“Bell rung as I severed her eye contest. Back to library and bleck.” Me.
“Fuck. Stupid girl isn’t minding her own business.” Matt.
“No, seems not. Maybe Gloria’s right.” Me.
“What?”
“Gloria doesn’t think Abigail can deal with the rest of us mere mortals. She’s a perfectionist. She’s hypercritical.”
Matt sighed and slipped an arm into his jacket.
“Listen Rache, I’ve got to meet with a guy from the City of Escondido about a job. I’ll keep my phone on so I can monitor what’s going on. But you’ll have to cover this for us. Just keep your cool.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” He handed me a work order slip which listed the details of his trip to the city so I could make the necessary entries in our log. I kissed him good-bye and returned to my vigil.
Luis’ next entries weren’t for another hour. I was thinking it was going to be a long day of babysitting the computer. But then more tweets appeared. My anxiety rose with each one.
Louie_Louiee bll rng, TG. im suferng i-strain. no offns, R: bossmn is tyrnt. bll saves me. Only break from mnotny when 3 pints mxitup in lib. boss just watchd. What givs?
10:28 am Oct 29
I was a little offended at his remark that the librarian was a tyrant, but shelving books is monotonous.
I wanted to text him that school rules don’t encourage teacher involvement anymore. I wanted to, but couldn’t. Luis had yet to respond to the text email Matt had written. Another message arrived.
Louie_Louiee sub talkng 2 sad chub guy. Pintos watch.
10:29 am Oct 29
Chub guy. I wondered if that was the heavy set boy at the memorial.
Louie_Louiee ind grl and sub have neighbor lockers. pints again, intrcept this time chub not me. pints r like cockroaches.
10:30 am Oct 29
Louie_Louiee bell. back 2 lib 2 wait lunch and bleck.
10:33 am Oct 29
From wherever he was, Matt wrote Luis he’d send in Will. I know this because Luis wrote back on Twitter not to. He’d handle it. Matt wrote: Spoken like a Marine.
At least Luis was checking his emails.
“But he’s not a Marine,” I whispered miles away in our office.
He was a big kid. I continued to monitor Luis’ messages with growing apprehension, knowing we had to get him on the phone and knowing we couldn’t or we’d blow his cover.
Chapter 39
She was tiny, as if her height had been badly affected by her diet when she was a child. Or maybe Indians were usually tiny. Her name was Betty Wolftooth, which Abigail thought was sooo cool. They were talking about high school and whether or not they liked it. It was hard since they were both freshmen and took a lot of flak from the upper classmen.
Of course, Abigail had made her decision and the devil himself couldn’t deter her from staying in school. Betty had moved to a sore topic for her—her older sister.
“She got pregnant two years ago…when she was only fifteen. Never did know who the father was. And now all the boys think I’m going to put out for them, too. Believe me that is the last thing I want. I think I’ll have to wait until college to find a nice guy who likes me for who…”
“What happened to your sister?” Abigail said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, why doesn’t she know who the father of her child is?”
The conversation stalled as Betty Wolftooth thought about Abby’s question.
“I’m sorry, Betty. That was way too…” Abby began.
“No. It’s okay. I was just deciding whether to tell you or not, given what’s going on. But maybe a little truth wouldn’t hurt with all this mass hysteria around us.
“You know, Jimmy Winters wasn’t such a nice boy as they’re making him out. Well, maybe he was in some ways, but…he’s the one who ruined my sister. They were in the same class, and she had a big crush on him. Well, one day he noticed, and asked her out.”
Betty Wolftooth shook her head disapprovingly and looked around. Abigail did too, looking for those nasty girls. But there were dozens of kids hanging out in the quad, as they called it, eating lunch and gossiping. Betty continued.
“Jimmy and Judi had always been an item, maybe since they were babies. So my sister…her name is Karen…she was stunned when Jimmy asked her out. Any way they, like, dated for a while. And then all of a sudden he quit her.
“Karen spent the rest of that summer crying her eyes out. And then the phone began ringing. All of Jimmy’s friends were asking her out.
“My dad thought it was cool, having a popular daughter, but my mom, well, she just kept quiet. Mom never even got to high school. She’s worked in the fields from the time she was eleven, and she’d been pregnant with our oldest brother by the time she was fourteen. That’s what she told us anyway, after…after Karen turned up pregnant.”
Working the fields as a child? Where did this happen, Abigail wondered. Surely not in America.
And why did Betty’s dad want her to date? Abigail thought if she had a dad anymore, he’d be against her dating.
“Not long ago my sis told me Jimmy had only dated her so he could lose his virginity. She swears they never did it, though. And she said she didn’t do it with those fast-handed friends of his either. At least not at first. In the end, one of them got to her. I won’t tell you which one. It doesn’t matter now anyway. He’s dead. And afterwards my sis ran away. My mom is taking care of the baby.”
Abigail could feel her mouth was catching flies and she consciously closed it. Wow. Double wow.
“And, like those boys are after you now?”
“No, not those boys. Those boys were all in that car accident, or they’ve graduated or something. The ones chasing after me now are their younger brothers. You know how it is.”
They needed to change tracks, Abigail knew. This was too painful for Betty. And too weird for her.
“Sure, I know. So you plan to go to college?”
“Of course.”
She was insulted and Abby quickly added, “I don’t want to. Maybe an art school somewhere. But even that would be stultifying. All they do at college is brain wash you into thinking just like them…most of them are a bunch of dried up old hippies still trying to justify their misspent youths. Really, I’d rather travel, visit places I can paint, visit other artist colonies.”
“Misspent youths?”
Betty looked askance at Abigail. Abigail grinned foolishly.
“My mother’s phrase. My mom is an immigrant, from Ukraine. She ran away and came to America in her late teens. She’s old-fashioned.”
“Does she work?”
“Yeah. She’s a nurse, actually the head nurse, at the local hospital. In the ICU.”
“Really. Wow. I was thinking I might want to be a nurse someday.”
“You’d be good. You should pursue that.” Abigail said. She tried to hide the sense of pride she was feeling in her mother’s career after Betty had shared her own mom’s abbreviated education. But secretly, she didn’t see how anyone so short could be a nurse. How could she reach the patients up on those elevated beds?
“Anyway, I don’t think we can afford a college education for me now anyway…now that my dad, well…” She didn’t want to tell Betty that her dad was still alive and a complete coward. She didn’t want to tell her anything about her dad.
Truth? Her lame father would never pay for her education anyway, even though he could probably get her something from the government because he was permanently disabled.
More truth? Her mother desperately wanted her to get a four-year college degree.
Betty said, “Your dad died huh? Sorry. My dad is still alive and he’s still working in the fields, except when he can get an odd job helping someone with their gardening business. Where do you think you want to go to art school…or, find an art colony?”
Abigail didn’t bother to correct Betty’s misunderstanding about her father.
“Art
ists’ Colony. Well, Paris of course, that would be my first choice, near the Sorbonne. You can find them near any major art school really, but just not in the art schools. They sort of hang around the fringes doing the real experimental stuff. That’s what I want to explore. But the new center of art is really in South East Asia. There’s a real revival going on there. The people of that region are so smart and they’ve been so repressed and stultified. Maybe Cambodia.”
Abigail watched Betty raise her eyebrows. Surprise? Reproach? Was she sounding too…out-of-time…geekish. Like she’d been living in a time-capsule?
“Who’s repressing them?”
Was she kidding? Was she being ironic?
“Oh, you know, just old practices and poverty, and of course some pretty stultifying dictatorships. My mother fled a Communist country, you know? She hated it.”
Abby had just learned this new word, stultifying and realized suddenly she was over using it.
“Why? I think we need a dictatorship. I think democracy is a dumb idea that clearly isn’t working. We’d be way better off if we had some benign leader. We need a movement for the little people.”
Abigail stared at her in disbelief. Under this tiny girl’s head of beautiful black hair was a radical’s brain? Or was she a rebel…?
Or was Betty toying with her. That thought came just after she blurted out, “You want us to live under a dictator’s thumb?”
She glanced around, realizing she’d spoken too loudly. My god, she was sounding dumb.
But then Betty went off on a tangent that almost had Abigail believing her.
“What’s the difference? We’re under the thumbs of a handful of billionaire capitalists now. And some of them are as stupid as those college professors you just talked about. My mother says the fat cat rich guys left America behind in the nineties. Just up and left the country, taking all their wealth with them. They all just moved their companies to poor countries where they could pay slave wages. And now look where we are.”
Abigail was flabbergasted. What she’d really wanted was to head the conversation to something not so controversial or so personal.
Then the bell rang, saving her ass.
“Cripes, I really hate the sound of that bell. Rattles my nerves. Come on, Betty, we better get inside.”
Truth. The bell made her feel they were like cattle being herded down a chute to their deaths. And then short little Betty took the lead!
“Get moving Abigail, your mind numbing education awaits you. It’s worse here than in any college you’ll never attend,” the Native American quipped as she marched them back inside.
Way too late Abigail realized she should have argued that the country hadn’t begun as a democracy, it had begun as a republic, where the people got one carefully controlled vote for their representative in government and then they were supposed to step back and let the chosen leaders make the decisions.
Democracy was an aberration only recently evolved, mostly in California with the excessive use of propositions.
What she really should have said was…but then the door to her classroom closed behind her.
Abigail had no idea who this girl was. One thing was for sure, this was no meek, ignorant farmer’s daughter. And maybe Abigail had just learned the most important cultural lesson of the day, from the mouth of a radicalized Native American—she was a babe in the woods and the wolves were everywhere and everyone.
Chapter 40
Abigail’s mind drifted in the boring English class. She spent most of the hour thinking about her conversation with Betty Wolftooth--until she bumped into a painful memory of her own.
Not that Abigail had a sister but she had a close—really close—girlfriend once. And that girlfriend was the reason she’d run off to Pinto Springs High.
Without meaning to, her close girlfriend had betrayed their lifelong friendship.
Her name was Gracie, and Abby and Gracie had been closest friends since…well, since before she could remember. Back when they were five Gracie had saved her life by pulling her back from a bad fall. But when they were both thirteen—just this past summer in fact—Gracie betrayed her.
She’d come over for a sleepover at Abigail’s house and while they were both sitting at her kitchen counter in the very wee hours of the morning Gracie shared something terrible with her.
“Abby?”
“Yeah.” Abby’s mouth was full of a chocolate filled donut. She was hoping the chocolate would help keep her up. It was already past one and Gracie seemed to have an endless supply of energy.
“I was wondering if…if maybe you could tell me something.”
“Sure. What?” She swallowed hard trying to force the lump of moist dough stubbornly refusing to go down her gullet into her stomach. Next bite would be smaller. Then she turned a serious eye toward her friend.
“What’s on your mind?”
Gracie was nervously pulling the outer crust off her plain donut bit by bit.
Abby looked around as if maybe her mom or Nana might suddenly be seen lurking in the dark shadows of the living room, waiting to hear Gracie’s secret.
It was a secret, wasn’t it?
“Well, I’ve never told you this, but….”
She stalled again.
“Go ahead Gracie. You can tell me anything remember? We’re best of friends.”
“Right. But, well, I’ve never told anyone this before, so….”
“Goes without saying, blood-sisters never rat on each other.”
They’d become blood-sisters when they were eight or nine. It was a childish act of bonding that they’d seen done in some long ago movie where you sliced your palms and then grasped each other’s hands as if in a handshake and pressed your blood into each other’s veins.
Gracie offered her a meager smile then lowered her head and peeled more donut skin.
“What is it Gracie?”
Without looking up, her lifetime friend said, “I was raped.”
Abigail about fell off her stool. She quickly glanced at Nana’s door. It was closed, but she knew the old woman to have dogs’ ears, so she grabbed Gracie’s hand and pulled her off onto the porch where they could huddle on the couch.
“When!”
“Oh, a long time ago now. Almost a year. It was last summer, actually.”
“And you never told me?”
“I…couldn’t. I was….” Gracie began picking at the skin around her thumbnail now that she had no donut to worry. Abigail grabbed her hands in hers to still them.
“How? What happened? Who..?”
Gracie sighed deeply, as if a great burden was leaving her chest.
“I was out wandering near our Lake Hope house. My parents were entertaining, and well, you know how I’ve told you it’s so lonely up there, all adults all drunk all of the time.”
“So you went for a walk what time?”
“It was late, after dark. Maybe after ten. This guy, I suddenly realized he was following me.”
“Oh God, Gracie. Who?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before. But he was wearing a trench coat, like really weird, you know, because it was hot and all, the middle of summer. Even up at the lake. And…suddenly he threw it open and he was naked!”
“Jesus! What did you do?”
She looked up with her big brown sheep eyes now filling with tears. “Nothing.”
Abigail grew animated with the urgency to hear what had happened and was waving her arms around now, and said, “So you screamed…and you ran? Right?”
Gracie just shook her head no, then looked back down at her hands in her lap as if wondering what new part to peel.
“Didn’t you tell your folks?”
She shook her head no.
“Gracie! The cops, didn’t you call the cops?”
She shook her head no. Then her whole body shook. She was sobbing.
Abigail wrapped her friend in her arms and held her still, whispering, ‘Oh God, oh God’ over and over in her
ear. What else could she say?
Finally they both calmed, and sat holding hands again, knee to knee, head to head, in the dark shadows out on Abigail’s sun porch.
“The thing is, Abby, well, I’m just so afraid….”
“What?”
“Well, I thought with all your experience you’d know….”
Abigail could feel herself stiffen but she wasn’t sure why.
“What..?”
“You know, I was wondering--could I still have a baby?”
“What?!”
“Well, I just am afraid I’m still going to turn out to be pregnant, you know….”
“Gracie! It takes nine months. I thought you said it was a year ago.”
“It was. Almost. So you think…you’re sure? I couldn’t….”
“Wait a minute, what experience? What do you mean with all my…” But she never finished her question.
Abigail was thinking she must surely mean her experience through her mother the nurse. And it was true that Abigail knew a lot about medicine, but no, Gracie meant something entirely different.
“You know, you and Barry….”
“Barry?”
Well wasn’t this the night of surprises,
“B.O. Barry? Jesus, Gracie, we’re just geek friends! You know, World of Warcraft friends. We talk on Skype, help each other. What are you thinking?”
It might have all been forgiven and forgotten except the look on Gracie’s face said it all.
And then Gracie added, “Everyone knows about you and Barry, Abby. And, what I need to know is with your experience and all….”
Abigail shut down the memory. It was too painful to review further. They had gone to bed quickly after that, but from that point on her friendship with Gracie was caput. And so was her friendship with the rest of the homeschool group.
Nasty gossips.
B.O. Barry, for crying out loud!
Then she’d met Buddy at the art classes and as the saying goes, the rest was history.
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