I sigh again and pull myself back up onto the tailgate, the ends of my jeans wet where I didn’t roll them up far enough. “You have anything good to tell me?”
“There’s gonna be a party,” he offers. “Last one, before the Allan house is torn down.”
“Yeah?” I say, unrolling my pant legs.
“Everybody’ll be there,” Ribbit pushes. “I figured you could, you know, maybe make some money.”
I stop struggling with the wet denim. He’s got a point. Where there’s a party there’s plenty of wants, and I’m able to fill them, taking care of my own needs in return. I’ve been looking out for myself long enough to smell opportunity, but I know the scent of danger, too. If the township council finally gets it into their head to come after Amontillado Animal Attractions, Lenore Usher’s vote won’t be enough to save us, and I can’t say for sure that she’d back us. She and my mom might have had the same last name and shared the same blood, but it takes more than that to make someone family.
Grandma died before I knew her, slow and awful, by all accounts. The slow part she was thankful for, calling a lawyer to her bedside to take the house right out from under Cecil’s feet and give it to Lenore. The awful part I don’t like to think on much. Lenore told me once she died screaming, clutching her belly and refusing to leave her land. Lenore put her mom in the ground the next day, her father out of the house within the week. My mom landed on her feet, marrying a Montor. Cecil landed in the trailer and has been rolling downhill ever since.
I don’t love Cecil’s trailer, but it’s got a roof and four walls. And a mortgage. One that gets paid more by what we grow on the back acre than the animals that live up front. But at least the animals let us pretend to be respectable.
What bothers me, though, is that I know Ribbit isn’t talking about the party because he’s worried about my financial situation. He brought it up because he can’t go alone. One drink and he’ll do anything that’s asked of him, strip down, bark like a dog, or funnel a quart of vinegar straight to his gut . . . or somewhere else. I’ve seen him do all these things, and smile doing them, because it makes people laugh. He doesn’t understand that it’s not because he’s funny but because he’s the joke.
I hate when they do that to him.
I hate that he lets them.
But I know why, and I kind of get it. Lenore’s had him jumping to her beck and call since he had his feet under him, and the only time she had a smile for Ribbit is when he did as he was asked. If Cecil had trained up our animals half as well as Lenore did her son, I wouldn’t have to go to the Allan house tomorrow night just to keep our electricity on.
A minnow comes in close to investigate where my feet have been, the last swirls of mud finally settling. A larger bluegill follows behind, curious. I wonder for a second if the bluegill is the minnow’s mom or dad. I’ve been doing that ever since my own parents disappeared, coupling up smaller animals with larger ones, not wanting even a fish to feel the pain of being an orphan. I can’t even claim the title of orphan, not yet. Next month will mark seven years since anyone has seen my mom or dad. Until then, I’m just a ward and Cecil my guardian, because we don’t use words like grandpa or granddaughter to refer to each other. That would imply an emotional connection that isn’t there.
But the blood connection is there, one I can’t deny because you can see it in the way we both hold our heads high, or square our shoulders when someone walks up to us too quick for comfort. Maybe I learned it from watching him, but I don’t think so. I think there’s a steel streak in me that comes from Cecil, and I think that same bit of steel is partly what’s held up the Allan house for all these years, not the brick and mortar. I’ve felt it every time I’ve walked into a party, something calling to me, something saying I belong there.
I know that house, and not just because I’ve scouted out the best places to do my business dealings at parties. I know that house because it knows me, and we’ve both been abandoned. There are dark corners inside of it, as there are in me. And if it’s going to be destroyed, I’ve got someone in mind to go down with it.
I shake off my feet, pull my sandals back on. “Everybody’s going?”
Ribbit nods quickly, sensing that I’m about to cave.
“All right,” I agree. “I’ll come.”
The fish flash away as I move, my shadow crossing the water, their world changing again, light to dark, in a moment. Like mine. At least theirs changes back quick, the sun returning to warm them.
My world can’t be fixed. But maybe it can be put right.
Chapter 5
Felicity
In Amontillado, calling someone rich is an insult. Everybody knows who has money and who doesn’t, so you don’t need to go around showing it off, especially if you’re new blood, like we are. Of course, new blood means your family hasn’t been around for at least five generations. Time carries more weight than money in Amontillado, something Gretchen Astor enjoys reminding me of every time we pass the stone pillar in the center of town with the founding fathers’ names inscribed: Allan. Astor. Montor. Usher.
I’d like to think she’s not doing it on purpose, that maybe running her fingers over her last name as we walk by is an unconscious movement, something she’s learned from watching her parents, who worship at the altar of their surname and expect the rest of us to as well. But everything I know of Gretchen is careful and calculated, and despite my money—and we do have it—this is her silently reminding me that Turnado isn’t up there and never will be.
That little snub isn’t the only thing that bothers me about that pillar, though. The Allans are gone. The Ushers are still here, struggling along, clinging to the power embedded in the history of their last name. It’s sad enough, knowing how the Allan and Usher lines of Amontillado ended up. It’s the other name—Montor—that gives me goose bumps, and for the opposite reason. Nobody knows what happened to Lee Montor, the last male survivor of his name.
And Tress . . . She turned her back on the town—literally—when she went to live in the hills with her grandfather, and metaphorically by refusing help from everyone who tried to give it. And people did try—I know, because I was one of them—to do what they could for the last Montor. But Tress is Tress, and Mom says that pride always was a Montor trait. That and thinking they’re better than everyone else, she had told me once, with a sniff. That’s how I know Mom wishes Turnado was up on that pillar, too.
But it’s not.
New money might spend the same as old, but it still isn’t worth as much to the people of Amontillado. So Mom and Dad were careful, putting a deck on the back of the house first, waiting a few years to add the porch on the front. Mom says nobody’s better than anybody else, and we don’t want people thinking the Turnados got too big for their britches all the sudden. The gas pocket the company hit on our land wasn’t exactly a secret—you can’t hide a long line of white company trucks. But Dad says every landowner in Amontillado has some money from gas, it’s just that nobody needs to know exactly how much.
I don’t even know how much, just that they stopped talking about community college a few years back, then told me if I wanted my own car I could pick something out . . . just nothing flashy. They didn’t have to clarify. Gretchen Astor’s dad had bought himself a BMW when we were in junior high. Somebody spray-painted ASStor across the hood two days later. He took the hit and traded it in for a Civic. That car had all the bells and whistles: heated seats, satellite radio, entertainment centers for the kids in the back. Gretchen’s mom had worried that it was still too much, but the Civic had passed. Like her dad said—as long as you keep the money out of sight, you’re allowed to have it.