by Tash, Red
“Somebody’s busted,” Derek said.
I sat up as we pulled onto our street. The police were at my house.
“How’d you get hurt, anyway?” Derek asked, as he pulled the car into his driveway.
“You don’t really want to know,” I said. Were the cops there to question me? Would they actually do anything if I told them about Dave and his drug ring?
I slunk down in the seat of the car and adjusted the rearview mirror so I could see what was going on at my house. Two uniformed cops stood on the front porch, knocking.
“Derek, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“Don’t you want to go home and see what’s going on?”
“I think one of those cops is Dave’s cousin.”
Derek twisted around, painfully obvious as he checked out the two police. “Yeah,” he said. “And the woman cop is his aunt.”
“Fuck. You gotta get me out of here, man,” I said.
Derek backed the car out of the driveway a little too quickly, and I slid further down the seat, hoping the cops weren’t going to jump in their car and follow us. Peeling out in the trailer park might be an everyday occurrence, but in this instance it had to look suspicious.
They didn’t follow us, and we were five miles from the park before Derek asked me where we should go.
“We aren’t going anywhere—but you can drop me off at the rink,” I said.
“Coach isn’t there. He said he’s going to The Barn for some drinks after the game.”
“Crap. Got any other ideas?”
“Well, my mom’s at church. We could stop in there and beg for gas money.”
It wasn’t my first choice of destinations, but it looked like I was out of options. We were there in minutes.
“What’s she doing at church on a Friday, anyway?” The plastic flapping banner across the entrance to the cinderblock building read, HOLIDAY BAZAAR THIS SATURDAY. “She selling her ornaments at the church?”
“Oh, yeah. Doilies, stuff she hot-glues—you know it. There’s a potluck tonight, then they’re setting up the booths.”
The smell of food inside the church hit me like a baseball bat. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until that moment. When had I last eaten? “Think they’d care if we had some of their food?”
“It’s a church, isn’t it?” Derek said.
He had a point.
The Fellowship Hall was lined with folding tables and pegboards bearing Christmas and Thanksgiving crafts. Halloween hadn’t passed yet, but Christ Covenant Brigade wasn’t really big on monsters and witches and such, as far as I could tell.
At the end of the room was a buffet table at least twenty feet long. I found an empty table, pulled out a folding chair, and felt what was left of my energy drain away. If I were a character in one of Derek’s video games, I’d be in dire need of more hearts.
“Just stay here. I’ll say hi to my mom and get you something to eat,” Derek said. He was never going to succeed with his Mac Daddy act at this rate.
His mom was so excited to see him at church that she even made a fuss over me—usually she didn’t even look me in the eye. Derek and I stopped hanging out when she realized I was probably going to grow up to be a lesbian, so…you know, around fourth grade or so. At least a year or two before I even knew.
Yeast rolls, hot from the oven and dripping butter, appeared in a basket before me. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, mac and cheese with a potato chip crust, and a tiny cup of Coke followed shortly. Starving, I ate too fast.
“I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“You want to go outside?” Derek asked.
I nodded, and he handed me his keys. I tried to stand, and I really thought I’d make it, but then a sign reading FRIDAY NIGHT MEATLOAF FELLOWSHIP swam before my eyes, and I was falling. The cowboy hat barely cushioned my head against the hard tile floor, and I think I managed to croak out “I’m sorry” to Derek.
Not again. Please, God. Not in the company of holy rollers. I’ll wake up in a dress at Camp Pray-the-Gay-Away.
And then all was black.
Chapter 3.5
Paranoia Will Destroy Ya
Harlow
I’ve never done anything illegal short of stealing a goat now and then, but I’m related to too many criminals to consider myself safe. Drug dealers are nasty people—even worse when they’re trolls.
I’d followed my cousin enough the past few years to realize that he was completely unconcerned for his own safety. I guess growing up under the wing of McJagger gave him false confidence. Or maybe since the Wheelers and the Saarkenners were dead, he and his dad thought nothing could touch them. I don’t know, but he didn’t even seem to notice that I tailed him all over Laurents County.
His first stop was The Barn, a huge Amish-built structure that served watered-down drinks to rednecks while they played pool or darts and ignored women. He bought everyone a couple of rounds—no doubt so they would be his alibi.
Even though he owned the county peacekeepers and had every judge in the tri-county area in his pocket, those Staties could be a nuisance, every now and then. The last one who’d stumbled off the main road onto Dave’s field of pot in the northern part of the county got turned into a small, yet fashionable, valise.
Dave wasn’t at The Barn very long before he and a younger fellow—surely not even legal drinking age—exited the bar and hopped into Dave’s caddy. I followed them on foot to the hospital. I could have outrun the car, no problem, but moving through a heavily populated area when you’re a seven foot tall troll was a bit problematic. I glamoured myself into my usual “homeless guy” look, and took my time.
As I cut through a parking lot, a wee girl outside the Beehler’s Buy-Lo caught a glimpse of me and screamed from her seat in the shopping cart. By the time her mother would have turned her head my way, I was gone. Little ones almost always have The Sight.
In another ten minutes, I was outside the hospital, watching Dave’s friend enter the double doors under a brilliant blue Emergency sign. So, he was there to pick up the poor girl and finish the job, huh?
The boy came running out of the ER, gesturing back toward the doorway and waving his arms. Dave backed the car up, trunk to the ambulance doors, and in a moment, a glamour cascaded over the car, making it look like an ambulance.
Two nurses wheeled the chubby girl with the long, blonde hair out on a stretcher. The scrawnier, tougher girl who had saved her life was nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t want to let Dave take this girl—no good could come of that, for sure—but it was the other girl who concerned me the most. I couldn’t explain it at the time, but I had to find her—and find her now.
Chapter Four
You Don’t Have to Go Home, but You Can’t Stay Here
Deb
My mother screamed from the living room. I opened my eyes. From my bed, I could instantly tell the daylight streaming in through my window was far from fresh—it had to have been midday, at least. I wondered how bad this head injury was, after all.
“I want my daughter back, you son of a bitch! I don’t care what you think I owe you! I want Gennifer back and I want her back in one piece!” She took a deep breath, and I could tell she’d been sobbing, the way her breathing faltered through deep gasps. “Don’t you—don’t! Do NOT hang up on me!” Another beat, then “Son of a bitch!” I heard the phone slam down into the receiver, and Mom crying.
Two seconds later, the door to my room flew open. I sat up quickly.
“You better jump!” she said. “I don’t know what the hell you are trying to pull! Where is your sister!?” She flew at me from the doorway and shook me by the shoulders. “Tell me! Tell me!” Her eyes were wild, her fury and fear driving her further from sanity than I’d ever seen her.
“Mom! Mom! Stop!” She let go, and I drew a deep breath. “Hospital,” I said.
“No, she is goddamn well not at the hospital, and she’s not here,
and you goddamn well know it!” She drew back and slapped me, and before I could react, her hands were covering her face in despair. For a second I thought she was sorry she’d hit me.
“My only child,” she moaned. “My baby, my only baby …”
I was numb with shock. I’d never been Mom’s favorite, I knew, but was she going to disown me now?
“Mom?”
“Don’t call me that—don’t do it! Don’t call me that, ever again. They told me I had to take you, that you were the only one who could keep her safe, but I’ll be damned if you did! Damn lot of good it did me, all these years! I fed you, I clothed you, I changed your filthy diapers, and you were supposed to be the big hero or something, the Escort—no, the Protector, they said. And what did you do? Nothing, that’s what!”
The room was spinning, and her words were gibberish. How to interpret this babbling? She’d gotten drunk and hit me plenty of times, but I’d always been able to understand why. She lost at Bingo. We were out of gin, or cigarettes.
“Me? An escort?” The only escorts I’d ever heard of were big-city call girls or hookers or something like that. I wasn’t for sure—I’d only ever heard the word in movies, or in the ads of that free newspaper that’s put out by some group in Bloomington.
She breathed deeply, and looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Debra,” she said, “I need to get Gennifer back. It is your job to guard your sister and protect her.” I could see the rage rising in her face again.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
She held her hands up, turning her face away from me. “It’s not okay!” The words exploded out of her, in a tone I’d never heard from her. Gutteral. She drew another deep breath, and looked me in the eye. She forced a smile. “I wasn’t allowed to tell you—it went against the agreement—but, no, you are not my daughter. You’re a foster child. You are insurance! It was part of the prophecy.”
“What prophecy? What are you talking about?” So many questions—and my entire life suddenly felt like a lie.
“I protected you when you were unable to protect yourself,” she said. “I may not have been the best mother, but you owe me. Find my daughter. Find Gennifer, or your life is mine.”
She stormed out of the room and out of the house. I was still sitting on my bed in shock when I heard her car pull out of the driveway.
A tornado might as well have hit our trailer again. Everything I’d ever known about my life was tossed into the air. There was no truth, no way to tell which way was up or down.
I looked at myself in the mirror over my dresser. A large crack had run through it for years, and suddenly it seemed so fitting, a diagonal slash through my face. I brushed the dried blood from my hair, and only winced a little at the tender spot on my head left over from the fire. I took off my shirt, and found bruises in the shapes of stars up and down my torso. Where the hell did those come from?
“No time to sit around waiting to heal,” I said to my jagged reflection. I didn’t feel like laughing, but my reflection smirked in agreement. “What the hell?” I asked the mirror. The very same thing had happened at the hospital, before I stole the hat. “I’m losing it,” I said to myself. I couldn’t bear to look in the mirror any longer.
My backpack leaned against my bed, my skates strewn on the floor beside it.
“I don’t know what else to do,” I said, and started shoving clothes and shoes into my backpack. I opened the back of the framed Joan Weston photo by my bed, and pulled out the cash I’d saved from the past several Christmases. After I’d dressed, I shoved it deep into my front pocket, hoping it would be enough. Enough for what, I didn’t know.
I put my skates on from the front steps, and then, because I didn’t know what to do, I did what I always do. I skated away.
Chapter 4.5
Heard It From A Friend Who Heard It From A Friend
Harlow
The scent was weak, but I followed it to the local high school. A crowd was dispersing from the gymnasium—mostly adults. Loud music inside. The homecoming dance. Wonderful.
In the old days, whenever townspeople got together to celebrate a seasonal solstice or experience a rite of passage, they inevitably ended up toting pitchforks and torches, routing out whatever local trolls that were unlucky enough to be spotted. I’d learned this from my parents, who explained that only the oldest, weakest, and those who were ready to die ever let themselves be shown.
Things had changed, for sure. Not only were trolls walking among the English, but they’d learned how to use glamour from the fae, and they were virtually indistinguishable from humans—at least to other humans. There were teenaged trolls and fairies in this high school, right now, shimmying to the music. I could hear their laughter, could smell their sweat and bloodlust mixed with the palpable passion of prurient teens. I didn’t smell the girl, but I knew she’d been there.
There was no way I was going to enter that gym, and risk blowing my cover after all these years on the fringe of both worlds. I hunkered down behind a copse of trees on the edge of the property and glamoured myself to look like a boulder. I waited.
I was there only a few minutes before the wind changed directions, and I caught her scent—along with another, more familiar one. She’d been with The Coach earlier, before she’d gone to the hospital. I knew he would never hurt her, but he hadn’t come here with her, either. How did he know her? What was the connection?
I set off for The Coach’s den—a cavernous, musty roller skating rink on the edge of town. He had a rolling mansa, glamoured to look like an old ‘70s conversion van. When I was a kid, it had been custom-glamoured to look like a gypsy wagon.
We hadn’t kept in touch, but there was a time when I’d thought of Coach as something of an uncle. There was a time when I had something more than this life, and he was part of that. He’d been a part of Jag’s life, too. I just hoped he was still the man I thought he was.
Chapter Five
The Wind Beneath My Wings
Deb
I knew he’d be at the rink, but the familiar sight of Coach’s 1970s Stalker Van lifted my spirits from the moment I saw it in the parking lot, front row center. A two-tone number in light brown and shimmering wheat, it bore a fantastical mural of bodacious topless mermaids, mating unicorns, and dancing leprechauns frolicking on roller skates through a rainbow-and-cloud landscape that looked like something from the back of a cereal box, or a low budget Saturday morning cartoon. I’d seen it open—once and only once, and only for a few moments—and knew that the interior was all teal shag carpet and black leather. I had a feeling Coach had lived in the van—maybe he still did.
Coach was in the skate room, replacing the trucks on a pair of speed skates, when I rolled in.
“Well, look what the cat drug in. What’s new, furball? You here about the job, finally?” He gestured at the Help Wanted flier posted next to the skate rental window. The edges were torn—he’d had it posted forever.
“You know I can’t do it, Coach. Too much to look after at home.”
“You’re here all the time, anyway,” he said. He flipped the skate right-side up and test-rolled it on the counter, squatting down to eye the stability of his handiwork. “Care to try this on for me? Give it a test-drive?”
“Yeah, here’s the thing, Coach,” I said. “Gennifer’s missing, Mom’s thrown me out of the house, there was a fire …”
But it was like my words were muted by the siren song of those new skates. Coach smiled at me and rolled them to me across the skate rental counter.
Skating was my addiction and he’d handed me a fresh hit of my drug of choice.
“No problem, Coach.” I took a seat on the sticky floor and slid my foot into the boot, shocked by how comfortable it was—like it was tailor-made for me. “This feels incredible—hand me the other one.”
I had the skates on in about thirty seconds flat, and was barreling around the rink in a low crouch in less than a minute.
“Keep your kne
es bent—like you’re sitting in a chair!” barked the Coach. “Lean into the turns, don’t square up—this isn’t speed skating!”
“It’s not roller derby, either, Coach!” I called.
“Never hurts to start training early,” he sighed, his meaty man-hands clutching the metal bar guarding the edge of the rink. “As soon as you’ve got a car, I expect you to join those girls in Bloomington—be part of a real team.”
I rolled up to him, seamlessly gliding over the edge of the rink, and performed a quick 180, raising up on my toe stops to slow down completely—the tricky Mohawk turn I’d seen so many rollergirls do. He didn’t even jump as I approached.
“They feel good, Coach. Really stable, too—not too loose, trucks aren’t too tight. Are these somebody’s special order?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Mine. For you.”
I didn’t know what to say. I stared at him, completely thrown. I mean, the Coach was nice and all, and I’ll admit it—I trusted him more than any other adult in town—but this was a really expensive gift, and we weren’t really in the habit of buying each other stuff.
“But,” I started. Thoughts of Gennifer and Mom sputtered into my head, and I knew something was wrong. I just couldn’t recall what it was. My head was swimmy, and yet I felt more alive than I ever had. Skating always made me feel good, but nowhere near as good as these skates had done. It was like they’d taken me to another level. How could I possibly pay the Coach back for these?
“But, nothing,” he said. “You’ve been my most loyal skater at this rink, and I know you’re going to do great things in roller derby, when you get the chance. The truth is, you’re going to need a decent pair of skates to do it. Those raggedy-ass old things you wear out in the street are about shot—I wouldn’t be surprised if the bearings locked and you rolled right out in front of a car one of these days. I’ve tried to get you to work here, thinking maybe you’d be able to save up for a decent set of skates, but …”