“I’m just going to make a quick stop by the trading post,” Slutsky said. “You want to come?”
“Trading post?” I asked, confused. It didn’t look like the kind of place where I’d want to trade anything.
“Oh, Tal,” she said, shaking her head, “you’ve been away too long. They’ve got everything, speed, Oxy — what’s your poison these days?”
One of the guys was leaning up against the camper, watching us. He had a braided beard and a spiked choker. His arms were tattooed from his shoulders to his fingers.
“I think I’m just going to go,” I said quietly. “Be careful, okay?”
Slutsky nodded, as if she’d already read a script of my lines. “Of course,” she shrugged, leaning in to kiss my cheek. “I’ll call you?”
From my car, I could see her silhouette climbing into the back of the trading post camper. I was glad to be out of there, but unsettled by the fact that I knew my next stop had to be my father’s.
I decided to sleep on it before I made any impulsive moves and put the car in drive. Suddenly, I was very aware of the leather interior, surround-sound stereo system, and blinging hubcaps. Here I was, stuck in my past, sticking out because of my present.
And speaking of my present, I still hadn’t listened to Mike’s message:
“Don’t know if you were waiting in our spot today, but if you were, I’m sorry. I just needed a little bit of time to clear my head. Don’t be mad, okay? Just call me. I love you.”
I sighed and tossed the phone back in my bag — but when I did, I noticed something conspicuously missing. The rattle of the bottle of pills. I quickly sifted through my backpack. Where were they?
I knew I’d had the bottle when I walked into the bar; I’d felt for it when I paid for my drinks. I replayed the last hour in my mind and remembered Slutsky rifling through my bag. That little bitch had stolen my pills! And now she was selling them at that sleazy trading post!
I almost slammed on the brakes and turned the car around. But then, a calm settled over me. Slutsky had just unwittingly done me a favor by taking away the baggage I hadn’t known how to lose.
Let her have them. Now I could only hope that they’d disappeared for good.
CHAPTER Fourteen A BATTLE LOST AND WON When I woke up, everything was just as it had been before: my thin pea green comforter wrapped around me; the sun peeking through the wide east window, my father passed out on the easy chair in the living room of the trailer, where I slept on the fold-out bed. I was groggy, half asleep.
“Dad? ” I said. My voice had an underwater slowness to it. “I’ll make some coffee, okay?”
Silence from the chair. Dad’s arms were thrown up over his head in slack fists, and his cheeks were bristly and bloated. He’d kicked off one shoe by the door, but the other one still hung from his foot at an odd angle, like it had been twisted. A spider inched along the back of his headrest. He was so gruesome; I couldn’t stop staring at him. It seemed like lifetimes since I’d seen him, but then, it was just another day. Wasn’t it?
I stood over him, shaking his shoulder. “Dad,” I said more loudly. Then my heart picked up, and I turned towards the back of the trailer. “Mom!”
In the bedroom down the short hall of the trailer, I waited for my mother’s moan and rustle in the bed. We had a whole routine: I’d call again; she’d gripe her way to the door and stick her bed head out into the hallway — sometimes with a backward glance toward the bed. She could have anyone in there — anyone willing to sneak out between the time I left for school and whenever my dad came to.
“Mom,” I called again. “He’s really out this time.”
Suddenly, Dad’s fingers clamped around my wrist. I looked down, and his eyes snapped open.
“Shut your mouth. Nobody’s out.”
I screamed because he’d scared me, because his grip was tight and his breath smelled dead, because his lips and his gums were blue.
“Mom?” I called again. My voice wobbled through the cramped room.
“Your mom’s not here,” he spit. “She didn’t bother coming home last night.”
“How would you know?” I said, wrestling free to scurry to the corner of my bed.
It was then that Dad lurched from the easy chair and came at me. I didn’t think he had it in him to make it across the trailer, but then again, when he wanted to scare me, it didn’t matter how strung out he was.
“You think I don’t know what goes on in my own house?”
When he stood up fully, which was rare, Dad was the height of the trailer’s low ceiling. His big arm reached for one of the bottles of painkillers strewn across the kitchen table, but he stopped to look up at me. I could feel my lips trembling. I was willing him to inhale his morning fistful. It’d be better for us both if he just swallowed them down.
“I know what your mom tells you,” he said in a low voice. “Talking behind my back as if I’m half a man. You think I need it?” He’d uncapped the bottle, but instead of taking out the pills, he chucked the whole thing at me, hard. The bottle bounced off my thigh, and the pills clattered across the floor.
“You think I need any of you?” he yelled.
“Dad,” I pleaded, wincing when he pinned me up against the wall. His fist came close to grabbing my hair, but when I ducked to dodge him, he stumbled forward, knocking his shin on the bed.
“Damn it, Tal,” he groaned, grabbing his leg and hopping on one foot toward his chair.
I grabbed my purple backpack and shoved flip-flops on my feet, not caring that this meant I was going to school in my pajamas, again. Better to show up in flannel pants today than covered in bruises tomorrow.
“You get back here,” Dad yelled, chasing me out into the yard of the trailer park.
I kept running. I only looked back when I heard the thud.
My father was face first in the dirt. It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen like that, but it was the first time I’d seen him lie there silently, not trying to get up. He’d tripped over the bottom step of the trailer and come down hard. I saw the smear of blood dripping from his lower lip. His eyelids fluttered and he was out again. I reached down to his neck, felt his pulse, then turned around and kept on running.
Mom showed up at school that day to tell me that the cops had picked him up. It was the last time either of us saw him. It was the first time I started keeping that old promise never to speak to him again.
Could a man change? Definitely not.
He opened the door before I’d even finished knocking. He looked frail and tired; the skin around his silver eyes looked loose like a grandfather’s. But when he put out his arms, they were unexpectedly steady.
“Tal-doll,” he said, waiting for a hug.
I stood on the metal steps of my Uncle Lewey’s trailer, my arms crossed tight over my waist. I was fighting the part of me that wanted badly to step toward my father and put my head on his broad chest. Instead, I stared at the point on his forehead directly between his eyes. It was an old trick I’d learned in debate class — use it when you’re too nervous to look someone in the eyes but still want to display your control.
“What do you want?” I said.
“To congratulate you,” he said, nudging me with his bony elbow. “My daughter the Princess. Not that I’m surprised.”
“I don’t need you to say congratulations.”
Dad frowned. “Okay, then maybe I need you to say, ‘Welcome home.’ I’m still on probation, of course, but with enough good behavior, everything can go right back to—”
“No,” I said, feeling the old tremble come back into my voice. “It’s different now. Mom and I are different. We
