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Michelle, who’d made her vague condolences right before her, now grabbed her arm and dragged her down the church steps.
When there was some distance between them and anyone else, Michelle said, “Okay, that was severely wack. Like, it is not okay that he still had your prom photo framed by his bed.”
“Yeah, that freaked me out a little.”
“He was exactly the guy I told you he was when he first asked you out.”
“Okay, Chelle, okay. Let’s say that that is the last time you get to say ‘I told you so’ about Tommy. He’s dead, he’s about to be buried, and we’re going to bury the topic of him, too.”
“I can do that. On one condition.”
Lyra sighed and started heading toward her car in the makeshift lot. “What condition?”
“Can wepleasenot go to the cemetery?”
It felt rude to skip out in the middle of a funeral, and she’d taken one of the ‘FUNERAL’ signs to put in her car to be part of the procession. It also felt unsettling, like unfinished business.
On the other hand, what Mrs. Como had told her had freaked her out. Moreover, she wasn’t in Tommy’s life anymore and hadn’t been for a long time. She’d paid her respects. She could, with a clear conscience, be done.
“Okay, yeah. You want to do something else? Or do you want to go home?”
“Let’s get some drive-thru tacos and go hang out on our rock.”
Their big rock in the middle of the desert. “We’re dressed for a funeral, Chelle. I don’t want to hike in heels.”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “I’m not wearing heels. You should be more like me.”
“The world can only take one of you.”
“Well, that’s true. Okay, then, let’s get some truck tacos and sit at a picnic table by the highway.”
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Lyra licked hot saucefrom her fingers. “Are you still thinking about leaving town?”
A truck roared by, kicking up a dusty wind, and they both leaned forward and slammed their hands down on the various papers of their taco lunch. Michelle turned and flipped the back of the truck off before she faced Lyra again and picked up her third taco.
Michelle was built like a two-by-four, narrow and flat. She weighed about a hundred pounds. But she ate like a linebacker.
“Nah. I was just ... depressed and freaked out. I worked, what, three shifts after what happened and I was a wreck every second. I was shit at the work, too. Way too distracted, always on the lookout. You know I always said there’s no place outside a nuclear silo more secure than a casino—”
She stopped abruptly and looked off to the side, where the taco truck was, and behind it a nearly endless expanse of dry earth. Ocher was the color of the American desert. A beautiful color, even if the desert itself could be bleak.
Lyra set her hand on her friend’s. “I know.”
Michelle sighed. “All those cameras, all those huge men with guns there to protect the money, and none of it was enough to protect thepeople. I hate how everybody just cleaned up the blood and went back to gambling so fast.” She twitched a little. “Sorry, Ly. That wasn’t a dig at HRC.”
“I know. I feel the same way. I was disgusted at how little time they gave us to clean the site. It was a fucking horror, all those people dead, and they were clean and repaired and back in business a week later—and they were full! People went right back to the slots. Crazy.”
“Crazy or shitty. Either works.” Michelle sighed and picked up her taco again. After a huge bite, while she was still chewing, she said, “But I’m not leaving. I can’t leave Mom. I just don’t know what I’m gonna do. No offense, but I can’t do what you do.”
Lyra had offered, but she hadn’t expected Michelle to take her up on it. “I know.” She certainly didn’t take offense at the idea that cleaning up the scenes violence left behind wasn’t desirable work. If she hadn’t been born into it, she wouldn’t have done it either.
She had been born to it, and she owned part of it, so she’d work at Haddon Restorative Cleaning as long as she and it existed. But lately, she’d wondered if she couldn’t also do something else.
