Stranger in the Lake(77)
“With what? We both know you ain’t got no money.”
Jax looked over at the little girl, who’d sunk to the stoop, her face screwed up with tears. Jesus Christ. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow.
A familiar fire sparked in his chest. “What is wrong with you people? Stop laughing. Nothing about this is funny.”
Micah either didn’t hear or he didn’t care. The woman was still swiping at the air. Bobby was still twisting away, holding the joint high above his head. Micah clutched his stomach and laughed and laughed, hooting like they were some kind of street performers.
“Micah, shut up.” Jax banged on the hood of his Jeep with a fist. Micah was doubled over by now, wiping at his eyes, slapping his leg with hilarity. “Oh my God, you are such an asshole. How is this even remotely funny? This is tragic.”
Jax’s voice broke on the last word, and here came the tears, damn it. More than three months after his mother’s death, in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a bunch of people he didn’t want to see. Fucking figured.
Jax turned away in anger, in shame. He’d walk home. He’d sleep in the woods. He couldn’t stay here another miserable second.
“It’s okay,” the little girl said, and for a split second, Jax thought she was talking to him, until she ducked her head and pressed her cheek to the baby’s forehead. “Everything’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna take care of you and we’re gonna be just fine, I promise.”
That was it. Party over. Bobby’s shiny yellow Camaro was just sitting there, with the door open and the keys hanging from the ignition. A getaway car if he’d ever seen one. He leaned his upper body inside, spotted the keys and Paul, crashed on the back seat. His head was slung back, his mouth hanging open. And bingo—he was clutching that second bottle of tequila.
Jax grabbed it and chugged. He chugged until his eyes watered and his brain cleared and his belly lit up with liquid fire, and then he dropped behind the wheel and reached for the keys.
34
Micah stares at me from the opposite couch. “I thought you said you didn’t remember anything.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. It’s just snippets, really, but...”
But now I can’t tell what’s real and what’s my mind twisting up on itself. The image of Micah is so vivid it feels almost tangible, but dreams are like that too sometimes, those blurry moments right before you’re good and awake. Our mother scrounging around for liquor and drugs, that was a constant, and there were always people hanging around the trailer park, there to do business with Bobby. Maybe I’m seeing something that wasn’t there, putting Micah’s face on another person’s body. I was only six. How real can it be?
Come on, Bobby. Just one little hit.
Mama said it, I’m positive. I squeeze my eyes shut and new pictures flash behind my eyes, turning from black and white to technicolor. Mama’s red underwear. A grubby yellow blanket. Expensive blue jeans.
My phone lights up on my lap, Chet calling from the car, but I let him go to voice mail. Those first blurry memories have broken through the darkness, knocked something loose in my brain, and I don’t want to let go of the images.
“My mom wanted some of Bobby’s cigarette. No, not a cigarette. A joint. She was begging him for a hit, and he laughed at her. He pushed her down in the dirt.”
“Jesus, that scrawny lady... That was your mother?”
“And the baby in my arms was Chet. He was a really light sleeper. The noise from Bobby’s place was constantly waking him up.”
Micah laughs, a strangled sound. “Damn. I thought maybe I’d seen you working the register at the gas station, or busing tables in town or something.” He shakes his head slowly, not bothering to wipe away his surprise. “But I should have known because you look just like her—minus the bad skin and tweaker teeth. Oh my God, your mom was a tweaker. Too strung out to notice she was outside in her underwear while her babies were bawling on the stoop.”
Micah’s tone hits me wrong—too high and mighty, and I shift on my chair.
“Bobby laughed at her, and so did you.”
There’s a voice in my head screaming at me to just let it lie. To shut up and pick up my phone, silent and dark on the cushion next to me, to tell Chet to hurry. But the memories have edges now, and this one’s too big, too consequential to keep inside.
“What can I say? We were real shits back then.”
“Not Jax,” I say, and suddenly I understand. This is why I’ve never been afraid of him, why when he showed up—a raggedy fugitive on my back deck—I opened the door without hesitation. “Jax got mad. He felt bad for me.”
“No, he felt sorry for you. There’s a big difference.”
Micah’s words knock me like a slap, even though it’s true. Jax did feel sorry for me that night. I get a lightning-quick glimpse of the look he gave me from behind the wheel of Bobby’s car, the sudden lurch of the car shooting forward only to go nowhere. I hear the laughter, the shouting. I shake my head, trying to string the images together in a way that makes sense, but I can’t. None of it makes any sense.
But still.
If I hadn’t said anything just now, Micah wouldn’t have, either. He would have gone right on acting like he’d never met poor, sad Bobby. He would have gone right on blaming Paul and Jax. The mood changes in an instant, the seriousness of where this discussion is headed settling like a rash on my skin.