he knew how to use the clippers himself and didn’t have to count on anyone else to cut his hair.
TJ didn’t want to have to count on anyone else for anything.
He finished his drink as he reached the intersection of Spruce and Sixth. He spied a trash can and took two steps toward it before he remembered himself and tossed his paper cup onto the sidewalk.
Across the street on his right was a school. To the left, a park—Davenport Park, according to the sign. Telling himself he wasn’t one bit curious about the school, he entered the park.
The playground teemed with rug rats and moms with strollers, plus a few families he pegged as tourists. Seemed to be a lot of tourists on the streets, and in a moment of honesty he could understand why. The weather was great; about a million times better than it was in Atlanta this time of year. The place was pretty to look at, too, and all those activities the sheriff talked about? They sounded like a blast.
It made him think of the times he’d gotten to visit his great-grandmother up in the Great Smoky Mountains.
Just then a little kid let out a yell on the playground, catching TJ’s attention, and he noticed a couple of kids half his age who had haircuts like his. A six-year-old couldn’t shave his own head. That meant his parents had to be in on the style. Really? No way would his dad have let him wear his hair this way.
Isn’t that why you went for the style? To piss him off, since he couldn’t do anything about it?
Thinking about his father depressed him, so he turned and walked away from the playground. Passing an empty baseball diamond, he heard the familiar thump, thump, thump of a basketball bouncing on a cement court. He veered toward the sound, rounded some bleachers, and spied a guy near his age shooting baskets by himself.
TJ blurted out the question without thinking about it. “Hey, wanna play horse?”
The guy turned. “Sure.”
Not a guy. A girl. Well, okay. TJ didn’t have anything against girls.
“My name is Mandy West. What’s yours?”
“TJ.”
“You want to warm up first, TJ?”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
She tossed him the ball and started talking. Mandy was thirteen years old, in seventh grade. She had one brother and one sister and her parents were divorced. Her mother called her father a deadbeat dad because he hadn’t sent child support since he moved in with his girlfriend in February. “We’re poor now and Mom has to work more and we don’t get new sneakers for school this year because the ones we have are still okay. I’m mad at my dad for being deadbeat, but I still miss him, you know?”
TJ absolutely did know.
He won the first game of horse, and she challenged him to two out of three. She only stopped talking when they were actually taking their shots. After blabbing about herself, she started asking questions about him. She thought he was a tourist. He didn’t tell her otherwise at first, simply saying that he was from Atlanta and had just arrived in town that day.
“How long are you going to be here?”
After a moment’s pause, he replied, “I’m not sure.”
“Are you staying at a place in town?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate at first, but then he decided it was stupid to put it off. “I’m not exactly a tourist. I’m staying with my aunt for a while.”
“Who is your aunt?”
“Savannah Moore.”
Mandy’s face brightened. “Ms. Moore from Heavenscents? That’s cool. She’s really nice. She doesn’t mind me coming in just to smell stuff even though I can’t buy anything, and when I wanted to buy my mom something for her birthday from Heavenscents, Ms. Moore gave me a big discount so I could buy a bubble bath bar. Mom loved it.”
Bubble bath? That’s what all that stuff is? He’d noticed the smell in the shop, but he’d been in a hurry to make his escape, so he hadn’t looked around.
The second game lasted a little longer than the first, mainly because Mandy started talking about kids in the seventh grade and wouldn’t shut up. She told him stories about a dozen people before she finally wound down. After she missed a shot for her S, she turned to him and asked, “Can I ask you a question, TJ?”
Could I possibly stop you?
“When you have a ring in your nose, does it hurt to sneeze?”
He couldn’t help it—he started to laugh. It was the