I meet Macon’s gaze, both of us finding silent agreement in this one area. Army is twenty-eight, three years younger than Macon, and one of the most irresponsible people alive. We told Army that woman was no good, and now he’s raising a kid alone.
Correction: Not alone. We’re helping him.
Which is why Macon will never be free. Who else will help my brothers pay for their weddings, support their kids, bail them out of jail, have a couch to crash on when their wives kick them out, or keep up the ancestral home?
A drop of water hits the kitchen table, and I look up at the leaky ceiling and move my coffee cup under the leak.
Macon has buried himself here to a point where there’s more than just the six of us to worry about. Everyone in this community depends on Tryst Six.
“Besides,” Army says, ruffling my hair as he moves behind me, “you’ve got the touch with him.”
“I’ve got a vagina, you mean.”
Iron sweeps through, pouring some coffee, and I quickly stuff the envelope back into the bill pile, because I’m not in the mood to talk about it anymore, and I don’t want them to notice it.
“Put it out,” Army yells at him. “Not in the house.”
Iron nods, takes one final puff, and blows out the smoke, running the cigarette under the faucet. He tosses the wet butt into the trash.
Army walks toward the living room. “Two minutes.”
“Arm—”
“Two minutes!” he yells back at me. “Ten, tops!”
And he disappears. I grit my teeth.
Iron follows him without a word, and I bounce Dexter up and down in my arms as I find my gaze traveling to Macon again, grease caked under his fingernails as he fists his mug.
It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s right. We’re all just getting up and starting our day. He’s filthy, because he woke up hours ago. Probably already went to Mariette’s to receive the deliveries of crawfish for the restaurant, got Trace’s truck loaded for him to service lawns today, helped Mrs. Torres repair the pothole in front of her house that the city won’t address, and fixed a motorcycle he’s planning to flip.
“You should’ve gone to college, you know?” My words are quiet. Gentle. “You’re the real brains in the family.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I’m afraid to look up.
“The hardest choices were never choices to begin with,” he finally says. “That’s life.”
Still sucks, though. Why can’t he just admit that it sucks? He has to want to be somewhere else. He has to know what wanting to leave feels like. He’s not happy. Why does he pretend that he can’t relate to me and to wanting something more?
“You’re not paying forty thousand a year to learn how to playact.” He pushes off the stove and I hear him empty his mug into the sink. “When you graduate in four years, you can do whatever the hell you want. Just get a degree you can use first.”
And then a newspaper drops on the table in front of me, open to page fourteen and folded in half. “It’s time for you to step up and help this family,” he commands.
I lean over the kid in my arms, and read the headline.
Blue Rock Resort Breaking Ground
Blue Rock is Seminole land farther south. They’re building a resort?
I scan the article, only reading a few paragraphs before I know enough not to have to finish the rest. Words like “eminent domain” and “job creation” jump out, confirming what everyone feared three years ago when the protests and lobbying started. As with everything, though, those with the most money win the long game, and those without lose the war.
We have nothing to do with Blue Rock, but if they can get Blue Rock, they can get Sanoa Bay. We’re not a reservation, just a community of ancestral landowners who are lucky enough to be sitting off one of the few and most gorgeous reefs on the Florida coast.
They’ll be coming for us next, and it’ll be a piece of cake compared to Blue Rock.
I stare at the paper. “They can’t do this.”
“If the government determines that the land we’re on is worth more revenue to the state in their hands instead…” Macon tells me what I already know. “If it means creating jobs that get the important people re-elected, then yes, they can. They will.”
• • •
Light sprinkles hit my shoulders and legs, and I lick the water off my lips as I jog around the empty track. Normally, I hate running in the rain. My earbuds aren’t waterproof, and music is the only motivation I have to stay in shape—that and the fact that more exercise means I can eat more guac—but today, I don’t mind it. I need to think. I need silence.
Digging in my heels, I pick up the pace, an energy filling my legs that I’m not used to.
I have six months. Six months until I leave for Dartmouth and three months until I leave Marymount for good. I can figure this out. Macon doesn’t have a plan B to keep our land, because he also doesn’t have access to the developers on a daily basis.
I do. The developer—Garrett Ames—and the law firm—Jefferson Collins—in charge of the resort enterprise, are kicking eight, possibly nine families off their land in Blue Rock.
Collins and Ames.
I’m within arm’s reach of their daughter and son every day right at this school. And I’m sick of these people never paying for what they take.
I’m tired of their kids doing the same.
I squeeze the copper key in my fist as I charge down the rust-colored clay track, the green field at the center glistening with rain as the wheels in my head spin and spin.
It’s a key to Fox Hill.
It’s a key to a private party.
It’s a key to a lot of private parties, I’m sure, and not all of them hosted by Garrett Ames’s idiot, teenage son who doesn’t have the good sense to sin with people who don’t have a motive to hurt him.
Think, Liv. Think. How do I use this?
The sharp key cuts into my palm, but I just squeeze it tighter, seeing them in my mind. Seeing them lose and seeing us win.
Seeing Clay watch me walk away from her.
The rain picks up again, a little harder, and I feel drops pour down my legs and inside my white tank top, my black sports bra underneath seeping through my wet shirt.
There are usually a few cars in Marymount’s parking lot on Saturday. Maintenance crews come to fix things when the students aren’t here, teachers show up to get work done undisturbed, or the team sports need the extra time to practice. But the whole place is abandoned today, the heavy clouds promising more shitty weather to come.
I have no idea why I’m here. I’m not hip on showing up to this place when I have to, let alone when I don’t.
Sticking the key back into my pocket, I dig out the other key, the one to Dallas’s old Mustang that the jerk let me take today, and fall to a walk as I head off the track and into the parking lot. He should just let me have the car. It sits on the street, collecting rust most days, but he’s still under the impression he’ll eventually have enough money to restore it.
“Clay, I’m not practicing in this!” someone yells.
I dart my eyes up, seeing Clay, Krisjen, and Amy in the parking lot. I pause mid-step. Great.