AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Babies were always doing crap like that. Waking you up real early in the morning when you wanted to sleep, poking you in the eye, scratching you with their finger-nails. They didn’t mean to be jerks. They just couldn’t help it.
Nobody was in the rest room when they got there, and Lucy was glad to see that it wasn’t too scummy. Her arms felt like somebody was trying to pull them right out of her shoulders, and she barely made it into one of two big shower stalls before they gave out. She plopped her sister on the concrete floor and dumped all their stuff on the wooden bench.
That was when she remembered that she’d forgotten soap and shampoo. She looked into the shower stall and saw that somebody’d left a little piece there, but it was green, and she didn’t like green soap because of the way it smelled. Still, she’d have to use it because she didn’t have any choice, just like she didn’t have a choice about anything that had happened to her.
Her stomach started hurting again. It had been hurting a lot lately, mainly when she got scared about things.
The baby babbled while Lucy undressed her, and those soft, happy sounds made up for having to get up so early. While the baby crawled around, Lucy pulled off her own clothes and carefully tested the water to make sure it wasn’t too hot. She stepped inside, then knelt down and held out her arms, but her sister was scared of the running water and didn’t want to come in.
“Come here.”
“Nuh!” She puckered up her face and crawled backward.
Lucy tried not to get mad because she was just a little baby, and she didn’t know water wouldn’t hurt her. But it was hard not to be mad with her stomach hurting and everything.
“Get in here right now!”
Her bottom lip stuck out, but the baby didn’t move.
“I mean it! Get in here!”
Oh, shit. The baby’s face crumpled and her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t even make any noise, just started to shake, with her lip all quivery, and Lucy couldn’t stand it. She stepped out of the stall and, naked and cold, squatted down to hug her.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m sorry, Button. I’m really sorry.”
Button buried her face in her neck, just like she always did, and hung on because Lucy was the only person she had left in the world.
That was when Lucy started to cry, too. With goose bumps breaking out all over her skin, and Button hanging on, and her heart hammering. She started to cry until she was shaking because she didn’t know how she was going to take care of Button, and she didn’t know what Jorik would do when he found out about her grandmother.
She told herself she wouldn’t be so scared if she was by herself. She was fourteen, and she was smart, the smartest kid in her class, although she made sure none of those losers she went to school with knew about that. A few of the teachers had figured it out, and some of them made Lucy come up to their desks after class to talk about how she should apply herself and crap like that. But with a mother like Sandy, and never having any money, and moving from one ugly, run-down house to another, Lucy already felt like a freak. She didn’t need everybody knowing she had a smart brain, too.
Except her smart brain hadn’t figured out how she was going to take care of Button. Right after Sandy’d died, she’d cashed her mother’s last paycheck and used it to pay the rent and phone and stuff. Then she’d started baby-sitting one of the little kids in the neighborhood while his mom went to work. She’d been doing okay until that lawyer had found her.
If it was just her, she’d run away to New York City or someplace like Hollywood, and get a job and make a whole lot of money. But she couldn’t do that and take care of Button, too.
Right now, she only knew one thing. She had to be tough. That was about the only good thing Sandy had ever taught her. When somebody gets in your face, just spit right in their eye. If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody else is going to do it.
So that’s what she was doing. Being tough, standing up for herself, and trying to slow down this trip while she figured out how to take care of her baby sister.
Button started sucking on Lucy’s neck. She did that sometimes when Lucy hugged her, and it made Lucy’s stomach hurt so bad she wanted to start crying again because she knew Button couldn’t tell the difference between her sister and a grown-up. Even worse, she knew Button didn’t understand that Lucy wasn’t her mom.
It had come to this, Nealy thought. The First Lady of the United States was traveling toward the heartland with a drunk, a teenage hellion, a baby she was terrified to touch, and an unborn Wal-Mart pillow.
“Where the hell are we?” Mat’s big, booming voice bounced off the walls of the Winnebago.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw him uncoiling from the couch like a bear coming out of hibernation. Except he looked more like a gorgeous, rumpled pirate with his unkempt hair, wrinkled black T-shirt, and jaw covered in dark stubble.
“West Virginia.”
He levered himself up, winced, and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “I know that. Where in West Virginia?”
“This is the most beautiful state. Mountains, rivers, bucolic woodlands, winding roads.” She thought about singing a little “West Virginia, mountain mama,” but decided that might be pushing a man with a nasty hangover too far.
“The tollbooths are behind us for now, and we’re not supposed to be on a winding road. We’re supposed to be on a four-lane highway.” His voice sounded gravelly, as if he might have swallowed dirt.
“We’re near it,” she said. “That’s all that’s important. Please go back to sleep. You’re only causing trouble awake.”
Lucy smiled. She was sitting in the banquette putting on makeup. Her eyelashes were already so heavy with mascara, it was a wonder she could lift them. The remains of their McDonald’s breakfasts were scattered around her, along with a newspaper Nealy had picked up at the campground before they’d pulled out. While they’d been waiting at the drive-in window for their Egg McMuffins, Nealy’d glanced through it and found what she was looking for, a short item on page three announcing that Cornelia Case had been stricken with the flu and forced to cancel her scheduled activities for the next week.
