“Fine.” Ronnie kicks at the ground like an upset child. “Friday night, and don’t forget.”
Her mother gives Ronnie an exasperated look.
Their conversation makes me glad I studied Spanish for four years and not French.
The front door opens, and the mother looks up. “Oh my God! What took you so long?” she says, again in Spanish.
A thin man dressed in a suit that is too big for him walks out of the house, carrying the little girl from Ronnie’s profile picture. “My bebecita had to go to the bathroom.”
“Let’s go! We’re late.” The mother gently takes the little girl from him and rushes them all into a maroon Toyota Camry parked in the street.
Ronnie shoves her siblings aside and enters the back. As the Camry pulls away from the curb, I see a bumper sticker that reads Jesus is Lord. Rosary beads hang from the rearview mirror. I keep close behind the Camry and end up following the Rodriguez family to Sunday mass at a nearby Church.
It takes me another day before I’m able to get my first glimpse of Cracker. She lives in one of the most depressing apartment complexes, in one of the worst sections of Cantor, positioned right behind a cluster of abandoned warehouses. I’m guessing this area is considered the projects, and before I can even reach the front of Cracker’s apartment building, I see a woman with pale freckled skin and greasy red hair standing in the street, screaming at a fat shirtless man, who seems to mostly ignore her. She’s drunk and wears a sheer top that shows her small, sagging breasts. I park behind a pickup truck and watch from inside my car. I know immediately this drunk screaming mess is Cracker’s mother. She looks exactly like Cracker, but older.
“Shut the fuck up!” someone yells.
“Mind your own fuckin’ business, Gerald! You fat fuckin’ queer!” Cracker’s mother yells in the direction of the voice.
I see two young white faces staring out from behind a bedsheet used as a curtain for a fourth-floor apartment window.
Finally, a cop car arrives, and a male and a female police officer step out. Cracker’s mother slurs her words as she tells the officers an incoherent story about what happened.
“Fat fuck’s dog barking all goddamn morning! Fuckin’ crapped all over the fuckin’ place!”
After growing impatient, the female police officer threatens to arrest Cracker’s mother if she doesn’t go back inside her home. A door bangs open, and I look up and see Cracker hauling ass out of the building. She grabs her mother’s arm. “Ma! Let’s go!”
Cracker is shorter than I expect. I’m guessing maybe five feet four, the same height as Carly, the band geek. She wears a faded orange T-shirt and cut-off jean shorts that hang low off her ass, with about two inches of white underwear showing.
“Ma! C’mon!”
Her mother continues to curse at the neighbor, even spitting in his direction, until finally, she pushes Cracker off her arm and stumbles drunkenly inside the apartment building.
“Don’t you all have nothin’ better to do?” Cracker says to the two officers with the cadence of a guy. “Instead of fuckin’ arresting people for doin’ nothin’?” She shares her opinion on what she thinks of their jobs, and every sentence is laced with a curse. “Get a real fuckin’ job!” Cracker yells before storming off.
The neighbor shakes his head as if this is an everyday occurrence. “They’re nuts!” he tells the police officers then wanders away.
The cops leave, and after that, it’s quiet.
I head back to my motel room to escape the heat. I think about calling Jay, but I don’t. It’s selfish. It’d only be calling him to hear a familiar voice, and besides, he’ll only ask me questions I can’t answer, like why aren’t we together. Why won’t I let him help me? If he only knew. If anyone only knew.
Chapter 16
For the next couple of days, I pass by each one of these Black Diamond girls’ homes. It isn’t difficult to spy. The worst thing about it is the fear of getting caught. Online, you can creep around for days, and nobody ever knows you were trespassing. Out here, doing it live, I worry that one of their neighbors may start to wonder who I am or what I’m doing in the neighborhood. Or worse yet, Mark Silva will notice me parked outside his home and think that I’m some crazy stalker, which essentially, I am. But I’m careful about my stalking. I drive past their homes at different times of the day and only start to park when it’s dark. Today, I’m wearing a baseball cap. Yesterday, I wore sunglasses. The humidity is brutal, but my obsession with these girls keeps me less concerned with the weather and more concerned with how I’m going to get close to them.
My plan is simple: to befriend Lori Silva and her Black Diamond friends and somehow find evidence linking them to my sister’s murder. How I’m going to do this, I have no idea.
The clock is ticking, and I’m not any closer to becoming friends with these girls than when I first rolled into town. I keep checking Ronnie’s Facebook page, hoping that she made it public, and I can see where she’s checking in, but it’s still private. I think about returning to the gas station first thing in the morning to flirt with Mark Silva, assuming he’s working. But if he has a girlfriend, I’m sure this’ll cause other problems.
I try not to let any of this discourage me as I turn onto Lori Siva’s block and see the maroon Toyota Camry with the Jesus is Lord bumper sticker parked in her driveway. Ronnie’s mother kept to her word. It’s Friday night. I do a quick U-turn and park across the street without a second to spare as the front door flies open, and Ronnie Rodriquez barrels out. She’s eating something when it drops out of her hands and hits the ground. “Dammit!” I hear her say before she picks it up, wipes the food clean, and takes another big bite.
“You’re nasty!” Cracker emerges from the house.
Ronnie laughs and gets behind the wheel, taking another bite of her food.
Cracker is about to climb into the shotgun seat when someone yells, “Backseat, Cracker!”
I look to the front door and see Lori Silva. Her hair is worn in the same pulled-back style as in her mug shot. She has on jeans and a red-and-white-striped tank top that fits snugly against her body. She’s a much thicker girl in person. Her arms are fit and muscular. Cracker promptly takes the backseat. Lori approaches the passenger side, takes hold of the door handle, then stops as if she has seen something. She’s looking directly at my car.
I freeze, waiting to see what Lori will do, when my Middletown cell phone rings. Shit! I grab it off the seat and duck down to the floor. Of course, it’s Lea. I hit Decline and send it to voice mail.
I glance up ever so slowly. Lori continues to stare in my direction as if trying to sharpen her vision. She says something to Cracker, or maybe Ronnie, then walks down the driveway. My pulse quickens as she takes another step and another. I shift the Olds into drive, ready to burn out of there, when all of a sudden, Lori stops and scoops up a pack of cigarettes.
She walks back to the car and ducks inside. I breathe again.
A moment later, Ronnie reverses out of the driveway and speeds away. I put my phone on silent and toss it aside. I wait until the Jesus-mobile reaches the end of the block before I hit the gas pedal. I almost lose them as Ronnie tears through the streets, but I manage to catch up and stay close, at least for another mile, when I see them pull off the highway and into a shopping center.
I watch as the Camry travels to the far end of the parking lot, where parked cars and teenagers are gathered in front of the only open store. It’s a pizza shop with the words Pop’s Pizzeria written across its front window in large red scripted letters. I keep a good distance away, parking alongside a store that’s boarded up and has newspapers covering its windows. There’s also a “We Buy Gold” and a discounted food store in the shopping center, but both are closed. From what I can see of the crowd, it’s mostly guys drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. I hear their car stereos, heavy with bass, blasting hip-ho
p.
I search the crowd and immediately spot Lori in her red-and-white-striped shirt. She’s standing alongside Cracker as one of the guys in the crowd hands her a beer. Moments later, Ronnie appears with a slice of pizza. She says something, causing Lori to spit out what she is drinking and bust up laughing with Cracker.
As I sit watching Lori and Cracker having a blast, I think about all the times I’ve ever hated someone before, like when one teammate’s mother spread rumors about me stealing booze from her house because I started over her daughter, or when I was in tenth grade and a male teacher blatantly lied about sexual comments he had made to me, or when Jenny was bullied so badly in third grade she was afraid to go to school. But never once did any of it even remotely compare to what I feel right now toward these two. This is a whole new level of hate. This is a Super Bowl stadium full of hate. This is homicidal hate.
There don’t seem to be any consequences for what these girls did only six months earlier. They drink. They party. They laugh. Not a care in the world. And just as I’m beginning to think justice will never be served, a black girl in a red T-shirt and jeans runs out from the pizzeria and joins them. She steals a sip from Lori’s bottle, talks for a while, and runs back inside. I wonder if that’s Natice Gentry.
I stare at the Open sign in the window, debating if I should go in, buy a slice of pizza, and see if it is Natice who works there. But then what? I need to be smart about how I’m going to befriend these girls. Then it hits me. Well, maybe they’re hiring? I can’t wait for morning to arrive.
Chapter 17
I leave my motel room in a white blouse and shorts. The sun is especially hot this morning, and by the time I arrive at the pizzeria, my blouse is drenched in sweat. The air conditioner in the Olds stopped working last night.
The parking lot, unlike last night, is a ghost town, void of any cars or teenagers. A sign hangs on the pizzeria’s front door that reads Open. I push through a glass door, and the place is completely empty, not a soul in it. It looks like any other pizza shop. There’s a long glass counter that runs the length of the front room, and behind the counters are ovens. A large bay window faces the parking lot, and in the back room are tables, chairs, and a basketball toss machine.
“Hello?” I call out.
A man, somewhere in his fifties, with a full head of gray hair and a gut protruding from under a white apron, appears from the kitchen. He carries a stack of brown boxes labeled Dough.
“Are you hiring?” I try to sound friendly.
“No,” he grumbles, barely acknowledging me.
“I’ll work for tips. I don’t need a salary.” I follow him, determined to get a job.
“You’ll go broke, kid.” He slams the boxes on the counter.
“I can work weekdays or weekends. I’ll wash dishes. I’m good at cleaning bathrooms.”
“You don’t want to work here. Trust me,” he says to himself in Spanish.
“I do, and I’m not leaving until you at least interview me,” I reply in Spanish.
He looks at me closely and sighs heavily. “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”
It takes him almost forty minutes before he is right back. His name is Pop, or at least that is the name he goes by. His armpits are stained in sweat and his apron splotched in water. I tell him I can work mornings, afternoons, and evenings. He waves a dismissive hand in the air.
“That ain’t my concern. Stealin’ is.” He stares at me, wondering if he can trust me. “No handouts to friends.”
“That’s not a problem. I don’t have any friends.”
He hands me a red T-shirt with Pop’s Pizza written in white letters. “Come back at four, and don’t be late.” He walks off, looking exhausted just from having hired me.
I drive back to the motel all hyped up and nervous like a kid who’s had way too much candy and soda. I’m not quite sure how I am going to pass the time. At least the air conditioner in my motel room works, even if it only blows out semi-cool air. I click on the TV, hoping to find a distraction and calm my nerves. Game of Thrones is playing. I stare at the screen, and it triggers something I read in the case folder. Lori said they were at home watching Game of Thrones.
I am doing this. I am really doing this.
I arrive fifteen minutes early and full of anxiety. Pop stares at me strangely and checks his watch. Apparently, he isn’t used to employees arriving early. He orders me to clean the back tables and disappears to the kitchen without any further direction. I pick up a smelly wet rag off the counter and head to the back room. There are five wooden tables in all, booth style, lining the sides of the room. The basketball toss game is tucked in the corner of the room, and part of its net is ripped and sagging. Next to it is one of those old Centipede machines. A Not Working sign is taped to its screen.
As I wipe dried tomato paste and soda rings off the tables, fear, my new best friend, creeps in. It’s like an undertow pulling me further and further away from the shore. What if someone recognizes me from the basketball game? What if they know I’m the sister of the girl who was shot and killed? I pull at the collar of my red T-shirt and struggle to take air into my lungs at the exact moment the walls start swimming around me. I drop the rag from my clammy hand, and it dawns on me that I’m having a panic attack. It’s something Amber would sometimes experience before games. What is it that she used to tell herself to calm down? I remember. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
I grab onto the ends of the table and close my eyes. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.” I do this for about a minute before I release the table and stand upright on a pair of wobbly legs. I glance around the room—tables, chairs, nothing to be scared about. I catch my reflection in the mirror of a Coca-Cola sign. It reminds me how much different I look with short bleached-blond hair. Slowly, my breathing returns to normal, and I calm down. I pick up the wet rag and move on to a new table. I focus my attention on cleaning, hoping it will keep my mind distracted. I lean in twice as hard on the worn tabletops. There are names and initials carved into the wood and words like “eat me” and “fuck you” and every other curse word imaginable. I move to the last table in the back. Carved into the wood is a small black diamond. Next to it are the initials: “L.S.”
“Ally! Come here!” Pop yells from the front room.
I turn and see him standing alongside the counter, and facing him is Natice Gentry. She looks exactly like her mug shot, right down to her pissed-off expression. She’s a little taller than I am and much thinner, like a model. Her skin is dark, without any blemishes.
“You get here at four—not four-thirty!” Pop says to Natice, who stands with attitude, her arms folded across her chest.
“I told you I couldn’t get a damn ride!” she yells back at him.
I take my time walking toward them, hoping their argument will come to a quick end, but it doesn’t. I reach Pop’s side, and he points at me. “The new girl got here early! You’re late again, you’re fired!”
Natice’s narrowed eyes shift to me. I wish I hadn’t arrived early.
“Show her around then train her on the goddamn cash register,” Pop says as a way of introduction then walks off, leaving the two of us standing alone.
“You full time?” Natice asks, her tone anything but friendly.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
“Well, if you are, don’t get here on time. Got it?”
“No problem.”
Natice grabs a dirty rag off the counter and heads toward the back.
“I already cleaned the tables.”
She stops. “Did I say I was cleaning the damn tables?” She rolls her eyes, drops the rag, and walks off. “C’mon.”
She opens a door, and I follow her down a set of wooden steps into a basement. And without a word to me, Natice fills her arms with a bunch of cardboard pizza boxes that are sto
red on a metal shelf. I do the same and head back up the stairs ahead of her. I feel her eyes burning into my head. I hear a snicker of a laugh.
We stack the pizza boxes under a stainless steel counter. “You know your hair is orange in the back?” Natice says.
I had forgotten about my bleached hair. “Oh. Yeah. I did it myself.”
She looks at me as if I’m stupid. “Girl, next time pay someone.”
Natice gives me a rushed tour of the kitchen. “Here’s the dough. Pepperoni. Mushrooms. Everything. Fathead makes all the pies himself.” We pass a sink filled with dirty dishes. “You’ll probably be back here cleaning later. ‘Cause someone’s too damn cheap to hire a dish washer!” She yells it loud enough for Pop to hear through the closed office door.
We move back to the front counter, and Natice shows me how to work the cash register. It’s a huge piece of outdated machinery. Natice talks fast, and I can hardly keep up with her as her right forefinger moves swiftly, hitting various buttons to demonstrate. That’s when I see it. Between her thumb and forefinger is a small black diamond tattoo.
“You got it?” Natice asks.
I don’t answer. My eyes are focused on the tattoo, trying to determine for certain if it is a diamond. Natice follows my stare, and a bolt of anxiety goes through me. I feel my face turn red, and I shift from one foot to the other, shoving a hand deep in my pocket. “That’s cool,” I say, nodding to her tattoo, trying to sound casual.
Natice looks at the tattoo and couldn’t appear less impressed by it. “Yeah. Now you’re trained.”
She walks away from me and stares out the window. Natice hasn’t done half of what Lori and Cracker have done, but there’s still plenty on her resume that disturbs me. She spent at least a year in juvy for various fighting. One girl was hospitalized.
“Sorry about getting here early,” I say.
Natice shrugs. Then she faces me, shoulders hunched as if feeling bad. “Look, I’m not trying to be a bitch. A’right? I’m jus’ tired. I was up late studying. And I got my period. So the last place I want to be is here, workin’ late, with Fathead’s nasty-ass breath following me around like a dirty fart.”
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