Million Dollar Road (19 page)

“Here.” He offered her the makeshift pipe.

Already feeling more than a little trashed, Lireinne regarded the smoldering can for a moment, nonplussed. It had been forever since she'd been stoned—not since that couple of times behind the school, when she and that weird girl from French class had cut fourth period and gotten high. It hadn't been that big a deal.

Oh, why the hell not? Lireinne took the pipe, held it to her lips, and inhaled the herby-tasting smoke. Bolt was right: it seemed strong, burning when she held the hit for a few seconds in her lungs.

“Whoa, I'm feelin' it now.” Bolt happily fell backward across the Explorer's hood, his weighty collapse propelling the squealing ferret from his shoulder. Black Death landed on the roof, slipped, and slid down the windshield. “Man, that's some good shit,” Bolt commented.

Black Death untangled himself from the windshield wipers and scrabbled down the Explorer's fender, springing onto Lireinne's shoulder in a practically visible cloud of greasy shed fur and pheromones only another ferret could love.

“
God
—like now what?” Lireinne exclaimed in disgust. “Hold on there, you little whacko.” She was
so
not going to wear a ferret. “C'mon. Let's get you back in your cage.”

Weaving through a crowd of stoned kids in full Goth regalia, Lireinne climbed the front steps into the house. Almost hidden in her long hair, the ferret's claws stuck to her shoulder like Velcro as she picked her way through the groups on the floor. The dark, narrow hall was full of oblivious couples groping each other and making out, but once in Bolt's totally gross room Lireinne managed to peel the frantic ferret from her shoulder and returned him safely to his cage. The rancid reek of dirty socks and Black Death's home was so intense in there it was like being gassed, so with an ick-grimace, Lireinne shut the door on Bolt's chaotic mess and found her unsteady way back outside to her car. Under the streetlight the air was fragrant with the smell of marijuana, the faint scent of patchouli oil, and the damp September night.

“Want 'nother hit?” Miraculously upright again, Bolt held out the smoking Live Wire can.

Why not? Lireinne thought again. It had been a shitty day, but the punch and the pot made everything seem outrageously funny. Ridiculous, even. Her, with Mr. Con, of all people. Sometimes he was a little pervy, and even if he wasn't, he was
old
. So not going to happen! She couldn't think of him that way without giggling. The full silver moon riding in the sky overhead seemed to laugh along with her. Like, those bitches were
crazy,
Lireinne thought. She could almost feel sorry for them—now that she was stoned. Tina and 'Cille were ancient; freaking ugly, too: no wonder they had to make stuff up. Dirty thoughts and mean mouths. That was pretty sad.

Bolt was okay, though. He wasn't such a bad guy, not for a lame-ass freak who didn't have any real friends—not except for Wolf. She could almost feel sorry for him, too. Lireinne thought for a moment. Was she leaving anyone out? Oh, yeah, Emma. She didn't feel sorry for Emma. Not one bit. Lireinne shook her head in contempt. At least Tina and 'Cille were upfront with the hate thing; she knew where she stood with
them
.

“Fuck you, Emma Favreaux,” Lireinne muttered. The next time you play your “I-want-to-be-your-friend” game, go find someone else to lie to. This last came to her with a sense of finality, as though she'd put paid to her hurt feelings. Her deeply felt resentment faded and Lireinne decided she didn't need to think about Emma anymore. Her cup was empty and she needed a refill.

And so went the night, until the party began to wind down, the kids piled in their cars, and drove off to find their way home through the dark streets.

Lireinne stayed till the end.

In the way of so many disasters, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Around four in the morning, somehow Lireinne had found herself driving Wolf and Bolt out to the alligator farm.

After stopping at an all-night convenience store for microwave burritos and snacks, once at the farm the giggling trio tumbled out of the Explorer and sneaked onto the property in the country night, as black as the spaces between the stars. Thank you God for the moonlight, Lireinne thought in a brief, cold moment of real clarity. There was a good chance they might wander into the retention pond, it was so dark out here. She ripped open the bag of cheap cookies she'd picked up at the gas station: no dog biscuits for Snowball tonight.

“White gator,” Bolt was saying. “Thought they were just some bayou cowboy bullshit.” He'd left his long vinyl coat in the car, the night having turned balmy and humid. A warm front was moving in and fog was rising off the water, its pale fingers of mist groping toward the dam. Like always, Bolt's T-shirt wasn't long enough to cover his huge stomach. In the darkness his revealed gut was a big white slice of honeydew melon, jiggling above the waistband of his baggy jeans as he struggled to keep up.

“Y'gotta get some longer shirts, Bolt,” Lireinne said, drunkenly disapproving. “You're almost as big as freakin' Snowball.”

Behind her in the dark, Wolf giggled. “
Snowball
. Helluva name for a gator.” He stumbled in his Doc Martens, lurched alarmingly, and recovered at the last moment. The three were crossing the foggy dam of the pond in a ragged line and the ground here was uneven, the grass slippery with dew.

“She like some kind of freakin' pet?” Wolf's voice was loud in the mist.

“Shhh!” Starting to sober somewhat and wondering if this was such a great idea after all, Lireinne led the boys beyond the dam.

“Not so
loud,
Wolf. She's no pet—she's not even scared of people like regular gators are. C'mon. We gotta get to the BFG barn.”

Bolt was lagging behind, having stopped to take a piss in the retention pond. “Hey, wait up, y'all,” he said. “What's . . . the story on this . . . BFG barn?” Puffing as he zipped his jeans, he was trotting to catch up with Lireinne and Wolf on the other side of the dam.

“Like, for Big Fucking Gators, okay?” Lireinne snapped.

“No . . . shit.” Bolt's breath rasped, labored as an exhausted dog's. “We ever . . . gonna get there? We been . . . walking like a . . .
mile
.”

“I said, keep it down.” They were finally at the doors to the BFG barn. “Listen up, y'all,” Lireinne said in a low voice. “Quiet, 'member? Don't want the whole damn barn to go bat-shit. Nobody comes out here at night so I can't turn the lights on.” She eased open the doors and slipped inside.

“This way,” she whispered. Through the open doors a wavering silver puddle of moonlight spread across the cement floor. A couple of rats scurried out of sight into the blackness. Lireinne, Wolf, and Bolt tiptoed into the barn, blinking and wide-eyed in the dark relieved only by the faint glow from the skylights overhead.

“Can't see,” Wolf said, his voice hushed.

“Give it a minute. Your eyes'll work soon.” Lireinne fumbled at the barrel latch on the access door to Snowball's tank.

“God
damn,
it stinks in here,” Bolt said, holding his nose.

“Like you'd notice.” Lireinne sneered softly. “Your freaking room is like a thousand times worse, you slob.” To tell the truth, after weeks in the office she thought it smelled rank in here, too. The reptilian reek was as thick as 'Cille's gumbo. The other nineteen thousand nine-hundred and ninety-nine gators began to stir in their tanks, alarmed at this interruption in their normal, changeless routine of feeding, water-changing, hosing, and silence. It was weird, almost horror-movie scary in the unrelieved dark of the barn, filled with all that invisible splashing and grunting, thinking about the hundreds of unseen rats, the crushing jaws lined with savage teeth.

With a shiver, Lireinne slid open the door to Snowball's tank. “She's in here. Y'all hurry, 'kay?”

The water below them was a light-swallowing hole in space, until a huge white head rose out of the black. Snowball swam toward the front of her tank, floating like a horn-backed surfboard until she paused below Lireinne's flip-flops and the boys' Doc Martens on the cement ledge, only inches above the dead, empty holes of her eyes.

“Here,” Lireinne said in a low voice, doling out the cookies. “She's gonna love these.” One by one, the three trespassers dropped their offerings onto the tarry surface. Snowball snatched the soggy sandwich crèmes up while they watched in wordless fascination.

“Man, this is, like,
ill,
it's so cool. Hey—you think she'd get loose if you left the door-thing open?” Bolt's voice seemed too loud in the quiet. “Whoa, like that shit would be like fucking . . .
doom
or something.”

“Maybe,” Lireinne said shortly. She dropped another cookie. Before it hit the water, Snowball's maw snapped it out of the air, like an immense mousetrap slamming closed. “The tank's pretty deep, but she's strong as hell. The crew always used to say the gators sometimes climbed into the aisle if they forgot and left the doors open.” She handed the boys another cookie apiece.

Giggling, Bolt dropped his cookie on top of Snowball's monstrous head and Wolf guffawed.

“Here, gator, gator, gator.” The boys were goofing around like they were at a freaking petting zoo.

Lireinne wished Bolt and Wolf would hurry the hell up, wondering what she'd been thinking, agreeing to bring her brother and his lame-ass friend out here in the middle of the night. Snowball had never come this close to her before. Damn, she could step on that big white snout and stand on it if she wanted to. Snowball might even let her—before she bit her leg off and ate it.

Lireinne shuddered, suddenly chilled.

“Let's go.” She was ready to get out of there, like
now
. She was getting a really bad feeling about this.

The boys grumbled, but agreed. With a sense of relief, as though she'd reached the other side of four lanes of speeding cars, Lireinne tried to slide the access door shut. It was stickier than usual in the humid night air, and she struggled with the moisture-warped plywood, panting with a sudden, imperative need to
hurry
.

Just as the door creaked and splintered in its track, Snowball's head and shoulders shot out of the water. She stretched a clawed, webbed foot upward, pawing at the lip of the tank. Before Lireinne could react, those claws had dug into the cement next to her flip-flop.

“Hey!” she shrieked. The boys jumped, nearly falling to the cement floor. They scrambled away, their astonished faces white ovals in the dark. Frantically, Lireinne shoved at the door. It was broken; it wouldn't move. “Help me,” Lireinne cried.

Then she froze, her jaw dropping.

Both the alligator's front legs were out of the tank. Opening her pink jaws wide as the door to a stretch limousine, her ivory teeth like rows and rows of twelve-gauge slugs, Snowball
hissed
. Her head swung into the aisle; her scaled shoulders followed.

It all happened so fast!

Now halfway to freedom, Snowball raised her massive tail, smacking the water with a great splash and a hollow
boom
. She grunted, straining to leverage her huge white body out of the tank, over the concrete lip, and into the barn.

Boom
. A hind leg was seeking purchase. It was in the aisle.
Boom
.

“Jesus!” Wolf's voice was a breathless scream. “Bitch's coming for us!”

Her paralysis broken, Lireinne grabbed her brother's arm and dragged him toward the door of the BFG barn. “Quick, you assholes—
run,
” she cried. So desperate to get the boys away from Snowball's sure pursuit, she didn't notice the torn mouth of the plastic cookie bag because Lireinne was shoving Bolt and Wolf out of the door. The bag still clutched in her nerveless fingers, she didn't notice the cookies that had fallen on the floor behind her, like a scattered, vanilla-sandwich-crème trail.

But when Snowball slammed the mighty length of her tail on the water's surface a final time and launched into the aisle,
she
noticed.

Indeed, she did.

In her slow high-walk, her tail lifted and swinging, eleven terrible feet and twelve hundred pounds of dripping white-scaled alligator followed the cookies to the open doors, consuming every one with a swipe of her insulation-pink tongue.

In the doorway, Snowball paused in the hazed moonlight for the space of a breath, and then she was loose in the night, leaving the barn where she'd been imprisoned for more than a decade. The thousands of other gators roiled the water in their tanks, snapping and bellowing in frenzied confusion.