No answer. Her whispery creek had stopped running. Maybe she had no idea who I was. “Sucks,” I said. “I grew up just me and my mom. I had to take care of her a lot.”
“How is she now?”
I wanted to lie. And I didn’t. “Dead. They both are, her and my dad.”
“Shi-it,” she said. “And here I thought the football heroes came from the nicer homes.”
“Even a lowly orphan can be a mighty General,” I said, and God forgive me for what I thought: She knows I’m Eighty-Eight. Girls give it up for that. She shifted her weight, a bird fixing to fly away. I nearly blacked out from how bad I wanted to hold her.
Finally she spoke. “No lie, you’re state property? DSS guardianship and everything.”
I felt more stoned than I was, swimming around in my head for a place to land. I asked how she knew about that, and she said the DSS had their doubts on her dad raising a girl alone. He never lost custody, but it was touch-and-go. She actually knew Old Baggy. I’d forgotten the lady’s name, but she said it. She knew things I kept locked up. My eyes had made friends with the dark and I could see all of her now: the little white dress and lace-up sandals, the bag of popcorn. I wanted her to throw it on the ground and run off with me. Not to the woods. Some better place.
“So. I better go find my people,” she said. If people meant person, like a boyfriend, I needed to vaporize him. She stretched her head to one side. “They’ll be wondering.”
“Me though,” I said. “I could be your people. If you want. Like, next time, or whatever.” I was not normally this terrible at asking a girl out. Never, honestly. This was epic.
She laughed. “What in the world is scaring you so bad?”
“That I won’t see you again.”
“Oh, my goodness, Demon. You don’t have any idea, do you?”
I asked her, idea of what. Even in the dark I could see her black eyes finding me out.
“You’re the one all the girls will be writing to in prison. Oh, my Lord. They’ll roll on the ground pulling each other’s hair out to get on your visiting list.”
Then she was gone. And I was a mess. She knows my name. That’s what I was thinking. Not, that was weird, what a righteously fucked-up thing to say, that I’m going to end up in prison. What can I say. Love. It’s an unexcusable train wreck.
For the next while I had weight and occupied space, too shocked to think. I watched the handcuffed movie couples having their bad day. This squatty monster thing beat one of the guys with a shovel till his head came off. Another guy tried to fight, and it ripped off his nuts. I’m not making any of this up. For about fifteen minutes I’d wanted this night never to end, now I was ready for it to be over. And then. Here comes Tommy Waddles. Walking along all fretful, balancing a flimsy box of tall cups. My first thought: Who buys drinks from the concessions, cheaper to bring your own, and my second thought: Damn. It’s Tommy. How did I know it was him? The hair. Still too much for his head, standing straight up. I hollered and he said who’s that, and I told him. I told him I still had his T-shirt he gave me to sleep in at Creaky’s.
He almost dropped his concessions box. We hadn’t seen each other in close to five years. The Lee County drive-in evidently is a portal to other dimensions.
Tommy was still the best of men. He wanted to know everything. I told him my living situation now was the type of fosters we never believed existed: good food, nice people, not in it for the money. He himself was eighteen so out of foster care. He never did get adopted, but that’s okay, he was living in an apartment with friends. He had a job and a girlfriend. Tommy goddamn Waddles. I came with him to meet his roommates, eight in number, all in one Camaro. At the drive-in you paid per vehicle, which led to any number of pile-in shenanigans. The concession drinks were because they’d forgotten mixers. These guys were discussing their plan of buying old horses from farmers and selling them for dog food in Canada. After my first Jack and Coke I remembered to tell Tommy I was hanging out with Fast Forward now. I invited him to come say hello, but he said that’s okay, he’d better stay and look after his ever-more-shitfaced roommates.
After my second Jack and Coke I spilled my guts about Dori, that I was in love and everything. Just talking about her made me want to run off and find her, to settle this people question. Tommy got it. He’d fallen for his girlfriend over the computer. His job was at the newspaper, emptying wastepaper baskets and cleaning their coffee room, but they let him have his own account on a computer and that’s how he found this girl. She was awesome and in Pennsylvania. It sounded like the sex potential was pretty limited there, but probably Tommy was more of a gentleman and not as fixated on that aspect of the girlfriend enterprise.
The movie was winding down, the squatty demon had done about all the damage one movie allows, and I didn’t want to miss my ride home. The Lariat was easy to spot because of this battery camping lantern he always set up on the tailgate, kind of festive. Bugs bombing around the light. Fast Forward had his arm around a tall, skinny girl that guys called Car Wash, not to her face. She had on a silky type dress with her hipbones jutting out like furniture under a sheet. Fast Forward was ignoring her, arguing with Big Bear and some other ex-Generals over who had the better offensive game, Riverheads or Surry. Nobody making very good points. To be honest, the tequila shots had won the day, but neither was any man giving an inch. They were going to die on their hill of Riverheads or Surry. Fast Forward tried repeatedly to say “onside kick recoveries,” and for the first time ever, I wondered if he was okay to drive. I could get us to my house, no problem, but getting the keys would be the trick. Unless he passed out first.
And then who should appear but Rose Dartell. Like I said, a portal. She stomped out of the nowhere darkness into our little circle of light. Fast Forward with deep feeling was saying words like sourced overtime and legal lorward flateral so he didn’t notice Rose until she chucked down something heavy in a paper bag, on the tailgate. I felt the clank of the metal in my teeth.
Fast looked at her, wide-eyed, a notch more sober.
She glared back. “I had to drive halfway to fucking Kentucky. BJ’s closed at eleven.”
He shook his head fast, like he’d caught a shiver. “What?”
“You’re welcome.”
“Oh, where are my manners.” He ashed his cigarette too close to the silky hip of Car Wash. She edged away from him. “I am so thankful, I’ll tolerate your mess of a face and let you ride around in my truck. But just so you know, less hideous girls have done more to get there.”
We all went dead quiet. Rose turned towards the rest of us, her pointy teeth glittering. “Just so you all know? Sterling Ford is the worst mistake his dead whore mother ever made.”
And off she went into the dark. I couldn’t believe what just happened. We all have our secret stores of poison, but to strike outright, calling a girl hideous to her face? The other guys seemed to give no shit, they were pulling out round two of Jose Cuervo and poking into the empty bag, with somebody saying “Didn’t you give her a fifty, man?” Fast Forward saying “That bitch.” And me saying “I’ll go get your change.” It just came out of me. I went after her.
She was moving fast, headed for the back of the lot, but her frizzed-out hair was catching the light some way. And then the red glow of whatever it was that she lit up. She bypassed the campfire circle, a bunch of kids that looked too young to be out here, and disappeared into the trees. It was a joint she’d lit. I tracked her by the smell of it. I didn’t want to scare her, so I called out hey.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Who is that?”
“Me, Demon.” I came closer. She held out the joint, but I passed, feeling the need for a clear head. Some bargaining was called for. “Nobody should talk to a girl that way. I’m sorry.”
“Wasn’t you that said it.” She inhaled and blew out, mad, ragged puffs. “Has he been telling you he owns his own place now? Over by Cedar Hill?”
I didn’t answer. I wanted to ask her a lot of things. Her face was a scribble of rage.
“Well, he doesn’t own squat. He feeds the horses and cleans their barn over there. Some dude ranchers that moved here from New York. He lives in what they call their guest house, and you know what? It’s a fucking barn. He is exactly equal to a horse’s ass.”
Then why keep coming around? Rushing the scrimmage, bringing him whatever he wants? I settled on one question I could ask. “Did you know his mom, for real?”
She shook her head, holding her smoke. Then blew out. “Before my time. My mother took her on as a rescue. She died whenever he was real little, and we adopted him.”
I tried to square this with everything else I knew about him. “He’s your adopted brother?”
“Was,” she said. “Until he was nine. They feel guilty over it to this day, but my parents had to unadopt him. Can you believe that?”
“Jesus,” I said. “How come?”
“The safety of their other kids. Sterling tried to kill us, any number of times.”
