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And hadn’t I bled for it, too? I screamed in the closet, the echo shaking the trailer. Then I put my first through the back of her closet. I lived in the past the way I breathed, and I was going to be suffocated by my memories.
I closed my eyes for a moment, slowing my breathing, calming myself down.
At the ranch I’d been a spectator, a plaything. I’d been someone who had things done to them. I was passive and weak.
I would not be that anymore. I was taking control. Starting now.
After I put everything in her room back in order, I grabbed a handful of sandwich bags from the kitchen. I shoved the blood money inside and headed out the back door, across the yard, and through the cemetery. I didn’t feel safe putting the money anywhere in the trailer, so I went to the safest place I knew. The scariest place I knew. I pulled my notebook from my pocket, then a pen.
I wrote a note to Sorina, then shoved it into the bag with the money before pushing the bills through the mail slot on her front door. I waited a moment for her to come, but she never did, so I left after casting a fleeting glance at the window to her bedroom.
Once back in the trailer park, I ran to the Clement trailer.
When Billy answered the door, he grinned. “Nice shirt, Hemming. Is that vintage? What are you doing here?” he asked.
I walked in, looking down the hallway where I saw the open doors to the twin’s separate bedrooms. Jessica stepped out, calling over her shoulder. “The curls look good, don’t touch them.” The smile she had on her face warmed me. I wanted us to all get along tonight—to have fun tonight. I wanted a sense to normalcy before I plunged into danger again.
When Jessica looked at me before heading into her room, her eyes went wide. I blushed before I could register the feeling she pulled from me. “Fucking hell, Hemming. Look at you,” she whispered.
I’d bought the clothes for the formal during Thanksgiving break. I was growing out of clothes all the time, and my height had reached six foot two. I thought I’d looked decent when I left the trailer, but she made me feel weird.
Billy grabbed my arm, pulling me away from his sister. “Finish getting ready Jess, you can eye fuck him at the dance later where I don’t have to see it.” He groaned.
I walked into Billy’s room, following the sound of loud music, which he turned down. When he turned to me, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. None of it had blood stains. “Is your uncle’s truck still for sale?” I asked.
Billy grinned wide. “Fuck yes, Hemming. I’ve been saying you need wheels. Those wheels are so you. You’re going to eat them alive up there.”
Jessica walked into the room as he clapped me on the back. She looked no more ready to go than she had moments earlier. “What the fuck are you going on about?” she asked.
“Hemming is buying the Silverado.”
“Yes! That means we don’t have to babysit you anymore!” She punched me in the arm, and I wondered where Nicole was. She was the sibling least likely to assault me.
“Yeah.” I laughed as Billy rummaged through his desk.
In my peripheral, I saw Jessica eyeing me up and down as the prospect of having the truck made me suddenly even more irresistible to her. I pushed away memories of the first day of school, of her spreading her legs, and the way she’d looked at me just moments ago.
Following a few curses and slammed drawers, Billy turned around triumphantly. After we’d exchanged cash for the title and key, I felt a weight lift from me. Valerie would be pissed I took the money without discussing it with her. But I was pissed she’d never brought up the amount she had stashed away to me. I knew she was saving. I knew that’s what we were both doing.
But she never mentioned the money she took from the ranch. She never mentioned a plan for it. I suspected college after I graduated, or a house for her. The woman I fled with was practically a stranger, but familiar to me. And maybe that’s where the guilt lay. I didn’t believe she kept it from me for a nefarious reason. But perhaps that was my naivety living on.
I wondered if she’d seen who spilled the blood, if she’d taken part in it.
She’d been practically mute for weeks after we left the ranch, but I chalked it up to everything we’d been through. And I’d like the silence, the quiet of our existence. It was as comforting as the sounds surrounding me now.
After Jessica left Billy’s room to finish getting ready, I shut the bedroom door. Billy raised his eyebrow, and I walked to his desk.
I held the title of the truck in my hand like a lifeline. And it would be. “I need you to be cool about some shit here for a minute,” I said.
Billy looked at his door and cocked his head. “Is this about Jessica? She’s just fucking with you, and I’m not sure how I’d feel about you—”
“No. No.” I said. “It’s about the … it’s about a lot of things.”
Billy leaned forward. “Okay. What is it?”
I let out a breath. “It’s about Amber. And Kyrie. Sorina. And … Sam.”
Billy’s jaw twitched.
