The Cheerleaders(91)

He left the engine running and swung himself out the driver’s side, wincing. As he walked up to the store, past the boys with skateboards who were always smoking in the parking lot, Ginny noticed that his lopsided gait was getting worse. That fact, coupled with how foul her father’s mood had been, made her suspect that his orthopedist wasn’t prescribing him as many pain pills as he needed.

Ginny looked in the side mirror, craning her neck to see behind her, at Jessie’s Gym across the street. When she was four, her mother signed her up for “toddler tumbling,” and she’d liked it so much she wound up going to class three nights a week, once she was old enough. She would have signed Ginny up for every class Jessie had to offer, if they could’ve afforded it. Ginny knew she wanted to get her out of the house, away from her father.

Ginny closed her eyes and smelled sweat and rosin. Heard her father squealing up to the curb outside Jessie’s Gym in his truck, nearly taking down the sign listing a sandwich special for the deli next door.

When Jennifer Rayburn saw and marched off to tell Jessie what she’d seen, hair flying out behind her, all Ginny could think was that Jen was an angel. A blond-haired, green-eyed angel.

But then Ginny would get embarrassed, worrying about everyone else at the gym thinking she was a loser whose parents never picked her up on time or who showed up drunk.

Her father had managed to ruin gymnastics too.

Outside the truck, someone was yelling. Her father was yelling. She’d recognize that sound anywhere. Ginny peered out the window.

Her father was standing in front of a beat-up pickup truck. A man was leaning against the side, and one was seated in the driver’s seat, his arm dangling from the window. Ginny swallowed back fear and lowered the window just enough to hear what they were saying. She caught her father midsentence.

“S’matter with you?” he was shouting. “Those girls are less’n half your age.”

The guy leaning against the side of the truck laughed, clearly unthreatened by her father. “Whatever, old man.”

Ginny’s blood ran cold as her father stood up straight. “The fuck did you just call me?”

The driver of the truck stopped smirking. He opened his door, sending a flood of panic over Ginny. She lowered the window and called out to her father.

“Daddy, please. Don’t.”

The man standing outside the truck swung his head toward her. He gaped, then turned back to her father. “You’re standing there blitzed out of your mind, and you got a fucking kid in the truck?”

Ginny flitted back and forth between hoping the men would call the police and praying that her father wouldn’t put his beer down and go after the driver. He may have been stronger than her mother, but this was a fight he couldn’t win.

“Daddy,” she pleaded. “Let’s go. Come on.”

To her surprise, he didn’t take another step toward the men in the truck. He hoisted his twelve-pack of beer up and headed around to the driver’s side of his own truck, while the other man got into his truck. They peeled off, leaving Ginny trembling in her seat.

“I told you to stay out of shit like that.”

Her father’s voice jolted her. He tossed the beer into the backseat and slammed the door shut. Ginny’s heart thumped as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she whispered.

Her father grunted. Ginny picked up the stench of beer on him that wasn’t there when he entered the store, and she strongly suspected that one can was missing from the twelve-pack in the backseat.

“Those men were harassing some girls,” he said. “I don’t like when animals like them look at girls like that. One of them could be you someday.”

Ginny breathed through her mouth as he fumbled to put the truck in reverse. She didn’t say it, but she didn’t think there was a man out there who was more dangerous to her than her own father was.

The rain was falling sideways in sheets now; one of those fall storms that shifts gears with little warning.

“It’s really rainy,” Ginny said. “It’s too dangerous to drive.” It’s too dangerous for you to drive.

Daddy grabbed her by the chin. “Hey. Look at me. Have I ever put you in danger before?”

His words slurred together. Ginny shook her head. Her father released her, and Ginny felt a red spot bloom on her face where his fingers had dug in. “I don’t put my family in danger. You’re safer with me than ’nyone else, you got that?”

Ginny nodded. She thought of the cell phone in the pocket of her father’s jacket. If she could sneak it without him seeing—

He leaned over and began to cycle through the radio stations. The moment his eyes left the road, the truck swerved onto the shoulder. “What d’you think? The Stones or the Moody Blues?”

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut.

“What, now you’re not talking to me?” Daddy whipped around in his seat to face her, jerking the car into the oncoming lane. Ginny grabbed the dashboard, seeing the headlights of the other car through the rain—

She felt like she was leaving her body, like it was someone else screaming Daddy Daddy Daddy—

He yanked the wheel back. The sickening sound of the other car’s horn, then the screech of metal on metal; Daddy slammed on the brakes and the truck spun a complete three-sixty. Ginny felt the tires leave the pavement—they were falling, both of them screaming. Her skull cracked against the ceiling and then everything went still.