A Dark Road

by Amanda Lance

“Well, you can at least be proud of this cuddle-monster.” I massaged Dog’s wrinkled face and he groaned. “You could give him a name to be proud of.”

  “You’re so good with names, I’ll leave it up to you.”

  “I don’t know if I can handle the responsibility.”

  “I think you can. He’s already playdough in your hands.”

  “You said it yourself—he’d roll over.”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “But I didn’t know he’d be so easily manipulated.”

  “I guess it’s not just human parents who get prideful.”

  He smiled until his dimple winked at me. Now I was sure it was there and it was extremely adorable. “Am I going to have to watch out for you, Hadley Grayson?”

  I thought of how he stood by quietly while Jenna and I were teased and pulled my hand away from Dog, away from him. “I have a feeling you’re the one who needs to be watched out for, James McKay.”

  “Nobody calls me James.” He frowned.

  I imitated his shrug perfectly. “Now they do.”

  Chapter 10

  McKay

  How could she expect me to sleep after leaving me there like that? Hardly anyone has called me James since Mom left, aside from a couple of dumb teachers. I should hate her, right? Shaming the good and honest love I have for my dog and laughing at me with her sweet giggle like some…strumpet. Yes, it’s decided then. We’ll hate her.

  Dog licks the spot where his balls should be, as if to tell me I can speak for myself.

  Goddamn traitor.

  I saw the moving truck last week. Yuppies with their fancy furniture, some woman tipping the movers with twenties…but I hadn’t seen any kids. The house had been for sale for so long I had stopped worrying about it. After reducing the price, the realtor stopped hosting open houses and replacing the signs that fell over with bad weather. I guess I just kind of figured it wouldn’t ever sell. Maybe that had made me lazy. Since it was the only house around within three miles, I cooked at all times of the day and in all kinds of weather. If no one was around to smell the ether, iodine, acetone, and hydrochloric acid, then it promised me even more security. Even if someone did buy the house, hopefully they would just be an elderly couple and wouldn’t know a cook if 60 Minutes did a special on it.

  Then Hadley Grayson has a brother. I doubt either one of them knows what a meth lab smells like, but they definitely know how to use Google. All it takes is one nosy neighbor on a windy day and a patrol car with probable cause. And I don’t know what the shelters around here are like, and what would Frank do with Dog? And would the cops shoot him if he was barking too much? And who would adopt an eleven year old dog?

  I guess it’s bittersweet that Frank is already at the house when I get back. He is the last person I want to see, but dealing with him is somewhat better than dealing with Hadley Grayson-related thoughts.

  “There you are, Boy.” He finishes his beer and squishes it under his boot. “What are you and that ‘tard dog doing?”

  “Just walking.”

  “You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Staying off the phone?”

  “Yep.”

  “No one coming over the house?”

  “Nope.”

  “It only takes one mistake to ruin the whole house of cards.”

  “I know.”

  “You think you know everything, don’t you?” Frank throws his beer can, but all it does is make Dog’s ears perk.

  Frank starts up one of his coughing fits and I look over that marigold-ish skin of his and the patches where he has scratched raw patches into himself. Sometimes I think he might have Hepatitis B, maybe C, but I’ve never said anything. It wouldn’t matter much, anyway.

  “Somebody finally bought that sinkhole down the bend.”

  I flinch. Hadley’s house. But I can’t let him know, can’t let him see. “It’s okay. Some yuppies from further East.”

  Frank reaches for another beer in the fridge. “Go get the supplies out of the cab.”

  I do as I’m told and go to Frank’s truck. He must have ridden with the windows closed because I can smell the cigarette smoke all over the interior. I gag on the smell of dairy and body odor before dumping out the overflowing ashtray. I also take out a handful of fast-food wrappers and empty cartons to toss them in the garbage out back.

  In plastic bags from different pharmacies there are cold pills, boxes of matches, kitty litter, and lye. Hidden in the glove box and underneath the seats are more cold pills. I’m sure they have all been bought with cash, probably at convenience stores that never asked for ID.

  When I get back in the house Frank is already asleep at the kitchen table, or what’s left of it, anyway. Anymore it’s just the face with a two-by-four as a leg and the other two of the four original legs. I got it to stand up by leaning it against the window sill. I don’t understand how Frank can sleep there so easily. You’d think that after spending a week in a truck, he’d want to sleep in his own bed, or at least stretch out in his room.

  I have a theory that maybe Frank is defective, like a toy that got built all wrong at the factory. I think that maybe he’s missing those little inklings that make us feel on a regular basis. If I’m right, then that’s probably why he uses, why Mom left. Maybe she was afraid he had passed the disfigurement on to me and didn’t want to wait around and see if she was right.

  I try to go to sleep, but it is pretty pointless. Even though Dog and Frank are snoring in perfect harmony, I start thinking about Hadley Grayson the second I’m alone. I start thinking about where I had learned her last name from, but I can’t remember. I think that someone in the halls said she and her brother were from Connecticut. Obviously, she had never lived in the city or even visited one if she went walking around at night by herself in a neighborhood she didn’t know.

  I think she may have looked amazing in a pair of shorts and maybe she did have decent aim, but clearly she is an idiot.

  I think, and think, and think.

  The thing about ecstasy is that is it typically doesn’t reach the blood stream for one to three hours after it has been ingested. After that, it takes a solid eight hours to reach full potency. Depending on the product, ecstasy can last anywhere between twelve and eighteen hours. At $20 dollars a pill (or $50 for three) I can already afford to go to a community college, but I won’t be able to afford a place to live.

  Meth is different, though. People tend to develop a tolerance for it faster, and though I’ve tried hacking them out as pills, its just way easier and less time consuming to leave them in rock form. The ones who don’t smoke it, melt and inject it. Frankly though, I don’t understand any of it. It’s only been a couple of years and Frank can barely chew food with the teeth he has left. And despite the money they make for me, I sort of hope The Stooges cut back. I think with wrestling season, they can blame the itching on ringworm, but after that, coming up with an explanation for the itch jitters might fall on me.

  I feel for my wallet where I keep the business card of a criminal lawyer three towns over. I’ve already given him a retainer, so if I was ever caught I would just have to give his card to the cops and keep my mouth shut, though that seems to be harder for me to do these days.

  I always make sure to pay in cash and never use my real name. To keep from being seen buying cooking supplies, I steal from school science labs and I never hit the same place more than once, never making more than a couple hundred dollars’ worth per batch. The big thing though is the phones, and here I have to hand it to Frank for being paranoid. There isn’t much of a point in buying pre-paid phones. With either that, or a regular cell phone plan, all the cops need is a lenient search warrant and they’ll know everybody you’ve ever talked to. So instead of people getting a hold of me, I try to reach out to them. I keep the customer base small and my nose clean to not draw attention. I do keep a couple of pre-paid in the little lock-box under my bed. (Three to be exact.) I only have them for
emergencies, but you never know.

  By my calculations I’ll have to sell 1000 tablets of ecstasy before June to pay for two semesters at a state university. So far I’m about halfway there.

  Chapter 11

  Hadley

  I reached for an apple on the kitchen counter, trying not to think about canines and certain boys with blond hair.

  “You guys need to hurry, you’ll be late.” Dad gulped at red liquid from the blender. Judging from the stems on the cutting board, I’d say there were too many strawberries.

  “Do you want me to drive you?” Mom had lipstick on her teeth but I wasn’t going to say anything. Instead I watched the veins under her stockings and tried to imagine carrying out a parry or a lunge in the heels she wore. I had once seen a picture of Mom from her days in college track, but it was hard to believe her feet were those of an athlete. Didn’t she miss those days at all? Skipping meals for coffee kept her trim, but the only competiveness I ever saw in her was when she was trying to sell the undercoat to a customer.

  “I think we can handle it, Mom.”

  “Yeah,” Simon added. “I have to stay late for band practice, anyway.”

  I nudged him not-so-gently before hissing in his ear, “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t? Damn, my bad. It’ll be like an hour at the most.”

  What could I say? There were plenty of times I had made Simon wait for me when I was planning fundraisers with the team or working out in the weight room and he never complained, then again, he always had a small group of friends around him, most of them female. Without the proper acoustics at the house, all his practice and playing wasn’t quite the same.

  “I’d pick you up, Hadley, but I have to wait for the cable guy and I have a conference call around 2:30, so—”

  “No, Dad, don’t worry about it. I’ll find something to keep me busy.”

  “Anyway, Hadley, you should find a few afterschool activities yourself. Without fencing, your college applications will look a little bare.”

  I stuffed the apple in my mouth so I wouldn’t end up saying something I’d regret.

  The morning was cold and wet, and even though I retreated into my sweatshirt, I couldn’t get rid of the shivers I felt every few seconds. Hadn’t it just been summer the day before last? Where were all those positive aspects of global warming when you really needed them?

  Rachel and Mark were obliviously making out against a locker, not caring that they were making me and Jenna uncomfortable. Kate texted something away on her phone while Simon chatted with a boy named Cooper. I was sorely wishing that I had charged my own phone after using the flashlight app and then letting the alarm go off for ten minutes. Now, I had nothing to pretend to do.

  “Hey, Jenna.”

  She startled at the sound of her name. As she looked up, I saw my own reflection in the scratched lens of her glasses. They were slightly bent, making me wonder if she had fallen asleep with them on one too many times.

  “Yes?” Her voice was soft, like a small child.

  “What’s a good dog name?”

  “Hi.” Tim tugged on my backpack strap and I was genuinely thrilled by the gesture.

  “Hey.”

  Tim shook the ends of my sweatshirt as they flopped. “From far away you kind of look like an amputee.”

  “Aww, that’s so sweet.” I feigned a swoon and made my eyelashes flutter.

  “Ha ha. Hey, did you hear we’re going to have a quiz today in English?”

  “I did hear that, actually.” I glanced over my shoulder at Simon. “On Jackson’s The Lottery, right?”

  Tim nodded. “Yeah. I guess Grander is only writing three different questions on the board but the questions are different for all of his classes, so no one can cheat.” He sighed and started combing through his English textbook. “If I don’t have an 80 or higher in all of my classes by mid-semester then I can’t play football. I hate his class.”

  “I thought all you had to do was pass.”

  “I wish. That’s the school standard. My parents want me to have a C average.”

  In the thick of fencing season my parents had a very similar attitude. Mom, and even my carefree Dad, would often nag me about assignments and grades just to be sure things were accomplished. And though their admonitions annoyed me, in all fairness I did live and breathe the sword for those months, so their lectures did take effect.

  “I’m sure it’ll be all right, you’ve been paying attention—”

  A group of kids wearing black cargo pants, various shades of gray, and skull prints walked past the end of the corridor; distracting me from my train of thought. One particularly large girl with streaks of blue in her hair looked at our group and snickered. For an instant I wondered how she managed to blink with the globs of dark makeup around her eyes, but she turned to her companion, a diamond in the rough compared to the other Goths. James McKay said something in her ear that made her laugh.

  I watched them walk all the way down until they disappeared down the hall.

  Tim waved me over when I walked into English. I was running late because the shelf in my locker had collapsed under the weight of the books and I struggled to reorganize the mess they had created in the hall.

  “Hadley, hey, how’s your first week going?”

  I dropped my books on the desk much louder than I had meant to, drawing attention from several pairs of eyes around us. I felt myself grimace. “Not bad, I guess.”

  “That’s cool.” He hesitated and pulled at the tongue of his shoe. I think he was probably trying to think of something else to say. To save us both from the awkwardness, I opened up the textbook to Shakespeare. As the class started, McKay and his scumbag friends walked in, drawing my attention away from the romantic text.

  “Tim?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who are those guys?” I pointed each of them out with as much discretion as I could. It was better to know your enemies, or at least your potential enemies.

  “That’s Ryan Fuller and Sam Anderson.” He pointed to the short boy and the one with the shaved head respectively. “The tall kid is Luke and that’s McKay.”

  “And they’re wrestlers, right?”

  Tim looked confused by my inquiry. “Uh, Ryan and Sam are, I think. But Luke is on the football team.”

  I tapped my fingers against the cover of the book. I wanted to ask Tim more, but Grander began the lesson and the opportunity was gone.

  Chapter 12

  McKay

  Next to gym class, English is the second least useful subject in school. If you want to read books, fine, and learning proper grammar and everything is swell, but that isn’t what goes on in high school English class. Most of the time, Grander goes on about themes and symbolism and all that other crap. He gives lectures about plagiarism and paper formatting until I’m ready to go to sleep. It’s either that or old renditions of Romeo and Juliet on DVD, picking random people in the class to read out loud. I can zone out for more than half the class and we’ll only be four pages deeper into the book than when we first started.

  It’s harder to zone out today with Hadley Grayson around. She’s already in the back of the room when I get to class, and in my seat. So now I have to sit in the front and that makes me jittery, anxious. Half of it comes from not sleeping last night, I know. But I can’t get the idea that people in the class are looking at me out of my head, maybe watching for moves that I was smarter than I wanted them to know.

  Chapter 13

  Hadley

  The students dwindled down after last period as they fled to the parking lot or their bus. A hoard of fall athletes lingered outside of the locker room and a couple of the custodial staff began their rounds. I sat leaning up against my locker and watched a girl walk down the hall with a large instrument case. I tried to guess if it was a tuba or cello, but I had no clue. I was glad Mom and Dad let me quit the piano about two lessons in. I enjoyed music as much as anything else, but had no ear for it like Simon d
id.

  “Hey, aren’t we lucky?” Simon said one day while I was using him for target practice. “All our family talent lies in the wrists.”

  I listened in now while he and the rest of the school band warmed up. Percussions rammed together with brass and woodwind slammed against strings. Shivers rang through me at the combination of sounds. Somewhere in there I assumed there was a melody, those bright and lovely sounds that made Simon light up, but I just wasn’t hearing them.

  I grabbed my stuff and headed outside. The football team was doing laps in the furthest field from the school. One of the twenty coaches or so shouted profanities at them. A morale booster, I suppose. Everything was warm sunshine at the moment , and I wouldn’t have minded running some laps myself. I rejected the idea almost as soon as it came to me though. My peasant top was tight around the sleeves and bodice, and while it accentuated my finer curves, it might have done so a little too well if I started running without a sports bra.

  I hated feeling stuck like this. And just knowing it made me realize that Simon was right again. To keep Mom from nagging and me from going nuts, I’d have to find something to keep me busy. Yet from the general look of town, there weren’t a lot of part-time jobs available for students with no experience.

  I found a tree to sit under and connected to the school’s Wi-Fi access on my phone. Other than a couple of fast-food places and calls for housekeepers, there wasn’t a whole lot I was qualified for. I brushed my head up against the trunk, took a breath, and tried another search. It didn’t take long to find a search site that catered to volunteer opportunities. I filled out a form or two and sent them off without a lot of regard and settled back into my indifference. If it came to it, I’d much rather have a job than work for free, but at least it looked good on college applications.