C H A P T E R 5: The Girl With Two Names
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Fact: Scout-Juliet "SJ" Compton hated when people asked her why she had two first names.
She hated it more than she hated children, vienna sausages, and mittens. And Scout-Juliet Compton absolutely despised children, vienna sausages and mittens.
So, on her first day of fourth grade, after enduring the same probing from her peers for five whole years on the matter of her names, she replied, with the straightest face she could muster, "I had a twin named Juliet... and I ate her in the womb." That was also about the same time that her collection of friends reduced to one, Bodhi "Bo" Benson, who only stuck around because she was shunned as well — her status as a pariah, however, resulted from being the resident lesbian. They were known as Cannibal Lecter and Bo Van Dyke, respectively — although respect and those godawful nicknames should never go in the same sentence.
Scout's reasoning was untrue, of course. There was no cannibalized twin. It was just that her parents could not decide on a single first name. Her father, Scott, campaigned for Scout, arguing that the best names had a personality of all their own, and Scout seemed to have more character than most. Her mother, Virginia, asserted that Scout was an "atrocious" name and that Juliet was wholesome. They almost got divorced over it. Eventually, they conceded, gave her both names and threw a hyphen in the mix.
Scout always thought they should have just gotten the divorce. After all, Virginia left before Scout could even walk. She never came back.
Scout's brows knitted together as she clipped her name tag to her tank top. Why she even needed a name tag was beyond her. She worked at the desk of her father's auto repair shop, for Christ's sake. No one cared about her name. The only thing the customers cared about was getting the free tire rotation that came with the oil change, as promised by the sign outside.
That was all Scout's life consisted of; sitting within the confines of her father's shop, Santan Valley Auto Repair, answering the phone and making appointments; and, on occasion, Bo kidnapping Scout to hang out at the shops further in town, wherein they would terrorize every old classmate that coined them as Cannibal Lecter and Bo Van Dyke. They usually got kicked out of the shops, or the owners would threaten to call the cops. That was all the excitement Santan Valley had to offer. Often times, Scout wished that they actually would call the cops. Getting arrested would be more interesting than anything else that had occurred in her life thus far.
After graduating from high school four months early, Scout thought she would be out partying with friends, having drunken sex, and regretting it in the morning. That was what every other eighteen-year-old girl in their town was doing, but Scout soon discovered that she was not the average eighteen-year-old girl from Santan Valley. Scout's only friend was Bo, who had an aversion to anything that even remotely resembled a social gathering; and the only guy Scout had ever had sex with was her ex-boyfriend, Antonio Ruiz, who cheated on her with half of Santan Valley's female population. She found it astounding that they had not yet named a sexually transmitted disease after him.
Scout sighed, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She ran a hand through her long, copper hair that faded into blonde at the ends like the bleeding hues of the sunrise, hoping that she could miraculously pull the thought of Antonio right out of her head. She hated wasting valuable time thinking about a guy that was probably banging a cheerleader somewhere in Arizona right now. No matter what he was doing, Scout knew that she was the farthest thing from his mind.
Scout pushed the thought of Antonio, and all of the sentiments that came with it, out of her mind. She descended the stairs from her and her father's little apartment over the auto shop and joined him downstairs.
Scott Compton was a short, but fairly muscular man that scowled as often as he breathed. He did not scowl for any particular reason, though. After his wife left him to care for a five-month old baby girl all by himself, scowling just became his natural expression. Contradictory to his face, which still appeared to be handsome in that mature way that salt-and-pepper-haired men tended to look, he never really was a negative person. He had a lighthearted nature to him, and a kindness imbibed deep in his bones. Ask him to do you a favor and he'll do you five, Scout always said.
Looking at her father hunched over the reception desk with the phone squished between his shoulder and his ear, and his reading glasses struggling to get a grip on the end of his sweat-slicked nose, Scout observed that the only physical feature she ever got from him was his height. She would have been perfectly content accepting any other trait from her father, but she just so happened to be burdened with the only one she absolutely abhorred having — her shortness was near the top of her very extensive hate-list, right between mittens and bugs.
Scout had only ever seen one photo of her mother — before her father "accidentally" dropped it down the garbage disposal, — and had long ago decided that she did not look like her much either. Virginia was six-foot, blonde, and blue-eyed. Scout was five-foot-two, brunette, and hazel-eyed. Virginia was oddly pale for having spent her entire youth in Arizona. Scout always seemed to hold a tan; not as good of a tan as her aunt Georgia Morgan, however, but it would do. And whereas Virginia had all of the elements of average, Scout, as her father would always say, had a face that belonged in a magazine. Scout would never take his word for it, though. He was her father, so as far as she was concerned, he was supposed to say things like that. It's in the job description.
Scout watched as a bead of sweat raced across her father's forearm, passed the old, faded tattoo that was supposed to be an eagle, but looked more like a fist-sized, discolored birthmark these days. She had not noticed until then that she was also beginning to sweat. The Arizona heat was bad. It was always especially bad after a thunderstorm, which they had already experienced two of within the last hour and a half. Arizona's weather made the top-ten of her hate list; right above miniature forks.
"Dad, it's hot," she whined.
Scott, who was still on the phone, shot her that famous scowl. "It's Arizona, SJ," he whispered, placing his hand over the phone. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Turn on the damn air conditioning," she glowered.
Scott sighed. He reached his arm over the desk and flipped the switch on the wall's thermostat. A blast of cool air shot out of the vent over Scout's head, blowing her hair over her shoulders in an ombré cascade.
"I should make you pay the bill next month," he said.
Scout could not help but laugh at her father's expense. "Considering that you're the one who writes my paychecks, you'll still be paying for it."
Scott's face fell back into that scowl as he tossed a pen at her. She caught it just before it could smack her in the forehead, and smiled brightly at him. That was their daily routine: Scout woke up late, forcing her father to answer the phone; she complained to him about the weather; he threatened to dock her check for having the air conditioning running all of the time; and then one would throw something at the other before Scott gave her a kiss on the cheek as she took over the phone call. Then he would disappear into the large auto garage to repair some Santan Valley resident's piece-of-crap jalopy.
Scout sat behind the reception desk, her feet propped on the desk, for what felt like a long time. She had peeled the electric green polish off of three of her nails by the time a call came in. When Scout answered with a monotonous "Santan Valley Auto Repair," the man on the other end of the line curtly replied that he had the wrong number and hung up.
Scout parroted his words in a high-pitched, whiny tone before slamming the phone back onto the receiver. She hated being hung up on about as much as she hated George Bush — which was a whole lot.
After unwinding a loose thread from her denim shorts, Scout decided she could not sit at that desk any longer, and resolved to joining her father in the garage, appointments be damned.
When Scout opened the adjoining door between the shop and the garage, a wave of Arizona heat all but slapped her across the face. Her father had opened the garage doors to let in the light of the scintillating afternoon sun. Scout was on her way to shut them but stopped dead in her tracks.
Her father was laying on the mechanic's creeper beneath Mrs. Fern's, the elderly motel owner's, green Plymouth Fury, and sitting perched on the hood scantily clad in a strained tank top and Daisy Dukes with that unfailingly haughty smirk plastered across her face was Mandy Morgan, the bane of Scout's existence. Mandy's position on Scout's hate-list was number one — two and three, as well, on particularly bad days.
"Good afternoon, bitch-face," Mandy snickered.
Scott rolled out from under the car. "Language," he warned, before disappearing again.
Mandy rolled her eyes. "Sorry, uncle Scott."
"No afternoon is a good afternoon if you're alive," Scout held up a fist, "but I can easily take care of that."
Scout had as much tenacity as Arizona had heat — which was also a whole lot, — and when it came to Mandy Morgan, irritant extraordinaire, Scout was especially tenacious.
"Wow," Mandy said with feigned hurt. "Threatening my life, now? What a horrible cousin you are."
Scout crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "Oh, shut your trap, Mattress-Back-Mandy."
Mandy's eyes widened in horror. Whenever anyone mentioned the nickname that haunted her throughout her entire tenure in high school she all but shit her pants. She made the mistake of sleeping with a married man once, and was known as a slut from then on out. But it was not like her track record since had redeemed her any; she almost always could be found laying on her back beneath anyone that gave her the slightest amount of attention.
Scout and Mandy glowered at each other so intensely that one of them could have burst into flames. Scout's hazel eyes burned into Mandy's green ones, and it was only when Mandy blinked that their hackles relinquished.
Scout often wondered how in the world two people so diametrically incompatible could ever share the same genealogy. She deduced their relation to being some sort of divine prank, like the universe placed the two of them in the same family tree just for shits and giggles. She thought there was no way that their mothers happened to be sisters by coincidence. Where Scout was an honor roll student that graduated early, Mandy was an airhead that got held back in her senior year, then dropped out and fail her GED test three times. Where the only person Scout had ever had sex with was her ex-boyfriend of almost two years, Mandy probably screwed every guy in the tri-state area twice. And where Scout's aspirations in life exceeded beyond Santan Valley, Mandy was perfectly content spending the rest of her life helping her mother, Georgia, run their convenience store, Santan Single-Stop.
The only time in their lives when Scout and Mandy ever got along was on an especially hot day in July seven years ago. Scout, then eleven, had been coerced by her father to accompany Mandy, then fourteen, to the local swimming pool. On that day, Mandy decided to show-off in front of a group of guys hanging around the pool, so she dove in the deep end. Beneath the water, Mandy's hair got caught at the bottom of the pool and she thought for sure she would drown to death until Scout, who had always swam like a fish according to her father, dove in, unwound Mandy's hair and towed her up to the surface. Afterward, the two of them agreed to never speak of it. Scout never wanted anyone to know that she actually cared about Mandy enough to prevent her death, and Mandy was just thoroughly embarrassed about the whole event.
"Stop staring at me," Mandy snapped, flipping her long, black hair over her shoulder.
Scout only continued to stare out of spite. She hated everything about Mandy's face. From her perfectly fair skin to her ski-slope nose to her plump lips, down to the exact symmetry of her features. She thought Mandy's face was the standard for what models should look like, which made the urge to punch Mandy in the nose even more difficult to resist.
Now that's the type of face that should be in a magazine, Scout thought. Too bad her face would only be used in an article about a herpes epidemic in Arizona.
"You make me wanna die," Scout drawled.
Mandy pulled an emery board from her pocket and began to file her nails. "Ditto."
"Oh, Christ." Scott went on, "Can't we all just get along?"
"No," Scout and Mandy hissed.
Scott rolled out from under the Plymouth dotted with oil stains and dirt. He held a wrench between his hands, of which he pointed at the two fuming women. "Well, at least you two can agree on something."
Scout's eyes narrowed. Her sneaker-clad foot was just a few inches away from her father. She had to refrain from kicking the creeper, sending Scott rolling under the Plymouth.
"Scotty!"
Scout, Mandy, and Scott, who had just gotten to his feet and began to dust himself off, looked toward the door where the light, sing-song voice of Georgia Morgan floated in through the garage.
"What, Mom?" Mandy snapped, not taking her eyes away from the emery board filing quickly at her left ring finger.
Georgia stopped in the middle of the wide garage door, her cowboy boots covered in freshly overturned dirt, like she was in a rush to get to the garage. There was an ever-present smile the size of a lesser planet on her face, even as she annoyedly swatted at stray hairs that sprung loose from her ponytail.
"I'm pretty sure I didn't name you Scott, sweetheart," Georgia directed towards Mandy, who scoffed in response.
"What can I do you for, Georgie?" Scott chuckled, wiping his oil-stained hands on his T-shirt.
"I finally got you the help you been needin' around here."
Not even a minute later did Mandy's emery board hit the floor of the garage with a dull thump. When Scout looked at her, Mandy's mouth was wide open. After a second, she promptly closed it, pushed her chest out and crossed her long, smooth legs. Scout had never seen someone bat their eyelashes as much as Mandy did in that moment — it made Scout nauseous.
Scout grunted, thinking Mandy was ridiculous until she looked up to see the object of Mandy's lascivious stare.
Skylar Glass, with a complacent look on his face and his hands shoved deep in his jeans' pockets, had claimed the spot beside Georgia, who patted his shoulder proudly.
Scout clenched her jaw so tightly that it began to hurt, like how it felt to chew on a Jawbreaker for an hour. She was sure she looked angry, but that was not the case. That was not the case at all. She was trying to keep her jaw from coming unhinged in the same fashion as Mandy's.
In all of her eighteen years living in Santan Valley, Arizona, Scout had never seen a new face, and she had surely never seen one as becoming as Skylar's. She found him just as much interesting as she did handsome. He reminded her of a painting, of the sketch lines of fine art: rough and effortlessly captivating. From the scars that seemed to compliment his rugged aesthetic, to his jawline that looked capable of cutting diamonds, to his rigid cheekbones, to his proportionately angled nose, to the copper sunbursts of his eyes, he was an experience. An experience that sledgehammered her with admiration.
Instead of Scout's jaw falling open like Mandy's had, she found herself smiling. Smiling as brightly as Arizona's afternoon sun. Scout-Juliet Compton did not smile often — smiling being number nine on her hate-list, — but when she did, and when it was genuine as it was then, her smile could attain world peace.
At least, that's what Skylar thought.