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“You don’t have to be quite so obnoxious,” she replies. She covers her nose with her hand. “And you stink. You smell like moonshine and…” She leans toward me and sniffs, her nose scrunching up. “Is that cow shit?”
I sniff hard, pointing my nose down toward my chest. “I do not smell like cow shit,” I say. I do smell quite vile, but I can’t quite tell what that smell is either. I smell so bad I’m offending myself. I lean toward her. “Whatever it is, you smell like it too,” I inform her.
She jerks like I just slapped her. “You take that back, Grady Parker.”
“Make me, Clifford.”
She sucks in a quick breath, and then she lifts her foot to make good on her promise. I block her foot with my hand. “I hate you so much,” she says. She says it like “the flowers smell nice” or “the yard needs mowing.” She says it like something she has said so many times that it no longer comes out as an insult. It’s just there.
“The feeling is mutual,” I assure her.
“Why are you even here?”
“Ms. Markie said you might have my clothes.” I look around her room, but I don’t see them.
“I have no idea where your clothes are.”
Suddenly, a fireman’s-style knock from the front door jerks us both out of glaring at one another.
“What’s that?” she asks, trying to lean out so she can look around me.
“No idea.”
She shoves me to the side so she can walk out of the bedroom door.
“Hey!”
“Oh, shut it,” she says. She walks toward the kitchen, where Ms. Markie is standing with Little Robbie Gentry, who is holding an official-looking piece of paper in his hand. He’s wearing his state trooper’s uniform and the bigg
est smile I’ve ever seen him wear.
“Robbie,” I say, as he tips his head in my direction.
He looks down at the apron, which is still my only clothing, and his eyebrows shoot up. “Grady,” he replies.
“What are you doing here, Robbie?” Evie asks.
Robbie scratches his head. “I’m here to pick you two up,” he says, refusing to look at either one of us.
I hitch my hip against the counter. “Why?”
“Well, it appears as though somebody drove out to Mr. Jacobson’s place at Lake Fisher last night, and whoever it was vandalized the big old building that sits next to the road.”
“The one that gets tagged by graffiti all the time?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“What’s that got to do with us?” Evie asks. She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to give her some great big revelation.
Robbie scratches his head again. “Well, the last time Mr. Jacobson’s building got tagged, him and Jake decided to put up some surveillance cameras in case somebody had the audacity to do it again.”
“That’s actually a really good idea,” I say. Kids were always tagging that building. It had become a rite of passage to put your initials—at the very least—on the side of it. In great big letters easily seen from the road. Then Jake had to go and cover it all up the next day with fresh paint.
“Well, you’ll never believe who his cameras caught last night.”
I watch as Evie goes and pours herself a glass of sweet tea. I would ask her for one, but she’d probably sooner pour it over my head as look at me.
“Who got caught on camera?” I ask, although I pretty much already know.
