When Ash honked, my aunt walked me out of the house. Earthworms rolled about in her decaying vegetable garden. My mind returned briefly to the old football field shining bone gray in the moonlight, and the unease that had been flirting with me all month ran a cracked fingernail down my neck. I knew in that moment. Something was wrong with Honaw. Honaw was broken, like I was broken, and as much as it might look normal from the outside, inside it was an open wound, bleeding and hurting and about to overflow. I knew this as well as I knew my own pain.
But knowing is one thing.
Believing is another.
"What," my aunt said lightly, "would your mother and father think of me sending you off to your friends now?"
At the mention of my parents a wall fell down between us, or around us. I felt it go, and I was scared to have it gone, but I was glad too. It seemed like the wrong moment for a lie or a dodge, so I said, "They wouldn't approve."
"No." Sandy squinted into the morning sunlight. I remember that sunlight clearly, the way we remember all lost things. It was bright and sharp and pure as springwater, and washed in it, my aunt became a different version of herself. Not younger, but different. More content, perhaps. Not so lonely. She lowered her gaze to me. "And I guess they definitely wouldn't approve of this either."
"Approve of what?"
She leaned over and tucked something into the pocket of my leather jacket. I had decided I rather liked the thing (the cross I had taken off, however), and was wearing it open over a white undershirt.
"What's that?" I said.
"In my day we called it grass."
"Weed?"
She shook her head sadly. "Grass sounds so much nicer, don't you think?"
I had no comment on that. I was still stuck on, "Why?"
"Does there have to be a reason?"
"No," I said after a pause. "No, there doesn't."
She leaned over once more and planted a kiss on my cheek, a big wet one. "Don't keep Ash waiting forever now."
I pushed on down the path, Bitchmaster's wheels clicking across the stones.
"I'm curious," my aunt called after me. "Might the three of you at some point actually learn how to play a musical instrument?"
"Santy . . . Santy . . . what would be the fun in that?"
Her laugh warmed the cool morning. "Have a nice first day of your long weekend . . . Joelie."
Our long weekend would turn out to be much longer than expected.
♫
So, we hadn't won the talent show.
But we had taken home a consolation prize, one that would turn out to be far more valuable than KY's $100 ticket to Applebee's.
A one-day suspension.
♫
Nip's voice soaked anxiously through the locked door. "Mom'll murder me."
"Your mom'll never know," I cooed from the welcome mat. "We'll have you back before she steps one foot into Honaw again. Won't we, Ash?"
"We will. Absolutely. Before her shift even ends at the hospital."
A pause. "What if she calls?"
"Then you'll answer, dipshit, and we'll be real quiet until you hang up."
"What if she calls the house phone?"
Ash laughed. "You have a house phone?"
Another pause. "No."
"Then what are you waiting for? Come on."
"I don't know, you guys . . ."
Ash fingered the eyehole and I pounded the nearby window with the drumbeater and together we chanted, "Comeoncomeoncomeon-comeoncome—"
The door opened. Nip was back to his normal plainclothes self, his face scrubbed clean of paint except for a smudge of mascara beneath his right eye. He lifted the novel in his hand. "I'm bringing my book."
"We'd expect nothing less, would we?"
"No." I returned the drumbeater to its bag like a gun to its holster. "Not a smidge less."
"And," he said, one finger raised, "I get to choose the first album."
"Of course." Ash stepped back to make room for him. After he locked the house and started for the van, she murmured, "Over my dead body."
"Shotgun," I called out as he climbed into the front seat.
Nip lived two miles north of my aunt's place, which sat a mile north from the high school. We headed the opposite way, toward Ash's house and the mine. The van grunted as it hauled us uphill. There were only a few cars out that morning, and that includes the cars that were parked. Vacant drive-throughs hugged vacant restaurants. A crow picked yesterday's hamburger meat off the floor of the McDonald's playpen. Above the supermarket, a towering green billboard (Turn Your Money-Dreams into Cash-Money) looked down on an acre of unoccupied asphalt. I realized that this ghost-town we were passing through was exactly what Nip had been referring to when he talked about the adult population fleeing Honaw every workday.
Us kids had been left home alone.
"My cross is ashes right now. Literally. It's in the bottom of the fireplace." Nip leaned over the seat divider and nudged Ash. "So, what'd your parents do when they heard?"
"You make a critical error, assuming they heard at all."
"You didn't tell them? The school didn't call them?"
"No and who knows." She shrugged as an all-black military Humvee barreled past us. "My guess is that one of the seven million voicemails on our answering machine is from an aghast Principal Werther detailing the irrevocable damage my potty mouth did to the youth of Honaw. When she doesn't hear back from mom and pops in a week or so, there'll be a letter in the mail. Maybe even"—Ash gave an excited little shiver—"a home appearance."
"Wait," I said. "You have a house phone?"
"Yeah. I know." She swung the wheel and we rocked off the Road onto the leaf-shadowed lane that led to her place. "It's like a museum artifact, that thing."
Nip sat back down. "Lucky."
"It's nothing special. Trust me. It squeals like a pig in the middle of the night and then you run down to pick it up thinking someone you know has been stabbed or something, and it's just some guy from India trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner."
"No. I mean about your parents."
"Oh." Ash was quiet for a little while. "That's not so special either."
I felt her silence pulling for a change of subject, so I said, "Guess what our favorite aunt gifted us with this fine morning."
Gravel crunched beneath the tires as we climbed Ash's steep, winding driveway.
"Not more grape juice, I hope," said Nip. "That stuff made my stomach do nasty things."
"No. Even better." I was reaching into my coat pocket for the joint when Ash slammed on the brakes. Nip smacked the back of her seat. My skull yanked hard on my neck.
"What the—"
I lost my voice. In front of Ash's house, on the bottom step of the staircase, sat a long-legged figure in a black sweatshirt.
Slowly, wearily, the figure lifted his head.
Billy Rascoe stared out at us from under a deep hood.
♫
Billy didn't move. For a long time neither did we. Then Ash told us to wait in the van and opened her door. Then Nip exploded, "Like heck," and opened his door. Then I pushed open my door, and both of them turned on me together, saying it was me Billy had it in for, that I wasn't going anywhere, not without my chair, and while they were talking I threw my legs out one at a time and shoved off the seat.
Gravel isn't made for diving.
I bruised up my palms and barely avoided kissing the rocks. When I looked up from my stomach, Billy was on his feet moving toward me. Dragging toward me, like the mass of his body had increased and gravity was working twice as hard on him. The skin around his eyes was a bruised, wilted-rose purple. The holes in his jeans gawped wider than zombie mouths.
Nip stepped between us, his back to me, his hands tightened into fists. "I won't let you hurt him again."
I know it sounds gay to admit, but that touched me. It really did.
"Again?" shouted Ash. "What do you mean, again?"
Billy stopped. He looked down at Nip, then past Nip, at me. "I'm not. That's not what I'm here about. That was before—"
"What was before?" Ash skidded into place by Nip, who hadn't budged an inch. "What does he mean by that?" She twisted toward Billy. "And how the fuck do you know where I live?"
"I'm . . ." Billy searched for the words, or maybe his voice. "My house is up the road."
"The hell it is. Since when?"
"Since always?"
I was only half listening to this exchange. My brain was stuck on what Billy had said, what he had been about to say. "Before what?"
Billy blinked at Ash, like she had just appeared there. "Ghost Girl. You have to come with me. You're the only one who'll listen. Who'll believe."
"Before what, Billy?" I propped myself on an elbow. "What happened?"
He turned his head my way, and in his gaze I saw headlights shining off a pair of black marble eyes.
"My Dad. He came home."
____ ____
Author's Note:
Thank you for reading! If you're enjoying Poor Things, please consider hitting the vote button—it will help other readers find the story. Comments are always appreciated, too. Seriously, I love them.
Coming up, the trio take their first steps into the dark . . .