Winner Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction

I Ride Along

Leon likes me to ride along because no one’s going to think he’s up to no good if there’s a pretty little girl like me riding up front. He doesn’t say that exactly—except the pretty little girl part— but I’ve figured out the up-to-no-good part by now. Ma complains when he takes me, but just so Leon knows he owes her something, not because she wants me home with her.

“Come on, sweetcakes, let’s check the breeze in the trees. Let’s rocket down the highway. Let’s get us something tasty,” Leon will say, sliding his blue baseball cap over his bald spot and hunting for his keys. We may park in an alley while he dashes in somewhere real quick, or meet up with some guys in cars at the edge of town to exchange boxes of jumbled junk, or see what’s not bolted down in front of closed up shops downtown. And Leon always does buy me something—a shake at the Sno White drive-thru, or a whole box of doughnuts at Dunkin’s—so that part’s true. But he’s not so interested in me the rest of the time. For that my ma says I should be grateful. I’m thirteen, I know what that means—stepfathers and all. Only he’s just Ma’s boyfriend. Not a one of them has ever married her.

One night Leon comes in from that shed out back where he works on his “business”—always popping back and forth to “check on things”— and I hear him on the phone talking to Dooley, a new friend of his. I’m in my room trying to get the picture to come in on this half-busted TV Leon gave me for Christmas. I’m twisting the knob to keep the picture from turning slanty, but soon as I hear Dooley’s name I shut it off.

Dooley’s not like Leon’s other friends. The others come in a clump and sit around telling long stories about when they did this and shorter stories about when they’re gonna do that. They’re sloppy and pale. Dooley comes alone. He’s no teenager but he’s a lot younger than Leon. That doesn’t stop him from being boss. He’s always moving—walking back and forth, or jiggling change in his pocket— and he gets madder and more excited than anyone I ever seen. Except Ma when one of her boyfriends starts to drift.

Dooley makes me feel like I jumped in a cold lake. Wide awake and waiting for what’s next. Sometimes he’s friendly with Leon, drinking beers and asking me nice to go on into the kitchen and get him some chips or take a peek outside and check on his dog, Bruiser. Other times he comes roaring up to the house, his motorcycle spitting gravel, yelling for Leon. Calls him a fucking retard, an asshole who’s gonna wreck everything. I guess he’s still getting used to Leon’s way of pissing people off, then making it up to them. Leon’s a master of the art, Ma says.

Anyway, Leon was talking to Dooley and it sounded friendly enough. My door’s open a bit and I can see Ma’s already in her going-to-bed clothes—a turquoise nightgown I think is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Her blonde hair’s been brushed so hard it’s drifting up off her shoulders. I’m not the one she cares about noticing though. And Leon? He’s not even looking.

“Right now?” he says to the phone.

I see my ma put her hands on her hips. Leon sticks his hand up at her like a stop sign. “Uh, it’s kinda late, Dool,” he says, just so Ma thinks he’s trying. We all know he’s going to do whatever the hell he wants to, even if it means listening to Ma screaming at him all the way to the El Camino, and then spending a TV show’s worth of time on the making up part once he gets back, and then disappearing into the bedroom for God knows how long after that. I haven’t timed that part.

Now he’s hanging up the phone and asking Ma, “Where’s the kid? She asleep?”

I quick comb my fingers through my hair and sit up straight in bed, waiting.

“What do you need her for! She’s only thirteen, for Chrissakes!” she hollers. As if you need a license to ride in a car.

“That’s kinda the point,” Leon says, heading my way.

            “Well I don’t like it, I tell you!”

“Feeling all motherly, are you?” he snorts. “Come on, Lorraine, how’m I ever gonna get anything together here if I can’t work up some cap-i-tal?” A pause. I know she’s looking like she’s thinking it over hard. Like she’d ever really say no to him, to any man.

I want to run out there and have my own say. Riding with Leon is the most fun I ever have. But he’s coming.

“Quick trip, sweetcakes,” he says, pushing my door open.

Then we’re in the green El Camino, night air rushing in the cranked down windows. Leon turns down Lime Kiln Road and I know we’re going over to Dooley’s. I’ve been there with Leon once, to drop off a box of greasy car parts. His little house is even more pathetic than ours, but it has a neatness to it that makes it look like it’s fine with itself and fuck you. I’d never say that, but that’s how Dooley talks. I love to listen to him. Even Leon sometimes can’t think of what to say back.

Leon honks and Dooley comes out, slipping on his jacket, and of course he’s gonna slide in next to me. “Hey, little lady,” he says, then gives Leon a nod. He smells of leather and old cigarettes. But his hair is damp and there’s a sweet soapy smell to it. Dooley taking a shower. Funny to think about. Well of course he does. Using stuff like shampoo and deodorant. Cream rinse? I picture him standing in front of his bathroom cupboard choosing out bottles of this and that.

“What’re you looking at, pip squeak?”

My face burns and I thank God it’s dark so he can’t see. I swallow and look straight ahead while Leon turns the car around. Dooley pushes me with his elbow to show he meant no harm.

“Head over to the skate rink,” he says. I know we’re not going there to skate, but I can’t help picturing Dooley there gliding along. He’d look like he owned the place, his brown hair blowing back off his forehead, his long legs crossing one over the other, the way they do when you’re skating steady and easy like you could go round all day. I laugh, then realize it’s out loud.

Dooley looks at me and pops the lighter in. I bite my lip to shut myself up.

When we pull into the parking lot, parents are already coming by to pick up kids. I see Tammy and Lisa and another girl climbing into Tammy’s mom’s white station wagon. It’s a sleepover, maybe. I don’t get asked to many of those. Probably because of my ma and her “shameless parade of live-in low-lifes” is how my grandma put it. I had to live with Gran for a whole year when I was nine. I’d never laid eyes on my grandma before and I thought it would mean chocolate cake and bubble baths every day, but she was the biggest sourpuss I ever met.

“Take the kid inside, Leon,” Dooley says, waving his cigarette at the glass window where you pay. At the ticket booth Leon tells the skinny lady selling tickets, “I don’t care if there are ten seconds left to skate, lady. My girl is gonna skate!” He squeezes my hand and tugs me after him through the door.

By the time I roll out onto the rink, the music is off and the floor is empty. Some kids are sitting on benches changing back into their street shoes. A few heads pop up and look at me. I see Leon talking to a man next to the lockers, but I’m watching my feet so I don’t see where he goes.

I’m just getting the hang of skating backwards when the lights flash off and on and Leon’s waving me off the rink, and then we’re back in the El Camino heading out of town. There’s a blue tarp thrown over something big in the back. Dooley sees me looking and says, “Gotta fix some equipment for the rink.” I shrug to show him I don’t care what they’re up to. We’re all squeezed together in front, shoulders touching as we turn corners and roll over bumps. I feel happy, like I could ride like this forever. Dooley turns sideways and pulls his head back against the window and looks at me. “Know something?” he says. “You look different in the dark.” I save that to think about later.

Back home I take the roll of cherry Lifesavers Leon got me from the vending machine and crunch through one after the other. The tiniest treat he ever got me, but I’m not complaining. I got Dooley’s looking at me to chew over.

Ma never asks where we’ve been. What she knows is she’s owed some attention. I hear their fuzzy voices through the wall. Ma’s soft and sing-songy, Leon’s deep and mumbly. I wonder suddenly if he likes my ma at all anymore. I’ve seen how boyfriends change their minds. Fast. Then Ma will storm and cry for days and let the cups of coffee I bring her turn cold and stare at the ceiling when I think up a joke to tell her. And what’ll perk her up later still isn’t me, it’s the thought of who else might be out there could be her boyfriend.

I think about my suitcase under the bed. I’ve grown a lot since we moved in with Leon last fall. Tomorrow I’ll make sure the outfit I got packed still fits. I like to be ready to go.

When I get up, Leon’s still sleeping but Ma is at the table, smoking and drinking her coffee, her peach robe barely pulled shut. She’s sloppy that way. “Hey, girl,” she tells me, the smoke rising and stinging her one-eyed. “Go grab yourself a sweatshirt. Make yourself decent.”

Gran would call that “The pot calling the kettle black.” But I just look at her and then down at my Garfield sleep shirt and my teeny tits pushing the material out a bit. “It’s only cause this shirt is so wore out,” I say, lifting one of Leon’s flannel shirts off the back of the couch and putting it on.

She blows a stream of smoke out her nose, and looks at the shirt. “Well now, aren’t you all comfy with Leon all of a sudden,” she says like she’s caught me at something. “Wasn’t so long ago you was crying your eyes out over moving in here.”

I dip my cheek to the soft flannel on my shoulder. “He treats me right,” I say. And when I hear those words floating there I panic and want to grab them back. They’re her words. Her answer to why we’re with some beer guzzling sheet rock worker or a cigar-smelling old man who hawks and spits but always has a wad of cash. My stomach drops and I shoot her a look. She’s sitting there staring back at me still and cold, like a statue. Like a woman who doesn’t know me and doesn’t like me.

A sick feeling comes over me then. I want my ma back—mad or yelling or drunk—but not this woman pouring ice out her eyes. I feel like I’ve been abandoned on the moon. I think about doing all kinds of things—running over to her and throwing my arms around her neck, or climbing into her lap, or singing the lullaby she used to sing me—anything to remind her she’s my ma and how things used to be. But I can’t remember what any of those things feel like anymore. Instead I walk over to the table and pull out a chair.

She unfreezes and gets busy folding the newspaper. She must be done with the local news—the reunions, the family picnics, the highway accidents. “Keeping up on things” is what she calls it. She’s watching me out of the corner of her eye, like I’m some kind of animal she don’t know what’ll do next. I search for a good memory to remind her of, but my head’s all muddled. Besides, she might just laugh.

So I reach across the table and take one of her cigarettes. I don’t know why. I look at it in my hand and wait for what she’ll say. Nothing. She’s leaning on her elbow giving me a this-I-gotta-see kind of look. Waiting for me to light it and cough my fool head off. I slip it into the front pocket of Leon’s yellow and black plaid shirt. Then I get up and go to my room.

I hear Dooley’s motorcycle from a long way off because I’m always listening for it. Before he even gets to the door, I’ve changed my shorts and given my cheeks a quick pinch the way I seen Ma do when she’s away from her makeup. I wait in my room until I hear him bang on the screen door. I don’t want to appear over eager. Ma always says that’s the kiss of death. “You gotta act like you don’t care much. Especially at first,” she used to say when she was getting ready for her dates. I hold myself to a painful walk going to the door.

“Thought I’d pay you a call,” Dooley says, all fake gentleman like. But before I can even say something fake-fancy back, he says, “Leon around?”

I hold open the screen door so he can come in. He’s wearing his leather jacket even though it’s July and we got three fans going in the living room.

“Sure,” I say, happy to help. “I’ll run get him.”

I leave Dooley standing in the middle of the living room and tear off for the back shed. It feels good to run hard and by the time I get to the shed my throat stings from the wind of it. I knock on the plywood door. “Hey! Dooley wants you!” I call through the crack.

I can hear Leon moving things around. I hear a hiss and smell the Mountain Rain Glade he always sprays, like I don’t know he smokes weed in there all day. He turns off the Allman Brothers and steps out wiping his hands on a towel. He sees me all sweaty and huffing and puffing and looks worried. “Dooley in a mood?” he asks.

“Don’t know,” I tell him. “He just got here.”

I trot alongside Leon back to the house. Maybe the three of us will go somewhere. I’ll try to be smart, think up some ideas. Ideas that mean rides.

When we walk in Ma’s there. She’d been lying down in her room with one of her sick headaches, but she must’ve got up when she heard Dooley’s voice. Dooley’s got his boots up on the coffee table and he’s smoking and watching her, like he’s taking it all in and he’ll figure out later what it’s worth to him.

Ma’s hair is all mussed up from the pillows, and like usual, she looks prettier when a man’s watching. Her eyes are all shiny and she’s as pepped up as Dooley gets. She looks younger and happier, and it reminds me of when I was littler and she’d let me help her get ready for dates. She’d sprinkle herself with sweet talc and talk about whoever it was she was seeing, while I’d hand her different pairs of swinging earrings or hair clips with rhinestones. She’d try some on me for a laugh, or squirt me with her perfume, and then kiss me for good luck.

“Here’s Leon!” I practically shout to break the looks between them.

“No shit,” says Dooley, swiveling toward the door. My ma drops her head and pinches between her eyes to remind us about the headache.

Leon tosses his rag on the floor and heads to the kitchen, “Cold one?”

I’m the one brings the bottle of Bud and hands it to Dooley. “Thanks there, squirt,” he says, which makes Ma give me a pleased-as-punch look.

“Go on, now. Skeedaddle. Grown-ups want to talk,” she says.

My face gets hot and I want to holler at her, “I’m the one rides with them! I’m the one belongs out here!” But I bite my lip. I’m so mad I feel tears crawling up my throat, so I run to my room. I throw myself on the floor near the door so I can hear what’s so big I can’t be around for it. And it’s nothing but stupid chatter. Grown-ups want to talk! I make mean faces and copy them talking. I hate them! I want to rush in there and break everything. I let myself cry a while, but then I give myself a talking to. I gotta act more grownup than them even, so they don’t run me off all the time. Because the truth is I want to be with them. All of them. Any of them.

I think of what Ma told me once when I complained about her always hunting for a new boyfriend the minute she goes through one of her break-ups. “A person’s just got to have somebody,” she said. “You’ll see that soon enough.” Must be that time has come, because now that seems big and true. Only I don’t even know who it would be, and what I could give them to make them stay.

At least I got Ma nearby. Not like that awful year she left me with Gran and Gran poured out on me all the things she’d saved up to say since Ma’d run off as a teenager. And even that didn’t help her sour mood. “You have your fun too early, Missy,” she liked to tell me, “and you’ll pay for the rest of your life.”

I thought it was a sign of Ma’s love for me that she waited until the law was about to take me before she called Gran. She hadn’t found a new man friend since Oren the car stereo guy dumped her, which made her drink more. She was waitressing at a club nights and leaving me alone in a room we rented above a beauty parlor. We made tables of stacked up boxes of hairspray and sat in chairs with busted hair dryer hoods attached.

One day she took a handful of quarters across the street to the pay phone outside the liquor store. From the window I watched her jam the coins in the slot and stand with her hand on her hip. Then I saw her head drop and her shoulders curve in. When she started nodding, I knew someone had the best of her.

But when she came in the door she looked almost happy. “She said why don’t I stay a few days see how we all get along,” she told me. Then she waved me over to her and began to comb the knots out of my hair, something she hadn’t done in a good long time. “Maybe I’ll get a job right there in good old Boynton instead of having to come get you later.” But when we climbed the stairs of the Greyhound bus to go there, she started losing her starch fast. And two hours later when we pulled into the depot and she laid eyes on the old lady standing there, she handed me over in about three seconds and climbed right back on the bus.

“Hurrying back to some man, I’m guessing,” said the old lady, watching the bus drive off. “That girl never could stand to be alone.” She put my plaid suitcase in the trunk and gave the lid a good slam, then turned to me and started in with the lessons: “Here’s something you best learn: You got no power if you can’t be alone.”

And now I’m lying on my belly like a two-year-old, with my ear to the bottom of the door, hungry for voices. Ma’s got her party voice on, while Dooley and Leon are just talking regular.

“I got a taker for the pinball machine but he’s way the hell over in Ashpoint,” Dooley’s saying. This is where Dooley needs Leon because all he’s got is a motorcycle.

“Hold your horses,” says Leon. “I’m still working on it.”

“You mean you been playing it day and night,” says Dooley, not mad yet.

“Like hell. I gotta reseat all the connectors and realign the flip switches. Hauling it over here knocked it all to shit.”

“You dog!” squeals Ma. “You got a pinball machine out in that shed of yours?” Like pinball is her favorite thing in the world. “Why don’t you plant it right here? I’m a woman likes to have some fun, you know.”

“That so?” I hear Dooley say. A long pause. Then to Leon, “I got an idea put us in line for some regular income.”

He starts talking about laundromats and vending machines and master keys. I hear Ma pitch in with plans, “Why, I could do that! And if anyone stops me, I know how to distract them.” She’s all loose and laughing, hooting like she does when she’s had a few drinks. But it’s morning and she stopped drinking mornings when we moved in with Leon. Means she’s man-drunk on Dooley.

I hear Dooley say, “Well, Leon, seems I found the brains of your little outfit here.”

“Yeah, well, how ‘bout we talk about this some other time? I’ll call you soon’s I get the machine popping and pinging. In fact, I can probably move it myself with one of those auto creepers.”

“Fuck that, I’m coming. I made the deal.” Then to Ma, “Lorraine, it has been a real pleasure. I’ll be seeing you later.”

I can imagine the looks passing between them, only I can’t imagine Leon’s expression. And at that moment I know he doesn’t care enough and that Ma’s planning to make the jump from Leon to Dooley.

I yank my plaid suitcase out from underneath the bed, but I’m too mad and wore out to see if the clothes inside still fit. I’m tired of moving whenever she needs a fresh boyfriend. So I kick it back under the bed and decide it’s time I had my own plan.

Two days later Dooley and Leon are working in the shed. I’m sitting on the front steps of the house waiting for them to come out. Dooley’s motorcycle is parked in the driveway with the sun bouncing off the metal, making me squint. I walk over and run my hand over the warm seat, looking for traces of Dooley on the bike. Then, before I can tell myself no, I climb up on the bike and reach for the handlebars. The sun’s making me feel dreamy and I’m thinking about what might be in Dooley’s head when he rides over here, when all of a sudden I hear Dooley hoot. I jump off the bike so fast I stumble to my knees in the gravel. He walks up and offers me a hand up. “Okay, squirt. Since you asked so nice, I’ll give you a ride.”

I open my mouth to say I didn’t mean anything by it, but he’s throwing a leg over the bike and saying, “Don’t tell me our little partner is chicken.” I think about the new laundromat scheme and wonder if I’m being tested. I’m barely settled behind him when he turns the key and revs the engine. My hands fly up to my ears and dust blows up around us.

“Now you’re gonna want to put your arms around me,” he says. “Tight.” And I do. “That’s right.” We take off and I jerk backward and quick lean against his back so I don’t fall off. My hair is rubberbanded but Dooley’s brown hair flies above my head. We tear off down the county road, hay fields on both sides, and I am positively filling up with rattles, bumps, hums, scent, warm air, dust, and the feel of Dooley breathing in and out inside my arms and his muscles going hard and soft through the turns. I don’t want him to stop, and when he loops back toward the house, I hang on tighter and lay my cheek against his back, my eyes squeezed shut, hoping he’ll take a turn somewhere so we can ride forever. But then I hear the gravel, the bike slows down, and we roll to a stop in front of the shed. I get off, look at him smiling at me, and burst into tears.

Leon’s come out of the shed. “You do something to her?” he’s asking as I run to the house.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I hear Dooley complain. “Alls I did was take her for a little spin up the road.”

Ma fries hamburgers for dinner and the three of us sit at the little kitchen table squeezing ketchup from drive-thru packets onto our plates. Leon says, “Seems I got two crazy women on my hands now. I’m thinking I’m not up for any of it.”

“What the hell’s that mean,” Ma says, looking around for woman number two.

“This one right here,” he points at me. “Old Dooley give her a ride on his bike and she cracked up.”

Ma drops her fork and looks at me. “You got hurt?”

I enjoy for one second the worry on her face. Then Leon sets it straight, “No, no. She pitched a little fit after.”

She picks up her fork and starts chewing again, but slow. “Huh,” is all she says about that, but she gives me a look like she knows something about it.

That night, late, I hear a motorcycle on the road, but it stops far off. I hear soft creaks and then the screen door click. I jump out of bed and open my door. I catch the scent of Ma’s perfume in the hall and hear Leon’s rattling snores.

In the morning she’s there in her peach robe at the kitchen table keeping up with accidents and reunions. I look at her for signs she’s in love, but she looks pretty much the same. She doesn’t deserve Dooley if she can look the same, I decide. I think about the warm, melty feeling of putting my arms around him and know I look different—just from thinking about him.

Dooley shows up later in the day and the sly looks between him and Ma make me sick. Don’t they know I’m standing right there? No one’s saying anything about the laundromat plan. I want to kick the couch they’re sitting on, or slam out of there, but I can’t bring myself to leave, plus I’ve got to show how I’m grown up. So I bust things up a different way. “I got an idea,” I announce, even though I don’t.

“Well, whoopdedoo,” says Ma.

Dooley grins at me.

“You want some real money?” I say. “Stop messing around with skating rinks?”

“Leon!” Dooley calls. “Get in here. The kid’s gonna straighten us out.”

Leon walks in from the kitchen and throws himself onto the couch next to Ma, who scoots over a few inches closer to Dooley.

“I know the guy who closes up at the video store. His sister was in my P.E class. We stop by there at the right time, I know how to distract him so you can grab the money out of the register.”

Ma snorts. “Like hell! You cry if I swipe a lipstick at the Rexall.”

“That was when I was little,” I say, slow and calm-as-can-be.

Dooley’s nodding his head like he appreciates what I have to say, but then he tells me all the things that are wrong with my plan, including that if the kid knew me he’d tell the cops and they’d find Dooley and Leon through me.

“So we don’t come in together,” I tell him, getting impatient. “You wear a mask.” Don’t they watch TV?

Leon just gets up and goes back to the kitchen. My ma is shaking her head like I’ve just told the biggest tale she can imagine. But what sticks with me is the long look Dooley gives me before he takes another swig of beer.

Next morning when Ma’s gone to town for groceries and Leon’s up and listening to his music and smoking weed in the shed, I rip my old three-speed out of the blackberry bushes where I dumped it last fall. The vines don’t want to let it go and my arms get scratched but I don’t care. I just want to go. I tell myself I don’t know where and I don’t care, but that’s a double lie.

I rush back into the house, wash the bloody scratches and dab some of Ma’s perfume behind my ears and change my socks. Socks! I take them off. I pick the dead berry leaves out of my hair and brush my teeth. I’ve got a slowed down going-to-church kind of feeling, but over that my heart is going wild.

Then I’m on my bike turning down Lime Kiln Road.

When I see Dooley’s motorcycle I get scared. I realize I’m going to have to say something because he’s there. He’ll want to know why I come. I can tell him Leon sent me, but he’ll find out quick that’s not so. Just out riding, I can say. Yeah.

I need to practice being brave if I’m going to pull jobs with them. I force myself off my bike and march myself to the door. Inside the house, Bruiser starts barking before I decide to knock. I hear some groggy swearing then the door flies open. Dooley is standing there in a pair of gray boxer shorts. I can’t help but look down. The flap is pushed open a bit and I see dark in there. “Yeah? What, kid?” He rubs his eyes and pushes his hair out of his face.

“Uh, I was out riding and I got a flat,” I tell him, glad I dumped my bike off a ways so he can’t see. One of the tires was leaking and if I’m lucky it’ll be flat in a while.

“Fuck it, I’m going back to bed,” he tells me. “Phone’s there.” He flaps an arm toward the kitchen then walks through an open door and throws himself face down on his bed, which makes a bloop, bloop aquarium sound.

The bed takes up most of the room. There’s nothing else in there but a kitchen chair with some clothes tossed over the back. I hear him start to snore, so I tiptoe in and watch him until his snores get deep and raggedy. His back is smooth and tan and I notice the rise and fall of it. How did he get that tan, I wonder, wearing his jacket all the time. There’s a scar like a sliver of the moon on back of one shoulder. I think back to yesterday when I had my cheek pressed up against his back and the bumps of the road came up through the motorcycle and through Dooley’s body and rumbled into me. Was my cheek right over that little scar? I sit down on the chair and take off my shoes.

When I put my hand down on the bed, it sends a wave toward Dooley that rocks him like a boat on a lake. He smacks his lips and grumbles in his sleep and flips over to the wall. I hold my breath and creep onto the bed as careful as I can. I settle so close I feel hot from the heat must be coming off his skin, but I don’t touch him. Instead I stare and stare at that little purple scar until the shivery feeling I got settles down. And after a while, I just feel warm and good, and it doesn’t seem strange somehow that I’m at Dooley’s house, in Dooley’s room, in Dooley’s bed. I breathe easy then, taking in that Dooley smell of old leather and cigarettes and shampoo coming from the pillow under my head. I bury my face in it and get lost thinking about having someone of my own.

I wake up to a bunch of barking and then Dooley shouting, “What the fuck you think you’re doing?” I rub my eyes and see him jumping out of bed and shoving his legs into his jeans. I’m still sleepy but I know where I am. I feel peaceful and happy, but Dooley’s yelling, “Get the fuck outta my bed! You nuts?”

A car door slams and he whips back the curtain and I catch a glimpse of green. The El Camino. Next he’s rattling a few things in the kitchen while the knocking on the front door gets louder. “Yeah, yeah, gimme a sec!” He’s waving me out of the bedroom like it’s on fire.

He points to the door and says in an angry whisper, “Be smart, girl!” Then loud, “Kid, do me a favor and get that door, huh?” I pull it open and there’s Ma. Her mouth drops open at the sight of me, then her jaw moves but no words come out. Her head turns to Dooley standing at the stove.

“Lorraine! Come on in!” Dooley says, like she’s the first to arrive for a party he’s giving. “The gang’s all here.” He glances back at me. “Your kid here had a bike problem and wandered over here for help cuz I was closest. Thought I may’s well make her some breakfast seeing as she’s here. Make you a couple eggs?”

I’ve never heard him say so much at once. He’s standing there in his tiny kitchen, holding a silver spatula, the scar on his bare shoulder moving as he works his arms.

Ma turns to me. She gives me another one of those I-don’t-know-who-you-are-anymore looks, but not mean and icy this time. Instead, she has a faraway look to her, like she’s staring right through me, traveling back to a time I’m not part of. I’m scared now, though. I know she’ll snap out of it and she’ll hate me more. And then I see the faraway look slide off her face and she locks her eyes on mine.

I didn’t really do anything, I tell myself. But I was ready to, if Dooley’d wanted to. If he’d have woken up natural, without doors slamming and dogs barking and people banging on the door, I wondered what might have happened. Whatever it was, I thought it would be worth it for that feeling of having somebody.

She’s staring at my bare feet now. “Get your shoes,” she says. I look at Dooley, then turn and walk into the bedroom. I feel her eyes on my back as I stoop and pick my Keds up off the floor next to the bed.

“Christ Almighty,” she says, then she puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me to the door. “March!”  

“You all running out on me? No breakfast?” Ma doesn’t answer, just keeps walking, one step behind me. “Don’t forget her bike!” he shouts after us.

“She won’t be needing it, asshole!”

We’re in the El Camino speeding down the flat country roads. Ma stares straight like she can’t turn her head. “What in the hell is wrong with you?” she hisses. “First you want to be a criminal, now you want to be a whore. You are thirteen, for Chrissakes! THIRTEEN!”

I start blubbering then because now I lost Dooley, and what she’s saying—it all sounds so bad, and I don’t know how to explain that what I wanted was something good. Something I used to have and not even think about. She opens the glove compartment and grabs a fistful of drive-thru napkins and tosses them in my lap.

When we get close to the house, she slows down and pulls over and parks by the mailbox. “You budge from this car, I’ll tan your hide!” she tells me. I watch her tiptoe up the gravel drive to the house and come out five minutes later with my plaid suitcase and her beat up red one. She heaves them in the back of the El Camino.

We drive miles—me afraid to say a word. Maybe she’s going to drop me off somewhere. Give me to the police. Or take me to the depot, put me on a bus to Gran’s. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. “Where you going?” I ask.

“You’re the one with all the plans,” she says, touching the lighter to the tip of her cigarette. “You tell me.”

I look out the side window so she doesn’t see me grin.

She’ll be mad at me for a long while still, but that’s okay. I roll down the window and the hot hay smell and the baking ground smell rush in and fill me up. I pray we ride and ride like this. I think ahead to maybe a little motel, and wonder will she wash my hair like she used to, comb it out in front of the TV while we watch old game shows. And we could get jobs. It’s summer and there’s no school. She could be a waitress and I could wash dishes. Maybe she won’t need a boyfriend for a while. I can be the one that treats her right.