“DARCY PRENTISS.” MOM’S talking from someplace far away. I roll over. Sleep’s better. She jerks the bedsheet back. “Get up.”
Through the fog of whatever I drank last night, I see her standing over me, looking about thirty feet tall. A rectangle of morning sunlight stretches across my ceiling, tossing rainbows through the crack in the windowpane. I sit up—the piano that lands on my head makes me wish I hadn’t—and see that my alarm clock reads 7:15. Oh, crap.
“The girls left.” Mom’s dressed for work, a seersucker blouse and jeans she’ll wear under her clean-suit cover-up and hairnet. She doesn’t have many wrinkles for a mom, but when she frowns like that, the lines between her eyebrows turn into a deep V and she reminds me of Gramma Nan when one of the pigs gets out and trucks off to visit the neighbors. Mom turns and leaves, kicking my dirty clothes from yesterday out of her way. “Go shower. You smell like booze.”
I jump under the cool spray, then whip my wet hair into a ponytail, swallow a couple aspirin, and head downstairs, where Libby sits at the table stirring sugar into her coffee and pretending to read the paper. She watches me over the top of her glasses; figures she’d be smug as a cat on a sparrow, seeing me get in trouble. Holding her gaze, I swallow handfuls of dry cereal to put something into my stomach before I throw up (I’ve got half a memory of doing it last night, too) and think of all the things I’d love to say to her.
Mom comes in and gets her keys, purse, and the fleece jacket she brings to work because it’s so cold in the E. F. Danforth refrigeration plant. She’s actually come home with frostbite on her fingers before. Got it right through her gloves.
Crunching Froot Loops, I mutter, “Can’t believe they just left.”
She stares at me like she’s considering giving me my first thrashing since grade school. “I told them to leave. Your sister knocked on your door for about five minutes. Nell wanted to go in and shake you.”
She goes outside and I follow her, but she stops me on the porch. “Uh-uh. Forget it. You’re not making me late for work.”
“It’s on your way!”
Mom shrugs. “Guess you shouldn’t have missed your ride.” She opens her car door, then stands there for a second, almost like she’s looking through me, or seeing somebody else. She exhales and shakes her head. “I hope you know enough not to get yourself pregnant.”
She leaves me standing there with the wind knocked out of me.
I go inside to find Libby leaning back in her chair, taking the world’s longest sip of coffee, tilted at the perfect angle to watch Mom and me out the front window.
Now that it’s just the two of us, the tension is electric. I scowl at her as I stuff my feet into sneakers, and she lowers her chair to the floor, hitching her big boobs up onto her folded arms and giving me a look like I know you, little girl. As if she’s got the slightest clue. I could cut her so deep with the truth. I’d make her bleed, if it wouldn’t mean doing the same to Nell. I open the door, say, “Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop?” and bang out before she can answer.
It’s hot. I’m about four miles into the walk down 15, and I can see the barrens over the next rise. Sweat rolls down my back. Serve Mom right if I keel over. Death from dehydration. They’ll find me in the ditch with crows picking at me, and the cops will bring her up on child abuse charges, and I’ll laugh. Laugh from my ditch.
A car slows behind me, but that’s been happening all morning and nobody’s stopped yet, so I don’t even turn around. A maroon truck crosses the line and pulls into the breakdown lane in front of me. I recognize the toolbox in the bed and jog over.
“Thanks.” Inside the cab, Hunt’s got the air-conditioning cranked and I sigh, closing my eyes for a second as it blows over me. Stars burst against the back of my lids. “Really. I almost died.”
He checks the rearview mirror. “Hot day for a walk.”
“You’re telling me.” I crane my neck to look at the oncoming lane. “You’re good.” I flop back. Classic rock plays softly on the radio. I wonder if Mom knew Hunt would probably come along on his way to work and get me, or if she even cared. I know better than to tell him what happened—Mom will kick my butt if I air dirty family laundry—so I leave it alone.
He’s wearing his work duds, which are almost exactly the same as his handyman duds: chambray shirt, fat carpenter pencil in the chest pocket, Dickies pants, boots. He sees me looking and gives me one of those Hunt smiles, humor showing only in his eyes and playing around his mouth. “Good year for berries?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re all over the place. We’re killing ourselves.” My stomach does a dipsy-doo all of a sudden and I sit up straight. Swallow. Ugh. Tastes sour. Hunt’s watching me. “Uh . . . I think . . . maybe . . .”
He pulls over again, quick. Thank God I make it onto the shoulder before I heave up the aspirin and cereal and whatever else is left in my poor stomach.
I stand there, hands on my thighs, head hanging. Broken Bud glass glints in the dirt. I’m so embarrassed that I think about making a run for the woods, but then he’d think I was crazy on top of not being able to hold my liquor. I can’t look at him as I get back in the truck. “Sorry.”
He puts a thermos cup in my hand. It’s iced black coffee that smells like it could peel paint. I drink, making a face. “Better eat some of this. Take it slow.” He’s unwrapped half a bologna-and-cheese sandwich—he’s giving me his whole lunch here—and I start to argue, but his expression is so serious that I do what he says, fighting it down until my stomach settles. Finally, he says, “Long night, huh.”
I laugh weakly. “Oh, yeah.”
“Maybe I ought to take you home.”
“Nah, I’ll be okay. I’ve raked more hungover than this.” He doesn’t move. “Seriously. And I need the money.” I guess he knows it’s true, because he shifts into first and we go.
He drops me off at the top of the barrens road and I wave. I don’t have to worry about him telling Mom anything; I know our ride is between us. And Mom’s so closemouthed that she’ll never ask if he saw me, anyway. Those two could split one word down the middle and make it last the whole day.
Mags straightens up at the sound of Hunt’s truck leaving, but Mrs. Wardwell gets to me first. “Look what the cat drug in.” She eyes me from her lawn chair, fanning herself slowly with a Hannaford flyer. The chalkboard where she keeps track of who’s in the running for top harvester leans against the camper; Shea’s name is number six. The rest are all migrants, names I don’t know. “Your sister said you were sick, missy.”
“I was.” I duck into Mags’s car to get my gloves and cowgirl hat. “Now I’m better.”
She grunts. I hear her sipping soda as she watches me walk into the field, those hawk eyes of hers burning a couple dime-size holes into my back. The thing is, I really hate being late. I hate looking like a bad worker. But I don’t think anybody would believe that on my best day.
Mags says to me as we rake, “You call Hunt for a ride?”
“No. I was walking and he picked me up.”
She’s quiet. “You could’ve told us you were going to the quarry last night. We waited for you.” I don’t answer. I didn’t tell them because I knew they’d try to talk me out of it. “Let me guess. Kat set ’em up and you knocked ’em back until you couldn’t see straight again.”
Color creeps into my cheeks. “I drank what I wanted. It’s not her job to stop me.”
“She thinks it’s funny when you’re drunk, Darcy. She wants you to make an ass of yourself.”
“I can do that without her help.”
“Mom fell asleep on the couch waiting up for you.”
I stop, not realizing how out of breath and dizzy I am until I almost lose my balance. I must’ve walked right past Mom in the dark last night after Kat dropped me off. Was she awake, the throw pillow under her head, watching me do a careful drunk step through the living room and up the stairs? Things have changed since Rhiannon, and I know it. Moms’ minds go straight to murder when their kids come home late. I look at the ground. Mags doesn’t have to say anything more.
I focus on work until I have to stop and take a long drink from Mags’s water jug, scanning the rows to our right and left. Today, the sight of Jesse makes me feel like I bit into a lemon. He’s sexy as hell, shirt off, tanned so deep that he doesn’t have to worry about burning anymore. Shea tosses something at him—a garter snake—and Jesse jerks away, laughing and cussing him out. Mason checks the snake over and then sets it on a rock, out of reach. I remember last night at the quarry and turn away.
Jesse was there, with his hands all over Emma Bowen. Hanging his arm over Maddie Clark’s shoulder. Grab-assing with Kat, who most guys stay away from because Kenyon’s always around, even though Kenyon doesn’t care. I was probably the only girl Jesse didn’t touch last night. In fact, he didn’t talk to me at all except to say hi. And here I was, panting for him, getting all giddy over a pair of old gloves. Wow.
At quitting time, I go up to headquarters to get our paychecks. Duke McCutcheon’s cinching the straps on a truckload of boxes bound for Danforth’s. Shea’s hanging off the other side, holding them taut. If I squint, I can see the family resemblance between him and Duke; add thirty pounds, a handlebar mustache, and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, and you’ve got it. Duke climbs down from the flatbed and swings into the driver’s seat. Funny to think that after those berries go through the winnower at Danforth’s, Mom will be sorting through them, fingers freezing through her gloves, picking out anything squished or white.
The guy in front of me in line for checks is a migrant, a short, muscular guy with skin the color of rosewood. I wonder what it feels like to be that dark. He speaks with a pretty thick accent when he tells Mrs. Wardwell his name. “Say again?” She squints up at him.
He repeats himself. There’s grumbling from people behind me, and I hear somebody say, “Don’t sound like English to me.”
The guy’s back has gone rigid, and he says his name a third time, slowly: “Al-e-jan-dro Sán-chez. Do you want me to spell it?”
More muttering. “Awright, shut up back there.” Mrs. Wardwell finds the check and gives it to him. He gets out of there pretty fast. I wonder what they’re saying about us locals up there in the cabins. Can’t really blame them for not wanting to mix with us, considering the way people treat them now. You can’t help but wonder if the ugliness was always there, though. I don’t think this much hate grows overnight, just because of Rhiannon. “You”—Wardwell crams all three of our checks into my hand—“keep the line movin.’”
As I leave, I hear somebody say, “Ale-who?” to a couple of snickers.
Mags and Nell are already walking to the car, Nell looking back with her hand cupped over her eyes to make sure I’m coming. I stoop to grab our water jug when somebody comes up behind me and slides their hand into the front pocket of my shirt, tucking in a bundle of buttercups. It’s Jesse, so close that I smell his fresh sweat and sports stick. He smiles, showing the chipped tooth that makes him look a little off center, a little wild. “There.” He walks backward, framing me with his hands. “Perfect.”
Speechless, I touch the flowers and watch him go.