6
THE BAD ONE
TEN YEARS EARLIER
Sixteen-year-old Ronnie sat in her pickup truck outside the faded white Queenslander with the tiny greenhouse in the overgrown yard, smoking a cigarette with trembling fingers. She was still warm and tingly from almost being shot in the face by a stranger half an hour ago, and could smell her own stale sweat. She wondered if this was how her girlfriend Maude and Maude’s clients, subordinate dealers, and drug-trapped working girls felt when they got high here in front of her. It was two in the morning but the inside lights were still on and a truck she didn’t recognize sat beside her girlfriend’s car.
Maude wasn’t really her girlfriend—Ronnie realized that now.
Ronnie had been so stupid.
She should return in the morning to grab her things, but fuck it.
This ends now.
Maude wouldn’t like what Ronnie had to say, and was probably drunk or high, but Ronnie had to get this feeling offher chest and break up with her now before she forgot the words she had rehearsed in the truck and chickened out. Her stomach burbled. She stubbed out the cigarette in the ash tray before slowly unfolding her large frame from the truck, clumsy from the baby bump stretching the waistband of her gym shorts, and climbed the front steps two at a time, cricket bat hanging loosely from her left hand behind her.
Not all monsters hit people. Some make others do their dirty work for them.
Bashing a house full of innocent people was too much. What if there had been kids inside? Shaking down criminals who owed Maude money was one thing. Being tricked into committing an actual crime was another.
The baby didn’t deserve that.
No one deserved that.
Inside, Maude slumped on the couch watching Braveheart with a tall man more than twice her age, his arm around her narrow shoulders making her look like a child. When Ronnie froze in the kitchen doorway, wondering why she was here instead of at her dad’s house, fear flickered in the tiny eighteen-year-old’s eyes and Maude pushed the man beside her away. “Leave.” The man took one slow glance up at Ronnie filling the kitchen doorway, stood, picked up his hat, nodded politely, and wordlessly let himself out the back door.
Ronnie grabbed a trash bag from under the sink and jogged up the stairs to the bedroom, snatching her clothes from the dresser.
Maude screamed up the stairs at her. “You fucked up, didn’t you?”
Ronnie pawed through the pile of dirty laundry on the floor, separating out what was hers.
“If you steal from me, I will send Shaky-eyes after you, and you won’t like it!”
Ronnie shuddered, stuffing into the bag unfinished homework assignments from the high school she would never graduate from. “I’m not stealing! Don’t call Shaky-eyes!”
“You owe me two thousand dollars! I need that money tonight!”
Heart racing, she shoved soccer cleats she hadn’t used since the coach kicked her off the team into the bag. “I don’t owe you anything! I didn’t collect! Do you hear me? I don’t have the money! I quit!”
Everything that belonged to her went in, no matter how cheap or replaceable. She was tired of starting over with nothing. Her shit was coming with her. She might be human garbage, but her daughter wouldn’t be.
“You can’t quit, you’re fired! Get busy, because if you don’t find the money you owe me by tomorrow, Shaky-eyes will become your problem, not mine!”
The last person Shaky-eyes had caught, a working girl, had been found dead in a dumpster. If Maude sent him to rough up Ronnie, there was no chance the baby would survive.
“I’m sorry, okay? I would have collected if you sent me to the right address!”
“What are you talking about? Where did you go? You retard! Please tell me you didn’t bash the wrong house!”
She was used to that word, but it still bothered her. Ronnie would never call anyone that, ever. “Fuck you! I nearly got shot! I don’t owe you money! Stop threatening me! I can’t do this anymore!” No more of Maude’s lies. The gaslighting made her feel insane.
When everything she owned was in the bag, she jogged down the stairs carrying it over her left shoulder, cricket bat tucked behind her in her right hand, dread tight in the pit of her stomach, armpits sweating in anticipation of the confrontationawaiting her below. White noise murmured on the television and the house smelled like pot cookies baking in the oven.
Fog near the ceiling. The house smelled like burning cookies. Pounding on the outside of the front door, a neighbor shouting.
Breathing hard, Ronnie dropped the cricket bat and felt lighter. Now that she was free to go, she found she couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t obey her brain, perhaps because her reason to run had evaporated. She rubbed her face and leaned against the wall, trying to slow her racing heart by slowing her breathing.
