I know I’m hard to love. Teachers barely tolerated me. Other kids got irritated with me right quick. I could never keep a best friend more than a week or so. Forty, Lou, and my mom. They were it.
And what was it really? A few minutes every so often. A few grunts. Hands I could ignore. A mess on my sheets I could wash the next day. I could stare at a wall while he did it. Hold my breath. It never lasted that long.
I’m a tough girl, right?
One night, my mom caught Ed coming out of my room. She started looking at me funny. She drank more, and all she had to say to me was clean your room. Unload the dishwasher. Don’t you think it’s time you got an afterschool job? See? No one can love you if they know. It’s too gross.
I was down to Forty and Lou.
Then Forty left for basic. Then the look in Ed Ellis’ eye changed.
The walls were closing in, and Lou was all I had left. Make it real or keep it a bad dream. You get to make the choice over and over again. Every morning when you wake up.
In the guidance counselor’s office while she’s checking a box and meeting with you about your four-year plan. On the bus ride home from school when Miss Amy asks you if something’s wrong. At the dinner table when your stepdad tells you that you can do better than the grease monkey you’re dating.
A thousand choices a day, a choice every second you’re alone with nothing to distract yourself. Your mind rolls on a loop, and every time you decide to eat it, the choices pile up in your belly like rocks.
And here’s the worst of it. The reason I never said a thing. If I made it real, then it really happened. To me. And somehow, I’d have to live with that, and at sixteen, I didn’t know how. So I decided it was a bad dream.
And when Ed Ellis looked around, saw I had no one left, and he tried to make it really real? I beat him with a chair, and I got out of this house, this town.
I did come back for his funeral. He passed from pancreatic cancer. He went quickly. Mom begged me to come see him. He was asking for me. I refused, and she’s never talked to me since.
I’d half-thought maybe I’d see Forty at the funeral, but he’d been gone a few years at that point. He’d never come back from the Army.
I was sitting in a corner of the funeral parlor, playing on my phone, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Shirlene Robard, this old lady from the Steel Bones MC who kind of adopted me for a while. She’s a hardcore, old-school biker chick. She came to the viewing in a faded Appetite for Destruction T-shirt, skintight black jeans, and snakeskin cowgirl boots.
Back when I was with Forty, I’d help her out around the clubhouse. Ran errands and such. She was a nurse, so she was always fussing over the older guys. We’d been tight, and when I left town, she still called me every so often. I’d entertain her with stories about the big city. She’d reminisce about Twitch and bitch about how the old dudes wouldn’t take care of themselves.
Shirlene paid her respects to Lou and my mom, and then we’d stepped outside—mostly to avoid my mom’s disapproving stares—and she slipped me a half pint of whiskey. We passed the bottle, taking baby sips, and she listened while I told someone for the first time why I wasn’t sorry Ed Ellis was dead.
She listened for what felt like hours. Then she’d patted my knee and said, “Too bad we can’t kill him. You’re a tough cookie, Nevaeh.”
You know what? I was.
I shake myself, stretch my legs. I should drop by Shirlene’s place. See if she needs anything. She’s retired now. Even though she keeps herself crazy busy, she might need help with her lawn or something. She’s a proud woman. Not likely to speak up if she could use a hand.
Yeah, that’s what I’ll do tomorrow. I wrinkle my nose. It’s gloomy as shit in here. I pop up to my feet.
My heart’s raw, and everything’s wrong. For almost ten years, a drawer’s been open with a sweater hanging out. A chair is missing. Forty Nowicki has pink lipstick on his collar, and he still hates me.
I’m living off my little brother, maybe hiding out from the mob, and—to be one hundred percent honest—I’m not really sure where my pants are or why I’m hanging out in my underwear.
But I’m breathing a little easier.
There’s nothing in this room I haven’t carried with me in my memory.
I don’t need to run.
I can stand on my own two feet. I can walk out of this room. Shut the door. I left before, and I was young and broke and friendless. I couldn’t help but take this room with me.
But I’m older now. Maybe this is just a room.
Maybe I’m not what I learned I was here.
Maybe I’m strong.
Maybe I have been all this time.
4
NEVAEH
I sleep really well for the first time in forever. When I wake up, I spackle on the concealer and head over to Shirlene’s. It’s early, around noon. She’s already on her trike, strapping on her helmet.
When she sees me, the corner of her lip quirks up, just barely. She’s so happy to see me.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She tugs on a glove. I give her a little salute.
“Is that new?”
She’s got herself a fancy touring trike in teal, complete with a trunk and everything.
“Yup. Had myself a midlife crisis. Bought a bike.” Shirlene pats the passenger seat behind her. “Hop on.”
“You got a spare helmet?”
“Your head’s hard enough. And I’m not planning on laying her down. It’s got three wheels.” Shirlene revs the engine. I shrug, grin, and climb onto the seat behind her.
Shirlene pulls off cautiously, gets herself up to an audacious fifty miles per hour, and I lean back against the backrest and lift my arms into the wind. The sun is warm on my face, and the sky is a perfect robin’s egg blue.
“Where are we going?” I shout as she turns down toward the river.
“Makin’ the rounds.”
I don’t know what that means, but I’m up for anything. I’m already bored out of my mind at the house, and I really need to let my face heal up more before I go job hunting. I spackled on concealer this morning, but it didn’t do much.
Shirlene takes it down to twenty-five as she enters a rundown neighborhood and turns into a cul-de-sac that ends at the river. There’s a boxy building that looks like it’s been broken into apartments, and across a parking lot, there’s a rancher right on the water with a very fancy two-story addition. A pier juts out into the slow moving Luckahannock, and at the end, there’s a grizzled old man in a wheelchair.
“Boots!” I swing off the trike and go running. I haven’t seen Boots in years. He always used to smoke me up back in the day and tell me stories about following the Dead.
He’s fishing. Well, he’s holding a pole, but he has a beer in the other hand, and by the way he startles as I go pounding down the wood slats, he was dozing.
“Boots!”
He grins, and this guy has the best smile. It’s goofy as hell, teeth missing, but as innocent and joyful as a baby. He doesn’t look any older than he was when I left town, but he was old as shit then.
“Wild child!”
I’m not sure if he remembers me. He knew my name back in the day, but he always called me wild child.