the back, where he stretched out on his side and yawned.
I started the engine but didn’t pull out. We sat there smoking while the rain throbbed across the windshield.
“Was Mother watching too?” Dale asked.
“Yes.”
“She always comes and sits in back. She doesn’t realize how much we can see from the stage.”
“She thinks she’ll embarrass you.”
“She does.”
“Really?” I said. “You don’t look embarrassed.”
Dale finished her cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray. She turned slightly in her seat so she could give me the full effect of her glare.
“What is this?” she asked.
“I’m showing concern.”
“For what?”
“For you.”
“I got that much. I mean, concern over what?”
I hadn’t expected her to be so resistant. I should have. She was a teenager, and for the second time in two days I’d come from out of the shadows to pull her from her own crowd. It was stupid but I still wasn’t sure how else I could’ve done it.
It was a rough hand and I didn’t know how to play it. Should I soft-soap my worries over Butch or ask her flat out if she knew he was a punk working for Danny Thompson who might be a little too eager to step up?
I put the wipers on intermittent and watched the front doors of the school where I’d pretended to be a part of a society when I was actually an outlaw. I’d never believed I would need to get a joe job. I’d always expected to be able to boost and score and burgle my way through life. I’d fail a test and some teacher would threaten me with calling my parents, and I’d always think, Look at the scars on my chest, my old man made me this way. I’d feel a great love and a bewildering resentment for my father. I wondered if Dale felt the same way about him. And me.
She sat with her backpack on her lap. I had the sudden urge to yank it away from her and go through it. I had t? &my nose in everybody’s business. I didn’t want to steal anything, I just wanted to pry and sate my curiosity.
She said, “I told you last night, Terry, I don’t like you following me.”
“Jesus Christ, I’m not following you, Dale. But I didn’t think I’d need to make an appointment with your social secretary either.”
“I have a life, you know.”
“I know. I have no idea what it includes, but I know you have one.”
“If you’re interested, I’ll tell you all about it.”
I cracked my window and tapped cigarette ash outside. The smoke made JFK sneeze so hard he nearly rolled off the backseat. “I am interested. Of course I am.”
“Stop playing coy, Terry. You’re not here to take me out to the malt shop for a sundae. And you didn’t come just to chat or to ask me how much homework I have.”
She was laying it on the line. I had to do the same.
“Tell me more about Butch.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
An angry grin crimped her mouth. It was so abhorrent that I wanted to slap it off her face. “You didn’t have to. You don’t like him and Mom and Dad don’t like him and the three of you are just buzzing around like wasps, aren’t you?”
“No, I don’t think that’s what we’re doing.”
“He’s my boyfriend. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“No,” I said. I tried to remember the days when I’d drive her to the ice cream parlor and everything made her eyes brighten. “Where’d you two meet?”
“At the lake.”
I waited for more. There wasn’t any.
“You know he’s too old for you.”
“Your opinion, Terry.”
“And the law’s. He could go up for seven on statutory-rape charges.”
She tossed the backpack on the floor, put her feet on the dashboard, and crossed her ankles. “You worried about the law all of a sudden?”
“Not really. Are you being contrary for a reason?”
She turned her face away, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. We Rands, we could work one another’s nerves without even making an effort. “What did you do for those five years you were gone?”
“Worked on ranches, mostly.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Yes, why? Did you like it? Is it something you always wanted to do?”
We were getting to places I didn’t want to be. “I didn’t mind it. And yeah, I thought about doing it before I wound up broke with a busted-down car on a road where the exits were thirty miles apart. But I didn’t know what it would really be like.”
She sounded genuinely interested. I wondered if she was just trying to find a way to hurt me. “So why didn’t you get another job?”
“Because I was only killing time. I knew the call would come one day, I guess. I didn’t know you’d be making it, but I knew it would come. And I knew I’d have to sit across from Collie and finally ask him the questions I wanted to know the answers to.”
“Did you get them?”
“No. He’s contrary too.”
“I’m not being contrary. I just don’t know what to tell you.” She swung her legs down and planted her feet on the car mat again. “Start the car, let’s go already.”
I checked the rearview and spotted the security guy coming over to brace me and get me off school property. I threw the car in gear and headed back toward Old Autauk Road.
Dale was smart and mature and was running at least a small game on me, but I just couldn’t manage to come out and ask her if she knew Butch was planning a heist. Or if she was involved in any way. I felt sick with myself for even thinking such a thing, but that didn’t mean I was wrong.
“Why didn’t you give Blanche a southern accent?”
“And be like everyone else? I was trying something new.”
“It worked. You nailed it.”
“Thank you. So you’ve complimented me, now comes the changeup when you ask me something you really want to know. So go on.”
I wanted to know it all but I would never be able to convince her of that. Again that cruel smile played on her lips.
“Have you ever tried to visit Collie?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I want to? You didn’t see him until I called you.”
I didn’t want to dig too deeply, but I thought the only way I’d ever learn anything about her, really understand her once again, was to discuss Collie. It tied us together and touched us in a way that it wouldn’t touch anyone else. Collie was our older brother, and there was something exclusive in that.
“I don’t feel the same way you do,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She used an index finger to draw a smiley face in the condensation of the passenger window. When she was
