More Than Good Enough(14)

A couple minutes later, I spotted her leaving the auditorium. She was trying to balance her camera bag, along with that doodle-crusted notebook she carried like it was part of her and she couldn’t let it go.

I found a seed pod in the grass and tossed it in her direction. We used to throw them at each other on the playground. The hard, grenade-like shells made good ammunition.

“What’s up, homeslice?” I said, adjusting the flaps on my trapper hat.

Pippa flopped next to me on the lawn. “Haven’t seen you all day,” she said. “That’s crazy. I mean, the office is probably freaking out, right? You missed a lot of stuff in class. We learned how to take light readings.”

“There’s more light out here.”

She laughed. “Well, I guess we can call off the search party.”

“Hey, I’m always down for a party.”

I didn’t say anything about Churchill’s or the fact that she never called back. No use talking about it. We sat in the Hole, listening to the lawn mower rumble past the auditorium. My eyes were burning. I leaned back, like I was going to take a nap.

“This is so random,” Pippa said. “Last night I was watching a YouTube documentary about vampire bats. They don’t suck blood, by the way. They lick it.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.

“I got really into it. Then I couldn’t fall asleep because I was so freaked out. I didn’t notice that somebody had left a message on my cell.”

Pippa held up her phone. The caller on the screen was listed as TRENTOSCEO. Guess the last few letters got cut off. It reminded me of Mom’s anti-anxiety meds, those bottles with the really long names you can’t pronounce.

Here’s the saddest part.

I couldn’t remember what I’d said.

What if it was really bad? After knocking back a couple beers, there’s no telling what could come out of my mouth.

“At first, I thought it was people from school. You know. Crank calling me or whatever.” Pippa lowered her head.

“Does that ever happen?” Sure, I’d made a few crank calls back in junior high. Usually I dialed up this Mexican place and asked for pizza. Yeah, that was totally original.

“I get crank calls sometimes,” Pippa said.

“For real? Why would anybody do that to you?”

She kept scraping the polish on her thumb, chipping away the sparkly black paint. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I wasn’t crank calling your house. I swear.”

“It’s no big deal. I really don’t feel like talking about it. To be honest, it hasn’t happened in a while.”

I knew this meant one thing: It was happening. Why would anybody target Pippa? She didn’t go around creating drama (unlike half the girls in this school). She belonged in her own universe, far from their dark energy.

“Last night I was at Churchill’s,” I told her. “Actually, the parking lot at Churchills. The cops shut it down and I had to leave. Sorry I didn’t call you again later. By the time I got back to the Rez, it was super late.”

“What’s it like on the reservation?” she asked.

“It’s not that different from anywhere else. My uncle’s been teaching me about Miccosukee stuff,” I said. “We’re supposed to go camping in the Everglades. No tents. Just a hammock and a chickee hut. You have to sleep high, in case the gators sneak up on you.”

“Your family sounds amazing,” she said. “How come you never talked about them before?”

“Do you actually care?” I yanked another handful of grass.

“Sorry for asking,” she said.

It felt like everything I said was wrong. I took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s rewind this conversation and start over.”

“So you’re living with your dad now?” she asked.

I nodded. “My mom basically dumped me.”

“Sounds awkward.”

“You have no idea.” I rubbed my forehead, as if scrolling through the pages in my mind.

“What about your dad?”

“My dad? He’s got issues. No joke. My mom was dumb enough to put up with it for years.”

“You never told me.”

“That’s because I hadn’t met you yet. One day, Mom told me to grab my shit, whatever I could throw in a duffel bag. All my Legos, my Gundam action figures. God, I even tried to shove the PlayStation in there. Then she’s like, ‘You can’t bring that goddamn thing with you.’ And I started crying and freaking out. Pretty embarrassing, I guess.”

“That’s the last time you saw him?”

“Yeah, we stayed with my grandma in Fort Myers for a couple months, but she and Mom kept fighting about stupid stuff. Then my dad got his ass thrown in jail. Mom finally woke up. I was still too little to understand what was really going on. All I knew was, that’s when we got our first real house … the one on our block.”

Our block.

“How come you never talked about this?” she asked.

“Because it’s nobody’s business.”

“Not even your best friend’s?”

I winced. “Except you, homeslice. I know you won’t go around spreading my business, right?”