asks.

It stings even coming from her mouth. “Yeah,” I say. “I just want him to be a good guy, you know?”

Lindsey nods, but doesn’t say anything. Sometimes, I think most of friendship is knowing when to keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Lindsey is an expert where this is concerned. She flips onto her back and stretches her hamstring, waiting for me to continue.

“What bothered me most was how Will didn’t get it. He didn’t understand why I was upset that he was telling these girls they don’t measure up. He acts like he has some natural right to tell them they should look a certain way. Why? Because he’s a dude?”

“It’s not just your brother.” Lindsey stands up and stretches her arms above her head. “Seen a Hardee’s commercial lately? The whole planet is wired that way.”

We walk to our cars, and when I tell Lindsey I’ll see her on Monday, she hugs me. She’s not much of a hugger.

I smile. “What was that for?”


“For being somebody who cares about this stuff,” she says. “Not many people around here do.” She gives me a little wave, then gets in her navy-blue hatchback and drives away.

There are only two news vans here right now, which leaves me wondering where the other three are. Off getting coffee? On the curb at the courthouse, waiting for word on whether Greg and Randy will be tried asadults? The trailer park staking out Stacey’s place again?

After I start the truck, I sit there for a second before I throw it in reverse. I’m not even sure where I’m headed, really, until I make the turn toward Walmart.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE


HarperCollins Publishers

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twenty-six


I DON’T MEAN to break in, exactly.

It’s just that when I reach out to ring the bell, I notice the door to Stacey’s trailer isn’t latched all the way. There’s no car parked out front. LeeAnne must be at work.

The Coral Creek Mobile Village looks shabbier without the benefit of an ethereal nighttime glow. In the stark light of a Saturday afternoon, Stacey’s trailer is still the tidiest, but it looks tired, too—as if it takes a tremendous amount of energy just to stay upright; that it might, at any moment, give up altogether and collapse in a great wheeze of dust and fiberglass.

An elderly black man sits by a stack of the tires in the yard next door, leaning back in a green plastic lawn chair. He’s reading a book while the Doberman snoozes, draped over his feet. When I walk up to the little white gate, the man smiles and waves a howdy in my direction. The dog stays silent and still, but I see his eyes open and follow me, like a painting in a haunted castle. The closer you look, the more you see. I smile back at him, then quickly open the white picket gate and close it again, as if these flimsy slats could protect me from a motivated Doberman.

I can hear a shower running through an open window as I climb the stairs of the redwood deck. Whatever possessed me to come here again must still have me firmly in hand. When I see the unlatched door, I push it open without hesitation, then walk in like I own the place, my hand held back to keep the storm door from banging behind me.

I find myself standing on a linoleum island right inside the door, surrounded by sculpted shag carpet the color of Mom’s two-alarm chili. I don’t know what I expected the inside of a trailer home to look like, but this one is as well kept on the inside as it is on the outside. It isn’t covered in old take-out containers and doesn’t reek of cigarette smoke. No one is standing in the kitchen to my right cooking meth.

I hear music coming from down the hall where the water is running. It must be Stacey in the shower. I make a decision then and there. I will wait for her. I will convince her that I’m not one of them. I just want to find out what really happened. I don’t need her to be my best friend. I don’t even need her to believe me.