by Chuck Wendig
“Good luck paying that mortgage, little girl.”
Click.
It takes every ounce of willpower she can muster not to throw the phone across the room.
Friday, she’s back at school.
And classes are off for the day. Because today is a grief day, a day where the school comes together and deals with the subject of teenage suicide.
Pictures of Samantha Gwynn-Rudin hang everywhere.
Little vigils at different corners, in different hallways.
Various assemblies break out into smaller groups where everybody can share their thoughts. People who didn’t know Samantha talk about how nice she was (a lie), how she made them better people (probably a lie), how she helped others aspire to something greater (what?). Atlanta sits through all of this with a sick feeling in her gut. She thinks as the day goes: They didn’t do this for Chris.
At lunchtime she sits with her crowd and they all shoot the shit, and Atlanta pretends everything is fine and that Samantha wasn’t murdered and that her parents weren’t involved and that she doesn’t feel like she’s standing at the edge of an old well throwing pebbles down in it but never hearing them land in water or anywhere else. An endless pit like a hungry mouth waiting to swallow her up.
Moose Barnes still isn’t back at school.
The rumor mill is hard at work, there: his parents are on vacation, he ran away, he was secretly “doing” Samantha and now he’s so broken up he’s depressed or in an institution or tried to kill himself, too, and now he’s in an institution. Of course Atlanta wonders: Is he dead, too?
Nobody seems to have a straight answer.
Kyle says at the end of lunch: “See you guys at parent-teacher night.”
And Atlanta shrugs and says: “I doubt it.”
When she gets home, Mama is in the kitchen, all done up. Hair teased out, lipstick on, pink blouse swaying. Paul comes in, too—he’s wearing a button-down shirt, jeans, nice shoes, if a little scuffed. Atlanta cocks an eyebrow: “Hot date?”
Arlene gives her a dubious look. “Baby, it’s parent-teacher night.”
“What?”
“That letter I got about your suspension said we had to go.”
“Oh. Uh.” Atlanta tries to wave it off. “You really don’t have to. You guys go do something else. This isn’t, like, mandatory. Go have fun or something. I’ll be cool. Won’t mean much to me.”
Paul says, “Well, it means something to your mother that she’s involved with you and knows what’s going on.”
“I haven’t always been there,” Mama says.
“No need to start now,” Atlanta offers, and realizes that it sounds a whole lot snarkier than she meant it to. “I just mean—”
“Go get ready,” Mama says. “We leave in thirty.”
In those thirty minutes, Atlanta sequesters herself upstairs and grabs the cordless phone and the local phone book. She tries to find the phone number to Moose Barnes’s house—but, of course, the book has eleven different Barneses.
Screw it, she calls all of them.
Or would—but it only takes to number five to get what she needs, because number five is his uncle’s house. Jimmy Barnes. Guy who sounds like he doesn’t smoke cigarettes so much as he gargles them.
He doesn’t know much about his nephew except for the correct phone number to call, so she calls it up.
“Hello?” It’s a woman’s voice on the other end.
“I’m looking for Moose.”
The woman, prickly sounding, says: “Mark isn’t here.”
Mark. His real name is Mark. She never even considered that “Moose” wasn’t the name you’d find on his birth certificate.
“Is he . . . okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s away.”
“Away?”
“Away.” A pause. “As you know, he lost somebody close.”
“I . . . of course.” Samantha? Were they close?
“He’s taking time away at our mountain house.”
Ugh. “Oh. Sure. Just tell him I called.”
“Who should I say is calling?”
Atlanta draws a sharp breath, then hangs up.
At the school, she, Mama, and Paul sit down with all the teachers. Mr. Lovegrove. Miss Prasse. Mr. Dinkins. Mrs. Wryzek. They all tell the same story: blah blah blah, they like Atlanta and think she’s smart, but she has problems “focusing,” barely turns in homework, and is hovering somewhere around a C or D average, and if she’s not careful she could end up failing a class, which means repeating a class, which means potentially not graduating—
Mama, for her part, gets fighty with every one of them. “School isn’t fun,” she says. “It’s like prison.” Atlanta smiles a bit at that. “You make them sit here day in and day out while you teach them things they don’t care about and then are surprised when somehow you don’t magically change their minds—oh, and meanwhile all you’re doing is teaching to somebody’s governmental standards and this Common Core business isn’t how I learned things in school . . .”
And the teachers nod and smile and take it on the chin.
Paul at one point pulls Arlene aside and says: “You know, these teachers are just trying their best, sweet-pea. My sister, you know, Katherine, she’s a teacher in New Jersey, and it’s a rough game. They don’t get results, the school doesn’t get funding, the teachers don’t get tenure—”
“Don’t start with me, Paul,” Arlene says, putting a little venom on her tongue. “Atlanta’s a good kid and deserves the best.”
“Mama,” Atlanta says, but Paul keeps talking:
“Arlene, I’m not starting with you now—”
“Mama.”
“Paul, you are not this girl’s father, so maybe just be my arm candy and nod and smile when I talk—”
“Arlene,” Atlanta says. “Paul. Dang, you two. Listen, I got this, okay? Ain’t the teachers’ fault. I should do better. I’ll try.” Though even as she says it, it feels like a lie—just the thought of having to invest more in school, more time, more work, more everything, makes her feel tired. Ugh.
Last teacher of the day is Mrs. Strez.
And her report, thankfully, is glowing.
The teacher—an old biddy with eyeglasses big as the eyes on a praying mantis—says, “Atlanta has a poet’s heart and a ditch digger’s mouth.” Arlene’s about to protest, but Mrs. Strez continues: “She’s a student like I was, and she’s doing very well in this class. Could stand to turn in some more homework, of course.” And there a wry smile because Mrs. Strez still hasn’t docked her any points for not turning in her homework. Not yet. And at this point, maybe not ever.
It’s a good end to the night, or so Atlanta thinks.
They come out into the hall where a lot of other parents and their kids have gathered. Some parents are happy, chatty, their kids beaming. Others are dragging their kids away by the elbow, disappointment hanging on their faces like hats on a rack peg. Mama’s beaming. Paul looks lost—satisfied, maybe. But a little uncomfortable, too. Atlanta’s studying him when suddenly he stares off, and his face brightens. Someone calls to him in a voice she recognizes:
“Paul. Hey there.”
She follows Paul’s gaze.
And there’s the tan, bearded man. The one from Samantha’s house. Then in a pink polo, now in a brown blazer with a cranberry button-down underneath.
He marches up to Paul. They shake hands.
Paul says: “Hey, Ty, how the hell are you?”
The man—Ty, apparently—turns toward Atlanta. His smile broadens. “Hey, now. I know this girl.”
Arlene looks confused. “You do?” she asks.
Panic fires like a piston in Atlanta’s chest.
“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Atlanta says, already hearing how stiff, how fakey-fakey, her words sound. “I’m sure I don’t—”
“No,” the man says, “but my son talks about you a lot.”
“Your son?” she asks.
And then Ty pivots
just so.
About ten feet behind him is a big bleach-blonde woman in a straining yellow sundress. And next to her?
Damon Carrizo.
A hard wind blows this house of cards over.
“You’re Damon’s daddy,” she says, trying to mask . . . whatever it is she’s feeling right now. Fear, disappointment, anger, confusion. Some nasty-tasting cocktail of all that, shaken up and poured down her throat.
Paul clucks his tongue. “I’m sorry. Arlene, Atlanta, this is Ty Carrizo. He’s the CFO over at VLS. He works up in the offices, obviously.”
“But,” Ty says, grinning ear to ear, “I love coming down to visit the boys working the wells and tanks. Vigilant brings about seventy-five percent of its workforce with us wherever we go, but the Keystone State here has really been a gem for us. And Paul, gosh, what can I say about Paul? A lot of the locals we hire, we bring them on for a season, maybe two, but this guy has long-term potential. He has a future with VLS if he wants it.” Ty claps Paul on the shoulder hard. Paul looks genuinely chuffed about the whole thing, like a little boy winning a kiss from his mother.
Damon comes up, then, staring at this meeting between his father and Atlanta. Behind him, the woman who Atlanta figures is his mother wraps up a conversation with the PE teacher, shakes his hand, and wanders over.
Ty puts his arm around Damon, hugs him close. Damon looks embarrassed about it but doesn’t pull away. He introduces the woman: “This is my wife, Sue.” Handshakes and introductions all around. Then he gives his son a noogie: “My boy here’s doing great. This is a fine school. How are your grades, Atlanta?”
She’s about to answer and say something about who cares, but Arlene jumps in: “Her English teacher just raved about her. Said she had a poet’s heart.”
Ty laughs. “That is a wonderful thing. Not sure how that translates to the workforce and getting a job, but maybe we could all use a little poetry in our hearts.” Then the man’s face looks suddenly downcast. “That poor girl who killed herself probably didn’t have enough of that in her life. Rest her weary soul.”
Here, he watches Atlanta way a cat watches a can of tuna being opened.
She feels her palms go cold and damp. Am I looking at the man who killed Samantha? He was involved somehow. She’s sure of it.
“I gotta go,” Atlanta says. She clears her throat. “To the, ahh, bathroom.”
Then she darts away to go dry heave in a girls’ room stall.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Next day, hunter safety class. Atlanta thinks she’s going to be distracted, but it’s Paul who’s the distracted one. He seems off, somehow. Lost. He bites at the calluses along his thumb. Well, whatever. That’s his business. She’s suffering no such nonsense today, because today they get to learn about guns. How they work. How you clean them. How you store them.
(Though not, of course: how you fire them. No practice session.)
But they’ve got her attention. Her eyes are wide open. She’s bright and awake and aware, in part because she didn’t really sleep last night and she’s at that point where she’s gone so far over the hump she’s gotten her second, or third, or fifteenth wind. She can almost feel the weight of the .410 against her shoulder. The cold metal of the trigger tucked in the softness of her finger. The satisfying click it makes when the hammer draws back and settles in, ready to go.
It hits her, then:
I want to shoot somebody.
Maybe even kill them.
That thought scares her so bad she almost gets up and runs out of the class.
Paul must sense something. “You okay?” he whispers as the teacher goes on about the various kinds of safeties you find on firearms.
“Are you?” she whispers back to him.
But he stays quiet, and so does she.
Back home, outside, she paces. Whitey paces with her, turning every time she turns, making every pivot, walking every ten-foot length. Sometimes she stops to pick up a stone and pitch it into the corn. Whitey barks and runs after it—never finds the stone she throws but always finds some stone, and whatever he brings, she tosses. Then they pace once more.
She can’t put it all together.
She’s got pieces of a puzzle scattered across her table, and she can’t figure out how they go together. Bee. Samantha. Ty Carrizo. What about VLS? Doesn’t seem to figure in—could be Ty is working on his own. A little voice asks if he could really be involved, but of course he is—she saw the look in his eyes. And he was there at Samantha’s house. Are you cool? Handing her his card. No, that sonofabitch is in this somehow. She’s just not sure where he fits.
Then it hits her. The puzzle doesn’t come together because:
I’m still missing too many pieces.
That means it’s time to start filling them in.
She’s got a job here—find the father of Bee’s unborn bug. That means she needs to start digging and pulling up roots to see what comes out of the dirt.
Okay. What name did Samantha say when Atlanta asked her who came and took Bee away from the party that night?
Think, think, think!
Wait. There it is.
I dunno him. Some thug. Mahoney or something.
Mahoney.
Good. A name. A start. A thread to pull.
She calls Guy. “Hey,” she says.
“’Lanta, yo.”
“Whatcha doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to fix my toilet.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“Yeah, it’s like a nonstop party around this joint. What up?”
“I need a favor.”
He audibly scoffs. “You always need favors.”
“It’s what makes me adorable.”
“It’s what makes you annoying. Especially since you always seem to drag me into some shit that ain’t got nothin’ to do with me. How about you do me a favor for once?”
“Fine. Tell me about your toilet.”
“What?”
“The toilet.” She enunciates each word now: “Tell. Me. About. Your. Toilet.”
“It’s where I dump.”
She makes an ugh sound. “Man, c’mon, I mean tell me what the heck is wrong with it.”
“It’s running all the time and the tank won’t fill.”
“Fine. I’ll fix your toilet if you help me with something.”
“I think you owe me, like, fifteen fixed toilets, but let’s hear what this something is first. Whatchoo got?”
“You know a guy named Mahoney?”
Silence on the other end.
She says: “Hello? Guy?”
A sigh. “Why are you asking about that?”
“About that, or about him? You saying you know him?”
“You don’t wanna get involved with this. Whatever it is. You feel me?”
Her hand tightens around the phone. “I need this, Guy. Who is he? Where can I find him?”
Another long sigh. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He tells her.
And after that, she wishes he hadn’t.
Four of them in the car. Shane’s car. They’re parked in the lot of a bar—the Wagon Wheel, up on Grainger Hill. It’s still daylight: five o’clock. A couple Harleys sit parked out front. In the back corner of the gravel lot there’s a beater Ford Explorer, and opposite that, a red seventies Camaro that shines like a spit-polished apple.
Atlanta taps her foot on the ground, her hand bracing against the dashboard even though they’re not moving. The smell of French fries in the car is making her sick, but they’re part of the deal, so she tries to just breathe in through her mouth.
“You’re sure this guy is in here?” Shane says, hands wrapped tight around the steering wheel. “You don’t have to do this.”
She nods.
From the backseat, Josie leans forward. “Who is this douche again?”
“Just some low-rent thug,” Atlanta lies.
Next to Josie, Steven says: “I don’t think we�
�re supposed to go into a bar.”
“We’re not,” Atlanta says. “It’s just me. I’m going in.”
“Atlanta,” Josie starts to say.
“No, I gotta do this. You guys just pull around back.”
“You sure this is gonna work?” Shane asks.
“I’m sure.” Another lie. To Steven: “Hand me the bag.”
On the bag, the logo for one of the local Italian joints: DiSilvo’s. One of the things she wasn’t prepared for moving up north is just how many Italian restaurants they’ve got around. Even the smallest town has a half-dozen pizza-pasta joints within a ten-mile drive. Sometimes they’re across the street from each other. Different immigrant families. Italians at the counter. Latinos in the kitchen.
The bag is heavy, grease soaking through the bottom, but it’s holding together. She smells the fryer grease, the sauce of the meatball sub. Then Steven hands her the big Coke. Sixty-four ounces. She can barely carry it. It’s like an oil drum of soda. Enough to kill a whole room full of diabetics.
Without saying another word, Atlanta pops the door and heads in.
The door creaks open. Light streams in. In it, dust motes duck and dive in a slow-motion dogfight. Music comes from a jukebox in the back: it’s something from the eighties, hairband glam music. Poison, maybe, or Mötley Crüe.
Atlanta squints, steps in with the bag.
Two bikers sit at the bar. One’s got bare arms and a bare chest underneath a black leather vest. Maybe fifty, sixty years old, hair dyed black as squid ink. The other one’s shorter, chubbier, younger, like a pig that ran away from the farm, dressed up in denim and dark leather. He clearly took the term riding a hog all literal.
Far side of the room, an old, old man. He drives the SUV, she thinks. Fella’s so old he probably chaperoned Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s prom. Everything about him looks dried up, bleached out, like the roads in winter after the salt trucks blast them: pitted, crusty, chalky as a ghost.
Bartender behind the bar: shape of a human pyramid. Head like a gas can, torso like a shed, butt like a garbage truck parked in a too-small garage. Big bug-eyes and rubbery lips. That dude looks like he could tear Atlanta in half like she was a Kleenex tissue.