A Penny on the Tracks

by Alicia Joseph

  The long stairwell lay straight ahead of us. We climbed halfway up it.

  “Where do you girls think you are going?” Mrs. Hulling asked.

  We turned slowly around.

  “Upstairs,” Abbey answered.

  Mrs. Hulling’s hair was pushed back by a thick, blue hair band, and she wore a white silk robe over blue leotards. Thick pink socks, cuffed at the ankles, covered her feet.

  “Not with those shoes on you’re not. Come on, girls. You know the rules. Get down here and take off your shoes.”

  We trudged back down the stairs.

  “What’s up with your mom’s outfit?” I whispered to Abbey.

  “How the heck should I know? Just stay close and don’t let her see the back of my shirt,” she replied.

  “You girls know better than that.” She leaned against the wall and watched us shake our shoes off. “Why aren’t you outside playing? It’s a beautiful day out.”

  “Um . . . we’re . . .” Abbey stammered.

  “We’re taking a break from the sun,” I finished.

  “Oh. Okay. Well, come into the kitchen and get something to drink.”

  Neither Abbey nor I moved from our spots next to the door.

  “Well, come on,” she urged.

  “Remember to stay close,” Abbey whispered as we walked toward the kitchen.

  We followed Mrs. Hulling into the other room, and I noticed her walk was more of a sway than an actual walk. It was as though she were strolling to music only she could hear. Even her robe seemed to wave against the same rhythm of the soundless melody.

  “There’s some juice in the fridge, Abbey.” Mrs. Hulling took a seat at the table. “Pour a glass for you and Lyssa.”

  With Mrs. Hulling watching us, I made sure to block her view of Abbey’s shirt as Abbey got our drinks ready.

  “Come over here, Lyssa,” Mrs. Hulling said. “I want to ask you something.”

  I glanced nervously at Abbey and she shrugged, obviously having no idea what her mother could want. I looked back at Mrs. Hulling, and she was watching me. Though this made me uncomfortable, I was relieved she seemed to be paying no attention to Abbey or her bloody shirt.

  “Okay.” I walked to the table and sat down across from her. She reached across the table and clasped onto my hands. I looked at her, and for the first time since we got there I saw her face clearly, and I knew instantly she’d been drinking.

  “How’s your mom?” she asked.

  “She’s okay.”

  She gave me a strange smile. “Is she dating anyone?”

  I stole a quick look at Abbey, suspecting she’d told her mom about Franklin, but she shook her head, looking as surprised as me.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” I answered quietly.

  Her grip around my fingers got a little tighter as excitement seemed to grow in her eyes, and I wished she’d stop holding my hands. Mrs. Hulling wasn’t usually the touchy feely type, and it was very out of character for her to be touching me like that, but then I remembered she was drunk.

  “Really?” she asked. “Because I was at the grocery store this morning and one of your neighbors told me they saw a very handsome man making his way up your mother’s front porch steps last night.” Her eyebrows creased. “Who is he?”

  “Just someone my mom knows,” I said.

  “Abbey,” she said. “You were over there last night. Did you meet him?”

  Suddenly, I was sure that Abbey, like me, was no longer concerned about her nose or worried about her mother noticing her shirt. Mrs. Hulling had only one thing on her mind—men.

  “Yes,” Abbey replied quietly.

  She finally let go of my hands and spun her head toward Abbey. “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “I . . . I didn’t think it was a big deal.”

  “Not a big deal? Missy, when a woman invites a man to her home it is always a big deal. And very exciting.” She turned back to me with a big smile on her face. “Tell me his name.”

  I breathed a soft sigh. “Franklin.”

  “Ooooh, I love that name. Franklin. Such a distinguished-sounding name. Tell me how he looks.”

  I glanced at Abbey for help, but all she offered was another shrug.

  “It isn’t that difficult,” Mrs. Hulling prodded. “Just tell me how he looks.”

  I stared into her glassy, drunk eyes that were having a hard time focusing on one any one thing because they kept shifting to the empty space to my side.

  I fought the urge to look behind me to see what she was looking at because I knew she was looking at nothing. The woman was just drunk.

  “He’s kinda big,” I said.

  “Fat big or muscle big?”

  I hesitated answering that one because I didn’t know. I hadn’t looked that closely at his body. His biceps weren’t bulging out of his sleeves, but he didn’t seem fat, just not really skinny.

  Finally, Abbey came to my rescue. “He looks like Mr. Davis from across the street, only a little taller.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh. So he’s stocky. Meaty.”

  “I . . . I guess.”

  “Ohh. I love that. Tell me more. Does he have a lot of hair on his face? Abbey’s father’s face is as smooth as a baby’s bottom, and I really hate that. Kissing him is always like kissing a young boy.”

  I snuck a glance at Abbey, and she looked as awkward as I felt. Her hands were locked behind her back, and her gaze fell mostly toward the floor.

  “He has some hair on his face,” I said.

  “So he has some, but not a lot. Like a trim beard, close to the face?”

  “I guess so,” I replied.

  “Oh my.” She clasped her hands together and stretched them tightly across the kitchen table. “He sounds like a real man, a burly man. Your mother’s very lucky. A brawn man is very sexy. So strong. So . . . manly.” She seemed to drift off into her own fantasy world.

  “Lyssa and I have to go to my room, now.” Abbey grabbed my arm and yanked me from the table and out of the kitchen.

  “Wait a minute!” Mrs. Hulling yelled.

  We turned back around as her mother slowly stood from the table. “Come over here, Abbey.”

  “Wh . . . what is it?” Abbey didn’t move.

  “I want you to come over here.” She rested a hand on the table, steadying herself.

  Abbey gave me a quick, unsure look, and I could feel the thud of my heart beating against my chest because I was sure she saw the blood stains.

  “Why?” Abbey asked.

  “Just get over here!” Mrs. Hulling slammed her fist on the table. Abbey scurried to her.

  I tried to think of something that would explain the blood stains on Abbey’s shirt, but couldn’t.

  “Give me your hands.” Abbey’s mother held out her palms.

  I frowned, confused. There was no blood on her hands.

  Abbey put her hands up.

  “Is that dirt underneath your finger nails, missy?”

  Abbey pulled her hands away from her mother and clasped them behind her back.

  Mrs. Hulling stepped closer to Abbey and held a hand out to her. “Let me see. Now.”

  Abbey cast a glance in my direction holding her hands out for her mother to inspect.

  Mrs. Hulling grasped onto them with a horrified look on her face. She pulled Abbey’s hands closer to her, hard enough that Abbey’s body spilled forward with the motion.

  “What on earth have you been doing? Using your hands as a shovel? Proper girls don’t play in the dirt.”

  “We weren’t playing in the dirt,” Abbey said.

  “Then why are they so dirty?”

  Mrs. Hulling stood and walked to me, taking small, distinct steps. Her sway was gone. Now she was just trying not to fall down.

  “Your fingernails. Let me see them.”

  I glanced at my fingernails, but didn’t see any dirt. I bit my nails too short to have dirt underneath them.

  I held my hands out to her. She didn’t pul
l them close to her face like she did Abbey’s, but she did lean into me. If I already hadn’t been so certain she’d been drinking, the smell of her breath would have confirmed it.

  She scowled. “Proper girls don’t bite their nails. They grow them long and care for them.”

  She stepped back from us, her gaze lingering on us as though she were sizing us up. “I really don’t know what to think of all this. You girls aren’t nine years old anymore. It’s time to start acting like proper young girls. You ride your bikes around town in the streets so fast like I see the boys do. And, Lyssa, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I heard you cuss yesterday in the yard. I won’t repeat the word you said, but it’s not the language proper young girls use.”

  I was looking straight ahead, but titled my head to catch a glimpse of Abbey. Her face was as red as a beet. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hulling. I’ll watch my mouth.”

  “Thank you.” She let out a deep breath. “All right. I suppose that’s it for now. Go on upstairs.”

  We hurried out of the room and raced up the stairs. I was relieved she hadn’t said anything about my ripped sleeves.

  “Slow down!” Mrs. Hulling shouted, but we didn’t slow down. I was sure we both shared the same sense of urgency to get as far away from her mother as we could.

  Abbey slammed her door shut and placed a chair against the handle. Her mother didn’t allow Abbey to have a lock on her door the way my mother did.

  “Hey. There’s a red mark across your nose. Doe it hurt?” I hadn’t noticed the mark before. I assumed it was because of all the blood.

  Abbey shrugged weakly and sat on her bed. “I don’t feel anything right now . . . I don’t know why she has to act like that.”

  I parked myself next to her. “That’s on her. Not you.”

  “But I have to live with it, so it’s kind of on me, too.”

  “You won’t have to live with it forever. You’ll leave as soon as you’re old enough.”

  “When? College? I have to wait till after high school? I want to be old enough now. I want to leave now, Lyssa.”

  I was sure I’d never seen her look as miserable as she did right then. It dawned on me that she really couldn’t take the way things were with her mother, and I felt desperately helpless. “Maybe you can stay with us for a little while. I know my mom would understand.”

  “Of course yours would, but no way mine will. She’ll never let me stay with you cuz she doesn’t think she’s doing anything wrong. It doesn’t matter. Nothing will change until my mother gets the life she sees in movies.”

  “Nobody gets the life they see in movies. Look at my mom.”

  “I do,” Abbey responded. “All the time. And I’ve never once seen her drunk. I know you think sometimes that if you had a dad everything would be better, but you don’t know that for sure. I have a dad. Does it look like everything’s great here? I know my mom was drunk just now, and so do you. But my dad’ll come home and pretend not to notice because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to be bothered, but I know he knows. He doesn’t care about anything but his work. He never asks how I’m doing. What I did that day. He’s away on business trips most of the time, too. You wanna know why I always wish I was you?”

  I nodded.

  “Because at least when you’re alone, you’re actually alone.”

  I took in her words and thought about what they meant. All along I’d been feeling incredibly sorry for myself because I had to eat alone most nights. While Abbey, though she wasn’t ever really alone, dreadfully felt like she was.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay. What can I do except runaway?”

  “Do you think about running away?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Abbey.” I grabbed her hand. “Promise me you’ll never do that. Promise me you won’t even think it.”

  She looked at me with wet eyes. “I already do think it.”

  I clasped my arms around her and held her close to me. “Well, don’t ever think about it again. You hear me?” I pulled away from her and looked directly in her eyes. “If you ever think about running away again, you run right to my house. Nowhere else. Understand?”

  She wiped her eyes. “Okay.”

  I hugged her again. We pulled apart, and I felt I needed to say more. I didn’t feel confident Abbey understood that I was the one she needed to run to, and no one else.

  “My mom ran away from home when she was fifteen,” I blurted.

  Abbey jerked her head to me with eyebrows raised in disbelief. “Really?”

  I nodded. “She told me last night.”

  “Why she’d leave?”

  “Probably for the same reason you want to. My grandfather was real strict and a big pain in the ass. She met my father and moved in with him. She was fifteen.”

  “She moved in with your dad?”

  “Yeah, but not for very long.” I inched closer to her. “Ab, my mom hated being on her own. It was hard. It wasn’t anything she expected it to be like, and maybe it wouldn’t be for you, either. She had nobody when she left, just my dad, but he was hardly around. At least here you have me. And I have you. So no matter how bad things get, at least we have each other.”

  Abbey put her head down, and I could tell she was trying hard not to cry. I hoped she was able to hold it back, because I didn’t want to cry but knew I would if she did.

  “You promise?” she asked.

  “That we’ll always have each other?”

  She nodded.

  “Always,” I responded.

  She smiled, and it was a great relief to see her smile.

  “I didn’t know that she lived with your dad,” she said.

  “I didn’t know either, but she told me last night and some other things, too.”

  “Like what?”

  “My father knew she was pregnant with me when he left, but he didn’t want to stick around to meet me. Ab, there’s nobody out there wondering about me.”

  “I’m sorry, Lyssa. But if your dad would have ended up anything like mine, you’re better off without one cuz I hardly see him too.”

  I sighed. “I guess.” I scrunched my face at her. “Hey, you’re still wearing your bloody shirt. Hurry up and change. We’ll go to my house and put ice on your nose there. Does it still hurt?”

  “Yeah, I just forgot about the pain for a little while.”

  Abbey pulled a shirt from her dresser drawer, and I silently wished that she’d forget about all her pain for a very long time.

  Chapter Nine

  I WALKED ALONG the tracks while imagining myself as a great Olympic champion balancing on a high beam. Though I couldn’t do fancy backflips or handstands across the thin rail, a few small jumps and the fight to keep my balance on one foot was enough to amuse me for endless afternoons.

  “I really hate it when you play on the tracks like that.”

  Abbey was sitting in the grass, holding a hot dog on a stick over a small fire we had made. I knew it made her nervous when I goofed around on the tracks. She’d seen too many movies of people’s shoes getting stuck between the rails and not being able to get their feet out in time before the train came. It was a terrible image when I thought about it. So I didn’t think about it.

  “Just eat your hot dog,” I yelled.

  I walked down the tracks, past the open grass area toward the forest where the leaves hung so close over the tracks that I figured they touched the train as it barreled by. I didn’t stop walking, not even when Abbey was out of my sights, and soon, she was calling out my name.

  “Lyssa! Lyssa! Where are you?”

  “Over here!”

  Seconds later, Abbey appeared about a couple hundred feet or so down the tracks. “Why do you always have to walk all the way down there? The woods are right there.”

  I laughed because I knew what she was thinking. The tracks were so close to the forest, Abbey was scared anything hiding deep in the woods would come out and grab me right off the tracks. I onc
e told her a story about how all the abandoned clothes and shoes I had seen scattered around the woods belonged to people who were never seen or heard from again.

  Even though she told me she didn’t believe me, I knew she thought about it a lot. At first, the story almost made her not want to come back to the Hideout, but I had convinced her that whatever was lurking in the woods stayed only in the woods.

  Since then, it was as though there were an imaginary line between us and the forest that Abbey would never cross. Sometimes I felt bad about not telling her the truth, that the story wasn’t something I heard from other kids, but one that I had made up myself.

  I took my time getting back to our spot. If I stared toward the trees and into the dark spaces of the woods long enough, my mind imagined people being chased by some hideous creature, their clothes torn off them, scaring myself with my own made-up tales.

  I came to the opening of the field where Abbey was, and Derek was standing close beside her. They looked like they were engaged in a serious conversation, and then Derek put his arm around Abbey’s shoulder.

  “Hey!” I jumped from the tracks and ran toward them. They quickly stepped away from each other. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing much,” Derek answered. “Where were you?”

  “She was out walking on the tracks again,” Abbey said.

  Derek shook his head. “You’re gonna get hit by a train one day if you’re not careful.”

  “That’s what I always tell her,” Abbey said, somewhat hopelessly.

  “Get off my case, guys. I’m always careful.”

  I watched the two of them closely for a couple seconds, trying to get a better read at what they could have been talking so intensely about.

  Derek dropped a hand into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled something out. I inched closer to get a better look. It was a pocket knife.

  “Holy shit. Where’d you get that?” I was so interested in the knife I ignored the cut on his face, above his left eyebrow. I didn’t care about hearing any details of his latest fight. I wanted a better look at the knife.

  Derek held the knife up and when the sun hit it just right, it shined.

  “Think fast,” he said, and I moved my hands up and caught the closed pocket knife.