Scare Crow
Authors: Julie Hockley
SC
A
R
E
CROW
A CROW’S ROW LOVE STORY
JULIE HOCKLEY
iUniverse LLC
Bloomington
Scare Crow
A Crow’s Row Love Story
Copyright © 2014 Julie Hockley.
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ISBN: 978-1-4917-2615-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4917-2655-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4917-2616-7 (e)
iUniverse rev. date: 3/24/2014
CONTENTS
To my two smart, strong, beautiful babies, G a
nd M.
Remember, broken hearts will
heal.
And to anyone who breaks my babies’ hearts,
run.
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going thr
ough.
—“Changes,” song by David Bowie
Watch the whales from your back
yard!
Emmy—my Emmy—was in a tiny bikini, lying on the sand with a book leaning against her
knee.
A spectacular opportunity to own this pristine piece of heaven. Enjoy this quaint
little island of just over five acres of unexplored terrain surrounded by sandy shore
line.
There was a mountain of greenery behind her that looked like an elephant’s rump. Our
shack was somewhere in the depths of our jungle. But only we knew it was there. It
had a tin roof. Emmy loved to hear the clack of the rain against the metal. So d
id I.
This island offers a serene and remote setting, where you can be at one with nature
and forget about the rest of the w
orld.
I was standing in the water, hip deep in the ocean, facing the shore. The waves crashed
against my backside, and I watched her, wishing this moment would last forever, noticing
that the ocean water was almost touching her toes, resisting the urge to disturb
her.
Just a twenty-minute helicopter ride from Bora Bora International Airp
ort
…
Then again, life was short. I fought the current and found my rightful place on top
of her. Bathing suits were for the rest of the free world. Not fo
r us.
OMEN
When the strap of my bra snapped, fanned out like a goose taking flight, and took
a bend in the road just so it could whack me in the face, I knew it was a bad omen.
Getting dressed had seemed like a necessary step. Not a step forward or a step backward.
Just a step. At least it was something. Better than just sitting there. Better than
waiting for something to ha
ppen.
But I had to admit—the sting of the strap against my cheek had felt almost enlive
ning.
I stared at my face in the plate-sized mirror of my bedroom wall, floating my fingers
over the strap-length redness on my cheek. And I decided, to a 99 percent certainty,
that the pleasure of physical pain didn’t mean that I had been reduced to masochism.
After weeks of having the emotional quotient of a rock, feeling something, feeling
anything, was better than the numbness that had engulfe
d me.
Though I did wish that my human need to feel hadn’t left yet another blemish on my
c
heek.
The other bruises and cuts, the ones that Victor had left behind, were just a pale
pink now—easily concealed with a touch of foundation. I supposed that the newest addition
to the facial collection was a reminder that, no matter what I tried, big or small—even
getting dressed—I would never be quite the same a
gain.
I realized how bad of an omen the breaking of my bra strap was when I remembered that
this was my one and only bra. The other one had already been eaten by the demonically
possessed washing machine at the Laundr
omat.
I sighed, pulled myself away from the reflection in the mirror, and tied a knot to
hold what was left toge
ther.
Meatball was hiding under my bed, where I longed to be. He had adjusted pretty quickly
to our new existence—like moving in with me was just a vacation, a change of scenery.
Within minutes of Carly dropping him off, he strolled around the place like he was
renting it—sniffing everything, leaving his scent in creative places, like my roommate’s
bedpost. He wagged his tail, he jumped around, he begged to go out to run and play.
To him, nothing was different other than the setting. It was as if nothing were wrong,
as if Cameron were coming back. There were days when I envied him for his ability
to forget so quickly. But sometimes I felt like he was a traitor. Cameron was something
we had once shared, but only I was left with the pain of his me
mory.
I couldn’t even think of Cameron’s name without my breath being cut short, feeling
like I was going to throw up. Cameron’s face colored my every thought, like everything
I was seeing and feeling was through the veil of his beautiful face—like I was looking
out through a window, and Cameron was my windowpane. It was excrucia
ting.
If it hadn’t been for Meatball, I would have never left the house or the couch. I
would have never gone to the supermarket to buy dog and people food; Meatball refused
to eat anything unless I joined him. If it weren’t for him, I would have never gone
to the supermarket to buy food, only to be stopped at the cash register because my
card rang insufficient funds. Meatball’s needs, Meatball’s life, Meatball had kept
me alive for the last few w
eeks.
I was officially b
roke.
I hadn’t been to work since May, since I had been taken from my lackluster life and
thrust into the underworld—Cameron’s world. This was the world where I had longed
to be so that I could stay with Cameron. Now I belonged now
here.
After missing work for over three months, I had lost my job, though my salary had
stopped coming into my bank account only a few weeks ago. The fact that it took so
long for the school to figure out that Emily Sheppard, a once-dedicated student employee,
wasn’t showing up for work every day would have normally hurt my feelings. Nowadays
I was indifferent to
this.
While I was getting dressed, my dog—it was still hard for me to call him “my” dog—remained
sulking under the bed. My bed was still the same. Still stilted on top of the milk
crates I had stolen last year from the darkened parking lot of the corner store. After
Meatball had spent his first night in his new house endlessly pacing around me, I
had pulled my stuff out from under my bed so that he would have a space of his own,
one that was—and would forever be—within my s
pace.
And the burrow under my stilted bed was where Meatball had plastered himself ever
since my roommates had started filtering back a few days ago. He had grown too comfortable
with our seclusion. Now we were being interrupted, overwhe
lmed.
I had expected Spider’s and Victor’s minions to burst through the door, realizing
what a liability I was. While Cameron had never shared too many details with me, I
knew enough about them and their criminal enterprise to cause major prob
lems.
But Meatball and I had been left alone for weeks. And before we knew it, my roommates
had started coming back, like everything was normal. Normal had never been my thing,
and I wasn’t about to start now. Everything had changed. I had changed. Maybe Spider
and Victor didn’t see me as a threat. I was just a girl, right? Little Emily Sheppard,
nineteen years old, sheltered by the Fortune 500 Sheppard family, could never be a
threat to the underw
orld.
If only they knew how much I despised
them.
If only they knew how much my hate fuele
d me.
Meatball’s big head was the only thing that was sticking out from under the bed. When
I leaned down to pat that big head of his, he flattened his ears and closed his eyes.
Apparently he was still mad at me for having ordered him to not bite anyone’s head
off as my roommates came back, one by one, carrying baskets of the clean clothes their
mothers had carefully packed for them. They came back from summer break with tans
and absolutely no money s
aved.
I came back from my so-called break completely life
less.
Meatball and I mostly kept to ourselves, staying hidden in my room, leaving only to
go outside or make a quick meal. We avoided run-ins with the others as much as possible.
Avoiding others had basically been my life before Cameron. So, as far as I knew, no
one noticed a difference in me. Other than the fact that I now had a very hairy roomie
living under my
bed.
I rubbed Meatball’s ears while he pretended that he didn’t care, though the low rumble
betrayed
him.
I was about to switch my pajama bottoms for jeans when I noticed my curtain door flu
tter.
“Just a minute,” I called out, pulling my bottoms back up, knowing full well that
I wouldn’t have a minute. Hunter had already poked his head through the curtain
door.
“That wasn’t a minute,” I snapped, letting the elastic of my pants snap back to my
w
aist.
He folded his arms and leaned into the doorframe. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen be
fore.”
I knew he was trying to be cute. But I had no smiles left i
n me.
I sat on the floor and dug my flip-flops out from under the bed. They were a little
wet and had canine-sized punctures along the toe
line.
Hunter stood waiting and cleared his th
roat.
“What do you want, Hunter?” I wiped my chewed-up sandal against my shirt and narrowed
my eyes at Meatball, who was looking a bit shee
pish.
“I need all of your rent checks for the year. The landlord insists that everyone needs
to provide checks for the whole year upfront so that he doesn’t have to worry about
the kids who’ll quit school midyear and take off without paying the rest of their
rent.”
Oh, crap
. It wasn’t just money for food that I needed. I would need money for rent
too.
By default, because he was most likely to return to school—he had been coming back
to school every year for the last eight years … still no degree to show for it—Hunter
was the house “manager.” The landlord gave him a discount on his rent just for collecting
checks and doing the chores that he was supposed to do but never
did.
“Is that it?” I tried to mask the mass of panic that was growing in my th
roat.
Hunter hesitated, put off either by my irritability or by the guard dog whose head
had popped up at the change in my tone of v
oice.
“And your bins are blocking the hallway. It’s a fire hazard,” he added. “It’s my job
to keep this place from burning to the ground, ya
know.”
“The power cords that snake between our rooms are fire hazards. The microwave that
you found in the garbage, fixed with duct tape, and plugged in your room is a fire
hazard. My bins are the least of our problems.” I knew full well that my bins were
not the i
ssue.
When Hunter began fidgeting, scratching his goatee, I took a calming breath. “I need
the extra room under my bed. Now that Meatball sleeps there. But I’m happy to send
him to your room to s
leep.”
He eyed my mammoth-sized pet. “My room already smells like urine thanks to him. And
I’m pretty sure it’s not Joseph’s d
oing.”
Hunter had to share a room with Joseph, who spent almost all his time in their room
in front of his computer screen. Since moving in a year ago, I’d only spoken maybe
twenty words to him. We got along famously. And Meatball’s scent was definitely an
improvement to the smell of their
room.
I had brought up the subject of Meatball on purpose—to give Hunter the window he was
obviously looking for to warn me about having a dog in a no-pet-allowed zone. I faced
the fact that I might have to move out, though finding a place that was so cheap,
in September, at the beginning of the school year—when students still had hopes that
they would make it, that they wouldn’t be dropping out three months later—would have
been nearly impossible. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but whatever happened,
Meatball and I were going together. And the faster Hunter and I dealt with it, the
faster he was out of my
room.
But Hunter continued to tiptoe around the issue. “Why did you name him Meat
ball?”
“I didn’t.” I passed him and stopped outside my curtained doorway, where my blue bins
were neatly stacked, one on top of the other, in a non-fire-hazard type of way. I
pulled the lid off the top bin and pretended to be looking for my check
book.
“I thought you said you found him on the st
reet.”
“I did,” I answered, eyes trained on my
task.
I lifted one sock at a time, as if my checkbook might magically be hidden in the rolls.
I felt more eyes on my back. I knew that Cassie was behind me and that I wasn’t going
to be left alone. Once I was out of my room, I was easy prey to my roomm
ates.
I poked my head out of the Rubbermaid bin and confirmed the apparition. There was
Cassie, drenched in black clothes, black hair, and enough eyeliner to supply three
Vegas showgirls for a
year.
It was hard for me to understand why Cassie felt the need to look like a zombie quarter
back.
Last year, someone (who we suspected to be Hunter) left dirty socks on the radiator.
When the socks started smoking in the early morning hours, the fire alarm went off,
and all seven of us crashed into each other as we charged down the stairs and out
the front door. Cassie didn’t have any makeup on, and it turned out that she was really
pretty, with full pink lips and blonde—blonde!—eyeb
rows.
That was the first and last time that I had seen Cassie without makeup. After that,
she slept with her game fac
e on.
While Cassie stood expressionless, waiting, Hunter did something that he rarely ever
did—he stuck around. He and Cassie were as similar as a monkey and a cobra. And they
got along similarly. They were rarely within the same breathing s
pace.
Cassie didn’t look like she was trying to do me any favors by interrupting the inevitable
revelation that I was bankrupt. Rather, she had continued to stand staring, straight-faced,
holding up a piece of paper. I was shocked when I recognized the name at the top of
the
form.
“Is that
my
class schedule?” I acc
used.
“Looks like we’re in the same ethics class,” she tol
d me.
All of a sudden, an image flashed through my head. I was back at the Farm in the study,
my favorite room apart from Cameron’s bedroom. Cameron watched me while my fingers
floated over book spines. There was a whole shelf dedicated to ancient philos
ophy.
Then I was on one of the chairs, Plato book in hand, sitting across from Rocco while
he ate cheesies and wouldn’t give me any quiet
time.
I closed my eyes for a mere moment and steadied myself on my Rubbermaid
bins.
Then I snatched the piece of paper from Cassie. “Where did you fin
d it?”
“It came in the mail.” She said this like opening someone else’s mail was a perfectly
normal thing to do and not at all a fe
lony.
“You
read
my
mail?”
She grabbed my schedule back and pointed to the first rows. “You’ve already missed
four cla
sses.”
Meatball had kept his station under my bed, his eyes following the tug-of-war with
my mail. I snatched the paper from Cassie’s grasp, again. But this time I quickly
folded it and stuck it in the waistband of my pajamas. It wasn’t until more roommates
popped their nosy heads out of doorways that I realized this discussion wasn’t a coincidence.
It was an interven
tion.