Morning seemed like a tentative way to describe the time I finally got home, and with the sun barely hanging above the horizon I knew it was still too early for anyone in my dad’s house to be moving. The acrid smell of stale smoke and alcohol filtered through the front door as I pulled it open. The stench wrapped around me like an old friend. I tried my best not to use the front door at all if I could help it, but I’d assumed this entry would be safe, and as always, I was wrong. The living room was in the usual state of disarray, filled ashtrays and empty beer bottles littering every surface, while two half-naked women draped over one another as they slept on the couch. A trail of clothes cut through the room into the back hall toward my dad’s room, where he undoubtedly had his girlfriend of the moment, possibly even a third, all spread out on his bed. I just hoped he’d remembered to shut his door this time. He may not notice me or when I was coming or going, but I saw everything, and scenes like this one were what made me usually climb in through my bedroom window. The window was easier to handle than suffering the imprint of this on the back of my eyelids on a daily basis.

“Who the fuck are you, kid?” one of the women asked sleepily, rubbing the mascara across her face as I picked my way through the debris toward the kitchen.

“The housekeeper,” I lied easily.

“No shit? I bet your life fucking sucks,” she said and snorted, her hand rubbing her nose before she flung her arm over her eyes.

“You have no idea.”

“Good luck.” The sentiment was an afterthought, and she was already asleep again before she’d got the entire sentence out.

I always lied to the strangers in my dad’s living room. It wasn’t often they saw me because I was more than adept at vanishing from sight, but on the rare occasion one of them caught me passing through, I would lie and tell them I was the housekeeper, or that I was delivering his paper to him. Lying was easier than them asking questions and trying to mother me in some lame attempt to subdue their own guilt and win my father’s affections. My dad knew he had a daughter, he didn’t need to be reminded, and he sure didn’t thank me for letting these women know he was old enough to have a teenager.

I made it down the hall to my room without further incident, my keys in my hand so I could slip inside without being noticed again. I didn’t need to be out in the main house much these days. Jennifer had bought me a mini fridge for my room and bribed my dad into building an en-suite bathroom in my room. I think she’d threatened him with Child Protective Services if he forced me to go out during his foul nighttime orgies to use the bathroom. I’d listened to the whole conversation and looked up the word orgy in the school library the next day. I saw things no eleven-year-old should see, and I was almost caught by the ancient librarian who scowled at me when she saw which page was open. I’d somehow managed to convince her I was looking for an ogre. Thank God I was a quick thinker when I needed to be.

My dad wasn’t a bad guy necessarily, he was just young, bad with alcohol, and largely selfish. He hadn’t wanted kids that early in life, maybe not at all, and if Mom had allowed it, he would have taken her to Amarillo to get an abortion without a second thought. Mom hadn’t planned on kids at sixteen, either, but one look at that ultrasound monitor and she was in love. Dad had adored her enough to stay, and he’d loved me for a while, too, but I don’t think he’d so much as looked at me properly since she died. Standing next to him in the cemetery, his big hand curled around mine, he’d knelt beside me and held me close as we both cried. I really think he wanted to love me. I even liked to believe he wanted to be the father that my mom always thought he could be, but looking at my face and the resemblance I had to my mom, simply reminded him of just how much he’d lost. She’d always been the thing he’d loved most in the world.

Locking my door behind me, I headed across the room and dropped face first onto my bed with a sigh of content, allowing the exhaustion to slowly wash over me. Saying goodbye to Dustin that morning had been harder than I thought it would be, especially knowing what he would be walking into when he got home. He’d turned down my offer to accompany him for moral support. We both knew I would have been the one to get the blame for his absence at the game—just a girl distracting him from his proper place on the field, right? I was all right with that distinction because taking the blame just didn’t matter to me, but he wasn’t going to let that happen. He’d told me he wasn’t going to drag my name through the dirt for his actions, and anyway, having someone there to take that responsibility went against his master plan to get kicked off the team. A scheme that was deeply flawed and doomed to fail, in my opinion.

Dustin hadn’t said much more about Libby after his comment about dating someone he could talk to. We’d both eaten in silence and decided we needed to be on our way. Now all I could think about was the firing squad he would be facing. His accusers wouldn’t be just his family. The whole town would have an opinion about his absence from the game. I could almost hear the comments as I let my eyes slide closed. His dad would be screaming about being irresponsible and using his mom to make him feel guilty. I imagined Libby grating away about him embarrassing her, his teammates, and coach—laying blame at his feet—and every man, woman, and child glaring at him as they passed him in the store. These horrific visuals made me glad that I surrounded myself in obscurity. No one cared what I did or where I went, let alone what I chose to do with my time. Megan and her mom loved me, but they knew I was capable of looking after myself and they trusted me to go to them if I had a problem. I was self-sufficient and content. I couldn’t even imagine having every minute of my day planned out for me.

I was finally drifting off to sleep in the cool confines of my room when my phone rang. The shrill ring was from my personal line, so the noise was only in my space, but I knew I couldn’t let it ring out again. I’d agreed to keep the damn thing completely off the radar when Jennifer had the line installed. I couldn’t even remember turning the ringer up that high.

“Hello?” I answered groggily, my hand holding the receiver to my ear.

“Where the hell have you been?” Megan demanded in a stage whisper. “You missed all the drama last night.”

“I was where I normally am on a Friday night. What did I miss?”

“Dustin Hill went missing.”

I rolled my eyes and flopped onto my back. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Half the people I knew secrets about, didn’t even know I existed, but I knew every detail that Megan knew, and people loved to talk to her. I was her info dumpsite, the safe place where all that useless information ended. She got her gossip fix risk free. Satisfaction guaranteed.

“Missing?”

“Yup. Gone. He didn’t show up for practice before the game or the game itself. There was a rumor that he and Libby had this huge fight and he drove off after grabbing a bottle of Stu’s bourbon. Some of the faculty went looking for him, but it was like he just fell off the grid. Of course, we lost the game. Stu was pissed and blamed the whole thing on Libby. From what I heard, he didn’t show back up until this morning. Lisa said that Libby was in his bed waiting for him when he got back and they made up. Not that his reappearance is gonna stop coach. I’ve never seen him that mad before. He was spitting teeth. It was only the second game of the season. We can’t afford to lose another one.”

Megan stopped to take a breath, while I fought the battle with my eyelids.

“Why were they fighting?” I asked, yawning. Megan was likely to be offended, but it wasn’t like I ever showed much interest. I was just a net to catch all the crap she had in her head.

“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t have heard.” Oh, but I had, and from the horse’s mouth. “Little Miss Homecoming was getting down and dirty with some of the guys from the baseball team.”

“Some?”

“Like four. Not at the same time… at least, I don’t think so. That would be really weird.”

“Then why has Dustin gotten back with her?”

I could almost see Megan shrugging as she thought about her answer. The fact that most of the kids in school had the same thought process on the Dustin and Libby conundrum was actually quite horrific. I could only imagine how that would go down in any other coupling. The school would take sides like they always did, but how did you take sides between Dustin and Libby?

“They’ve always just been together.”

“That’s a shitty way of looking at it. What if it was Rob? You’ve always been with him. Would you stay if he’d been caught with some other girl, just because it was expected of you?”

Her silence was deafening and so enticing to my tired brain. The mattress was hugging me like it always did, drawing me into the center and convincing me to curl up in a ball.

“You’re right, no one would want to stay through that. Maybe they didn’t get back together?”

“Maybe they did.”

Megan huffed out a laugh. She was used to my sarcasm and cynicism. As much as I knew how Dustin felt about the situation, I also knew there was a lot of pressure behind the scenes for him to do what he was supposed to and keep up appearances.

“Someone woke up contrary this morning.”

“Someone hasn’t been to sleep yet.”

“You stayed up all night listening to Hellbent Hair Bands again, didn’t you?”

I smiled. “You know me so well.”

“Fine. Abandon me for sleep. I will get more information. Call me when you get your lazy butt out of bed.”

“I will,” I said, grinning at the receiver.

“Mom also said you need to come over and get your shopping later, anyway.”

I groaned at my forgetfulness. Every Saturday morning, no matter how many times I told her not to, Jennifer bought me groceries of my own to live off. It didn’t matter that I worked in her insurance office most days during the summer, and she overpaid me for doing so, but she also fed me. Having Jen was like having a fairy godmother. Well, she was my godmother, just without the wings.

“Tell her I’ll be there in a few hours.”

“Go to sleep, weirdo.”

I said my goodbyes and hung up the phone, picking it up again briefly only to turn the ringer off. My heavy limbs fell, as I flopped back on my side and finally let sleep claim me.

The giggling outside my door and my dad’s accompanying deep baritone woke me from a dead sleep. As my grogginess faded, I knew it was only a matter of time before the stereo cut on and the music filled the house, making sleep utterly unattainable. Stretching out my arms and legs, I looked over at the window. From what I could deduce from the light it was late in the afternoon, which meant I’d been able to get a couple of hours of undisturbed sleep. More than I got most nights.

I got up and showered as quietly as I could, the sounds of laughter and beer bottles clinking together filtering through the walls and drowning out the small radio I had playing. I was dressed and out of the window in another fifteen minutes, pulling out of the driveway before heading to the Hern’s to catch up with Jennifer, and Megan if she wasn’t out with her boyfriend, Rob. I was barely halfway there when I saw Dustin’s big Chevy blowing past me in the opposite direction.

My choice to either keep going in the direction I was going or follow Dustin was made for me when the scream of tires against asphalt alerted me to the fact that he’d stopped his truck abruptly. The rubber squealed again when he threw the truck into reverse and hit the gas. Smoke billowed from the sides of his truck like it was an angry bull amidst a charge. Unsure what to do, I stayed stationary and rolled down my window, waiting as he pulled up level with me, and I smiled up at him. Dustin looked awful. His normally sun-kissed skin was pale, his eyes were bloodshot, and his eyebrows were pulled together in a tight frown.

“That bad?” I asked, grimacing. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and twisted my wrists. I didn’t really need an answer, which was probably why he didn’t give me one. The cloud that now hung over him was a dead giveaway of just how well his morning had gone.

“Will you meet me at your spot?” he asked, almost desperately.

“I…” I looked at the road and back to his pleading eyes, knowing I couldn’t deny him. “Can you give me an hour?”

“Thirty minutes?”

I nodded in agreement. “I’ll make it work. Are you okay?”

“Hurry.” The request was made in earnest, and he was gone before I could question him further. There was another protest of tires against the asphalt, another cloud of smoke pouring from the wheel wells, followed by the raging howl of his truck as he pushed the machine to go faster than it was capable from a dead standstill.

I watched in the mirror for as long as I could and took off toward Megan’s house with a weight hanging low in my stomach. I barely knew Dustin, and yet I could feel the concern creeping into my consciousness, coiling like a snake ready to strike at any moment. If I had been going anywhere else in the world, I would have turned around and followed him like a little lamb. I wasn’t really sure I liked that thought. I honestly thought I was made of tougher stuff, but even that realization didn’t stop me from pushing my car a little harder and coaxing more speed from the vehicle than I normally did.

When I pulled up in the driveway of the Hern’s home, I found Megan leaning against her dad’s truck while he tinkered under the hood. His work boots were covered in what I could only assume was oil. The moment she saw my car pull in, she pushed off the front fender and walked over to greet me.

“Damn, girl, Rob’s just coming to pick me up. You have rotten timing.”

“Who says I’m here to see you?” I grinned up at her and opened the door, pushing her gently aside as I did. Her rolling eyes were a comforting familiarity these days. So was the hug that followed. Most of the time she was the only human interaction I had.

“Fair warning: Mom’s on the warpath. She heard one of your dad’s friends talking in The Filling Station. They were picking up more beers and talking about finding drugs.”

“As she should be,” Megan’s dad, said, wiping his hands on an oily rag. “That’s no place for a sixteen-year-old girl to be.”

“Hi, Mike.” I grinned at him warmly. I always felt cared for when I was here. “I keep my door locked at all times. They don’t bother me.”

“People get stupid, Miki. Drugs make them stupider.”

“Noted,” I replied. “But you know you and Jen would be the first people I called if something happened.”

He smiled with a nod and turned back to his truck, mumbling about how my dad should have better sense, and that he didn’t know how lucky he was to have a daughter like me. This, too, was familiar to me. Mike constantly mumbled under his breath when he disagreed with something but didn’t want to start a fight. If Jen overheard him, she followed him with a sigh, hollering about still being able to hear him and him being passive aggressive. He always mumbled his displeasure about my dad, which Jen emphatically didn’t complain about.

“Thanks for that, Dad.” Megan rolled her eyes again and looped her arm through mine, leading us both away from her dad, toward the front door. It was when she nudged me into the porch swing that I realized she had more gossip for me.

“What happened now?”

“Erin called me earlier. She said that it’s the absolute truth that Libby was waiting in Dustin’s bed for him, but they got in a fight and Libby called Amy to come and get her. When she showed up, Dustin told her that it was over, that they were through and he didn’t care who she went to homecoming with, but it wasn’t going to be him. Then he slammed the door in her face. Amy said that the moment the door was closed, his daddy was yelling so loud you could hear it two counties over.”

“Want to take a breath there?”

“Oh, hush. This is the biggest news around town right now. Even you look intrigued.”

“I’m actually thinking about straturday.”

“Liar.”

“Meg, I kinda feel bad for the guy. He was cheated on. Talking about it feels like an intrusion.”

“If he hadn’t missed the game…”

“He’s entitled to not play—he’s not under contract. He’s eighteen and in high school. Isn’t there a law against contracts or something? Just think about it from his point of view. All those people looking at you, knowing that the person who was supposed to love you had been with another guy, maybe even a friend? Were they friends?”

Megan shrugged, but the glint of guilt in her eyes made me feel bad for putting it there. She was never malicious about what she told me. What she found out were just facts, but I still couldn’t help feeling like any information gleaned this way was an intrusion.

“You’re right, I would hate that, but they were the most popular couple in school. Everyone knows.”

“I know, and I know you’re just keeping me up to speed. I love you for it. I just hate to think of the two of them hurting. They surely had to love each other at some point.”

A honk of a horn pulled Megan’s attention away from me for a moment. Her face lighting up as Rob’s truck pulled in behind my car. I loved seeing her that happy. Rob adored her and worshiped the ground she walked on, and Megan just plain loved him.

“Can I call you later?” she asked, rising from the swing and waving at Rob to stay in the truck.

“Yeah, but if I don’t answer, I’m either out or have the ringer off. If my dad’s having his friends over…” I didn’t need to finish. Megan knew the drill.

“If they get too loud come over and stay the night. You know you’re always welcome. The good movies are on the top shelf of my closet.” She meant the horror movies we hid from her mom. With a good-natured ruffle of my hair, she grabbed her things and hopped off the porch, running to Rob who was wandering toward her dad. She’d told me once that an open hood was like a magnet to him after he’d restored his old truck with his dad.

The creak of the screen door told me that Jen had joined me on the porch, and I stepped toward her, my arm snaking around her waist in greeting as we watched Megan clambering into the truck and kissing Rob in greeting.

“Do you think she’s having sex?”

“Jen!”

“She’s my baby. I worry.”

I was pretty sure that Jen saw my mom in me. There were times when she would talk to me candidly like this and catch me off guard. I liked to think that she was so used to talking to my mom the same way that chatting with me just came naturally to her. Even when those chats were about topics like sex, I really didn’t mind. It was just a little shocking when I wasn’t expecting them.

Jen looked down at me, her arm wrapping around my shoulder and pulling me closer. “Don’t tell me if she is. I want to be oblivious.”

“Consider it done.”

Jen released a quiet laugh and squeezed me again. “Come on, let’s get your groceries. I want to talk to you about your dad. I heard something today.”