I made it up two steps before the girl let out a small yell and grabbed for my hoodie.
I stopped and turned, staring down at her.
“I don’t live here,” she said.
“I knew it.”
“But my father does have a gun.”
“What does that have to do with anything here?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to tell you the truth.”
“Right. You’d better get home. It’s getting cold out.”
“Nobody knows I’m out here,” she said.
“Nobody cares that I’m out here,” I said.
She backed up and I walked down the steps to the sidewalk.
We were two strangers standing in front of a stranger’s house.
I noticed her hair. Dark blonde and super curly. Her eyes were a dark shade of blue. There was this sense of tough innocence about her.
“Seriously, you’d better go,” I said. “My guys are meeting me somewhere. And when that guy” - I pointed to my father’s house - “comes out and finds his windshield fucked up, he’s going to call the cops.”
“Who is that guy?”
“Nobody you need to know,” I said. I closed in on her. “Just like me.”
She smelled like honey and lavender. And how in the hell I knew those two smells was beyond me.
I sidestepped and nodded, waiting for her to walk away.
When she went out of sight, I looked to my father’s house again.
He was stumbling down the porch steps, about to find his minivan with some damage.
I smiled, but it didn’t make me feel any better inside.
A messed-up windshield for a messed-up childhood didn’t seem to be a fair trade at all.
Chapter 5
Two Days Expired
THEN
(Amelia)
OMG… cute guy alert.
I stuffed my hands into the front pocket of my hoodie and rolled my eyes.
I knew there were some streets in town I wasn’t supposed to be on, but I never knew why until now.
After cutting through a few yards, walking along an old, rusted chain link fence, I heard the sound of voices and couldn’t believe what I had seen. A guy on the hood of a minivan, swinging a baseball bat over and over. Three other guys on the ground, watching.
Stupid me for freezing up and being seen.
And stupid me for running and stopping at a random house not that far from where the vandalizing had happened.
But at least I got to talk to him.
And by him I had no idea his name or who he was.
Just some tough, cut boy in a black hoodie who was super tall. With messy, long hair, and a really mean look in his eyes. At least until we started talking. Then the look in his eyes changed. He relaxed a little, even after I told him I lived in the house I stood at and that my father had a gun.
I hurried back home and went through the back door into the kitchen.
As I turned to shut the door, I bumped the counter full of empty beer bottles. They clanked together and one took a dive to the floor. The sound was like a bomb going off.
“Dammit,” I growled.
I locked the door and looked up, waiting for the creak of the floor.
I picked up the beer bottle and hurried to take off my hoodie. I balled it up and put it on a chair at the kitchen table. When I pushed the chair in, the hoodie was totally hidden. I reached back and pulled the hair tie out of my hair. I bent forward and messed with it. It was forever in a million knots because of my curls.
When I stood back up, I let it fall wherever it wanted.
I walked to the fridge, opened it and took out the almost empty gallon of milk. The expiration date was two days ago, but my father insisted it was still good to drink.
“Hello?” a voice asked. “Who’s there? I have a weapon. I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Mom, it’s just me,” I said. “I’m getting a drink of milk.”
Mom shuffled into the kitchen with her right hand hidden in her royal blue fuzzy bathrobe.
She took her hand out of the robe, holding the TV remote from her bedroom.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“I was going to pretend it was a gun,” she said. “In case you were a robber.”
“I’m just getting a glass of milk,” I said.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Just thirsty,” I said. “Go back to sleep. Before…” I looked up. “… he wakes up.”