Running On Empty

by Colette Ballard

  She narrowed her almond-shaped cat eyes. “You look like hell.”

  Exhibit A.

  “You okay?”

  I shielded my eyes from the sun and sat up slowly. “I’m fine,” I lied.

  She arched a single, perfectly plucked eyebrow—a skill I’d never managed to master.

  I pressed my fingers hard into my temples and attempted to sum up the feelings I had about living in this run-down trailer park, in this tiny little town, with these screwed-up people. “I’m just sick of this place. I’m sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

  With a long sigh, Kat lowered herself on the step beside me, and together we gazed out at our dismal surroundings. “Yeah, I get it.” She knew exactly what I meant, even if I didn’t.

  After a few minutes of silence, she asked, “So, what happened?”

  “Besides the fact that Jack’s a pathetic drunk, Justice is disappointed in me, and Ranger died this morning?” I made a conscious decision not to tell her about my annoyance at Logan and his family for their unnatural concern for the opinions of the good people of small-town Texas. The edges around her eyes softened. “What? Ranger died?”

  “Colic,” I said through the cotton filling my throat.

  She gave me time to gather myself, and then asked, “Why is Justice disappointed in you?”

  Me and my big mouth. “Logan.”

  She curled her lip. “What did that asshole do now?”

  Kat held the same opinion of Logan as Justice did, and I was in no mood for another defense trial. “He didn’t do anything. I forgot about his football thing this morning and—”

  She held up a finger. “Let me guess. You were at Justice’s trying to save your dying horse, and he was pissed because you were with Justice?”

  The image of the confusion on Justice’s face when I told him I had to meet Logan gnawed at me. Why did things have to be so complicated? Why couldn’t Justice accept my boyfriend? And why did Logan have to have jealousy issues that forced me to make choices between the two of them? “Something like that. But Logan’s football thing was really important.”

  “And your horse dying wasn’t?”

  “Look, I know you and Justice have seen Logan’s bad side at a couple of parties, but in his defense, he was wasted both times. The first time he thought one of his friends was flirting with me and the other was over some guy scratching his car.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Two good reasons to beat the shit out of somebody.”

  I knew they weren’t good reasons, but if I acknowledged that to Kat she’d never let up. She’d never try to get to know Logan or understand that he had flaws like everyone else. “So what if he messed up a few times, and so what if he doesn’t show everyone else his gentler side? The bottom line is that he treats me good.”

  Kat inspected the precision paint job on her fingernails. “Define good.”

  I decided to skip over the reasons I gave Justice and cut straight to the point—the point Kat would relate to above all others. “He takes me places.” I flipped my hand over and gestured toward the lack of possibilities that oozed from Castle Court Trailer Park. “Away from here.”

  With a knowing glance, she nodded her head slowly. Aware my answer wasn’t enough to satisfy her for long, I continued, “He does nice things for me, too. He even bought me a cell phone.”

  “You mean a GPS system.” She caught my glare, but it didn’t stop her. “He bought you that phone so he could keep tabs on you.”

  “Maybe he’s a little paranoid sometimes, but it’s only because his last girlfriend cheated on him.”

  “Not your problem.” She dug her nails underneath the back of her hair and shook her hand through it. “You hardly do anything with us anymore; he’s suffocating you. You even missed Billi Jo’s birthday.” It was a standing tradition to meet at the fire pit outside the trailer court for each of my girlfriends’ birthdays. Kat, Billi Jo, and I would roast marshmallows, drink beer, and play poker all night, and sometimes into the next morning.

  I rubbed at my throat, but the guilt that had lodged there wouldn’t budge. “I hated missing Billi Jo’s party. I was going to come, but Logan—”

  She held up a hand. “It doesn’t even matter what your excuse is. You always have one.”

  This conversation was getting old. “Believe it or not, he really cares about me.”

  “River,” Kat smacked her palms on her legs, “he cares about getting in your pants. And once he gets what he wants, he might hang around awhile, but then he’ll move on to the next chase. It’s all about the chase. Trust me.”

  I wasn’t stupid—I knew having sex with Logan was inevitable. I knew he liked a good chase as much as any guy, and I knew that Kat might be right. But for now, I wanted desperately to hang on to the belief that I was enough without the sex. I needed to be the exception. I craved to be somebody’s everything. “He’s not like that,” I snapped.

  Her emerald green eyes pierced into me like daggers. “Oh really? So he doesn’t pressure you to have sex?”

  I brushed a stray chunk of hair out of my face. “He does, but it’s only because…because he loves me.”

  “What about you? Are you in love with him?”

  Logan was handsome and smart and charming; he made my stomach fill with tiny butterflies and my heart pump like I’d sprinted a 5K. But above it all, he made me feel the one thing that no guy had ever made me feel before—wanted. I couldn’t say for sure if all that equaled love, but I couldn’t say it didn’t—especially to Kat. So I nodded.

  “Well then, what’s the big hold up? Why’re you still holding on to your virginity?”

  It was a valid question, but one I didn’t have a sane answer for. I actually wanted to want to have sex just to feel normal. Most girls I knew had had sex by the time they were seventeen—or at least said they had. “I plan on having sex with him.” I stared down at my own pitiful nails. “It’s just, every time I think about following through with it…I don’t know…something inside stops me.”

  “It’s called your gut instinct, my friend, and you have a bad habit of ignoring yours—especially when it involves Logan Westfield.”

  “Kat, he really is a good guy.” Most of the time. Sometimes he was self-centered, and maybe even a little pushy. But he made me feel wanted and special when nobody else did. And that was enough.

  She put her hands up to call a truce and gave me a weak smile. “Hope you’re right.”

  I wanted to be right.

  Kat exhaled longer than necessary as she stared at her watch, then patted my knee and stood. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll see you later at your awards ceremony.” Halfway down the steps she turned back. “Hey, I’m sorry about Ranger… and your fucked-up dad.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself and stood up to go inside. “He was never my dad.”

  Stopping to lean over the deck rails, I poured out the rest of my warm beer. I was strangely amused by the way the liquid lingered on top of the hard, stubborn earth before it finally sank in. Funny how in that moment, I still thought my pathetic fake father and my geographical location were my biggest problems.

  4

  AWARDS NIGHT

  After a tension-relieving shower failed, I detoured to the kitchen and snatched Jack’s last beer out of the fridge. Staring at my previous can of beer on the counter—half of which I’d wasted—I cracked open number two, took a sip, and smiled to myself. Unfortunately, neither the beer nor the hot shower magically washed away all my troubles like I had hoped, but they both served their purpose—I was defiant and clean.

  On my third sip, my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten all day. If I planned to do any partying tonight, I had to eat something. Hanging on to the towel still swaddling my wet hair like a beehive, I leaned back down to inspect the contents of the fridge. It was easy hunting since Jack didn’t give me grocery money this week.

  I pulled out the bologna and French’s, then found a heel of bread. After writing ‘L
ife Sucks’ in mustard calligraphy, I folded my sandwich in half, grabbed the beer, and took my brunch of champions into our faux wood-paneled living room. I plopped down on the ugly brown couch in front of our three-channel television and reached for the remote.

  Before I could press the ‘on’ button, the screen door squealed open and in breezed Kat. “There is no way I am letting you go off to your big night with puffy eyes and dark circles.” Setting her makeup bag and a bottle of clear nail polish on the coffee table, she grabbed my hand. “And these ragged nubs are not acceptable.” Kat wasn’t the fussy girl type, but she had standards, and they didn’t include allowing her friends to go out looking like crap.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said like I wasn’t interested, but really, I was just glad she was here.

  Looking down at me as if I was a scruffy, lost puppy, Kat placed a gentle hand on the top of my towel-head. “Besides, I knew you could use some cheering up.”

  I waggled my bologna sandwich at her, “Yeah, not really in the mood for being cheered up,” I grimaced at Kat’s beauty supply products, “or pretty.”

  “That’s why you need me.” She bent down to give me an awkward half-hug, and I tried my best to keep any mustard drippings out of her silken locks. “I’m really sorry about Ranger.”

  The hole in my chest deepened, so I traded in my half-eaten sandwich for my can of beer. Just as I was about to take a sip, Kat snatched it out of my hand. “You are not going to be intoxicated when you accept the award you’ve worked your ass off for—afterwards maybe, but not before.”

  I snarled at her, but knew she was right. Kat always had my back.

  The screen door whined again and in came the last of our threesome. Except for the silver stud in her nose, Billi Jo still looked like a fourteen-year-old, with hair the color of a dull penny and a sprinkle of freckles to match. Wearing basketball shorts, a cami, and a ball cap that said ‘Go to Hell’, she tromped toward the couch holding a red Twizzler and a candy bag. “What’s this?” She ripped off a chunk of licorice. “Somebody called a family meeting and didn’t invite me?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Since when did you ever need to be invited here?” From the moment I moved to the trailer park and joined forces with my kindred spirits, my house became the designated meeting place—thanks to Jack’s frequent absences.

  Kat pointed a shiny red fingernail at Billi Jo. “I stopped by your house, but you weren’t there. Judging by the way you’re inhaling those Twizzlers, I’d bet money you were off smoking a joint.”

  She smirked into her crinkling bag as she searched for just the right strand of licorice. “I might’ve had a couple hits.” Billi Jo loved to get high more than anyone I’d ever met in my whole life. She always had a bag of weed—or was on her way to find one.

  I unwrapped the towel from my wet head and attempted to work my fingers through the tangles as I studied Billi Jo’s spindly beanstalk legs. “How is it that you constantly eat junk food and still maintain the figure of a fence post?”

  “What’s not curvy about this?” Billi Jo stuck her boney butt out and smoothed her hand over her baggy shorts. She was as long and lanky as Kat was curvy and voluptuous.

  Scowling at Billi Jo, Kat took a seat next to me. “Just curious, is that what you plan on wearing to River’s awards ceremony?”

  “Why? Would this embarrass ya’ll?” Billi Jo twirled around so we could get a better view of her fashion ‘don’t’. Then, with a red Twizzler stretched across her top row of teeth, she garbled, “What about this?”

  I couldn’t help but join Kat in laughing at Billi Jo, even though I didn’t really feel like it. What I really felt like was having some time alone. “Don’t you guys have anything better to do than hang out here and watch me feel sad for myself?”

  “Um…no. No, I don’t.” Billi Jo looked to Kat. “You?”

  Kat clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back. “If you want to know the truth, my mom is banging a client right now and we all know how thin the walls of a trailer are.” Kat’s mom was well known around here as the trailer tramp—the kind that collects money for her services. I never could figure out why she did it because she was really smart, like Kat. Beautiful too—just in a trashy, two-dollar whore kinda way.

  Billi Jo pitched her candy bag on the coffee table, grabbed a cigarette out of Kat’s pack, and lit it. She gazed out the window in the direction of her house and took her time exhaling. “Well, since we’re all sharing…my aunt and little cousin are visiting, and ya’ll know the rest.”

  I knew; we all knew. My heart ached for her, and I sank deeper into the couch. When Billi Jo was eleven, she was supposed to be watching her cousin and little brother in the kiddie pool in her back yard. When the phone rang, Billi Jo ran inside to get it. By the time she got back, her baby brother had drowned. Her family never forgave her, and she never forgave herself. That was the day she started looking for ways to numb the pain.

  Kat’s eyes glistened as she reached for her cigarette pack. We were all good at pushing our feelings away. Whether we coped by smoking a cigarette or drinking a stolen beer, turning serious matters into jokes or getting high—we had all become experts at pushing our pain away. Kat’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Looks like you’re stuck with us.”

  Nodding, I silently acknowledged each of my friends. Thank God I was stuck with them, and thank God they’d stuck by me all these years. Parents and siblings and boyfriends had come and gone in our lives, but the three of us had been there for each other through it all. My friends may have given other reasons for being here today, but I knew they were really here because they cared about me.

  We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family.

  After my friends made sure my dress was ironed, my nails were presentable, and Kat’s makeup had transformed me into looking like someone who belonged amongst the living, they took off to get themselves ready. I finished fixing my hair into its usual style—down and wavy with a little from the sides pinned in back—and then slipped on Mom’s sundress. Sliding the delicate spaghetti straps into place, I smoothed the skirt that hung loose just above my knees and checked myself in the mirror. I had to admit, with Mom’s dress on, I was a little unnerved by my resemblance to her in her wedding photo.

  Reaching underneath my thick hair, I brought my locket around front. As I thought about my mother, I rubbed the smooth, silver oval between my thumb and forefinger. Mom had passed down her prized possession that held tiny baby pictures of Jamie and me shortly before she died. It was the only thing I had of hers…until now.

  The smooth hum of Logan’s Mustang startled me, and I headed outside to meet him after I lined my second beer can neatly on the counter. It would piss Jack off to see two beer cans on the counter—one of them nearly full—and know that he didn’t drink them. “A waste of hard-earned money,” he would say. Too bad he thought the same thing about paying the phone bill.

  Logan met me at the bottom of the steps with a bundle of red roses in each hand. “Hey, gorgeous.”

  He was the one who was gorgeous—with his messy-spike, sandy blond hair and blue-gray polo that matched his eyes so perfectly it made me dizzy. “Wow, thanks. What are these for?”

  His pleading eyes and perfectly aligned pearly whites turned my insides to mush. “To say I’m sorry,” he held out his right hand, “to offer my sympathy,” he held out his left, “and to congratulate you on your award tonight.” He joined his hands together to make one huge bundle of sweet-smelling roses.

  With Logan only a few feet away, I’d almost forgotten about all of those things.

  His cell phone rang, so I took the flowers from him and ran inside to put them in water. When I returned, I slid quietly in the passenger seat and put my bag in the back. He put down his phone and began to scan me. “You look nice. That the dress my mom bought you?”

  I could taste cigarettes and beer on his breath even though he didn’t kiss me. “Actually…this dress was my mother’s.”
>
  The beginning of a frown morphed into a sly grin when his eyes paused on my bare legs. “I like it.”

  A sensation that unnerved me tingled beneath my skin, and I bit my bottom lip. Sometimes the way Logan looked at me—like a starving carnivore who’d found his next meal—seemed illegal. When I was with him, I felt a sense of excitement and danger I’d never experienced. I was certain he should’ve come with a warning label and wrapped in caution tape.

  Before we could get out of Castle Court, his phone rang again. Like his parents, Logan took his social status very seriously. Almost as seriously as he took the responsibility to lead the Winston High Raiders to their state championship year after year. With his natural good looks, his football star status, and his bloodlines, I guess he couldn’t help but be Mr. Popularity. I was still baffled as to why he was dating me, the lowly stable employee of his parents, a nobody from Mason County High—the high school from the other side of the county that couldn’t even afford to keep a football program running.

  Oddly, Logan’s long list of attributes wasn’t what I found most attractive about him. Climbing the social ladder wasn’t my thing. It was the fact that his world was so different from mine. When I entered his, I got to leave mine behind. I didn’t worry if the bills were paid, if Jack drank too much, or if the truck would start so I could get to work. I didn’t worry about any of the things that usually hung over my head like a dark cloud. His world was simpler, and I was willing to make compromises to be in it.

  Logan swung into a parking space in my school’s lot and cut the ignition. “One more call, then I’ll be there.”

  I’d barely dropped my shoulders when Logan leaned across the console and reached for me. My heart stuttered when he pressed his warm, soft lips to mine, the intensity of his kiss escalating from zero to fifty in seconds, then ending just as quickly. It was the kind of kiss that made me forget things—the kind that took my breath away and made everything okay.