The parking lot was still full of vehicles, but they made it to Rachel’s truck without incident. There were a few catcalls, but the riot Red Mabel caused seemed to temper them a bit. For a full minute, Rachel sat in her truck and stared out at the empty field. If she was going to drive, this would not do. Jake shook her arm, until she turned, and regarded him with heavy eyes.
“There’s something you need to see,” he said.
“I’m not in the mood,” said Rachel.
“Please,” he protested. “We need to flee this scene. As soon as possible.”
“I just want to go home,” she said.
“They could be waiting for you there.”
Silently, she turned the key in the ignition and followed his directions.
* * *
At the cemetery, they stood in front of Frank’s plot.
“I haven’t seen this before,” said Rachel. “That makes me feel like an asshole.”
“I loved him,” said Jake. “He was the only man who was ever nice to me.”
They stared down at the plot; clumps of grass emerged, and dandelions had popped up, beginning their march to take over the bare soil.
“I don’t know what to say about today,” said Rachel. “I guess I was kind of expecting it this whole time, to tell you the truth.”
Jake reached out for her hand. “You remind me of him,” he said. “Good and bad. You’ve taken really good care of me, and you don’t have to. But today you had that look in your eye.”
“What look?”
“Frank got that look sometimes. Like he wanted to burn everything down. Like he was staring past everything already and he could see the ashes.” Jake stared at Rachel until she looked at his face. “He had that look the last time I saw him.”
“I don’t want to burn anything down,” said Rachel. “I’m done with destroying things.”
“Exactly,” Jake said, and continued to hold her hand, as the sounds of a riding lawn mower began, and they both ignored it.
When they drove back through town, they saw the dog. It ignored the nonexistent traffic, and galloped across Main Street, still on the run.
Fireman’s Ball, 1981
As sixth period finally ended, Rachel drew a pentagram in the center of the pig, the only mark on the paper. The rest of the biology class actually dissected pigs, and the room was filled with the sounds of popping and ripping. Rachel refused. Her pig remained on Mr. Tyler’s desk, Saran wrapped in a cake pan. Her customized assignment was to consult her textbook and draw the circulatory system. She also refused to do this, and put on her toughest face when the bell rang. She entered the halls of her high school, a place where she had once been beloved. She sought protection in the freshmen corridor, walking to the last period of the day, study hall. Before, being wasted and slutty had been charming, had elevated her status. But crossing Laverna was unforgivable. Parents had apparently warned their children to stay far, far away from her, had encouraged them to say awful things right to her face, to scrawl terrible things on her locker door. She thought that the girls in her class would eventually get their fill, would gobble up all the blood in the water. A year later, the knives were still out.
After class, Rachel just wanted to get the hell out of the building, go home, and get ready for the Fireman’s Ball. She was going tonight, despite Black Mabel’s and Krystal’s warning her of the carnage.
Rachel’s locker door was open.
Inside her locker, a pile of fetal pigs.
The smell rose up, and she nearly gagged. She heard the laughter, and was surrounded by the bravest girls in her biology class. Rachel’s coat and purse were soaked with formaldehyde. She would not let them win. She grabbed her coat and shook the bodies onto the floor. More laughter, as Rachel slammed shut her locker door.
Della Dempsey tried to stop Rachel from leaving. She boldly stood in her path, and screamed with the others. “Murderer!” “Slut!” Rachel was a foot taller than Della and threw an elbow, caught Della right on the chin. Della cried out and fell to the floor, dramatic as always. Rachel stepped over her, kept on walking. She had a bus to catch.
As she strode down the hall, other girls waited with contraband from biology class. Rachel kept walking, even as they threw tiny hearts and stomachs in her hair.
That night, Rachel was going dancing.
* * *
She rode the bus to the trailer court, shivering in her seat. She had stuffed her coat into a garbage can. She had carried her purse onto the bus, and the bus driver cursed at the smell.
She sat in the back, surrounded by empty seats. The bus ride took twenty minutes, and Rachel removed the soggy SAT study guide from her studded purse. She memorized vocabulary words during every bus ride. She had to think about college. She spent the weekends on math, the math she had once cheated on. She no longer had peers to terrorize for answers. She had always known she was a smart girl but had never wanted it to define her. She used to be the fun girl, the promiscuous girl, the dangerous girl. Now she was determined to be the girl who was leaving.
Riding the bus was embarrassing, but Rachel no longer had friends with cars. Krystal had a car, but Krystal also had a baby. Her sole friend was not only dumb but boring. She was the very definition of average; her only distinguishing characteristics came from a makeup bag. Style had changed, but Rachel could not persuade her friend to put down the electric blue Maybelline eyeliner, or the Avon lipstick, Neon Orchid. Krystal’s pink lipstick was her thing, just like Rachel’s was surliness.
When Rachel had been kicked out of her mother’s house, she lugged her two giant army duffel bags to the Sinclair, called Krystal from the payphone. Rachel’s scalp burned where the air touched the wound, and her upper thigh ached from her mother’s kick. Nothing hurt on the inside, because Rachel would not allow it.
Everything fit in the backseat of Krystal’s Datsun. Krystal didn’t even ask what had happened. She knew that Rachel had done something bad, because that was just what Rachel did. It was Frank’s problem now.
Her father’s door had been unlocked, and the house was dark. Rachel sat on the couch and rolled a joint, put on her headphones and listened to Blondie, got so stoned that she envisioned herself as a punk rock Goldilocks, and decided not to raid the refrigerator, just in case the bears showed up.
She rolled a second joint, and her headphones were so loud that she didn’t even notice that he was suddenly standing above her.
She pulled off the headphones, untangled them from her hair. It still hurt where her mother had partially scalped her. She realized that the house was thick with pot smoke.
“I’m living with you now,” she said.
He stared at her.
“I’m Rachel,” she said, and he nodded. “You can stop sending child support checks.”
He didn’t seem to be bothered by the pot smoke, in fact, none of this seemed to surprise him at all. She reached out and extended her hand, an offering of a handshake. He surprised her by pulling her toward him in a stiff, awkward hug. She rolled her eyes.
“I’m used to sleeping on couches,” she said. “You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“I’m in the woods most of the year,” he said.
“Also, I’m a vegetarian.”
“Good to know,” he said. She lit the joint again and took a deep drag. She offered it to her father, but he shook his head.
“I mostly eat french fries,” she said. “But I guess I won’t be allowed at the Dirty Shame anymore.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Yes,” admitted Rachel. “I’m going to need an allowance.”
He sighed. “I figured this day would come, sooner or later,” he said.
“Really?”
“Even in the woods, I hear stories,” he said.
Black Mabel delivered her allowance every Friday night. Frank had some sort of arrangement with her, and Rachel could not understand it, because her father was a big square. Black Mabel mowed the lawn in the sum
mer, shoveled in the winter, switched out the filters of the furnace, and changed the lightbulbs. This had been going on for years. In return, Black Mabel had a place to hide from the cops, or sleep off her binges. Black Mabel lived in a garage on her father’s property, but he did not tolerate her drug use. He locked her out of the garage when he suspected she was high. Thus, Black Mabel was mostly homeless.
* * *
Rachel soaked her purse in the kitchen sink, dumped in an entire box of baking soda. She did not pay attention in chemistry class, but vaguely remembered that baking soda counteracted acid. She wasn’t sure if formaldehyde was an acid, but she was determined to save the purse. While it soaked, she called Krystal.
“We’re going,” said Rachel. “Don’t even try to argue with me.”
“Why do you call me? I’m right next door.”
“Rocky gives me the creeps, and your baby is always shitting.”
“It’s a bad idea,” said Krystal. “I heard Red Mabel got a hold of a flamethrower.”
“Don’t wear hair spray,” said Rachel. “And it’s not a bad idea. It’s a fun idea.”
Krystal was too easy. “I guess,” she said.
“I’ve got wine coolers,” said Rachel. She waved at Krystal from the kitchen window. “Hang on a second.” Rachel decided to check Black Mabel’s stash. She left the phone on the kitchen counter, removed a brick from behind the impotent fireplace. She waved the glassine envelope at Krystal and picked up the phone. “And coke!”
“Come over at seven,” said Krystal. Rachel watched her hang up the phone, her lips so pink they were visible across the gloomy yard.
The purse was not salvageable. Rachel dug in her closet for another purse. There was so much time to kill. She chose a pink T-shirt she had cut in half, cut again into fringes, each fringe weighed down with a giant safety pin. She had to wear clothes for a quick getaway, so she reluctantly put on jeans, black denim, splattered with bleach. Instead of heels, she wore army boots. She might need to run. Despite the threat of the flamethrower, she sprayed her hair into giant blond curtains.
Satisfied, she sat on the couch. She still had an hour to kill, so she opened her spiral notebook and continued the work on her application essay. She was determined to go to the University of Montana and study business, get a degree, and learn how to be cutthroat, and return to Quinn for a hostile takeover of the Dirty Shame. Her essay was about her drunken mother abandoning her, for pity points. Rachel left out the parts about fucking her drunken mother’s boyfriend, and the subsequent negligent homicide.
It had happened on that couch.
Rachel had lost interest in Billy within a week of seducing him. He could not understand why she turned so cold, but kept coming to Frank’s trailer. She tolerated him for months, because she had no other friends. He was in the same boat, kept getting his ass kicked every time he came out of the woods. Even the other Petersens turned on him. Rachel could not understand why he didn’t return to Georgia—Laverna’s power did not extend past the Continental Divide. Billy was needy, and Rachel hated needy. But she was lonely, and he worshipped her. She tried to break up with him, but he kept returning, every weekend, Frank’s house the only safe place outside of the woods. When winter came, and the logging crew disbanded, Billy returned to the butcher shop, which made Rachel even more disgusted. She made him shower two times before fucking.
On Christmas Eve, he showed up at Frank’s trailer with a mangled face. He had been beaten up so badly he couldn’t see out of his left eye. Whining, ugly, and smelling like steak, Rachel could barely tolerate him. Thankfully, Black Mabel had a new line on painkillers, and Rachel popped four Percocets, and stared out the window at Krystal’s house, where it seemed like Christmas. Rocky had hung lights. There was no Christmas cheer in Frank’s house, just Billy’s complaints and Rachel’s drug haze. At least the house hung with green smoke.
Billy drank fourteen cans of beer in two hours, lined up each empty on the coffee table. He usually drank, but not this much.
“Your mother has a vendetta,” he slurred.
“Duh,” said Rachel.
“I want to take you away,” he said.
“I don’t think so,” said Rachel. “I think it would be better if we went our separate ways. It would be harder for Red Mabel to track us down.”
“I can’t leave without you,” he said, tears seeping out of his one good eye.
“Please,” said Rachel. “Go. Without me. Like, tomorrow.”
“I ain’t leaving you,” he said, sobbing now.
Rachel rolled her eyes and pulled away from him. “My mother would report you for kidnapping her teenage daughter and transporting her across state lines. That’s a federal crime and shit.”
“I WON’T LEAVE YOU!”
“Jesus Christ,” said Rachel. “You didn’t even get me anything for Christmas.” This made Billy cry even harder. Rachel opened the pill bottle, shook out five Percocet. “Take these.” Billy squinted with his good eye, swallowed them with a swig of beer. When he was still talking, half an hour later, she made him take four more. He finally passed out, and Rachel lay in her bed, too high to sleep. Through her bedroom window, she watched the lights next door.
Christmas morning, and there were no presents. She lay in her bed, and remembered the holidays with Laverna, who always spoiled her, no matter how bad she had been.
In the living room, Billy was blue. He was on his back, vomit all over his chest and mouth. Rachel felt nothing, just an urge to protect herself.
Rachel pounded on Krystal’s door. Even though they were opening presents, Krystal left Rocky and the baby, could see the panic on Rachel’s face. Krystal was still in her first year of night classes, but knew enough to call it cyanosis.
“Holy crap,” she said. “I’ve never seen this in real life. I mean, I’ve seen pictures, but he’s really, really blue. What did he take?”
“He was drunk,” said Rachel.
“That’s it?”
“I gave him some pills,” she said.
“Downers?”
“Painkillers. He was in pain! And I wanted him to shut up.”
“It worked,” said Krystal. “It’s called aspiration. He choked on his own vomit.”
“Fuck,” said Rachel.
“Merry Christmas,” said Krystal.
When she called the volunteer dispatch, Rachel drank a beer to steel herself. She didn’t even want to think about the people at home, listening to the police scanner, even though it was Christmas morning. She drank another when the sheriff showed up and pronounced it an overdose. She was grateful that the ambulance did not disrupt the trailer park with sirens, but the people came anyway, watched as the heavy black bag was carried out through the driveway.
* * *
Rachel and Krystal parked in the Datsun and snorted lines of coke on the dashboard, even thought it was dusty, and they kept sneezing.
Inside the fire hall, Rachel and Krystal were so high that they barely noticed the stares, the glares, the admonitions. They needed to be seen by as many people as possible, needed an alibi. They were waiting to be seen by Laverna and Red Mabel. Holding hands, they did a lap around the fire trucks, at warp speed. Rachel’s mother was nowhere to be found.
A kid with the biggest buckteeth Rachel had ever seen carried a coffee can, wrapped in pink construction paper. Scrawled with a sloppy Magic Marker, the can solicited donations for the Petersen family. The kid was pathetic-looking, and Rachel was angered when she realized how much money he would collect. Billy’s extended Montana family did not deserve any compensation, but passing the coffee can was a tradition in Quinn.
Rachel and Krystal checked the bathroom, and no Laverna. Rachel cut more lines on the mirror of her compact, and tried to pick a fight with Krystal about her lipstick and eyeliner. After another line of coke, Krystal finally acquiesced. Rachel was applying a shimmery blue eye shadow when the women’s bathroom door burst open, and the small space was invaded by a trio of large women. T
he women saw the cocaine, and shut the door behind them. The women had moved to town to work in the brand-new silver mine. They wanted to touch Rachel’s hair, and she let them. She needed all the friends she could get. Krystal was slightly terrified, and excused herself to cower in the bathroom stall.
On the dance floor, there were nine more of these women, and they surrounded her, protected her from flying beer cups. Ginger Fitchett pushed her way through the ring of silver miners, swatting at them with her expensive purse.
“You’ve got some nerve,” said Ginger, pointing a finger at Rachel’s chest.
“Fucking snob,” said Rachel, and let the tallest silver miner dip her backward. Krystal danced by herself, one shimmery eye twitching. Ginger would not allow Rachel to ignore her, and grabbed her arm.
“I’m serious,” said Ginger. “Hasn’t there been enough suffering?”
“Oh my god,” said Rachel. “Go away!” Ginger screamed as two of the miners picked her up, lifting her off the floor and depositing her near one of the flaming barrels. Ginger kept screaming, and stomped her foot, ineffectual because the floor was cement and the disco was incredibly loud. “She’s underage! Underage!”
Krystal flew across the room and waved a finger in Ginger’s face. “She’s not drinking! Don’t be such a twat!”
Ginger was horrified by this outburst, and they watched as she commandeered the judge. Apparently, seeking legal advice.
The silver miners cheered for Krystal and hoisted her up on their shoulders. Krystal was not used to this admiration, and basked in it, and was smiling when she joined Rachel on the dance floor.
Rachel cornered the kid with the buckteeth in a smoky corner. She dug in her pocket and gave him six dimes and a penny. He gawked at her in silence while she deposited the coins through the slit on the plastic lid. He didn’t say a word when she snatched the coffee can from his hands.
“Let me help you out, kid.” Rachel tucked the can under her arm, made sure no one was looking. “I’m the prettiest girl here.” At this, he nodded. “I bet I can get way more money than you.” The kid continued to stare in shock, until she shooed him away. In the bathroom, she covered the can with paper towels, buried it at the bottom of the wastebasket. Thirty dollars and ninety-four cents, sixty-one of which came from her. She stuffed her pockets with the cash. She had earned this money.
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