walking, even as they threw tiny hearts and stomachs in her hair.
That night, Rachel was going dancing.
* * *
She rode the bus to the trailer court, shivering in her seat. She had stuffed her coat into a garbage can. She had carried her purse onto the bus, and the bus driver cursed at the smell.
She sat in the back, surrounded by empty seats. The bus ride took twenty minutes, and Rachel removed the soggy SAT study guide from her studded purse. She memorized vocabulary words during every bus ride. She had to think about college. She spent the weekends on math, the math she had once cheated on. She no longer had peers to terrorize for answers. She had always known she was a smart girl but had never wanted it to define her. She used to be the fun girl, the promiscuous girl, the dangerous girl. Now she was determined to be the girl who was leaving.
Riding the bus was embarrassing, but Rachel no longer had friends with cars. Krystal had a car, but Krystal also had a baby. Her sole friend was not only dumb but boring. She was the very definition of average; her only distinguishing characteristics came from a makeup bag. Style had changed, but Rachel could not persuade her friend to put down the electric blue Maybelline eyeliner, or the Avon lipstick, Neon Orchid. Krystal’s pink lipstick was her thing, just like Rachel’s was surliness.
When Rachel had been kicked out of her mother’s house, she lugged her two giant army duffel bags to the Sinclair, called Krystal from the payphone. Rachel’s scalp burned where the air touched the wound, and her upper thigh ached from her mother’s kick. Nothing hurt on the inside, because Rachel would not allow it.
Everything fit in the backseat of Krystal’s Datsun. Krystal didn’t even ask what had happened. She knew that Rachel had done something bad, because that was just what Rachel did. It was Frank’s problem now.
Her father’s door had been unlocked, and the house was dark. Rachel sat on the couch and rolled a joint, put on her headphones and listened to Blondie, got so stoned that she envisioned herself as a punk rock Goldilocks, and decided not to raid the refrigerator, just in case the bears showed up.
She rolled a second joint, and her headphones were so loud that she didn’t even notice that he was suddenly standing above her.
She pulled off the headphones, untangled them from her hair. It still hurt where her mother had partially scalped her. She realized that the house was thick with pot smoke.
“I’m living with you now,” she said.
He stared at her.
“I’m Rachel,” she said, and he nodded. “You can stop sending child support checks.”
He didn’t seem to be bothered by the pot smoke, in fact, none of this seemed to surprise him at all. She reached out and extended her hand, an offering of a handshake. He surprised her by pulling her toward him in a stiff, awkward hug. She rolled her eyes.
“I’m used to sleeping on couches,” she said. “You won’t even notice I’m here.”
“I’m in the woods most of the year,” he said.
“Also, I’m a vegetarian.”
“Good to know,” he said. She lit the joint again and took a deep drag. She offered it to her father, but he shook his head.
“I mostly eat french fries,” she said. “But I guess I won’t be allowed at the Dirty Shame anymore.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“Yes,” admitted Rachel. “I’m going to need an allowance.”
He sighed. “I figured this day would come, sooner or later,” he said.
“Really?”
“Even in the woods, I hear stories,” he said.
Black Mabel delivered her allowance every Friday night. Frank had some sort of arrangement with her, and Rachel could not understand it, because her father was a big square. Black Mabel mowed the lawn in the summer, shoveled in the winter, switched out the filters of the furnace, and changed the lightbulbs. This had been going on for years. In return, Black Mabel had a place to hide from the cops, or sleep off her binges. Black Mabel lived in a garage on her father’s property, but he did not tolerate her drug use. He locked her out of the garage when he suspected she was high. Thus, Black Mabel was mostly homeless.
* * *
Rachel soaked her purse in the kitchen sink, dumped in an entire box of baking soda. She did not pay attention in chemistry class, but vaguely remembered that baking soda counteracted acid. She wasn’t