A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (14 page)

the whole time. I got it al put back the way I’d found it, box in pouch, pouch in album, albums in bin, and then shoved the whole mess as far under the hospital bed as it would go. I stood up and backed up al the way across the room.

I peeked out Liza’s door. The hal was clear, so I ran to the bathroom and washed my hands with water so hot it turned my skin pink, wishing I had Clorox and freaking out. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if she’d ever taken this box into the woods, when she was druiding, and that made me have to wash my hands again.

“Grow up,” I said to the Mosey in the mirror. My mom hadn’t brought a boyfriend home to meet me in my whole memory, but different men used to cal the house a lot, asking for her and not leaving messages. Sometimes I heard her coming home three hours after The Crow had closed. It wasn’t as if the idea that Liza liked men and men liked her back was new or shocking to me. Besides, I knew Liza’s biggest secret now, and it bound us in a way that was fifty mil ion times bigger than her box of buzzing yuck, bigger even than the fact that her religion wasn’t about any kind of god I’d ever heard of.

I went to the kitchen and found Big at the sink, washing her dishes. She glanced at me and said, “Hey, sugar-doodle, your breakfast is on the table,” like everything was regular. I glared red needles into her head, but she didn’t feel it. My plate was sitting in front of the chair by Liza’s good side, the place I’d gotten used to sitting. I didn’t feel like sitting there now. I sat down across the table from her instead, my back to Big, and pul ed my plate across.

I said, “Hey, Liza.”

She was looking right at me, and she made her Mosey-baby noise. I felt it again, that weird burble of happy feeling, like I wanted to lean across and kiss her on the hurt side of her face. I sat there swinging my feet and looking at her until Big said, “Eat your breakfast.”

“Not hungry.”

“You need the protein.” I rol ed my eyes for Liza, and the good side of her mouth twitched up, like she was laughing with me at this dumb-ass nutrition stuff when she knew and I knew that Big didn’t have the right to make me eat any damn thing. Big asked, “You want to stay home, Mosey? I could take the day off if you want.”

The very idea of sitting at home with her being Biggish and talky and helpy made my skin want to al come off and crawl away. I was glad I had my back to her. If Big knew I was some sort of squawky cowbird that Liza had slipped into her nest, would she be looking at me al worried, wanting me to eat her cooling eggs? They stared up at me with their yolks shining like glazy yel ow eyes. Vile.

“Makeup civics quiz. I gotta jet.” I gave my mom a fast conspirator’s grin and then grabbed the toast and shoved my chair back, almost running to bang my way out the front door and get fast as I could away from Big’s looky eyes.

I made the bus with time to spare. As I dragged my backpack to my usual seat near the middle, Beautiful Jack Owens looked up, pushing his floppy blond hair off his forehead.

“Hey, Mosey,” he said.

I stopped dead and said, “Hey.”

I guess I would have stood there goggling at him with my mouth swinging open til drool fel out, but the bus jerked forward and sent me staggering past him. I hustled to my usual place and plopped down. But after I sat, BJO turned and flashed me a smile over his shoulder, that lopsided one that could make a thousand pairs of cheerleader panties fal down on the floor in a pattery avalanche.

I ducked my head down fast and powered up my phone. My thumbs were already tapping out, ZOMG BJackO knows my name, when I saw I already had a couple of texts from Roger. The first one was from yesterday, and it said, # of missing babies = none babies.

I rol ed my eyes. Roger had this bee completely up his butt that he was going to trace my mom’s route and find out who I was. He’d sent me fifty mil ion texts about it last night, using so many abbreviations I felt like I was being told his whole lunatic plan by lolcats. I’d final y turned my phone off when he’d said he was searching news archives to see if any babies between here and Pascagoula had mysteriously gone missing the same week my mom ran away. Apparently he’d come up empty, which of course he would. The whole idea of using Google Maps to trace my mom’s drugged-up, hitchhiky route across America, fifteen years later and with her unable to help, was so wildly unpossible.

He had not downloaded any wisdom in his sleep, because his text from this morning said, What was L’s first road job?

I sent him back one that said, U can b replaced, u no. BJackO just smiled at me w/ al his teeth. I am Bones in the Yard Girl now & total y superfamous.

His answer came back, Superfamous = ur destiny. If u were here @ Cal? You’d be Luau Stroke Mom Girl. So.

I texted, Way to brightside, giggling loud enough that the bug-eyed freshman girl on the seat across from me stared at me harder than she’d already been staring.

His next text said, I need u to sho me her route on map. Meet on roof of TRP?

He meant Charlie’s Real Pit BBQ, which he cal ed The Real Pit. It was this craphole right by my school that had this huge bil board with a picture of a vile person-style pig on top, like ten feet high, very fat with al his chunks lumping out of overal s. Roger’d once planned to spray-paint a talk bubble over that pig’s head that said, COME ON IN AND EAT MY KIN! But once he found a way to use the back Dumpster to get up on the roof, he liked the shady spot behind the sign too much to cal attention to it.

No. U must Stopppppit. For realz. Stop. I wasn’t laughing anymore. I clicked my phone al the way off, done hearing about him snuffing around to find me like a lunatic bloodhound, not asking if I wanted for a single sorry second to be found.

At school the sudden friendliness of Beautiful Jack Owens had caught and spread. As I walked from homeroom to bio to lab, stoners and jocks, cheerleaders and mathletes al smiled at me or waved or said hel o. I wasn’t so stupid as to think I’d woken up hot enough for Jack, or cool enough for the wild kids, or that my 3.5 GPA was suddenly good enough to get me frenemied into the cutthroat Valedictorian-or-Die smarty set. This was like when a drunk driver kil ed a senior who went to Moss Point High, and al of a sudden everyone who ever met her (and some who total y hadn’t) had these memories of her, and they stood around talking in soft voices about The Time They Shared a Coke with Her, like she’d so mattered to them. Now I mattered, too.

On my way to study hal , I stopped short when my ex-BFF, Briony Hutchins, came bouncing out of Coach Richardson’s classroom door right in my path without ever noticing me. She paused right in my way to hump her amazing boobage up out of her shirt.

“See you fifth period,” she chirped at him. He was such a creeper that fluffing her C cups was getting her an easy A in his Life Skil s class. But when she turned and saw she’d almost run me down, she actual y paused her grade whoring long enough to flash her teeth and say, “Mosey!

What’s the haps?”

I shrugged and tried to look through her.

“Wel , text me,” she said, and twirled away. I stood there for a sec, dying to tel Roger, even though it meant hearing more about his Mom-Mission Unpossible. Unfortunately my craptastic cel could only get a signal near the fire door, because the wal s were super-thick concrete. There were hardly any windows, too, so they’d painted everything a putty-pink color that Roger cal ed Mental Institution Blush because it was supposed to make us feel cheerful.

But I hadn’t gone two steps before I saw Roger, real Roger in the actual flesh, standing ten feet ahead of me by the library. He was hard to miss, glowing white in his Calvary uniform shirt with the button-down col ar and monogrammed logo. He peered back and forth, searching for me in the crowd.

My arm was lifting in a wave when this junior named Charlie who went to church at Calvary spotted Roger, too. He threw back his head and hol ered, “Gay Ray Got-Wood, in da house!” He made the last word into a hoot that carried al the way to space. Even down the hal , I saw Roger flush a mad, dark red clear to the roots of his hair.

Roger’s real name was Raymond Knotwood, but he was short and pale and had a huge vocabulary and sucked at sports, so of course the guys at Cal al cal ed him Gay Ray, which was retarded because the last guy caught being gay was a basebal god who shot deer on the weekends; it was a huge scandal, and now he went to school in Pascagoula. The Cal guys didn’t like to think a guy like that would turn out to be gay. He’d been too much like them. Gay Ray Got-Wood’s initials would be GRG, but everyone had my friend pegged so wrong that I cal ed him those initials backward. RGR. Roger.

Roger stepped toward Charlie with his hands coming up and his eyebrows coming together, just as Charlie licked his hand and gave Roger a massive cathead. He whanged Roger’s forehead so hard with his wet palm that I heard the smack al the way down the hal .

Roger’d completely hate for me knowing he got catheaded, like somehow me seeing it with my girl eyes would make it sting for so much longer. I ducked sideways out of sight, jumping right through Coach’s classroom door. I fisted my hands and pressed them up against my eyes.

“Mosey?”

I whirled around.

Across the mostly empty room, Coach Richardson was looking at me like I actual y existed. I don’t think he’d ever said my name before, except at rol cal . I hadn’t ever rated even the uncancerous lesser leer he saved for flatties. Now he was actual y smiling, his teeth so perfect they looked like they had been made up total y out of spackle.

I burbled, “Oh, I…um, I don’t actual y have Life Skil s now,” which was insane, because of course he knew that. Some kids pushed in behind me, heading to their desks.

He didn’t give me any flak, though, just said, real serious, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s your mom doing?”

My eyes narrowed. This was maybe the first time he’d ever asked me a direct question. A personal one anyway. He was Claire Richardson’s husband, after al , and Slocumbs plain did not exist to him.

When I didn’t answer, he added, “We’ve al been so concerned, since we heard about the stroke.”

I walked over to his desk because I didn’t want to yel back and forth across the room about Liza now that the kids in his next class were filing in.

“She’s doing okay," I said.

He nodded, encouraging, like we were having some kind of conversation and he wanted me to say more, which was super weird. He’d taught my mom Life Skil s, too, when it was plain driver’s ed and home ec existed and sex ed didn’t. A lot of my teachers had had my mom, because they’d al been teaching at PRH for about a hundred years, which proved Roger’s hypothesis that death was the only sure way out of Immita. I’d gotten a lot of stink-eye when they’d read my last name off the rol at the start of the year, most of al from Coach. He’d paused after my name, looking me up and down with a gaze so cold it was like he had lizard eyes, then never bothered looking at me again. Every rol cal after that, he rushed past me, cal ing the next name on the list while I was stil saying “Here.”

Wel , he was a busy guy; he had tons of blouses that needed to be looked down, and every day he had to come up with a fresh new excuse to hug cheerleaders. It was time-consuming, being supercool, joking around with the sports guys and letting them pick on the scrubs. My mom, though, back in the day, she was friends with his daughter before she got pregnant and al the bad crap went down. Back then Liza would have rated his attention. He’d probably liked her the same as he liked Briony.

The last kids were wandering in and flopping into their seats. Janie Pestre and her friend Deb were already sitting on the far end of the front row. I could see them in my side vision, looking at me. Deb poked Janie with her elbow and then said, “Hey, Mosey,” like we talked every day.

I gave them a little nod.

Deb poked Janie again, like egging at her, and Janie gave me a smile that was al pointy teeth, sharp and overfriendly. “We heard about your yard. What did the cops say? Was it a murder?”

“I’m not sure that’s appropriate,” Coach said, but he leaned in, and as he said it, his face flashed a look that was like hunger. Just for a second, but I got it: He hadn’t real y cared how Liza was. This was what he’d wanted to ask me. The room was ful now, and as I glanced around, I saw he wasn’t alone. Everyone had hushed to hear what I would say, staring at me like I was cake and they deserved a piece.

I looked down at the big zoo of crap on Coach’s desk, stacks of health pamphlets and report binders and a col ection of bobblehead guys in footbal helmets. Near the front was this hinged picture frame that opened like a book. Fifty mil ion years ago, he’d caught some impossible pass to win a col ege game. He’d cut the story and picture out of the paper and framed them, and it stil sat on his desk. It was a little sad. He looked like the Stay Puft Marshmal ow Man version of the boy in the picture, stil trying to be cool in button-fly Levi’s with his bel y pooching over the top. Him having that pic was like if I was forty and stil had some old A-plus paper stuck on the fridge, al brown and curled up at the edges.

Staring at that picture, with everyone in the room craning toward me, I had this weird déjà vu feeling, like way back before this frame was al dusty, fifteen years ago, my mom had stood here, in this spot, twirling a strand of her hair and using her pretty to wheedle Coach into giving her the one practice car with an A/C that worked. I felt like my mother’s teenage ghost owned the room, and standing in her footprints, I owned it, too, now.

Like it was something Liza had bought for us.

I made a hard, mysterious face and dredged up some
CSI
memories to get the right vocab and the Horatio tone. I tossed my hair back and said,

“I can’t talk about it while it’s…an ongoing investigation.” I real y needed some sunglasses to whip off, but it was good enough for them. Four or five conversations started buzzing in the room behind me, everybody wondering how much I knew, and me not giving any of them, especial y Coach, a damn thing.

Coach leaned in a little closer. Too close. His breath smel ed like peppermints. He dropped his voice so only I could hear and started to ask me another question.