Текст книги "Such a Rush"

Автор книги: Jennifer Echols

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

five

I sucked in a breath. Then realized that sucking in my breath had revealed to Grayson just how right he was, and how much I did not want him to involve my mother. “She’s out of town,” I said as evenly as I could. “Good luck finding her.”

“She’ll be back,” he predicted. “But if not… My dad just died. For the moment, I’m loaded. I’ll hire a private detective to find her.”

I blinked at Grayson. He was so handsome, and sitting so close in his chair, that my heart went into overdrive. I blinked again and he was the devil, sent here to seek out my every hope and crush it, my every fear and make it come true. I had never found my mother when she went missing, but I had never tried. I imagined it would be easy for a professional. A private detective would be friendly with the police, and my mother’s boyfriends were usually on parole.

“What would she do if she knew you’d forged her signature so you could start taking flying lessons at such a tender age?” Grayson asked.

She would kick me out of the trailer for forging her name and—more important to her—for lying to her about where my money was going. The trailer wasn’t much, but I had a month and a half of high school left, and nowhere else to go. Molly would offer to let me stay at her house. Her parents wouldn’t understand. Rich parents didn’t kick their children out. Molly’s folks would assume I’d done something truly awful and that I was a bad influence on her. They would make sure Molly stayed away from me. That would be the end of our friendship. And then—

“Would your mother pitch a fit at the airport office?” Grayson prodded me. “My dad’s dead. There’s nobody for her to sue. Does she understand that? I’ll bet she would try to lay the blame somewhere. Everybody at the airport would get dragged into it—everybody still alive who could have written you recommendations for jobs and flight schools and college in the next few months. You were planning to go to college at some point, right? You’d have to, if you want a job as an airline pilot.”

He had me there. College was not an option for me right now. Every dime I hadn’t given over to my mom, I’d blown on flying. I’d been counting on flying for Mr. Simon and saving up money for junior college tuition. After a few semesters, I would use my stellar new GPA and glowing recommendations from Mr. Simon and the Admiral and everyone else I knew at the airport to get a scholarship to a decent college that offered an aviation degree. But if Grayson ruined those recommendations for me—

“You know what else you need to get that airline pilot job?” Grayson asked. “Good moral character.”

He’d done his homework to blackmail me. He was quoting the FAA rules for an airline pilot’s license. I’d never known what “good moral character” meant, but I was pretty sure it ruled out forging my mother’s name to take flying lessons.

“All right,” I said through my hand, which I’d clapped over my mouth at some point while he was talking.

“All right, what?” he prompted me.

“All right, I’ll work for you.”

“Great,” he said calmly, like he didn’t think it was great at all. He just folded my entire future, sticky note and all, and shoved it back into his pocket.

“For how long?” I asked weakly.

He shrugged like he hadn’t thought about it. But his words betrayed him. He’d thought about this a lot. “Definitely this whole week of spring break. Most weekends after that, because Alec and I will be coming over from Wilmington to fly too. Not the next weekend after spring break is over, though. That’s our high school’s prom. My dad didn’t schedule any banners then, like he expected Alec and me to want to go.”

He turned his head toward the road as if listening for something, but the pit bull had stopped barking.

Grayson went on, “And after school lets out for the summer, we’ll reevaluate.”

I took a swig of beer, considering. Grayson would drive the business into the ground way before school let out. So I would fly for him this week. He would go back to Wilmington. The following weekend, his dad had given him the excuse of the prom to skip flying. There would be more excuses after that. Grayson and Alec would not come to Heaven Beach again, at least not to fly. They’d stay in Wilmington and forget all about me, and it would be like none of this had ever happened.

In the meantime, I could start looking for another job flying. I hadn’t expected the crop-dusting job to drop in my lap. The imaginary crop-dusting job. Maybe an actual job would come up too. My prospects looked brighter than they had an hour before, when I’d buried my head under the pillows. Honestly, I didn’t want to fly for Grayson, but my spirits were lifted at the thought that I would finally fly a plane again. Or maybe it was the beer. I took another long pull and set the can down on the stump.

“I want you to pay me at the end of every workday,” I said.

Grayson’s brows went down behind his shades. “Why?”

“This is a day-by-day operation. I don’t want to walk over there one morning and find out you’ve packed up and run back to Wilmington without paying me.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Grayson said so firmly that I almost believed him. “But sure, if that’s what you want, I’ll pay you every day. And there’s one more thing.” His fist gripped and relaxed. “I need you to date Alec this week.”

I laughed shortly. The alcohol rushed to my head and heated my skin in the warm evening. I couldn’t make sense of what Grayson was saying. “You want me to what?”

“Date Alec.”

Date Alec? All day I’d fought my long-standing crush on Grayson. The idea of dating Alec, who was so different from Grayson, was a one-eighty, and I felt dizzy with the turn. “I haven’t even seen Alec since the fune—” Even drunk, I was able to stop myself, almost.

“Come to work tomorrow morning,” Grayson said as if I hadn’t spoken. “Flirt with Alec. He’ll ask you out. You’re local and it’s spring break, so it should be easy for you to show him a good time.”

“Grayson, that’s nuts!” I was yelling now, and the pit bull barked viciously in response. I lowered my voice. “Why in the world would you want me to date your brother?”

“I can’t tell you,” Grayson said simply.

“Then I’m not doing it,” I told him just as glibly.

“Then I’ll hire someone to deliver this forgery to your mother when you’re not around to stop it.” He leaned forward to stand up.

“No!” I exclaimed. “Sit down.”

He seemed to be watching me as he eased back into his chair.

“I’ll do it,” I said, “but you have to tell me why.”

“No.”

“Grayson!” His name set the pit bull off again. I whispered, “Is it for something illegal?”

“No.”

“Or something else that will screw up my commercial license?”

“Nothing like that,” he assured me. “It will get you out of trouble, because I’ll give you back this form and all the copies I made.”

And I would burn them. “Why do you think Alec’s going to ask me out just because I flirt with him? He hardly knows me.”

“But I know him,” Grayson said.

I shook my head. “Alec would not go out with me.” He might never have seen my trailer, but he knew. Everybody at the airport knew.

“Yes, he will,” Grayson said. “I’ve seen you in action. That oh, you’re a big strong man thing you do. Do that.”

I was tired of Grayson basically calling me a slut. “Why do you keep telling me I have to sleep with people to get a job? It’s a fourteen-year-old boy’s wet dream about how the business world functions. Grow up.”

Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could tell my words had finally affected him. He shifted backward in his chair like I’d slapped him.

Then I realized where I’d gotten that “grow up” line. From Mr. Hall himself. It was his favorite thing to yell at Grayson when he forgot to lock the hangar door or left a banner out in the rain. Mr. Hall didn’t mind yelling it across the tarmac for the Admiral and the other pilots and me to hear. Grow up, son.

“I said I want you to date him, not sleep with him,” Grayson said sharply. “If you assume you’re going to do everybody you date, that’s your problem.”

The palm tree above us swayed violently in the breeze, and my feet ached, two things that should not have gone together. I had been flexing my feet in my flip-flops as if pressing the foot pedals in a plane, stabilizing it against the buffeting wind.

“And”—his voice was soft now—“you’re a beautiful girl. If you show the slightest interest in Alec, he’ll want to go out with you. I know I would.”

My skin prickled with goose bumps, a chill in the hot April evening. My brain knew Grayson didn’t have the crush on me that I’d imagined when he got mad at me at the airport that afternoon. He wouldn’t have asked me to date his brother if he’d been interested in me. But my body didn’t know this, or didn’t care.

“Tell me why you want me to do this,” I said, quietly this time.

“It’s for his own good.”

I laughed, because that was a ridiculous thing for Grayson to say. Grayson and Alec were twins, exactly the same age, yet Grayson sounded like their father.

Grayson didn’t laugh. And as I watched him, he bit his lip nervously, gripped and relaxed his fist, kept himself barely under control. Convincing me to date Alec mattered to Grayson. A lot. Almost as if he were trying to do something for Alec’s own good, for once. As if someone needed to fill those shoes now that their father and their older brother were gone.

I understood why Grayson had recruited me for this job rather than sending the smoother Alec, and why irresponsible Grayson seemed to be the one in charge. For some reason having to do with the business and their dad’s death, Grayson was manipulating Alec.

If I could figure out why, I could blackmail Grayson right back.

I swallowed. “So you’re saying I’m for Alec’s own good.”

Grayson looked me up and down. He moved his head enough that I wouldn’t miss the tilt of his hat, and the provocative meaning behind it. “Ridiculous as that sounds, yes. Trust me, I have an excellent reason. You trust me, don’t you, Leah?”

“I thought I had made it very clear that no.”

“And Alec can’t know I told you to do this. If he finds out, I will make your life as difficult as I possibly can.”

Not if I made his life difficult first. I let out a frustrated huff. “Is this all because I didn’t say yes to your job in the first place?”

“No. I was always going to ask you to do this too. But when you didn’t say yes in the first place, you made me mad, and I went and found something to hold over your head. Now I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.” He took off his straw cowboy hat. I saw his hair so seldom that it always surprised me: how blond it was, almost as light as Alec’s, and how curly, whereas Alec’s was board straight. Grayson’s hair reminded me how young he was, even though he was acting like a boss, a manipulator, a god.

He passed the back of his wrist across his sweating brow, then put his hat back on. “You kicked Mark out, right?”

I frowned at Grayson. “What? Why?”

“Because you’re out here drinking beer. Let me guess. You asked Mark about the crop-dusting job. You found out he made it up, like I said. So you broke up with him. Is that what happened?”

I ground my teeth together, squeezed my eyes shut behind my shades, anything to keep from sobbing in front of Grayson.

“Hey, Leah, seriously.” His voice was soft and sweet like the spring wind. “He didn’t threaten to hurt you or anything, did he?”

I put one hand up to my temple, which had begun to ache. “No, but thanks for asking.”

Grayson nodded. “We talked about you for a while this morning. I thought he was lying to you about that job, but I don’t think he could fake the way he feels about you.”

I took the bait. “How does he feel about me?”

“Very strongly.”

I flared my nostrils in distaste. “I think he could fake that,” I muttered. “He was cheating on me anyway.”

“Doesn’t matter with Mark,” Grayson said. “My mother warned me about girls like you.”

I sighed the longest sigh. “Girls like what, Grayson?”

“Girls with crazy boyfriends. She says girls like you are bad news. I need to know whether you really are. I want my brother to fall for you, but I don’t want to get him killed.”

The back of my neck prickled with danger, something the pit bull did not sense for once, because he was silent. This was the second time today someone had warned me about Mark. I didn’t know him that well, honestly. He hadn’t gotten violent when he left. But I knew he’d repeated his final semester in high school because he’d been suspended so many times for fighting.

“Last year we played a pickup basketball game at the hangar,” Grayson said, “and I beat him. Later that afternoon when we were both trying to land, he cut me off.”

“In the air?” I asked.

“Yeah. He didn’t announce himself. He came in right underneath me. It could have been bad. Of course, nobody was outside watching. I should have told my dad, but he would have blamed it on me and told me to grow up.” He balled his fist and tapped it on his knee. “I wanted you to work for me, Leah, but I also didn’t want you to take a job where you’ll be around that guy.”

“You said there was no job.”

“There isn’t,” Grayson insisted, “and if you double-check with Mr. Simon about it, you’re going to be embarrassed. Anyway, you have a job now.” He closed the distance between our chairs and stood over me again. “Tomorrow morning at seven.”

My stomach was doing flips. I reached for my beer on the stump.

He snagged it before I did and poured the rest on the dead palm fronds behind my chair.

“Hey,” I protested.

He crumpled the can in one fist. Then he crossed the yard, jogged up the cement-block stairs, and swung through the aluminum door.

“Grayson!” I yelled. But I didn’t run after him into the trailer. The only thing worse than him rooting around in there was watching him while he did it, and seeing his expression of pity. I kept my eyes on the door, and waited, and wished for that beer back.

He leaned out the doorway. “Where’s the rest of the beer?”

“Gone,” I said. At the beach. At a party. At Patrick’s brother’s house, where Mark and that girl were getting it on in the basement, having a lot more fun than me right now.

Grayson ran down the steps and jogged across the dirt to stop in front of me with his hands on his hips. “No more drinking tonight.”

I opened my hands to show him they were empty.

“Seriously. No hangovers. I’ve told Alec too. We’re not crashing any planes this week.” He crouched in front of my chair so he was on my level and we faced each other. “I’m going to leave now. Will you be okay?”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t even process anymore. My brain was too overloaded with Grayson, acting like himself but a million times worse because he was dragging me into his impulsive bad ideas this time; and Grayson, acting protective like a father.

When I said nothing, he reached forward and put his hand on my knee.

Electricity shot up my thigh and made my heart pump painfully.

Maybe Grayson felt the jolt too. He took his hand away. I could see my own shades reflected in his sunglasses, my dark curls sliding around my face in the breeze, my frown.

I finally guessed, “Yes? I’ll be okay.”

Satisfied, he stood. “See you bright and early,” he called as he crossed the gravel road and disappeared up the path. The pit bull lunged insanely.

I didn’t sit there long. Or maybe I sat there for a very long time. I was drunk. Twilight settled over the trees. But my heart raced. Although Grayson had left the trailer park, his gaze remained. I was seeing everything through his eyes again. I saw myself sitting alone in the dark, my knees pulled up to my chest in the plastic chair, watching the dust sparkle and slowly settle in the dusk, listening to the pit bull strain against his chain.

I moved back across the yard, into the trailer, and locked the door behind me, muffling but not shutting out the pit bull.

Inside, I retrieved my newspaper and I settled on the pitted sofa, facing the wall where the TV had been. I hoped to lose myself so the day would effectively be over, and I would have no time between now and seven a.m. to worry about what would happen tomorrow with Alec and Grayson. But right away, my stomach growled. The walk to the convenience store didn’t seem so far now. I didn’t dare walk there at night. Heaven Beach had an upscale resort end and a flophouse end. The trailer park was on the flophouse end, and whenever I walked along the highway after dark, men stopped their trucks to ask me whether I was working. Since boys seemed slow to take no for an answer today, I chose not to tempt fate. My stomach groaned in protest.

After a while, I jumped and dropped the paper at a shockingly loud knock on the aluminum door. “Who is it?” I hollered.

“Delivery.”

It was too much, a takeout order misdirected to my door when I was starving. I stomped across the trailer and flung the door open.

Startled, a Chinese guy backed down one cement block, nearly fell, and stepped up again. He held a big white bag in front of him like a shield, printed with red Chinese characters. “Delivery,” he repeated.

I inhaled one long, heavenly noseful of Chinese spice before I said, “Not mine.” I started to close the door.

“Compliments of Hall Aviation.” He shoved the bag at me and hopped off the cement blocks. “Don’t forget! Be there seven a.m. sharp!”

I watched his car disappear down the gravel road. Then I stared through the dust where his car had been, past the yard with the bellowing pit bull, at the path through the trees to the airport. I’d forgotten this when I was saying unkind things to Grayson, and kicking Mark out of the trailer, and threatening to shove beer cans up Patrick’s ass. But when I was a little girl, my mom always told me to be nice to everybody, no matter what they looked like or how they treated me, because I never knew who might be an angel God had sent to Earth in disguise.

Despite the fact that Molly lived on the upscale resort end of town, she deigned to be my friend. She didn’t mind that I lived in a trailer park. But she didn’t seem to consider it an actual home, either, or to think other people lived here. Around eleven I recognized the rhythm of a rock song tapped out in sharp beeps from her electric car.

That is, she didn’t mind that I lived in a trailer park, but she did care. She might even have sought me out. Her parents had run an architecture and interior design business in Atlanta. Now they had “retired” to the beach (they were way too young to retire, in their midforties like everybody’s parents except my embarrassingly young mother) and opened a café that was constructed to look weathered in order to appeal to vacationers on the rich end of town. From the peacenik stickers in the window to the organic menu, their café shouted bleeding-heart liberal. They had taught Molly to reserve judgment and value difference.

And Molly had learned well. The instant she’d moved to town two years before, she’d become the crusader of our high school, lobbying the lunchroom for vegetarian choices, organizing cleanup crews to keep the nearby bird habitats free of garbage. She was no pushover, though. When she thought I was trying to steal her boyfriend, she found me in the hallway between classes and, within hearing of everyone, told me what she thought of the school slut.

But when she saw the way the other girls joined in to bully me—that’s when, ironically, she befriended me. So in a way, she was using me. I was her Different friend. She gave herself brownie points for hanging with me. But she didn’t see herself in this light. And I hadn’t told her, because it would be like kicking a puppy. I was glad that she’d picked me for her cross-cultural experiment, instead of somebody else from the trailer park, like Aaron Traynor, who would have convinced her to try meth “just once,” or Ben Reynolds, who would have screwed her.

I threw on some clothes against the cool spring night, locked the door behind me, and dashed out to her. I was so happy to see her that I almost hugged her across the front seat of the car, but I didn’t dare ruin our friendship with a blatant show of my affection. Our bond had started with our mutual respect for each other’s toughness, sense of humor, and utter lack of sentimentality, and that’s how it would stay. I said, “Hey, bitch.”

“My God. You disgust me. You look like you just rolled out of bed, and I swear you’re prettier than me even with all my swagga.” She ran her hand down her side and out, presenting some part of her outfit—the low-cut top, maybe, or the miniskirt, or the platform shoes. She was no prettier and no less pretty than any rich girl at our high school.

I said, “I think it’s my hair.”

“You always think it’s your hair.” She looked over her shoulder to back the car across my yard and didn’t flinch when the bumper hit one of the plastic chairs, tipping it over. She turned forward again and tore out of the trailer park at fifty miles an hour.

“Good concert?” I asked.

“Please. I couldn’t wait to ditch those silly chicks I went with. I’ve been dying to tell you. At breakfast I finally connected with the coolest guy at the café!”

“If he’s so cool, why are you with me instead of him?”

“Smart-ass. I had the concert. You know I never break a commitment. And he’s working early tomorrow.” She stomped the brakes at the entrance to the highway and looked both ways before pulling into traffic, at least. “But tell me what you need to tell me first.”

“No, you go ahead.”

She stomped the accelerator and the car hissed toward town at top speed, which luckily wasn’t very fast or we both would have been dead when she first got her driver’s license. Then she glanced at me. “No, you go ahead. Something big’s happened. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

I told her everything that had happened with Grayson, and with Mark, and with Grayson again, leaving out the Chinese food, because that would sound like begging. Molly wasn’t allowed in the trailer, and she’d never opened the usually empty refrigerator.

She interjected a lot of “Wait a minute. You mean your friend Mr. Hall’s sons? Twins are so sexy!” and “He wants you to do what?” and “That ass!” which referred to both Mark and Grayson. Though I should have been accustomed to it by now, it was pretty strange to hear filthy language coming from her lips. She was naturally sunny and rich and innocent looking—a lot like Alec, actually—and she’d worn very heavy, glittery eye makeup to her concert, which she thought made her look older but actually made her look about twelve, with huge eyes like a cartoon character.

“I know,” I said. “I don’t understand how Grayson did it. I went into our talk thinking of myself as a pilot. Somehow I came out as the airport whore.”

Molly laughed so hard that I thought she would run off the road because I had said “whore.” Molly was easily amused by smut. Therefore, our conversations tended to be very dirty. I liked to hear her laugh.

When her giggles died down, I said, “You know I’m not a whore.” I was double-checking, actually. I had a bad rep around school, but that’s because the new girl at school was an easy target. After three and a half years here, I was still considered the new girl. Molly hadn’t lived here as long, but she’d blended in better. The new girl who lived in a trailer park was a sitting duck.

Molly cut her eyes sideways at me. “I know you’re not a practicing whore. But Mark Simon living with you? Even for just a week? I’m so glad you got rid of him.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Did you end up doing it?”

“No.”

“Gah!” Molly exclaimed. “I’m so relieved. I tried to be glad you were finally going to get some, but Mark Simon is not the crazy I would have picked out for you. Girls were talking about you. I mean, more than usual. That was out there, living with a guy when you’re only eighteen and you haven’t even graduated yet.”

It wasn’t like that, I almost told her. But I’d said this to her all week: It’s not like that. I sounded like my mother trying to explain a few of her military boyfriends to me. Why do you stay with him when he hits you, Mama? You don’t understand. It’s not like that.

“Do you think I gave Mark the wrong idea without meaning to?” I asked. “I never meant that I would do him in exchange for a job. Do you think Grayson is right, that I’ll look at Alec and he’ll fall at my feet?” What I wanted to ask was whether Mr. Hall had befriended me for the wrong reasons, like Grayson had said a year ago in the hangar, which seemed like a lifetime ago now. But I didn’t ask that. I didn’t want to know the answer.

She took a long breath, considering. “I do think you turn on a very sexy act around men when you need something, and you may not realize you’re doing it. Obviously you don’t realize it if you’re asking me about it.”

“Give me an example.”

“Ryan.” Ryan was the boyfriend Molly and I had argued about when we first met.

I hated it when she brought Ryan up. She didn’t know the whole truth about what had happened. The fact that I’d hidden it from her made my stomach twist even now. But my fib had landed me this beautiful friend. I wouldn’t let her go. So I continued with the tough act she loved so much. I said, “Oh, I realized I was seducing Ryan all right.”

She cackled at our oldest joke. “Okay, another example. You’ve gotten in one million fights at school, and you’ve been called to the principal’s office one million times, but you’ve never been suspended.”

“That’s because I don’t start the fights,” I said self-righteously.

“Maybe not,” Molly said, “but that’s not what those other girls and their friends are telling the principal, yet they’re getting suspended and you’re not.”

“So you do think I’m a whore,” I said grimly.

“No. You’re not doing the principal. The rumors about you aren’t true. But they’re not random, either. Think about it. Do you own a T-shirt that doesn’t show your cleavage?”

I put both hands over the deepest part of my V-neck.

“And then there’s Mark living with you,” she said. “You’re not a whore. You’re a chick who hasn’t exactly grown up with every advantage, and you’ve learned to use what you’ve got. You don’t do it on purpose. It’s second nature. You act girly and helpless and make men think you’re harmless.”

I swallowed.

“Leah. You look like you’re going to pass out again. I’m not helping.”

“Sure you are,” I said brightly. “You’re a candle in my window.”

I meant for her to laugh at this, but she stared out the windshield, tapping one finger nervously on the steering wheel. “So, about these Hall boys. Are you in love with Alec?”

“What? No.” As I said this, we passed the convenience store. I was always amazed how little time it took to drive here when it took forever to walk here.

“Are you in love with the one who thinks you’re a whore?” she asked.

I snickered at the way she’d put it. Then I realized I shouldn’t be amused, because the way she’d put it was pretty accurate. “Grayson. No.” My skin tingled as I said his name, which was just stupid.

“I can’t put my finger on it, but you’re in love with somebody.”

I fished in her purse at my feet, found a clove cigarette, and lit it. “I’ve been watching them from afar for a while. The twins, and their father who died, and their older brother who died. I guess I’ve fallen a little in love with all of them.” One puff and the cigarette was making me sick. Mr. Hall was looking over my shoulder, telling me to put that garbage out. I stubbed it out carefully in an empty paper cup in her cup holder.

“So you’re nostalgic for their lost family, and you feel sorry for this guy. You’re making excuses to yourself for his poor social skills. But you can’t forget he’s blackmailing you into dating his brother. Worse, he’s blackmailing you into doing this dangerous job flying.”

“Well, I don’t know that it’s a dangerous job. Before Mr. Hall died, I actually wanted that job.”

“When Mr. Hall was running the show, yes. Now he’s not. With this inexperienced eighteen-year-old dude running the place, it’ll be even more like suicide than it was before.”

“I wouldn’t call it suicide.”

“You’ve described it to me, Leah. You’re flying this little tin can of a plane pulling this long, heavy banner it was never made to pull. And you’re fighting with the controls the whole time to keep the plane from stalling and plunging you to your death.”

“Technically, all of that is true, but a pilot wouldn’t phrase it so dramatically. If we did, we wouldn’t be pilots very long. Because that sounds like some crazy shit.”

“Exactly. And you said they’ve stripped all the instruments out of those little planes so they’re light enough to carry the banners. You’re flying without instruments, and that’s not dangerous?”

“They don’t take out all the instruments. The ones they’ve taken out, you don’t really need unless it’s cloudy or dark. I mean, yes, they’d be nice to have, but you don’t need them.”

Molly turned to gape at me.

I realized what I was saying did sound kind of lame. “Yes, I can hear myself,” I said. “Was that your next question? Yes.”

“Well,” she said, “since you love these guys so much, and you swear the job isn’t ‘that’ suicidal”—she took her hands off the steering wheel to make finger quotes—“I don’t see what the problem is. I mean, I understand your concern about the good moral character thing and your mother finding out that you forged her name. You’re just trying to keep your head down and your nose clean until you can get out of Heaven Beach.”

“Right.” We passed the grocery store. The few times I’d walked here to shop, the bags had pulled my arms out of their sockets, just like the heavy chocks on the tarmac, as I hiked back to the trailer. But if I could have driven here, I would have plopped the bags in the trunk and forgotten about them until I reached home. Yes, I was amazed at this miraculous invention called a car. On pretty much every drive Molly took me on, I was tempted to ask her to stop and let me get a few groceries. I never asked, though, and it never occurred to her.

“And maybe you have a little problem with authority—” Molly said.

“Who, me?”

“—so Grayson telling you what to do gets on your last nerve, especially when it involves whoredom.”