“Guard it, Utah,” she tells the dog, who’s too busy looking for scraps on the ground to even look up.
I guide her out toward the stage, into the crowd. The minute I let go of her arm, she grabs my hand and spins me around like a ballerina in a music box. And I can’t help laughing.
“Told you dancing was fun.” She only sounds a little smug.
I try to spin her back, but I can’t get my arm over her head, so Agnes has to duck as she turns, which sets us both into fits.
We dance like this for a while, neither of us leading or following. Sometimes we just keep turning each other. Sometimes we try and do moves we learned in elementary school, when they made us square dance. We hook elbows and trot in a circle, our feet in rhythm with the banjo that’s playing onstage.
And for a second it’s so perfect that I forget where we are and what’s happened over the last few days. I forget where we’re going and everything that I know’s about to come.
It’s just me and Agnes and her laugh and this song and nothing else.
At least until the song stops.
Then I remember again.
“You okay?” Agnes asks, a little breathless.
“Yeah … just … told you I don’t dance.”
“All right, all right. Let’s go sit down. I’m sure Utah’s wondering what the heck we’re doing anyway.”
A smile. “Poor dog thinks we’ve gone crazy.”
“Oh, I’m thinking that bridge was burned a while ago, Bo.”
“That dog had to live with my mama. I doubt much fazes her at this point.” We get to the table, and I hand Agnes her folded cane. “Wanna walk around some? I’m thinking we oughta spare a buck for some lemonade.”
“Sure.”
I’m bent down, untying Utah from the table, when I hear him. Or maybe I smell him first. It’s the smell of beer and sweat. And it’s right behind us.
“You looked sexy out there.”
I stand up and turn to see a skinny, shirtless guy. He’s wearing cutoff shorts and holding an open beer bottle in his hand. I ain’t sure how old he is, but he’s too old to be looking at Agnes with that gross glint in his eye, that’s for damn sure.
Agnes just ignores him. She might not even know he’s talking to her. She unfolds her cane and looks at me.
“Hey. You hear me?” he asks, slurring his words together. “I liked watching you dance. Why don’t you come over here so I can get a better look at that ass?”
Now Agnes knows he’s talking to her. She looks at him, and right when I’m about to go for his throat, she says, “Fuck off.”
I grin at her. It’s the first time I’ve really heard her stand up for herself. Not that I’m surprised. I’ve always known that she’s tough, even if she don’t see it. I offer her my arm and she loops hers through it. We ain’t even taken two steps, though, when the prick yells after us.
“Have it your way, fat bitch.”
I spin around so fast that Agnes, holding on to my arm, stumbles.
“What the hell did you just call her?” I demand.
“I said she’s a fucking fat bitch.”
I don’t know I’m gonna hit him until we’re already toppling to the pavement and my fist has slammed into his nose. But I guess that’s how almost all my fights are. One minute I’m standing still and the next I’m throwing punches. But no matter how they start, I always win.
I hear Utah barking and Agnes yelling my name. Hear people in the crowd shouting. But all I can think about is the blood coming from this guy’s nose and where I’m gonna hit next.
But even though he’s skinny, he’s taller than me and probably a good thirty or forty pounds heavier. So after I get a few good punches and kicks in, he gets his senses together and shoves me on my back. My head hits the concrete, and for a minute I see stars. But I still manage to slam my knee up into his crotch. He grunts in pain, but he don’t let me up. Instead, he throws his own punch, right in my eye.
“Get the fuck off her!”
I just barely see the long white cane flying down and colliding with the back of this asshole’s neck.
He yelps and jumps up, but I’m guessing he’s more surprised than hurt. Either way, it gives me a chance to throw my weight—little as it is—at him, knock him back on the ground. I throw another punch and land it right on his mouth.
I might have a black eye, but he’s gonna be missing a tooth.
Then there are hands on my shoulders—lots of them—dragging me off the motherfucker. And there are hands on him, too, pulling him away, across the pavement.
A few people ask me if I’m all right. Others ask me what the hell is wrong with me and call me a crazy bitch. And someone else shoves a ziplock bag full of ice in my hand, tells me to put it on my eye.
“Bo,” Agnes says, at my shoulder. She’s got her cane in one hand and Utah’s leash in the other. “Oh my God. What were you thinking? I mean, thank you. But what the hell were you thinking?”
I ain’t got a chance to answer before someone shouts, “Cops are on their way.”
“Oh shit,” I say. “Agnes.”
But she heard it, too, and shoves Utah’s leash into my hand before taking hold of my arm.
I push through the crowd, avoiding hands that try to grab me, to hold us back. We dodge in and out of the crowd as strangers yell after us, telling us to stay, to stop.
But we can’t do that. Because we cannot be here when the cops come.
So we run.
After my grounding was over, Bo and I became inseparable. Not just at school, but everywhere. She spent nearly every Friday night at my house, and she must’ve been growing on my parents, because when she wasn’t around, they asked after her. How she was doing in school, if she’d taught Utah any new tricks, that sort of thing. Mama even asked once what she liked to eat so that we could have one of her favorite meals for dinner when she came over next.
But Daddy was the one who’d really taken to her. Probably because she laughed at his jokes more often than Mama and I did, and he loved talking to her about Utah, who camped out on our back porch whenever Bo was over. It was more than that, though. He even defended her when Grandma made a comment about rumors that I was spending time with “that harlot.” Daddy stood up for Bo real fast.
“She’s a nice girl,” he told Grandma. “And it’s sure hard to imagine she’s doing all the running around people seem to say when she’s at our dinner table most nights.”
I gave Daddy so many hugs in the days after that, he must’ve thought I’d lost my mind.
Daddy was also the one who convinced Mama to let me go out with Bo sometimes. Not to parties. They always had an excuse why that wasn’t all right. But sometimes they’d let us go grab some fries and a milkshake at Marty’s, a little fast-food place down the road. Colt almost always met us there, but we didn’t tell my folks about that. They may have liked Bo, but I wasn’t sure they could handle me spending so much time with a male Dickinson.
But the more time I spent with Colt, the more I realized how wrong people were about him. He was quieter than Bo, but obviously very protective of her. He seemed more like her brother than her cousin. And when he smiled at me—a smile so wide even I could see—it gave me this fluttering feeling in my stomach.
And sometimes, just occasionally, when our legs would brush under the table or he’d touch my shoulder for an instant—it made me think again about what it might feel like to kiss him. And I knew I was gonna be sad when he left for his new job in January.
Not that I’d told Bo that, though. It was one of the few secrets I kept.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you” had become our little game. We played almost every time we were alone together, and I devoured each detail I learned about Bo.
Like that her full name was Isabo June Dickinson.
Or that she was deathly allergic to bees and, because of that, was terrified of them.
Or how when she was eleven, her mama brought home a German shepher
d puppy without any warning. She’d bought the dog from a guy in the next town, who was selling pups for cheap. Bo’d named her Utah after seeing a picture in a travel book. “It just seemed like a nice place,” she said.
But there were things I still didn’t know about Bo Dickinson. Like why, after spending the night, she was always gone when I woke up in the morning. Or why she never invited me to her house.
But I got my answer to the second question a few days before Christmas.
It was winter break, and Gracie had gotten a ride home with some boys from UK. Even though she’d been home almost a week, I’d barely seen her. At night, she went out with some of her friends from high school. During the day, she slept. But that Friday, Mama sent us shopping, giving us a long list of the things she’d need for Christmas dinner.
We made an extra stop at the Goodwill, though. Gracie said she wanted to look at the homecoming dresses people had donated because there was a spring dance coming up and she needed something to wear. While she dug through the layers of tulle and taffeta, I stayed near the front of the store, listening to the chime of the bells as people walked in and out in a hurry. A lot of people in Mursey did their Christmas shopping at the Goodwill, so this was a real busy time of year.
The donated books were up front, and I started going through a stack of them. I couldn’t read the pages in most books, but if the letters were big and bright enough on the covers, I could at least make out their titles. And since about half the stack seemed to be made up of romance novels, some of those titles were pretty funny.
But one book, a heavy, leather-bound thing, got my attention. It was beat-up real bad. I could feel the scratches and creases of the cover. But the words in thick gold cursive still seemed to shine.
Our Poems: A Collection
“All right, let’s go,” Gracie said, suddenly at my shoulder. “The only dresses in my size are maroon and yellow. So there’s no chance in hell that’s happening … What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a gift for somebody.”
I bought the book for a couple dollars, then we got back into Gracie’s car and started for home.
When I knew we were getting close to home, I said, “Hey, Gracie, can you … can you drop me off at the church?”
“What for?”
“My friend lives in the trailer down the street. I wanna give her this.” I tapped the book in my lap.
The car slowed to a stop, and I heard the ticking of the turn signal. “That’s a Dickinson trailer, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Some of my friends told me they’d heard you two were friends now,” Gracie said. “I didn’t believe them, though. Not until Mama said she’d been hanging out at the house.”
“Uh … well, yeah. It’s true. So will you drop me off?”
Gracie sighed as the car turned right. “Fine. But if Mama gets pissed—”
“She won’t be mad.”
It was only half a lie. I hadn’t asked permission to do this. Not from my parents. Not from Bo. I hadn’t even known I was gonna have Gracie drop me off until five minutes ago. It was impulsive and spontaneous. And those were things I definitely wasn’t allowed to be.
But Daddy was at work, and Mama was visiting my grandmother. As long as I was home before either of them, it’d be all right. And as much as my sister might have disapproved of me hanging out with Dickinsons, I knew she’d never get me in trouble with our parents.
That’s how it had always been. Gracie and me might be different in every way—from how we looked to how we acted—but we were always a united front when it came to our parents. She’d definitely opposed them more than I had growing up, but now it was my turn to break the rules, and I knew she’d cover for me if it came down to that.
Gracie let me out in front of the church. But she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Are you sure you can walk to her house on your own?”
I pretended I hadn’t heard her and just started walking, my cane tapping its way down the sidewalk ahead of me.
Despite that, I did have a little trouble. I’d never actually stepped into Bo’s yard before, just stood on the sidewalk in front of her trailer. So when I got there, it took a second for me and my cane to find our way across the frozen yard and up the cement steps to her door. When I knocked, I heard Utah start barking inside.
“Hush!” I heard Bo yell. “Ain’t nobody trying to kill us, Utah. Jesus Christ.”
Then she opened the door. And froze.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked after a second.
It wasn’t the warm welcome I’d expected, and for a second, I was stunned. And scared. Like maybe she’d decided she didn’t like me now. Maybe she realized what everyone else already knew—that I wasn’t nearly the badass she thought I was.
“Um … I brought you something,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“Well … Mama’s not here, so yeah. Sure.”
I noticed the way she said it. Like, if her mother had been there, I wouldn’t be welcomed in.
Bo stepped aside, and I walked into the trailer. First thing I noticed was how cold it was. Barely warmer than the December air outside. When I looked back at Bo, I noticed she looked wider than normal. Layers, I realized. No telling how many she had on.
The second thing that caught my attention was the soft sound of talking mixed with static coming from down the hall.
“What’s that sound?” I asked.
“Police scanner,” Bo said. “I keep it on all the time, just in case …” She trailed off. “You said you brought me something?”
“Oh, yeah.” I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the book from Goodwill. “Thought you might like this. Merry Christmas.”
She took the book from my hands, but she didn’t say anything. Not for a long second.
“Do you like it?” I asked.
Her voice cracked when she answered. “I can’t take this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I ain’t got nothing for you,” she said. “I wanted to get you something, but I just don’t got the money to—”
“That’s all right.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Bo,” I said. “It’s a book from Goodwill. I didn’t spend a lot. And …” I hesitated. “Honestly? You know what I’d like in return? And it doesn’t cost a thing?”
“What?”
“Can you read me some of those poems?” I asked. “I’m still not real good with poetry. Still don’t get it most of the time. But I love hearing you read it and explain it. That’s all I want from you.”
Bo seemed to think on this for a second before saying, “All right. I reckon I can do that.”
“Good.” I folded up my cane and tucked it under my arm as I looked around. The trailer was pretty dark, and the windows looked like they were covered with sheets instead of curtains.
Bo must’ve seen me looking, because she said, “It ain’t real nice, I know. Not like your house. But—”
“Can I see your room?” I asked.
She hadn’t given me an answer yet when the front door burst open and Utah let out a startled bark from somewhere in the living room.
“Oh, shut up, you damn mutt,” a woman’s voice snapped.
“Mama.” Bo sounded just as surprised as the dog. “What’re you doing here?”
“Live here, don’t I?”
In the pale light, I could barely even make out her outline, though I still had a pretty good memory from the day when I’d first seen her in the front yard, screaming at the trees. “Who’s this?” she asked.
I guess she didn’t remember that day quite as well.
“Uh … Mama, this is Agnes,” Bo said. “Agnes Atwood.”
“Hi,” I said, giving a little wave in her general direction.
“Atwood,” Mrs. Dickinson repeated. “Your daddy owns the hardware store, right?’
I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I see a lot of people goi
ng in and out of there. Y’all must make a lot of money off that place.”
“Mama …”
“What? I’m just saying—it’s great for her dad. Probably a pretty penny. Ain’t it, Agnes? Y’all do pretty well for yourselves, I’d imagine.”
There was something strange about her voice. She sounded jumpy. Like she was teetering on the edge of something. And whatever it was, it made me nervous.
“You’re friends with Bo now, huh?” she continued. “She’s always at your house these days. I hardly ever see her. You might as well be family. And since we’re family, maybe you and your folks can help us out.”
“Mama, don’t.”
“I’m only kidding!” Mrs. Dickinson said. “Agnes knows that. Right, Agnes?”
“Uh …” I glanced at Bo and wished I could make out her face in this light.
“But,” Mrs. Dickinson continued, “friends do help each other out, don’t they? And we ain’t had heat almost all winter. I’m just pointing out that they could help us, since y’all are so close now. A hundred bucks or so could go a long way. And that probably ain’t nothing to y’all, Agnes. With the store doing well.”
I just stood there, not knowing what to do or say. Nobody had ever asked me for money before. Not even in this roundabout way. Where we lived, we grew up being taught never to ask for things like that. Never to put people on the spot. You waited until it was offered, and even then, you were supposed to say no at least once. I wasn’t sure why. That was just the way it was. It was a rule everyone followed.
Everyone but Bo’s mama, apparently.
“You oughta go to bed,” Bo told her. “You seem tired.”
That’s when it shifted. When the ledge Mrs. Dickinson had been teetering on crumbled.
“Are you telling me what to do?” she yelled.
Bo, who’d moved to stand next to me, flinched. “No. I’m just trying to help, Mama.”
“Bullshit! Don’t you act like you’re taking care of me. Why’re you trying to get rid of me, huh? You embarrassed?”
“Mama—”
“Because I’m the one who oughta be embarrassed,” she hissed. “You think I ain’t heard? I know you been whoring around town, Bo. I ain’t stupid. I’m the one who oughta be embarrassed of my slut of a daughter.”
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