There’s a pile of bills and letters and papers on the kitchen table. From ten feet away, I can tell that a lot of the bills are that familiar pink that means Uncle Ashley owed more money than he was worth. Just as I’m walking over to see if maybe there’s a birthday card from my daddy with a return address on it, someone knocks on the door.
My eyes jerk wide and meet Wyatt’s. He points to the sliding glass door, and I quietly remove the antitheft bar and slide it open.
“Ash, man, you hear that? You shooting squirrels again? Cuz you know my mama don’t like that,” a kid yells through the front door as we slip out the back. When I reach to slide the glass door closed, the dog squirms out behind us, her tail wagging hopefully.
Wyatt goes to jump the chain-link fence where it’s a little short, but I shake my head and motion to the gate at the far end of the yard. As far as I figure, I’m the closest thing Matilda’s got to family, and I’m not leaving her behind.
I jog to the gate with a tall boy and a fat dog loping beside me in the high, wet grass. Wyatt’s bare feet squelch in the mud. We leave the gate open, and I run around the next two houses and try to compose myself to walk to the truck. I’m still wearing my Postal Service hat, if not my shirt, and I hope it looks like I’m just coming back from a delivery, or at the very worst, like I’ve been making out with my boyfriend in the woods between deliveries. I guess there’s no explanation for the dog trotting at my heels like she’s always been there.
As we come around in front of Ashley’s house, the kid on his front porch turns to watch us. He looks like he’s just out of high school, or maybe a dropout. Quite frankly, he doesn’t look like the sharpest hammer in the drawer.
“What y’all doing with Matty?” he asks, scratching a thin and hairy neck.
“Is that her name?” I say, putting emphasis on the Southern accent I usually try to cover up. “That ol’ dog’s been following me all up and down the street. Get on, dog.”
My heart’s not in it, and Matty knows it, but hopefully the kid’s dumber than the dog. Wyatt gets in the passenger seat, and I roll up the back door and motion Matilda—Matty—inside just as the kid starts walking down the sidewalk toward us, his head to the side like he’s thinking so hard he might overheat and blow a gasket.
“Did y’all hear a gunshot a few minutes ago?” he asks.
“Wanna go for a ride, girl?” I whisper.
At the word “ride,” Matty yips and jumps in the back of the truck, and I crawl in behind her and roll the door shut and lock it. Just as I hoped he would, Wyatt shifts into the seat behind the steering wheel and turns the key he’s been holding all along.
“Naw, man. That was just the truck backfiring,” he says, whipping out his own accent.
“My friend Ash ain’t answering his door,” the kid says. “Hey, where’d Matty go?”
“Dumbass dog,” Wyatt says. “Probably diggin’ up somebody’s yard.”
And I stroke Matty’s head in the back of the truck and murmur, “He doesn’t mean that, sugar.” She thumps her tail and licks my wrist like she doesn’t mind that I just killed her owner. My uncle. Like she was supposed to be with me all along.
Wyatt pulls away, the truck jerking as he gets used to the clunky steering.
“Hey, come back!” the kid yells, and I imagine him chasing a few feet before stopping in the middle of the cracked road, scratching his neck like he accidentally misplaced his trachea.
I can’t help wondering how many days he’ll stand in front of Ash’s front door, ringing the doorbell and hollering about squirrels. How long before he breaks down that door or tries the unlocked sliding glass door in back? How long before he calls the police and can’t get anybody on the phone?
Not until Wyatt pulls back onto the highway do I realize that we left my fake fruit basket on my uncle Ashley’s nicotine-yellow carpet.
4.
Kelsey Mackey
“That was close,” Wyatt says, and it sounds so much like a TV sitcom that I laugh.
“We woulda got away with it, too, if not for that redneck yokel,” I say, and Matty leans her bulk against me and thumps her tail on the floor like she thinks it’s a good joke. It occurs to me that I now have my first dog. And my first inheritance from a family I’ve never met.
And then it occurs to me that since I was wearing my Postal Service shirt when I killed Ashley Cannon, whoever’s on the other side of that button heard me freak out and now knows a lot more about me than I’d like them to. Of course, from what I’ve seen so far, they knew more than enough about me already. I pull down the list on the wall.
Out of three victims, one was the jerkass who fired my mom, one was dying of the same thing as my mom, and the other one was my uncle? I cross out the first three names and trace number four with my bitten-up fingertip before sticking it back on the wall.
Kelsey Mackey.
So a girl then, probably not too old. And I don’t know her—that I know of. There’s a name I do know on my list, much lower down, but I’m doing my best to forget about that one. Like with Wyatt’s brother, I don’t want to count my dead chickens before they hatch. No point in worrying about the next-to-last kill when I’ve got six more assignments to get through alive in a world already filled with thugs and people hard up for cash.
“So how am I going to get Kelsey Mackey to open the door without a sexy gift basket?” I say half to myself, and Wyatt glances back at me. He’s got to notice that I’m avoiding talking about what just happened. But he can also see that I’m curled up on the cot, quietly shaking with an arm around my dead uncle’s dog.
“Just hold an envelope,” he says. “People will open the door for anyone in a mail truck.”
“Good point.”
I uncurl myself and shrug on a huge, colorful sweater before pulling my envelope out from under the thin mattress. It’s unmarked—no name, no address, not so much as a wrinkle in the orangey-tan paper. I dump out the rest of the cards and pick up the one for Kelsey Mackey. The card looks so boring, so normal. But it’s just another death sentence, printed on fancy paper.
The truck shudders and chugs at a stop sign, and Wyatt says, “So where to? You want to hit your next kill or grab some food or what?”
Put that way, it sort of takes away my appetite. But if I don’t eat something soon, I’m going to get even worse shakes.
“Pull into a gas station,” I say.
I dig around for my cash while he drives up the highway. Matty hops up on the bed and falls instantly asleep, and even though she’s getting rain splatter and mud all over my stuff, I let her. Being in the back of the truck makes me kind of queasy and carsick. My feet slide a little on the metal floor whenever he makes a turn, and every bump in the road jars my butt bones. I sit on the bed and try to relax among my throw pillows and stuffed turtles, but it’s hard. I’ve been in control for so long that I’m not even sure how to let someone else take the steering wheel.
After my dad left, my mom didn’t do that thing where women get makeovers and start dating and aiming higher at work. I don’t remember her really having hobbies or friends or going out or leaving me with a babysitter she had to pay. She just had work and me. My mama never had any ambition; just put one foot in front of the other, hoping to stay in the same place. Naturally, she fell behind. By the time I was eight, I was pet sitting for cash and doing gardening for old ladies in return for cookies and crumpled dollar bills. When I was eleven, I started babysitting, and that’s when I really started being helpful. From the beginning of third grade, I got myself up in the morning, made my own breakfast and lunch, and walked my own self to the bus stop while my mom was already at work.
I started at the pizza place when I was fourteen, when Jeremy and Roy promised they’d take care of me, and we’d mostly just sit around, flipping dough in the back room and cracking jokes. I was like a mascot, almost, and it felt good to pay
for my own clothes and craft supplies and fill the car with gas, once I started driving and before my mom wrapped the old Tercel around a median when a big rig ran her off the road.
My mom took care of me in the only way she knew how, with no help, no support, and no luck. When I think about the way she looked in the hospital after the accident, my throat closes up and my eyes burn. It was bad enough when she had insurance. She needs me now, more than ever. And I want to be done with this job as soon as possible so I can take care of her in the only way I know how.
“Gas station first, then next house,” I say more firmly.
Wyatt just says, “Cool.”
The tank of gas is practically full, so Wyatt pulls into a parking space and turns in his seat to stare at me, eyebrows up.
“Stay with Matty,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
I come uncomfortably close to him as I squeeze between the seats on my way to the passenger door, and it’s almost alarming, how warm he is. I can smell the boy funk rising from his clothes and wonder for a moment who does the laundry at his house. Probably not his dad. Maybe him or his brother. And one of them let something sit too long, wet, in the washer. Does he even have a mom? I never asked. I hop down to the sidewalk and turn back to look up at him.
“Hey, do you want anything?”
“A Coke and something to eat would be good.”
His eyes dart to the cash in my hand like he’s wondering how much I have, how long it can keep both of us going when it was set aside for me alone. And I hadn’t even thought about Matty, and I’m hoping gas station dog food isn’t too crappy and doesn’t cost too much. I’m also hoping Wyatt doesn’t see me as just a poor girl to pity. I learned pretty early on that if you couldn’t afford cool clothes, it was better to aim for a quirky style than to try to make do on the cheap copies of what the popular kids wore. But standing in the iridescent puddles of a gas station parking lot in my jeans and baggy sweater and mismatched socks, smelling like two days of stink and gun oil, and knowing that Wyatt is staring at me, I just wish, for once, that I felt like enough. I dash my bangs out of my face, wondering angrily what it would be like to have them professionally cut instead of just hacking them off myself over the bathroom sink.
I dart inside. Being in a public place is making me cagey. I’ve been shoving down my guilt over what I’m doing, pushing it down deep so I can finish what I have to do. But surrounded by people, by parents holding sticky little kid hands and old men comparing candy bars, it surfaces for just a moment that each person I’ve killed has a family who will miss them. For Ashley Cannon, I’m part of that family, and even though I didn’t know him proper, I already regret that he’s gone. Barely looking at what I’m picking up, I grab some king-sized candy bars and a couple of hot-all-day biscuits and some Cokes, not to mention a gallon of water and a bag of the cheapest, nastiest-looking dog food ever. I guess Uncle Ash didn’t feed his fat old dog fresh organic chicken, but I don’t want her to get sick.
I dump my bounty on the counter. As the clerk rings it up, I can’t help watching the TV over his head. There’s some dude talking about something, too low for me to hear. The video playing behind him shows a squirrel on a skateboard, and the guy laughs a big, fake laugh that makes his teeth look like horse teeth in a human mouth. Nothing about the government, Valor, or random killings, no insurgents lobbing Molotov cocktails at army dudes behind a barbed-wire barricade. Just a goddamn squirrel on a skateboard.
Something catches my eye, and when I look away from the TV, he’s there. The Valor dude. Or maybe it’s not exactly the same one, but it might as well be. Crisp black robot suit, perfect tie, cyborg earpiece, dark sunglasses. This one’s hair is the color of nothing, white-blond and thin. He steps into line two people behind me, moving sideways like he’s being controlled with a joystick.
I go all rigid with terror. Is he here to punish me? To warn me? To deliver a list of my penalties? He leans forward as if to grab a pack of gum, and I jump and drop my wallet. There’s a flash of white, and he tries to hand me a card.
I have never been as scared of anything as I am of that card.
“That all for you, hon?”
It’s my turn to pay, and I just grab my wallet, toss a twenty at the lady, and run back to the mail truck. Whether because that’s what he wanted or because he’s programmed to do so, the Black Suit doesn’t move from line. His head swivels to follow me like a security camera as he places a pack of gum on the counter.
Back at the truck, I swing into the passenger seat and drop my bag on the floor, stunned and twitchy with ebbing fear. I scan the lot for a black vehicle, for any sign of the Valor suit, but he’s totally disappeared.
What the hell was that? Why didn’t I take the damn card? Could I be more spastic?
I hand Wyatt a sausage biscuit and a Coke and pull myself together enough to say, “I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”
“I’m pretty sure bacon is a vegetable,” he says, biting off half the biscuit in one bite, and I smile. I guess I was wrong about that part.
In the back of the truck, I pour Matty’s food into a plastic cereal bowl I brought from home. She starts snarfing it down, wagging her tail so hard against my leg that I’m afraid I’ll get a bruise. Maybe cheap dog food is like fast food for dogs. She seems pretty happy, at least.
Wyatt joins me in the back of the truck, wadded biscuit wrapper in hand, and says, “What else did you get?” I throw him a foot-long Snickers bar. I was bolting my own biscuit, but now that he’s watching me, I try to take daintier bites. But, of course, you can’t eat a biscuit all in one piece if you take dainty bites—it just crumbles to bits and makes a mess. I drop a big chunk, and Matty slurps it up before I can grab it.
“I can pay you back,” Wyatt says. “I mean . . . I don’t have money with me right now, but I’m good for it. I eat a lot.”
“No biggie,” I say. “We can get by.”
I lick my pinkie and dab up the last of my biscuit crumbs before Matty can get to them. They’re dry as they coat my throat, and I swig my Coke too hard. The burn feels good, but the knowledge that I’m going to have to use a gas station bathroom soon doesn’t. I guess it’s better than going outside in the open again. The Black Suit hasn’t reappeared. Damn, those dudes are like Teflon. I’d rather pee myself than get within touching distance of another Valor robot.
“Watch Matty, okay?” I say. “I’m gonna hit the bathroom.”
“I’m next,” Wyatt says with a smile, collapsing on the floor of the mail truck to tussle with the big dog. She likes him, but I get the feeling Matty likes everybody.
I take my backpack with me to the bathroom and clean up as best I can in the cramped, smelly room. Full-body wipe, deodorant, face wipe, hair brush, quick change of clothes, and some coconut-scented drugstore body spray. As I put on a long-sleeved tee under a band shirt, I wonder if Wyatt has the same one. I lean close to the mirror, noticing that my eyes have purple bags under them and are crisscrossed by little red veins. I’m not surprised, but it’s weird. I look years older than I did the last time I stood in front of my own bathroom mirror. I slap on some red lipstick and purse my lips and make kissy faces, turning my head back and forth to see whether my jagged brown hair looks cleaner up or down.
Someone bangs on the door, and I rush out with my face down, cheeks hot. As soon as I hit the truck, Wyatt sprints to the guys’ room. He finished off his Coke and mine as well. That means he’s about to hit a men’s gas station bathroom barefoot. I shudder and look away.
The keys are on my bed, and I realize that I could end it all right here. I could drive back to his house, kill his brother, and know that I was one step closer to finishing my term of service. Wyatt wouldn’t get in my way, wouldn’t try to stop me. He’d be stuck, barefoot and penniless, at a gas station. I’d never have to see him again.
But I know I can’t do that. What I’m doing—it’
s not fair, and it’s not good. But I am, or at least I want to be. I’ve done some harmlessly mischievous stuff in my time, but at my heart, I’m fair and good, and even if I have to do horrible things, I’m not going to be a horrible person.
Would anything be different if I wasn’t, as I grudgingly admit to myself, suffering a crush on this boy? Maybe. If he was a bully, if he had hurt me, if he was mean—maybe then I could just peel out onto the highway and take care of the loose end that is his mysterious brother, Max. But he didn’t leave me behind when he could have, so I won’t leave him behind now. Instead, I just chew on my Milky Way and scan the road for shiny black SUVs and wait for Wyatt to return. At my side, Matty thumps her tail as if she can read my mind and approves of this course of action.
Whatever I have to do in the next few days, I want to make sure that the girl who comes out the other side is as similar as possible to the one who went in.
“So,” Wyatt says, landing in the driver’s seat and making the whole truck shake. “Where does this Kelsey chick live, anyway?”
“It’s in the GPS. Just turn it on and click on her name.”
“It’s preprogrammed?”
“Apparently.”
He inspects the GPS from all sides, taps on the red clock, and messes with the dashboard buttons for a few minutes before finally just backing out of the space and turning onto the road. Although I know I don’t have much time, I pull out my knitting bag and select a new ball of yarn. Powder blue. That’s how I feel today, like the color of tears in old cartoons. It looks even sadder next to the bright, hot yellow I was using the night Valor dropped a gun in my lap. I’ve been planning this piece for a while—it’s supposed to go around the flagpole at my school. I even measured it and counted the stitches to make sure it would fit as snugly as a sock. The plan is to go in one morning at dawn and stitch it around the pole so that when everyone else comes in, it will be there, a kid-sized, rainbow-hued jacket around the cold, silver flagpole.
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