11. ME, MYSELF, AND I

My mind hadn't worked right for as long as I could remember. Tiny intrusions I noticed first: A deposing thought about my height or my weight or an inner critique about my general usefulness. Then came what I called "the scissor moments." During a day I'd ask myself "would this moment be better without me?" and I'd cut myself out of it like a paper doll to see if it improved.

I was broken and you couldn't fix things that were broken.

My parents were the measuring stick when I finally understood not everybody thought the way I did. Most people liked who they were! Most people weren't aimless. My dad had a purpose. He was a hero. I tried to be near him; I thought it'd flake off on me. My mom saw the world with herself in it. People invited her places because every room needed an axis to revolve. Smiling was the trick. People wanted happy. I wasn't happy, and that meant I was wrong.

Headlights skated on a glass road wet from the rain. When I left the party, I couldn't feel my fingertips. I couldn't feel at all. But whatever the alcohol or the drugs had hidden from me, I still knew I was different.

My car glanced a deer. A flash of white and a pop—a headlight exploded. I slid to a stop.

There was someone in the front seat with me. She looked like me, and I wanted me dead. The only time I could escape myself was at the movies. In the dark. With a reality on-screen that didn't have me in it.

I don't remember what happened that night Busy died.

But I tried to kill myself.

12. PHONECALL

"I'm looking for a boy."

"This is not an escort service."

"He's tall and he smokes."

"Lady, hang up."

"No, wait. Try whoever's in Room 20...please."

I twisted the plastic coated phone cord around my finger and leaned against the kitchen wall. The phonebook spread its ribs on the kitchen table. I'd spent an hour leafing through tattooed pages, trying the numbers for motels.  Mostly men answered when the front desk rang. But I could tell by the sound of their lives breaking apart behind their steady voices that they weren't the go-lucky drifter I'd ditched at the movie theater.

This time, the telephone buzzed twice.

"Hello?"

The quick answer surprised me. "Hi."

It was him. Lucky Strike. I knew it before he said,  "Who is this?" And I licked my lips because he wouldn't know even if I told him. We'd never exchanged names.

"Hello?"

"Yes, hello. You might not remember me, but we went to the movies a week ago?"

The line clicked. I thought he'd hung up, but then he said:

"Where are you now?"

13. GUN

How to use a gun:

Step 1. Buy gun

(Steal it from the trunk of a police cruiser.)

Step 2. Load ammunition

(Skip step if already loaded.)

Step 3. Aim and press the trigger, don't pull

(Threaten to kill a serial killer if they hurt a boy called Lucky.)

14. THE WRONG MAN

Janet leaned on the counter. Her elbow was dry skin, her chicken wing folded out from a tight cap sleeve. She had bruises on her upper arms, maybe pinch marks. The black tee shirt she wore stretched the name Rick's Roadhouse like a canvas across her chest. Did Rick like having his name slurred by a pair of forty year old breasts? Probably.

It was rowdy in Rick's. Saturday after five filled the truck stop to the roof. Pool balls winged off each other with loud clacks. Men laughed and shouted. The Jukebox worked overtime in the corner and the cigarettes were depleted.

"Goddamn zoo animals," Janet said and set a beer down for Lucky and a cream soda for me.

I sighed.

"Hey," Janet clucked above the noise. "Someone has to look out for the girls in this town, since your daddy's doing such a bang-up job of it." She eyed Lucky when she said it. I popped the paper off a straw.

"If that's all you got, Janet. It ain't much," I said and tugged Lucky's sleeve to find a place in the corner where I didn't have to talk to her anymore--or listen to her whine about my father. Which, to recall our recent interactions, shouldn't have offended me as much as it did. But when she smeared him, she smeared me. And I didn't like that.

My ears stuck out, I could feel them.

The sawdust floor was a mine field. Twice my ass was grabbed, but turning around revealed a pack of most-likelys and I wasn't in the mood to figure out who.

"So Mickey Mouse," Lucky said. "Should we introduce ourselves?"

"No."

"Fair nuff."

He took a swallow from his beer bottle, "What'd she mean about your daddy?"

"He's the Sheriff of Nowhere."

He coughed, "Your daddy's a cop?"

"Why, you gonna kill me?"

He shook his head and grinned, "Depends, darlin. You gonna leave me again?"

I rolled my eyes. "How dangerous could you be?"

"Not as dangerous as a cop."

I thought of Deputy Bithell and the burn marks. In my mind he was guilty, and I wasn't worried about meeting the real killer. I already knew who he was.

We sat for awhile, until the suds in both our drinks warmed and the pretzels dwindled to salt crystals.  Then, a man in a red trucker cap punched a man who'd taken his pool cue.

"Look at those cavemen go," Lucky laughed as a fight tore up the floor. Shaking up his beer bottle he capped the mouth under his thumb and sprayed what was left across the brawling crowd.

When the police came, we ended up side by side, handcuffed, stinking of hops and shouting obscenities. I liked not doing it by myself for a change. I was suddenly less lonely.

My dad met us in the parking lot. Light tumbled down the front steps of the station, stretching his shadow a mile long ahead of him. He must have gotten a call about me and Lucky. He stomped to our cruiser, ignoring the other bearded drunks being ushered inside where it was cool and bright, not hot and sticky and the dark side of cobalt.

"Is this him?" he asked.

He already knew.

Deputy Bithell guided me around the nose of the cruiser, my hands still cuffed against the small of my back. He kept me there as my dad grabbed Lucky by the jacket front and crashed the rear car door shut with his body.

"You fucking tramp," he said.

"Fascist pig," said Lucky.

I screamed in surprise as he struck Lucky. Once in the face. Once in the stomach. Tied like me, Lucky collapsed on his knees, gagging. Blood on his teeth.

"Uncuff me!" I shouted at Bithell, twisting in his clammy grip. The heat bugs had stopped singing. All I could hear was my dad's fists thumping angry against Lucky's flesh.

"If you don't let me go, I'll tell everyone you touched me in your car."

"Whatever you say, Fiona."

As soon as my hands were free I lunged for my dad.

"Stop!" I beat on him. "You've got the wrong guy. Stop."

He stopped just shy of hitting me. His breaths quick and absolute. The fog lifted, and he reached toward me. "I told you not to—"

"NO." I said. My jaw so tight I thought it'd break. "Don't talk to me."

"Fiona."

"Don't!"

I helped Lucky into the backseat of the cruiser. The siren light click, click, clicked lazily around each circuit, washing my father in two colors. Not black and white like his moods, but close enough.

I climbed into the driver's seat.

15. DISHES DUOS

The only lengthy time I spent with my mom was in the kitchen washing the dishes.

Here, until she left, was our confessional. We talked about our day and my school and what dad did or didn't do. Most days I listened, drying dishes as she scrubbed wet egg lace off an iron pan.

Once, I dropped a mug and it split, both halves still fit together but she pointed to the trash:

"You can't fix things that are broken."