CHAPTER 7
LUCY
Over the next couple of days, float season started to pick up. The constant stream of customers kept me busy, and every once in a while, I caught sight of tourists posing for pictures across the street, in front of Cheri’s tree. One guy came in to ask me which tree it was, the one where they’d found “that retarded girl’s parts.” A filthy pink ribbon dangled from the lowest branch, all that was left of the memorial. Crete wasn’t around, and when I tried his office door, it was locked. I wondered which of his friends had lived in the trailer, how well he knew them.
I walked home through the woods after work on Friday, picked a few strawberries from the garden, and ate them hot from the sun. Then I lay down on the couch to rest for a few minutes. It wasn’t completely dark when I woke up, but the crick in my neck told me hours had passed. The answering machine was beeping and someone was knocking at the door. I got to my feet just as Bess let herself in.
“You didn’t call,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “I just woke up.” I punched the button on the answering machine, and we listened to a message from Dad, sorry he couldn’t make it back until the next morning. There was a problem with his truck. “I’m still tired,” I said to Bess. “I think I might stay in tonight.”
“Uh-uh,” Bess said. “Your dad’s gone, that’s a free pass. And I’m not going by myself. Let’s get you dressed.”
“Can’t I just wear what I have on? It’s gonna be dark out anyway.”
She eyed my Dane’s shirt and cutoffs critically. “No.” I followed her upstairs, and she began flipping through my closet, as if something new might magically appear amid the shorts and T-shirts I wore every day. “These look like your dad’s old shirts,” she said disdainfully. “Don’t you have anything dressy? I knew I should’ve brought some of my clothes.” She wore a pair of shorts tight enough to prohibit sitting and a low-cut tank top with sequins along the neckline. “Hey, how about this?” She pulled out the very last thing in my closet, a gauzy white dress I’d sewn in home ec and never worn.
“I can’t wear that to the river.”
“Sure you can.” She held it out until I shucked off my work clothes and slipped the dress over my head. “Now makeup,” she said, sitting me down at Grandma Dane’s vanity table. I didn’t bother to protest. She dumped out her purse and plucked a stubby little eyeliner pencil and a tube of Maybelline mascara out of the mess. I tried not to flinch while she worked. “Lip gloss,” she said, handing me a tube.
“It’s too sparkly.”
She groaned, cupped my chin in her palm, and slathered the gloss on my lips. It smelled sweet and tasted bitter. “Damn,” Bess said when she was done. “You should let me fix you up more often.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You look good, too.”
“No Gypsy witch like you.” She smirked. “Here, take your hair down.” She pulled out the ponytail holder and spread my hair over my shoulders, dragging the brush through it one section at a time. “You’re freaking my mom out, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was going on about you the other day: It’s like she grew into her skin. Lila’s. I mean, you always looked like her, I guess, but Mom said it’s weird how, all of a sudden, now that your hair’s so long, and with the boobs and everything … She said sometimes when you open your mouth, she thinks Lila’s voice’ll come out. Like Lila’s haunting her somehow. Then she lit a big fat doobie and locked herself in her room.”
I rolled my eyes. “Should I get a haircut before she has a mental breakdown?”
“No, it’s perfect,” Bess said, setting down the brush and smiling at me in the mirror. “Now you just need a black cat and a broom.”
Fireflies strobed all around us as we followed the narrow path to the river. I regretted letting Bess take my hair down, because it was hotter than a wool scarf and sticking to my skin. Bottles of Boone’s Farm clinked together in Bess’s backpack, and I carried an old quilt for us to sit on.
We heard voices and music and the hiss of a driftwood fire as we neared the clearing. I recognized a few faces around the bonfire, but no one I much cared to talk to. Bess grabbed my wrist and pulled me around the circle toward the shore, where two of the Petree brothers sat in the shadows taking turns with a one-hitter. Smoke hung in the damp air. “Did you know they’d be here?” I whispered. Jamie and Gage were too old to be hanging around high school parties. Jamie, who was nearly thirty, had always given me the creeps. He was a dealer with long stringy hair and a goatee and a habit of staring at people to the point of discomfort.
“I just want to talk to Gage,” she said. “Only for a minute, please?” I knew what that meant. She wanted to see if he was between girlfriends, in which case he’d take her back until he found a new one. Not that he was any prize. He was four or five years older than us, and I’d never known him to hold an honest job.
“Hey, guys,” Gage said. “Glad you could make it.”
Jamie, as usual, just stared. I spread the quilt out far enough from him that I couldn’t make out his face in the dark. Bess sat down next to Gage and held the tiny pipe to her lips as the lighter flared. She handed the pipe to me, and I passed it to Jamie without taking a hit, careful not to let our fingers touch. When the pipe finished its second circuit, Bess and Gage moved from courtship to foreplay, Jamie watching them with hooded eyes. I wouldn’t forgive Bess easily for tricking me into this awkward double date. I twisted around to see if anyone new had shown up by the bonfire, and when I turned back, Jamie was beside me, blowing smoke in my face.
“Cheri,” he said, inches from my ear. “Friend of yours, correct?”
I rearranged myself to get farther away from him without letting on how uncomfortable he made me. “Yeah,” I said. “She was.”
“She sure was a sweet thing, weren’t she, though?” He brushed his hair back from his face and brought his hand down disturbingly close to mine. Fever radiated from his body.
“Did you know her?” I asked. He could’ve mentioned Cheri simply because she was a popular topic of conversation, but I was thinking of the trailer and the kind of people who might have hung out there. It wasn’t a stretch to picture Jamie ogling Teen Pussy.
“Yeah,” he said, packing the pipe and sucking it to ash. “Showed me her room one time when I was there to see her mom. Weren’t hardly nothing in it. Had this doll made of socks knotted up.”
I wondered if he’d been there to sell drugs or get laid, but I didn’t ask. Could’ve been both; he was known to barter. He unscrewed a bottle of Wild Turkey between his legs and took a long swig. I glanced over at Bess, all but straddling Gage, and knew I’d be walking home alone, cursing the stupid too-small sandals she’d made me wear.
Jamie’s gravelly voice pulled me back to him. “The strange thing was, I saw her once after she disappeared. Last summer.”
“What?” I said. “Where’d you see her?”
He leaned in, filling what was left of my personal space with his shadows and angles and heat. “It was the middle of the night. I was out on the river, and I heard splashing, heavy breathing. Up like a ghost she come, wet and shining in the moon, tearing through the shallows like the devil’s on her heels.”
“Where on the river?” I snapped.
He was close enough that I could see his eyes, bloodshot, unfocused. He wavered for a moment, mesmerized, like he’d forgotten what we were talking about.
“Where was Cheri?” I prompted.
He blinked hard. “Can’t say, exactly,” he said. “Upstream.”
I wondered if she could’ve been running toward town, looking for help. Maybe Jamie could’ve saved her if he’d done something.
“You didn’t try to help her?” I said.
“I thought she was a ghost,” he whispered. “She looked right through me, kept going. I thought maybe I’d imagined it.”
“Bullshit,” I said. But I wondered if it was possible, if he was so far gone that he no longer knew what was real, couldn’t rely on his brain to make the distinction. I tried to sound nicer. “Have you told anyone else?”
“Yeah,” he said, “a few people, right after it happened. They had a good laugh.” He paused to take another drink.
“Why’d you tell me?”
“You’re different, you know?” His hand traced the outline of my hair, my body, not touching but wanting to. Longing softened his voice. “You’re like her. Lila.” I pushed away, stood up. Jamie gaped up at me, and I wondered if he, like Gabby, looked at me and saw my mother. He couldn’t have been more than a kid when she’d left, but somehow, in that mystical way of hers, she’d impressed herself upon him. How unfair that she lingered in Jamie Petree’s burned-out skull, while I hadn’t been able to conjure her up in a lifetime of trying.
Bess didn’t come after me, probably didn’t even notice I was gone. I pried my sandals off at the water’s edge and waded in until the river reached the hem of my dress. Dampness wicked up the thin fabric and I shivered, letting the chill displace all other sensation. Jamie’s smoke lingered on my skin and hair, and I lowered myself deeper into the current, splashing water over my bare arms. Had I not been wearing the ridiculous white dress, I would’ve plunged below the surface to remove any trace of his smell.
“Going for a swim?”