All the Little Lights(26)

I snarled at the oversize door with the rounded arch. It frowned at me every time I came home, mocking me. I pulled on the handle and dragged my bag inside. Even though I was angry and fed up, I was careful not to let the front door slam behind me.

The house was dusty, dark, and hot, but still better than outside with the cruel sun and the screaming cicadas.

Mama wasn’t at the door holding an iced tea. She wasn’t there at all. I stayed still, listening for who was.

Against Dad’s wishes, Mama had used most of his life insurance money to transform our seven-bedroom house into a place where the road weary could rest for a night or the weekend. Just like Dad had predicted, we rarely saw a visit from someone new. And the regulars weren’t enough. Even after we’d sold Mama’s car, the bills were overdue. Even after the social security checks, if we rented every room every night for the rest of my high school career, everything would still get taken away. The house would get taken by the bank, I’d get taken by DHS, and Mama and the regulars would have to find a way to exist outside of the walls of the Juniper.

I choked on the stale, humid air, deciding to open a window. The summer had been miserably hot, even for Oklahoma, and autumn wasn’t offering much relief. Even so, Mama didn’t like to run the air conditioner unless we were expecting guests.

But we were. We were always expecting guests.

Footsteps scampered down the hall upstairs. The crystal chandelier rattled, and I smiled. Poppy was back.

I left my backpack at the door and climbed the wooden steps, two at a time. Poppy was at the end of the hall, standing by the window, looking down on the backyard.

“Do you want to go out and play?” I asked, reaching out to pet her hair.

She shook her head but didn’t turn around.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Bad day?”

“Daddy won’t let me go outside until he gets back,” she whimpered. “He’s been gone a long time.”

“Have you had lunch?” I asked, holding out my hand. She shook her head. “I bet your dad will let you go outside with me if you eat a sandwich first. Peanut butter and jelly?”

Poppy grinned. She was practically a little sister. I’d been taking care of her since the first night she visited. She and her father were the first to come after Dad had died.

Poppy walked clumsily down the stairs, then watched as I rummaged through the cabinets for bread, a knife, jelly, and peanut butter. The corners of her dirty mouth turned up while she watched me slather together ingredients and then add a banana for good measure.

Mama use to sneak in something healthy when I was Poppy’s age, and now, five months from my eighteenth birthday, I was the adult. It had been that way since Dad died. Mama never thanked me or acknowledged what I did for us, not that I expected her to. Our life now was about making it through the day. Anything more was too overwhelming for me, and I didn’t have the luxury of quitting. At least one of us had to keep it together so we didn’t fall apart.

“Did you eat breakfast?” I asked, trying to get a sense of when she’d checked in.

She nodded, stuffing the sandwich into her mouth. A ring of grape jelly added to the dirt and stickiness already spotting her face.

I fetched my backpack and brought it to the end of our long, rectangular table in the dining room, not far from where Poppy sat. While she chomped and wiped her sticky chin with the back of her hand, I finished my geometry. Poppy was happy but lonely like me. Mama didn’t like for me to have friends over, except for the occasional visit from Tess, who mostly talked about her house down the street. She was homeschooled and a little weird, but she was someone to talk to, and she didn’t care about the goings-on at the Juniper. It wasn’t as if I had time for things like that anyway. We couldn’t allow outsiders to see what was happening inside our walls.

Bass thumped outside, and I pulled aside the curtain to peek out the window. Presley’s pearl-white convertible Mini Cooper was full of the clones, now seniors like me. The top was down, the clones laughing and bobbing their heads to the music as Presley slowed at the four-way stop in front of our house. Two years ago, jealousy or sadness might have seared through me, but the discomfort of numbness was the only thing I could feel. The part of me that wished for cars and dates and new clothes had died with Dad. Wanting something I couldn’t have was too painful, so I chose not to.

Mama and I had bills to pay, and that meant keeping secrets for the people who walked the hallways. If our neighbors knew the truth, they wouldn’t want us to stay. So we were loyal to her patrons, and we kept their secrets. I was willing to sacrifice the few friends I had to keep us all happy and lonely and together.

As soon as I opened the back door, Poppy bolted down the wooden steps to the yard below, planting her palms on the ground and kicking over in an awkward cartwheel. She giggled and covered her mouth, sitting on the crispy golden grass. My mouth felt dry just hearing it crunch beneath our feet. The summer had been one of the hottest I could remember. Even now, in late September, the trees were withered and the ground was made of dead grass, dust, and beetles. Rain was something the adults talked about like a fond memory.

“Daddy will be back soon,” Poppy said, a tinge of nostalgia in her voice.

“I know.”

“Tell me again. The story about when you were born. The story about your name.”

I smiled, sitting down on the steps. “Again?”