Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,20
long. “Atlanta Burns. That’s a… unique name.”
She’s surprised he doesn’t recognize it from the news.
“Thank you?” she says.
“Where’d you get it?”
“My parents gave it to me,” she says, in a fit of unmitigated obviousness.
“That’s great,” he says, nodding, still shaking her hand. “Just great. You two kids go on and play.” Like they’re going to whip out Monopoly upstairs. Or maybe he thinks they’re going to get all sex-monkey—a far looser definition of play, but there it is. And Bill all but confirms that: “Don’t worry, I won’t bother you two.”
He then pats her on the shoulder with a creepy smile. And he heads over to a workbench whose tool-laden corkboard is bordered by a series of colorful license plates. Most of them for NASCAR or football teams. One stands, out though. Black and white. No color. Stamped on the plate is the text:
14WORDS.
Doesn’t mean much and she’s not sure why it would.
Chris pulls her inside.
In the kitchen, Chris pours her a glass of sun tea. Bitter. She hates the way they make tea up here. Tea should be sweet. Gritty with sugar. Up here it’s like the Yankees want their tea to taste like wash water.
“He knows you’re gay,” she says. “He’s gotta.”
“He knows.”
“But the way he acted—“
“He thinks being gay is like a… decision. Like I choose that way now because I’m a rebellious teenager. But eventually the vagina will overwhelm me with its miasmic vapors.”
“That sounds like the slogan for a really weird douche commercial.”
He laughs.
“So where’s your Mom?”
He shrugs. “She left us when I was six.”
“That sucks.”
“Way of the world. Your Daddy?”
A twinge of sadness in the real estate between her heart and her guts. “Died.”
“Shit, girl. I’m sorry.” His face sinks like a stone.
Time to change the topic. “The fourth attacker. The ones who hurt you. We still don’t know who he is?”
“I didn’t really see him much. He stayed off to the side. Hard to even call him an attacker, honestly. Just stood there in the other room, sometimes hovering near the doorway. Watching. Overseeing.”
“Didn’t get a good look?”
“No. Not a big guy. Shorter than John Elvis, for sure. Arms crossed. Any time I tried to look they pulled my head the other direction. Mashed it into the ground.”
“Now it’s my turn to be sorry.”
He sighs. “This is bumming me out. Let’s go find Shane and talk about boys in front of him to make him uncomfortable!”
* * *
It’s been nice hanging out with Chris and Shane. Even if she doesn’t understand their conversations half the time. Blah blah blah, Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek. Blah blah blah, Glee. Batman, Superman, whatever. Linux. Android. Apple. Facebook.
Their babble is comforting. It’s like the warm wash of white noise. Womb sounds from yammering geeks. Helps her feel relaxed.
And like she already said, the Adderall certainly helps.
At least, it helps until it doesn’t. By the end of the week, though, she’s feeling torn up around the edges. Like she drank a football helmet full of espresso and now she’s coming down but isn’t quite at the bottom yet. Not tired, but not awake, either; floating in the uncomfortable space between.
* * *
On Friday is when it goes sour.
Things were good. Suddenly, they’re not.
It’s like those two lines in the Housman poem:
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
* * *
Mitchell Erickson finds her as she comes out of the cafeteria.
“Do we know each other?” he says, face feigning obliviousness. Perfect teeth. Not a hair out of place. He’s like a teenage Ken doll, which makes her think, does he have balls down there, but that conjures to mind some dark magic she doesn’t care to stir up and so she puts it down.
“I don’t think we do,” she says, and she goes to keep walking.
But he steps in her path.
It occurs to her: you’ve got nothing, you know that? Nothing with which to protect your fool ass. Did you ever order more bear mace? Did you bring that baton? Can’t carry a shotgun into school. You were so goofed on up Adderall you didn’t think about that, did you?
Mitchell gets close. She tries to pull away but he grabs her backpack straps—not violently, but with a grim authority that leaves her scared and angry at the same time—and holds her still.
“I do know you,” he says, still smiling, but his voice soft and cold. “Took a little while for your message to get to me but it found its way, like a lost puppy