Sadie(15)

I creep around the side of the house and peer into the first window I see.

A living room. I lean closer, my hands gripping the edge of the windowsill. There’s a couch. Coffee table. There are baby toys on the floor and … distantly, I hear the front door of the house open and moments after that, someone approaching. I feel the weight of their gaze on my body, sizing me up the closer they get. Sweat pearls against my forehead and under my hair, beginning its leisurely slide down the back of my neck and when I turn around, I face the woman I’m looking for.

Marlee.

“Who the hell are you?”

I’d put her close to forty, or maybe not quite. Her white-blond hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, her mouth a gash of red lipstick. High cheekbones. Her eyebrows must be white too, either that or she doesn’t have any. She’s bony, almost in the way that Mattie was bony, but not because she’s growing—from drugs or an eating disorder or not having enough money. I recognize all of these things, but I can’t always tell them apart. She’s wearing cut-offs and a T-shirt with vintage Mickey Mouse on the front and it’s knotted just under her breasts. Silver stretchmarks line her pink abdomen. I don’t see any marks on her arms, not like Caddy.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She’s got a flinty kind of voice, one I can’t imagine as a whisper or a song.

“—”

A rope around my throat. I lock on nothing for far too long. She looks like she’s a minute away from calling the police. Spit it out, I think. Just spit it out. Keith used to snap that at me when he got tired of waiting. If I was close enough, he’d grab me by the face with one hand, like he could force the words out of me if he just squeezed hard enough.

“Hello?” She waves a hand in front of my face. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around my house? Give me one reason I shouldn’t call the cops right now.”

I exhale sharply. “I’m l-looking f-for s-someone.”

Marlee puts her bony hands on her bony hips. I think I could wrap my fingers around her wrists once, twice, three times. Maybe I could break her in half, but there’s something about her that makes me think I wouldn’t get too far in the attempt, like my throat would be slit before I even knew what was happening. It’s hard not to respect that.

“In my house?” She steps forward and I resist a step back. “Let’s try this a question at a time, real slow: who the hell are you?”

“L-Lera.”

Sometimes I wonder how my mother came to put Sadie Lera together. When I asked her she’d always say, I had to call you something, didn’t I? But there has to be more to it than that. I want there to be. Even if it’s just that she liked them both enough to mash them together, despite the fact they don’t sound nice together at all.

“Lera…?”

“C-Caddy Sinclair g-gave me your n-name,” I tell her. Her eyes flash in a way I don’t like. “He said you c-could help me.”

“Did he now? Who is it you’re looking for?”

“Darren M-Marshall.”

She laughs, a brittle, unpleasant sound that makes my spine crawl.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” she says. It’s not a question. She sniffs and runs an arm across her nose. The vaguely muted sound of a baby crying inside floats out onto the street. She spares me half a glance before making her way toward it.

“Go home, girl,” she says and then she’s gone.

I hear her front door slam shut.

But I didn’t come this far to go home.

I round the house and I sit on her stoop, legs stretched in front of me and crossed at the ankles, my bag by my side. I stare at the sky and watch its forget-me-not blue deepen into something a little more, what’s the word … cerulean. I stare until the sun puts itself directly in my line of vision and forces me to look away. I let my skin bake, then burn, let my mouth dry. Is this self-harm? Feeling the pain happening to you and letting it happen?

I could die, I think, and it feels like nothing.

It’s just after three when Marlee’s door creaks open, pulling me from a hazy stupor. I don’t raise my head until she says, “Get your ass in here.”

The door slams shut behind her and I begin the painstakingly painful task of rising to my feet, my body stiff, my skin sore and sunburnt. I force myself to draw my shoulders back and walk into Marlee’s place like I own it. The house smells stale and smoky, like someone made a point to close every window just before opening a pack of Lucky Strikes.

I stand in a dim hallway before the stairs leading to the second floor. It offshoots in two different directions, the living room—which I’ve already seen—and a kitchen. That’s the room Marlee steps out of, wearing something different now, a pair of jeans with such artistic rips in the legs I can’t tell if they’re on purpose or not and a red tank top that grants a full view of her collarbone, where she has a tattoo of a knife surrounded by flowers, daring me to look at it.

“Didn’t suppose there was any other way to get you off my stoop,” Marlee says and I nod in agreement, crossing my arms. She crosses hers. “You’re all sunburnt.”

“Y-yeah.”

“That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”

It hurts now.

“L-likely, yeah.”