“You nuts?” Dani said.
“If he’s back, he won’t be home for hours.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” I said. Sometimes he stopped at Bob’s, his friend in town, and they hit the bars, but other times he came straight home.
She tugged the back of my hair. “Don’t worry.”
Courtney acted like she didn’t care what Dad did to her, but I knew she was scared of him. Mom was the only person who’d ever been able to keep him under control, but he’d still go on benders with his friends, then come home yelling and throwing stuff around, breaking dishes. She kicked him out a couple of months before she died, but he sweet-talked his way back in, sober and swearing he’d stay that way. Mom was really happy for a while—we all were. Dad stayed sober until the night we found out she’d died. Sometimes I think about how sad she’d be over what happened to us, how pissed off she’d be at Dad.
I looked down the road again, imagined his truck getting closer.
“Promise you’ll come home early?” I said. The last time Dad caught Courtney sneaking in, she hadn’t been able to sit for days.
“Promise,” Courtney said.
“He told you what would happen if you mess up again.” Dani dropped her cigarette onto the dirt, ground her heel into it. “He warned you.”
“God, you guys are paranoid,” Courtney said. “He’s not even in town.”
But I’d seen the way she glanced at the road before she picked up the rifle.
“Come on, let’s shoot some more cans.”
CHAPTER THREE
We shot cans until we’d finished the case of beer, moving each one farther away to make it more challenging, trying to distract whoever was taking aim. We were all good shots—Dad had taught us. When we were younger he liked to make us set the cans up for him—he’d shot one when I was reaching for it. I fell back, crying, and he laughed. I didn’t flinch the next time.
The rest of the afternoon we did laundry, hanging it outside to dry because the dryer was broken again, then made dinner, adding some rice to the last of the tomato soup to make it more filling.
After dinner, Courtney headed upstairs to get ready for her date.
“Want to keep me company?” she said.
Courtney didn’t like being alone much and often asked me to hang out with her. I didn’t mind. I liked sitting on the side of the bathtub listening to her talk about her new boyfriend and watching her do her hair and makeup. We’d shoplifted most of the makeup—we figured stealing samples wasn’t as bad—but we shared what we had. It led to a few fights, mostly because Courtney left a lid off something, but usually we were okay. Dani didn’t use makeup unless she was going out with Corey, but I liked playing around with it.
Courtney was leaning toward the mirror, carefully shaping her eyebrows with an old pair of tweezers. I perched on the side of the tub, the porcelain cool against the backs of my legs. The window was open, blowing the curtains with a faint breeze, but it was still damn hot. The scent of the cedar shingles baking in the sun on the roof drifted in, mixing with Courtney’s hair spray and perfume.
“You going to see Shane?” I said.
She paused, looked confused.
“That guy with the blue car,” I said.
She made a face. “Ugh, no. I got rid of him last week.”
Courtney didn’t keep boyfriends around long. The only guy she’d ever gotten sort of serious with, Troy Dougan, had moved away in May. She said she didn’t care because she was going to move to Vancouver as soon as she graduated. She figured she could make enough money to move down to the States in a few years, somewhere like Nashville, and become a country singer. When I graduated I was going to come live with her in Vancouver—I couldn’t wait to see the ocean. We talked about it a lot, how I’d go on tour with her and take all her photos. I took one of her now, her tawny skin bathed in warm evening light from the open window that turned the side of her face gold.
I didn’t actually have any film in the camera, hadn’t had any for weeks. Sometimes Dad would bring me home a roll, same with Courtney—she stole it or got boyfriends to buy it. She liked the thrill of grabbing it right under the clerk’s nose. Dani kept telling her, “You’re going to end up in jail before you’re twenty.”