All Out of Pretty

by Ingrid Palmer

  “I’ll get a job right away in the next town. Maybe if it’s bigger…” My voice fades. The reality of our situation is just so daunting.

  After a minute, Ayla opens her eyes and says calmly, “We can sell some stuff.”

  “What stuff?” We only have Gram’s car, which we need as both house and transport. I follow Ayla’s gaze, then clamp my right hand over Gram’s silver watch. “We have nothing to sell.”

  Her expression hardens. I glance at the dense woods surrounding us. Gram’s car is well hidden here. And it has been a very long day.

  “Let’s crash here,” I suggest in a softer voice. “We’ll decide what to do tomorrow, when we’re not so tired.”

  Ayla rubs her nose again and nods. “Maybe head to the coast.”

  “Yeah…” But there’s no conviction in either of our voices.

  While I try to imagine soothing ocean waves, Ayla scrounges in her purse and pulls out a plastic water bottle, which she hands to me. “The bartender gave me this. I saved you half.”

  “Thanks,” I say, surprised. I unscrew the lid and gulp. I had no idea how thirsty I was. When I’m done drinking, I shake the last drops into my palms and rub them over my sunburned cheeks.

  “Move,” she commands when I’m done. I climb into the backseat, grab the blankets off the floor, and toss hers over. She curls up in front, and I sprawl out in back, so exhausted that I don’t even care about the sticky leather, the metal buckles poking my hips. As soon as I lie down, I can tell that I’m going to sleep hard.

  Before I succumb, my eyes flutter a few times. Through the backseat windows, the crowded silhouettes of trees sway—too willowy, too fast—like living beings with faces and ragged fingers. They come at me, poking into the windows. Windows that are not solid glass anymore, but flexing like rubber, turning liquid, bending and soluble…until they become waves of clear water floating around me, encasing me in an enormous, translucent bubble. Finally, the water turns black, drowning me in slumber.

  My dreams are fitful and strange. A giant appears, muttering, “Well, well. Look who came slithering back.” My hand slides across the leather upholstery. The light and shapes around me are blurred and streaked, my mouth cotton-stuffed. Nothing feels right. I am floating, then falling, until my cheek lies flat against a rock and darkness folds over me like a sack.

  Chapter 22

  I’m not in the Buick. I’m underneath some sort of tent, and it’s a thousand degrees. I push at the fabric and it slides away. Brightness envelopes me. I’m lying on something hard, twisted up in a pink sheet. I push onto my knees, but my head bobbles around my shoulders as if it weighs two hundred pounds in liquid form. I reach up to hold it still. Shut my eyes against the searing sunlight. I don’t know what happened, can’t tell the difference between my hallucination and reality. My brain ticks back the hours.

  We were in the car, in the state forest in West Virginia. Were we abducted? Where is Ayla?

  As if on cue, I hear a whump and then a long wail from below. “I said I was sooooorry!”

  “Sorry don’t mean shit.”

  The voice paralyzes me.

  No. God, no. It can’t be true.

  I pry open my eyes and it is true.

  I hyperventilate. Shake. Clutch my head as everything snaps into focus—the peeling wallpaper, the creaky bed, the flimsy door near the hexagonal window.

  I am back in Judd’s attic.

  Downstairs, there’s more noise. Crashing and cursing.

  “Pleeeease, Judd. Just gimme somethin’. I came back, didn’t I?” Ayla doesn’t sound like herself. It’s like she’s pleading through a mouthful of food. Or blood.

  My ears strain to make out their words while Judd’s boots clomp and creak, a hunter circling wounded prey.

  “Yer nothing but a whore,” he growls. “Who were you with all these weeks, huh?”

  “No one. I swear,” Ayla insists, her words tumbling in breathless bursts. “Bones and I…we stayed in a motel in West Virginia. I wanted to come back, but she kept talking me out of it, telling me how worthless you were. Telling me we were better off alone, even though I knew in my heart I wanted you, Judd. So I…I slipped her something so she wouldn’t fight me when I drove us back here.”

  I am frozen in horror. Ayla is blaming everything on me. She must know what Judd will do to me now. And…Oh my God, Ayla drugged me with the water bottle! That’s why I feel like this. My fingers clamp around my skull in disbelief.

  Why, why, why would she bring us back here? We were free, and she ruined it. For what? Not Judd’s greasy hair and rotten teeth. No. She wants his drugs. If she thinks he doesn’t know that, then Ayla is the dumbest person on earth.

  Maybe I can get away before they notice. I’ll hitchhike if I have to, back to that church lady in West Virginia. Or I’ll take off on my own. Somehow I’ll make it.

  I crawl to the door, stand up, and twist the handle. It doesn’t budge. I pull with all my strength, but nothing happens. I’m locked in. It takes all my willpower not to kick the door down. But Judd would hear that and then he’d come.

  I slide to the floor, defeated. My face crumples. Burying it in my lap, I let the tears go, like little spiders running down my cheeks and spilling onto my cutoff jeans.

  There is nothing to do but wait. I lay flat against the cool wooden planks because the room is seriously overheated. It reminds me of the sauna at the Y where I took swim lessons and Gram went for exercise class. Only the sauna door wasn’t locked.

  I watch the slow movement of shadows cross the walls. Several hours must go by. My mouth feels pasty, my throat raw.

  Judd’s methodical footsteps finally start echoing up the stairs. The knob turns and terror pops my heart. I scurry across the floor like a spider myself, pushing my back against the far wall.

  When he enters, I avoid his eyes, staring instead at his steel-toed boots as they get closer and closer, step by menacing step. I brace myself for a kick, but instead there’s a very deep sigh. Judd has settled onto the edge of the bed, a few feet from where I’m hunkered. I hear the click of his lighter. Still, my eyes stay on those boots.

  “Bones, Bones, Bones,” Judd finally says, like he’s puzzling over something too big for his puny brain. God, I despise his voice—that gravelly twang that always sounds like a sneer. “Did you really think you could get away from me?”

  I raise my eyes cautiously and press harder into the wall. The sight of his lean muscled arms inked with sword and flame, his smug, grungy face, and that familiar stench of whiskey, marijuana, and tobacco twist my stomach.

  “I did get away.” I spit the words. It’s a stupid thing to say, but I figure it’s better to die fighting than to just roll over.

  He laughs, heartily. “You got as far as I let you. You think I don’t know people in Morgantown?” Judd puffs on a lit cigarette held loosely in his hand. The red-hot butt dangles dangerously close to my face. “I got friends everywhere, girl. Eyes all around.”

  I stare at the cigarette, too scared to speak. How does he know about Morgantown? Was he watching us? Or did Ayla just tell him the truth in exchange for a hit?

  “You know why you’re alive right now? Because of me. All it woulda’ taken is one word and…” he makes a gun-shooting motion with his hand.

  “I don’t believe you,” I whisper.

  “You’d better start,” he growls. “I’m the best friend you got. Now, get up!” he shouts.

  But I can’t move. My limbs are frozen in fear, despite the sickening heat. When Judd sees that I’m not obeying, he grabs a fistful of my hair. He uses it to drag me down the stairs so fast I am flapping like a kite behind him.

  My feet slam into the bottom step, my legs buckling. I’m still so dizzy from whatever Ayla slipped me that I have to steady myself against the walls to avoid toppling. We pass the door to Judd’s bedroom and con
tinue into the hallway. I’m afraid he’s taking me out to the woods to lock me in the shed, so I say the first thing I can think of—“I need the bathroom!”

  Judd grunts, pushes me inside and slams the door. “You got two minutes.”

  I really did need the bathroom. While I’m on the toilet, I look around for an escape, but there’s nothing. No windows. No tools to use as weapons. I flush, then stand and retch into the sink. Some bile comes up—there’s nothing else in my stomach. I scrub my hands and face with soap before gulping the faucet water. Then I vomit it back up. In the mirror, my reflection looks demonic, even after washing. My nickname fits now. I am a dirty, wasted pile of bones.

  The door flies open and Judd squeezes my neck. He pushes me through the kitchen and over to the couch, where Ayla is curled up shivering, pale and red-eyed, and at least a day into hardcore withdrawal. My hatred for her is overpowering. I want to hit her, to drag her by her hair, to scream in her face, What the hell were you thinking bringing us back here?

  But she’s more a pile of bones than I am.

  Judd throws me down next to her and mutters, “You two aren’t worth the trouble you cause. Of all the times to take off and distract me from important business. Goddamn women!” He pauses, glaring. He chews his lip for a minute, like he’s deciding something. “However, Ayla and I have a history, so I’ll be gracious enough to take y’all back.” He sighs like he’s doing us a favor. Like we should be happy about this. “But there’s still the matter of restitution…”

  We cost him, he claims. Money spent tracking us, money in lost deals and wasted time, money for the sack of drugs Ayla stole. Thousands, we owe him.

  “So where’d you stash it? In the car?” he demands, looking to me for an answer.

  “Stash what?” I mumble. “Your pills? I threw them in the gutter!”

  Fump! His fist comes at me when I’m not braced for it. I cry out and fall into Ayla, my eye instantly puffing up to twice its normal size.

  “Where’d you stash the mon-ey?” He articulates each syllable like I’m an idiot. “Don’t tell me she ain’t cashed her check.”

  I glare at him with the eye I can still see out of. Every nerve ending in my body is on fire. I feel like a monster held by a chain, ready to attack the first thing I can sink my teeth into. But I can’t attack Judd and live. And he wants an answer.

  Mentioning Giovanni doesn’t seem wise, so I hiss, “We got mugged. Why do you think she came back here? For you?” It may be evil of me, but I take a small pleasure in throwing Ayla under the bus this time.

  Judd’s face turns crimson with rage, but instead of taking it out on us, he kicks the coffee table, and I wonder why he’s so upset. Then I get it—he was planning to steal Gram’s money when it came. Giovanni beat him to it. Maybe that’s why Judd brought us here in the first place last spring. Why would Ayla even tell him about those checks? She is so stupid.

  “Don’t matter, I guess.” Judd calms himself down so fast it’s eerie. “There’s more comin’ in January. I’ll take that, in addition to what you two will owe me for this little stunt.”

  I barely listen to his ramblings. While I try to assess the damage to my eye by feeling the size of the lump, Judd calculates my share of the debt to be seven hundred dollars. That’s what I must pay him, on top of what I’ll continue to pay for my room and board by helping with deliveries. “You have until the first of December to come up with it,” he decrees. “If you don’t, you’ll earn it the hard way.”

  I don’t even want to know what that means. I have no idea how he expects me to come up with seven hundred dollars, and honestly, I’m hurting too badly at the moment to care.

  Ayla’s debt is significantly higher than mine, but she doesn’t care either. She just quivers and begs for a hit. Judd laughs harshly and says, “No way.” She pulls a small pillow over her head and moans. I wonder how long he’ll make her wait.

  Then Judd sees how I’m trying not to even blink because the slightest motion hurts my eye. He sneers, “I’ll be outside. Eat if you want.”

  Once he’s gone, I snatch the pillow off Ayla’s face and give her the most evil one-eyed glare I can conjure. “How. Could you. Do this?” I demand, my voice shaking.

  She has the decency to look remorseful. Her red-rimmed eyes plead with me. “I had to, Bones—”

  “I could’ve died,” I rumble.

  She shakes her head. “What I gave you wasn’t that strong.”

  I scoff. Maybe not for her.

  “We had a plan…the beach!” I say, clinging to the illusion of Ayla and me making things work, together.

  She groans like I’m living in fantasy-land. “We weren’t gonna make it. We were kidding ourselves.”

  She might be right, but I still would’ve preferred to try. “Now we’ll never know! And he’s still not giving you anything. So congratulations on your brilliant idea.”

  Unable to argue, Ayla goes back to sniveling on the edge of the couch. “At least you got food,” she mumbles.

  Without verbally acknowledging that truth, I realize that I’m starving. I fall over my feet to get to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and chug the soda that almost seems worth the punch to my eye in trade. Then come chips and cheese and ham. Soon I’m so stuffed my stomach hurts and that’s when I smell the smoke.

  Peering out the window above the sink, I see that Judd has built a bonfire. I think of his threats of punishing me with flame, and the food I consumed threatens to reappear. I swallow it down, past the fear that is slimy and black and wending its way through my veins.

  Before I can hide or think to grab a knife, Judd comes inside carrying my bags. He must have gotten them from Gram’s car, which means he has the keys again. Wonderful.

  Hurling the bags at me, he orders, “Get upstairs.”

  I scurry into the attic room, surprised that he follows. He strides over to the closet and yanks open the door, then points. “Unpack everything.”

  Even with my brain functioning better, I can’t figure out his plan. But I obey, funneling all my clothes onto the wooden shelves. Then I unload my backpack, dumping books and folders onto the closet floor. Compulsively, I reach down to straighten the books.

  “Pick those up,” he commands.

  As soon as I do, he snatches them. I only have four books, but they are like old friends. It pains me to see them clenched in his gritty hand.

  He shakes out both my bags to be sure they’re completely empty. Then he thrusts them back into my arms, keeping my books in his own. “Bring those and follow me.”

  He leads me downstairs, outside, and across the yard to the bonfire, its flames licking the sky now. He points again and says, “Drop ’em.”

  I clutch the empty bags to my chest. While this is certainly better than him pushing me into the fire, I’m not sure I can do it. Of course destroying my bags won’t stop me from taking off again, but he’s making a point. He is searing it into me.

  Hip lip curls as he whispers, “You ever try leaving here again, you won’t be taking anything with you. I bought those clothes, girl. You remember that.”

  I have no choice. I fling my bags into the flames. He makes me watch until they have burned to ash.

  I don’t cry. I won’t, in front of him. But those bags held my whole life after Gram died. They were as much my home as the Buick. Somehow, he knows this. How does he know this? How does he know what will hurt me most?

  Grinning, he holds up my books. “You won’t be needin’ these anymore, either.”

  I open my mouth to say something, but before I can figure out what that should be, he tosses all four books into the fire. My lips tremble as the pages turn black and disintegrate into tiny glowing embers that float up to the clouds. I don’t know if the agony I feel is for the loss of the books themselves, or the fear that his words mean I won’t be going to school again. Ever
.

  Before he wrenches me back inside, I see victory in Judd’s steel gray eyes.

  Chapter 23

  The new lock on my door clicks each night around ten, and that’s when panic constricts my chest. I remember watching Gram twist the screws around the bottom of our Christmas tree every December, squeezing tighter and tighter until the big old pine couldn’t wriggle loose and fall over. That’s how I feel lying under the pale pink sheet—intense pressure coming at me from all sides, rendering me immobile.

  My attic room is hot as a furnace, and the only window that opens gets stuck two inches down. Not much breeze squeezes through that tiny space.

  Considering the torture I expected from Judd, the one punch he delivered feels like kindness. For the next three days, all I have to do is cook dinner. The rest of the time I lay in my little bed, wishing I had some aspirin and waiting for my face to heal. I spend the hours thinking about how I’ve always lived two separate lives. Childhood memories spent playing in leaf piles sit next to those of a ghost-white Ayla convulsing on the couch. I think about how I came into this world—unplanned, unwanted—and wonder how I will leave it.

  Judd denies Ayla drugs for days. It is maddening to hear her beg for them. I remember these sounds from years past, when Gram put Ayla in the guest room and forbade me from going near the door. I’d be sent to sleep at friends’ houses during the worst of it, which for Ayla came on day three or four. All those years, I never told my friends about Ayla, not even Delaney. Gram didn’t ask me to keep secrets. I just did.

  On day four, I’m back to work in the cellar and, crazy as it sounds, I’m glad. Glad to be out of the sweltering attic and the inane boredom that comes with isolation. Judd isn’t even that mean. I think he’s happy to have my help again. Just when I’m beginning to think day four is a decent one, Ayla loses it. She jumps on Judd’s back, clinging to him with her skeleton legs and whapping him in the head, demanding a hit of some drug or other, then dive-bombing down the stairs to get at the goods we are packaging. Her physical attack is a joke, but annoying enough that Judd tosses her onto the floor of his bedroom and locks her in. Even muffled by the door, her ceaseless howls rub me raw. No wonder Gram sent me away.