Wild and Crooked

by Leah Thomas

  I don’t know how they dredged that picture up. It feels wrong, because I’m in the wheelchair there, which is probably why they chose it. It feels even wronger because Tamara wasn’t with us. Once again she’s cut out of our family, severed from our lives so Mom can take on the role of the tragic widow.

  Even though she took work off today, Tamara’s been outside tearing up earth since she woke me. Every few minutes, soil patters against the siding like gunfire.

  An IFA spokesman details the circumstances of the case. They reference strong DNA evidence, but they don’t share details. They compare James Ellis’s case to a dozen others. There’s talk of conducting new interviews and rebooting the investigation by as early as tomorrow. There’s talk, there’s talk, too much to comprehend. Images a-million.

  “This is all wrong. He did it. Gary Spence did it. He confessed. He did it!” Mom repeats this like a mantra, baring her teeth, getting steadily louder. “He’s guilty.”

  The words bother her. I’m more worried about the images. Dad’s face was a comfort, but these constant flashes of him, of Mom, of me, of the murderer, of Dad, me, him, Mom make my stomach churn.

  I find my feet.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Bathroom,” I lie.

  “Gus, I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “Mom. It’s just the bathroom.”

  Her eyes trail me, but she can’t see me once I’m past the door frame. I pause in the foyer. The keys are right where they were yesterday, in the bowl at the bottom of the stairs. Am I quick enough? Of course not. She’ll hear the jangle and then she’ll hear me struggling with the door and I’ll be pulled right back to that couch.

  “Gus? You finished?”

  I’m resigned to my fate. I steel myself to turn back—­

  I hear a throat clearing, and Tamara is here, watching me through the open door. Her eyes are red. She beckons me closer.

  I do my best not to drag my foot over the precipice, and she closes the door, as silently as she opened it. Away from the sickening warmth of the living room, the October morning proves chillier than expected. I can smell the leaves that have crisped and fallen across the lawn overnight. I tell myself that’s why Tamara’s spent all morning outside—she’s raking them onto the flowerbeds, anticipating the first frost.

  “You know, you won’t be able to hide from this for long.” Tamara pulls a spare set of keys from her pocket. “Better make the most of it. Take my jacket.”

  It’s denim, heavier than I expect when she sets it on my shoulders. I tip sideways and assume my body’s acting up, until Tamara pulls a spade from one of the pockets.

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “Oh, if you think she’s not already waiting outside the bathroom door for you to come out, you haven’t been paying attention. Better get on with it, kid.”

  I hug her tight.

  “Well,” she tells my shoulder. “I figure you got me to the taco place all right. I figure you’re seventeen. I figure maybe I’m not cut out for responsible parenting.”

  “That’s, that’s bullshit.”

  I head down the ramp, but before I reach the driveway, she catches me again.

  “Hold up—I put your cane in the back. Please use it today.”

  I haven’t used it in years. “I don’t—”

  “Please,” she insists. “So I can tell her I did something right. And come back by dark. I’ve got to make some kind of show of being responsible, hey?”

  I pull myself into the truck and do up my seat belt. I place my feet near the pedals. My slippers look like moccasins. No one but me cares what I’m wearing.

  When I look back, Tamara’s on the porch, putting herself between me and the tomb. I don’t know how I’ll ever thank her. I don’t run over the grass, but I do hit the curb when I switch into drive. I’m still in our subdivision when I realize I left my phone on my nightstand. I’m not going back for it.

  Maybe I’ll get into a terrible accident today, but it’s hard to care. It’s all been one big accident from the beginning.

  KALYN

  “I LOVE YOUR blouse, Rose.” Seems like a genuine compliment. There’s no way Sarah can know it’s the sort of compliment that’s really a gut punch.

  “Why, thank you! Isn’t it just divine?” Man, I’m hitting the shine too hard.

  Sarah frowns. “Yeah.”

  We’re sitting at a lunch table full of pretty people. I haven’t been in the cafeteria for weeks, but now I’m nestled between Eli and his basketball friends while their girlfriends have separate conversations right across from us. Seems my reward for letting Eli grope me yesterday is being squished against him now.

  Back in junior high, a guy named Rusty shoved his hand up my skirt at the AMP bonfire and I went full Spence, stabbing him in the foot with my marshmallow poker. I wasted two beautifully browned marshmallows on that weasel.

  How would Rose respond to this situation? I don’t know how to address problems without blowing up. Would Sarah tell Eli off? Or would she accept this as something boyfriends do?

  How do straight and narrow people even function?

  I’m staring at the door. I haven’t seen Gus. Usually we’d cross paths between classes, nod, and save our conversations for the kiln.

  Earlier I made a beeline for his locker, pulling my dress into place because I swear it spends every minute hitching up to constrict around my throat. I leaned against it until a freckled girl came close and began twisting the dial of her combination lock.

  “Hey, you seen Gus today?”

  “You’re Rose Poplawski.”

  “That’s right, gold star.” I added more butter to my voice. “And you are?”

  “Ariel Mathers. Did you say yes to Eli Martin?”

  “I’m talking about Gus, not Eli.”

  “Who’s Gus?” She leaned in, ready to be doused in gossip.

  I didn’t intend to slam my fist against her locker. If my failed intentions were pearls, I’d wear a thousand necklaces. “Gus. Gus Peake? He’s got the locker right next to yours. Seen him today?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He’s been tutoring me,” I lied, because why not. I told Gus I wasn’t embarrassed to know him and that’s the truth.

  Ariel gawked. “He’s tutoring you? But isn’t he, like, retarded?”

  This time I slammed my fist on purpose. “What the hell kind of word is that? What fucking year do you think this is?”

  “Excuse me? I don’t even know you.”

  I watched her go, wondering if Kalyn could get away with yanking her hair. Maybe even Rose could. Anyone who thinks the word “retard” is okay deserves worse.

  Sitting here with Eli’s hand creeping up my back, I don’t regret cussing her out.

  I can’t stop watching the damn cafeteria doors.

  “You done getting tutored?” Jackson asks, tossing a fry into his mouth. He’s one of Eli’s basketball buddies, a gargantuan center Eli treats like a dumb sidekick.

  “No. My tutor’s absent.”

  “Guess I’ll get to teach you today,” Eli whispers.

  “So you two have worked it out.” I can’t read Sarah’s expression. “Will you be sharing our limo on Saturday night?”

  “I dunno,” Eli says, sliding his hand lower, “we might wanna drive separately.”

  “Rose? What do you think?”

  Too bad I can’t split myself in half so Rose can go to the dance and I can do literally anything else. Homecoming was always a stupid thing, but now it means even less than ever.

  News that’s life changing for me and Gus is nothing to these guys. Nobody recognizes my dress. They don’t have memories of it being paraded around the papers, the woman who bought it being slandered and spat at and the daughter wearing it not knowing that as far as the whole world was concerned, her family didn’t deserve respect.

  Eli’s hand goes too far, his fingers lifting the line of my tights away from me, and the spork in my hand is
a weapon and I’m going to stab him—­

  Phil lurches into the cafeteria, eyes locked on his screen. I cry out in relief, untangling myself from Eli’s greasy grip. “Hey, Phil! Hold up!”

  I don’t know what I thought he’d do. The second that pill bug hears me yelling, he makes himself scarce, doing an about-face and lurching back the way he came.

  “Someone needs to put that kid out of his misery,” Eli says.

  Boom.

  I punch the edge of Eli’s lunch tray, knocking its contents into the air and into his lap. Jackson’s girlfriend screeches as a slice of pizza smacks my white dress dab in the middle, but I don’t care. I don’t care that the cafeteria has just erupted in noise, that Rose is brutally murdered that quickly and publicly. I’m on my feet and out of there.

  Eli yells at my back, “You’re a goddamn psycho, Rose!”

  “I’m not Rose,” I tell him, “but you got the rest right.”

  I’m scum to the people of Samsboro, but at least I’m not Eli fucking Martin.

  GUS

  IT TAKES TEN minutes to reach the place that started and ended everything.

  A mile past downtown, the Munch-O Mills plant chugs its sweetness into the air. There’s a factory feel to this area filled with smokestacks and parking lots that gray the landscape. But factories mean work, and the houses on the fringes aren’t in bad shape—maybe the paint is chipping or there are junky old swing sets polluting yards.

  If you keep driving past the plant, the roads become bumpier and the grass becomes distended. Suddenly you’re at Harrison Farm. The decaying Harrison Farm, collapsed barn and all, is almost glamorous compared to what comes after.

  Crooked fence posts encompass the entire length of Spence Salvage. Those wouldn’t keep anything out if not for the chicken wire wound between them. Still, there are places where the fence fails, dips to the dirt and vanishes in tall grass. In those places, the fence posts look like tombstones.

  I’ve never been this close.

  The truck rattles, and I nearly bite my tongue—I’ve drifted onto the rumble strips. I right the wheel, but I’m struggling. I need to stop and breathe, but I keep driving, so slowly that I might as well take my foot off the gas. The fence seems to stretch for miles, but I know it’s only forty acres.

  I finally spot the driveway and pull up onto the shoulder. The welcome sign is rotting in places, and the chains suspending it have rusted to perpetual stillness. Alongside the words Spence Salvage, someone’s clumsily painted a wrench. A plastic orange and black CLOSED sign is bolted to the wood.

  I switch into park. I roll down the windows. This is Tamara’s truck, so there are no pictures of Dad here. But Mom, Tam, and me are on the dashboard, a curling photo of the three of us at Mammoth Cave.

  Yesterday Kalyn told me never to come here. The last thing I want is to come home and find Mom mummifying on the couch and Tamara outside. The last thing I want is to go back to school and be pitied, the boy in the pumpkin patch.

  I don’t want our lives turned into a whodunit. I don’t want this case reopened. I don’t want Dad’s face to become a thing I hate seeing. So what am I doing here?

  I climb out of the truck. No cars have passed, and I doubt any will. This place is out of business. People don’t come here. I weave along the shoulder until I’m standing in the middle of that long driveway.

  I lift my eyes from my feet.

  Lining the driveway are rows and rows of cars in all sizes and colors. The only thing they have in common is a state of disrepair. There isn’t a single one that looks like it could leave this yard. Some of the vehicles are lopsided, even sunken into the ground. They crowd the driveway so closely that I can’t tell where it ends.

  Did Dad actually walk down here once? Did he do it with a knife in his hand?

  I want to believe no. I want to believe this is Mordor. I want to think that the story I’ve been told since the day I was born is nonfiction. Not because I want Dad to have been murdered, but because I want to know that some portion of my life is a certainty.

  I’ve never questioned our truth: Dad was kidnapped during his senior homecoming game, taken here, shot dead, and shoved into a trunk like secondhand clothes. That story won our case and became America’s truth after Grandpa Ellis bribed the best prosecuting attorney in the Bible Belt.

  We stopped seeing Grandpa Ellis years ago. Before that, he was a fixture in our lives. We used to visit him for Sunday dinner.

  Mom would put on makeup and a smile and act like leaving the house was as easy as breathing, but she’d spend a few seconds hyperventilating in the car, hands stuck to the wheel, before dabbing at her mascara and stepping outside.

  Whenever we knocked on the door, Grandpa looked unhappy to see Mom. The feeling was definitely mutual. But Grandpa Ellis helped Mom pay rent before she started making steady ghostwriting money, and he paid for me to go to summer camp. We couldn’t turn down his invitations.

  He lives in a huge cabin thirty minutes out of Samsboro, on a wooded hill near Lake Cumberland. Grandpa Ellis didn’t keep any pictures of Dad around, although family trophies lined the walls.

  Grandpa always sat at the head of the table, even though there were only three of us. He hardly spoke, just asked how school was going for me; he didn’t ask about Mom. He only once talked about Dad and the Spences—on the day he kicked us out for good, the day Mom told Grandpa she was seeing someone.

  Grandpa Ellis has Dad’s eyes, but sharpened to knifepoints. When Mom mentioned Tam, he spat out his food, stood up straight, and pointed us to the door.

  “You’re as evil as any Spence,” he told Mom’s back. “You’re as good as killing him all over again.”

  It wasn’t just a cruel thing to say. It was also the only time I ever heard Grandpa Ellis’s voice crack. It was the first time I wondered whether, as much as it sucked for me to grow up without a dad, having and losing a son could be worse.

  When we got back to the car, Mom didn’t hyperventilate. She laughed, a little madly. “Well, that book’s finally shut.”

  An icy October wind is blowing. The grass bows away from me, and unseen dashboards in the salvage yard creak in the gusts.

  When do words like “evil” start sticking? If they stick, does that make them true? People have called me a thousand names. I call myself names. But I choose to believe that those names aren’t all I am.

  A Spence isn’t all that Kalyn is, either. Not even close.

  I wonder if she’s playing hooky. I wonder if she’s mummifying in front of a TV at the end of this driveway, or throwing eggs at strangers, or batting her lashes at boys.

  I know what I’m doing here. Despite it all, I want to see her.

  But I can’t bring myself to walk down this driveway.

  KALYN

  I STEP OUT of the cafeteria and peel the pizza from my torso. I let it hit the floor, then scan the area for Quillpower’s signature lurch. The main hallway is almost empty.

  I cuss and stomp left. As I pass the office, there’s no getting around the secretary, Ms. Patrick. She’s balanced on a rolling chair in heeled sandals, unfurling the latest honor roll poster on the office window.

  “No running in the halls!” The chair swivels but she doesn’t lose her footing. “Oh! What’s the matter, hon?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Please remember that I’m the only cool adult in this building before you try peddling that crap. What’s wrong?”

  I stare at her tattooed eyebrows. Hard to tell if the concern is genuine, but I go with my gut. “Gus Peake isn’t in school today, and it’s my fault.”

  Her eyes flash. “That’s not your fault.”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “I know who you are.” She plops down onto the chair and lets it roll toward me. “I’ve got all your records, remember? Fact is, you didn’t kill anybody, honey. As of the news today, fact is maybe no one in your family did. Right?”

  I don’t know what to do when people are k
ind to me.

  “Hey, the speed limit is WALK!”

  I’m the hell outta Dodge, and soon I’m near the gymnasium at the far end of the building. Based on the squeaking and hollerin’, people are throwing dodgeballs inside. No way would Phil choose to be in there. His twigs would probably snap.

  I put my hands to my hair, unclip my braid, and give it a hard tug to center myself.

  There’s a sound like swords clashing to my right, but it’s tinny, nothing natural about it. I swivel with my fists up.

  Phil’s killing things on his Game Boy or whatever in a small nook beside the boys’ locker room. His baggy gym shorts make him look longer than ever. Phil’s tried makin’ himself as small as possible, but his terrible posture makes my back hurt. He’s Ichabod Crane, in a ratty Blade Runner T-shirt. I know hand-me-downs when I see them.

  Phil’s upright before I get close, yanking on the door to the locker room—­

  “If you think I won’t follow you the fuck in there, you’ve got no idea who you asked to homecoming.” I have no idea, either, but hey. “Where’s Gus?”

  I’ll be damned—Phil doesn’t bolt. “Gus actually asked you out for me?”

  I can’t figure out his expression. “Don’t tell me that’s what you two argued about? Jesus. Gus couldn’t betray you if he tried. He’s wrapped around your fingers.”

  “He isn’t.” Gus’s glasses sharpen his eyes, but Phil’s dilute his to glassy ponds. “I’m not his keeper.”

  “Happen to see the local news today, Phil?”

  “Who bothers with local news?” But he’s already moving his fingers. Guess that toy has internet. I bite my tongue while he scans the headlines.

  “Hmm.” He draws himself up straighter. “It’s not merely local.”

  “Oh, great.” Here we go again. At least I’m dressed for the circus.

  Phil looks at me. “I’ll message Tamara. I presume Gus told you. About his dad?”

  “More or less.”

  His device pings. “Tamara says he left and neglected to bring his cell phone.”

  “He left? Alone?”

  “He’s not an infant.”