by Makenzi Fisk
Along the row of houses, I slip around fences and try the knobs on each garage door. At the end of the block I hit the jackpot, a swimming pool in the backyard and no lights on. Looks like fun.
I go back to fetch Nina and find her lying in the weeds like a drunk hobo. The water will do her some good. I help her to her feet and she trails behind me to the house with the pool. She looks worse than the first time I let her smoke a cigarette. I’m afraid she’ll barf so I keep her at arms’ length when I hoist her over the fence. She lands on the other side with a loud oomph!
I climb over, quick as a cat, join her on the lawn and there it is. The pool. The moon reflects in wavy patterns across the surface of the water and I can’t think of a better gift for Nina. I’m damn well proud of myself but she doesn’t look very appreciative. In fact, she doesn’t seem to notice at all.
I grab her chin and point her face toward the pool and she sees it but she’s still not impressed. I can’t believe I went to all this trouble. I’m considering leaving her here and going home when she gets up and walks over to it.
“It’s all right. This is my uncle’s house,” I lie.
She yanks off her shoes and rolls up her pants. I do the same. With feet dangling in the water, this is more of what I had in mind. Nina looks less like she wants to throw up. She treats me with a sad smile. I don’t want her to be sad. That’s no fun. I want her to be happy.
“As long as I can remember, my dad said he would buy us a house with a swimming pool.” Her face darkens and she suddenly looks angry, or sad. Something is wrong.
“That sounds… nice.” The words are stupid, but what else can I say to someone who tells me about something good with a mad look on her face?
“Yeah, it sounds nice.” She kicks her foot and water splashes up her leg. “He used to make a lot of promises.”
I don’t get what she’s upset about. Don’t everyone’s parents make up fairy tale shit for their kids? My mom did. We were going to Disneyland. We were going to move into a beautiful mansion. New car, blah blah blah. It never happened and after a while I stopped getting sucked into her fantasy world.
When mom took me for a picnic and told me she stopped doing drugs, I knew it was only temporary. Then she took it too far. She said she was going to marry my father and we’d all live happily ever after. That was a goddamn lie. He would never leave Mrs. Perfect in the perfect house at the other end of town. Parents lie. That’s why my mom ended up at the bottom of the bog.
Nina is still splashing water like she’s doing the flutter kick from the pool deck and I block her with my leg. She stops instantly and slumps over like she will plunge right in. That’s when it dawns on me. This has got nothing to do with parents lying. It’s something more. I stare in her eyes and she meets mine for a long moment.
Her nostrils flare. “My dad is a monster. My mom is a pathetic drunk. That’s why we left. That’s why we’re hiding.” She opens her eyes so wide I can see the whites all the way around and it looks freaky. “He beats the crap out of my mom. He nearly killed her once but she won’t report him.”
“He tried to kill her? How?” Details, I want details. Does her dad measure up to mine?
“I can’t tell anyone.”
“Oh, seriously. This is me you’re talking to. My dad is in prison for kidnapping me and almost killing a cop.”
Her mouth drops. “Really?”
“Yup.” I lean back on my hands. “That’s why I’m here in witness protection. They moved me from Minnesota so he can’t find me when he gets out. He’s a dangerous felon. Look it up.”
Nina takes a breath.
“Tell me.”
“She almost caught him… He was in my room…” Nina tilts her head back and the moonlight glistens in her eyes. “My mom interrupted him and he pretended he was only tucking me in. She told him to get out and let me go to sleep. He said he was just being a good dad and she shouldn’t be so suspicious. He beat her so bad that I had to call the ambulance. I didn’t want to get my mom in trouble. I lied to the cops but I don’t think they believed that my mom fell down the stairs. They said they couldn’t arrest him if my mom wouldn’t testify. She was in the hospital for three days. That’s why we had to run.”
“So, your dad made you have sex with him.”
“What? I didn’t say that!” Nina pulls her feet from the pool, a terrified mouse.
“Yeah, ya kinda did.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Face ghostly white against the sky, she leaps to her feet. “If he finds out I told…”
“Ah, don’t worry about it. You know I won’t tell. That crap happened to me too.” The lies come so easily, I don’t even have to stop to think about them.
“Really?” She crouches beside me.
“Swear to God.” I pat the pool edge and she sits down again. “We’re best friends right? I’d never lie to you.”
“He can’t possibly be my real dad anyway. My real dad wouldn’t do that. I dream about him sometimes.”
“Who?”
“My real dad. He’s a famous news anchor or something. My mom always acts weird when she sees this one guy on TV and my fake dad gets jealous. That’s probably why.”
“My mom’s famous too.” I can’t let her get above me. “She’s in Hollywood but she’s between jobs right now.”
“Oh.” She looks down at the water and I think she must realize that the story she made up about the news guy can’t be true.
“Yeah, my mom’s got tons of money,” I tell her. “She’s going to come get me soon.” I wish that was true but my mom is dead and she’s never coming.
All this talk has Nina sobered up. She’s not quite herself yet but I think we had a valuable bonding moment. I give her shoulder a push and it startles her. She whips her head up and catches my eye, then pokes me with two fingers. I flinch, but only a little.
“I think you’re afraid of girls,” she says, and gives me a harder nudge.
“Shut up.” In a way, she’s not wrong but I hate when boys touch me too. I shove her hard and she tumbles right into the pool, clothes and all. She comes up laughing and grabs me by the leg. There is no way she’s strong enough to pull me in. I smirk at her and rock my weight back on my arms.
I’m still smirking when she hauls my ass into the pool with her. Never in a million years did I think she could do it. She’s way stronger than I thought. She should have kicked her pervert dad’s ass when he tried to touch her. Why didn’t she?
We’re splashing in the pool and she’s shoving my head underwater when the yard light comes on. Two gray-haired heads pop up behind the screen door. Someone is home after all. One of them is on the phone and I bet the cops are on the other end.
I’m half-drowned before Nina notices we’re lit up like Christmas. She beats me out of the pool and we shinny like two otters over the fence. Bare toes on gravel, shoes in our hands, we laugh all the way to the park.
With our backs to the tree, we slide down the trunk until we’re sitting in the same spot we left earlier. She sighs and leans toward me, then checks herself and veers away. “I like you.”
“I… uh… I like you too.” My heart shrivels. She is not going there.
“No, I mean, I like you.”
She did. What do I say? Do I tell her the truth? Neither gender does it for me? I don’t mind other people sometimes, but I really only need myself. Or is it different with Nina?
“Oh, look! A shooting star.” I point at the sky.
Nina looks up and I’m off the hook. There never was a shooting star but she will spend the next five minutes looking.
“There. It was there.” I aim my finger at an imaginary spot. “Maybe there will be another one.” Now we can talk about something else. “I used to see the Northern Lights back home.”
“We don’t see them here in the city.” Her gaze on the sky, she slinks down onto her back. “What time is it?”
“I dunno. I’m not wearing a watch. Check your cell phone.”
/> “You know I don’t have a cell.”
It’s a joke between us that we’re the only ones in our entire school without cell phones. It seems to bother her but I don’t care. Who would I text anyway? There’s only Nina.
Realization hits her and she smacks me on the shoulder with the back of her hand. I narrow my eyes. This new Nina wants to talk about stupid shit and thinks she can smack me. It’s like the grade four boys who punch girls they like. From now on, her drink limit is one.
“It’s probably after ten.” I take a guess, based on the position of the moon.
“I have to go!” She jumps to her feet like she’s been sitting on an anthill. “My mom has to work at ten and I’m supposed to babysit my sister!”
She runs off without saying goodbye. Nina has been babysitting her sister since her mom got the night shift job cleaning offices and I hate that she always has to go home early. I lie back in the grass and search the sky for my favorite constellations. When the mosquitoes find me I walk back to the motel.
CHAPTER 9
“There it is!” Allie pulled her hand out of the cat carrier and latched the door. Wrong-Way Rachel immediately meowed.
“Canadian border ten miles.” Erin read the road sign as they passed. She rolled up her window and ran a hand through her hair to smooth each strand back into place.
“You’ve been quiet a long time.”
“My ankle feels naked.” Erin tugged up her pant leg as if to prove this fact. “I miss my off-duty piece already.”
“I’m sorry you don’t get to carry your precious gun in Canada.” Allie wasn’t sorry. Not really. The only part she was sorry about was that it made Erin uncomfortable.
“It’s just a pistol.” Erin frowned. “It’s not like I want to carry a bazooka down the street.”
“Maybe you’ll find that you don’t really need to rely on your pistol so much north of the border.” She’d gotten used to the gun on Erin’s hip when she was in uniform but the concealed off-duty holster made her nervous. She hadn’t grown up with guns and had only seen them on TV. Americans were so different in subtle ways.
“Are you going to tell me about your visit at the prison? You’ve hardly said a word.” Allie squinted in the oblique light that angled through the clouds. In the visual distortion, Erin’s usual radiance was etched with a crosshatch of darker energy. Did she have something on her mind, or was there a storm coming? Maybe she and Derek had not found common ground. Maybe something bad had happened. “Will you tell me about it? Your emotions are so intense that I’m getting concerned.”
Erin smiled at her and the darkness eased. “Oh, Baby,” she said. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” She reached over and took Allie’s hand.
As if plugged into a conduit, warm energy flowed through her and she sighed in relief.
“Derek had a lot to say when he started talking. Some of it might be helpful. I’ve been lost in thought trying to puzzle out how we’re going to stop that kid.”
“What can you tell me?” Allie asked.
Erin smirked. “This is not covert ops. There are no secrets between us. I’ll tell you everything I remember. We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
Allie’s chest tickled. That smirk always melted her and Erin knew it. “I already sensed that Derek is in trouble. He’s very motivated to get out of there. He’s loyal to his daughter, God knows why, and he desperately wants to find her mom.”
Eyebrows raised, Erin nodded.
“He wants to help Lily. I feel like he thinks she can be saved and he doesn’t want you to hurt her.”
“You make me sound like I’m the bad guy.”
“No, Honey. I only mean that he’s afraid Lily has gotten herself in too deep and might give you no other choice.”
“There are always other choices,” Erin said flatly. “It seems like you sensed all the important big-picture stuff we talked about.”
“Can you fill in the details?”
“Well, he doesn’t quite understand why I’m going after her, since she’s a kid and would probably never stand trial.”
Allie was pretty sure Derek hadn’t said it quite like that. The words so damn gung-ho resonated through her mind, and she had a distinct sense of his indignation.
“I told him that it wasn’t about convicting her. It was about stopping her. I understood his loyalty to his daughter more when he told me about Lily’s mom.”
As if eavesdropping on the past conversation, Derek’s anguish swept over Allie. He’d certainly felt strongly about Lily’s mom.
“Let me preface this next part by telling you that it was a bit weird for me to be sitting in a prison talking to a macho guy about feelings.”
Allie grinned and squeezed her hand. Erin protested too much. She was actually pretty in touch with her feelings but she didn’t like to admit it.
“Derek feels guilty that he didn’t help Tiffany get off drugs.”
That was it. Tiffany. The name had been on the tip of Allie’s tongue for the past half hour.
“He should have helped her when she’d asked. He thought it was fun to smoke a joint with her in high school but after she had the baby, she smoked more. Eventually, she turned to crack.”
That was when Derek distanced himself from her. He saw a different future.
“That was when Derek distanced himself from her.” Like instant replay, Erin’s words echoed the ones that had run through Allie’s mind. “He wanted to be a police officer. He stopped taking Tiffany’s calls and they drifted in separate directions.”
Allie listened to Erin’s words and her mind flashed unfocused images. A teenage mother passed out on the couch while the baby cried. Gunther holding Lily’s small hand at his wife’s graveside.
“He said he tried to help Tiffany by paying her as an informant. He wanted her to use the money to get clean. When her mom died of cancer, it was a wake-up call. She got her life under control and finally told him about Lily. He promised to leave his wife and be a father. They would be a family. He proposed and she accepted. She was going to take their daughter for a picnic and tell her all about their new life. He never heard from her again. He worked so hard to find the woman he loved, did his best to be a dad, but he failed.”
Allie tried to conjure up an image of Tiffany’s face. Where is she now? Every time she focused on the name, the image of Lily overwhelmed Allie, obliterating her train of thought. It was a mental block she couldn’t get past.
“He knew Lily was different, right from the beginning. He thought that if only he spent more time with her…”
“She treated him like a pawn,” Allie finished.
Erin nodded. “He told me that she called him her minion.”
“That’s a strange way for a child to talk to an adult.”
“Lily’s an unusual girl, but she’s no longer just a child. Derek has had a lot of time to think about that in prison.”
Allie remembered the moment when Derek had realized his daughter needed to be stopped. His feelings had surged through the prison’s parking lot like an emotional tsunami. Even the distraction of her romance novel couldn’t shield her from the force.
“Derek told me he remembered seeing her in town on the night of the fire at Gina’s store. He took her home, but she went right back to town. He thinks she wanted to get revenge.”
Allie didn’t interrupt Erin. There was more she had to say.
“He also said he caught Lily poisoning her grandfather.”
“He caught her? Why didn’t he stop her?”
“He didn’t understand what she was doing at the time. He’d driven to Gunther’s place to drop off his monthly child support payment. No one was at the house so he checked the shed. He saw Lily through the window. She was using a pair of pliers to crimp the cap back onto a Budweiser. There was an old brown bottle on the workbench. When he went inside, she hid that bottle from him. He asked her what she was doing and she said she was just getting her grandpa a beer.”
“Th
at sounds more than suspicious to me.”
“The thing was, Gunther wasn’t even around.” Erin exhaled. “Derek says that, in retrospect, he should have known that she was up to something but he didn’t want to accept that fact until now. He knows she’s accelerating. She needs to stop before it’s too late and someone dies.”
“Someone already has died.” As if on cue, the dark clouds opened and great droplets of rain splashed the windshield. Ahead, a torrential downpour made it appear that the water literally bounced off the asphalt.
Erin slowed when she caught up with a semi-trailer. Their windshield was coated with the spatter from its rear mud flaps. “He’s not totally convinced that Lily killed Dolores Johnson. He thinks it must have been an accident or mistake.” She stomped the gas pedal to the floor and overtook the semi, buffeted by watery wave.
Allie grimaced when the truck was rocked by the gust. Erin was so competitive. Would it kill her to back off and follow the semi a while longer? Finally in their own lane, they could see the road ahead. Almost deserted today, there had not been an oncoming car for at least five minutes.
Erin continued talking as if her truck had not just nearly been pummeled off the highway. “The fingerprints on those beer cans behind the house weren’t exactly definitive proof of murder.”
“And you kind of bent the rules with that evidence.”
Up ahead, a bright yellow sign on Interstate Highway 29 announced LAST EXIT BEFORE CANADA.
“Thank you for reminding me of yet another of my screw-ups.” Erin withdrew her hand from Allie’s and massaged her temple. “I got Kathy, who happens to be my favorite forensic tech, in the loon shit. They denied her the course she deserved.”
“She wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t want to. She doesn’t hold any grudges.”