I’d wanted to pick up some extra shifts waitressing and asked Mom if she could get me a job. She worked at an expensive hotel downtown and had to take two buses to get there but she made great tips, especially in the summer. She’d said it was too far for me to go at night, though. I think she just wanted to keep an eye on me. At least when I was at the gym she didn’t send me as many of her just-saying-hi-and-making-sure-you’re-okay-and-don’t-forget-to-lock-the-door texts.
Dallas came out of the office, and I focused back on the shirts, watching from the corner of my eye as she walked deeper into the gym.
Crystal came to the front counter.
“I’ve gotta run,” she said, grabbing a Gatorade out of the fridge.
“Everything okay?” I said.
“Sure.” She gave me a smile but she still looked kind of stressed. “See you Sunday.” She was already pushing out the front door. She climbed into the passenger side of a blue car that had been waiting in the parking lot and took off. I got a brief glimpse of the man behind the wheel, sunglasses and a shaved head.
I glanced back into the gym. Dallas had turned around and was watching the car drive off with a worried expression.
* * *
For as long as I could remember, we had dinner over at Patrick and Karen’s on the first Sunday of every month. Mom was late getting off work and when we finally got to their house that night, Dallas was already in the kitchen helping Karen, who was stirring something at the stove. I picked up a cat winding its way around my feet, and gave Karen a kiss on the cheek.
“How are you, sweetie?” she said.
“Good.” Karen didn’t spend as much time in the gym anymore, preferring to do her crafts at home, but she still worked out a few times a week with Patrick.
Now Mom came over and gave Karen a kiss.
Karen gave her a look. “You’re working too much again, baby.”
“I’m fine, just hot.” She waved a hand in the air, brushing away Karen’s worry. Mom did look tired, and I’d heard her walking around the apartment the night before. She wasn’t a good sleeper at the best of times, often getting up in the middle of the night to watch TV, but in the summer she barely slept and hated being in the apartment on hot days, was always trying to drag me out somewhere.
“Can I help with something?” she said.
“We’ve got it,” Dallas said.
I glanced up at them from my perch in the living room, two cats on my lap while I flipped through TV channels. Mom was leaning against the counter, laughing at something. I knew she thought Crystal was the beautiful one, but I thought Mom was just as pretty. We didn’t look alike, though. She had cute freckles, green eyes, and chocolate brown hair that was really shiny—my hair was crazy, long black curls that fell to the middle of my back and around my face. Her lips were a nice shape. I touched mine, hating my small mouth. She could get a tan in five minutes and I could spend all summer out in the sun and barely change color. We had the same nose, straight with a bit of a flare at the nostrils, but her face was rounder. Everything on my mom was curvier, same with my aunts, and they were a lot shorter. I was really tall—like, five-ten already.
Patrick came in from outside. “Hey, sugar, I’ve got a new movie for us tonight.”
“Let me guess, Rocky part three thousand?”
He laughed. “Shove over, kid.” I made room and he sat next to me, his big shoulders resting against mine. I leaned my head against him.
Mom and Dallas almost had the table set—Patrick and I were always on cleanup duty. Karen kept looking at the door. “Should we try calling her again?”
“Let’s just start,” Dallas said.
We sat at the table and dished ourselves out. Sounds of the front door opening, a voice calling out, “Hello, hello!”
Crystal came into the kitchen. “Sorry I’m late.”
Karen stood up. “Crystal, honey. I’m glad you could make it.”
Crystal gave Karen a kiss on the cheek and plopped down at the table beside me. She gave me a big smile.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Karen set another place at the table, dished out some salad.
Talk started up again but it was mostly Patrick and Dallas, discussing the gym and a boxing tournament that was coming up. Mom mentioned some of the boys at the gym, like Aaron, who she thought could win.
Crystal leaned closer, whispered, “How was the party?”
“We had to cancel it.” My two closest girlfriends, Emily and Taylor, lived at the other end of the city and both had jobs, so we didn’t see each other a lot in the summer, but we’d been planning a big party at Taylor’s while her parents were away for the weekend. I was going to DJ and I’d spent hours working on an awesome mix. Then her mom got sick and stayed home.
Mom had flipped out when I asked to play at a couple of grad parties last year—even though people were willing to pay. She said there’d be too much drugs and alcohol around. I told her she could chaperone but she still wouldn’t agree. She was hoping I’d go to university, and was always leaving course books around the house. She didn’t know I’d started to send sample tracks of my beats to some big producers in the States. I checked my e-mail constantly.
“We should go to the beach this week,” Crystal said.
“Sure, that’d be fun.”
I glanced at her plate. She’d only had a few mouthfuls and mostly just smeared her food around. She’d had three glasses of wine, though. Her laugh louder with each one, her face flushed, which made her blue eyes stand out even more with her tan. Dallas gave her a dirty look, but she just made a face at her.
“How are things going at the bar?” I said.
“Good. Next weekend we’ve got the Headkickers.”
“No way,” I said. The Headkickers were this cool indie band from Seattle that was just starting to get really popular.
Crystal smiled. “You should come see them—I could sneak you in.”
“Awesome! That would be so—”
“No way in hell,” Mom said.
“Why not?” Crystal said.
“She’s seventeen.”
“She doesn’t have to drink,” Crystal said. “Lighten up. We did way worse stuff when we were her age.” She laughed.
Mom looked furious now. “Crystal, shut up.”
“You’ll lose your job again,” Dallas said.
“The boss is away,” Crystal said. “And if he finds out, whatever.” She shrugged. “I’ll find another job.”
“Can I go, Mom?” I said. “You can come too.” I knew she’d be pissed I was asking in front of everyone, but that was kind of the point.
“I have to work,” she said.
“I won’t drink,” I said. “I promise.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said, her mouth a tense line.
I already knew what that meant. Crystal gave me a sympathetic look.
I ate the rest of my meal in silence while Crystal told us about some new guy she’d met at the bar last week—he worked for a construction firm, was going through a divorce, and had a couple of kids, traveled around a lot. I wondered if that was the guy in the blue car with the shaved head. Karen was being nice, asking questions, but Mom and Dallas weren’t saying much.
“He’s a little rough around the edges, but he has potential,” Crystal said.
“Yeah, he sounds like a real winner,” Mom said.
“Hey, at least I try,” Crystal said.
Mom flushed. She never had a boyfriend, said she was too busy working and raising a kid, and Dallas was casual with her boyfriend. Terry was a nice guy, worked at a restaurant nearby, and they’d dated for, like, a year. Mom said Dallas was scared to commit. I think she just wasn’t that into him. I’d seen him try to rub her back or hold her hand and she’d pull away.
“You should try dating somebody nice for a change,” Dallas said.
“Nice is boring.” Crystal said it with a smile but she sounded kind of sad. I didn’t understand why she was always a
ttracted to jerks. I hadn’t had a boyfriend myself yet. Well, not a real one. I’d fooled around with a few guys at school but hadn’t gone all the way. If Mom had her wish I’d probably die a virgin.
Crystal poured the rest of the wine in her glass. Dallas gave her a look, and Crystal just smiled. I wished I could be like that, not giving a crap what anyone else thought. She just did whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.
* * *
Dallas gave us a ride home. She and Mom talked in the front seat while I listened to music on my phone and checked my Facebook.
I walked into our apartment and threw my purse onto the hook, missing by a mile. It hit the floor with a thud.
“Seriously, Skylar?” Mom said.
I hung it up, then collapsed onto the couch, picked up the remote, and started flipping through the channels.
“Why can’t I see the Headkickers?”
“You’re underage.”
“I won’t drink—I swear.”
Mom snorted. I’d been in trouble a few times for drinking and even got suspended last year for smoking pot in the bathroom with a friend, which Crystal thought was hysterical. Mom not so much. I wasn’t, like, a stoner or anything, so what was the problem with getting a little buzzed now and then?
“Crystal will watch out for me.”
“Crystal will be working. Do you know how many drunk assholes will be at the bar? You have no idea how to deal with that.”
“I’m seventeen—not stupid. When you were my age, you already had a kid.”
My mom’s face flushed, and I felt bad. I hadn’t meant it that way, was just trying to remind her I was growing up.
“This conversation is over,” she said as she walked toward the bathroom.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next Saturday night, I drove to Crystal’s. I had an older red Honda Civic that Mom, Dallas, and Patrick and Karen had helped me buy for my sixteenth birthday. Crystal had been broke at the time—her boyfriend had taken off with all her money—but she’d bought me a heart-shaped air freshener that made it smell like strawberries and made me a mixed CD with some cool tunes.
Mom thought I was over at Emily’s for the night. When I was younger and Mom had to work all weekend, I stayed at Emily’s, and her parents had invited me on a few trips to their summer cabin. They were teachers and super-nice but they were also strict, so that made it okay with Mom. She used to call Emily’s mom to get parenting advice. I hated it at the time, but now Mom didn’t even follow up with Emily’s mom whenever I said I was heading over there.
Crystal lived in a basement suite about twenty minutes from the gym. When I got there all her windows were open and I could hear music, something with a hard beat. I knocked a couple of times before she turned the music down and finally opened the door. She was wearing faded jeans shorts, the top button undone and the waist rolled over, and a black bikini top.
“Come on in.” She walked into her kitchen, bare feet padding on the tile, reached into the fridge, and pulled out a wine cooler. “Want one?”
“Sure.”
She grabbed another for herself. “Let’s smoke a joint before I get ready.”
“Cool.” I followed her into the living room, where we sat next to each other on the couch.
“Your mom figure anything out?” She pulled a joint out of a little box she kept on the side table.
“I don’t think so.”
Crystal lit the end of the joint, inhaling until it glowed, then held the smoke in her lungs as she passed it to me. I took a deep drag.
“God, it’s hot.” She ran her hands through her hair, then took a sip of her drink.
My body felt relaxed, my eyes heavy. I sank back into the couch.
“Hope we meet some cute boys tonight,” I said.
“That hottie at the gym was sure checking you out the other day.”
“Aaron? He likes me, but it’s not like that. He looks like a thug.”
“Sometimes the bad boys are the sweetest ones. It’s the nice ones you can’t always trust.” Her eyes were angry as she took another toke.
“Did you date a lot of bad boys when you were my age?”
“Bad ones, good ones, all kinds.…” She was quiet for a minute, picking at the label on her bottle. “There was one. Troy…” She smiled. “Shit, we’d go at it for hours in his truck.” She took a couple of hard swallows of her drink.
“What happened?”
“He moved.” She looked sad, then shook her head, making her hair ripple. “Fucking men, anyway.” She laughed, but it was kind of bitter.
“What about my dad? Was he a nice guy?”
Crystal’s face went still. She took another swallow of her drink before answering.
“Billy? Yeah, he was a nice guy.”
“Mom never talks about him.” I used to ask her about him all the time, wanting to know every detail, but Mom didn’t know much, other than his name was Billy Wilson and that he was blond—I got my height and hair from my grandfather—and he’d been into skateboarding and books. They met when he was camping for a couple weeks in the town where she grew up. When she found out she was pregnant, he was already gone and she didn’t know how to find him. It upset her to talk about him, so I eventually stopped asking.
I hoped Crystal would share something else, maybe some little fact that Mom had forgotten, but she was just staring at her bottle, rolling it in her hands.
“I used to wish she’d meet someone nice,” I said. “So I could have a dad, you know? But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.” Once I’d saved up enough for my equipment and could make more money doing real events, I was going to hire a private detective to search for my father. I didn’t want to tell Crystal about that—she was cool but I had a feeling she might tell my mom.
“I don’t know, Sky,” she said. “Having a dad isn’t always a good thing. He might not be who you imagined.” She passed me the joint.
“Maybe he’s a jerk, maybe he wouldn’t even want to meet me.” I took a drag, let the smoke out. “But I have this fantasy that he’ll come watch me DJ. I’ll see him in the crowd and he’ll have this proud look on his face, and I’ll just know it’s him.” I looked down at my pinkie finger, which bent at the top toward the one beside it. It was curved like that on both hands. I used to be embarrassed when I was little but I was used to it now. Clinodactyly, it was called, and I must have inherited it from my dad because my mom said no one in her family had it. I’d asked her, but she said she couldn’t remember his hands.
I glanced up at Crystal. She was also staring at my finger, her eyes shiny.
“You okay?” I said.
She met my eyes. “Your mom just wishes she knew how to find him for you but she can’t. She feels bad about that. Maybe go easy on her.…”
I’d never really heard Crystal worry about someone else’s feelings before.
She stood up. “Come sit in the bathroom with me while I do my makeup.”
* * *
The bar was packed, the dance floor jammed with bodies, but Crystal got me a seat up at the bar where I had a great view of the band. I’d been worried I might get busted at the door, but Crystal had lent me a pair of her booty shorts and a sexy top that actually made me look like I had boobs and did my makeup so I looked older. She just walked in all confident and introduced me as one of her friends. No one asked for my ID.
We’d agreed I wouldn’t drink at the bar—just in case we did get caught—but she kept me supplied with Red Bulls and we went outside a couple of times on her breaks to smoke a joint. The guy she’d told us about at dinner showed up and she introduced me. His name was Larry, and I didn’t like him or the way he checked out Crystal’s butt every time she turned around, but she kept giving him flirty looks. His head was shaved, so I figured he was the guy who’d driven her to the gym. He also had this habit of licking his lips every time he took a sip of his drink, which was gross. He kept trying to ask me questions, but I pretended I couldn’t hear him.
When Crystal was done, we headed back to her place. I drove because Crystal had had a couple of drinks at the bar. Larry came too, and the three of us sat around smoking another joint—and drinking. Crystal and Larry were really pounding them now, when they weren’t busy flirting with each other. I felt like the third wheel but I couldn’t go home—Mom thought I was at Emily’s, and anyway I was too stoned and a little drunk.
I sat on the chair while they got closer on the couch. Larry’s hand was around my aunt’s waist, almost climbing up her shirt. She laughed and pushed him away, but I could tell she was into it. I stared at my drink, my face hot.
“Hey, Skylar, do you mind if we disappear for a bit?” Crystal stood and grabbed Larry’s hand to pull him up.
“No, that’s cool.”
They headed for Crystal’s bedroom. I turned up the music in the living room, grabbed the last cigarette from Crystal’s pack on the coffee table, and lit it, taking long drags and blowing the smoke out in lazy puffs as I sprawled on the couch. I didn’t really enjoy smoking, but I was kind of annoyed at my aunt.
I’d finished my cigarette and had my eyes closed—letting the pulse of the music wash over me, tapping out a beat on my leg—when I heard noises in the bedroom, kind of a thump, a muffled scream. I jerked up.
Crystal was shouting something. Larry was yelling too, but I couldn’t make out the words.
I stood up and turned down the stereo so I could hear better.
Another scream, then a crash like something had been knocked over.
I raced down the hall to the bedroom, pushed open the door.
Crystal was kneeling naked on the side of the bed, punching at Larry’s arms and legs as he tried to get his clothes on. The lamp was on the floor.
“Get out! Get out!” she yelled.
“I’m trying to, you crazy bitch!” he said, pulling his pants up and grabbing his shirt off the floor.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” Crystal jumped off the bed, came at him with fists flying, caught him in the corner of the jaw.
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