The woman and the cops stayed completely calm in response to her outburst. When they were certain they had said everything they legally had to say and had given her all the information they legally had to give her, they left.
Mike stood motionless as Ciarra paced. “Who the fuck do they think they are … Fucking pigs. I’m gonna fucking sue them, I swear to God!” she yelled, talking as much to the universe as she was to her father.
“We can get us a house and then we can get ’im back,” Mike told her, as unable to moderate her distress as he was his own.
Ciarra sank to the floor, kneeling with her legs splayed. She cried against the complete powerlessness that she felt until she couldn’t take it anymore. She ran to the purple van to get her coat and then took off on foot. Mike didn’t know where she was going, but he guessed, especially after what the CPS workers had said, that she was going to find a dealer.
The entire thing had been like a concussion grenade going off in their little camp. Mike explained what had happened to Robert, who had been minding his own business in his little tent since finding out that the police were only there to find Ciarra. Though buoyed by Robert’s encouragement, Mike felt like it was entirely his fault. He re-evaluated the kind of father he had been or not been. He wanted to have faith in Ciarra, but he couldn’t. He made himself a cup of coffee as a comfort.
The only consolation he could find was in the plan he was hatching to get a more stable job. A job where he could afford a house with steady paychecks arriving in the mail. Once that happened, he would try to get custody of Aston for himself. He would make up for the poor job he had done in Ciarra’s childhood by giving them both a stable place to live. Tomorrow, he would go to ask for a job at every trucking company he could find.
CHAPTER 27
“I used to put it down to the fact I wasn’t fit enough or I didn’t look good enough or how big my nose was or that my legs look like chicken legs or whatever. But I really think all that had nothin’ to do with it. I was just avoiding the bigger issue.”
Taylor was eating an oatmeal cookie that he had saved from the free lunch he had been given at the church. He chewed it while he talked. “I mean, I knew there was somethin’ wrong with me when other boys wanted to start hangin’ out with girls and I just wanted to hang out with them. I basically did everything in my power not to face it. I think I just felt so much shame I couldn’t admit to it until I kinda had to, you know?”
Aria was listening to him from the back seat of the car. The rest of the car lot was void of movement. Everyone else had already turned in for the night. “There was this boy in middle school, Brian Meyer. He was the first boy I ever kissed. I don’t know, he was prob’ly just having fun. Straight guys like to do that sometimes. But I was so in love with him I used to write my name and his, and then my name with his last name in my school notebook over and over. I was stayin’ with this real Christian family at the time. The mom found my notebook and kicked me out of the house ’cause of it. I guess the idea of movin’ in with someone is just scary ’cause it means I kinda have to own it, you know. Like I still feel like maybe it’s somethin’ I gotta do in secret. But if I’m living there then everyone kinda knows.”
Dan had been pressuring Taylor to move in with him. Aria had known about Taylor’s resistance to doing so for weeks now. But tonight, she tried to relieve the boredom of trying to fall asleep – neither of them was tired – by digging deeper about the real reasons why. To Aria it made no sense at all why someone in Taylor’s position wouldn’t jump at the first opportunity to get off the street, especially given everything Taylor had told her about Dan so far. With Omkar in her life, Taylor’s frequent absences felt less like abandonment than they did before. Given how effeminate he was and how out of the closet he seemed, it shocked Aria that Taylor was still so ashamed for people to know that he was gay. She tried to counter his shame by telling him there was nothing wrong with it, but nothing she said seemed to sink in. Eventually, the conversation slowed and she heard the louder, labored breathing of his sleep.
Later that night, the shrill sound of Palin’s bark startled them awake; the hysterical alarm of her intonations sent a wave of dread up and down both Taylor’s and Aria’s spines. They threw off the weight of their sleeping bags in preparation for conflict before they even knew what the conflict was. It was Taylor who realized first what was happening.
“Holy shit … Oh my fucking God, we gotta get out of here … Quick!” he yelled to Aria, flailing to collect whatever things he could in time to escape.
The entire car lot was alive with fire. Its molten veins had already claimed Mike’s tent as well as the Camaro where EJ used to stay. And it was reaching to swallow everything else in sight. Before Aria could make sense of what was happening, she grabbed the shoulder strap of her backpack and pulled it free from beneath the seat. She yanked the
