PART TWO

1. KELLEN

December 1979

In high school in Oklahoma, there was this girl I liked, and one night after I went out drinking, I climbed up to her bedroom window. In bed, she let me kiss her and grope her a little, but then she told me to get lost. She really only liked my bike. Not me so much. Climbing up to her window, though, that was fun. What Old Man Cutcheon called “shenanigans.”

Climbing the trellis under Wavy’s window felt like shenanigans, but as soon as I knocked on the sash, I realized I was too drunk and being stupid. I shouldn’t have been riding, let alone climbing up to her window.

I woulda gone back down, but Wavy opened the window before I could. I guess she’d heard the bike coming up the road. I crawled over the sill and managed to scramble into her room without busting my ass. She closed the window and stood there like a ghost in her nightgown. Waiting for me to say something. Well, yeah, since I just crawled in her bedroom window in the middle of the night.

“I brought you a present,” I said.

“Not Christmas yet.”

“No, not Christmas. It’s a—a birthday present.”

“July.”

“I know your birthday’s in July. I just—I don’t—I’m a little drunk. It’s actually my birthday. I brought you a present for my birthday.”

“Today?”

“Yeah, today’s my birthday. Well, yesterday. I think it’s past midnight already.”

Her teeth flashed in the dark and she took hold of my hand, pulled me toward the bed. It was the only place for me to sit down, but that spooked me. Made me think about climbing through that other girl’s window to get in bed with her.

“No, sweetheart. I just came to bring you a present.”

I’d carried it tucked flat into the back of my waistband, but when I pulled it out, I dropped it on the floor. Before I could pick it up, she pulled me another step toward the bed.

“Cold,” she said.

“Yeah, you need to get back in bed. I let all the cold in opening the window.”

“You.”

I was cold. When Wavy held the covers open for me, I sat down on the edge of the bed. I shrugged outta my motorcycle jacket and kicked off my boots. Left my jeans, belt, and shirt on. Drunk as I was, that seemed okay. She was in her nightgown, but I was still dressed.

Getting under the covers was easy enough. I fluffed the quilts and tucked them around both of us, since my arms were long enough to arrange it all. She huddled up along my side, shivering, and rubbed her feet against my leg trying to warm up.

Once I got my arm around her and she laid her head on my shoulder, we were warm and comfortable, and ready to go to sleep. And that was the goddamn problem. This wasn’t the same as falling asleep next to Wavy in the meadow. I was in bed with her. If Val came upstairs and found me there, I couldn’t exactly say, “I was too comfortable to leave.”

“Wavy? I better go.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t stay here.”

She dug her chin into my arm. A nod?

“Seriously, sweetheart. I can’t.”

Her answer was so quiet, I wasn’t sure I heard it right. I didn’t want to be sure, except I needed to be sure. It felt like two dogs were playing tug-of-war with my heart. She wouldn’t say it again, and it turned out I wanted to know more than I didn’t want to know.

“You love me?” I said.

The sharp chin again. Twice. There weren’t many things she thought were worth nodding twice for.
“I love you, too. I love you.” I said it twice, to be sure she heard it. I shivered, not cold anymore but knowing that saying it out loud made it real. For a long time it was this sneaking feeling I didn’t look at too closely, but now I’d said it. I laid awake for a while, feeling her breath on my arm, but finally, being warm and comfortable and drunk caught up with me, and I fell asleep.
*   *   *
I woke up needing to piss, with my dick hard as a rock first thing in the morning, and there I was in Wavy’s bed, with her curled up next to me. When I went to get up, she held onto me.
“Present?” she mumbled.
“Yeah. Here, let me up. You think your mom’ll wake up if I go down to the bathroom?”
“Window.”
“Sure, I can leave the way I came.”
“I won’t look.”
Her eyes were squeezed shut against the sun coming up, but she turned her head away, too. It was the quickest fix, so I lifted up the window sash and undid my zipper. The cold took care of my hard-on right quick. Wavy giggled at the sound of piss splattering and freezing on the metal porch roof, but she kept her face hidden until I zipped up and closed the window.
“Present.” She must have been feeling brave. All that talking and the way she looked at me.
Her present was on the floor where I’d dropped it the night before. Seeing it in daylight, I was embarrassed it was something so cheap. I’d thought it was magical when I bought it and, when she took it from me, it still was. Her face lit up, so she was half angel and half little girl with sleep wrinkles on her face.

“They glow?” she said.
“Yeah, and you stick them up on your ceiling. So you can have stars even when it’s cloudy like last night. So you can see Orion all year round.”
“Wonderful.” She said it so soft it wasn’t even a whisper.
“I better go. I don’t think Val would be too happy about me being up here.”
Wavy shrugged. I pulled on my boots and jacket, before I opened the window again. Looking at the trellis, I couldn’t believe I’d climbed up it in the middle of the night. Stupid as hell.
So the boots had to come off again and I tiptoed down the stairs behind Wavy. In the kitchen, I tugged my boots on, while Wavy waited in her bare feet. When I reached for the knob on the kitchen door, she put her hand on my arm.
“Nothing for your birthday,” she said.
“Not nothing. You gave me the best present I’ve had in a long time.”
Since she didn’t step back from me, I took her face in both my hands, turned it up, so I could lean down and kiss her. On the mouth, but nothing dirty. The kind of kiss you give someone you love.
She smiled at me. A real smile, with teeth and dimples and the whole shebang.

2. AMY

After Thanksgiving, Mom started calling Aunt Val and saying, “We want the kids to come for Christmas. If you’ll tell me how to find your house, I’ll come get them,” but Aunt Val wouldn’t. Mom finally gave up, but four days before Christmas, this little bald man showed up to drop them off. He didn’t even bother to take the cigarette out of his mouth to introduce himself to Mom. His name was Butch, and he was a “business associate” of Uncle Liam’s, he said. He told Mom that somebody else would come pick Wavy and Donal up, but he didn’t say who or when. Until then, they were all ours.
Dad made Wavy promise not to sneak out, but that didn’t keep her from doing other weird things. At the rehearsal for the church Christmas pageant, Donal got cast as a shepherd and the choir director cast Wavy as an angel.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” said Leslie, who had been passed over as the Virgin Mary every year and twice was stuck being the Innkeeper, the jerk who makes Jesus get born in a barn. Now that she was too old to be in the pageant, she helped the choir director corral angels. She didn’t want to corral Wavy.
“Why not?” the director said.
“She won’t talk. Or sing,” I said. In my last year in the pageant, I was the third wise man. That’s the problem with the Christmas story: most of the roles are for boys. The only girl is there because men can’t have babies.
“And she does things,” Leslie said, but the choir director wasn’t listening.
Wavy already wore a white dress, so for the rehearsal all she needed was a halo and a pair of wings. Even without those things, she looked like an angel.
The rehearsal went fine until we broke for our snack. When we returned to the sanctuary, the Baby Jesus was missing. Like in a crime drama, the only things left behind in the straw were his swaddling clothes.
The adults searched through piles of costumes and boxes of decorations. The church ladies accused each other.
“I put it in the manger. I always put it in the manger,” said one.
“Him!” another lady said. “Our Lord Jesus is not an it.”
The choir director accused the Virgin Mary, who cried, and then the Virgin Mary’s mother yelled at the choir director.
In the middle of the drama, Wavy leaned close to me and whispered, “Dust Bunny.”
“This isn’t just some baby doll,” I said. “This Baby Jesus has been in the church’s Christmas pageant every year for a long time.”
Wavy gave me the small, sneaky smile I knew so well.
She had Dust Bunnied the Baby Jesus.
“Let’s look under the pews,” I said to Leslie. So we crawled through the sanctuary, searching under the pews. 
The other kids started looking, too, and five minutes later, the head shepherd said, “I found it!”
I cornered Wavy on the steps to the choir loft and said, “Why did you do that?”
“Easter egg hunt.”
That’s what church was to Wavy: a set of games she didn’t quite understand. I laughed, Wavy laughed, and the choir director yelled, “Who’s giggling in the loft? And where’s my third wise man? Please, can we focus?”
*   *   *
In Sunday School, we were supposed to make Christmas cards to deliver to church members who were too sick to come to church. Wavy cut out the wise men and the livestock, colored them in shades of purple and green, and glued them all around the edge of her card. She left Mary and Joseph and Jesus in a pile of cut out paper on the table.
Inside her card, where we were supposed to write Bible verses, Wavy wrote, “Dear Kellen.”
I didn’t get to read what she wrote after that and neither did anyone else. When the teacher came around to look at our cards, Wavy wouldn’t let her.
“Why not, sweetie? Just let me see.”
The teacher took a step closer and Wavy ran. For the rest of Sunday School she hid, and for the pageant, too. So the choir director didn’t get her perfect blond angel to stand front and center and refuse to sing. After the pageant was over, as Mom was about to panic, Wavy walked out from behind the baptistery.
Back at home, Dad sat on the couch, reading his work papers, while Leslie, Donal, and I tore into our presents. Wavy had presents, too, but all she wanted for Christmas was an envelope and a stamp.
“Who’s the card for?” Mom said.
Once it was safely sealed in the envelope and addressed, Wavy passed it to her.
“Jesse Joe Kellen? This is the boy who calls you Wavy?”
“Is he your boyfriend?” Leslie was in eighth grade that year and had gone completely boy-crazy, and Dad’s mom was just as bad.
“What color are his eyes? Blue? Brown?” Gramma Jane said.
Wavy nodded and said, “Soft.”
“Soft brown eyes are very nice. Is he in your class at school?”
Wavy shook her head.
“Well, is he younger than you? Or older?” Gramma Jane said.
Older.
They went on asking questions about Kellen and, to my surprise, Wavy answered. He had a shy smile and Wavy got to ride on his bike.
“Mom, stop, you’re embarrassing her,” Dad said.
“She likes it,” Gramma Jane said. “Every girl likes to talk about the boy she likes. And he likes you, too, doesn’t he?”
“He loves me.” Wavy followed the confession with one of her rare dimpled smiles. Mom thought it was so cute that she told the story to her book club friends when they came over for New Year’s. Wasn’t it sweet how her tragic ten-year-old niece had a little boyfriend who loved her?
It was sweet until Mom met Kellen.
We were in the kitchen, getting ready to leave for our music lessons, and Mom was arguing with Donal about his Christmas toys.
“Donal, we’re going to come back to the house and get them, okay? You don’t have to take them all with you. Wavy, will you tell him?”
Wavy shrugged, maybe because in her experience, you didn’t always get to go back for your toys.
The doorbell rang and Mom sent me to answer it. On the front porch stood a huge man in jeans and a snap-front western shirt. He said, “Hey, I’m Kellen. I’m here to get Wavy and Donal.”
I left him in the entryway and ran back to the kitchen.
“Who was it?” Mom said.
“Kellen. He’s here to get them.”
Donal dropped his toys and ran out of the kitchen, shouting, “Kellen!”
Wavy went after him.
Still in our coats, we trundled into the front hall, where Kellen swooped Donal up so high he almost knocked his head on the ceiling. Wavy smiled, while Donal talked nonstop. Now that he was talking, that was all he did. “And the Jesus baby was missing. And we crawled crawled crawled around on the floor to find it. And I wore a towel on my head. I was a shepherd. They wore towels on their heads. And Wavy was an angel. She had a halo. And … “
“Who is he?” Mom whispered to me.
“He said his name was Kellen.”
“Is he Jesse Joe’s father?”
Mom opened her purse, rattling her keys to be sure her can of mace was there.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Brenda Newling.”
Kellen set Donal down and came toward my mother with his hand out.
“Good to meet you. I’m Jesse Joe Kellen.”
I watched my mother’s face as reality crowded out the story she’d invented. She had imagined little Jesse Joe as the sort of shy young man a quiet, wounded girl like Wavy could befriend. In Mom’s fairy tale, they held hands and shared secrets, and would someday go away to college and have good lives, if properly encouraged by a supportive aunt.
Soft brown eyes and a shy smile, Wavy had said. His eyes were almost sleepy as he offered his hand to my mother, and a big gold cap studded the middle of his shy smile.
Behemoth was the word my mother used to describe him to her book club friends, and he was enormous. Bigger than the Incredible Hulk on TV. Even though he wasn’t green, Mom recoiled from the hand he offered. His shirtsleeves were cuffed back, revealing several tattoos, including one in a horseshoe shape. In the center of it was a four-leaf clover and the words Lucky Motherfucker. This was Wavy’s “little boyfriend.”
My mother stepped back and bumped into Leslie. Kellen still had his hand out, offering to shake, but he withdrew it and rested it on Wavy’s shoulder. She didn’t shake him off, like she would have with anyone else.
“Well, this is really inconvenient,” Mom blurted. “No one called to say that they were leaving today. It’s unreasonable for Val to expect…”
Kellen wasn’t listening. He’d gone down on one knee so that he was eye-to-eye with Wavy. While he looked at her, the rest of us didn’t exist.
Wavy whispered something into his ear and he answered: “I got your letter. I missed you, too.” All of that was shocking enough, but then she kissed him on the cheek. Unheard of.
“Mom, I’m going to be late to my lesson,” Leslie said. Only she would be upset about that. I dreamed of reasons to keep me from my violin lessons.
My mother cleared her throat and said, “Mr. Kellen, we have an appointment to go to. Perhaps you could come back this evening to discuss this.”
“I guess Val forgot to call.” Kellen finally took his eyes off Wavy and got to his feet.
“I guess so. If you’ll excuse us, we need to leave. Come on, kids.”
“Why can’t I go with Kellen?” Donal said.
“Because I haven’t spoken to your mother yet.” My mother rattled her car keys. “Now, come on. Why don’t you girls walk Mr. Kellen out, while I get the car? Don’t forget to lock the front door.”
I was thrilled to stand in the entryway with Kellen. He had alarmed my mother and received a kiss from Wavy. As they parted on the front porch, Kellen reached out and ran his hand over Wavy’s hair, all down her back. She turned and smiled at him.
At the music school, while Leslie was having her lesson, Mom scooted her chair next to Wavy’s and whispered, “Who is that man?”
“Kellen.”
“Jesse Joe Kellen? The person you sent the Christmas card to?”
Wavy nodded.
“How old is he?”
Wavy shrugged.
When Dad came home from work, he and Mom went into the den and argued for half an hour. Then Mom came out and called Aunt Val. The phone rang for ages, before Aunt Val answered. Mom’s whole face clenched up and she said, “Some man came here today to pick up your children. He said his name was Kellen. I was under the impression that Jesse Joe Kellen was a very young man, since Wavy told us he was her boyfriend.”
There was a long pause, as my mother wound the phone cord around her finger and then released it. Her face relaxed a little and she laughed.

“Of course, I know girls get crushes, but I am not about to hand your children over to some stranger who claims you sent him.

“Yes, not a stranger to her, but she’s only ten. She can’t be expected to look out for herself. It is not—”

My mother was going to have the last word until the doorbell rang. Dad answered it and the sound of Kellen introducing himself ended Mom’s conversation with Aunt Val.

Donal had been playing with his cars on the floor, but he was up in an instant, running into the front hall. When Kellen stepped into the room, he had a giggling Donal slung over his shoulder. Dad shrugged at Mom and said, “Are you kids ready to go?”

For once, Wavy led the packing. As Mom watched from the doorway, Kellen held the bag for Wavy to put Donal’s things in.

Next to my bed was a pile of Christmas presents that technically belonged to Wavy, including a blond Darci Cover Girl Model doll, two stuffed Smurfs, and a Mork and Mindy lunchbox. Ignoring all of that, Wavy pulled a book on constellations out of the pile. She handed it to Kellen with a smile and said, “For you.”

Mom had been particularly proud of that book. Something Wavy would like. Obviously she did like it, if she was giving it to Kellen, but my mother acted like Wavy had spit in her face.

After they were gone, Mom called her friend Sheila and said, “I just don’t know what to do about my niece.” I think she only said it to be saying it, because I’d heard enough of her fights with Dad to know there were only three things we could do about Wavy. We could let her and Donal come live with us, we could call Child Protective Services, or we could “leave well enough alone.” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it was always the decision Mom and Dad came to.


 3. KELLEN

August 1980


All Liam said about the pickup in Nagadoches was, “Your job is to be the biggest, scariest son of a bitch in the room.” I shoulda known it wasn’t gonna be that simple. What was supposed to take two days took four and when it was over, I’d done the one damn thing I’d always told Liam I wouldn’t do. I killed somebody.

Driving home, I told myself it was different from Liam sending me to kill some guy on purpose. I didn’t go down to Texas planning to kill them two Mexicans. They tried to kill me first. That was bad enough, but then Vic’s car broke down, and there we were on the side of the road with twenty kilos of coke in the trunk. Plus the cash for the buy.

Vic drove this white ’74 El Dorado Biarritz with red tufted leather seats. The car was waxed and polished and Armor-Alled like a showroom model, but under the hood, it was a goddamn mess.

“How long has it been since you changed the fucking oil?” I said.

Stupid bastard shrugged.

I’d been trying to keep my temper under control lately, stop getting in fights, but I couldn’t believe he was that stupid. I punched him.

“What the fuck?” Vic screamed, catching blood from his nose before it could drip on his shirt.

“You tell me what the fuck, you driving around in a car that doesn’t run. Do you think we can just flag down the highway patrol and get a tow?”

I pushed the car off the main road, sweating through the last pair of clean clothes I had. Then I spent two hours wedged up under the car, trying to get the bitch started.

We limped it to the next town, but there was no way that car was gonna make it back to Powell. So I called Danny at the shop and said, “Bring the flatbed.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to get a tow from there?” Danny was a good kid, but he smoked too much dope.

“Bring the tow truck. Tell Liam we’re running late.”

Six hours later, we had the car on the flatbed and got headed back to the ranch. I drove. As tired as I was, I was too pissed to put up with Danny or Vic driving. People said I was stupid, but at least I could follow some basic rules. Like don’t go on a drug buy in a car that might break down.

It was past ten when we got to the ranch, and Dee smirked at me while Liam tore me a new asshole. Like it was my fault the Mexicans tried to double-deal. Like it was my fault Vic’s car broke down. Goddamn, I was done with Liam Quinn. Or I woulda been done with him, if it wasn’t for Wavy.

I left the flatbed there and rode the Panhead home, just to get some fresh air on me. At the house, I was through the front door, pulling off my boots before I realized the kitchen light was on. Thinking of those dead Mexicans, my guts tightened up. Those boys probably had friends who wouldn’t think much of me plugging them. I walked into the kitchen and leveled my gun right in Wavy’s face.

“What are you doing?” I said. The no sleep and the running on nerves caught up with me. My hands were shaking as I popped the clip. I slammed open the kitchen drawer and shoved the gun to the back.

Wavy looked as shocked as I felt. She was sitting at the table, up on two phone books, with her boots off, her bare feet dangling. The overhead light made her hair gold.

“Come on, pack your stuff up. I’ll give you a ride home.” The back of my shirt was filthy from lying in the dirt working on Vic’s car. Her white sundress was gonna end up covered in it, but that was too bad.

I went stomping back to the front door to get my boots on, but she didn’t come. When I went back to the kitchen, she was still sitting at the table, reading a magazine.

“Now. Goddamn right now. I’m not in the mood for this.”

“Walk.” She slid off the phone books and stood in her bare feet.

“No, you’re not walking home.”

“Walked here.”

“Yeah, well it wasn’t pitch-black out when you walked here, either.”

She shrugged.

“And how’d you get in here?”

She took a key out of her dress pocket and laid it on the table. The spare from under the mat on the back porch.

Looking down at the key, I got an eyeful of the magazine she’d been reading. A skin mag from out of my nightstand. She had it open to a couple things I didn’t like to think she’d looked at. A blow job on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.

“What are you doing looking at this fucking shit? You can’t be looking at this kinda thing. And where the hell do you get off? Just coming in here and making yourself at home? This is my house.”

I snatched that magazine off the table and rolled it up. She flinched, like she thought I was gonna hit her with it. The way you’d do a dog. Seeing her ready for me to hit her was a bucket of cold water on me. If I couldn’t be any better to her than that, I didn’t have any business thinking I was sticking around for her.

“It’s my house, okay? You can’t come in here without me.”

She gave me the kinda look makes you wanna curl up and die. Just because she didn’t have any titty mags for me to look at didn’t mean I hadn’t snooped in her bedroom. I went around the table, opened the sink cabinet, and stuffed the magazine in the trash.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t slept in two days. I’m fucking dirty and greasy and tired and I need a shower and something to eat and there isn’t so much as a clean shirt in this goddamn house, because I had to leave in a hurry. So I’m sorry, but I don’t have—”

I came that close to saying, “I don’t have time for you.” Except it wasn’t just mean. It was a lie. I had all the time in the world for her. I wanted her to be there, but I was so miserable, I couldn’t even talk to her like I normally would. I didn’t have no business saying, Sorry I’m in such a shitty mood, but I just killed a couple guys.

She walked out to the breezeway, so I said, “The bike’s out front, sweetheart.”

She came back with a bundle of cloth in her hands. She held it out to me: a T-shirt, jeans, and a towel. Washed, dried, and folded. She did my laundry.

“Thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m just tired and I had a bad couple days.”

I reached out to take the clean clothes, but she pulled them back and frowned at me. My hands were covered in grease. I followed her to the bathroom, where she laid the clean clothes on the edge of the sink and turned on the shower. She went out, closing the door after her.

In the shower, I spent a good fifteen minutes letting the hot water pound down on me, trying to be finished with the two dead Mexicans. I needed to stop playing that over in my head. It was done.

By the time I got out of the shower, Wavy was gone. I worried she’d walked home, but her backpack was still in the kitchen. Weirder, she’d emptied my wallet. It was in the center of the table with its chain coiled up beside it. Laid out next to it, like a game of solitaire, was all the stuff I kept in my wallet and my pockets. A roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, my keys, a bottle of eye drops, and five shell casings standing on end. I pocketed those. I’d cleaned and tossed the gun, but forgotten to ditch the shell casings. I guess I wasn’t much smarter than Vic.

I was about to put my wallet to rights, when Wavy came through the back door carrying a grocery sack from the store up the road. She dragged a chair to the counter and emptied the bag: a package of liver, an onion, a green pepper, a carton of eggs, and a box of ice cream sandwiches.

“I think I already got some ice cream sandwiches.”

She shook her head.

“You ate my ice cream sandwiches?”

An embarrassed nod.

“That’s okay. I’m sorry about what I said before. It’s okay for you to come here.”

I was so tired, I sat down at the table and drank a beer while I waited. In fifteen minutes, I had a steaming plate of liver with onions and peppers.

While I ate, she counted my change into piles and sorted through the stuff laid out on the table. She sniffed the Lifesavers and then traced her finger around the spot where the shell casings had stood.

“Those were trash,” I said.

She went through all the cards as she put them back in my wallet. My driver’s license, my library card, my blood donor card.

“O negative,” she mouthed.

Then she hit on a card that made her frown.

She primed herself with a big breath and said it out loud: “Barfoot.”

“I used to have a different name.”

I put out my hand and she gave me my old tribal ID card with my father’s name on it. I was Junior when I was a kid, but after he kicked me out, I started going by my granny’s name. Tipping back in my chair, I pitched the old card into the trash.

I finished my dinner, while Wavy watched me. I was never sure what that meant, her watching me eat. I figured she must like it, or she wouldn’t take so much trouble to feed me.

“I’m about done in, so I better take you home before I fall asleep,” I said.

“Mama.”

It made my skin crawl the way she said it. Like you’d say, “Tornado,” if one was bearing down on you.

“What about Val?”

Wavy brought her hands to her head and made her fingers stand up, like antlers. Or flames?

“Is she acting weird? Where’s Donal?”

“Sandy.” Wavy came around the table behind me and rested her hands on my shoulders. “Can I stay?”

“I don’t know, that’s not…”

I didn’t even remember what I was gonna say after she tightened her hands on my shoulders. She squeezed the spot where I’d gotten all bunched up from the stress.

When I got down on the kitchen floor, she took off her boots and walked on my back.

“What happened?” she said.

I knew if I didn’t answer, she’d never ask again. Part of me wanted to do that, but I couldn’t keep it in with her waiting to listen to me. She knew how to keep a secret.

“I killed some guys. This job Liam sent me on down in Texas. It got all fucked up and I shot these two guys.”

She stopped walking her feet on either side of my spine.

“Who?” she said.

“A couple of drug dealers, so not any kinda good guys, but I guess that makes me about the same. Not any kinda good guy.”

It didn’t surprise me when she stepped off my back. I didn’t blame her if she didn’t want to be around me. I’d thought I could stick it out with Liam, to stay close to Wavy, but maybe all I was doing was turning into Liam.

“I’ll take you home,” I said.

“No.”

She got down on her knees and slung her leg over me. There I was thinking she’d wanna leave, but she laid down on top of me, and pressed her cheek against mine. She didn’t have to say anything, because I knew what that meant. She still thought I was a good guy.

*   *   *

I drifted off for a second and jerked awake.

Daylight was coming through the window over the sink. I’d fallen asleep on the kitchen floor and slept the whole night in a blink. When I was younger, I used to get so drunk I passed out, but I hadn’t done that in years.

On the other side of the table, Wavy was working her feet into her boots.

“Hey,” I said.

I was worried it would startle her, but she’d known I was awake. She stamped her feet to seat the boots and pulled on her backpack.

“Let me get myself together and I’ll take you home.”

I got up, stiff in weird places from sleeping facedown on the floor, but at least my back didn’t hurt anymore. In my bedroom there was a rumpled spot on the bed where Wavy musta slept. Still warm when I laid my hand on it. In the bathroom, a second damp towel was hanging next to mine. So she’d had herself a shower, too. I took a piss and then splashed cold water on my face, trying to get things into focus.

In the kitchen, Wavy was standing right where I left her.

When I sat down to pull on my boots, she slid a piece of paper across the table to me.

Her school registration form. She’d filled it all out, but she needed a parent’s signature and the twelve bucks to register. Nobody had registered her for school, and that morning was the first day. I couldn’t pass myself off as Val, but I was getting pretty good at playing Liam.