She scrawled an idea for the scholarship: Paperboys and Strangers: The Hidden Dangers of Kids Delivering Newspapers.
Hadn’t there been a couple of paperboys murdered in Omaha last year? She made a quick note to look it up. She vaguely remembered something about a military guy getting convicted last winter. Maybe there were more child-abduction cases in the Midwest. Or even nationwide.
Child Abductions: A Growing Epidemic.
This could be a good angle. She could write about the most high-profile cases and their effects on cities, do in-depth research. Research looked good. Maybe she could even interview local people about how these cases made them feel, whether it had changed their habits or routines. Crystal chewed on the top of her pen. She could walk to the mall this afternoon, talk to shoppers about the missing paperboys. The mall would be busy. Moms doing back-to-school shopping. She started a list of questions.
And she’d run the YJWA story idea by Mr. K when he came to tutor Sammy. He sometimes helped her with her writing. It was always a good conversation starter.
Crystal quickly made her bed and tucked her pajamas away in a bureau drawer. She always kept her room neat as a pin, with her books organized by subject and alphabetized, her clothes grouped and hanging in the closet according to season, and her bed made when she wasn’t in it. She changed into a clean pair of shorts and a nice polo shirt and brushed out the tangles of her overgrown bob. She licked her index finger and pushed the hairs of her eyebrows upward because she’d once read in one of her mother’s beauty magazines that brushing the eyebrows up gave the appearance of intelligence and maturity.
She wanted to start saving every article about the Stewart case, so she crossed the hall and silently entered Sammy’s dim bedroom to get their mother’s scissors, which Sammy was always taking on his route. As Sammy slept, she tiptoed through a stew of clothes, shoes, toys, candy wrappers, and partially assembled model cars spread out across the floor on newspapers. She lowered to her hands and knees and checked under the bed. More dirty clothes and trash, but also his canvas newspaper delivery bag. She slid the bag out and stuck her arm inside. Sure enough, her mother’s scissors were in the bottom. But beneath the scissors, she felt another item and pulled it out.
A Polaroid picture.
She turned it over and squinted at the image.
It was of a boy from the waist up with his shirt off, striking a goofy pose, flexing his arm muscles and laughing at the camera. He looked to be about Sammy’s age, skinny, with shaggy golden-brown hair. Crystal held the picture closer. She recognized the boy. His name was Corey Collier and he’d lived a few streets away near the library. Tina had worked at Haircrafters with Corey’s mother until the Colliers moved. The picture had to be at least a few years old. Corey would be around sixteen now.
She didn’t recognize the background of the photo—an unfinished room of some kind, with exposed wooden studs and plywood walls. Corey’s basement or attic, maybe. Crystal hadn’t realized Sammy had ever played at Corey’s house. Probably where Sammy got his hands on a Polaroid camera. Their mother certainly couldn’t afford one. The flash bars alone were $2.99 apiece.
Crystal returned the picture and shoved the bag under the bed where she’d found it, leaving Sammy undisturbed and still sleeping. Her mother banged around in the bathroom, getting ready for work, so Crystal went back to her bedroom and grabbed the two in-state college applications. She’d start with those. Ease her way into the conversation.
Crystal took a deep breath, knocked once, and opened the door. Tina stood in front of the small medicine cabinet mirror with a Capri super slim pursed between her lips as she crimped a section of her long hair in a smoldering iron. She took one last puff of the cigarette and tossed it into the toilet with a flush. When the tank kept running, Crystal entered and jiggled the handle several times to make it stop. She closed the lid and sat, the knot in her stomach pulling tighter.
“Can Sammy and I go to the mall today?” Crystal asked.
“Sure.” Tina set the iron down and ratted her bangs with a comb, then sprayed them stiff with an aerosol can of hair spray. “But don’t forget that Sammy has a tutoring session this morning.”
“I know,” she said. “We’ll go this afternoon.”
“What do you want to go to the mall for?”
“Um, just this school thing I’m working on. An article.” Crystal dangled the applications between her knees.
“For your little newspaper deal?” Tina squirted a mist of knockoff designer perfume and grimaced as the droplets landed on her chest.
“Well, sort of. But also this other project. That’s actually what I need to talk to you about. I’ve been think—”
“Shit!” Tina muttered. She leaned closer to the mirror and touched an infected bump just above her collarbone. Sometimes when she gave men haircuts, tiny pieces of hair landed on her chest and worked their way just beneath the surface of her skin, causing painful, pus-filled bumps, which Crystal found disgusting.
Tina grabbed a pair of tweezers and pulled the foreign sliver out. She fluffed her hair once more and moved to her bedroom to change, the conversation about Crystal’s article already forgotten. Crystal felt like Tina treated her passion for journalism as if it were a cute hobby. She loved to tell the story of how Crystal, at age thirteen, wrote dozens of letters to then-president Jimmy Carter, criticizing his handling of the Iran hostage crisis, and how Carter wrote back, politely thanking her for the “advice.” It was a battle to get her mother to see that she took journalism seriously.
Crystal reluctantly followed Tina into the bedroom, where she uncomfortably perched on the padded edge of the water bed, trying to muster the courage to broach the topic of college.
From her closet, Tina selected a black jean skirt, a hot-pink tank, and a black mesh top—the type of outfit all the younger stylists at the salon wore. It was hard to fathom that Tina had just turned eighteen when she’d gotten pregnant with Crystal, the same age Crystal was now. A shotgun wedding, divorced after fourteen mostly miserable years, working two jobs she hated and still struggling to pay the bills. For Crystal, her mother’s life was a road map to a destination she never wanted to visit. It refueled her determination to forge a different future for herself.
She took a deep breath and started again. “Mom, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, I’m listening,” Tina said, as she rummaged through her jewelry box on the bureau.
“I’m going to the mall today to work on a story that I’d like to submit to this scholarship. It’s a big scholarship that could help me pay for college next year.”
Tina slipped on a row of bracelets over her wrists and frowned. “Chrissie, we already talked about this. There’s no way we can afford to send you to school.”
“I know. That’s why I’m applying for this scholarship and some other things.”
“There’s no guarantee you’ll get it. Then what?”
“But I can at least try, right? I have a really good story idea that involves these paperboy cases—”
“Crystal, this conversation is pointless.” Tina jabbed a large white hoop earring through her lobe. “College is too expensive and out of the question. I can barely pay the bills I already have! You need to get a job after graduation. Learn a useful trade. Like doing hair. Peggy already said she’d give you a job at the salon even with your eye problems. Then you could just ride to work with me every day and you wouldn’t have to worry about driving.”