* * *
—
In math class I actually do fall asleep, with my head leaning against the wall. When the bell jolts me awake, the teacher glares but doesn’t say anything. For the first month of school he’d come over and wake me up when I fell asleep in class but by now he’s obviously decided that I’m not worth the effort.
When I get to chorus, I take my seat in the back row next to Savannah, who’s got her phone hidden behind her music folder. I lean over and whisper, “Let’s leave after this.”
Savannah snorts. “That was quick.”
I’d told her yesterday about my vow. Or part of it anyway. Told her I was going to stop cutting class, start actually trying in school.
“This will be the last time,” I say.
“Right,” says Savannah, and then Mrs. Carol calls us to attention and starts hammering out scales for us to yowl along to.
When the bell rings, Savannah and I duck out and hide behind the gym supply shed until the second bell. The high school is nestled at the foot of a hill, with hardly fifty feet between it and the start of the national forest, so it’s easy for us to book it to the trees. We go the long way to Queen of Heaven Cemetery, winding through the woods by our usual route.
When we get there, Savannah goes to visit the grave of her uncle Tad, who was her all-time favorite uncle before he wrecked his motorcycle. He was only eighteen when it happened, three years older than we are now, which makes his death seem more real, somehow.
Mama was only fifteen, the same age as I am now, when she disappeared, but the police never found her body. She doesn’t have a proper grave, so I walk around the edges of the cemetery and collect all the silk flowers that blew away in the wind and I lay them at the base of a tree and I pretend that’s where she is.
Aggie and Grandma Margaret don’t like talking to me about Mama. They always tell me not to bring it up, to let the pain of the past stay in the past, so most of what I know I’ve learned from the drunks in Joe’s Bar. They aren’t the most reliable source, perhaps, but I take what I can get. Every scrap of Mama I can gather is precious. I would give anything to see her, to talk to her, even just to touch her hand. To have one single memory of her that was my own.
As it is, all I have are other people’s memories. Details change depending on who I ask or how drunk they are at the time, but there are a few things I’m certain about. Mama was fifteen when she got pregnant. Grandma Margaret kicked her out of the house when she found out about it. Mama bounced from couch to couch for a while, ended up living with the Cantrell boys, Logan and Brandon, in their double-wide trailer out on the ridge. Logan Cantrell is probably my daddy, though nobody’s sure. Logan was a drug dealer and a thief. People say he was violent. People say they’re pretty sure he hit her. Say they saw the bruises.
People also say Logan wasn’t the only guy Mama hung around with. They say she was wild. Say she was friendly, a little too friendly, and I know what they really mean by that.
Officially, Mama is still missing. Officially, no one knows what happened to her. Not a soul laid eyes on her after she gave birth. But you ask practically anyone in Lester and they will tell you that they do know what happened. Logan Cantrell killed her, they’ll tell you, and buried her body in the woods.
* * *
—
When we’re done at the cemetery, we climb the hill behind it and pass through a band of trees into an overgrown yard with a sagging two-story house in the center of it.
Technically, the house belongs to Myron, Savannah’s oldest uncle, but it’s been empty since he got put away for dealing a few years back. No one ever comes here except the two of us, so in a way the house is ours.
The porch has collapsed and the back door is nailed shut, so I give Savannah, who is a good half a foot shorter than me, a boost through the kitchen window, and then I clamber through myself.
We hold our breath and creep through the hallway, past the Hornet Room (where Savannah once got stung four times) and the Pit-of-Hell Room (where the floor has given way to the basement) until we reach our favorite: the Naked Lady Room, where the walls are papered with pages from old nudie magazines. It used to be Myron’s bedroom. There’s a bare mattress on the floor and a dresser with two out of three drawers.
Savannah pulls out the bottom drawer and extracts her Tupperware of assorted cigarettes, begged and stolen from various sources and carefully hoarded here.
“Can I have the blanket?” I ask. “I was up all night.”
Savannah pouts, but she pulls the folded quilt from the drawer and hands it over. I spread it across the mattress, run my hands over the faded squares, each one a slightly different shade of blue, like little windows into a hundred summer days.
This is our secret hideout. We used to come here and play games. We’d pretend the house was haunted by Victorian-era ghosts or that we were archaeologists exploring an ancient and musty ruin. We’d make up elaborate backstories for the ladies on the walls. We’d carve pictures into the rotting floorboards with nails. I’d be Myron sometimes. She’d be Myron’s pretend girlfriend. We’d fool around.
Now, though, Savannah settles down cross-legged in the corner, cigarette in one hand, phone in the other. It’s a hand-me-down from her sister Dakota, its screen spiderwebbed with cracks, but it’s still way better than my phone, which is no phone at all. Aggie refuses to buy me one and I can’t afford it on my own.
I don’t need to ask Savannah who she’s texting. I know who it is: a boy. She’s been obsessed with the damn things since she first kissed one last year. She’s kissed at least eight more since then. Done more than that, even, with a few of them, though she’s never gone all the way.
The sorry truth is I’ve never kissed any boys at all. The only person I’ve ever kissed is Savannah, right here in this very room. But that was just a game, I guess.
I curl up on the quilt. My eyelids are already heavy. I let them close.
“Jo?”
I startle. “What?”
“Were you asleep?” asks Savannah.
“No. Almost.”
“Well, do you think you’ll sleep for long?” Savannah sounds petulant. Maybe she wants me to stay awake and talk. I would if I could, I guess, though she rarely wants to talk about anything interesting these days. It’s all boring real things with her these days instead of stories. She wants to talk about the other kids at school. About boys.
“I don’t know,” I say. I was out way later than usual last night, and I can barely keep my head up.
Savannah huffs. “You’re going to trip and break your leg some night and then get eaten by wild deer and it will serve you right.”