I hopped on the hood next to him. “No. Nothing like that.” l studied his face and sustained eye contact, “I really am sorry about that. I don’t know what was going on with me. I don’t know what’s been going on with me for the last eighteen years”
“Uh oh. Too much to drink? You’re in your existential crisis mood.”
“It’s not the alcohol”
He furrowed his brow.
“Okay, I did have some to drink but... Hey, what do you mean? When was the last time I did that in front of you? We haven’t exactly hung out since junior high.”
“Right, and you did that then too. Always the eighth-grader with the most inner turmoil. You always have something stirring in that brain of yours. I don’t know how you make it through the day without falling over”
“It’s true though. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. What have I become?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You’re just Angela. What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m serious. You didn’t want to be my friend anymore for a reason. I wasn’t nice when we started high school and I don’t know that I was all that nice for any of high school. “You’re not that nice of a person, Angela” I shoved him a little.
“Point verified. Ouch.”
“Do you think it’s too late to get back to who I used to be? Am I too far gone?” I asked.
“No, Angie. You’re barely eighteen. You’re not too far gone. You have plenty of time to make up for a few years of being an asshole,” he let out a laugh.
“Thanks. What about us? You think it’s too late for us?”
Milo considered the question for a moment, but his face showed amusement. “What do you mean us?”
“Not like. No, I mean. Is it too late for us to get back to where we were? Is it too late for us? To be friends again?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? We are friends. We’ve always been and always will be,” Milo put his arm around me and squeezed. “Just because you suck most of the time doesn’t mean we aren’t friends.”
“So, for the last few years? Even with the way we’ve been toward each other?”
“The last few years are the last few years, not today. Stop worrying so much about ways you're screwing up and just live your life. Do your best. It’s all anyone can do,”
“I hope you aren’t drunk right now. I can’t take it if you go back to hating me tomorrow,” I said.
“I haven’t had anything to drink but I can’t make any guarantees. You are super annoying,”
“Thanks. Well, I’m tired. I didn’t really want to come here anyway but now that I’ve come, I know I don’t want to be here.”
“What? You don’t want to catch up with all your friends you haven’t seen in weeks,” he asked seething with sarcasm.
“I think I’ve had about enough.” I began to walk away when he jumped off the hood of his car
“Angela, you probably have had too much to drink to drive home,” Milo said
“It’s fine. I haven’t had that much. It’s not that far home,”
“The cops are out tonight. You know they’re just waiting for a kid from the dry lakebed party to bust for drinking. It would be the perfect thing to screw you over so you couldn’t go to college,”
“That’s true.”
“Tell you what. What if I take you home? We can come back in the morning and pick up your car bright and early,”
“I don’t know if I want to leave my car out here with these people,”
“It will be fine. No one is going to touch your precious hunk of metal,”
“You’re one to talk” I scoffed looking at his equally beat-up Ford Galaxy
“What drugs are you smoking? She’s a ‘66. A classic. A beauty”
“I know, I know,” I said as I slid off the hood and sat in the passenger’s side.
“Oh, we’re leaving now?”
“Aren’t we?” I asked.
Milo hopped off his car and got in.
“Alright, madam, but we are going to pick up fries and orange soda first. Lots of fries”
We drove from the dry lakebed and after picking up food from Burger Barn went to Finnegan’s Park and ate on the creaky old Merry-Go-Round. “How is this thing still here?” I asked.
“What? This is a classic piece of Manere history” Milo spun me around until I felt sick and jumped off. I made him get on to do the same for him. It was one of the best nights I had the last summer in Manere.
Chapter 16
After my mom informed me weeks earlier that she would find me a new place to work if I didn’t like working with Abby, I knew I had something to fall back on. Since things didn’t work out after being unceremoniously fired from the sandwich shop, she reminded me of her pull in town. I thought she was just trying to make me feel better or was threatening hard labor. I could never know with her. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted a job before college. I needed the extra money. I had a few thousand saved up from the last two years of babysitting and working weekends and a few nights a week at the market I worked senior year, but since I didn’t know how much I would need once I was on my own, I couldn’t exactly afford to turn anything down.
The stash of money was usually hidden inside a stuffed horse I got when I was a toddler. The horse once made noise using a battery back, which was buried in its belly, but once I started earning money, I ripped out the bulky battery back and decided it was the perfect spot to hide my wad of cash. The only person to see it was Lucy, which was a complete accident when she walked into my bedroom unexpectedly as I was pulling the cash out of my hiding spot. Her expression appeared far too eager, and she wanted to know where I got all the money. After I explained that it wasn’t much and not a big deal, I expected her to forget about it. She may have, but there was always a part of me that didn’t like the desirous look in Lucy’s eyes. It was difficult to imagine she would ask to borrow the money or expect me to buy her something, but it wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Nothing was ever out of the question with Lucy. In Manere, extra money seemed more than covetable, it was so rare it looked like a lost cause to strive for it. Most lived in ramshackle homes or trailers. There were also a few duplexes and triplexes. The only apartments in town sat on opposite sides of the town, each with fifteen units. One set still had residences and a landlord but the other one, Desert Sunset which was the one on the end of town closest to the exit, was no longer a working apartment complex. People lived in them, but there was no water, power, or anyone collecting rent. The police rarely bothered the condemned property. They claimed it was not part of their jurisdiction because it was so close to the town’s border but we always figured it was because of the seedy things that went on there, not to mention the teenage runaways who would only cause more paperwork for the cops.
**
“Angela Abrams, how you doing? How’s the family?” Carl Blethenfield asked me in his typical buoyant manner.
“Great. The family is great too. We’re all, uh, great”, I smiled unsure how to expound on all the greatness that was going on, purely for his benefit.
“Your mom tells me you want to work with us.”
I nodded, not sure exactly what the job entailed. Carl ran an insurance company, in fact, it was the only insurance company in town. That was one benefit of small business owners in Manere, they always seemed to have a monopoly on any business they opened.
“I do, but um, I don’t know anything about insurance, really. Am I supposed to, like, to sell it to people?”
“Oh, no, not at all Angela. We have salespeople to do those sorts of things. We have a team of two in sales, though I occasionally do a bit of selling myself. Mostly, I stick to the accounting and general supervision items. What we do need is a lovely smiling face for the front desk to greet customers and answer the phone,”
“A secretary? I could be a secretary” I said excitedly thinking about all the time I could waste doodling in my sketchbook or reading magazines when the p
hone wasn’t ringing.
“That’s fantastic. It is mostly reception duties, but we will need assistance in certain cases. How do you fill about occasionally filling in for our investigations?” Carl asked with a single eyebrow raised.
“Investigations for what?” I asked utterly clueless about everything that happened at Blethenfield Insurance. “Oh, it’s mostly minor things. Sometimes people will file a claim they were hurt at work, can’t continue working and get a whole load of money from their employer, but we catch them in their back-yard jump roping on their trampoline,”. I giggled generously
“It happened. That one actually happened,”. Carl was becoming much warmer and more entertaining than I ever thought he would have been. “There are other things too. But it wouldn’t be that often. Only when we are short on help. “Would that work for you?” Carl’s demeanor suddenly became more severe and to the point.
“Absolutely. I think this all sounds perfect. But, you know, I am leaving at the beginning of September for college”
“Yes, your mother did tell me something about that. I think that should be just fine. Who knows? Maybe you’ll love it here so much you may decide to stick around forever.”
I smiled kindly not wanting to say what I wanted to say which may have been something along the line of, No Carl, I will not be staying here and it takes every muscle in my body to not run out of this place like it’s on fire.
“Can you start tomorrow?”
“Of course. Sounds good. Nine, right?” I asked knowing I was going to have to force myself out of bed to get myself cleaned up and ready for work so early on lazy summer days.
“Actually, we like to start at eight here. It gets so hot on these summer days that we prefer to get started early” My stomach dropped. The job was becoming less and less enticing by the moment.
“However, you get to leave at 2 pm which I think is a mighty decent schedule. Wouldn’t you say?”
There was nothing to say. It was better than working in fast food or some labor job and being stuck out in the sun all day. “It sounds like a decent schedule. Very decent Mr. Blethenfield.”
The walk from Blethenfield Insurance felt far less urgent than the walk there. It wasn’t just because I needed to make it to the appointment to meet with him on time, but only the need to check off another goal for the summer. Get a new job, check! It also seemed like the best time to wander for a bit since I was going to have a regular schedule to abide by. There wasn’t much of a chance at a no-stress, no-responsibilities summer. I glanced over at Smokey’s Hamburger Shack just as my stomach growled perfectly on cue.
When I entered Smokey’s, which was an actual dilapidated shack built half a century before, I scoped out the patrons to see if I recognized anyone. It was a relief that most of the customers were recognizable but no one I would be expected to eat with or even converse with. I wasn’t in the mood to socialize and unfortunately with a town so small, seldom was there a time when I could avoid bumping into someone I knew, but it seemed safe to pull up a chair. Sitting at the splinter-covered table, I looked over the menu without really reading it. I knew the menu by heart, but I wanted to appear enormously absorbed in the appetizers and side selection, so I could eavesdrop on two girls sitting two tables behind me.
“It’s true. I don’t care if you believe me” said a nasal voice.
“I think it’s all bullshit. There is no way it’s him. It’s probably some druggie tweaker” said a voice peppered with arrogance.
“I’m telling you. It’s Troy. My dad was at the police station when the call came in,”
“Oh, yeah? What was your dad in for this time?” the intolerable one said with delight.
“None of your business, bitch.”
Troy? I wondered how many Troys there could be? I only knew of one. I wondered if Rachel’s brother had gotten into some sort of trouble. I hadn’t thought about him or even heard his name in years, but suddenly he pops up twice in the same week. It was peculiar. I pretended to drop a napkin on the floor. As I bent down, I looked over my shoulder to see if the two voices were attached to recognizable faces. As luck would have it, they were familiar. Beth Erikson and Brandy Baxter, both of who were on Elli’s soccer team. I knew if I tried to interrupt the conversation for any casual inquiries about their chosen topic, they would stop talking about it altogether. The two had an attitude with nearly everyone who wasn’t in their league and many of those who were.
“Okay, so what did he hear exactly. That there was a body” Brandy asked.
“Shh” Beth lowered her voice, I strained my neck to hear them.
“Yes. It was at Desert Sunset in the office bathroom.” Beth explained.
They couldn’t be talking about Troy Duke. Why would he even be in that dump.? My hurried pulse thumped through my ears. Were they saying he was dead? Troy Duke was dead? It couldn’t be. “Drug overdose, huh? I figured that dude was a druggie. He always looked so strung out and skinny. Is that why he moved back to town?” Brandy asked.
“No, that’s the thing. They said something about poisoning.”
“Ah, suicide. Oh well, no big loss” Beth was silent for a moment before Brandy spoke again.
“Oh my god, Beth. I’m kidding. That sucks if he killed himself. I mean, I didn’t know him, really. His sister was not one of my favorite people, but he wasn’t that bad. As I said, I didn’t know him much”.
“What about when you two…” Beth stopped speaking. Their whispers became inaudible.
“Besides, I think someone at the police station said something about foul play. It was creepy though. You know how this town is. The cops don’t give a shit when anything happens. They just pretend nothing bad could ever happen here” Beth reminded Brandy.
Beth was right. If something serious happened in Manere, the cops and the town commissioners tended to cover it up, or just pretend it didn’t happen. However, Brandy and Beth were also the types of people to get worked up over nothing and begin spreading gossip. While it was unsettling that Troy could be dead, there was a good chance that this was nothing more than two bored girls trying to create excitement to make life more interesting.
While scanning the outside through the grease-smudged window I could see two cops standing uncomfortably close to Chris Barrett. The poor guy had already gotten in trouble with the school principal for having a device that came from outside of Manere, and now he was being hassled by the cops? If it was for the same thing, I was dying to know exactly what the black rectangle did. It didn’t seem dangerous in any way, but it did appear to be some modern technology that the Manere town council would flip-out over finding it in their own town. Chris Barrett skulked off while the police officer beheld his environment while taking it all in as if he was King of the Kingdom, and he had free rein to do what he liked without any repercussions.
A woman seated on the scalding gravel in front of Joe’s Auto Body avoided meeting the officer’s eyes, but he wasn’t having it. The officer pompously strutted toward the woman. I couldn’t tell what was being said, but the woman kept shaking her head. The officer hovered over her, chopping his hand in the air near her face. The officer then picked her up by her arm. Now, she was standing and revealing her gaunt face and dry lips. Unstable on her feet, the officer dragged her toward his car. The woman’s frail body betrayed her as she searched for assistance to no avail. The woman slumped down in the back seat of the police cruiser, and the officer slammed the door behind her. Again, he looked around to absorb his power, then ducked back inside his car.
“Anything good?” Derek came up behind me asking.
“Huh?”
“Outside. Whatcha watching?”
“Cops being assholes. No offense” I said always forgetting that his father was the leader of the assholes.
“I don’t take offense to it. I know they’re assholes. If things go my way, I will be one of them in a year. Don’t worry, I’ll be one of the nice ones,”
“You’d be the first,”
>
“So” Derek sat in the booth across from me. “Are we going to hang out?”
“About that. What does hanging out entail? We’ve hung out plenty the last few years, so it sounds like what you are asking me is to hang out in a way that’s different from how we did before. Is that accurate?” I asked trying to hide my flushed expression.
“It means anything you want it to mean,” he said with a twinkle of his russet eyes.
“Right. Well. Just so you know, I don’t have any interest in us being anything more than friends.”
“That’s fine. Friends can be friendly.”
“I think we’ve been friendly enough with each other. I don’t want to be any friendlier with you. Got it?”
Derek’s smile changed from good-natured to almost menacing. “Because you think you’re better than us Manere folk. Is that it?”
“What? No. I don’t think that. I was trying to be honest. We can stay buddies. You know? I’m leaving soon, and it would be fun to hang out. I just wanted to be sure that we were on the same page about things.”
“Whatever, Angela. Same page. Sure.” Derek started to look around the diner. “Look, I got to head out. Things to do. People to see. It’s been real” Derek got up and left in a hurry.
“Bye,” I said quietly.
Chapter 17
After leaving the diner, I remembered the craving for something sweet I had all day. My plan to get a chocolate milkshake was sidetracked by eavesdropping, and Derek. Knowing the recent lack of dairy products coming into Manere, it would probably have been futile, anyway. I stepped in at Darren’s Food and Drug suddenly with the need to attain rock candy and chocolate bars.
An acquainted voice traveled across the aisles. I was not in the mood to talk to Derek, but he seemed to be everywhere, and I was unconvinced that he wouldn’t have followed me from the diner. Derek didn’t like to be turned down. It would only make sense he would follow me around until I agreed to go out with him. Footsteps came closer. I turned to avoid him and went in the opposite direction. Bam! I collided with someone else. After backing up to apologize, I saw that the cushiony customer who broke my fall was none other than The Buffer. “Hi. You.” I said failing to recall her birth name but proud of myself for not calling her by her communal designation.
All That Remains (Manere Book 1) Page 11