Three days later, I dye my hair.
I do it in some public bathroom along the way. The ammonia mingles with the stench inside the dirty stalls and makes me gag. I’ve never colored my hair before and the end result is a muddy blond. On the girl on the box, it was golden but that doesn’t matter because all it’s meant to look is different.
Mattie would’ve hated it. She would’ve told me so. You never let me dye my hair, she’d whine in her thin voice and by thin, I don’t mean papery or weak. It just never came completely into itself. When she laughed, it would go so shrill and hurt my ears but I’m not complaining because when Mattie laughed, it was like being on a plane at night, looking down on some city you’ve never been to and it’s all lit up. Or at least how I imagine that would be. I’ve never been on a plane before.
And it’s true too. I never let her dye her hair. When she was burning through every rule in my book (call if you go to a friend’s house, don’t text boys without telling me, put your phone away and do your goddamn homework already) that was the only one she chose to honor: no dying your hair until you’re fourteen. Just missed it.
I think the real reason Mattie never touched her hair was because she got the blond from Mom and couldn’t stand the thought of losing what little pieces of her she had left. It always made me crazy how much the two of them looked alike, with their matching hair, blue eyes and heart-shaped faces. Mattie and I didn’t share a father and we didn’t look like we were sisters, not unless you caught us mirroring each other’s expressions in those rare instances we felt the exact same way about something. Between her and Mom, I was the odd one out; my unruly brown curls and murky gray eyes set upon what May Beth always called a sparrow’s face. Mattie was scrawny in a way that was underdeveloped and awkward, but there’s a special kind of softness that goes along with that, something less visually cynical compared to my makings. I’m the result of baby bottles filled with Mountain Dew. I have a system that doesn’t quite know how to process the finer things in life. My body is sharp enough to cut glass and in desperate need of rounding out, but sometimes I don’t mind. A body might not always be beautiful, but a body can be a beautiful deception. I’m stronger than I look.
It’s dark when the sign comes up for Whittler’s Truck Stop.
A truck stop. Closest thing to a pause button for people living on fast-forward, only they don’t pause so much as dial themselves down to twice the speed the rest of us operate on. I used to work at a gas station just outside of Cold Creek and my boss, Marty, never let me work nights alone was how little he trusted truckers passing through. I don’t know if that was entirely fair of him, but it’s how he felt. Whittler’s is bigger than what I come from, but doesn’t seem as clean. Or maybe you get so used to the mess of home you convince yourself over time everything’s exactly where it belongs. Nothing here is really trying for its best. The neon lights of the gas station sign seem duller than they should be, like they’re choosing to slowly go out rather than ending themselves with that sudden pop into darkness.
I head for the diner, Ray’s written in cursive paint on a sign that’s too small for the building it rests atop, making everything appear dizzyingly askew. BEST APPLE PIE IN GARNET COUNTY! a sloppy cardboard sign boasts from the window. TRY A SLICE!
I push through the heavy glass door and fall into the fifties. Ray’s looks just how it was described to me, red vinyl and turquoise, the waitresses in dresses and aprons styled to match. Bobby Vinton plays on an honest-to-God jukebox in the corner and I stand there, absorbing the nostalgia, the gravy-and-potatoes smell of it all, before I make my way to the counter at the back. The serving station and the kitchen is just beyond it.
I perch on one of the stools and rest my hands on the cool Formica countertop. To my right, a girl. Girl. Woman. She’s hunched over a plate of half-eaten food, thumbs moving fast across her phone’s screen. She has frizzy brown hair and she’s got so much exposed pale skin, it makes me shiver to look at her. She’s wearing black pumps, short-shorts and a thin, tight tank top. I think she works the parking lot. Lot lizards. That’s what they call girls like her. My eyes travel up for a better look at her face and it’s the kind of face that’s younger than it looks, skin ravaged by circumstance, not passage of time. The lines at the corner of her eyes and the edges of her mouth remind me of cracks in armor.
I rest my elbows against the counter and bow my head. Now that I’ve stopped, the drive is catching up with me. I’m not used to that kind of push behind a wheel and I’m fucking tired. The muscles in my back have tied themselves into tight little knots. I focus on tunneling each individual ache into a single pain I can ignore.
After a minute, a man comes out of the kitchen. He has olive skin, a shaved head, and beautiful, full-color tattoo sleeves on both arms. Skulls and flowers. His black Ray’s T-shirt strains across the front of him, tight enough to show off the parts of his body he must’ve worked hard for. He wipes his hands on the greasy towel hooked in his belt and gives me a once-over.
“What’ll it be?”
His voice sounds like a knife that sharpens itself on other people, intimidating enough that I can’t even imagine what it would sound like if he yelled. Before I can ask if he’s Ray, I notice the name tag on his shirt says SAUL. He turns his ear toward me and asks me to repeat myself, like there were words here and he only just missed them.
Mostly, my stutter is a constant. I know it better than any other part of myself, but when I’m tired, it can be as impossibly unpredictable as Mattie was when she was four and started playing hide-and-seek all over the neighborhood without ever telling anyone she’d begun the game. I have talking to do here but I don’t want to waste a possible spectacle on someone I’m not sure will give me what I need, so I clear my throat and grab the small, laminated menu next to a basket of napkins and skim it for something cheap. I give Saul a pointed look, gesture to my throat and mouth sorry like I’m fucking laryngitic. I tap the menu so he realizes this is me, communicating. His eyes follow my finger and its tap-tap-tap to COFFEE … $2.00.
A minute later, he’s sliding a mug under my nose, saying, “Just so we’re clear, you can’t be nursing that all night. Drink it while it’s hot or add a meal to it.”
I let the steam curl around my face before I take that first sip. The coffee scalds my tongue and my throat, waking me up faster than the caffeine ever would, but it tastes strong enough for me to be able to count on that too. I set the mug down and notice a woman at the service window. She’s wearing a black Ray’s shirt, like Saul, and she reminds me of a slightly younger May Beth, except this woman’s hair is dyed black. May Beth’s is all salt with a little pepper. They both have similarly peachy faces and pointed features, though, and everything after their necks is rounder and much less defined. Soft. May Beth used to wrap me in her arms and hold me close when there was no one else to do it—until I got too old for that sort of thing—and I loved that softness. I let the memory inspire a careful smile to play across my mouth. I give it to the woman. She gifts me with one of her own.
“You’re looking at me like you know me,” she says.
That’s something else that separates her from May Beth, besides the hair—her voice. May Beth’s voice is crumbling sugar cubes. This woman’s is tart apple pie. Or maybe it’s not that she sounds like that, it’s what I’m smelling. There’s a pie rack a few feet down the counter, the diner’s famous apple sitting on top with its soft, syrupy pieces of fruit tucked into a beautifully flaky crust. My mouth waters and I know I’ve been hungrier than this in my life, but that caramel-cinnamon-sugar kiss is making it hard for me to remember when. My stomach growls. The woman arches her eyebrow and it’s then I notice the name tag pinned over her right breast says RUBY. It’ll be a bitch pushing that one past my lips.
“Forget it, Roo,” Saul says from behind the service station. “She can’t talk.”
Ruby turns to me. “That true?”
“—”
I close my eyes. A block: a feels-like-forever moment where my mouth is open and nothing happens—at least, not on the outside. Inside, the word is there and the struggle to give it shape makes me freeze, makes me feel like I’ve been disconnected.
“Y-you l—” I fight for the L, fight my way back to myself. I open my eyes. I feel the woman beside me staring. Ruby, she doesn’t even blink and it makes me grateful but I fucking hate that too, because the kind of decency everybody ought to live by isn’t something that deserves my gratitude. “You l-look like s-someone I know.”
“That a good thing?”
“Yeah.” I nod, faintly pleased with its successful landing. Yeah.
“Thought you didn’t talk,” Saul says, unimpressed.
“You want something with that coffee?” Ruby asks.
“I’m g-good.”
She purses her lips. “You know you can’t be nursing that all night.”
Jesus. I clear my throat.
“I w-was wondering if I c-could ask y-you s—” Something. “A question.”
That’s a thing I can do sometimes: fake out my stutter. I psych it up to ruin one word and switch it out with another at the last minute and it somehow never manages to catch up to me. The first time I discovered this, I thought I was finally free, but no; I was being held hostage in a different way. It’s exhausting, doing all that thinking for the kind of talking no one else has to think twice about. And it’s not fair but there’s not much in life that is.
“Sure,” she says.
“Is R—” I close my eyes briefly. “Ray around?”
She winces. “Died a few years back.”
“S-sorry.” Shit.
“What do you need Ray for?”
“Have you w-worked here l-long?”
“Going on thirty years.” She peers at me. “What’s this about?”
“T-trying to f-find someone.”
There’s a faster way to do this. Before she can respond, I press my lips together and hold up my finger. She waits the minute I’m silently asking for while I open my backpack and take out a photograph. It’s eight years old, but it’s the only picture I have that holds the face of the particular person I’m looking for. It’s a summer scene, all of us posed outside May Beth’s trailer. I know it’s summer because her flower beds are in full bloom. She’s the one who took the photo and I took it from her, where it was nestled in the album she keeps of me and Mattie. This is the only picture of us that includes Mom—and Keith.
He has a hard face, a week’s worth of beard and deep crow’s feet I can’t believe he ever got from smiling too much. He looks like he would step out of the photograph just to hate you up close. He has a child on his hip and that child, with the messy blond hair, is Mattie. She was five. The eleven-year-old girl in pigtails out of focus in the far corner of the shot is me. I remember that day, how hot and uncomfortable it was, and how I could not be coaxed to pose alongside them until my mom finally said, Fine, we’ll do it without you, and that didn’t feel right to me either so I crept into the frame and became the moment’s blurry edges. I stare at it too long, like I always do, and then I point to the pen in Ruby’s apron pocket. She hands it over. I flip the photo and scribble quickly across its back:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
But I already know the answer because I heard about Ray’s from Keith. He used to talk about this place, said he was a regular, used to cradle Mattie in his arms and run his hand through her hair and say one day, maybe, he’d take her to Ray’s for a slice of apple pie because baby, you never tasted anything so good … if Ruby’s been here as long as she says she has, I know she’s seen him. I pass the photo to her. She holds it careful as anything while I lean forward, watching her closely for some flash of recognition. Her face gives nothing away.
“Who wants to know?” she finally asks.
My heart hopes as little as I’ll let it. “H-his d—his daughter.”
She licks her lips and I notice her lipstick has faded and all that’s really left is the harsh red of her liner. Then she locks eyes with me and sighs in such a way I wonder how often this happens, girls asking after men who have nothing in them to give.
“We get a lot of men in here and they don’t really stand out unless there’s something wrong with ’em. I mean—more than what’s usually wrong with ’em.” She half-shrugs. “He might’ve come through, but I don’t remember him if he did.”
I can hear a lie a mile away. It’s not some superhero perk from stuttering, being in tune to other people’s emotional bullshit. It’s just what happens after a lifetime of listening to liars.
Ruby is lying.
“He s-said he w-was a r—a regular. Knew R-Ray.”
“Well, I’m not Ray and I don’t know him.” She slides the photo back to me, the tone of her voice taking a saccharine turn. “You know, my daddy left me when I was younger than you. Trust me when I tell you sometimes it’s just better that way.”
I bite my tongue because if I don’t, I’ll say something ugly. I make myself stare at the counter instead, at a dried coffee splotch that hasn’t been wiped up. I put my hands in my lap so she can’t see them curl into fists.
“You said he’s a regular?” Ruby asks. I nod. “What’s your phone number?”
“D-d-don’t have a f-phone.”
She sighs, thinks on it a second, and then reaches for a take-out menu from the neat stack next to the napkins. She points to the number on it.
“Look, I’ll keep my eye out. You call, ask for me, I’ll tell you if I’ve seen him. I can’t make any promises.” She frowns. “You really don’t have a phone?”
I shake my head and she crosses her arms, the look on her face wanting a thank you, I think, and it just makes me madder. I fold the menu and shove it and the photograph in my bag, trying to ignore the hot flush working its way across my body, the awful shame of not getting what I want. Bad enough it happens in the first place, worse to be forced to wear it.
“Y-you’re lying,” I say because I won’t let her make me wear it.
She stares at me a long moment. “You know what, kid? Don’t bother calling. And you’re done with your coffee.”
She heads back into the kitchen and I stare after her. Good job, Sadie. You fucking idiot, now what?
Now what.
I exhale slowly.
“Hey.” The voice sounds featherlight, uncertain. I turn my head and the woman is staring at me. “Never seen anybody call Ruby on her bullshit before.”
“—” I push past the block, letting out a small gasp. “You n-know w-why’s she’s b-bullshitting me?”
“Haven’t been around that long. Just long enough to know she can be a real bitch when she wants to be.” She looks at her hands. Her nails are pink and long and pointy, and I imagine the feel of them clawing across skin. Every little thing about you can be a weapon, if you’re clever enough. “Look, there’s a guy … sometimes he’s hanging around behind the diner, sometimes, it’s the gas station … if he hasn’t been chased away from them, that is. If he has, you can usually find him by the Dumpsters at the back of the parking lot. Name’s Caddy Sinclair. He’s tall, skinny. He might be able to tell you something.”
“He a d-dealer?” I ask, but it’s a question that answers itself, so she doesn’t bother. I slide off the stool, tossing a five on the counter, because I know where I have to go now. “Thanks. A-appreciate it.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says. “He doesn’t do anything for free and no one talks to him unless they have to so you might want to think long and hard on whether or not you really do.”
“Th-thanks,” I say again.
She reaches over for my half-drunk coffee, wraps her hands around it and says, bitterly, “I know a thing or two about missing dads.”
* * *
“You here for the Ruby Special?”
The voice is like phlegm, thick and unappealing. I cross from the light into the long, outstretched shadows of the truck stop until I’m in front of Caddy and Caddy is in front of me. I circled the diner and the gas station, and he wasn’t there. He’s in the last place I was told to look—the back of the parking lot next to the Dumpsters. He’s leaned against one of them, contoured by darkness that, for one moment, almost gives him extra dimension until my eyes adjust and I see how pathetically built he really is. He’s thin, his eyes cloudy and lifeless. Stubble shades his jawline and pointed chin.
“N-no.”
He’s smoking, takes a deep drag off the cigarette nestled between his long fingers. I watch the cherry flare and fade and my neck prickles uncomfortably at a memory of Keith. I don’t want to get into it, but I still have the scar on the back of my neck and I was afraid of fire for a long time after I got it. When I was fourteen, I forced myself to spend a night with a pack of matches and I made them burn bright, held them for as long as I could stand it. My hands would tremble, but I did it. I always forget fear is a conquerable thing but I learn it over and over again and that, I guess, is better than never learning it.
Caddy tosses the cigarette on the pavement and grinds it out. “Didn’t your mama tell you about approaching dangerous men in the dark?”
“W-when I see a d-dangerous man, I’ll k-keep that in m-mind.”
I’ve got no sense of self-preservation. That’s what May Beth used to tell me. You wouldn’t care if you died for it, so long as you were gettin’ the last word. It was hard enough having the stutter, let alone being a smart-ass on top of that.
Caddy slowly pushes himself from the Dumpster and sets his murky gaze on me.
“Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh will yuh-yuh-yuh you?”
It’s not the first sorry imitation of myself I’ve ever heard, but I still want to pull his tongue out of his mouth and strangle him with it.
“I n-n-n—” Calm down, I think and then I want to slap myself for it. Calm down doesn’t do anything. Calm down is what people who don’t know any better tell me to do, like the difference between having a stutter and not having one is a certain level of inner fucking peace. Even Mattie knew better than to tell me to calm down. “I n-need to talk t-to you.”
He coughs, spitting something resembling drying Elmer’s Glue onto the ground. My stomach turns at the sight. “That right?”
“I w-w-want—”
“Didn’t ask you what you want.”
I take the picture out and hold it right in front of his fucking face because it’s already pretty clear that I have to do this differently than I did it with Ruby. What’s that saying: better to ask forgiveness than permission?
But I’ve never been good at saying sorry either.
“D-do you know this m-man? I n-need to know where t-to f-find him.”
Caddy laughs and shoves past me, his bony shoulder slamming into mine, forcing me into a graceless backward shuffle. There’s something confident about the way he moves his body for a guy who can’t be a buck twenty soaking wet. I try to memorize it, the way his shoulders lead.
“I’m not goddamned Missed Connections.”
“I can p—I can pay.”
He stops and turns to me, running his tongue over his teeth as he contemplates it. In one quick clean stride, he closes the space between us and rips the photo from my hands. If I’d clutched it any tighter, I’d still be holding half of it. My first instinct is to make for a grab back, but I catch myself in time. Sudden movements don’t seem like they’d work in my favor.
“What do you want with Darren Marshall?”
I try not to wear the shock of this name on my face. Darren Marshall. So that’s what Keith’s calling himself now. Or maybe Keith was the name he gave himself when he lived with us and Darren is his real name—part of me wants that to be true. There’s something about peeling back a layer this fast that feels good. I haven’t felt good in a long time.
Darren Marshall.
“I’m his d-daughter.”
“He never mentioned no daughter.”
“W-why w-would he?”
He squints and holds the picture up in what little light there is and the long, loose sleeves of his shirt creep down enough for me to see a constellation of track marks on his left arm. May Beth used to tell me it’s a sickness and made me tell Mattie the same thing, but I don’t believe it because people don’t choose to be sick, do they? Show a little compassion for your sister’s sake. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Like my junkie mother’s addiction was my personal failing because I couldn’t put my compassion ahead of all the ways she made me starve.
“Got somethin’ to say?”
He knows exactly where I’m looking.
“No.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” He smiles faintly and gets close to me again. “Is it a money thing? You didn’t give a fuck after he left but now you’re hungry, that it? Why you think a man owes you more’n the life he gave you, huh?” He quiets for a moment, studying me. “Gotta say, kid, I don’t see much of a resemblance.” I raise my chin and he chuffs softly, slightly incredulous as his gaze returns to the photo. “You ever heard of a fool’s errand?”
Fool’s errand. Noun. I think. Like chasing after nothing, but sometimes nothing is all you have and sometimes nothing can turn into something. And I’ve got more than nothing. I know the guy in the picture is alive. If he’s alive, he can be found.
I grab the picture from Caddy. “Then I’m a f-fool.”
“I knew Darren but he hasn’t been around in a long damn time. Might know something about that too,” he says, and my throat gets tight because like I said, I can hear a lie a mile away.
Caddy isn’t lying.
“It’ll cost you,” he adds.
“Already s-said I’d p-pay. How m-much?”
“Who said anything about money?”
I grab the picture back and he grabs me by the arm and the surprising grip of his spider-leg fingers makes me want to separate from my skin just so I don’t have to feel it. The heat of him. A door slams somewhere beyond us. I turn my head to it.
There’s a truck, a big black dog of a thing idling in the dark. A girl runs toward it. She’s small in a way that reminds me of Mattie, and I stare at her tiny body, made of tiny bones, watching as she comes to a halt at the passenger’s side. She stares at it for a long, painful moment and there’s nothing I can do to stop what happens next. I watch as this girl, who isn’t Mattie, pulls the door open. The cab of the truck lights up briefly as she climbs inside. She closes the door. The truck’s interior lights dim, swallowing her whole.
Caddy digs his fingers into me, his nails sharp.
“L-let m-me go.”
He lets me go, coughing into his elbow.
“It’ll cost you,” he says again.
He tilts his head to the side, his eyes drifting over me and then—a little more tentatively than he did the last time—puts his hand on my arm and walks me farther into the darkness. He brings himself closer to me, fumbling for his belt buckle, whispering the kind of nothings in my ear that can’t even pretend to be sweet. His breath is sour. I look into his eyes and his eyes are red.