More Than Good Enough (17 page)

I was aching to kiss her again, unzip that baggy sweatshirt along with her jeans (in that order). Instead, I was opening the door, helping her out of the Yeti. Maybe out of my life, depending on whether she’d talk to me again. Yeah, it was that awkward.

“Will you text me later?” she asked. “My phone is officially ungrounded now.”

“Sure. No problem.” God, I sounded like a caveman.

I would chisel pictographs into my body, if that’s what it took to communicate with you …

As I walked her across the lawn, our hands swayed and brushed against each other. It took superpowers not to close my fingers around hers. I still couldn’t figure out what she wanted. Were we friends? More than friends? I couldn’t risk losing her trust again.

“I’m giving you a shout-out on Power 96 tonight,” I told her.

“Like, on the radio? People still do that?” She pointed at my Converse. “Your shoe’s undone, by the way.”

“Yeah. I’m working on it.”

Pippa crouched on the pavement and tightened my laces. “You’re the one who taught me about knots.”

“What about them?”

She smiled up at me. “They tell stories.”

“And you believed that?”

“Sometimes,” she said, tying a perfect two-loop knot:
over, under, around
.

“Call me before you go to sleep,” I said, like I was her dad or something. “I’ll send you a text.”

Please don’t go. Can we just sit here and talk about knots until the sun turns supernova and torches the earth? Because that would be okay with me.

When she reached the porch, I couldn’t watch her leave. I looked up at the sky and thought about dark energy. Not everybody believed in it. Some scientists called it a trick. A miscalculation. One day, the universe will run out of time.

Good thing I won’t be there.

The lights on the Rez speared the cypress trees. I pulled off the highway onto Old Tamiami Trail, a tunnel of darkness broken by houses so packed together, I couldn’t tell where one ended and another started. If you kept going down Loop Road, you’d find swimming holes, ranger huts, and trailer park refugees—old biker dudes selling car parts and chicken eggs on their back porches.

The longer I stayed in the Glades, the more I realized that “home” was a place inside my mind. I didn’t need a fence or a yard. I was still pissed at Mom for selling the house, but what could I do about it? Jack shit. That’s what.

I swerved around the skate park. Kids were hanging out practicing, even this late at night. I wanted to join them on the ramps, but I didn’t belong there. Guess I was still trying to figure out where I belonged.

As I rolled past the school, I spotted this kid thumping a basketball against the coral rock walls. He wore a trapper hat, the flaps bouncing as he slammed the ball up and over. I buzzed my window down and shouted at him.

“Nice hat.”

He saluted me. “Thanks, Trent.”

The kid actually remembered my name. “Can I have it back?” I asked.

“Maybe later.”

“How much later?”

“Later.”

Little jerk. I was starting to like him.

Back at the house, all the lights were off. I figured Dad was out, but his Kawasaki was parked under the chickee hut. A bunch of tools were scattered like medieval weapons on the lawn. Another “project” he never finished.

The front door was unlocked. Pretty typical for the Rez. Yet I still couldn’t shake the creeped-out vibes. I stumbled inside, flipped the light switch, and blinked at the mess in the kitchen: a puddle of yellow grease slicking the counter. Breakfast of Champions. Fried eggs and beer.

Wasn’t Dad supposed to be in charge?

Let him clean his own garbage.

I helped myself to a beer, flopped onto the couch, and pried off my kicks. Pippa had laced them so tight I’d lost circulation. What was she doing right now? I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d told me. If I ever met the guy who’d hurt her, I’d smash his brains out.

Yeah, I was a little obsessive.

Did she think about me, too?

Doubtful.

The beer wasn’t helping, so I pounded a couple more. Then I got up and stumbled to the bathroom. Right away, I knew something was sketchy. I almost slipped, walking in there. The floor was damp. At first, I thought Dad had taken a shower. He always left the curtain open, spraying a tsunami of water everywhere.

Not water.

The tiles on the floor were spackled with blood.

My stomach clenched. The room smeared as my legs buckled. I couldn’t stand up straight, couldn’t catch a breath. Normally, I wasn’t the kind of person who freaked over blood.

Judging by the color, it hadn’t been there long—a red glob, though more sticky than wet. I shoved my foot under the shower faucet and teetered on one leg, desperate to rinse off the nastiness. Then I splashed my eyes, as if that could scrub away what I’d seen.

All around the house, I yelled for Dad. His bedroom was landmined with dirty clothes. The stereo glowed faintly in the corner, a CD spinning inside, silent.

No sign of him.

I checked my room in the back of the house. My sleeping bag was rolled tight, like I was geared up to hike the Seven Summits.

I grabbed my heavy duty Maglite. Might as well check outside. The backyard was thick with mosquitoes. I searched behind the house, where the Everglades spilled all the way to the patio. I stood there, under the chickee hut, and squinted at the “River of Grass.”

Where the hell was Dad?

I circled the patio. As I headed toward the house, I bumped against something in the sawgrass. I took a step back, half-expecting to find a gator. They liked to hang out near the canal at night. Instead, it was a pair of legs crumpled on the lawn.

Dad. He was lying facedown, in nothing but his boxers.

I crouched next to him. “Shit.”

That’s all I could say.

I grabbed his arm, flopped it over, and checked his pulse. I had no clue what I was doing. His forehead was shiny with blood. Maybe he fell in the bathroom? How he got out here was anybody’s guess.

Here’s the most degrading part. I was too fucked up to move him. I could barely push him onto his side. I racked my brains, trying to remember what I’d learned in Health class—all that stuff about choking to death and swallowing your tongue. Maybe it was too late to try.

God. Please. Make him wake up.

I tugged off my shirt and pressed it against his head. The blood sopped through the flimsy iron-on letters:
Native Pride
. I balled it up and flipped to the clean side, but it darkened within seconds. I needed to get him into the house.

Again, I tried to hoist him under the arms, but it was like wrestling a fallen log. My uncle could drag an eight-foot gator in circles by its tail, but I couldn’t move a grown-ass man. The best I could do was whisper at him. Try to nudge him back to planet earth.

“Dad,” I said, over and over.

He breathed my name.

“Trent?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

He wasn’t dead. At least not yet. I wanted to turn around. Run. As fast as possible. Just leave him there to rot. After what he did to me, there was nothing I wanted more.

But I didn’t run.

Lights blared from Uncle Seth’s house. “Don’t move. I’m coming right back,” I said.

God, that sounded idiotic. I started marching toward the lights, still half-wasted, and I fell, more than once. When I finally got to the porch, I must’ve looked like hell. I couldn’t get myself together. I was pacing back and forth in my bare feet, trying to make up my damn mind.

Knock.

Or don’t knock.

Near the door was a stack of cans filled with BB pellets. Girls would strap them to their legs to make music for the Green Corn Dance. The girls would spin because the universe spins, the same as everything in it—plants and animals and people, too; the way it always was. The way it always will be.

I knocked.

When it opened, a woman leaned on the door frame. She wore a straw hat tipped low on her forehead and a heap of beads around her neck. Her thighs reminded me of bedposts, thick muscle packed into khaki shorts.

She squinted. “You’re Jimi’s boy.”

Around the Rez, people still called my dad “Jimi.”

“You don’t look too good,” she said, scratching her neck. “You don’t smell too good, either.”

Who was this crazy lady? All this time, I’d thought she was the girlfriend. Now I wasn’t so sure.

“Where’s Uncle Seth?” I asked.

“Gone.” She steered her gaze to the yard, which ended at a wall of stringy pines near the canal. “No use fussing about it. Can’t keep him away from the city lights.”

I felt like she was talking to the trees, like I wasn’t even there.

“It’s the lights that draw young people,” she said.

Inside the house, the TV crackled applause. A woman was screaming, all hyped about winning a year’s supply of Cheerios or a trip someplace that wasn’t here, one of those countries whose names I memorized then forgot how to spell.

“My dad’s hurt,” I said. “He needs help. I can’t do it by myself.”

“It shouldn’t be up to you.” She shoved her feet into a pair of flip-flops. “Come,” she said. As we marched across the yard, her gray-stained braids swung down her back. She was a lot older than I’d guessed. What did she mean,
not up to me
?

When I first moved onto the Rez, I thought I’d have total freedom. Instead, I got roped into Dad’s sick version of reality. The knots were yanked so tight, there was nothing I could do to pull myself loose.

Nothing except chew my way out.

fourteen

The room was spinning.

I was tangled in sheets. My mouth tasted gritty, like I’d swallowed a handful of sand. Even the inside of my nose felt dry. I tried to focus on the ceiling fan, but it kept shifting and the bed wouldn’t stay still.

In other words, I was seriously fucked.

The solution?

Close my eyes and drift back to Dreamland.

As I rolled over, the blanket snapped out of my grip. I figured it had slid on the floor. I reached for it, stretching my entire arm off the edge (definitely not the smartest move; everybody knows the bed demons have a weakness for dangling limbs).

“Wake up, Trenton.”

The bed demons had learned how to talk. They were calling my name. And they didn’t sound happy.

“Did you hear me?”

Yeah, I heard you the first time. Loud and clear.
Extra
loud, as if the world’s volume had cranked up.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

School? Why start now?

“It’s time to get out of bed.”

Time is a human invention. When nothing happens, it doesn’t exist.

Actually, something was happening.

The woman I’d met last night (not that I’d call it an “introduction”) was standing over me. In her arms, she held my jeans, neatly creased on top of my
Native Pride
T-shirt.

It could only mean one thing. I was half-naked, in nothing but my boxers. This was only slightly embarrassing for one reason: I wasn’t sober enough to give a shit. Yeah, it was already morning and I was still drunk. How twisted is that?

“Do you remember where you are?” she asked.

To be honest, I didn’t know. I remembered the blood on the bathroom floor. All the beers I’d pounded. Me and Pippa in the car. Her body sinking on top of mine.

“I’m not at my dad’s place,” I said. A brilliant observation.

“Correct,” she said.

“Whose place am I at?”

“Mine.”

Now I was totally confused.

“Not Uncle Seth’s?”

“My son-in-law lives here, yes. But this house belongs to me.”

The headache behind my eyes had moved toward my brain. “His wife was your daughter?”

“Granddaughter, as a matter of fact,” she said, folding my clothes on the dresser. “Call me Cookie. Everybody does.”

I was still trying to register the news. The only grandmother I knew was my Nana in Fort Myers, the one who loved dogs more than people.

Cookie wasn’t like any grandmother I’d ever seen. Her hair was coiled in a long braid, slung over a Harley Davidson muscle tank, and her throat was speckled like a conch shell. So were her knuckles, the same as most old people. But she didn’t look old. That’s for sure.

“Me and your dad ain’t exactly on speaking terms,” Cookie told me. “But he finally got you dragged back to your Indian family. I’ll give him that much.”

“Where’s Dad now?” I asked.

“In my sewing studio. Same as he’s been for the past month. Wasting time on the wrong things.”

“Wait. The Little Blue House is your sewing studio?”