by Skye Warren
* * *
When I wake up the moon peeks between the plastic slats at my window, the quiet creak of the trailer the only sound. But I know something’s different. The air feels different.
Someone is here.
My chest feels full with relief and a stupid kind of happiness, before I realize it can’t be Daddy. He would never be so quiet, especially coming from a two-week bender. He would crash into the counters, bang his head on the doorframe, and swear in loud whispers before finally falling asleep with snores that rattle the walls.
A burglar? We don’t have much of anything to steal, but people get dumb when they’re desperate. Maybe Mr. Romero told someone I had a hundred dollars.
Or maybe it’s Mr. Romero himself, come to my trailer since I won’t come to his. My heart beats wild and loud, banging against my ribs like it’s trying to break out.
“Trigonometry,” says a voice in the darkness.
For a half second I think it’s the man from school. The one who’s tall and dark, his voice too smooth and his smile too cold to be trusted. Jonathan Scott. The terror that rises up in me is bigger and sharper than when I thought it was a burglar, or even Mr. Romero in my trailer. The very worst threat. The same as drowning, my very own nightmare.
And then my sleepy mind registers something about the voice. It’s not deep.
“What’s a little kid doing with a trigonometry book?”
I sit up in bed. My gaze moves over the shadows in the room until I find him against the wall, his shadow thumbing through my textbook. “Don’t touch that.”
He flips the book open to a page, pale white from the moonlight through the blinds. “To prove an identity, you have to use logical steps to show that one side of the equation can be transformed into the other side of the equation. You know what that means, Penny?”
I’m supposed to feel bad for stealing his money, and I do, but right now I’m mad. Mad that he wasn’t there and mad that he suddenly appeared. Mad that he scared me.
“Yeah, I know what it means. Probably more than you.”
His laugh sounds so much like the man from school that I narrow my eyes, looking at the way he holds his head, the way his shoulders are set, the way he carries himself. Same, same, same. “You some kind of baby genius?”
“I’m not a baby.”
“And I’m the dumbass who left you with my money.”
My cheeks turn hot. “I’m sorry I did that. I have it here, under my pillow. The rest of it, anyway. After I paid for the soup. But you can have that too, if you want.”
He laughs, the sound clanging like bells. “I don’t want it back.”
“You have to take it,” I say, scared that he sounds so much like that stranger. “The soup is enough for me, if you leave it. And you need the money more than I do.”
His shadow goes still. “What do you know about that?”
“I know you have a dad who’s mean, mean enough to run away from.”
“Doesn’t take a baby genius to figure that out. I pretty much told you.”
“Then there’s the man from the school.”
“What school?”
“From some fancy private school, I guess. He came to visit me at recess.” Something cold touches my bones, making me shiver. There’s a reason his laugh sounds the same. A reason he’s run away from home. The answer comes to me the way numbers do, before I’m even sure I want to know.
Black eyes narrow. “What did he look like?”
“Like you.”
This strange feeling comes over me, like it did when I first cheated. I knew I had something important I needed to do. But I didn’t have a deck of cards in front of me. No trigonometry proof to solve. Numbers were easy, but people are hard. They always have been.
A boy without any place to go.
A man who promises me safety, a real future.
The proof doesn’t write itself inside my mind. There are gaps between each logical jump. Unsolved variables. Unknowns. I can figure out the answer anyway. It makes too much sense.
“He talk to your class?” The boy’s voice is casual, but I can hear the tension underneath.
“Not really. He came at recess. I think Mrs. Keller told him what I can do.”
“And what’s that?”
I shrug in the dark. “Does it matter?”
“Yeah, it matters. It matters if you told him what he wanted to hear.”
That dark wave passes over me again, dragging me under. A warning. “He gave me a bad feeling. Not the same as Mr. Romero, but worse. So I told him a wrong answer.”
“Good. When he comes back you tell him as many wrong answers as you need to until he goes away.”
“How do you know he’ll come back?”
“Because he doesn’t give up.” A short laugh. “I thought that meant he would keep looking for me. Instead he went looking for a replacement.”
“Did you go to his school?”
The sound he makes is hard and mean. “His school? Yeah, I guess you could say that. Learned a lot. You wouldn’t like it there, trust me.”
“They don’t have the free lunch program?”
A longer pause this time. “It’s important that you don’t go along with him, understand? No matter what he says. No matter what he promises you. It’s not worth it, okay? You need to believe me.”
“I don’t even know you.”
He tosses the book aside. “I’m serious. You need to stay away from him.”
“Tell me your name. And don’t say it’s Quarter.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because you want me to trust you. At least I should know what to call you.”
“Damon Scott.”
My stomach sinks. “So that means your dad is…”
“Jonathan Scott, yes. You’ve heard of him, then. That’s good. You know what he’s capable of.”
Everyone in the trailer park knows about him, after Lisa Blake. The people my father plays cards with are dangerous, the ones he borrows money from even more so. But even he would never dare go near Jonathan Scott, the man who rules the west side of Tanglewood.
“Why would he want me?”
“Because he likes to fuck—sorry. He likes to mess with people. That’s what he does. Moves people around on his big ugly chessboard. You know how to play chess?”
I shake my head even though he can’t see me. Some of the books I’ve read have descriptions of chess. I know how the pieces move but I’ve never played. Never even seen a chess set in person. “Not really.”
“Well, pawns are the front line. They’re easy to find, but they can only move one way, one square at a time. A kid who’s what? Six years old?”
“Seven,” I say, indignant.
A soft laugh. “A seven-year-old doing trigonometry. Imagine what he could turn you into.”
“What?” I asked, a little awed by the idea that I could become something. Something other than one of the tired mothers with three kids from different men or one of the women on the street corners. A girl from the west side didn’t have other options.
“He’d turn you into a weapon,” Damon says, his voice flat. “A bullet. He would spend years making you, and when you were done, he’d pull the trigger.”
“Is that what he did to you?”
“Why?” he asks, his voice rough. “Do I seem dangerous?”
I remember the way he had looked that first night, all puffed up and strong. Like he could shoot me with the gun he claimed to have. Or slash me with his knife. Instead he had offered me food.
And he didn’t hurt me now, even though I’d stolen from him.
“You’re not dangerous.”
After a beat he says, “Not to you, baby genius. Not to you.”