And they would both laugh.
That was Before. A thousand years ago. When I was little.
Dad shook his head a little. “No thanks, kiddo. You have money?”
I spotted his billfold on the counter and scooped it up. “I’m taking twenty.”
“Take another twenty, just in case.” Click. Click. “How’s school going?”
Just fine, Dad. Just freaking dandy. Two weeks in a new town is enough to make me all sorts of friends. “Okay.”
I took two twenties out of his billfold, rubbing the plastic sleeve over Mom’s picture with my thumb like I always did. There was a shiny space on the sleeve right over her wide, bright smile. Her chestnut hair was as wildly curly as mine, but pulled back into a loose ponytail, blonde-streaked ringlets falling into her heart-shaped face. She was beautiful. You could see why Dad fell for her in that picture. You could almost smell her perfume.
“Just okay?” Click.
“It’s fine. It’s stupid. Same old stuff.” I toed the linoleum and set his billfold down. “I’m going.”
Click. He didn’t look up. “Okay. I love you.” He was wearing his Marines sweatshirt and the pair of blue sweats he always worked out in, with the hole in the knee. I stared at the top of his head while he finished the clip, set it aside, and picked up a fresh one. I could almost feel the noise of each bullet being slid home in my own fingers.
My throat had turned to stone. “’Kay. Whatever. Bye.” Don’t get killed. I stamped out of the kitchen and down the hall, one of the stacked boxes barking me in the shin. I still hadn’t unpacked the living room yet. Why bother? I’d just have to box it all up in another couple months.
I slammed the front door, too, and pulled my hood up, shoving my hair back. I hadn’t bothered with much beyond dragging a comb through it. Mom’s curls had been loose pretty ringlets, but mine were pure frizz. The Midwest podunk humidity made it worse; it was a wet blanket of cold that immediately turned my breath into a white cloud and nipped at my elbows and knees.
The rental was on a long, ruler-straight block of similar houses, all dozing under watery sunlight managing to fight its way through overcast. The air tasted like iron and I shivered. We’d been in Florida before this, always sticky, sweaty, sultry heat against the skin like oil. We’d cleared out four poltergeists in Pensacola and a haunting apparition of a woman even Dad could see in some dead-end town north of Miami, and there was a creepy woman with cottonmouths and copperheads in glass cages who sold Dad the silver he needed to take care of something else. I hadn’t had to go to school there—we were so busy staying mobile, moving from one hotel to the next, so whatever Dad needed the silver for couldn’t get a lock on us.
Now it was the Dakotas, and snow up to our knees. Great.
Our yard was the only one with weeds and tall grass. We had a picket fence, too, but the paint was flaking and peeling off and parts of it were missing, like a gap-toothed smile. Still, the porch was sturdy and the house was even sturdier. Dad didn’t believe in renting crappy bungalows. He said it was a bad way to raise a kid.
I walked away with my head down and my hands stuffed in my pockets.
I never saw Dad alive again.
CHAPTER 1
“Miss Anderson?” Mrs. Bletchley’s voice droned through my name.
I’d propped my cheek on my fist and was staring out the window at the cold wasteland of a baseball field, waiting for the chimes to sound. Foley High School didn’t believe in bells. Instead, a sound like a cell phone ringing would echo through the room when it was time to go run on the treadmill in another classroom.
The pencil in my hand rested against blank paper, and I brought my gaze around slowly, sudden silence in the room meaning all eyes were on me.
I hate that.
Bletchley was round-faced, white-haired, and plump. The other teachers probably thought she was a kind, harmless soul. She had small dark hazel eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses and carnelian lipstick feathering off the edge of her lips. Her hands, when they weren’t clasping a yardstick like a cane, were constantly picking at the bottom edge of her lumpy cardigan. She alternated between three sweaters: primrose, blue with knitted roses, and a bilious yellow one with a Peter Pan collar. Today it was the yellow.
She looked like a weasel getting ready to steal its next chicken. The kids called her Mad Dog behind her back, and she could smell weakness.
There are two species of teacher—the soft and the hard. Soft teachers might genuinely want to help, or they might have been broken in. They’re usually nervous and afraid of kids, especially high school boys. The hard teachers are another thing entirely. They’re like sharks—machines made for eating, with a finely tuned sense for blood in the water.
“Were we paying attention, Miss Anderson?” You could have stropped a knife on Bletchley’s tone. A tide of whispers ran through the room. Bletch had picked her target for the next thirty minutes, and it was me.
I just love being the new girl.
I really shouldn’t have even opened my mouth. Hard teachers are like bullies. If you don’t react, pretty soon they think you’re stupid and they leave you alone.
The half-Asian goth kid in front of me shifted in his seat. He was tall and skinny, with a mop of wavy dark hair. The back of his neck was visible as he bent down in his seat, the collar of the black coat he never took off sticking up at the corners but folded down in back. I stared at his nape under the dark curls.
What the hell, might as well. “Fort Sumter,” I said.
Silence. Bletchley’s eyes narrowed behind her steel-rimmed glasses, and I’d opened my mouth. So I jumped in with both feet.
“You asked where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. It was Fort Sumter. April 12 to April 13 of 1861.” I delivered the words in a flat, bored monotone, and the whispers turned into the particular type of silent laughter a hard teacher hates most.
Who knew sophomore American History could be so fun?
Bletch eyed me for a moment. I wasn’t quite a known quantity yet, so I might actually get away with it. The goth kid in front of me squirmed again in his seat, making it creak.
The teacher visibly decided to pick on someone else, with a look that promised me trouble later. “Thank you, Miss Anderson.” Her pause lengthened as she tapped meditatively on the desk with her yardstick. Her ankles were swelling out of her oxfords, despite the heavy dark nylon socks she wore under a long waddling denim skirt. They looked like circulation socks—the kind they give diabetics.
Gran used to wear those when her ankles pained her. My skin chilled as I slumped in the hard plastic seat, not daring to look out the window again. Bletch might just as easily circle back to me. I hadn’t told Dad about the owl on my windowsill. Was he still home?
The unsteady, sinking feeling in my stomach got worse. I stared at the boy’s neck in front of me, but he shifted again, tugging at the corners of his collar with nervous fingers.
Don’t move, I wanted to whisper. She’s looking for her next victim. If I’d been all there in the classroom instead of worrying about Dad, I might have done something like smacking him on the back of the head to save him, since I didn’t give a good goddamn if I was sent to the office or signed up for detention or whatever.
The axe fell. “Mr. Graves.” Bletch’s eyes lit up.
The kid in front of me stiffened, his shoulders going tense.
Blood in the water. I tried not to feel guilty.
“I certainly hope you’re taking notes. Since Miss Anderson has answered the question about the start, perhaps you can tell us about the causes of the Civil War?” Her eyebrows went up, and the predatory gleam in her eyes reminded me of cottonmouths in glass aquariums, staring lidless before they opened their mouths and made that awful ratcheting sound. The thumps of snakes hitting the glass echoed in my head, along with the smell of red beans and rice, body odor, and incense.