100 Days (11 page)

“My truck usually works fine. Four-wheel drive.”

“You know, I've never been out to your place. Not even back when…” My voice trailed off into Awkwardland once again. God, why couldn't I just shut
up
already?

“This road was even worse back when we were in grade school,” Boone answered, saving me from feeling like a complete idiot. “The county didn't maintain it back then.”

Both of us were quiet after that, as if we'd broken some unspoken rule by bringing up that earlier time when we used to be friends. At the last big turn in the road he shifted in his seat. I turned to say something, to try to break the ice that had formed during the past mile or so, but he looked way more uptight than he had a minute earlier. “My driveway's the long one coming up on the left,” he said, pointing. “You can just drop me at the end of it here.”

“I don't mind driving all the—”

“No. I don't want you getting stuck.” Boone was talking fast all of a sudden.

“Getting stuck? Are you serious? The road's dry as a—”

“Ruts in the driveway,” he said, cutting me off. “Deep ones.” He grabbed his backpack and jumped out before I'd even brought El-C to a full stop. “Thanks for the ride.”

I didn't have time to reply before he slammed the door and walked away quickly, toward a little house at the end of another long dirt road.

“Sure,” I said to the windshield, my voice dazed and quiet. “Anytime.”

 

28

BOONE

DAY 73: APRIL 13

Turns out the Chevy just had some loose battery connections. Once I had time to pop the hood and investigate, it wasn't at all hard to get her back on the road. This time. Now I park the truck in front of the food bank where I can get a shopping cart full of groceries for just twenty bucks. I'd get everything free if Mom had a food assistance card from the state. She never has enough energy to go to the office where they give out the cards, though, even when I offer to drive her there and stay by her side throughout the whole paperwork process.

Today, the cart is filled with day-old donuts and birthday cupcakes, low-grade ground beef, and prespiced frozen chicken pieces in vacuum-packed plastic. Not a bad haul. I load everything into the back of the truck and throw a tarp over it. Sometimes, if it's the end of the day and they have lots of perishables left, they'll let me take two shopping carts. It's always a crapshoot, though. Some days there's nothing good left, just bags of carrot ends and boxes of dry rice cereal for babies. That or donated cans of random exotic things like coconut milk and canned lychees.

I know better than to ask Mom how long we can keep this up, how long I can keep spending money, even if I'm excruciatingly careful about how I spend it. The life insurance payout has been our main source of income for two years, but it's not going to last forever. I don't have to be a full-fledged adult to know that much. It's not like I can just pick up more time at the Feed & Seed, either, especially since TJ cut my hours in half. If it was later in the year, I'd probably do okay selling wood out of the back of the pickup when I ran out of skulls and antlers, but even then I'd need a working chainsaw. The Stihl I used to cut the last load has been acting up lately. It could take a hundred dollars or more to fix it.

And then there was the drive out to my place with Moira, the embarrassment I felt as we got closer to the house. From the road, it doesn't look so bad. A little weathered maybe, a little the worse for wear from having prairie wind, sun, rain, and snow beating down on it regularly, but that's to be expected out here. It's only when you get up close that you see the missing roof shingles, the chunks of old wood siding gouged and ripped from the exterior, the bowed front steps and warped window trim held in place by just a few remaining rusty nails. The Christmas lights dangling from hooks driven into the roof fascia. It wouldn't be so bad if the lights were from the holiday season that wrapped up just a few months ago, but this particular string has been hanging there for three years at least. It hasn't worked for two of those years. Standing that close to the house, a person would only have to take a few more steps to be able to look in through a window. And what would a person see then? That was easy. She'd see the interior of the House Hope Left Behind. She'd see my mother looking ten years older than she is, haggard from fear and sorrow, stooped over a table working a jigsaw puzzle like her life depended on it, like she was trying to figure out what went wrong, but couldn't quite piece it together.

When the house came into view and Moira acted like she was going to drive me right up to the front door, it was all I could do to stop myself from jumping out of the El Camino while it was still going thirty. The phrases “over my dead body” and “when hell freezes over” rushed into my mind. Probably because both of those things would have to happen simultaneously before I ever,
ever
allowed Moira Watkins inside the godforsaken shack that doubles as my home sweet home.

 

29

MOIRA

DAY 72: APRIL 14

Building Frankenstein's Monster.

That was the caption beneath the picture of me that circulated at the beginning of freshman year. I'd been reapplying my makeup in the fluorescent light of the locker room after PE when I heard giggling nearby. I hadn't yet applied lipstick, so my mouth was still open in a wide, pale O as I lowered the tube in time to see the reflection of three girls in the mirror, all of them juniors.
Oh God, my hair,
I thought. It was still spiky and wet from the shower, pulled back from my face with an old elastic headband. Seconds later, there was a flash from one of their phone cameras. By the next morning, copies of the photo were taped up in the hallways and posted all over social media. People started pointing at me and shouting, “She's alive!” It was the usual horror, really.

“Just ignore them,” Agnes advised, biting her lower lip.

“I'm trying. Believe me.”

“It could have been worse. You could have been wearing a towel or nothing at—”

“I know.”

The irony was that I'd recently decided to be pretty much done with the whole goth thing. I was just tired of it. The makeup I was applying that day in the locker room was noticeably toned down compared to how I'd been wearing it since eighth grade. I'd even donated some of my edgier clothes back to the thrift store where I bought them. But after the photo went viral, I had no choice but to reembrace a style that screamed
Death!
and
Darkness!
It was the only way I knew to not show weakness, to let the bastards know they weren't going to get me down.

Still, more than a year after the Frankenstein picture got plastered all over the school, it doesn't help when I feel like a monster yet again. When it becomes abundantly clear, for example, how quickly any guy who manages to spend more than five minutes in my presence wants to get away. Take Boone, for instance, and the way he bolted from El-C before I even got to the end of his driveway. Clearly he was freaked out by my music, my cynicism, my entire existence. The feeling of utter rejection that washed over me as soon as he shut the car door made me want to say,
Hey, wait. I think you might be misunderstanding something.

It also made me want to hurt him right back.

It makes me shudder in self-revulsion.

 

30

BOONE

DAY 71: APRIL 15

It doesn't seem like so long ago that we were in sixth grade and I came this close to telling her she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

At the time, I knew Moira would think I was being a dope.
Shut up,
she'd say.
You're just trying to make me feel better.

But she would have been wrong. Not that it mattered once she shut me out. Maybe I would have found the courage to tell her she was beautiful later if things had gone differently. Who knows?

These days, it's pretty obvious Moira thinks I'm a head case. All I need is for her to get an eyeful of my house and my one remaining nonfunctional parent to really make my life complete.

And so it goes and goes and goes. Some days, it's surprisingly easy to ignore how most guys my age are out shooting hoops or playing in garage bands or hanging with girls at parties every weekend. Other days, not so much. I despise self-pity, hate it most of all in myself. Still, sometimes I can't help but feel like every other sixteen-year-old guy in the universe is boarding the party plane to some magical land of women and money and fun while I sit by the side of the road, broken down before I even reached the airport.

 

31

AGNES

DAY 70: APRIL 16

Moira's family lives in an old, two-story Victorian house that's in constant disarray. There's art all over the walls, musical instruments everywhere, and, in the middle of it all, a baby grand piano. When we were girls, Moira and I would sometimes build forts under the piano and huddle there while her dad played jazz melodies or sonatas, filling our world with sound.

The house is one of my favorite places in the world, especially on a Saturday like today, when there's nothing that has to be done and nowhere that I have to be. It's the only place where I can really get away from my usual routine, other than school, which isn't much of a getaway at all.

“B-I-N-G-O!” I sing the tune of the old campfire song as Moira's dog comes up to me with his tongue lolling and his tail waving back and forth like a metronome. I've taken billions of pictures of him over the years, and I take another one now. Then I cup his muzzle in my hands, and he sighs. Back when we were in grade school, I loved throwing a tennis ball for Bingo out in the backyard. He knocked me down once, and Moira just about had a cow. I didn't hold it against him, though. “He's just being a dog,” I said.

The picture of Moira I love best has Bingo in it when he was a tiny puppy. Moira is only about three or four years old in that picture, which sits framed on a shelf filled with books on yoga and meditation and classic art. There's a look of pure, ticklish joy on Moira's face as Bingo sniffs her ear. Even now, that old dog is one of the only things that can make Moira seem like a little kid with no worries.

After we've been hanging out doing homework for a while, Moira drives me back home. On the way, I spot an old Volkswagen Beetle sitting in traffic. “Slug bug!” I shriek, punching Moira in the arm.

“Jesus, Agnes! You just about gave me a heart attack.”

“I got you, though,” I say, grinning maniacally.

Moira pretend-glares. “Indeed.” She has no choice but to be a good sport where this particular game is concerned. The one and only time Moira saw a Bug and punched me (ever so lightly) on the arm, she gave me a big purple bruise. After that, no matter how many times I tried to convince her it didn't hurt, Moira refused to be the puncher. She was only willing to play if she could be the punchee every single time a Bug was spotted, even if she was the one to spot it.

“That's not going to be any fun,” I said at the time. But I was wrong. It was tons of fun. I estimate that a good portion of every car ride I take with Moira is dedicated to being on the lookout for VWs so one of us can shout “Slug bug!” and I can punch my best friend.

“Why don't you come over for dinner tomorrow after school?” I ask her now. “You can show me how to make those yummy chocolate caramel coconut bars.”

Moira sighs. “My brother's coming into town with his new girlfriend, so I have to eat at my house tomorrow. You could come over, though. I'm sure Grant would love to see you. Plus, you can meet his new floozy.”

“Moira!”

“What? Have you seen some of the train wrecks he's dated? Like the girl with the spray tan who became a vegetarian when they started dating but then made this big, teary confession a month later that she'd been secretly bingeing on hamburgers the whole time? Then there was the cheerleader who was convinced they were going to get married right out of high school. She had a dress picked out and everything. And don't even get me started on that one protester girl who chained herself to the elm tree in our front yard after Grant broke up with her. I have no doubt this new chick will be a total piece of work.”

 

32

MOIRA

DAY 69: APRIL 17

Man, I want to dislike Fern. I really, really do.

The only problem is, I can't. Fern is too perfect, but in a nice way. In a way that's impossible to hate. She met my brother at the university library where they both work, and they're like two peas in a pod. Fern seems perfect in the same way Grant has always been perfect, which is no doubt why they started going out in the first place. Self-esteem and popularity always came so easily to Grant. All through school he somehow managed to strike the perfect balance between throwback hippie kid and pop culture dude, never veering too heavily into either one. Everyone loved him for that—teachers, other kids, other kids' parents. It was sickening. Thank God he was a guy. If he'd been an older sister, I no doubt would have ended it all rather than try to live up to her.
Let's hear it for the Y chromosome,
I think.

It's almost ridiculous how happy Mom and Dad are to have Grant home. It's probably nice for them to have their non–black sheep kid around for a change, the one who embraced their lifestyle by doing graduate work in environmental studies at UC Berkeley. I would probably resent him for this, too, if I didn't feel the exact same way about my brother that our parents do. Every time he comes back, I realize how much I've missed him. Then he leaves again, and I have to stop letting myself think too much about it until the next time we see each other.

“So what's new with you, sis?” he asks as we finish up the organic fruit compote Mom made for dessert. “Any love interests I should know about?”