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THE ROAD HAS RECENTLY been repaved, lines stark against the new asphalt and still burning with the smell of tar. It’s in sharp contrast to the smell of chill on the wind, early spring still carrying the weight that winter is known for. The smell of damp, frozen mud, white pines and burning logs. I hang nearly my entire body out of the passenger side window, seatbelt straining to hold my chest back into the seat. The wind whips my hair and leaves it tangled for days, swept with dust and leaf debris.As we round the next corner at the bend of the mountain the tail end of the truck slides over that yellow line, and the belt manages to snap me into place when Dad slams on the brakes. I laugh when he thrusts the wheel the other way, going sixty five in a thirty five. The radio is too loud in contrast to the sound of open windows, bass long since lost with age of the speakers. My leg rests against the speaker in the door, and every once in a while when there’s a strong beat I can feel the music, beige plastic and fiberglass vibrating against me. With my eyes closed I can say for certain that it rained here, not long ago. My face is sticky with it, and I swear to myself that I can taste the first few trillium blooms on my lips.Of course, I probably can’t, but it’s fun to lie to myself.I’d hardly consider the parkway a backroad with how much traffic it generates, but it wasn’t anything more than a two lane snaking through the Appalachian mountains. It closed in the thick of winter due to ice and snow and in the summer you’d nearly get blinded by bugs and smoke off the river below. It was where I learned to drive, and first heard the rule ‘if you can keep it in the lines, you can go as fast as you’d like.’Obviously I liked that rule. I got pretty good at whipping around curves and corners, and fighting that yellow and white line.Around the next corner the mountains opened up into a gap where you could see miles all around. Dipping valleys and heavy clouds and pine trees standing tall. Those that weren’t pines were just starting to bud, some trees more green than others. The further back the mountains trailed the more blue and purple they were, and from the rain was a coat of fog that hugged the curves of the valleys. I found myself drawn back out of the window, even though I’d driven that road at least a hundred times before. I wanted to reach out my hand to that unknown, and skip through the woods that I hadn’t explored before.It was different, not having to drive through the mountains. Especially when you fly, you don’t get much time to look around and appreciate everything. I liked sitting passenger princess, one leg folded underneath myself in the seat enjoying the silence before the storm.Speaking of storms- I glance at Dad from the corner of my eye, and then fully turn my head from the wind and back into the safety of the cab of the truck. Dad reaches over to turn the radio down a few notches, knowing I’m about to open my big fat mouth. He can’t half hear, most of the time, and I was worried I was starting to lose my hearing in my right ear like he had.“Do you reckon he’s gonna be mean and stuff?” It’s the first thing I’ve said in miles, and we’re almost through the parkway. The road goes from pointing towards the sky to the valley below, and I brace myself with one foot on the floorboard. It’s kind of chilly, with the windows down. I pull my sweater tighter around myself, tugging it to hide in. It’s long since frayed at the edges, and there’s a few people who have referred to me as ‘pinky’ because of it.Dad shrugged, reaching for his coke and knocking the screw lid off in one go, cigarette dangling from his lips as he took a drink. I have to admit, I love the smell of Marlboro cigarettes, but I’d always promised myself I would never smoke. Just maybe, take a deeper breath when I was around someone that was.“Nah.”“He’s been in prison for ten years, Dad, ain’t that enough to warrant some like, bad blood or something? Evil tendencies? That ‘prison mentality?’” I shift in my seat, as he takes a turn a little fast and breaks hard, me rolling over to look at him leaning against the belt. He laughs a little when he catches sight of my face and takes a deeper drag off his Marlboro, coughing it back up into his coke bottle and flexing his shoulders.“Uncle Blaze went to prison because he killed his wife’s ex-husband. Nah, I don’t reckon’ he’s mean at all,” Dad’s voice is thick with sarcasm. He glances into the rearview, setting his coke back in the cupholder. When he misses I grab it from him and place it in the holder, snorting out a laugh.“Didn’t he sell drugs, too? I thought that was what he got busted for?”“Well, I don’t think he ever quit that.”“In prison? How the hell do you sell drugs behind bars?” When I speak I fling my hands out, and accidently bust one of my knuckles against the door handle. I hiss and cradle it to my chest. Dad sends me a look out of the corner of his eye for my comment, and I try to nervously laugh off his leer. “Okay, I guess I know how you would sell drugs, I’ve watched enough of them’ late night crime shows. But still. I don’t know how you got pegged with picking him up.”And by extension, myself. Except, I do know how he got saddled with it, full and well. The whole conversation went something like Blaze’s wife, Cheryl, calling up and promising gas money and a steak dinner to Dad if he would pick up her estranged husband since clearly, she was too busy to do it herself. It’s hard to pass up a full tank of gas and free dinner, so it was an easy choice. Even easier, when you’re poor as anything and never get the chance to eat at the fancy steakhouse down the road, or see the red hand on the gas gauge point to FULL.Dad pulls off the backroads and onto the main four lane, then eventually, onto the interstate. I nod my head to what plays over the radio, CD’s switching over as I watch out for everything that passes the window. Knoxville has always been a big place to my eyes, and I was always fascinated when we came through. The way the ramps winded off into bridges and nausea inducing circles, the tall buildings reaching towards the sky. The sheer amount of cars on the road, and people genuinely using the sidewalks. Billboards with flashing lights, stores lit up on every corner and open space, the railroad that snakes underneath the interstate and highways, crossing over bridges and the Tennessee river by the University of Tennessee medical centers. The sunsphere, gold and shining like a second sun that’s easily overtaken by the shadows of taller buildings in the way. It was all so interesting to watch pass and blurr by.What was less interesting was driving through Knoxville. Everytime I managed to find myself behind the wheel driving somewhere through the city something went wrong. Either I got lost, or went the wrong way, or drove on the opposite side of a divided median. Or got lost, most often. It was an issue. I had been banned from diving through the bigger parts of the city since I was eighteen, fresh out of high school and thinking I understood what the world was. (Newsflash - I was wrong.)I liked to sit and play passenger princess, instead. It was much less heart-pounding and headache inducing for everyone involved.Legend has it that Cheryl is the one who got Blaze landed in jail and arrested in the first place. I kind of supposed it would make sense that she wouldn’t want to be the first one to see him when he was a free man, lest of all he gave her payback for getting him arrested.Cheryl wasn’t exactly an angel, either. She’d been known for dealing for Blaze while he was behind bars and I know she went between three or four men every few months. I supposed she wouldn’t only not want to be around Blaze, but the whole imprisonment thing, either. She probably had a few loose ends to tie up before her husband came home, anyways.And if you’re curious to who all these names are anyways, the story of Blaze Prince goes something along the lines of this:Blaze Prince is one of the roughest, toughest, badass mothers to ever be known on this side of Nashville. He’d been running his own drug gangs since he was younger than me, and over time started selling to different famous country stars passing through Nashville. He was known for high quality goods and fast service. And just like the stars he was the go-to man for, he started to rise. Hard and fast, and quite honestly too bright that it was inevitable that he would burn out. From what I understand, about some odd twenty years ago he took a job for a little young lady named Cheryl Prince, who just so happens to be my grandmother’s sister.Cheryl was a roadie with ambition, who happened to rise from the dirt with sheer luck and proof of her body alone. To be honest I didn’t think old pictures of her looked too hot, but for the time it must have been something. She generated a lot of business in her early twenties, until she married and started touring as a roadie. She ended up regretting that, since having a husband was nearly the antithesis of being a whore and making money from selling herself, so she found little lowdown and lonesome Blaze. It wasn’t long after that she hired him to take care of her husband, and the rest is history. Story has it they ‘fell in love’ or something along those lines as soon as Blaze finished the job, and they got married straight away. A drug dealer/crime overlord extraordinaire and the roadie queen of the 90’s.If anything it wasn’t love, but rather the ambition to make money, do drugs, and sell sex. At least, that was my take of the matter.About some ten years after they got married it came out of the works with a new detective on the case that Blaze had been the one to murder his wife’s ex husband, and although they tried to charge him with everything they had they couldn’t get much on the man. He had too many friends in too many high places, and any evidence that was found against him was quickly lost to the system. By the time the trial rolled around the court didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with murder, only some dirt from his long since drug business. So he earned himself a whopping ten years in prison, for the felony of drug use and sale, which was merely a cover up for the only murder he’d almost been caught committing.Now it’d been ten years, and the time had been served.Of course, as these things tend to go, there had been no evidence or questions of Cheryl’s involvement in the murder. I wasn’t sure if it was the sexism or her acting skills that got her a get out of jail free card, but she’d never been tried with anything. When Dad says that the business is still in action I supposed he would have to be correct. Cheryl had a knack for sales and trade, and developed a fondness for abundant luxury. That entire side of the family was obsessed with money. These were the kind of people who fed whole t-bone steaks to their yorkies, and drove the fanciest cars I’d ever laid eyes on. My paycheck wouldn’t amount to one day’s work for them, and while they had both grown up poor as dirt they sure didn’t act like it. The money had taken hold of them long ago, and they still followed the green trail above all else.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

And so, as I sit in my seat in the truck and watch Dad and a few correctional officers walk Blaze Prince (yes, he did take the name of his wife. I guess I couldn’t blame him, considering he was wanted by his other name.) to the edge of the yard, I feel my gut shift inside my bones. The officers turn and frisk the man, hands patting over the set of clothes Dad bought him from the Walmart earlier that morning. Blaze stands politely, and Dad awkwardly beside him.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to get along with the man of the hour. I didn’t really get along with people with money. I didn’t get along with people who were known murderers. Or family in general. Or family members who had money and were known murderers. It was safe to say I didn’t hardly get along with anyone at all. In high school I was notorious for getting into fights and trouble just because someone looked at me the wrong way. I wasn’t good at picking up on social cues, and generally had a disposition that led to thinking everyone was against me. I’d never been scared to open my mouth or get myself into trouble, and it only got worse when I started college.

And as much as I wanted to make a snarky comment, or joke about his ugly shoes or dropping the soap, I figured this was one of those times I needed to keep my opinions to myself. Or else, Blaze might come after me, next. I’d never met him or spent any time around him, after all. Just because he was fond of Dad, did not mean he would be that same to me.

Outside in the dusky evening light, Dad and Blaze didn’t look much different. They were not related at all and Blaze had a good fifteen or twenty years on Dad, but if you squinted the resemblance might have been there. Both were really scruff tall southern men with facial hair who wore hats. Dad wore a Harley cap most of the time while Blaze carried his cowboy hat (Bedazzled with turquoise and feathers, I’ll admit that it’s hideous and something akin to what an old pimp would wear). Both looked hard, with skin befitting of a redneck from years spent doing manual labor. But Dad had a hand that was so rough it was soft, caked over with calluses that had tucked me into bed as a child and taught me how to play guitar.

Overall, he was a man who seemed to fool you on the outside into thinking he was common and working, before wearing some designer Nashville cowboy getup and flashing a baggie of white powder at you. Like those country musicians who wore fancy boots that were too clean to have been real, shimmering with mink oil under stage lights and glittering sets of rhinestones and diamonds.

The man of the hour wrenched over the passenger side door of Dad’s old lift-kit truck, door hinges groaning with the effort to uphold themselves. He stood tall as he looked down at me all curled up in the leather seat, feet tucked underneath me and sweater pulled tight. I glared up at him, all confusion and annoyance as to why he needed to open my door. All Blaze did was squint his eyes and shoo me to the back like I was a dog.

“Out,” was the first word he spoke to me, pointing to the back. His voice was quiet but carried authority, and rough from not getting used in a while. I scowled at him.

“No.” Who was he to tell me what to do? Where to sit when I had been here first, I was Dad’s kid, and this was his truck. I was an adult like the rest of them, even semi-well mannered.

Sometimes.

“Just sit in the back.” Dad said as he jumped up into the driver’s seat with a sigh, like I put the weight of the world upon his shoulders by sitting up front. He shooed me over the console, hands skittering across my shoulders as he reached for his keys. I grit my teeth and did as he bid, even though I wasn’t happy about it. I fell on my face as I scrambled across the truck to the back, nose smashing up against the window as I pulled my legs through like I was some newborn deer.

I called shotgun, not this asshole. I always sat shotgun, whether that happened to be with my brother, Jace, or Mom, I was down to fight dirty and pull hair to get up front. I liked it best because I could curl my feet up on the dash, roll the window all the way down and have some form of control over the radio. And, it kept me from getting car sick.

When I managed to get situated in the back I parked it right in the middle of the bench seat, not bothering with a seatbelt since Dad had long ago ripped the ones in the backseat out. On my left was a pile of tools stacked up in the floorboard and seat, Dewalt bags and gear of the sort. There was plenty of room to the right of myself, but I wanted to see what was happening out of the windshield. Dad threw me a look in the rear view, blowing smoke off his beard from a newly lit cigarette. A Marlboro red short to be exact. Things were good if Dad could afford Marlboros,  and I loved the smell of them over all other cigarettes.Marlboro reds in particular reminded me of home, and I didn’t mind the ashes that sometimes snapped back and brushed me in the face, little embers like dying stars.

Blaze asked Dad for a cigarette and he handed it over, but overall the entire deal was just awkward and quiet. No one said anything until after Dad pulled out of the parking lot and through the trees that lined the deserted part of town, turning onto a real road and then merging back into interstate Knoxville traffic.

“Now that,” Blaze began. “That was hell. Better than jail, I”ll admit. And nice to have a solid three meals a day. But the required sports? Gangs? The ‘everything else?’ Hell, I tell you.”

When Blaze spoke, smoke from his cigarette trailed out of his nose and was swiftly sucked away by the slightly open window. Which was a tragedy, honestly. The window should have been rolled all the way down so I could firmly stick my head out of it and pretend I was flying. 
 
Dad snorted from the front seat at Blaze’s comment, and I watched the buildings rise and fall from the horizon line. After a few minutes more of awkward silence I dove between the two men, startling Dad into the lane beside him and almost getting us railed by a semi, who honked before passing us the rest of the way with his trailer.

“What are you doing-” he asked around his cigarette cancer stick as I fiddled with the radio, flicking through channels before deciding that Dad’s CD’s were better than anything that got played over the radio. I left the music on an older Kid Rock album, and neither man commented on the change in music. I settled back to my spot, dejected by lack of words from Blaze but fine to keep from pretending to like the man up front when I didn’t even know him. An eighteen wheeler passed us up, covered in graffiti of fire and some cartoon character I didn’t recognize.

After what felt like forever but could have been longer, Blaze tossed his cigarette out of the window and turned to give me a look in the rearview. His eyes were dark brown and warm, but bloodshot, pink and red veins so deep I could easily make them out in the blurry mirror.

“And your name, little lady?” His gaze waxed cold from me and instead he took the rear view mirror and pointed it so he could see himself better, picking at the stray hairs in his beard. Before I could open my mouth and get an answer out, Dad responded.

“That’s Coy, my youngest. Just like me, unfortunately. And a menace, so be careful.”

“Pff, I’m not a menace,” I pouted back. My only friend, July, likes to argue I’m a chaos magnet, but last I checked those weren’t synonyms. Yet. Probably.

“Coy. That’s an odd name.” Blaze said my name like he was tasting a sought after cigar, or the way a snake might if snakes could talk. Or maybe, that was just my idea of a snake, and I was overthinking everything that had to do with Blaze. He probably wasn’t all that bad. Just, you know, a bad rap. For murder, and all that.

But he’s not wrong. Coy would be odd because really, Coy isn’t my name at all.

“Coy’s short for ‘Coyote,’” Dad spoiled, taking the last drag from his spent cigarette and flicking the rest out of his window. He reached over to skip the next Kid Rock song, one that I actually liked, and merged into another lane of traffic on the road for the upcoming ramp. I got the pleasure of seeing several semis pass in a row in the lane right next to ours, so close I felt that if I stuck an arm out of the window I could have brushed up against them. I thought that they were cool, with their big dog privilege on the road and interesting paint jobs, mud flaps of naked women in provocative poses on the back tires.

Yes, short for Coyote, which was my nickname growing up that just seemed to get too long to say. As a kid I was a little obsessed with them, since they happen to be the closest animal that Tennessee has to wolves. And they’re everywhere, it’s like watching rabbits multiply in the summertime. There’s always more of them when they leave than when they arrive.

And, they’re bratty. They’ve got such big personalities that once I heard them referred to as ‘teenage Hellhounds.’ I didn’t think the statement was too far off the mark. I adored them, from the scruffiest looking ones to the most put together. Dad started to call me his little Coyote. The night terror, his Coy.

And it stuck a lot better than any name like ‘Chloe’ could.

When I started high school, and later on college, everyone started to call me Coy. it got to the point that anywhere but an official document I was known as Coy. There were a few issues in high school I can remember when I first started using it, namely with one English teacher. He refused to call me Coy because he didn’t believe in nicknames. He also liked to argue that since Coy is a registered word in the English Language denoted as an adjective, it wasn’t even possible for it to be a nickname. 
 
coy

/koi/

adjective

1. Marked by cute, coquettish, or artful playfulness, or pretended shyness

COY: Marked by a cute sly playfulness, or pretended shyness.

Yeah, it didn't really fit me all too well. I was brash and loud and generally unafraid to share my opinions and thoughts. As mentioned earlier, and I shall mention again, me and my big mouth. I didn’t really like being akin to an adjective in the Webster dictionary, so I liked to tell people my name was really just short for Coyote, the way Dad intended. It’d been my name for so long that I didn’t bother to explain it to people when I first met them, and they started to think that it was close enough to Chloe to make sense.

“What’s up with the hair?” Blaze said, giving me an unapproving look through the rear view mirror and pulling me from my thoughts. I frowned. A little handmade talisman cross hung from the mirror, dangling and swaying with the truck as it roughed it over the roads in Knoxville that really needed to be repaved. It glittered when passing car’s headlights angled just close enough to bounce off, the fading light of day giving everything an ethereal glow that I loved.

But about my hair. Everyone always had something bad to say about my hair. It was always something along the lines of, ‘oh, it would be so pretty if you left it natural,’ or that it looked like I was trying to play the part of a hooker from the 80’s. It rolled down my back in an overgrown mullet, the colors of the sunset fading from deep purple to bright yellow at the ends. It cost a lot of money to re-dye and cut it myself once a month, and I learned fast which box dye stained the sink and which ones didn’t. I had to go to a specialty hair and makeup store to buy the stuff instead of just Walmart, but it was a big part of who I was and what I liked. My hair was mine, thank you very much, and it took a long time to get it to look like that.

I toyed with some of the frayed and split edges as I shot Blaze a look for mentioning it.

“What? It reminds me of 80’s Bronco pain. The sunset fade?”

I feigned innocence, but in reality I knew exactly what he was talking about. It wasn’t nearly a compliment, but I suppose his reply was better than what I got from most. He didn’t compare me to a stripper, or ask if the curtains match the drapes so I let it go.

The first time Dad saw my hair bleached and dyed he about had a fit. I’d only ever fiddled with temporary dye before the fact and didn’t bother to ask. I was fresh into college and hadn’t been living in the dorms long, just up and decided one day after seeing someone on the internet with a similar style that that was what I wanted to look like.

“I remember a musician I used to work with often enough had a roadie that was infamous for his sunset Bronco. It was all jacked up, with big ass wheels and knotty tires. Ran over a cat one time after a show, it was pretty funny. Made a loud noise, that’s for sure,” Blaze rumbled.

I blinked at him. Stories already? I was surprised. I had expected Blaze to be a man of little words, and even less of stories of his past. That’s how you get caught, when you keep talking about all the laws you’ve broken. It’s always the ignorant ones who get arrested first.

“A big name? Who?” Dad asked, intrigued. Blaze waved him off, but after a Moment decided to hell with it and leaned over to whisper in his ear. Dad whistled.

“You ain’t a woofin’.” It was a question, but it came out more like a statement.

“Sometime in the nineties.”

“How many musicians do you know?” I piped up, because even I had to admit that it was pretty interesting. Getting to know local and country legends. That was the whole goal, to me. To one day work and live around Nashville, to play shows in dive bars and basements on the weekends and to write lyrics during the work week. Meeting and hanging out with the best and brightest Nashville and music in general had to offer. To be somebody. To be worth something more than just a kid or a daughter.

That was the kind of life I wanted to live. To even know these people at all, to have gone to a show and see them in person was impressive. But to have worked closely with them? Sure, I knew it was because Blaze had probably sold them drugs. Or did drugs with them. Or something else shady along those lines, but the facts paled a little in comparison to the outcome. If I wanted to, I could probably weasel my own way into his business, but before the complete thought could even form I shook it away, turning to stare out of the window.

As much as I wanted to be somebody, I wasn’t about to resort to selling drugs. Too often for my twenty years of living had I seen someone affected so poorly by them. It was rare to find someone like Blaze, who was around the stuff so often yet seemed to be well put together. Sure, he just got out of prison, but he had money and dignity. It might be a fast way to the top, but it was a steeper fall to the bottom after the fact. Life wasn’t something you could cheat at, it was something you slowly chipped away around until you got what you wanted out of it. It was a give and take, push and pull, ebb and flow. Anything is possible. It’s the consequences thereafter that determine whether or not you decide to make such a choice. Selling drugs to rise to fame seemed like the kind of thing that’s good in theory, but ends up turning around to set your ass on fire.

“How many musicians I know?  A shit ton of ‘em. Family business and all that. Techie and roadie stuff you wouldn’t understand, kid.”

Part of me tried to imagine Blaze, much younger than the grayed version of him sitting in the front seat of Dad’s truck, having just served ten years in prison, around these idols of mine. I could see it, as unfortunate as that was, pretty easily. He just looked like the type to make it as a hotshot musician.

“She’s older than you give her credit for, Blaze,” Dad said as he turned off the interstate, cruising right on towards the house as the night life started to stir. I slumped back into the bench seat for the rest of the ride and listened to old men tell tall tales of the past, of ramblin’ days filled with women and beer. Motorcycles, trouble and music, and all these things I would never get to see.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When we get back to the house it’s already dark. My legs and back are stiff from riding in the back for so long, and I nearly trip on the gravel under my feet when I jump out of the back door. My left foot is on fire, and I keep hopping on it and kicking up dust to get blood back into it. I dance around in the vague light of the porch lamp, dim lit driveway from how little we bother to change the bulbs. It’s an old incandescent one, the types that aren’t sold in stores anymore. Yellow, with lots of little bugs buzzing around it and one grampus fly. I cover my ears with my hands when I step under it and into the house to make sure no bugs crawl into my head.

In the house Mom had dinner cooking, a treat, some something or other involving chicken, potatoes, and way too many onions. I settle down in the corner of the living room in my spot, pulling my guitar gently out from the recliner seat and holding it on my lap to watch Mom cook from a safe distance. I tap to the theme of the next adult cartoon airing on the TV, and listen to Dad drag Blaze outside to show him around the place.

My parent’s house is somewhat of an interesting pile of cars that don’t run, two campers, and the tiny house itself. My brother’s room and mine happen to be the biggest part about the whole mess, and even then they are laughably small. Dad spends most of his time in a balance act between the campers and the living room, and Mom keeps to the bedroom and rest of the house. It’s not much on the outside, but it’s home to me. My little room was my corner of the universe, and the hours I spent sitting on my bed staring out of the windows were proof enough of my bond to the room. The property itself was tucked away from prying eyes with a long, winding driveway that crossed over a creek and a rather steep bend from the road. It was officially one and a half acres in Dad’s name, but I traversed the rest of the woods and mountain like I had owned it. We’d lived on the same road my entire life, that wasn’t about to change any time soon.

“What do you think?” Mom asks from the kitchen, and I trade spots with my beloved guitar before throwing myself up on the kitchen island to be able to hear her better as she stirs a pot on the stove.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know?’ Thought you were all upset over the situation.” Her lovely hair is pulled to the back of her head in a pony, fly aways frazzled and framing her face in curls. I chew my lips.

“Well I was,” I begin , thinking back to when Cheryl, Blaze’s wife, first tasked Dad with picking Blaze up from prison this week. “And I still am. I guess. But he doesn’t seem as bad as I thought he would. He’s not killed anyone or burned anyone’s house down yet,” I eye the chicken in the oven, just about overcooked. My hint sends Mom into a frenzy to pull it out in time.

“Mm-hmm. That’s just his way of getting to you,” she says as she drops the pan on the counter and sends a fork flying accidentally. I laugh and reach over to pick it up for her, but ponder on her words. I know she’s not wrong, but I choose not to reply steadfast. I guess the whole ‘knowing famous musicians’ and being in such a position similar to what I want my career to be was getting to me.

That, and the fact that Blaze has been built up by family for years. He’s practically infamous himself, at this point.

“Can you peel those for me?” Mom gestured to the potatoes on the counter beside me, and I did as she bid. I peel them over the trashcan while sitting atop the counter, telling her about my day and all the things I saw from the window of the moving truck. About how much I want to see Nashville one day, and hope I never get to see what the inside of that prison looks like.

About the time that Mom gets done with dinner, Dad and Blaze come ambling back inside, a bottle of Jack Daniels between them that Dad puts on the coffee table. I tilt my head at the brown party liquor but get no response, only Dad patting the spot on his ugly couch beside him and asking me to get my guitar.

“Why don’t we play a little for Blaze? He has been in prison for a decade, he doesn’t remember what real music sounds like.”

Blaze just laughs at Dad and takes up residency in one of the beat up recliners, leaning forward to dish out the booze into Dad’s favorite chaser shot glass with a two liter of coca-cola. He takes about two shots, maybe more since as soon as he twists the cap off he takes a swig before passing the bottle and shot glass to Dad. I curl up on the couch beside him, nudging one of dad’s two black cast over with my hip and trying to find room to balance my guitar without hitting the headstock on the armrest of the couch.

Dad pours himself a healthy shot, but I know it takes way more than just one for him to get drunk. He gives me a small look from out the corner of his eye, gesturing towards the bottle of liquor. I chew my lip and shake my head, trying to stay sober. You see, I had a few stints as a teenager that were not so well received with alcohol. By no means was I an alcoholic. I just spent a lot of time sad and trying to erase that with liquor. I knew I could hold several shots down much better than some others my age, but I also recognized that it was hard for me to stop when I started. So Dad left the Jack Daniels open on the coffee table, chaser shot glass beside it full with an extra round. He turned and took up his Yamaha acoustic guitar, taking time to pull his pick from where it was stuck up underneath the strings on the top fret.

“Got any ideas, Coy?” He asked me as he started to pick around, tuning his B string and getting comfortable. I shook my head. Even if I did have something in mind Dad rarely had the attention span to follow me or play what I liked. So, almost always, I just followed him and played rhythm. If I knew the words to what he was playing I would sometimes sing along, but I got embarrassed around him easily.

Which I shouldn’t have. I was not half bad at singing and the guitar was the one thing I had confidence in. I was just about to go into my third year of my undergrad for music, and had picked a focus in guitar and music composition. I spent hours a week with my baby, my favorite guitar, in my arms, riding the struggle bus to write or get a tune just right. But I still got nervous doing anything around Dad because he was the one who started teaching me how to play nearly ten years ago, when I was just eleven years old. He was the one person’s opinion that I really cared about, so if I did something embarrassing in front of him or screwed up he’d point it out and then my ears would burn the rest of the night.

“We’ll start with the classics, then,” and he burst right into

Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound

with me playing rhythm underneath him. We got through the first verse and two choruses before abruptly going into a Marshall Tucker Band solo, and then modulated up to something only Dad knew the words to. Blaze was happily tapping his foot along after another shot of whiskey himself, laughing and clapping when he recognized where we went. Never did we make it through an entire song before Dad switched, and hardly ever did he stop. It was like a train barreling down a track that kept getting switched over to the rails closest to it, and since growing up I played in similar fashion.

It took me years to figure out why he could never play an entire song, but I figured it was a mix of his short attention span and addiction to listening to Hank Williams Jr. Live. Hardly ever, and I mean

ever

, did Hank Jr. get an entire song out. His own, his Dad’s, or anyone else’s. He just couldn’t do it. And Dad idolized him, so I had to assume that was maybe a component.

After a few rounds of this Dad got bored and decided he needed another shot of whiskey, so he passed the metaphorical mic over to me.

“Play him some of your fingerpicking. Blaze once you hear her flatpick you’ll think she’s better than all them jokes in Nashville.” I was nervous and not really in the mood for being in the spotlight but I did as requested anyways. A little Doc Watson here and there, and a Molly Tuttle cover of

Wildwood Flower

I had memorized later and Blaze was nodded appreciatively. Dad’s smile was hard to see for all the hair on his face, but if you caught the angle of his eyes right I could make out the crow’s feet of his smile lines. It amped me up enough to pick around while they talked under me, about Nashville and old prison stories.

After a while when their attention was not so heavily directed to me I began to pick around an old Doc Watson tune that had lyrics, and mumbled them under my breath as I ran through the chords. Dad jammed me in the side with the headstock of his guitar, and I had to stop to yelp and grab my ribs in pain. He laughed.

“I didn’t hit you that hard.” I shot him a look. “Go ahead and sing it out, it’s just us. I like that one.” My look thinned, but my fingers started moving without my consent. I didn’t look away from Dad, who was laughing in my misery, until I began to open my mouth to sing. I started quiet but gained confidence when they started talking again over me.

“I’ve heard worse than ya’ll up there in Nash, that’s for sure.” Blaze was lighting up another cigarette stolen from Dad, and Mom shot us all a look from the kitchen as she came back to check up on what was in the oven. I winced when her eyes passed over me, but I didn’t shy away from her.

“I’m sure you have. But, really, Coy steals the show here. She’s going to school for all this, you know? I just know she’s gonna be famous one day.”

“If she plays her cards right,” Blaze rubbed at the scruff under his chin. I frowned.

Dad suddenly started up a coughing fit so bad he had to lean all the way forward and it sounded like he was hacking up a lung. I tossed my guitar to the side as gently yet fast as I could and began to beat on his back as he hacked. After a few minutes he caught his breath again and leaned back against the couch, but it was a scary few minutes.

“I’m alright baby,” he said, but I didn’t know how much I believed him. I poured him a glass of coke and made him drink it in front of me until I was sure he wasn’t about to spontaneously combust again. The entire ordeal Blaze just stared at us, face calculating. I shot him a glare for his staring, but he gave me a smile in return. Damn mind games he was playing over there. He poured himself another glass full of whiskey and settled down.

“So where are you gonna be stayin’ now, Blaze? Going back to Nashville to be with Cheryl or what?”Dad asked, picking at the frayed arm of the couch. With the subject changed, I leaned back into my corner and took up my baby again, resting my cheek against the curve of the wood and trailing my fingers over the pearl insets.

Blaze swirls his whiskey around in the shotglass, staring at it intently as if it held the answers to the universe. Gently, underneath their conversation my fingers continued to find themselves a tune on the frets of my guitar, picking a little this and that and what I could remember and play with little thought. Mostly, this included fingerstyle and flatpicking tunes, that were so old the lyrics had been lost to time. 
“Thinkin’ right here in the neighborhood.” “Here?” 
“Yep. You remember that little cabin you built on the top of the hill? I’m thinking about starting there for a little while. We always talked about starting up the family business there, and well, since you don’t live there anymore I figure it’s the perfect time. House for sale, space that’s empty and begging’ to be used. I had Cheryl put an offer on it last we talked on the phone, and last I heard it was pending in the bank. I can stay close to family, and Knoxville’s a bit of a slower start than Nashville. Not to say Cheryl hasn’t ‘kept the party going,’ but I think it’s time for some expansion.”

My fingers stopped. You could hear a pin drop in the Prince home. What did I say? Blaze was a man of many words, and those were all words I wanted to shoot him for.

That ‘cabin’ he spoke of was not just something my Dad built, but rather our family home for twelve years. This was rather unhappy news for the lot of us. Mom went back to hiding in the bedroom, Dad grit his teeth, and I reached for the bottle of Jack that had been slid over to Blaze’s side. He eyed me as I took the bottle up and drank directly from the tall and heavy glass for several long Moments, looking him straight in the eyes as I downed several large swallows.

“I see this is not well received,” he said, shining with mirth and a sly playfulness.

Dad rested a hand over my knee to keep me sitting. This was, once again, another big red flag Moment in the life of me where I go and try to spit out my words without thinking. I shook my head hard and pushed Dad’s hand away, stood up from the couch to put my guitar back in my room. Yeah sure, Blaze had cool stories, but he was the biggest, most petty asshole I had ever had the misfortune of meeting.

And then of being stuck with.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

-Time Skip-

-Four Months Later-

May

I’m so happy in bed that when my alarm starts to go off (some old 80’s song that seems to be an earworm that most certainly gets stuck in my head the rest of the day) I chuck my phone across the bedroom and hear it clang and crash. It slams into the box fan in the corner and sends it toppling over, startling one of the cats. I groan and try to roll over to get comfortable again only to plummet to my death on the floor. I land on the hardwood with a yelp, left shoulder making contact first. I take three stuffed animals with me to the floor, at least half of my comforter still tangled around my legs, and everything off the bedside table. An empty cup, magazine, planner, desk lamp, jewelry box and more go stumbling to the ground in my feeble attempts to keep myself from meeting the cold wood. And annoying as all of this is, none of it even comes close to the pain of looking up and out the window only to realize that it is definitely later than ten a.m.

Shit. I was supposed to be at the coffee shop to meet up with July at ten.

I go scrambling off of the floor to throw on my shorts and tie back my hair, dig through the pile in the corner for my phone and then check the time. Which reminds me that I need to do my laundry. There’s clothes scattered around the room, books and records thrown from one corner to the other. It’s a small room, but it’s my own little corner of the world. It’s filled with too many of my favorite things, overflowing at the seams. The window in the corner is cracked at the bottom, just enough for the cats to slip in and out and go as they please.

It’s twenty after.

July has already texted me twenty times asking if I got into a car accident, so I dial her number and hold the phone to my ear with my shoulder as I race to the bathroom to brush through my hair only to find the brush is missing and remember we’re out of toothpaste. She picks up on the fourth ring, and doesn't even start with a hello.

“Where are you? Did you get into that car accident down the road I swear Coy if you break our bet-”

“I’m at the house and I overslept,” I admit in a hurry, jogging around to try and find

where I stashed my shoes the night before. I come up with one of them by the couch and the other under my own bed. I sit on the floor and shove my feet into them, and then remember I forgot about socks. The two laying closest to me on the floor come nowhere near to matching but I make do anyways, since July is a stickler for time and I’m sure she’s way pissed I’m so late. She sighs on the other end of the phone and I can hear the morning drone of the cafe in the background.

“Just get here soon. Safely. It’s not the Taledaga speedway.”

“Can do boss,” I do a mock salute and almost send my phone back to the ground again, and go fumbling to keep it from dropping. I hush myself before I growl  at her about her being the reason I would speed in the first place, since she’s the reason I’m leaving the house, but I don’t. I just scratch for my phone on the counter and pull it back up to my shoulder.

“Take a second to calm down. It’s not the end of the world that you’re late, it’s just breakfast.” A surprising sentiment. There must be something she really wants to talk about if she’s not all that upset about the time. But then I stop with a start and remember-

“No July you don’t understand- breakfast ends in like, half an hour! You’d better order for me, I swear I’m coming as fast as I can-”

July barks out a laugh. “Giving me orders, hm? You’re the one who’s late and should be praising me for staying here to wait for your ass at all.”

“And we both know that your Mom probably dropped you off an hour ago because your car is in the shop. You couldn’t leave if you wanted to,” I brush past the cats in the kitchen to grab my water bottle off the back of the sink, unscrewing the cap to give it a good sniff. No good, it’s definitely grown mold since I last used it.

“Ey I’ve got a present waiting for you then, you smartass.”

“Lemme guess, It’s one of your fingers?” I dig through the cabinets looking for a different water bottle but am unsuccessful in my conquest. On the couch behind me Dad is sound asleep, and I figure Mom isn’t much different in the bedroom. I check across the hall from my own room to find Jace piled up at his desk, tapping away at a game controller.

“It’s possibly two of my fingers-” July tells me over the phone as I shake Jace’s shoulder.

“Coy? What’re you doing up?” He asks me, and I give him one of those dumbfounded looks that mean ‘you should know the answer to that, asshole.’

“Breakfast with July. I’ll be back later if Mom and Dad ask.”

I don’t wait for my brother’s full response before turning and practically running out the door before remembering that I ought to grab my purse.

In total it takes me thirty minutes from waking to get to the coffeeshop, and another several to park. I pray that July has actually ordered my breakfast considering it ended nearly a half hour ago, and come speed walking through the glass front doors, brushing past a family in a hurry to get out of the shop. I bump shoulders with one of them and snap my head to look when the man grumbles under his breath about how rude I was and the entire youth population in general. I pull out my best sneer at him, and he hurries along.

Lavender Leaf is the closest coffee shop to the college that July and I attend, so it’s pretty often that we end up there. That, combined with the fact I pick up odd shifts here and there and sometimes get a rare gig on the tiny stage in the corner make it a home base for getting together when we don’t quite know what we want to do yet in the day. She sits in the back corner by the windows where we usually pile up in the booth, Two plates of food  and a tall glass of something that is  not coffee sits in front of her. It’s bright neon pink, and she sips at it through a straw with purple stripes. Her back is to me so I try to sneak up on her, but she must catch my eye in the reflection of the glass because she startles none when I wrap my arms around her shoulders from behind and shake her.

“Wow, look what the cat dragged in. A near hour after it was supposed to get here,” She doesn't look up from the book she’s got her nose buried in, but I know she’s not paying any attention to the pages. She’s just pretending to read to screw with me. I shrug and pull her up from the booth so I can cram myself on the inside beside her and the window, taking the plate of bacon with me as I go.

“You’ll live,” I say, cramming bacon into my mouth as fast as I can. She’s already picked away at some of it but I pay it no mind, eating off even the pieces she’s chewed on. She shoots me a look when she notices, a look that’s something between disgust and humor, and I only smile back, bearing my teeth. She rolls her eyes and sticks a flattened straw into her book, docking the pages and placing it on the other end of the table.

“Soooooo,” I sing at her, leafing through the menu on the side of the table for the newest seasonal drinks. You would think I would know what I would want to order after coming for so many years and having worked there, but I still had to glance over the menu. “What’s the big news?”

“What big news are you asking about?”

“I’m not sure, that’s why I’m here.”

She yoinks the menu from my hands and laughs at me, pointing to a mug on the other side of the table I hadn't noticed before. I give her a sheepish grin and reach for it while she hovers over me to place the menu back where it goes. The coffee she ordered for me is sweet the way I like it, with some cinnamon undertones. It wasn’t something I would usually order myself, but I like it regardless. I glance back at her and she sits up, brushing her mile long hair behind her ears.

July usually wears her dark hair up, in a messy kind of situation piled at the top of her head. It’s strange to see how much of the booth it takes up around her.

“So that date last week-”

I squeal and knot my hands over her shoulders, tossing her back and forth. Her face lights up and is red around the corners, and she eventually pushes me back so hard the back of my head connects with the glass window behind me. I don’t even blink, just stare at her and motion her to go on, reaching for one of the pastries she’d ordered for the table.

It takes a couple times of her opening her mouth and looking away all shy like before she ever answers, and it’s hard for me to sit still while she tells the story of her date with Stephen. There’s something about dinner at Mcdonalds, a fight over which roller rink they were going to go to after, and them overall deciding to be friends by the end of the night.

“I mean, I’m not against going on another date with him. He’s super sweet, and I love his personality. He just doesn’t seem to be as into me as I am him.”

I frown at her.

“I guess- maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s secretly all into me, but he wouldn’t kiss me goodnight! And then I texted after and he was all like, ‘Well July, I think we should take things slow.’ We were already going slow!”

I laugh.

She sips the last of her pink monstrosity, and both of us look at each other like ‘Well, what now?’

“You know,” I drawl as I clean up my mess of crumbs and throw back the last of my coffee, “There should be enough blackberries ripe for us to go pick at the house.”

“In the woods?”

“No duh, the front yard. Yes of course in the woods. Halfway up the mountain there's a plot that I’ve been picking on the past few days.”

July hums into her crossed arms, head tilting as she thinks over the prospect of hiking and picking berries the rest of the day. More than likely it could include a heat stroke, several cut up hands, bugs of all kinds and if we were lucky— a bear. My mind races as I settle in on the idea, the prospect of having a helper very appealing. It gets a little lonely up in the mountains berry picking by yourself, and I would constantly talk and sing to myself to scare off any bears. I mean, bears aren’t really all that scary. But if it had cubs— yeah, no dice. Dad made me carry a loaded .30 with me, and it would be a lie to say that every time I heard a twig snap that was a little louder than a squirrel I was gripping the frayed leather sling.

“It’s awful early in the year for blackberries,” I continued my rant out loud, trying to convince her. “It’s better to pick them now when it’s not hot. And you can keep whatever you want! I’ll even make us a pie or cobbler with dinner if you stay.”

The food seems to get to her. As well as the fact that she’s not got anything better to do than sit at home with her Mom and his boyfriend while her car is in the shop.

“Let’s get outta here,” she says, tumbling out of the booth with a grace I didn’t have and pulling me up by the edge of my sweater.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

We leave Lavender Leaf with to go cups and giggles between the two of us, and belt out lyrics to bad pop punk the entire way back home. At the house Dad has run off somewhere, Mom is holed up watching TV in the bedroom and Jace hasn’t moved from his spot at his desk. I drag July around the kitchen as I grab our supplies. Several grocery bags, a modified milk jug and— thankfully clean— water bottles to take with us into the mountains. The entire time we’re getting ready July is reading off comments from some interesting Amazon reviews, so I’m so caught up laughing over reviews of a popular YA trope that I nearly forget about the gun. It’s stashed in the corner of my room where I left it since I was the last to use it, between my bookshelf and my favorite guitar up against the window. I know that it’s still loaded with the safety on, but I pull the rack open to check anyhow, and I have seven bullets total in the clip. I sling it over to rest cross body with the bag across my shoulders, and we head out.

The front yard of my parent’s house is a mess of vehicles, campers, and for some reason an old bathtub. We stumble through spider webs and unused paths to get to the corner of the lot that runs with the Powerline Valley. We stand at the bottom for a moment, staring up the hill and sighing in defeat. It’s nearly straight up to reach the real trail into the mountains, but there’s no avoiding it. Near the top of the powerline valley and near out of breath July begs for a break, so we stop in the clearest part. From here it feels like you can see the whole edge of the neighborhood. All of Dad’s property is clear, and I remember watching the sunset crest over the powerlines as a kid. To our right looking down is the biggest house in the neighborhood.

It’s a huge log cabin, with three stories and a stone bottom. The side we face is all windows and chimney, all the way up to the third floor A-frame ceiling. One side of the house is held up with stilts, being built on the steep part of the mountain. July gives me a pat on the shoulder as we observe the full driveway and detached garage, nearly ten or so cars in view. Thankfully there’s no one outside. We venture on.

Down the trail things level out for a while, and July and I take to speaking in British accents to narrate the landscape around us. We end down in a rolling golden field full of wildflowers, and then halfway through take a straight turn upwards past an even steeper part of the mountain. At the bottom there’s a huge mud puddle and we take a detour to decode every animal track we can find. Deer, bear, raccoon and coyote. We take pictures of them all to keep track of them and I remember that I need to check the SD card in the trail camera. We start up the steep part and it takes us the better part of thirty minutes to climb before it flattens out again. Here is a small clearing, with brush and thick greenery all around us to the point that even the view of the mountains is too obscure. If we keep going up it’s maybe another two thirds of the way to reach the top of the mountain, and from there everything is visible. I’ve hoofed it all the way to the parkway overlook before, but it’s a hike that takes several hours to complete and nerves of steel.

But we stop in the small clearing, where blackberries have begun to invade around the edges.

“Time to get to work,” July sings under her breath, and we drop our things in a pile between us. Most of the berries are fat and ripe, red and purple juices staining our hands after just moments. We start picking beside each other and work our way around the edges of the clearing, tamping down the bushes after we pick everything off to reach bigger fruits near the back of the thicket.

“You know,” July starts after a while, “You know, I think I’m starting to get into some of this classic literature more.”

“Oh yeah? What makes you say that?” I reach up to grab a berry hanging just above my head and get my hand caught in thorns. I hold my breath as I yank my hand back out of the thicket, shaking off the burn from the tiny cut when another larger berry catches my eye. The method repeats itself.

“Well, you remember how last semester the professor  kept making us read Jane Austen? She wasn’t your favorite, I know, but it got me into some other classic stuff. I came across

The Call of the Wild,

and it’s got to be one of my favorites.” I peek over at July through the bushes, and see her swatting away a horse fly. She stands with her bag nearly half full, and I frown at my berries. July always was better at just taking the risk of cutting her hand up in the briars meanwhile I had to try and mitigate the hurt as much as possible. I glance down at my hand and the thin red lines that run across it, and feel the ache from the scratches setting in already. Maybe her skin was just thicker than mine.

“Yeah, that’s a good one.” I start looking for a stick on the ground. “I like the part when he runs off to be with the wolves. Always wanted to run off with some wolves, join a wolfpack, run away from society,” I ramble as I hunt. Finally, near the center of the clearing I find a dead stick strong enough that wasn’t full of thorns, and march back to my side of the bushes. I hold my grocery bag out underneath a large vine, and beat the top with the stick. Berries fall off towards the ground with each ‘

wack,’ ‘whish,’ ‘whoop,

’ most of them falling to the open bag. When I tune back into the conversation, July has been ranting about

Call of the Wild

for some time now, and I nod like I’ve been paying attention the entire time.

“And then that, that idiot! When the ice breaks and all the dogs fall in-”

“The ending always makes me cry,” I admit over the sound of my stick coming down on branches of thorns and berries falling.

“Oh yeah totally! His relationship with the man it’s really something. For him to choose to embrace himself and run off with the wolves, that’s gotta be a hard one. I would have done the same. Just leave it all behind.”

“You talk about Buck like he wasn’t a dog.”

“Well, yeah. He was more than a dog, he was the main character,” July has stopped picking to look at me as she talks and shakes her head at my stick method. I shrug. It’s been working so far, mostly. There’s been some casualties of berries but my hands are in one piece.

“What’s your favorite then, Einstein?”

I hum as I think it over, knocking more blackberries into my grocery bag. I’ve almost filled it by this point.

“I really liked reading

Catcher in the Rye

and

The Outsiders

in highschool, but I also liked studying

Hamlet

freshman year. It was pretty interesting.”

July blinks at me. “

Hamlet

’s not really a book though, it’s a play.”

“Yeah, but it’s considered classic lit, right? All my professors have, anyways.”

“I suppose so. I didn’t really like Hamlet that much. Too many characters, too much going on. Too many people dying left and right. You’d start to like a character just a little bit then oops, Shakespear killed them.” I laugh as July mimes killing herself on my stick, taking the end and running herself through the armpit and falling to the ground in a grand show.  I hadn’t noticed when we stopped picking berries to get closer and chat.

“

Catcher in the Rye

was alright,” July continues, playing tug of war with my stick and coming out victorious. I groan at the loss and fall to the dirt, pretending to have been slain by her hand. She stands up over me, wielding the stick in circles like a sword.

“I, Thessilonious the Great Fourth Louis Second king Prince, pronounce thee, perished. By right of the sword of, uh, blackberry-ictus.” July nods as she finishes her monolouge, backing off of me to wave the stick-sword through the air. I laugh breathlessly at her as I sit up on the dirt, running my hands over a mossy patch to my left. July’s long dark hair dances around her as she dances, long lithe limbs arching through the air. The way the morning sun crests it bounces off of her green eyes, making them sparkle like dew in the grass. I think to myself that she’s beautiful, in a sisterhood type of way.

I don’t feel such the same, laughing and rolling in the dirt. I was tall enough, and skinny fine, but still had baby fat clinging to my cheeks and hands. My fingers were calloused and I was scarred from so much time spent outside in the woods. I had rings of scars around both my wrists, faint but visible in the right light. My hair was uneven and dyed my favorite colors, and while I loved the colors it was a lot of expensive upkeep. It curled if I didn’t blow dry it out after a bath, and frizzes easily. July always looked so put together. Light makeup covering her olive face and accentuating her long eyelashes.

But her personality was beautiful, too. When she was kind and helpful and smart, more as I was a class clown and the comedic relief. We got along like a house on fire, though.

From the woods to our left we heard a loud ‘snap,’ of branches, and both our heads turned so fast we almost gave ourselves whiplash. July scooted closer to me in the clearing, stick held out in defense.

“I have a sword, I’m warning you,” she said, stick making a ‘whooshing’ sound as she swung it across the air. The cracking in the woods was getting louder and closer, some creature traversing and bulldozing right through the blackberry brambles. There wasn’t an animal on the face of the Earth I could think of making that noise unless something was very wrong. I backed up to the pile of our belongings in the center of the circle, July coming to stand with me shoulder to shoulder.

From the brambles emerged a black bear, tall enough that its shoulders were nearly in line with mine. It was missing patches of fur, scars running over its muzzle and half of an ear missing on the left side. My foot tangled itself in the strap of the rifle, and slowly I lifted it up to my hands. I was used to dealing with bears, and most often they were unamused by humans and left us alone.

This one, it seemed, was not too happy with us being there. Perhaps it had made a den in the brambles, or just passing through in a bad mood.

“Hey bear!” I yelled as loud as I could, waving the gun around in my hands as wide as they would allow. The bear turned its big blocky head towards us, scuffling its paws on the ground. It looked twitchy and wrong. It snapped its jaws at us as it leafed through the blackberries, and July and I took a step back. I’d never seen a bear not turn and run off from a loud yell, nor one that was so twitchy. It reminded me of the zombie disease that affected deer down in middle Tennessee, but there was nothing like that for bears. Overall, it gave me the creeps, and my heart started to pick up pace.

“I think it’s going to charge,” I tell her, not bothering to whisper. I step in front of her, my feet braced apart to shoot and my hip nearly against July’s thigh. I’ve got the rifle in my arms, butt of the gun against my shoulder. And I turn to glance at July out of the corner of my eye and notice that she’s not even looking at the bear.

She’s looking at me and the gun.

I turn back to the bear and swing the rifle around, screaming and making up a ruckus. When it seems to not be too bothered I dare to take a step forward, reaching down to grab a rock off the ground and throw it at the animal. I don’t stop at one rock. I keep going. It takes several, and several hits does the bear take before it backs back down into the brambles and away from us.

I start to wonder what was causing it to act so strange, but don’t pause to think so long.

“Grab your things,” I knock July from her stupor and we gather our backpacks and grocery bags, gun still firmly in my grasp, raised and ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. We start to walk back down the trail, slowly, me going backwards to keep facing the bear. It doesn’t reemerge from the brambles, though. Not while we’re in sight.

We make it all the way down the side of the hill and into the first clearing of wildflowers before we stop to catch our breath and calm down. July is clearly shaken up, hands pulling on her long hair and tugging on the handles of her grocery bags full of blackberries. I swing the gun around to my shoulder and pull her hands from her hair, but she tugs away from my grip.

You see, July is terrified of guns. Ever since she was little she made it a point to not be around them. It was a bit of a shock to our friendship at first when she found out how familiar I was with them. Growing up our family spent a lot of time hunting, and it was a given that once a Prince was old enough they got their carry permit. I remember being in gun safety classes at six and seven years old, .22’s and shotguns in my arms as I shot skeet. Dad had two whole gun cabinets in the house that were full. I wasn’t sure why we needed so many guns, but they were pretty cool anyways. It was the deep south, you never knew when one would come in handy.

Like having to fight off that bear. If it had charged at us, I would have had to shoot.

But I wasn’t so sure that July could forgive me for such. It took enough of her energy just to look at one, and she was a lot more comfortable around bigger guns than smaller ones.

July had come from a military family, and for a while her Dad worked in the secret service. So in a way, she had grown up around guns, too. But when she was about five or six there was an incident on the base they were living on, and her Dad shot and killed someone in front of her. Since then July hasn’t been the same. Not to guns and not her relationship with her father. The unspoken rule around here was that if she was around we didn’t practice skeet targets or shoot at all if we could help it. She was terrified of guns. I hated to have to carry one in front of her, but it was much better to be safe than sorry.

I shook the weight of the strap of my .30 over my shoulder. It was starting to ache.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The air outside is warm enough that I’m sweating, despite the darkness clouding itself around me. I swear I can hear thunder off in the distance, even though Dad swears it’s just heat lightning. I can see it far off, brightening the thick clouds covered by trees and dense skyline. I could shrug my sweater off, thick pink knit covering half of my torso, but it’s soft. And comfy. And I just decide I’ll put up with the sweat, because it’s probably just from the humidity, anyways.

“I’ll be right back, gotta see a man about a dog,” Dad says, flicking the CD over in the radio to a live recording of a show we saw not long ago and sliding out of the truck to step on his cigarette butt. I leaf through the pages of a book July leant me that I’m not even all that interested in as he leaves me to the low light of the dying ceiling lamp. He’s not gone five minutes before the words on the pages blur so far I can’t read them and throw the book in the backseat.

Dang July and all her fantasy books.

I huff, and watch out the open window. Then decide that the overhead light, as dim as it may be, is too bright. I shuffle it off and skip a few songs on the radio and lean back in the seat, picking at the fraying leather. Dad’s duct taped over it a few times, and it sticks to my ass when I shift in the seat. The house we’re parked at is on a step grade, where I feel like the car is about to roll forward and through the garage door. There’s lights on in the living room, and I can see the shadows of people through thin curtains blocking the outside view. I guess at which one is Dad, and settle on the one standing in the middle of the small congregation. He’s talking about something with his hands and moving to hand something out.

My hands are itchy as I sit in the dark, and it only gets worse as time passes. I’ve never been one to be good at sitting still. I’d had the day off from work and had spent most of it sleeping, so it was no wonder why I was restless despite the late hour. Just when I was debating jumping out of the truck and knocking on the front door of the house to be let in - as awkward as that would be - Dad finished up whatever he was there for and ambled back out of the house.

As he stood on the front door step the man he was talking to lit up a joint, puffing on the end of it as smoke swirled up to join the moths around the porch light. Smelled just like when I got skunked as a kid.

Movement through the thin living room curtains abruptly catches my eye. I turn to glance out of the corner of my vision only to turn full body. There’s three figures, two of them clearly women, setting something up on the coffee table. After a few moments of banter one of them leans down and runs her face over the table, wiping across her face as she comes back up, shoulders shaking with laughter. The others do the same.

I hope it’s not what I think it is.

By the time I stop watching them and turn to Dad he’s sitting in the front seat of the truck and turning the engine over. He doesn’t say anything, but he watches me. And I watch him.

“Do you need me to drive?” I finally settled on, instead of really asking him what just happened. He stares at me, really looks into my eyes and goes to open his mouth and say something but he doesn't get that far. Coughs rack his frame, coming from deep within his chest and I panic, looking for something to help. He holds up a hand when I go to ask him if he’s okay, and we wait out the fit. He looks like he’s choking, but I know that he's breathing because he’s making noise. I’m brought back to my first aid classes for school, where they tell you the worst thing you can do is be idle and watch. But when I go to touch Dad he smacks my hand away - harder than he most likely intends - and so I’m forced to sit back. I cradle my hand to my chest, rubbing the red mark he leaves behind from his rings and pull my sweater down over it. The soft knit curls over my hand easily, and I twist the frayed edge between my fingers.

Eventually, after what feels like hours, he calms. The fit passes and he breathes hard, hovering over the steering wheel. His pack of cigarettes are smushed in his breast pocket against the wheel, and I hate to see the flutter of his chest as he tries to breathe.

Inside I can see the girls going for round two on the coffee table.

“We don’t talk about this,” he says through gritted teeth and a mouthful of spit. He hacks it out the driver's side window and goes to back out of the steep driveway, despite the fact I think he still needs a minute. I frown at him and take to watching the white line on the edge of the road when we get going. I don’t stare out of the rear view at the house as we drive off, but it’s a near thing. Instead I watch the toes of my shoes, converse star long since faded and holes put on the left side where the canvas has detached itself from the sole.

“About you being sick and refusing to take care of yourself, or hanging out with people who’re clearly doing lines of cocaine over there?” I mutter my question, and try to mitigate the heat I feel, but I don’t think I do too well with it. I can see him take a deep breath and pull at his face out of the corner of my eye. I don’t fully turn to him, though.

“Coy. Baby I love you, but I’ve got to pay the light bill somehow. It’s just for a little while, you know that. You know

I

don’t do that shit.”

“Then how’d you get it?” I say into my sweater. The CD on the radio has since played three times over for me, and when it starts to roll over again Dad beats the top of the console and it skips to the next disc. Then he gets mad at that one, too, and turns the radio off all together. I flinch when he beats the console again because the light won’t turn green fast enough, and only start breathing again when it does and he pulls forward. The only sound between us is the wind from our windows, traffic, and far off thunder. I watch the white line and the clouds.

“I’ve been doing odd jobs for Blaze here and there. He pays me pretty well for what he asks, and it ain’t never nothing big. I’ve got to make a living somehow, honey.” The truck swerves as a gust of wind tries to knock us from the lane. The tires on my side skip over the white line for a few seconds before he rights the truck and gets us back on the road.

It goes unsaid that there are many ways to make money other than dealing drugs, but I don’t mention any of them. Instead I just let a wave of guilt wash over me. I really should be picking up more jobs and gigs than what I do to help pay the bills. I live there as much as the rest of them over the summer when I’m not at school, and it’s my responsibility to carry my weight. I shuffle into myself and look at Dad, and he’s already glancing at me more often than the road. My legs pull themselves up under my ass as I curl, knees knocking against the door paneling.

“I’m sorry I said anything. I know I need to pick up more jobs-”

“Coy this ain’t about that. Just- you know how hard things are.”

And I do. I do know how hard things are for the family. There’s too many of us living on not enough money and not enough food. I always lose weight in the summer, and it’s not just because of the extra exercise. I think of last month and how we almost went the entire thirty days without electricity. I tried to save up what money I could to help pay for my college, but I had to face the music that I would be in debt forever. All of my money went right back to Mom and Dad, for bills and things we needed. My loans would hold out until I graduated, but right now?

“You need to keep your mouth shut about this. I’m not playing. If I hear you telling the rest of the family-”

“I’ll keep quiet.”

“I’m not kidding. If you do tell someone, don’t let it get back to Blaze. He’s family, but that doesn’t mean I trust him.”

I worry about Dad and the rest of the family the whole way home. The lighting strikes the sky above, rumbling the ground beneath me.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I’m standing, in my favorite black romper with bows around my waist and long, flowing sleeves to hide my arms, tapping my cowboys with green thread on the wood floor. From the floor to ceiling windows at Lavender Leaf I can see part of the sunset, tinted orange from the windows and streetlights. My truck is parked right outside the window by the door, in the ‘

performers only, R E S E R V E D

’ lines. Junibee is the working barista today, and she’s still just getting the hang of putting together a good latte. My nerves are a little on fire, considering I want my coffee and there’s a few more people here than I expected, so I’m more impatient than normal. I watch Juni’s hands shake as she twirls the cup and tries to fit the lid on the right way. She forgets the whip, but I don’t ask her for it. I only give her a grin and step away as fast as I can.

I’m queued to go on in ten minutes, anyhow. I was worried about being late.

Then again, it’s just a small coffee shop with a few hundred seats. Not even half are full, and the boy playing piano on the tiny stage on the other side of the shop, right in front of the windows yet facing the inside, was late himself. Nobody’s even looking at him. They’re all doing work on their computers or talking to each other, yet it’s clear they’re here for the music because they’ve drug chairs and couches over to face the stage. I twist back and forth and feel the ruffles of the romper dance around my thighs. It’s a bit shorter than I’d like, but it’s my favorite because of everything else it offers. It probably doesn’t match my boots, but I’m a musician. I’d seen people wear all kinds of things on stage and claim it looked good, so I tried to remind myself to just be me and be confident.

It worked, somewhat.

“You’re gonna do fine, Coy.” I’ve found July on the edge of a couch, perched on the arm guarding my guitar. I thank her, and she throws herself back to lay onto the cushions and disturb the girl working on the other end. The other girl stands up and awkwardly scuttles to another seat, July unaware. She blinks at me. And then the blinks turn into a squint, and she sits up.

“Wait a second- why

are

you so nervous?”

I steal her spot to perch on the arm of the couch, studying the pianist. He’s got sweat stains on his shirt, has since he walked in and asked for an Americano. I twirl my latte and take a sip.

“Is there a boy or something here? Are they recording you? What’s up-”

“Nothing like that! Just, I planned on playing a few that I wrote. I was hoping the crowd would be a little more into it… At least then I’d have a chance of guessing if they were good or not…”

“Chloe, shut up. You know your music is amazing.”

I shoot July with a side eye.

“Urgh, you wound me,” She says dramatically, and throws herself down again. I laugh at her, and the boy on stage finishes with a flourish and a wrong note. He smiles nervously at the crowd as they clap, and Juni has to run over to introduce me and play markee. July makes grab hands for my drink as I stand up to head to the stage and I hand it over after a long sip.

She moans about the lack of whipped cream.

“Hi ya’ll,” I say, clawing at the wood floor of the stage for my aux cord and jamming it into my acoustic. I re-tune my B string, since it’s always out of tune, as I speak. “I”m Coyote if you haven’t heard me before. I'm a local here going to the college on the hill, and I’m here to sing a few for ya. Hope you enjoy.”

I lose myself in the first ten seconds of song. I forget I was ever nervous in the first place. I start with a Zach Bryan cover that all the women in the small crowd seem to know. They like it, though, singing along with me and I keep their attention the whole way through. Then I ask for what they want to hear, and end up with a good three cover songs. I laugh, they laugh. I tell stories and jokes and Juni brings me another latte she places on top of the upright piano. I ask her for a water and everyone laughs when the poor girl comes stuttering back with it and trips over my aux cord, sending the water flying.

I wince and help pick her up from the ground, and reassure her that she’s not done anything wrong. By the time we get all that sorted there’s quite a small crowd, a few people coming in off the street from the open doors, line at the register wrapping around thrice.

“Alright wow, I wasn’t expecting so many,” I nervously laugh, picking at the strings absentmindedly in A minor. “I was going to save this one for later, but I’m really lookin’ for some feedback. So, this next one’s something that I wrote myself. A Coyote original. Tell me if you like it, yeah? Or if you hate it, just don’t boo me off the stage too hard,” I laugh.

And then I start into the pattern of fingerpicking that’s come so natural for a year now.

Howlin’ to Heaven

was a one off I wrote for a class final, and then ended up liking it. It was what had kickstarted my ambition to write music, and led me to being brave enough to get on stage and sing something that wasn’t just a cover.

Skinnin’ Coyotes with a muskrat knife,

Gotta get it just right and keep it by your side,

You’re gonna want it tonight.

Skinnin’ Coyotes before you go to church on Sunday,

You’d better keep your Bible close,

Or you’ll regret it the most.

There’s some mumbles in the crowd, But I keep going. My professors hadn’t been happy about how graphic the first verse was, either, but I didn’t write it just for the hell of writing a verse.

My fingers trail up the neck and frets to play higher, and pick with a flick of the wrist that makes a

tck

sound in the amp, adding percussion. My voice dips low, and I look out at the few people in the crowd. This is important. This is the first time I’ve played it for a crowd that wasn’t grading me. And let’s face it- getting a good grade didn’t automatically mean that something was going to hit well with a crowd.

And I’m, Howling to Heaven,

About the things I’ve done and the things I’m yet to do.

And I’m, Howling to Heaven,

About the things I’ve done and the things I’m yet to do.

And I’m - Oh, oh,

Oh, oh, Heaven.

I spin back and forth in my flowy outfit, letting the ribbons whip my waist as I try to make more of a stage presence. It’s always been something I’ve struggled with. I have to make myself step to the edge of the two step wood platform, bending down to look at a few women sitting in seats right below me. I catch a glance of July out of the corner of my eye, perched back on the arm of the sofa as she dramatically winks and motions at me. I roll my eyes with a smile and look back down at the women in their seats, their entire attention on me.

I tilt my head and wink, and then scurry back to somewhere safer near the middle of the stage.

Wander the blacktop warm,

As tar sands rip your feet,

You’re too easy to bruise,

That’s ready to lose.

A pack of dogs are just a coyote,

In a trenchcoat,

A pleasant lookin’ pack of cannibals.

There’s a teenager in the corner who gags at the imagery, and a few boys who giggle. I’m

surprised to see all of those in line for coffee turned to stare at me, including Juni. She’s holding a can of whipped cream in her hand and an iced latte in the other, coffee dripping off her hand and into the floor, mouth open and her white teeth on display. I have to try not to laugh.

And I’m, Howling to heaven.

About the things I’ve done and the things I’m yet to do.

And I’m, Howling to Heaven,

About the things I’ve done and the things I”m yet to do.

And I’m, oh,

Oh oh, Heaven

The song itself has some type of chord progression similar to something I’d think of 70’s

music, a i - III - IV, if you think of it in an A minor scale. It wasn’t a very common progression, but I was trying to write something that left people guessing.

When I finished the verse I slowed my hands, as if I was going to stop. A few people raised their arms to clap, but then I slapped the strings with a

tch tch

, and started in with a refrain that left the syncopated rhythm behind.

Laying over, Laying off.

Laying over and I’m laying off.

Laying over, Laying off.

Cause you’re howling at the moon

And I’m still howling,

Straight back after you, oh,

I’m howling back at you.

I have no clue what expression I’m wearing on my face, but it’s enough that July nods

at me with a huge smile from her seat. The last note rings for what feels like ages, as I howl into the mic for as long as I have breath. Past the point where my chest feels tight. It reminds me of getting swept under the river current a few weeks ago, aching for air as I tried to find the surface, fingers clawing on rocks for purchase.

The last few notes on my guitar find their place while my mind is already racing and wondering how the crowd will react. I know it’s not a song that fits into any realm of popular genres. But it does fall over the crowd, relatively large for Lavender Leaf, anyways, and they don’t seem appalled. There’s clapping, and chatter, and in the end it feels just like any other song I’d sang on stage.

I go back to singing my covers, and my tip jar on the edge of the stage fills.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“Oh come on, that’s gotta be some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen!” I bitch at the TV, sitting beside Dad on the couch. We’ve been having a Saturday morning western marathon. The kind of old shows that play for free on the networks you get with a TV antenna, that likes to go in and out of focus when it rains or the wind blows or if you look at it wrong. We poke more fun at the TV than we do watch it. Every once in a while Dad turns around backwards on the couch to the windows that line the back wall to beat on a window AC unit when it starts to spit ice onto us. It’s a nice morning for it, cicadas outside already ramping up to match the wet heat of the sun.

I roll over in my corner of the couch, propping myself up so my back is against the arm and my feet are curled underneath me. Dad’s picking at his nails as we watch TV, and I try to look away from his yellowed nail beds. He flicks his cigarette into the ashtray on his arm of the couch, and the TV cuts to commercials. He cusses.

The dog barks outside, something loud and mean and full of spit. I can see Dad’s shoulders fall when he realizes this means we’ve got company. I dig around through the pile of laundry and throw blankets on the chair beside us for something to cover up with, fighting the pile for a knit blanket swatched in bleach stains. It was red at one time, but now it’s more pink. I drag it over my shoulders like a cape, letting it drape over me despite the heat of the living room. I’ve just barely got it over my shoulders when Blaze beats on the door twice and lets himself in, going straight to the kitchen to dig. We’ve not got many groceries this week, so I scowl at his back for both barging in on us and stealing food. And just for existing.

“Whatchya’ll up to?” He says around a mouthful of saltine crackers. There’s a jar of peanut butter sitting out on the counter he grabs up before marching over to Dad and I. The sleeve of crackers is ripped so low he leaves a trail of crumbs on the floor as he goes. I feel a growl in the back of my throat I have to consciously fight.

Blaze sets his food down on the coffee table, on top of all Dad’s tools, our guitar picks, ashtrays and trash, before grabbing the laundry in the reclining chair up and unceremoniously dropping it into the dirty floor. I glare at him as he makes himself at home in the recliner closest to me, starting at the pile of laundry he’s just ruined.

“That wasn’t even all that dirty,” I grumble to myself, pulling my blanket tighter. He stares at me, chewing open mouth and slides his raybans up to hold his hair back, tipping his hat off to rest on his knee.

“Smelled pretty fuckin’ dirty to me.”

I just stare at him.

I can tell Dad isn't happy about it, but he doesn’t say anything, either. I wonder why, since he’s the one I get my big mouth and quick temper from.

The commercials cut off on the TV and the western comes back on, and I try to focus on the black and white cowboys but I can’t seem to get into it the way I had been before Blaze showed up. He’s dipping the crackers into the jar of peanut butter, hands coming out coated with it. When he catches me staring he goes to lick it off his hand and rubs the rest off onto the arm of the recliner, and I flip him off. He laughs.

“Th’ hell do you want, Blaze?” Dad asks when Blaze doesn't out right say. Blaze always wants something. He grins and finishes off the sleeve of crackers, throwing the brown plastic on top of the pile of laundry. I groan and go to stand up before he catches the edge of my blanket in his hand, rings catching in the knit and stopping me. I yank the edge back away from him, pulling it higher around myself.

“Where you goin’?”

“Bathroom,” I grumble.

“Nah, this concerns you, too, little lady. Sit.”

“I’m not a damn dog.” I sit, anyways. He picks the blanket off of his rings, much like a cat who’s gotten their nails caught making biscuits.

“I’ve got a job for the two of you, tonight. Includes free concert tickets, dinner, and two hundred each.”

I blink at Blaze, and glance at Dad. He’s not even looking at Blaze, rather mashing the butt of his cigarette into the ashtray to snuff it out.

“Make it five. I’ve got to pay the light bill this week.”

“Well, that’s not fair to Chloe here, is it? I’ll make it six, you get three hundred each.”

“My name is Coy-” I say at the same time Dad opens his mouth.

“Why are you involving her?”

“I’ll pay your light bill and give you each four hundred, then.”

“Blaze you ain’t answering my questions.”

“Don’t ask any, then.”

The two stare at each other for several long seconds. Blaze reaches into his chest pocket and pulls out a full pack of Marlboro Red shorts, box still wrapped in cellophane. He tosses them to Dad. Dad doesn’t catch them, just lets the box fall in his lap.

“Jackson. I’ve been good to you.”  Blaze says the words the way you might speak to a wounded wolf. Slow, like molasses dripping from my spatula when I bake. Full of unearthed ‘

do what I tell you to or else

,’ anger, and something else I can’t place. Perhaps it’s just laced in Blaze’s need to be Alpha, and rise to the top again like how he was before prison.

The sad part is that he’s not even wrong. I pick at the edge of the blanket, where one of the strings has come loose. Since getting out of jail in February Blaze always made sure the lights stay on. Since Dad started doing odd jobs for him - which I wasn’t entirely sure how long that had been occurring, but long enough to notice - we’d had a bit more food on the table. He’d taken us out to dinner a few times, nice places like Texas Roadhouse and that fancy steakhouse up in Gatlinburg. He’d bought my school books for the upcoming semester, a stack that I can see the corner of just barely from my open bedroom door. They sit on the wood floor, still in bubble wrap from being shipped to the house.

He’d even paid for insurance on both mine and Dad’s trucks for the entire year.

And yet, I don’t trust him. I don’t like him. I look at his face, beard and mustache lined with peanut butter and I can’t admit to myself that he’s an alright person. I can’t even put my finger on why. I just feel somewhere that he’s not. And maybe that’s because I am a very paranoid person, or maybe that’s because he is untrustworthy. I wasn’t sure which was which, inside my own head. Part of me thinks it is so easy to like Blaze, him buying us stuff and offering Dad jobs that were so hard to find. I liked listening to his stories of before prison, even if I was sure most of them were bullshit.

But but but

.

Dad looks down at the pack of Marlboros in his lap and picks them up, twisting the cellophane off the top to break the seal and beating the bottom of the box on his leg. When he opens the box the cigarettes are all there, in two neat little rows. He jams one out and lights it with a cheap bic lighter, one of those kinds with bad clip art on the plastic.

After a few inhales he starts to cough, nicotine making its way down into his lungs. I go to beat him on the back but he won’t let me. I watch from my corner, brows knitted together. I pull my blanket tighter over my shoulders.

He rubs his chest when he comes down from the fit, spitting up into an empty mountain lightinng two liter bottle on the floor. I try to ignore the fact his spit is near the color of my blanket.

“It’s a delivery tonight at Moonshine Meadows. Coy can get backstage without getting noticed easier than you can, Jackson. That’s why I want her to go. Keeps y'all from gettin’ caught. Here-” He tosses a wad of cash, a VISA prepaid card, and two VIP passes down between us on the couch. Lastly he pulls a ticket from his hat, and hands it to me. I turn it over in my hands and notice it’s actually a business card. The entire thing is black cardstock, edges tipped to rounded points. The front has a metallic black font, B7AZ3 written in all caps. I have to turn the card to catch the light just right to read it, otherwise it looks like a nondescript black card. The back is the same, only with a phone number bolded.

“If you run into trouble. Keep it with you.”

And with that, he stands to leave. He puts his hat back on and steps up to Dad to pat him on the shoulder, only getting a look in response. Dad’s eyes are dark and hollow around the edges, bags underneath them worse than usual. I look away and towards the TV, where commercials are playing again. I can’t hear the TV over the sound of the AC spitting ice and Blaze giving Dad a pep talk under his breath. I try to tune them all out.

Dad glances at me from under his hat, asking. I nod to him, and unfurl my legs from underneath me. Blaze opens the door and goes to leave, but stops and turns to me, hand on the door frame and face highlighted by the sun. He looks older, in full light, than he does hiding in the dark. Stray hairs from his beard sticking every which direction, a few awkward moles and freckles sitting out between smile line wrinkles.

“Coy?”

I’m not sure what he’s going to ask, or say, and I’m even less sure I want to hear it.

“Quit covering up that fucking tattoo. You paid and sat for the damn thing, you act like you’re arm has been in a fuckin’, I don’t know, house fire. It ain’t scarred up or nothin’, show it off.”

I slam the door in his face and cuss the green paint.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In the truck rear view mirror I can make out the top of my tattoo, edging over my left shoulder and pull the jean jacket further up my chest. Dad’s gotten to park in the front, right inside the gates of Moonshine Meadows. We arrived early enough to browse the booths of band merch, motorcycle products and more before the opening band even takes the stage. My boots thwack the concrete parking lot as we make our way to the bar, Blaze’s VISA clutched tight in Dad’s hand. We get dinner and drinks and sit down at the picnic tables to eat, both of us quiet.

It feels like The Meadow is a second home, in a vague sense. How many times had I sat at this exact picnic table with Dad to see a concert, dreaming of the day I would be famous enough to sing and play on that stage? All too often we spent our weekends around the venue, to the point all of the staff knew us by name. It felt wrong to be there for a purpose different than to just watch a show or grab dinner. It feels strange to have a pocket with a wad of cash, half of which had been my share that I had folded and slipped into Dad’s pocket. He shot me a look when I did, but didn’t reject the cash I gave him.

He’s sipping on a jack and coke, and when he catches me looking he slides the clear plastic cup over to me. I don’t ask, just watch his face as I drink what’s left of it.

“That was almost a full glass,” he complains as the few dregs of ice cubes crash to the bottom of the plastic cup. I shrug.

Generally speaking I wasn’t much one for alcohol. But I’ve got a wad of cash in one pocket, a little black card shoved deep into my right boot, VIP tag around my throat and a duct-taped package in my purse. I figured all that was cause enough to lose myself a little bit.

After Blaze left I stood in the middle of the living room, blanket dripping off my body as I stared at Dad.

“You’re not actually going to take it, are you?” I asked, even though I knew the answer full and well. Dad picked through the badges and wad of cash, tossing half of it toward me. I don’t reach for it, just let it bounce off my stomach and roll into the dirty floor. The dog howls outside as Blaze starts up his truck and leaves, and I see the plastic sleeve empty of crackers is still on top of the clothes pile he left behind. Figures.

“I need to pay the bills, Coy. Plus,” he gestures towards the moneygreen paper on the floor. I grumble and pick it up, flipping him off as I scamper back into my room. “Be ready in a couple hours,” he calls after me.

I don’t mention that there are other ways to make money, and he doesn’t say much on the fact I’m upset with him. He fights me in the truck when I take the duct tape package out of the console and shove it into my purse, wrapping his calloused hands over my wrist. My hand looks small, next to his. I can see the outline of scars wrapping around my hand from where he’s gripping my arm, and glance away fast when I notice them. They’re faint, but still barely there in the dusky light.

“I’ll keep it,” he grunts around a cigarette.

“Where,” I hiss, trying to pull my hand out from where he’s got a hold of my wrist. The package itself is just big enough to not fit into his jeans pocket, and even if it would it would stick out like a sore thumb. More than likely no one would ask questions even if it did, but I wanted to be sure he didn’t get caught. It was my way of apologizing for snapping at him earlier, taking it. He gently let my hand go and I slipped it into my purse, neither of us looking away from the others’ eyes.

–

When the opening band takes the stage Dad walks me to the side door of the inside venue, where bands practice and hang out before taking the outdoor stage. I smile and toss my hair over the backs of my shoulders, where it flows down the back of my black jean jacket. It stands out in the crowd, even more so with the black jacket. We both flash our VIP tags at security, and the man working seems hesitant to let us in. When one of the band members passes by the cracked door and peeks out to us he motions us in, and the security officer rolls his eyes and steps to the side, Dad and I trailing in.

There’s quite a few people huddled backstage, including the main act band, managers, photographer, journalist, venue staff and others I don’t bother to label. The back of the place is set up like a lounge, a small stage backing up one wall and cabinets lining another. There had been several shows I’d sat back here to watch in the winter time when the outdoor venue shuts down, ass aching from sitting on the wood cabinets for so long.

I stick so close to Dad that my shoulder brushes up against his arm, until I’m caught by the elbow by a man with a little too much cologne. It takes a moment for me to realize it’s the bassist for the main act.

“Well, ain’t you a pretty thing,” he says, wrapping an arm over my shoulder.

I have to close my eyes and take a breath, remembering what little I was taught in those few months of therapy I was required to take in high school before I punched the therapist’s lights out and ended up in juvie. This was a situation, not entirely ideal to myself. But I had a task. I had a way to help Dad. With a purse hiding a package, a little black card, and revolver in the back of my jeans.

Oh by the way, did I mention I kept my gun with me always? Generally I kept it as hidden and secret as possible, considering I didn’t have a carry permit and often went places with a strict policy against guns. That, and the fact that July could never know. She might be able to stand me holding a rifle, but I couldn’t see her sitting quiet while I carried a handgun.

The gun itself was an old .22 revolver that held six bullets. The metal was a dark color, engraved with vines and roses up the side. It fit just comfortably at the small of my back to be hidden by my jeans and shirt, and was the other half of the reason I almost always wore a sweater or jacket. The other of course, included my tattoo.

I do my best to put on an act, my best smile and softest look, but I must not do too well because the man laughs, dragging me with him to a standing table of drinks.

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to know a Blaze, would you?” I ask, trying to wiggle out from underneath his arm and glance around to find Dad. Go big or go home, right? The faster we can get this over with, the faster I can get back home. Which was a thought I had never had at The Meadows.

There’s too many people backstage for me to turn and find Dad. The light is too low, the smoke too thick. The man flashes a smile down at me, taking a shot of some clear liquid that doesn’t smell like vodka. I don’t take what he offers me. I can feel my face heated from what I drank of Dad’s and I don’t trust a random man - main act or not - and an open bottle of liquor.

“I might happen to have heard of him. But, lemme get you to Johnson. He’ll know for sure.”

I’m led from one table to the next as the bassist conversates and tries to find who he’s looking for, and I keep one hand around my back the whole time. I’m scanning the crowd for Dad, slightly starting to panic in the fact I haven’t found him yet. I’m worried he’s been found out or picked up, until I realize really I’m the one I should worry for. I’m the one with the drugs.

Through the walls I can hear the opening act, loud drums and screaming guitar. Our footsteps move in time with the bass drum, and my heart does double time. I can’t seem to keep focus on one thing or another, eyes twitching from one face to the next. When the hell did there get to be so many people back here?

“The man of the hour!” The bassist shouts, pulling me abruptly out of an awkward conversation over
hairstylehair style
preferences with a girl who looks like a slut, draped over the arm of a man similar to the one toting me. I catch a glimpse of Dad’s face out of the corner of my eye, him looking around the crowd as fast yet discreetly as possible. His eyes don’t find mine. I growl, and get pulled away.

“This here’s the one you wanna talk to, miss lady. Johnson, I’ve got your cat!” The bassist swings me out in front of him, one hand on each shoulder of mine as he presents me to Johnson. Johnson, who turns out to be the lead singer of the main act. I try to keep from catching flies, but neither Dad nor I had bothered to look at who was headlining.

Markus Johnson stands in front of me, looking down and smiling.

“The ‘cat,’ huh?” He rolls the word cat around in his mouth like it means more than what it does.

“I prefer Coy,” I say after I catch my breath and wits. 
“Ah, Coy. Alright then, you’re the cat that Blaze sent?” I frown when he calls me a cat again, but don’t bother correcting him. I dig my hand into my purse, glancing away for only a second to see if any one is paying attention. No one is. I go to pull the package out from my purse before another figure overtakes me and pulls me away harshly, and this time I can’t hold back. I’m so sick of being carted around like some animal that I swing a fist in a large arc, trying to knock the new figure in the clavicle. Dad catches my arm just in time before it connects, pulling me further away from the small group that had formed. I would like to say I feel bad for aiming for him, and I would like to say that I curl towards him like I’m a freezing man and he’s a fire, but I don’t. He lets go of my shoulders and waist and I step away from him, taking a moment to breathe. I pull my purse off of myself and hold it out for him. Dad doesn’t bother to take it from me, only jamming his hand into the unzipped, largest compartment and pulling out the package. He tosses it at Markus. 
Blaze had briefed us over text that this was only a delivery, and there was no collection fee. Markus sniffs the haphazardly wrapped package before setting it on the cabinet behind him, waving a hand to gather the attention of the party and yell at the crowd that’s gathered backstage. Dad and I shuffle away as fast and unconsciously as we can, bowing underneath arms and legs and bodies before Dad yanks me up again by the small of my waist. I yelp loud and reach for my gun, but before I can even move the hem of my jacket Dad spins me around and looks me over.

“You’re alright,” he says, half question and half relief. I nod.

“I’m alright.” My voice is sore from yelling over the sound of music and the crowd.

“Johnson?” I nod, trying to shake myself from his hold for a moment to breathe. He doesn’t let go of me, though. My nerves are making my fingers twitch.

“Can we just go?” I ask, and Dad glances at me from where he’s overlooking the crowd, no doubt scanning for Johson to perhaps beat the shit out of the man. He doesn’t give me a response, but after a few seconds pulls me from backstage and through the code getting ready to hear the main act. I’m partially disappointed that we’re leaving, but before we even get to the truck I turn from Dad and lean against a random Jeep, stomach upturning itself onto the white parking spaces of the lot.

“We ain’t doing this again,” Dad gruffs, pulling me up from my spot by the collar of my jacket and towards the truck. I yelp away from him and throw up again, bile staining my throat. I scratch at the asphalt when he pulls at me again, and smack his hands away. I couldn’t agree more with the ‘ain’t doing this again.’

It’s two weeks later before Blaze comes to us again, this time with the offer of more money. I don’t throw up this time, and Dad doesn’t complain when I put the new delivery down into my purse and my revolver in my right boot, jacket slipping from my shoulders with the heat of midsummer.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

As previously mentioned, Blaze does have a wife. It’s how I’m technically related to him in the first place. Cheryl is the worst kind of person, even worse than Blaze in my own opinion. When she gets out of the black GMC she runs up to me in a rush and kisses me all over the face like we’re in France, her pulling me around by the collar of my shirt and tugging on the ends of my hair. She arrives as a hurricane, and immediately I wonder when the storm will pass.

She’s come to stay, for some time that’s not specified and it makes me mad. The way that everyone treats her gets on my nerves, since everyone claims to dislike her so heavily but agrees steadfastly with everything she has to say. I think to myself that it’s all the money she has and the real mink scarf draped over her shoulders, but then again, most of it is supposed to be Blaze’s cash. I wonder how much of it is true.

Cheryl takes one look at the house turned office space that Blaze has bought and paid off (that I do not dare step near or by) and decides that it just will not do. She sleeps on my parent’s bed that night under a heated blanket with an eye mask, and demands my school laptop so she can browse zillow. She calls in a few favors before she falls asleep like that, my laptop on her legs. I have to sneak it back from her so I can be sure she doesn’t break it, and in the morning she’s already got a second house lined up. They go and make a payment on it while I spend a day with Mom and Dad, cooking dinner and cleaning my room. Mom shoots Dad looks from the corner of her eye while she cooks, but never says anything about the enigma of Cheryl.

I suppose we had all better keep on our best behavior, considering she’s more manipulative than a weather forecast station.

Cheryl comes back in a whirlwind the next day, dragging me out of the house with her to go shopping for her new home. I try to avoid her by hiding in my favorite tree, but when she shows up Dad takes her straight to me and they stand, staring up at me huddled in my tree with my writing notebook in hand. I snap it closed and hide it in the back of my jeans very fast, before she can demand to see what I’ve written. Too many embarrassing songs and poetry would be the answer, but I just stare down at them before admitting that it’s not worth the hassle. When we get out to town everything is a fight. Anything I suggest she immediately shoots down, and in the end she buys most everything she wants that’s three times the price it ought to be before taking me to lunch. I’ve nearly chewed a hole in my lip by the third hour, but she’s also managed to buy me several items I needed for the upcoming school year and a very nice dress I can imagine myself wearing on stage for my next jury exam.

Lunch is sushi, which I’m not so fond of, but eat happily despite my aversion to raw fish, considering it’s not coming from my wallet. And, there's a never ending plate of crab rangoons. My favorite.

She sips on a real matcha, green liquid clinging to the edges of her lips and coating her teeth. She eats like she’s some type of royalty, picking around her food with a fork and dabbing at her face with a napkin. I eat my sushi whole, trying to use chopsticks before getting angry and stabbing the wooden stick into the rice ball and shoving it into my mouth. I don’t know what’s in the roll that she ordered for me, but it doesn’t taste too bad. I try not to look too hard at the substance inside, and that helps make it easier to wolf down.

“So. How is school going?” Cheryl doesn’t look up from where her french tips are tapping away at her phone, the other hand still holding her fork. I roll my eyes since she isn’t looking anyways.

“I’m not in school right now.”

“Yes, I know. But I’m sure you still study over the breaks, don’t you? Keep your honor roll?”

I pick around my near empty plate, smearing wasabi around. It’s a heavy porcelain square with burnt edges. I imagine bashing it over Cheryl’s head, and it glittering like gold as it crowns her. She laughs at something on her phone.

“I do.”

Being a music major was not everything rainbows and kittens like most people thought it was. To be honest, it had to be up there with some of the most difficult challenges I’d ever had to accomplish. I was just about to start my third year of undergrad, which meant that now instead of focusing so much on theory we were more concerned about application, as well as ethnomusicology. I wasn’t the worst at theory, but my aural skills were lacking. Sue me if I wasn’t able to listen to a four part trumpet harmony and notate it in perfect pitch in ten minutes.

Cheryl taps at her phone a few times, before she looks up at me all expectant like I’d never answered her in the first place. I groan internally.

“I keep up with it. Every once in a while a group of us get together and study. Go over what last semester's material was about, the works,” I don’t notice when I fling my chopsticks around my head and get wasabi everywhere until Cheryl coughs. I grin at her sheepishly, but don’t bother trying to clean it up. She instead spits on a napkin and wipes at the wood, tapping her small heeled foot under the table.

“Anything else to keep your young mind busy?”

“I play chess.”

Cheryl hums, and waves the waiter over for the bill.

“What about your hands? I heard from your father that you’d played a couple shows here and there? Is that what you’re wanting to do with a degree?” She hands the waiter a silver credit card, metal of course, and signs the receipt with a flourish. The waiter bows and takes Cheryl’s unused porcelain crown from me, and I huff. Without the chopsticks and wasabi to push around I cross my arms like I’m some delinquent middle school boy who swears to his Mom ‘it’s not a phase!’ The long sleeve shirt Cheryl had insisted on was scratchy on my arms, and I take to trying to dig my long nails into my skin through it.

I had been happy to wear my own clothes, but she had brought over a cardboard moving box full of her old ‘fashion icon items’ that she’d wanted to play dress up with. She got mad when I wouldn’t throw off my sweater, and out of her ass pulled the monstrosity that was a long sleeved shirt. The thing had some big wig name brand written across the tits, and kept falling off my left shoulder. I had to fight the scratchy thing and get it to sit right over my tattoo. I was sure by then, she and half of the tri state area had seen the entire left side of my bra.

It wasn’t my fault I wasn’t as well endowed as the queen bee’s fake titties.

That Blaze paid for. Gross.

I shook the thought out of my head, and looked up to see she was buried in her phone again. Figures.

“Yeah, I’ve played a few small shows here and there. I guess I’m aiming to be a performer, but I’ll be happy to get my teaching license, too. My focus is on vocal and guitar, and I’ll be happy the day I get to stop reading standard classical on my six string.”

“Well, I have a niece that’s about to get married. I should get you to be on the band stand,” she laughs to herself like it’s some funny joke. I only squint my eyes at her and dig my nails in deeper.

There’s a look in her eyes that flashes every so often. It’s a color that suits my ideal of her, of a character to not be trusted. She boasts on and on about how great she is, about how she donates to charity and wants to help me out and become someone like I’m some charity case or her child, and it makes my chest pause.

I grit my teeth and bear the weight of her stares. I smile towards her, gums and all, when she speaks. When she mentions Blaze and the family business it’s a very obvious test, one I try to act oblivious towards. She passes the subject on when I don’t give her the reaction she wants, and it feels like I’ve just won the lottery.

Bingo. I know something that she thinks I don’t.

I try to wonder why it would matter in the first place that I happen to be privy to just what Blaze is still up to these days, (and how he paid for her boobs) but I don't get far. Cheryl is up and at me fast, ushering me out of my booth and dragging me to the next shop. I think to myself that I can’t wait until she blows over, and skips town again.

–

“I can’t stand that woman,” I grumble to July the next day. She giggles and passes me her sharpie, poking at the book in her hand where she wants me to doodle. I’m no good at drawing, but I amuse her anyways. July is pretty much religious with her daily bullet journal, each page a plethora of quotes and sticky notes and receipts. At the top of today’s page she’s got underlined in red pen are the words THREE MORE WEEKS - 21 DAYS. The last page to the left has a big fat number 22 on the top corner that gets scratched out by my sharpie. I draw my best impression of a worm, which is really just a squiggle, and write Cheryl’s name above it. July hands me a new marker.

“Jeez, I couldn’t have told you that.”

I hum at her, twirling the purple sharpie in my fingers the way I’d been taught to hold a drum stick. I hadn’t touched a drum kit in years, but the muscle memory was still there. I popped the lid to the new sharpie with my mouth, and held it there as I scribbled in the margins of barely there white space. Little hearts and stars and things that kindergarteners knew to draw.

“And like, I can’t even say anything because then what if it upsets Blaze?” When I speak I spit drool onto the journal, and normally July would be fast to yank it away from me but her eyes look like she’s far away. After a while, she finally responds to me, eyes glazed over as she glances out her bedroom window. It’s about time for her Dad to get home, but we don’t move from our spot on her pink bed sheets.

“What’s the worst he can do, really?”

I shrug at her.

“I don’t know, murder my whole family? I told you before about how-”

“How he’s killed people before, yes Coy, I remember. That doesn’t mean he’s gonna kill you. He has no reason to, you’re family. And plus, isn’t he weirdly obsessed with your Dad?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. I don’t trust Cheryl, though. We don’t even have a full set or idea on what she’s done. She could be like, a baby killer or something.”

“I would sure hope not.”

“I would too,” I spit the cap of the marker out onto the bedsheets in my lap, and jam it back on the purple sharpie. I needed red again.

“She’s too nice. I don’t trust it. And keeps wanting to do girly shit with me. She’s taking me to get my nails done tomorrow. I’ve never had anyone do that before.”

“I’ve had it done a few times. Most recent was for senior prom. Mom insisted.”

We watch a few cars pass out the window, and I know I should leave soon. But her bed is warm, and her leg is just barely touching mine under the comforter. Her long hair is up again, a few long strands in the front tickling my neck when she reaches over me for the bucket of markers. I brought my speaker and it’s somewhere between us in the bed, playing soft rock and some lofi mix that just fades to background music. Dad would call it elevator music, but it was enough to listen to.

I remember then that July paints her own nails, and I ask her for suggestions on color.

“Black? Or a fade to match your hair?”

I forgot to shower last night, having run around with Cheryl all day so my hair falls nearly limp around my face and down my back. When I first got there I asked July to sniff my armpits, and when she wouldn’t I wrestled her to the floor and pulled her nose up under my arm, her scrambling to get away.

“Black is always your first answer.”

I take the cap off the red marker and twist it onto the back, scribbling over my hearts in the journal. July leans back against her pillows, thinking.

“Black is a good color.”

“I disagree.”

“Disagree? What, you don’t like the dark now?”

“Nah, I disagree about black being a color. It’s good, goes with anything…” I trail off mid-thought, finishing the last star in the corner. I turn around and face July, her all sprawled out with her eyes closed. I get a bright idea then, and inch up the bed closer to her.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“About what?” I feign innocence, before breaking out in a huge grin and laugh as I try to get a mustache drawn on her face.

“You don’t even need me to draw one on you, you already have one!”

She spits at me, grabbling for the marker out of my right hand.

“Ohh, low blow,” I hiss around my teeth, fighting her off.

“Hair so dark, you might as well be a chupacabra. Maybe that’s why you dye it-,” she lunges then, yanking the pen from me and leaving only the cap in my hand, smearing the red ink across my face. I roll my eyes when she laughs.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

All is quiet in the neighborhood that Cheryl has been staying in. I sit, or more or less, lay curled at an awkward angle in the passenger seat of my truck, waiting on Dad to come back from whatever conversation includes Cheryl’s decrepit ass this time. Be it him cleaning out her freezer, or painting around an old light socket or whatever. It’d been about two weeks since she had come to live in the area, and I was sick of her as could be. Of course, that was no news to anyone. She’d finally stopped dragging me around town with her, but still took to doting on me like I was some long lost daughter.

But behind those small motions, was a glint in her eye. The same one I told July about.

When Dad got the call from her earlier in the day he cussed to himself and waited until the last ring to pick up. She was worried about her heat and air unit not working right and costing them extra, and said that she’d pay him to come out and look at it. I grumbled when he asked to borrow my truck, because didn’t Cheryl have more than enough money to find someone else to fix it? Dad just shrugged and patted me on the shoulder, saying that it was more money for the light bill for us. I couldn’t argue.

So here I sit, alone in my own vehicle waiting on him, because there’s no way I want to go sit in there and play house with a woman like her. I can see my breath start to fog in the cooler night, the windows hazing up as I try to nap. I pull my sweater closer around myself, trying to save gas money by keeping the car off. My toes wiggle in my converse, jammed up by the corner of the dash as I lean back against the console. I never have been one to sit still for very long or in a regular way. It makes my skin itch, not being able to move. That’s one thing I picked up from Dad’s genes, considering he can’t sit still either. My feet bump back and forth against the front windshield to an invisible song in my head, and I take to counting streetlamps.

I couldn’t imagine living in such a suburban neighborhood. All the houses are too close together, and no one knows their neighbors. Too much pavement. Too many houses. Too much everything that wasn’t wood. The house that Cheryl was currently renting was nice, two stories and recently renovated, but hardly any yard.There was a wooden privacy fence along the sides, and it made the whole place feel smaller than what it would have been if it were open. But I could see the appeal of a fence. At least then you didn’t have to be as worried about your neighbors looking across the way and into your windows, and with as shady as Cheryl could be she’d probably want to stay as hidden as possible.

Well, the best rule I’d learnt about doing things you weren’t supposed to was to do it in plain sight. The first time I stole a car it was five o’clock traffic hour, and everyone was so busy about what they were doing they didn’t pay any attention to me. You know, people start to get real suspicious when you do that kind of thing under the cover of darkness,like those people who steal stuff in the movies. It’s kinda obvious you’re about to do something you shouldn't when you show up to the gas station at midnight, walking, in a black hoodie with the hat up and a black beanie and mask. That’s enough to make anyone look at you twice.

But when you do bad things unapologetically, with some sort of reckless abandon or disregard? With a sense of finality and casual ‘oh, well, I’m supposed to be here,’ vibe? That’s when no one bats an eye.

IUrgh, it’s starting to actually get a little chilly. Middle of summer and in an off season. It’s rained for nearly a week straight, causing the temperature to drop. I pull my sweater up closer around my face, inhaling the scent of me. It feels like home. I start to worry about Dad in the house with Cheryl.

I’m sure that he’s fine. Probably. Cheryl seems to have calmed down since being here for a few weeks, and Blaze’s truck is in the driveway so I can only assume that he’s in the house with them. They’ve probably just got caught up talking to each other about this or that, or making future plans of where they’re selling and trying to rope Dad in. I try not to think so hard about that, and about the recent increase in ‘jobs’ they’ve been having him do. To be honest, I’d been trying to block it from my mind as much as possible. But that was kind of hard when it was summer and I didn’t work much or have school, so I was around Dad all the time.

Which meant I was usually with him when he made the drop offs.

I reach for my phone in my pocket and check the time. Nearly eleven at night, which means I’ve been sitting in the driveway, cold, for nearly two hours. July has sent me some cat videos on the worldwide web, and I giggle as I watch them. My eyes start to feel heavy the more I scroll, the light starting to make my headache. I snuggle back down into my sweater, content to listen to some kittens mewl and beg July for attention and wait.

Only for the passenger door of my car to be ripped open all of a sudden, and a figure emerge from the dark to grab me by the ankle and try to yank me from the car seat.

“What the hell-” I kick back against who has my foot and look up to see Cheryl, her face curled in on itself and her fake nails she bought the other day digging into my skin. Her hair is wild and the front door of the house is open wide, light spilling out into the tiny front yard. She keeps pulling on my ankle as I grab onto the console and try to pull myself back into the truck, very confused about what was going on. My mouth opens again to ask what she thinks she’s doing, when I catch what she’s holding in the other hand.

The Taurus clicks in her hand as she points it right at my face, kept at arm's length only by my legs pushing her. I stop for a moment, breathing hard and chest feeling like it was going to take flight.

“Get out of the car. Now.” She grits, yanking my ankle and twisting it in a direction that feet should definitely not go. I flail again in her hold, shaking her and the gun she’s holding near my face. No dice. Getting out of the car at this moment, with the devil pointing that thing in my face seems like a sure death sentence. I feel like I’ve been held up by a cop, or really worse, because cops don’t usually go straight to trying to shoot you. (Usually.)

“Chloe, if you don’t get your ass out of this car right now, I’m going to shoot you.”

Part of me believes her. Her face is stricken with anger, wild and posture much similar to that of a wild dog. And I know Cheryl has killed before. I might not have proof, but sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. I might not know what all she’s capable of, or have been around her long, but all the hairs on my head are on end.

I wonder where Dad is in that moment, and it hits me that she’s been out here for nearly an entire minute and he has not come running yet. My eyes light up with fire, and my veins burn. I grit my teeth and kick her as hard as I can, bucking to get out of her hold still wrapped in my sweater and the seat belt. Her back slams against the door of my car as I try to take her to the pavement with my legs, beating her atop the head with my converse covered crooked heel.

With my left hand I fling open the glove box, and pull everything out into the floor. The compartment goes tumbling down and out of the car, contents spewing across Cheryl and the pavement of her driveway, lit only by a yellow streetlamp across the way. I try to stomp on the hand of her’s that’s holding the gun and miss, landing instead on a flashlight from my glovebox and crushing it with one go. She recovers from the ground as my hand is nearly elbow deep in the dash of my car, digging for where I keep my own gun. I finally feel the engraved metal under my fingertips, wrapped in the wires that control the heat and air of my truck. Just as I wrap my fingers around the hilt of it Cheryl is pulling herself into my space, taking her gun and trying to jam it up against my forehead. I growl, some pitiful noise that’s full of desperation and annoyance, and finally, rip my gun free from the innards of my car.

I hold it to her throat, and dig the metal into her esophagus. She has my legs in some awful hold where they’re above my head, and I’m half laying in the car and half out on the pavement. Something hard and plastic is digging into my back, and somewhere in the fray I've lost a shoe. My sweater is still tangled in the nylon belt of the car, keeping me from getting drug out and across the driveway, out into the open, where I feel more vulnerable.

Cheryl’s chest heaves as she glares down at me, her black and sleek 9mm bruising the space between my eyebrows. My own .22 revolver in kind, giving a mocking bruise on her throat where a hickey would usually go.

(She’s really too old for hickeys anyways-)

“Put the fuckin’ guns down,” I hear from the front of the house, followed by heavy footsteps. I look up to see Blaze standing behind Dad with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, cigarette dripping from his lips as he feigns an innocent pose. Dad stands right at the base of the front porch steps, fingers of both hands curled around the trigger of his own handgun. It’s pointed at Cheryl, but he’s still several feet away from her. I could imagine he was trying to sneak up on her, but I was so caught up in her whirlwind of emotion that I hadn’t been paying anything else attention. Somewhere down the street a dog is howling, and I guess I’m glad for the tall privacy fence.

I stay right where I’m at, one eye trained on Cheryl’s face. I’m still all sprawled out against the seat and ground, calf in the hold of the psycho bitch from hell in front of me. I can tell I’m about to start shaking, since my heart is skipping beats and I feel like I’ve just been punched right in the diaphragm. It’s similar to the feeling after singing a long phrase, where you’ve given all your breath and it still requires more. So you have to push against your instinct, and pretend you’re going to drown if you don’t. My throat burns like I’ve been pitching notes outside of my range, and I can feel where Cheryl has drug her long acrylics down one of my arms and both ankles. Something hard is still digging into my back, and every time I take a breath I can feel it push deeper into my flesh.

Cheryl’s eyes flick from my face to the side, almost as if she can see behind her. Blaze is slowly approaching, one arm slung across Dad’s shoulders dragging him with every step. Dad seems eager to get to me, and I have to fight the urge for my eyes to flash towards them. He’s still holding his weapon, but it’s been lowered in compliance for Blaze, one of the old con man’s hands resting atop both of Dad’s and the gun. Cheryl’s chest is pushing and pulling, mouth open like a dog, panting for breath. She’s crouched over at such an awkward angle, feet splayed and supporting my lower body weight. The gun against my forehead starts to shiver, and she suddenly lets go of my leg. My body somewhat tumbles further out of the truck, but I’m caught by the belt again. Part of the shoulder strap is strangling me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it left a nasty bruise against my collarbones.

Even after Cheryl lets my legs free, she doesn’t let up on her grip of the gun. She nudges my head further back, bearing my throat to her. I shove my revolver towards her in kind, and she hisses and growls.

“You better think twice about doing that. You don’t know what game you’re playing, little girl.”

I bear my teeth towards her like a grin, and I can feel my back molars scraping and crying against the abuse.

“I know I’m playing with a snake,” I snip back, which is the wrong fucking thing to say. Remember when in chapter one where I mentioned a lot of my issues could be solved if I just kept my mouth shut? Yeah, this is one of those times.

The blonde old wench takes her gun high above her head and brings it down on my scalp, with the other hand she takes the seat belt that’s choking me and pulls with all her mighttaking the seat belt choking me with the other hand and pulling with her might. And believe me, she’s strong to be such an old hag.

I yelp out and buck, kicking right between where her legs were split as hard as I can. Her knees buckle a little, and as she starts to flail she takes the seatbelt with her. I have my gun pointed at her again, and my heart starts to gallop.

I’ve never wanted to kill someone before.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

No one ever tells you that that moment, when you’re prepared to pull that trigger, nothing stops. Nothing stands still around you, or starts to misbehave. The movies and books all lie. It’s just a split second in judgment, where raw emotion takes flight and form, and shifts into something ugly and evil. It’s self defensive, I know, but I’d always swore I’d never kill someone. It was so

wrong.

I was brought back to all those old church sermons as a kid, butt aching from sitting cross legged on a pew for far too long. The preacher urges us to follow the bible, and I agree eagerly. He speaks of disagreeances of two siblings, and how abruptly one takes the life of another. Cain and Abel, I recall, biting my tongue and licking my teeth.

Only, things there were much more cut and dry. One cuts the other down, out of jealousy and disregard for his Lord. There was not such a struggle or fight written on those thin and dusty pages. It was not Abel who slain his brother out of self protection. Protection or not, murder was wrong. It was one of the Ten Commandments, listed on the marquee in flashing lights with arrows pointing towards it that say, ‘thou Shall not kill’ in fancy, bold and gold script.

But believe it or not, humans are hardly any better than the animals we raise. We are still mortal, albeit with some sense of humanity that has been deemed better, more intelligent. We rule the food chain and the land. And yet, in that moment, I am nothing more than a dog.

A dog who is foaming at the mouth, spittle curling down my lips and chest and bleeding into my soft coral sweater. It eats away at my brain, such an animalistic instinct. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, fight, shoot first.

I can’t breathe, from where Cheryl has me pinned. Seatbelt across my throat and head

aching where she’s busted it with the bottom of her Taurus. I can’t breathe, and things are getting blurry.

Shoot to kill.

It pounds against my skull, beats the inside of my bones.

Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill.

I feel the warm metal trigger against my finger, hammer cocked and loaded. The engraved ivy and roses alongside the barrel bare themselves into my skin like a tattoo, blending with the red sweaty flesh.

Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill. Shoot. To. Kill.

It happens in the blink of an eye, and it happens like this.

I go to pull the trigger and Blaze is on Cheryl in an instant. He has shoved Dad’s head down and away from the scene, kneed his gun from his hands. He yanks Cheryl onto the pavement, and kicks away her Taurus. He starts beating her with his fists, and everything flashes before my eyes but not because I pulled the trigger-

because I didn’t

.

I realize I’ve been holding my breath, this odd some seconds, and gasp into the chilly night air. The dog down the street yowls and yips, and I’m reminded of the coyote pack at the house. Dad comes to me in the seat of my car and cuts the belt off of me with his pocket knife instead of trying to bother with the buckle, and pulls me by the elbow until I’m standing. He herds me behind him, and tells me to keep my gun in my hands but, “For the love of- don’t shoot.”

I obey, but only because I’m shaking so hard and so confused over even what this is all over and shit- I was ready to murder my own great-aunt right then. Which was a terrifying thought if you’ve ever felt anything similar.

I’m stuck in my head arguing with myself over whether I was really about to pull that trigger or not when Blaze stands up and yells at Cheryl.

“Get your motherfucking ass in that damn house right now, woman, or I swear, I’ll kill you next. Or divorce you so fast, your head will spin and fall off. Go! Git! Now, damn it!” He shoos her with his hands like she’s an animal, and she hisses back at him like she is. It takes her a minute to find her bearings and stand, before limping back up the three porch steps into the house, glaring at the three of us left outside in the meantime.

She slams the door on the way in, and it feels like a final bell tolling at a factory graveyard shift.

Blaze sighs like the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and rubs the space between his eyebrows and receding hairline. For once he’s not wearing his hat, and the cigarette fell out of his mouth when he was beating his wife. I shift my stance behind Dad, foot starting to smart from where Cheryl turned it the wrong way. I can’t exactly blame Blaze for beating her, even though normally I’d say I was against abuse.be all for women’s rights and old southern gender stereotypes and yada yada.

I glare at Blaze from behind Dad as he lights up a second cigarette, flicking the ashes and heat off of his hand from the Zippo in his pocket.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to explain to me what’s just happened but no one seems to want to own up to the fact that Cheryl just about killed me. (And in turn, I about shot her).

Dad’s shoulders fall a little in front of me, and he sticks his gun down the belt of his pants. He turns to look me over, but not without keeping one eye on Blaze. I’m leaning most of my weight against the truck, now, gun in my hand with a death grip and knuckles white. Dad pokes a spot in my hair, and a thin trail of blood traces itself down my face. I spit at the blood and blink it away before giving up, taking the bottom hem of my shirt to wipe away at it. It burns like I’m on fire, and Dad pulls a dirty garage rag from his back pocket to wipe at my face and head.

“You’ll get it infected,” Blaze says, taking a step back to lean against the vinyl siding of the house. He blows smoke out of his nose and takes another drag. “If it’s an open wound, anyways.”

I don’t have insurance to go to the ER or a clinic, nor the money to pay, either. I wave Dad’s hand away and take the red rag from him, pressing it to my head wound just to spite Blaze. I glare at him from my spot, and I’m still holding my revolver in my right hand, along with the dirty bloody grease rag. I let out a low groan as the dog down the street barking makes my head achesmart. I look to Dad to silently ask him what happened, but he won’t meet my eyes. His hand is still hovering over me, as if he’s afraid to touch me. I blink and bump towards him, asking for reassurance. He wraps an arm around me but still doesn’t face me, bothered more by staring down the porch steps or the faint glow of Blaze’s Marlboro. Just as I open my mouth to ask what exactly just happened, the devil speaks first.

“It came out of the wood works that you, little missy, have been sticking it with your Dad.”

I blink a few times, in the dark at him. I notice again my breath is coming out in a fog, along with the two men beside me. I equate Dad’s to a buck in the woods on a frosty morning, what with how his nose is running down his facial hair and the anger and flightiness flashing in his eyes. Then it hits me. Cheryl was angry, to the point of trying to murder me, in a semi-public area, because I knew that Dad was dealing drugs for them. And, going with him.

….what?

What in the world did that matter?! I was no rat, and what did they expect? Dad and I were close, yeah, of course she should figure I would know. And even the fact that I did, why did it bother her so much? Because they thought I would run to the police? Blaze had already asked for my helping hand with that incident at Moonshine Meadows, what was the issue?

And everyone in the local tristate area knew what and who Blaze was, there was no way the local police department couldn’t just come knocking on his door to arrest him at any moment. I had to figure he had people working on the inside, to the point it wouldn’t matter if I did go to the cops.

So why the hell did it matter so much if I was in the know? I was family, for goodness sakes.

So again, I go to open my mouth to voice all of this, to shout it to the rooftops and ask all these questions when Blaze motions for the two of us to come inside, putting his cigarette out on the heel of his boot. Dad stubs up, and I lean further back into the car.

None of us move.

“You have to admit that she’s young and unreliable, Jacks.” Blaze gestures with his hand in a wide arching motion, covering his view of me. I frown harder. “If she was anyone else, she would have shot Cheryl just then. Even after I pulled her away.”

I blink at his nonchalant tone and tilt my head. Shoot her? After she wasn’t trying to kill me? No thanks pal, I did not want to go to jail for murder. Or to Hell, for that matter. Although, it seemed the harder I fought that train the faster the wheels pushed and the greater the amount of coal was getting shoveled into the fuel box. The way Blaze put it made it sound like he wouldn’t have been too upset if I had killed his wife. Which, yeah they had problems, big ones, but not the kind I thought warranted them wanting the other to eat it. Bite the big Bazooka, if you will. Only the kind that made them sneak and dance around each other, to see who could obtain the most money.

Oh. This was all over

money

.

I groaned.

“I’m glad that she didn’t just shoot your wife, Blaze, because Coy would have killed her if she had.” Dad pulled me a little closer up under his arm, and I had to bite back a whimper. That seat belt really did a number on me.

Blaze laughed, as if that thought was a particularly hilarious one. As if I didn’t have the power or will to kill. I was still struggling internally over that thought. I had been ready to kill her. Or, I thought I was. I was trying to convince myself that I wasn’t, but there wasn’t much thought involved in those few seconds before Blaze ripped the woman away from me.

The devil in the corner cleared his throat, stepping out from the shadow of the house and rolling his shoulders from his brief stint with Cheryl. He examined Dad’s face, not a thought showing through his eyes. I tried to think of what he was after, other than money, when he turned to me and smiled.

“I have a proposition for you, Chloe.”

I hissed.

“I think it will benefit everyone involved, if you agree. You see, Cheryl here is ready to have you killed. Obviously, to try so sloppily. And while I favor both of y’alls company-”

“Blaze I love you, you’re my uncle. You’ve pulled me out of a lot of shit. But if you threaten my kid one more time, I’m going to put you in your grave,” Dad butt in, and I couldn’t remember ever hearing him speak with such malice in his voice. Blaze only smiled down at the two of us and took a step closer, holding out his hand.

“Nah, I’m not threatening. Merely offering Chloe a way to make some extra money on the side. Work for me in earnest, and I’ll even pay you.”

“Quit calling me Chloe. It’s Coy,” I spit. I felt like I could lay out on the cold concrete right then and go to bed. Things were starting to blur around the edges, and my head was still on fire. Anything had to be cooler than the rag I held against my scalp, and I tried to blink myself awake. Everything was moving, even when I was sure I was still.

That dog was still barking down the street.

“Alright, Coy. Fine then. Run a few jobs with your Dad, run a few jobs with me. Pay the bills. Quit dicking around and getting yourself and him into trouble, and being a pain by just sitting in the car. You’re gonna get caught like that, and I’m not going back to prison. Either you keep your ass at home, at school, or you do what I tell you. Make some cash.” Blaze said, with conviction. Dad threw him a glare. Blaze held up his hands.

“I mean that in a, ‘you’ll get caught or in trouble’ kind of way. You do what I tell you, you’ll be safe.”

“I’m not letting my kid sell drugs for you-”

“Well you’ve had her do a whole lot of other shit, haven’t you? Stealing cars at eleven, burning houses down. Drinking. I heard about the youngest Prince girl from different cops around. We all know you don’t keep a tight leash on her, Jack. Just the same way your Dad did you.”

More like Dad kept such a tight leash on me I couldn’t get away from all his troubles, I grumbled. It wasn’t like I wanted to steal that car- I was a kid. I couldn’t just up and walk away from my Dad after he picked me up from school that day, even if I felt it was wrong at the time.

“All you’ll have to do is make a few deliveries. I can get you permanent backstage passes at The JukeJoint, and you deliver there only. And then, help your Dad with whatever he wants. I’ll pay you a hundred for every deal, and can get you working every weekend. You know how to commit a crime without getting caught, Coy. I can see it in your eyes. All you have to do is hand over a little paper package, and I’ll pay good money. Otherwise, we’re gonna have some real trouble.”

“I’m not letting my kid do that.”

“I’m not asking you.”

The three of us were in a staredown for a few moments. Really, I was just trying to process exactly what Blaze had asked of me. It was getting harder to understand the words coming from his mouth. It felt like back in high school when I took Spanish, and the teacher would only speak in Spanish during class. Every once in a while I could catch a word, but other than that I was lost. The staredown continued.

Eventually, Blaze deflated.

“Give it a day or two, but I want an answer.”

He turned from us and stalked toward the house, looking back over his shoulder as he opened the front door. The warm light from the living room spilled out onto his face, highlighting his newly re-crooked nose. It seemed as if Cheryl had gotten in a few good hits on him, too. From inside I could hear her screaming, yelling at him and cussing to the world. Her voice was high, and so shrill it made me wince.

My movement brought Dad back to his senses and he finally looked me in the face, eyes meeting mine. He took a breath in his nose and nodded to the car. I shrugged, and he turned to get in the driver's seat. I had forgotten about the contents of my glovebox strewn across the pavement, and it took all of five minutes to clear everything up and throw it into the backseat. I crashed back into the passenger side when I was done, reaching for the belt only to realize it was nonexistent.

Everything hurt.

“Do you need a doctor?” Dad asked, starting the car up and pulling out of Cheryl’s driveway. I shook my head, only to moan when it made everything smear into one picture.

“Wanna go home,” I grit out, and so we did just that.

Neither of us said anything on the way back, and all I could hear was tires against asphalt, and the sound of a bullet I never shot.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Some Years Before

The rain comes so fast and so heavy, that everything is tinged with yellow. It swathes the woods with sheets of water, a downpour that drenches the dirt and causes bubbles of flash floods to arise. The ground has been so dry for so long, that it can’t help but reject the sudden onslaught of rain. I watch it spill out of the gutters and off the roof of the porch and onto the garden, pooling around marigolds and roses and rushing down the side of the hill. It races in muddy brown waters down the steep gravel driveway, dances around the tires of trucks parked in the yard. It’s so heavy and loud, that I can hardly hear the squeak of the porch swing every time I push back.

As the water pools and hits the hoods of cars and the hot tin roof of the garage steam starts to arise, making the woods hazy with fog and clouding my vision. I sigh and lean further back into the scratchy twine swing, pushing back with each beat of thunder and letting my legs dangle. They hardly reach the porch from this angle, and it’s the tips of my toes bearing the weight of my pushes.

“And it was an accident, you say?”

I humm at the gruff and tired voice to my right, refusing to look the man’s way. He doesn’t seem to appreciate my lack of respect, and moves in front of my line of sight. I shift so I’m looking off the side of the house, towards the uncovered wrap around porch. The rain beats the tall white pine there, wind blowing it side to side. Thunder cracks as lightning hits outside of my view, and the man once again comes to stand in front of me. I huff, and turn the other way. I study the lines of the trim on the cars in the driveway as if they are the most interesting thing ever. Fine prints of decals against stark white, clean cruisers who have never seen the dirt of the mountain. I scratch the top of my head where my hair has matted.

“Listen, I’m not afraid to cuff you and put you in the back of one of those cars if you don’t want to corporate. I’m trying to be kind and give you the benefit of the doubt, kid.” I scowl and meet the man’s eyes as he crouches down to ‘my level.’ It’s vaguely hard to hear him over the sound of the rain, and it’s too easy to pretend I’m somewhere else with its cover.

The blue of his uniform crashes with the yellow from the onslaught.

I stare at him, frowning, while he tries to convey his sincerity. It doesn’t take the officer long to give up and sigh, turning from me.

“I’ll ask you again. What happened on the night of July 17th?”

“I’ve already told you. I spent the day in the woods. When I got back for dinner, one of my parent’s friends was here. He’s the one who brought the trailer with the lawnmowers. That’s all I know.”

The officer doesn’t want to take my answer as truth. He raises an eyebrow at me and reaches for the cuffs dangling from his belt as if it will scare me.

It does, a little. I don’t like being in tight spaces, and the last time I was in the back of a cruiser, cuffed, I had a panic attack. When the cop finally let me out she got angry that I came flying at her, nails raised trying to scratch her face off. That was a year ago and I was only ten, I’d grown since then.

I’d grown up enough to learn that you don’t fight a cop with a taser, or pull your hands out of cuffs. My wrists were bruised for weeks, and since then I’d been labeled a ‘flight risk’ by local authorities and the school system.

“What about the road signs in the garage? Or the stolen tools and equipment?”

I hear a crash from inside the kitchen, and hear my Mom cuss from the open door of the cabin. I want to turn and look into the front windows of the house to see what’s going on, but the officer snaps his fingers in front of my face. I huff at him.

“I don’t know! I’m only a kid, I don’t know!” I was starting to get sick of getting questioned like I was an adult. Or like I was the problem. I hadn’t been the one to drive those lawnmowers up on the trailer. Or pull those road signs out of the ground. Or yank the display tools off of their leashes in the department store.

I only helped put the trailer tailgate back up and look out for people passing by. I only stacked the road signs in the bed of the truck and held them close in the backseat, protected by windows tinted black. I only took the tools from rough hands and kept them under my shirt as we walked out of the store, and turned to look sheepishly at the store clerk as she waved us through the front door with an apology about the alarm going off for no reason.

I only lied straight to the cop’s face, the same officer I always ended up getting questioned by. I think he had some weird complex about trying to help kids stuck around juvie find their ways to better lives, but there was nothing wrong with mine. It tells you in the Bible you’re supposed to respect your parents, and it would be mighty disrespectful to not do as they asked. They had bills to pay, and it was too hot at night to sleep without power again. I got sick of watching that ceiling fan spin from phantom winds and eating dry cereal by the light of a candle for dinner.

I got sick of seeing them drunk all the time and fight in the dark. So I did what I was told, with little question because they were my parents. I loved them, and they knew the right way better than anyone else. Certainly, with more assurance than the man in blue crouched before me, looking into my  eyes with false sympathy. He only wanted to pin me in the back of a cruiser, or lock me in juvie.

Or worse, have me admit to all of these terrible crimes and make one little call to Child Protective Services. I shivered in my seat, despite the heat and humidity. The rain fell harder, and I found comfort in the thick woods clouded by water.

“This one time, I’ll believe you. One time!” He says, pushing his pointer finger in my face and tapping my chest. “But kid, next time. Kid next time I see you, you’d better tell me the truth. I can only help you so far-”

“But you don’t want to help me,” I say with exasperation. He sighs, and chews a lip.

“Is that what they told you?” He gestures inside the house, and this time I turn to look in the windows unhindered. Mom is scrubbing graffiti off of stolen police equipment in the kitchen sink, hands cuffed together as two officers stand behind her. There are tears falling from her eyes, but they’re glowing with anger. I turn from where she’s cursing them, and let my eyes find the row of marigolds we stole from the

Lawn and Garden

section two weeks ago. The rain is pelting them down towards the dirt, and I feel bad for the pops of orange and yellow. Officer Keith gestures towards the garage across the driveway, and I can see Dad from the open drop down door. He’s also cuffed, with one of his friends, getting questioned by a few cops. There’s a pile of road signs by their feet, and there’s a wrecker in the driveway trying to fight the rain to tow away the trailer of stolen, zero turn mowers.

Those would have brought enough money to pay the light bill next month and a few groceries.

“I can help you if you let me, kid. You don’t have to live like this.”

I look at the woods I love so much, hidden by the fog of evening. The white pines and  oaks bring me joy, the beech in the back corner where the trees start to get thick carved from my Dad and mine’s hand. The swingset he so lovingly built me with parts he got from the dump. The four wheeler trail that leads into the mountains, that I’ve walked for so long. The log Dad sits with me on to play guitar and watch the sunset.

I look back to the garage at Dad. He’s leaning against the jamb of the garage door, the garage he built himself that holds four cars and a hidden still room. (I suspect the cops still haven’t found that one. They might have their suspicions, but they hadn’t checked behind the left workbench, yet.) Dad’s hair is flat against his head from the rain, and it looks wrong to see him without a hat or cigarette. But he’s Dad. He’s the one who tucks me in at night and holds me on his lap to play guitar and sing silly country songs. Who built me a playset from parts from the dump, and makes sure I at least have dry cereal to eat for dinner. And I think of Mom in the kitchen, scrubbing. Of her sewing me dresses to wear to school and holding my hand. Her reading the Bible to me by light of candles that have been in the family way for decades.

I pull my hand through my dark hair, thick with matts and knotts. I can’t remember the last time it’s been brushed.

“It’s okay to want more for yourself,” the officer says softly. I shake my head.

“It was one of his friends. I know my parents wouldn’t do that,” I whisper to him, even though it’s a lie.

The rain falls in heavy sheets, and I watch the treetops sway with the weight of the water.

—---

“No! No, no no no!” I scream and flail as the man in blue pulls my arms completely against my back, lifting me by my elbows and dragging me from the house. He doesn’t give me enough time to grab anything, and I’m still in last night's pajamas. I can feel my chest racing, blood burning as it courses through my veins. I can’t see anything, everything is blurry and I definitely can’t breathe. I try to keep screaming but I’ve run out of breath, and it feels like someone’s just punched me in the gut. It feels like my world is collapsing in on itself.

I kick my legs out blindly in front of me as he pulls me off the porch, and down the driveway towards one of the cruisers. I’m screaming, crying, and kicking. My bare arms are burning from scratching myself so hard with anxiety, and I’m clawing at what I can reach of the officer behind me.

“Let me the

fuck

go! Now! Damn it! Now!”

The officer is shushing me, trying to herd me into the seat of the warm cop car. It’s too hot, everything is too hot and on fire. There’s snow on the ground and I’m barefoot, it’s hardly past time for the sun to come up and they showed up so

early

. I swore I wouldn’t let anyone take me away, and yet here I am.

Here it is, December 20th. I’m thirteen years old, and we’ve been evicted for good this time. Five days before Christms.

I’ve known it was coming for years, but it didn’t make it any easier. After all this time the only thing that’s stayed consistent in life has been the house. And now that was being taken away. Even if my parents were raging in their bedroom, or we were eating by candles or didn’t have food to eat at all. Even if I was getting bullied at school or rain or shine or despite the season, there was always

home.

The officer manages to get me into the back of the cruiser with all my fingers, and I start to panic. It’s too small, the bars in front of me give me anxiety. I want my Dad. I want my house, with my things and my window and damn it, I want my Dad. I look for a way out of the cruiser, try the back door handles and beat on the cage but I can’t get out. Tears are streaming down my face so fast I can’t see anything, and I could probably take flight with how fast my chest beats. My fingers shake as I dig them into my elbows, pulling blood from the skin of my arms. It gets stuck under my nails and paints the backseat of the car. I’m left alone long enough that I’m exhausted from fighting by the time the door opens again, covered in blood and tears and red with fever.

Officer Keith stands holding the door open, whistling down at me.

“Got yourself into a mess this time, kid,” he says, taking a seat beside me and closing the door. “Chilly out there.”

The windows back here have such dark tint I can’t see outside. It takes all of my strength to get any air into my lungs, and Keith tries to start a breathing exercise with me but it only makes me panic more.

“What can I do?” He asks.

“Dad. Need Dad. Now,” I hiss at him. He shakes his head, with a dark look in his eyes.

“Sorry kiddo, I think Jack is a little busy right now. He’s trying to get everything he can out of the house before the time is up. I hate that Officer Kelly pulled you out like he did, but he was scared you were going to jump off the balcony. Now Coy, tell me you wouldn’t have done that, would you?” He says it with sarcasm, like he knows the real answer.

I twitch violently as I shake my head, fingers pulling the skin of my arms again. Keith reaches forward and tugs my arms away, and I shuffle as far away as I can from him. My shoulders hit somewhere against the cold window and the bars separating the back of the cruiser to the front. I can’t hardly feel them digging into my back, but know with certainty that they are there. My bare feet are pushing the seat so hard the dirty leather wrinkles under my weight.

“I’m trying to help you, kiddo.” He says it with such a finality, like he knows the answer to that, too. Even though it wasn’t a question.

“Out.” I grit.

“Sorry, can’t do that. You’re too much of a flight risk. Maybe if you calmed down some, we could work something out. But right now I can’t do that for you.”

I close my eyes and scream.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When I first meet July, I’m making a joke about stealing a car at the lunch table. She’s overheard me from a few isles away, and carries her neon red lunch tray to sit next to mine. The plastic makes a strange sound on the table I’m not used to when it connects, and it makes me flinch. She doesn’t seem to notice. I blinked towards her, beautiful, with long dark hair piled on the top of her head and all slender face. She was smiling at me so brightly, like I was the sun or something cheesy like that. I smile back at her like she’s mine for the first time ever, all crooked teeth and dimples. . I smiled back, all crooked teeth and dimples.

“You know how to hotwire a car?” She asked, teasing the slop on her tray with a plain metal fork. I shrug over the sound of the lunch room, crowded with cruddy middle school kids.

“No, but my Dad does.”

“That’s pretty cool,” She says around a bite of canned corn. I grin.

“Yeah! It was a few years ago, but one day he picked me and my brother up from school and was all like, ‘hey, kids, I’ve got a job for you. I’ll even pay you.’ And of course that sounded pretty cool so he took us to this abandoned parking lot by my house where this car had been sitting for like, ever, and then bada bing bada bop, he hot wired that sucker.”

The pretty girl’s eyes sparkled at me, and I could tell I was fond of her already.

“So what, did you drive it home?” Excitement was coloring her tone, and I shook my head so fast one of my hair clips went flying at her. She laughed, picking it up off her lap and handing it back to me. “I like the purple,” She mentioned off handedly, and I ran fingers through my short purple hair as I stuck the barrette back in to hold my bangs back.

“Thank you! Sorry. But nope, the car ran out of gas. So he took a pull rope and hooked it up, so I got to sit and steer the car while he pulled it.” My hands were flying everywhere as I motioned my point, gaining a few annoyed glances from the table behind me. “Hold on,” I say to the pretty girl, and turn around and flip the boy behind me the bird. His mouth drops open, and he turns, taking his lunch tray as he scoots down to the other end of the table. I laugh, bright and delighted that I had managed to offend him so easily. The pretty girl besides me whistles.

“Man, you really don’t have a filter, do you?” She asks, and I stop for a moment. I can’t really tell if she’s being nice or rude by the comment, but she doesn't get up. She doesn't move away or stop speaking to me. And the next day she sits beside me again.

“So, Chloe-” She starts, but I stop her right there.

“I go by Coy.”

“Oh, okay. So Coy I was thinking-”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s July! Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier-”

I’d seen July around a couple of times, but never had a class with her before. I would like to say I was surprised she knew who I was, but it would be a lie. Everyone at school knew who I was after CPS showed up one day, dragging me by my arm out of the front lunch room doors.

I watched July as she spoke, her eyes sparkling and the long fringe of her hair brushing her collarbones. She holds herself upright, with a strange air of confidence I was constantly trying to mimic. Her clothes were clean and she smelled nice, and her hair wasn’t cut short from matts. I liked her, outright and straight away, and for some reason she liked me well enough back for us to be friends well into college. 
 
–

There’s something warm dribbling down my chin and dripping onto the linoleum tile floor, and I can’t quite tell where it’s coming from. My nose? My head? I spit the blood out against the white tiles, and raise my head up to look at the girl who had pushed me into the floor. We were in a remote corner of the arts hallway, where the fluorescent lights flicker and sometimes don’t work. This just so happens to be one of those days. It’s raining again, occasionally lighting up the sky outside of the windows and emergency exit door. There’s red and green highlighting the blonde girl’s face from the LED exit signs, she’s all made up with expensive makeup and fake nails. I growl at her.

“I’m just sayin’, if you can’t keep your mouth shut maybe you shouldn’t say anything at all, really. We get it. You want attention. But everyone knows all your stories are lies.” The metal baseball bat drags the floor as she swings it back and forth.

Brinley.

The blonde chick probably isn’t wrong. This was another one of those times that if I could keep my big mouth shut, I wouldn’t be having issues. Unfortunately, here I was, sprawled out on the linoleum floor, staring at my blurry reflection in a silver, metal bat. Down the end of the hall I can see the gym equipment storage closet door barley ajar, and I would bet money that that’s where the bat came from. The last time I got into a pretty big fight like this, which let’s face it, was a month ago, I was the one who got suspended. I didn’t even throw the first punch! But these assholes had a way of knowing which security cams were online and which weren’t, and everybody wants to believe the young, skinny, pretty girl with mascara dripping down her face. Crying out that she’s the victim.

I didn’t even land a hit on the last girl, considering she made her boyfriend pull all the punches. I’d secretly broken his left arm, but that was kept under wraps because the boy couldn’t afford one more fight on his record. High school drama, I swear.

I push myself up so I’m sitting cross legged on the floor, blood slowly dripping off my face and into my lap. I sneeze, and red goes flying all over Brinley’s new cream Lululemon sweater. She screams, and swings the bat towards me but misses. It seems it’s almost too heavy for her to hold, even though I know it’s only aluminum. I am positive that if I wanted, I could grapple for the bat and cripple her with it. I would never, but I am sure I have the strength. The power. The will.

I’ve been here so many times I don’t bother to explain myself. I used to. I used to cuss and scream and fight and yell, go all ‘cat fight mega bitch’ on anyone who looked at me wrong. But that seemed to never have the effect I’d wanted it to. This time, Brinley was mad because I’d been a part of a charity donation her parents had put aside money towards. I was kidding about the food selection, how annoying it was that it was never enough. I was always hungry, and most often the food items were things we couldn’t use. Afterall, you couldn’t cook without electricity, and you didn’t have electricity when you were living out of a car. Things like spaghetti, ramen, cans without the pull tabs. Anything that had to be kept cold. It was all naught. I’d been complaining to July about eating raw noodles again. How hard and crunchy they were, flavorless.

I’d been complaining about the charity, and Brinley took it the wrong way. Afterall, it was her parents’ money and her Dad was the leader of that fraction of the church. She thought she was some type of savior or saint, working for them for dollars on the weekends and handing food out to the poor. The blonde had not taken well to my ‘ungrateful’ attitude, so I called her a whore-slut and told her boyfriend that she’d cheated on him with the gym coach.

Had the pictures to prove it.

And the unlocked gym equipment storage room, too.

Pages of sheet music littered the floor from where I had been taping them to the blackboard outside of the choral room, anything to stay after school a few hours and ignore the pain of going ‘home.’ I couldn’t say I was surprised that Brinley had shown up like she did, afterall she had been seeing the coach, but I can’t say I was expecting it, either.

“Run back to your little sugar Daddy, Brinley,” I growl and taunt her. Part of me means it. The part that wants to be left alone, and wishes for one normal day. Another part of me itches for a fight, anything to burn off excess energy. My fingers stretch and claw, and I smear blood across my face when it tickles the top of my lips with my hands. “You don’t want any marks against your record, do you?”

She swings with the bat again but misses as I roll out of the way. I grab a handful of sheet music off the floor and throw it up into her face, momentarily blinding her. I reach for her shoulders to pivot her towards the floor, and she tries to catch herself with the bat. The force she generates must be much more than I could have imagined for such a small thing as herself, because as she goes falling. The bat hits the safety glass of the emergency door and it shatters. Glass rains down with the onslaught outside, glittering green and red from the EXIT signs above. I expect an alarm to start blaring, but nothing goes off. Nothing flashes other than lightning and glass, and Brinley’s face.

“I’m going to kill you,” she spits, trying to make her way up from the bed of glass. I step backwards away from her, thinking of running. There was no way I could afford to replace that safety glass. As much as my skin itches for a fight and I wanted to rip the hair from my scalp, I couldn’t get caught breaking school property.

“Aha, yeah. Good luck with that,” I tell her as I back all the way to where a smaller hall feeds into the arts department, watching her try to stand without touching the glass. Her hands are stained with red, and I can see bits of glass stuck to her hair and clothes. She looks ethereal when lighting next strikes. Sparkling before the rain in the darkened hall after school that fateful day. I turn tail and run before she can find her bearings, and can hear her voice echoing down the hall after me.

Back towards the sector of classrooms I hear shouting and heavy laughing from the DND club, thirty or so kids jammed into one tiny classroom as their teacher makes errant voices and pretends to be a goblin. I stand in the doorway for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. I’ve got my shirt collar up above most of my face to cover the worst of the blood, but I can feel it sliding down my chest underneath my shirt. It makes my skin crawl.

My eyes wander over the students packed into the classroom, some sitting on top of desks and others crowded into corners and tight circles. Near the corner I spot July, her long hair tied behind her with my last hair clip. It flows down the side of her face and her back, swaying as she shakes her hands and whispers to a set of dice, tossing them onto the table with a grin. I stare for a moment more, trying to catch her eye before she seems to get the feeling that someone’s watching her.

Her eyes light up as she meets mine, and then her grin fades when she sees the shirt I’m holding up over my nose. She mouths my name and I have the decency to at least look sheepish from pulling her from the game. She waves off her squad members before stalking out of the room, pulling me by the shirt sleeve to the nearest empty classroom and shutting the door behind us. There are no lights on, just the storm to guide her hand as she yanks my t-shirt down off of my face.

She scowls.

“What the hell did you do this time? Who’d you piss off?”

“I uh, ran into a door?”

Her green eyes deadpan at my bloody face, and her entire body is rigid. She says nothing. I dart my eyes from her face to the room around me, feel my nose start to tickle. I duck my head to sneeze, blood coating my arm. Blecugh.

“Why didn’t you stay with me in DnD?”

I blink at her, as if the answer is obvious. Too many damn people. I don’t say that, though. Because unlike me, July is a social butterfly. She tries to act all closed off, but she’s a magnet to people the same way I’m a magnet to trouble. I couldn’t sit still long enough to stay in a situation like that, and I almost always make a fool of myself. July had long since figured out from meeting me that I just couldn’t do filters. Most people didn’t like that.

I had more to worry about than what people thought of me, which included what was for dinner and where I was going to sleep that night. Whether I had to stay up all night and wait for Dad to come home, or what the hell I was going to do after high school. Not so much about accidentally spilling my words before I thought about the sentence that was fixing to come out of my mouth, or who might hear.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“So, why did you lose the house?” I dare open my mouth to ask Dad the forbidden question. Water pools around my thighs as we wade up the river, my fishing line hiked up to help keep my balance as we trek. Life isn’t so bad here, where we’ve been stuck since the truck ran out of gas running back and forth from here to one of Dad’s friends' houses. The pink mimosa booms swirl over the rocks in the water where it’s most shallow, soft pink tendrils cradled by the afternoon sun. I reach out and let my fingers dig through the fishy water. It’s good to have fishy water, because it’s all we’ve been eating the past few days. Everytime someone catches a trout I stare at it for minutes, trying to trace the color of the scales to reason.

Dad hums beside me, and reaches out to steady me when I stub my bare toe on a rock.

“S’ complicated,” he admits, and I start to think that’s all I’m going to get. I was a kid when we were evicted, those years ago. An angry one, for sure, but a kid. I tried so hard then to ignore what was happening around me, because it made it easier to lie to the face of cops. Those days leading up to Christmas that year had been too good to be true, so I’d hoped what I’d heard in the old school rumor mill was wrong.

I've learned to pay attention, since then.

The sun glints off the wet rocks and moss, and I make my way around a section of river that’s full of some water grasses. The mud gets stuck between my toes, but I don’t kick it off. There’s a blue heron on the banks that’s been following us since Dad parked the truck and set the tent up on the edge of the river, feathers bold and slick. His little beady eyes twist in his head when he cocks his neck, searching the waves. It was pretty easy to imagine we were camping, when you didn’t have much left to look forward to at a home that didn’t quite exist.

“I have an uncle. One of many. He and his wife, we used to be pretty close.”

I look up at him, missing his hat and extra scruffy from not shaving but his eyes don’t meet mine. I’m not quite sure what some uncle has to do with us getting evicted, but the tone in his voice means to stay quiet, so I manage.

“They wanted to rent the house out, when you were little. Real little, I mean. Back when you and your brother were in elementary and middle school.

“Things back then were different. I had a stable job, your Mom wasn’t pissed off at me all the time. I tried to keep him from y'all, because he’s got a bad mouth and an even worse attitude. Him renting out the house was gonna give us an extra bit of cash, and I was going to take up on his offer until his wife let it sip what he wanted to rent it out for. Do you remember the sunflowers in the basement?”

I have to think for a moment, but I do. In the bottom back room of the house the longest wall was lined with a work bench, and underneath it was a bed of sunflowers. I used to get mad at Dad when they didn’t bloom, until I was old enough to realize it was just majauana.

“I thought he wanted it for something along those lines. Us living so far out of town, it would have been easy, no one would have smelled it or been the wiser. But, his wife kept bragging about him using it as a storage center for his other ‘trophies.’”

My eyes crinkle at Dad’s choice of words, and he stops in the water. We’re in the middle of the river now, and I can’t see the orange tent amongst the green trees from the bend in the river. It’s a little deeper here, current swift around my hips. I hadn’t noticed how much I had been fighting the water until he stopped for me to catch up. He looks down on me with furrowed eyebrows, and often I forget how old he is. His crow feet are deep and a few of his mustache hairs have gone gray. Mom likes to pluck them off of his face, but he gets upset when she does. I don’t mention them.

“He wanted to keep real hardcore stuff in the basement, kind of like a warehouse for his ‘employees.’ He’s been dealing since he was younger than you are now. I got a little frustrated at him, then. Once, because he hadn’t told me the full truth of what he wanted that part of the house for. And again, because you and Jace were so young. You’d already known about the sunflowers, what would happen if you accidentally ran across some of his shit? I didn’t want you around it.

“So, I told him no. Backed out of the deal late.”

“How does this have to do with us getting evicted?” I finally blurt, after Dad goes quiet for a minute. I can see through some trees on the left bank of the river. A few cars pass, cruising for a spot to settle down. They slow, but don’t stop. Dad glances up at the sky, and there’s not a cloud in sight.

“I’m getting there, little terror.”

I roll my eyes and grin at the nickname.

“Cheryl, his wife, got real pissed I backed out. She’d already had it in her head how things were going to be, and didn’t like the change in weather. So, she went out and hired a hit man behind her husband's back to kill us. Her exact words were something along the lines of, ‘if you don’t give him what he wants, I’ll burn this damn house down with you and your fucking kids inside.’”

My mouth falls open.

“You’ll catch bugs,” Dad says, and starts walking again. Things go slower after that, because the current here is stronger. I have to fight hard to keep up with his long legs. “I called and yelled at Blaze over the phone. He swore up and down he didn’t know, and last I’d heard he hired his own hit men to take out the ones after us. Real screwed up shit. He apologized about Cheryl, but he himself was upset over me skipping out. He’s the one who got me fired, ten years ago.

“The last time I looked at him, he was smoking a cigar that smelled like grapes. He looked me in the eyes and said that I would regret not agreeing, but that you and Jace had nothing to do with my actions. I got laid off two months later, and he cut ties with me. He’d been fond of me, up until then.”

I wasn’t sure what to say over the tide of the water and small breeze. The blue heron on the bank flies before us, diving to catch a fish leaping from the water. It misses, and with a trill lands on a rock jutting out of the water in the middle of the lane. I worry my lip and drag my fingers through the water, it pooling in the edges of my vision.

“He went to prison not long after. Guess at first he thought I had something to do with it, until he hired a private investigator to find out who ratted him to the cops. He called me, a few years ago, apologizing. Sometimes I get letters from him in the mail.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

I’m in fucking handcuffs again. This time they’ve been looped around the back door handle of a cop car (rather unprofessionally), and I watch as two men in blue frisk Dad. I’m just shy of turning eighteen, and as stated on my record, officer Keith is supposed to be present because of my minor status. He’s been assigned to me since my stint in Juvie, and is one of the few cops I have any vague sense of respect for. He’s yet to appear. I continually remind the circle of cops already present, but they ignore my demands.

So in turn, I ignore their questions.

“What’s your name?”

Coy Prince.

“How old are you, missy?”

Seventeen years old.

“Where did the counterfeit money come from?”

It came from Dad’s friend, Johnny, who just got one of his printers from

the office depot dumpsters to work.

“Did you know there was cocaine in the vehicle?”

No, I did not. And no, there is not. That’s a crumbled up air freshener. Put

it to your nose and take a whiff, pig.

“Are the drugs yours?”

No. And there are no drugs.

“Whose gun is in the sidedoor?”

Dad’s. Registered and everything. Completely legal.

“Is there anything in the vehicle that is going to stab or poke me? Any other weapons?”

There’s a knife in the console, and another in the dash. Two in my purse, and a switch in my pocket. There’s a secret compartment behind the dash where the wire harness for the heater runs, where my own gun is stashed. It was Dad’s present to me for getting accepted into college. I’m scared to take it in the new house, because my cousin keeps breaking in and stealing stuff. So it stays in my car. I don’t have my permit yet, since I’m not old enough, but I carry it anyway. Sometimes in the waist of my jeans, and sometimes under my pants with a harness around my thigh.

But I don’t answer any of the questions, just pull on the cuffs around my wrists. They’re a little tighter than normal, and at an awkward angle that brushes the bottom of my wrist bone. I could usually dislocate my thumbs to escape, but I can’t manage to get the rings of metal up over my wrist. So I just yank on them and the locked door handle of the car, watching them question Dad on the curb.

Dad and I had just been out for a little ride across the parkway and through town when I got pulled over for swerving on the highway, and then after getting blue lighted was reprimanded for not pulling over fast enough right there across the loud speaker. I’m barely off the edge of the highway, cars whizzing by in the lane closest to us at about fifty, dipping the curve of the mountain. There’s not much of a place to pull over since there’s a guardrail and steep drop off to the river, but I’d managed to get my car out of the white line well enough.

My hands itch every time a car passes us.

Across the radio of one of the cops questioning me I can hear officer Keith’s voice, and I breathe a sigh of relief. If my self taught cop code was any count at all, he was on the way here.

I flinch when one of the officers takes a taser out of his belt and points it at Dad, barking questions he won’t answer. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because he doesn’t have an answer. I yank on the cuffs and dig my feet into the edge of the asphalt, trying to raise myself up higher to better see.

“Leave him alone,” I hiss over the sound of passing cars. One of the other officers laughs at me from across the way, turning to glance at my struggles.

“Are you going to confess for him then?”

I grit my teeth and squeeze.

“He’s telling the truth.”

“Oh yeah? And how would we know that?”

I don’t have an answer to his question, only balk when the female officer comes up to me with a glove on her right hand.

“I’m a minor,” I remind her, but she only shakes her head and gestures for me to stand straight. I hiss and tear against the cuffs, leaning as far against the side of the cruiser as I can to get away from her. I can hear one or two of the male officers laughing when she kicks me in the shin, forcing my legs apart and leaning me against the side of the car. Her ungloved hand digs into my magenta hair, tangles in the shag cut and forces my cheek against fiberglass. I buck against her weight on my back, and she forces me down harder.

“I know who you are, Chloe Prince. You’ve got enough referrals to be treated as an adult.”

She gives me a rushed pat down, mostly because I’m fighting her the whole time. The metal bites into my wrists and my stomach hurts with the door handle and my own hands digging into it. The female officer’s gun is pressed into my lower back, but it doesn't scare me like she wants it to. I try to steady my heart and breath but it’s hard.

I don’t like being held down against my will, unjustly.

Her gloved hand comes up under the back of my shirt, reaching all the way up to grip the back of my neck in a mock choke. I make a loud gagging noise and snort when she thinks it’s genuine, pulling me by my hair away from the car and checking me over.

I spit in her face.

She slams me against the car door so hard I lose my breath, before I’m pushed down to my knees, hands above my head in the cuffs. I have to strain to hear the other officers laugh and scream at me. They know the female cop is new, and are joking about teaching her a lesson with me, or vice versa.

I pull against the cuffs.

There’s a small commotion over the radio, and it’s officer Keith advising the three cops around us on how to handle the situation. The radio I hear it off of gets turned down with the tiny black knob on the top, and Dad huffs into his own cuffs on the side of the road. A beeping noise comes from the front seat of the car I’m stuck to, and the female officer turns to the front seat to check and see if the reading on the air freshener comes back positive for narcotics.

She stands there a long time, just close enough for me to reach over and kick. I don’t, because I have some little brain up in my big head, but the thought and want is there. I shove at the back door handle and curse its existence, the tiny chain connecting my wrists jingling with my movements.

Across the divided median going the opposite direction we were, I spot another cruiser, the SUV type with the K9 unit sticker and number 87 emboldened on the side. It only makes me want to pull harder, because at least then I would have something to show for having sat on the edge of the road for an hour to Keith. I’ve rubbed a few places on my wrist raw, but I take to twisting my hands harder against the bite. The more damage I can physically show Keith, the better he can take over the situation and get the other three car loads away.

But before I can tear any more wear to my hands, there’s a singed screeching sound behind me. I swivel hard to the right, just in time to see a big van flipped on its side come barreling towards us. The two male cops closest to Dad pull him out of the way as I shout for his safety, and the guard rail stops the van from going off the edge of the bank, down through the trees and into the river. I can hear Keith’s sirens from just up the road, where there’s a split in the median and he can cross to our side. Everything is very loud, cops screaming and a few sirens wailing. I yank on my cuffs with panic, trying to dislodge my hands, standing back up.

The dust kicked up has traffic slowing on both sides, and all three cops are busy checking Dad over since he was so close to the crash and trying to pull the driver from the van. I can’t see the oncoming traffic for how short I am and how tall the van is, but I hear it.

Sudden, sharp and black.

Breaks, and something tearing across the asphalt and squealing tires and something goes flying, over the edge of the white line and into the front of the cruiser I’ve been cuffed to. It rips me through the air and slams my side into my back door as the cruiser spins, tail of the car slamming into the guardrail opposite me.

Then there’s another car bashing into the first that hit my cruiser, and metal squeaks and cracks as the guard rail bends and shakes with the weight of both cars that have rammed into the cop car but somehow managed to avoid me. The weight of all three cars on the edge of the mountain to the guard rail must be too much, because next thing I know the white cruiser I’m still fucking cuffed to is sliding through the guard rail like butter, dripping off the edge of the moutain. The tires aren’t spinning, and it’s sliding, gaining traction as it tips and I go right along with it.

I try to not panic, hoping to hit a tree as I try to hold on for dear life and rip my hands out of the cuffs but my stupid wrist bone has them caught on my arms, digging in now with a real bite and not just something enough to piss Keith off. There’s screaming above me now, as the cars go down the tall, steep bank towards the river. I can make out Dad’s voice above the rest, and can imagine him shoving cops off of his arms to get to me but don’t see any of it because all I can see is the fiberglass of the car, getting bashed against the side of my face without grace when the side of the car hits a tree.

Everything stops, then.

The beech tree the car has been rammed into is maybe ten or so feet off the edge of the guard rail, and just strong enough to bear the weight of the cruiser. There’s sirens, and someone yelling at traffic that’s getting blocked on the road above. Officer Keith throws himself off the edge of the blacktop and down towards me, his side making harsh contact with my car when he can’t catch his balance on the steep ground. I look up for Dad, searching the crowd for his scruffy face. I see it, him reaching out towards me and trying to fight the hold the first male cop has on his upper arm. Keith waves up to them, something I don't quite catch in full, and the cop is uncuffing Dad. He slips down the hill towards us, cradling me in his arms with my shoulder smushed against the back door I’m still cuffed to.

There’s tears in his eyes, but I don’t bother to cry. Only sniff once or twice, curl up towards his hold and try to stop shaking so bad with how fast it all happened. I know I’m hyperventilating, and give up trying to fight that.

My eyes meet Keith’s after a few seconds, and I gesture to my bloody arms.

“Gonna get a pretty badass scar, you think?” My words are strained in the back of my throat, too high for how I usually talk. But it’s a joke I choke out, a yip in the grand scheme of things.

Dad slaps me on the head for my comment and Keith laughs nervously, telling me it’s always something while he uncuffs me. Somehow, my truck is left unscathed and we get off the scene as soon as a paramedic dresses my wrists, everyone much more concerned with the dead driver in the second car.

They do leave pretty badass scars, and to this day I say an extra little prayer every time I get into a car. If that wasn’t enough to prove to me the power of the Good Lord, I wasn’t sure what was. I should have died that day, in the four car pile up. But I didn’t. I didn’t even break a bone, despite the deep gashes dug into my wrists.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

THE PARKWAY is otherworldly when it comes to sunsets, especially right after a heavy rain. The mountains are coated in a fine layer of mist and fog, smoke dancing through the arches and dips in the landscape as smooth as flowing water. The rain has given us a reprieve from the sweltering week. The only payback is the humidity that clings to my clothes and hair like a second layer of skin, mixing with the sweat that drips from my body. I hardly take to noticing it anymore, this far into summer it becomes a given.

July had been mad at me when we first arrived and I slammed the door to my truck closed with too much force and hopped the rock safety rail that trails the entire road.

“Coy!” She yells out after me as I threw myself over the barrier with my hands flat on the upper rock, swinging my body with no hassle. I land in a patch of thick wildflowers that line the bank, before everything suddenly drops off in a cliff. A small section of cliff has been reinforced for water drainage, and I sit on the very edge with my legs dangling off, overlooking the valley and mountains before me. When I glance over my shoulder July is standing on the other side of the barrier, arms crossed over her chest with a tight look on her face. I pat the spot in the dirt beside me.

She’s reluctant to hop the rocks, but does it anyway. She doesn’t sit as far on the edge as me but instead a foot or so away, wincing at the height of the drop.

“You’d better not fall off,” she mutters under her breath. “I am not jumping down there to save your sorry ass.” I roll my eyes at her.

“I haven’t fallen off a cliff yet.”

“Nearly drove off a few, with as fast as you were going.”

“Next time you can drive.”

“No thanks, I don’t have a death wish. With my anxiety I’d just turn the wheel a little too sharp and we’d be down the bank.”

I laugh, but it fades off fast. We both just stare out over the abyss for a while, watching the clouds roll. The sunset pulls in slowly, everything drenched in orange and bathed in pink. The greens are sharper with all the rain, mimosa trees just in bloom with bright neon buds. Their leaves have closed for the evening, and I take to pulling at the stalk of one just barley in my reach overlooking the bank. There’s a thin stream of water through the drainage ditch, creating a mini waterfall that drips off the edge of the mountain that mixes with the bugs to sing.

“Are you gonna tell me why you’ve been too busy to hang out? Anything to do with that weird murder uncle of yours?” July asks, and I turn to watch her again. Her hair is pulled back with a clip, and longer pieces sway with a slow draft from the valley. I frown, but nod. That was why I brought her up here.

“Yeah.”

A car buzzes by on the road above us, we both wait to see if it stops or keeps riding. July swings her hands around to motion me to go on, and I try to keep up a serious face but end up busting out laughing.

“Okay okay so, I have major drama. And I’ve been kind of scared to share it with you. You can’t tell anyone-”

“Who am I going to tell?”

“I don’t know, just, principle. Don’t tell. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, skeptikal. I hold out my pinky, like we’re both toddlers. She rolls her eyes and pushes me away, forgetting I’m sitting on the edge of a cliff. I have to go scrambling back towards her to keep from tumbling down with the force of her push, and she grabs me by the elbow and sweater and hauls me backwards towards her until I’m almost lying on top of her legs. I can feel her chest going behind me, and nervously laugh to brush off my near death.

“Well, I am so glad my balance is somewhat decent,” I try to joke, and she groans. 
“I - I would say I’m sorry, but you’re okay, so.” “You dick,” I growl, turning and pinning her in the wildflowers and having a mock wrestle match. I let her throw me off easily and we both lay beside each other, watching the dying light of the sun. 
“So glad you have a boyfriend,” I tell the sky. July snorts.

“Everyone thinks we’re dating, anyways.”

I grumble. “We ain’t. I wouldn’t date your ugly mug.”

“We’re more like sisters, anyways,” July hums. I nod, even though she’s not looking at me.

“So apparently Dad joined Blaze’s business for good.”

“Really?” July asks, rolling over to look at me better. I glance at her but keep watching the sun’s color creep down the mountains.

“Yep.” I pop my ‘p.’ “Totally never saw that coming. The other day I was hanging out with him, and we ran to ‘see a man about a dog’ and he was dealing bags of white powder out like they were candy.” July Whistles. “Then, Cheryl tried to kill me a few nights ago.”

“What?”

“Pulled a gun on me and everything. I was just napping in the car and she came outside and tried to start shit.”

“Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?”

“I mean,” July trails off, and I sit up to look at her. I pull back the hair hiding the gash on my head and July pulls me down to inspect it, poking at my half-healed wound as if it’s the seventh world wonder. I pull away from her, and she just looks down at me. It’s not pity in her eyes, but I can’t name what it is. Something close, that’s fueled with a hidden fire behind. I roll my shoulders behind my back.

“Said she was sick of me ruining the family business, and wouldn’t have me as a snitch. She was ready to kill me for it. The look on her face, I’ll never forget it. Then, Blaze rushes out and starts beating her against the concrete driveway, it was brutal. And Dad just stood there, because Blaze was holding a gun to him while he pointed one at Cheryl. It was a mess.” I pause.

“And the worst part of it all, is that I almost killed Cheryl herself. She was beating me, I was- I was scared. She came out of nowhere, she almost hung me with my seatbelt.” I shrug off the hem of my sweater to show off the ring of bruises around my neck, and July doesn’t reach out and touch them like she might have when we were kids but I see her fingers twitch like she wants to.

“I was scared, because I wanted to kill her. How could I kill someone? That’s so, so wrong.” I look away from July, towards the moon. It’s just begun to crest over the horizon, somewhere between the mist and fog and smoke. My chest heaves as I hold back the tears, but they don’t ever fall. When July speaks her voice is colder than what it normally is.

“I don’t see why you killing her would be so bad.”

I peek at her from my spot in the grass and flowers. She’s staring straight at me, unblinking.

“But it’s a sin to kill people,” I whisper.

“But not so to defend yourself.”

“I can defend myself without killing. She’s just an old woman.”

“Yet you said Blaze did it for you?”

I quiet. July sighs.

“She’s scum of the earth anyways, Coy. If I wasn’t so scared of guns I’d kill her for you. Maybe if I got the right angle I could catch her with a throwing knife.”

“July,” I scold, but she’s still staring at me. She still hasn’t blinked. It’s kind of creepy, the glassy look in her eyes. She reaches out for the hem of my sweater.

“You shouldn’t be around them alone.”

“I’m not alone, I was with Dad.”

“Take me with you.” She says it with conviction, then looks off over the dark valley.

“Huh?” I’m slightly dumbfounded. Even in our primary school days July didn’t come with me to fight the bullies. She’d patch me up. She’d yell at me, and scold, but it wasn’t her place to defend me.

Then again, she’d been sent to juvenile detention once, too. And it was for reasons she would never explain to me.

“I’ve followed you this far,” she shrugs. “I’m not letting go of you now. Just- keep your gun away from me, please? I can handle you with the rifle but a handgun,” her voice dips off, mind somewhere else. I nod. And then take a sharp breath-

“He wants me to work for him. Blaze, that is.”

“No, I thought you meant the president.”

“Haha, very funny smartass.”

“You’re not going to, are you?” July asks, and by the tone of voice she uses she means for me to say no. I think of Dad losing his breath, but shake my head violently.

“No. Never. Not for someone like him. He’s killed people before. He sells and does hardcore drugs. I never want to be like that.” I say it with as much conviction I can muster, but I’m not even sure if I can make myself believe the statement.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

There are seven more days until school starts, and seven more days until I get to move back into a dorm apartment with July. It’s been two weeks since the incident with Cheryl, and I’ve somehow managed to avoid her and Blaze enough to make it on my own. Mostly, this is because I’ve been spending all my time with July, or picking up the odd shift at Lavender Leaf.

I would like to say I could pick up more shifts, but they’re overstaffed enough. The owner has a habit of picking up stray college students, and has a policy that admits a job to anyone who applies. The catch is that since there are so many staff, scheduling is a nightmare. Often enough I can go a week or so without having a shift, and when I do I don’t make much because we all share tips. The concert season had picked up since the temperature rose, and the same policy could be shared for the stage light as barista.

Open to anyone, but only for a few seconds of fame.

I sigh as I bend over my desk, top scattered with loose pens and spoiled coffee. There’s one of dad’s cats half laying on the open windowsill and my desk, tail swaying back and forth across the keyboard of my laptop. I tip and tap my way through my school email, making double and triple sure that all of my classes are set for the semester when I notice way too many emails in my spam box.

Strange.

I slide my mouse over to the inbox and leaf through the number of them, most of them spam until an email titled with urgent in all caps and red font catches my attention. It’s labeled from yesterday, and the longer my eyes skip the text the more my heart drops. The gist of it goes like this:

Dear Chloe Prince,

We hate to inform you of this mistake on our behalf. Your payment for the next semester

tuition is lacking, due to changes in scholarship funding. You have a balance of

negative $742.16 (seven hundred and forty two dollars, and sixteen cents).

Oh, and also, screw you, because it’s due in three days.

And you’ll be void from programming if you can’t pay it.

With a big middle finger emoji at the end.

My jaw must hang so low, it brushes the floor. I clip it closed and slam the top of my laptop down, swearing to myself that what I read was just fake. I take a moment to try a breathing exercise before remembering those don’t really work, and open the laptopcover again to double check.

The same email is there, words glaring at me across the screen in arial text. I cry out, leaning all the way back in my rickety wooden desk chair, slapping myself across the forehead. In my anger I accidentally lean too far back, the last two legs of the chair skidding across hardwood and sending me flying onto my back. The black cat goes straight out the window with a yowl, and I just lay there contemplating the meaning of life.

After some time of this, time that is really too long to not be embarrassing, I amble my way to the kitchen to pick through what’s left in the fridge. There’s this and that, and a whole pack of chicken breasts I have to throw out because they’ve turned green. Things had gotten much better around the house since Dad had started doing jobs for Blaze, food included.

Unfortunately, my not answering his call to ‘work for me, Chloe,’ was shooting Dad and the rest of the family in the metaphorical foot. He hadn’t been offered a job in two weeks, since that night I got my brains bashed out by the butt of Cheryl’s gun. (There’s still a scab in my hair that makes it hurt to scrub, and yellow bruises across my throat and collar bones. I keep hoping I’ll wake up and they’ll be gone, but they haven’t grown legs and walked off yet.)

I take a peek at dad from behind the fridge door. He’s sprawled out on the couch. I can tell from here he’s not breathing very well, his chest pushing up and down against the thread of his shirt.

“You okay?” I ask, giving up on my venture to fridge land and waltzing over to the living room - a whole five steps, impressive I know - and settle up in the recliner by his couch. He glances at me from the TV and shrugs.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”  His voice is the same it’s always been. I twist in my seat until I can pull my feet up under myself, cold in the living room where the window AC unit spits ice.

“I don’t know. You just look like you don’t feel well.”

“I feel fine.”

“Something is worrying you,” I shoot back. He doesn’t meet my eyes when I say that, and I start to wonder if I’ve opened my mouth too wide. I was the one who was worried, over paying off my damn student loans and figuring out who to rob to get there. I was probably just pushing my emotions on to Dad.

But then he does start to say something, and my worries only grow.

“Think I got a cold or some shit. Also, the light bill is due.” He reaches forward to his coffee table and tosses a white envelope at me, and it hits me square in the nose. I pick at the corner he’s opened and accidently tear it half way down the package, and hear him sigh. I apologize and pull out the bill, wincing at how expensive it is. Power companies always did like to jack up prices when everyone was running their heat and air.

“I thought you had money put back for it from Blaze?”

Dad only lights a cigarette in response and shrugs half heartedly.

Okay, so obviously it's been spent. On what, I wasn’t sure, but in the end it doesn’t really matter. This complicated things. The date on the light bill in red reads the same as the one on my laptop screen.

Three days' notice.

I tear a hand through my greasy hair, forgetting about the sore spot on the top of my crown and wincing when I pull a little too hard.

“If you’ve got a couple hundred bucks I can bum, I can pay it off,” Dad says around a drag of his cigarette. I hum. Two hundred was all I had to my name, and that had been saved up to pay for essentials for moving out again. Stuff like toilet paper, milk and gas.

“I might,” I admit, but it’s very hard to choke the words out. I run back into my room and dig through my bookshelf, to where I keep my wallet hidden from my cousin’s sticky fingers. I take my last stack of twenties and tens from the poor thing and come back, folding them out to dad. He leans up from his spot on the couch and counts what he has in his own pocket, before tucking them all together and handing them back to me.

“Will you ride out and pay it today before they close? My arm is killing me.”

Inside, I groan and cuss my existence. On the outside, I smile and nod, and turn back to my corner of the world to dress and face the day.

—

In thirty minutes I have the light bill paid and am on my way back home when my truck starts squealing and beeping for me to feed it some gas. I just barely make it to the station closest to the house, coasting in on fumes and pull up to a pump. I bash my forehead against the steering wheel and turn to dig through the tuck, hoping I’ve stashed my quarters inside. The remendants from my glove box are still strewn across the backseat and floor, and by some miracle I manage to pick out eight dollars worth of quarters. It’s not a lot, but enough to get home and pilfer some gas out of someone else’s vehicle.

I juggle them as I step inside, the little bell above the door chiming as I walk into the cramped space. There’s two people ahead of me in line and I take up residency behind them, both of them buying lottery tickets. Neither one of them can seem to decide on what numbers they want to play, and keep arguing over which numbers are more important than others.

I’m about sick of standing there, tapping my foot against the linoleum and trying not to stare at the men in front of me. Rows and rows of candy and cigarettes, vapes and lottery tickets line the cashier’s desk. Colors and shapes of all kinds, pale underneath the green light of the shitty LED lights. I swear ten minutes have passed by the time it’s my turn, and I pull the hem of my shirt up to spill my stack of quarters on the counter.

The chick running the cash register glares at me.

I shrug at her, and begin to count them myself when someone steps up behind me, tugging me back with an arm across my shoulders and into their chest. They’re jamming a shiny metal credit card at the cashier, waving it in her face. I jam the heel of my converse back against the man’s foot, elbowing him in the stomach and twist away. He catches me by my wrist before I can make it any further, and when I catch his face I notice it’s Blaze of all people. He smiles at me, teeth cracked at the front.

I give him the same glare the cashier gave me only moments ago.

“Thirty on pump six.” I tell the chick, without looking back at her. Blaze speaks up for me.

“Make it forty. And a pack of Marlboros and that chocolate bar,” He motions to a fancy name brand dark chocolate. I scott at him and reach around his arm to pull my quarters back into the hem of my shirt, losing half in the process. He picks them off the dirty tiled floor for me, open hands full of coins waiting for me to pick them out.

I do so, but not without hesitance.

The both of us amble outside towards my truck, and where I notice his is now parked behind me, and I pop the cover on my gas tank and start filling it with 87. He takes up residency behind me, leaning against the pump and busting the cellophane on the cigarettes. When I shoot him a questioning glance he tosses the pack at me, and then the chocolate bar. I have to juggle to catch it, almost dropping them both on the oil slick ground.

“For you and Jackson,” is his only explanation.

I keep waiting for the other ball to drop. For him to finish me off or yell or get angry, but he stays surprisingly calm. Just seemingly content to wait for me to come to him or hit first. When the pump in my tank clicks to signify the end of its run, I don’t pull it out right fast.

“You offered me a job,” I start, and he chuckles.

“I knew you would come to your senses.”

“Come to my senses? Hah, all I’ve done lately is lose them,” It’s the wrong thing to say, but I say it anyway. He doesn’t reply. I close my eyes and count to ten before I open them again, and he hasn’t moved an inch. I have to fight my anger to keep it from taking hold of me.

“Why are you so dead set on asking me to work for you?” It’s an honest question. The only answer I’ve been able to come up with is that I can make him money. But then he said that he thought I was young and unreliable, so why bother? Which would it be?

I’m calm when I ask, but the more my mind races the more heated I get.

“And plus, what was up with Cheryl trying to kill me the other night? Huh?” I jump up in his face, pointing at his chest and scowling. Blaze rolls his eyes and motions for me to put the gas line back in the pump, and I do so, but not without glaring at him the entire time.

“Cheryl had a lapse in judgment. We all know she’s not as mentally stable as we’d like her to be.”

I squint at Blaze’s answer like it makes any sense at all.

“You’re too much like your dad, when he was younger. You know, I remember, when he was your age. He was a lot more of a troublemaker than you give him credit for. I liked him, because unlike everyone else at the time he wasn’t afraid to stand up to me.” Blaze runs a hand over his scruffy face, looking off towards the highway where cars are passing. He motions for me to get in the truck, so we can speak while sitting down but I refuse. The closest I get is leaning up against my wheel well, legs crossed at the ankle. It’s a warm day, and I can feel sweat roll down my legs.

“You like me, because I talk back?” I raise my eyebrows at him.

“No. I like you, because I know I can count on you within reason. You’ve been around the block.”

“What block?”

“Stop being a smartass.”

“Smartass? Only ass I see is a dumbass-”

“Coy.”

“Blaze.”

“Enough,” He says it real harsh. “Do you know how to play nice in a crowd, and get away without getting caught?”

“Well I only went to Juvie that one time, and it was because I got into a fight at school.”

“And how many cars have you stolen?”

“Two. I’ve stolen two.”

“And how many times have your parents gone to jail, and you’ve gotten off scott free? Why do you think that is?”

“Why would I tell you?”

“Well, you seem to be having a right fine and dandy conversation with me so far.”

I huff and cross my arms at him. I have to roll the answer around in my brain before it comes out.

“Because I was a kid, and one cop had a heart of gold or whatever and always talked the others down. And I didn’t do anything wrong.” I’m surprised to find that I mean it when I say it. Blaze gives me a long hard look, and throws his head back laughing, cowboy hat brushing the back of the gas pump. When he looks back to me, his eyes have a shine in them that’s different than before.

“You believe that you’ve done nothing wrong?” He says the words with wonder, like I’ve solved some unspoken code between us. I twist my shoe against the pavement.

“I did what Mom and Dad told me to. Other than fighting at school, I only ever did what they asked. I did nothing wrong.”

Blaze whistles, turning from me to his truck. I follow, without thinking much about it, two of my steps making one of his.

“I did nothing wrong,” I say again, trying to get him to understand. I’ve done nothing wrong, unlike him. And unfortunately, unlike Mom and Dad. They told me to do it. I was a kid. Therefore, I wasn’t in the wrong.  He shakes his head, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the door of his car and lighting one of them, leaning against the open door now while I stand facing him.

“But how many cars have you stolen?”

He says it so sweetly, like those Christmas chocolate cherry candies that ooze the red syrup when you bite into them, that always made my back teeth ache. He drips sugar and sarcasm, edged in so much sugar it’s sour. I see now how he and Cheryl get along at all.

I let out some noise that’s halfway between a scream and a tortured cry, and scuff my foot against the ground like I’m a toddler. More than a few heads turn, but everyone goes back to their business when I glance over their faces. A car comes up behind Blaze in line for gas, and honks at him.

The car has a parking tag sticker for the college I attend, and I’m brought back to why I needed to talk to Blaze in the first place. There was no way I could raise nearly eight hundred dollars in two days, and I’d already taken out all the loans in the area I could. I refused to pawn my guitar since I’d almost lost it last time, and I had to have my car. I couldn’t let it get repoed if I took out a title loan. I was all out of luck, and time.

“How much?” Blaze asks around his cigarette. I blink at him.

“How much what?”

“How much do you want, starting off? I can’t give you much, since I don’t want to break poor old daddy’s heart and have you out working things for real, but I know you can get in and out of The Meadow without any issues. Couple deliveries, that’s all. You can handle it, solo.”

I chew on my lip and think over his offer, fingers brushing the frayed edges of my sweater. It’s too sticky, curling around my back and shoulders the same way the cigarette smoke does around the two of us.

“You’ll be working with local legends, Coy. VIP passes, backstage access, all that. I only sell to those who can hold their own weight. Everything that goes through the Meadow is vetted.”

“Why me?” After all, he never did answer my first question. Blaze reaches behind himself into his truck’s console, where, after flipping the top, is a wad of cash stapled together with an orange sticky note. He tosses it at me, and tips the edge of his hat towards me.

The car behind him is honking in earnest, now.

“Because. You’ll get the job done.”

And I’m not sure where he gets that idea, but I do get the money to pay off my newly acquired school bill.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It doesn’t matter how many times I do it, it seems that every year moving back into the dorm I have at least one box fall apart in my arms between the truck and the new place. This time, it’s my box of underwear. When the bottom drops out of it on the sidewalk littered with Magnolia leaves I only sigh and look up, as if that’s going to solve the problem.

I slowly get down and fold my box back together the best I can and shove everything  inside to go back about carrying it in and up two flights of stairs. As soon as I’m in the door of the bedroom I slap the box onto the empty mattress of what I’ve claimed my bed, and catch my breath. Dad is all taken on top of July’s bed, since she’s not here yet, my guitar in his arms as he plucks around. I roll my eyes and push hair out of my face, leaning against the bed on my side. I can hear Jace off from the living room, berating me for not being fast enough and how kind it is of him to be helping me move. Which it really is, considering he’s got his own life and things to be busy with, but I tease him nonetheless.

“Now, where’s your,” Mom trails, digging into the new box I’ve just thrown onto the bed and sorting my underwear and sports bras. She holds up a few magnolia leaves at me, shaking them in my face. “Why?” She asks.

I shrug and take them from her, and toss them out of the window right beside my bed that’s open. The room I’ve been given to share with July is a shoe box, but it’s our own. Two windows, two desks, two dressers, two beds, and two closet doors side by side. I take the left side and she takes the right, and everything goes fine. The ceiling is shorter here than my last dorm, and there’s not a moon painted on the only ceiling light yet. But it’s not too bad, because there aren’t any infestations of bugs or cockroaches here.

Mom goes back to shuffling my clothes into different drawers of the dresser for me to find later, and smacks my hands away when I try to help. Dad picks at my guitar, smoking, despite the fact it’s not allowed inside. He puts his cigarette at the head of the guitar, between the tuning pegs and the nut, sticking straight up. The smoke trails off of it lazily. I go to ask him for a song request when I hear a cry of anguish from Jace, and forget about it in a split second. I run out to see what’s wrong but it’s nothing, other than the fact he’s tripped over the trash bags full of bedding that he put by the door. I stand with my hands on my hips, shaking my head.

“I told you to bring ‘em in here,” I tut at him, and he flips me off. I roll my eyes.

“And I told you I was only helping the bare minimum. I got all your shit inside, by the way.” He stumbles off the floor to the couch in the living room space, a tiny thing that was neon purple, barely held two people comfortably and had some questionable stains. When he sits he throws himself down and whips his hair across his shoulders. If it weren’t for Jace, I think I would forget what my own hair looks like. His is so dark it’s nearly black and drapes his face in straight lines where he hasn’t cut it in years, dipping down towards his collarbone. He keeps his face shaved but he’s all broad shoulders from a few years playing football and working around construction for a while.

I stick my tongue out at him and pull up the white, lavender scented trash bag with the letters

BEDSTUFS

written on the side in red sharpie. It’s smeared from the humidity of the day and being in the back of my truck so long, but is legible enough. I tear into it after I’ve lugged it into the bedroom and try to get it open without ripping the plastic so I can reuse it but it’s no luck. I end up with sheets and my orange comforter strung across the floor, and Mom shoos me out of the bedroom again when I try to help.

I don’t leave, though. Just slide over to what’s going to be July’s bed and settle beside dad on the ugly blue mattress. There’s a spring or two that’s not laying all the way flush with the others, and I poke it through the slippery material. He’s just holding my guitar now, and scrolling on his phone. I reach for it but he doesn’t see me, leaning up to flick the last of his cigarette into an empty coke bottle. I huff.

“So. Junior year, Coy. Hard to believe,” he says, looking at me from underneath his trucker’s hat. Today it reads ‘

Designated Asshole

.’ Jace bought it for him a few years ago for Christmas.

“Things only get harder from here,” I say back, and I really do mean it. I was terrified for the new semester. This was the start of Ethnomusicology, and a performance based class that had me shivering in my metaphorical boots.

“You gonna come home every day, like last year?” He picks at his nails with his left hand, eyes not leaving his phone when he says that with an accusatory tone. I sigh.

“Yeah, of course. When I’m not drowning in homework.” I scoot back against the mattress until my back is flush with the wall. Mom has almost got my bed made, cream sheets and orange comforter with little wolves dancing on the bottom. I like to imagine that they’re really coyotes, but I know they’re not supposed to be. It’s the one part of my bed set that I’d splurged on when I first started college three years ago.

“How about some Whiskey?” I ask, gesturing to the guitar. I’m asking for him to play but he doesn’t seem to read it as that, only hands it gently over to my lap. I sigh. I guess it was my duty to play, then.

I pick around for a minute. Mostly, flatpicking tunes with words that have been lost. I’ve gotten in trouble several times during my college career for playing guitar the way I do. I don’t mean to do it wrong, I just was never formally trained. My right hand picks mostly with two fingers instead of all five, and my capo always looks backwards. I didn’t even know I was doing it wrong until I was playing for a crowd to audition for my scholarships, and they asked if I had done it to be different. I was just an idiot who didn’t know any better.

There’s words and a tune for a new song on the tip of my tongue, like an itch deep in my chording hand, but I keep from playing anything out in front of my parents. It was always embarrassing, even after I got a song mostly flushed out.

I didn't notice that dad had pulled out his camera app to record me until later that evening when I’m eating dinner with July, and I get a ping on Facebook. I spit rice across the table towards July when I see how many views it’s got. Just shy of fifty. I immediately call Dad, and he answers before I can swallow my next bite of rice.

July scowls at me and wipes rice and spit off her face, kicking me underneath the table. I laugh and pull my legs up underneath me in the chair, taking another bite as the phone rings.

“You posted that?” I screech into the mic as soon as Dad picks up, embarrassed because my playing  hadn’t been anything special.

“Course I did. You sound good. And I’m proud of you.”

“I thought you were just, being indifferent and stuff,” I mumble into the speaker, twirling my fork so the overhead light glints off the handle just right.

“Coy, you know that ain’t true. You know I love you more than anything. Just, got a lot on my mind. How about I take you out this weekend? Celebrate you going back to school and all that.” He sounds genuine, when he says it, and I nod, though he can’t see it and twirl my fork so hard I accidentally sling it back towards the table. July sighs and grabs it from me before I can take it, carrying it and her finished plate with her to the kitchen.

“Yeah. Yeah that sounds great, yeah.”

“Alright. You coming home Friday night then?”

“Yeah I can come home Friday. I shouldn’t have much homework, it’s only syllabus week.”

One of our other roomates’, Jasmine, cats comes up to rub up against my leg and purr, begging for some of my rice. I run my hand over its little furry black head but don’t give it any.

“I love you, Coy. Take you a nice bath and get some rest before your first day tomorrow.”

“I love you too, dad. Goodnight, sleep good.”

“Goodnight, ferocious Coyote. Don’t let the fleas bite.”

He hangs up on me while I’m still laughing. July is leaning up against the frame of our divided kitchen, dish towel hanging from her hands. She’s got it all wound up and ready to smack me. I squint at her but don’t move, just look back down to my unfinished plate to realise she had stolen my fork.

“It was dirty,” she says from her perch. I hadn’t meant to complain out loud. I shrug, and pick up my plate to shovel the rest of my chicken and rice into my mouth with my hands. She makes a disgusted sound and comes at me with the towel, and I use my dirty plate as an impromptu shield to keep from getting popped in the mouth.

Life is good.

—

I wake up early Saturday morning but don’t manage to make it out of my bed at the house until nearly nine thirty. Mom has made coffee, even spruced it up with condensed milk and hazelnut powder creamer. I drink mine while Dad showers and laces his boots, and I’m just about to take the last sip when he ushers me out of the house. He drives his truck, and I get to play passenger princess again. First stop we make is this tiny, dingey convenient store that just so happens to have the best breakfast known to man. We both order steak biscuits, and in my case, more coffee, and sit in the calm of the watery light and watch cars pass.

Every once in a while someone interesting will step out of their car, things like neon pink cowboy hats and girls in too little clothes that we joke about. The worst of all has to be a barley preteen girl in a crop top, brushing up against what we assume to be a boyfriend, blue flip flops clacking against the linoleum when they step in to the convenience store to buy slushies. They pay with a twenty, and she spins as she sips her cherry slushy, spilling it all over the top.

The little thing doesn’t have a bra on, and we both keep to ourselves after that.

When we finish our biscuits and mop up our crumbs on the sticky table they’ve started serving lunch, and we cross the parking lot littered with gas pumps to the next door botanical and country store, where he buys a pound of fresh, local cure bacon and I give in to my mom’s obsessions with plants. I buy a small pothos with white spots, barely a few leaves on the poor creature.

We go back to the house after that, and he asks if I want to ride up the mountain. Of course I do, and so we both shed layers of clothes and I grab my hiking boots while he tries to get The Wheel to start. The Wheel is an older UTV Yamaha Rhino that came from the fancy outdoors lodging place up the road, and wasn’t hot in the slightest. (And if you were unaware before, ‘hot’ is a southern term for stolen, or possibly stolen. The hotter something is, the more likely someone is to come looking for it. So if something is warm, it could be possibly stolen, or stolen but most likely no one cares.) It’s got two seats, a busted headlight, and unmatching, knotty ties. I tie on an old light up bluetooth speaker to the roll bar with an extra large zip tie and play my own spotify playlist.

In terms of ‘riding up the mountain,’ offroading might have been a better word. The road I grew up on was a ‘deadend,’ except the end turns into an old four wheeler fire trail that goes across the mountains and eventually, connects to the parkway. It’s straight up and down and rough from where no one’s used it in so long, large rocks, fallen trees and ruts so large I could stand in them and the ground would meet my hips easy.

I ride, standing up holding onto the rollbar for the longest time, until Dad whips The Wheel around a steep curve and I knock my head against the plastic covering the roof. I laugh as I slot myself back down in my seat, and he reaches over to make sure I’m alright. I am, even though my head hurts. He manages to only turn us over three times on the way up the mountain, and only once did I jump out and help try to push the edge of the roll bar back up so it would sit on more than two wheels.

Hence, it being

The

Wheel instead of four. There were hardly four wheels on the ground at a time.

When we reach the top I jump out and go sailing across the woods, through the thicket of rose hips and wild blueberries to where the edge of the mountain rolls off to nothing. Dad cleared the overlook much before I was alive, long before he complained about an aching back and how fast I booked it through the thicket. My uncovered arms are tattered from the thorns, thin lines like cat scratches donning them all the way up towards my shoulders. It’d been more than hot enough for a tank top, but I might have thought better about the thorns.

My blood shimmers in the midday sun, crusting slowly over the black lines of roses that dance as my skin pulls on my left arm. Dad comes up to stand beside me, huffing for breath from the trek over from the wheel. He lights up a cigarette and sits down on the biggest exposed rock, looking off over the distance. You can make out a few houses here and there, but for the most part it’s just land. Hills that stretch down abruptly off the cliff before us, trailing into farm fields and the highway that runs twenty four seven past the house.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“And then, July said ‘we could climb that,’ and up she went. I was scared to death, and she told me she wasn’t going to tell her parents about climbing the waterfall but, I had to show you the pictures. Did you know that there’s a bigger waterfall on top of the one everyone stops to look at?”

Dad shakes his head, taking a longer drag off of his cigarette.

“No, ‘Yotie, I didn’t. You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

I quickly pull the leg of my shorts back down where I’d bruised my thigh and hip pretty well on the way back down. Perhaps sliding down wet rock wasn’t the best way to go about making it back down the waterfall, considering I lost any control I had and went rolling before busting my ass on the root of a rhododendron.

“Noo,” I whine, convincingly.

Dad eyes me behind him, letting a thin pine branch go too soon as to whip me in the face with it. I huff at him, and he blows smoke out of his mouth.

“Where are we going, anyways?” We’ve been trekking it down one of his old dirt bike trails on the top of the mountain for about an hour. Every once in a while I find a patch of blueberries, that are just about dried by the sun and sad, and pop a few in my mouth. Nearly half the time I spit them right back out, because they’ve gone sour from being ripe too long. Dad points at a light green plant not far from us off the path he’s made, and I nod. A pretty decent looking ginseng plant, a four prong that could brush my mid calf if I were to stand beside it. It’s not the right time of year to harvest them, quite illegal in fact, but I don’t doubt we’ll be back in the fall to dig it and it’s kin.

“I don’t know. Just goin’, I guess. You not having fun?”

“No I’m having a lot of fun, I was just curious if there was a spot in particular you were looking for.” I’d been all over the mountain, but never out this way so far. If I had to guess, I would assume we were on National Park property by now. Not that that was too big of a deal, but I found it cool that we lived so close to what was left of the wild. I was just about to open my mouth and ask if he thought we were on park property, when he started walking faster, with more of a purpose.

“Hey what’s-” I started, but got hung up in an old vine wrapped around one of my ankles. I had to pause to unwrap it before I got myself in a bigger mess and looked up to see Dad eyeing one of the largest beech trees I had ever seen. “Woah,” I hummed, trying to get myself untangled faster and therefore making things harder on myself.

“You alright, Coy?” He called.

“Yeah. Just a sec.” I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to get myself so thoroughly hung up. I plopped myself down on the ground, sweeping my hair out of my eyes and took to pulling it harder. It was just a little vine, but there wasn’t enough slack or give for me to yank my leg back out. I groaned in frustration and just kept pulling harder. Which, was bad because the harder I pulled the more stuck I seemed to get.

“Here,” Dad said, suddenly crouched beside me pulling out his muskrat pocket knife. He flicked it open in such a well practiced manner I was jealous, and in a few seconds had me lose and helped me back up. I kicked the vine in frustration and he did the stoic man version of a laugh and rolled his eyes. I smiled at him and started my way to the tree he’d been trying to show me when I started having issues.

The beech was huge, near white bark with moss at the bottom, so wide around that it would easily take three of me to entirely wrap my arms around it. The top branches squiggled out like hands, reaching towards the sun and assortment of pines around. It was the tallest tree on the ridge, reaching towards all of the sun it could swallow. I run my hands across the bark as I do a circle around it, and on the opposite side stop to laugh.

“Hey, when’d you do this?” I ask Dad, pulling him from his musing to the side of the tree I’m pointing at. There’s an old J + M in a heart, JACKSON in scratchy letters and a crudely carved penis on the broadest side. I laugh at how poorly they’re all done, and start to dig in my front pocket for the Kershaw knife I’d been carrying lately. It was a cheap version of a switchblade that Dad had bought me at a Flea Market earlier in the summer, but it held an edge well enough.

“I don’t really remember when I did it. Some time after I met your mom, at least. When I was still trying to ‘coon hunt with the blueticks I’d been raising.”

He pulls his own muskrat back out, and starts to recarve his name underneath where he’d originally done it. It only takes a few motions for him to flick it into the tree, bark scraped clean in a matter of seconds. I watch him as he does it, trying to pick up any tips for carving my own name faster. When he tilts the blade up to rehash over the S I notice the chip in the bottom of the bone handle.

“Hey, is that the knife you skinned Boots with?”

He nods, but doesn’t look away from what he’s doing.

Boots was my coyote pelt that he’d gotten me as a birthday present earlier in the year. Boots came from the side of the highway as roadkill, and Dad picked it up early that Sunday morning before church when he went out to grab biscuits for breakfast. He woke me up earlier than usual, blood on his hands standing over my bed.

“Coy,” he’d said a few times, yanking on the corner of my blanket. I remember rolling over and telling him to let me sleep, my alarm hadn’t gone off yet.

“I’ve got a present for you outside.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. Come on, you’re gonna like it.”

I groaned and rolled out of bed, too lazy to put on shoes and followed him outside to the yard slash car graveyard. On the tailgate of his old Ford truck was the pelt, hose still running water over the fur. I remember being tickled to death with it, such a beautiful color with a dark streak down his back.

“Where-”

He gestured over his shoulder and I looked down, to see the rest of the coyote, skinless with just muscle and sinew and bone, standing on its own with one of Dad’s Marbroros hanging out of its jaws. Smoke, lazily trailing off the end of it.

“Where are its feet?” I asked, a little appalled and disgusted but also delighted to have the fur. Hunting was always something I’d grown up around, and I was no stranger to gutting, skinning and cleaning my own animals to eat and put in the freezer for the winter. But the coyote’s body was a bit too similar to a dog that it made me a little uncomfortable. Since coyotes were my favorite I’d always wanted a pelt (also to match my deer skins) but it felt wrong to kill one just for fur. You couldn’t eat a coyote. Sure, they were legal to kill. All year round. They were labeled as pests, but I didn’t want to kill one just to kill it.

But since Boots was roadkill, at least saving his pelt meant he hadn’t died for nothing.

“His feet? Well, I tried to save the skin but they were a little bit more than annoying. So they went bye. You’ll live without,” he waved me off.

I grabbed up a stick from the gravel and poked at the side of the coyote. It was stiff enough it didn’t fall over.

“I think I’m gonna call him boots,” Dad said, hosing the pelt again and running his fingers through the fur.

“Because you cut off his feet?”

“Hacked them off with your brother’s hatchet, but yeah.”

“Interesting.”

“You’re gonna have to help me salt it down and clean it and all that.”

“Alright, I think I can do that.”

And I did help him salt it and preserve it. Took about two weeks for it to dry out completely, and when I brought it in I laid it out across the foot of my bed and slathered it in fabric febreze, because it still smelled a little like coyote (Despite having been washed with dawn dish soap no less than five times.)  Mom screamed when she first walked in and saw it, and I was very proud to show off Boot’s little whiskers and tiny nose.

She wasn’t happy about that.

I laughed to myself as I thought about it, and turned from watching dad carve another penis into the side of the beech tree and started on my own.

“You can hit it better if you get it at an angle,” Dad said, gesturing to my blade against the tree.

“Oh, thanks,” I said, and tried my best to do as he suggested. It did help some, but mine took triple the time his did to carve and didn’t look nearly as clean. I was still proud of it, though. It looked better than the mess he left when he was younger. He pulled out his phone and took a picture when we both decided we were finished, his new name and quite grotesque looking male anatomy next to COYOTE in all caps and what was my best version of a coyote’s head in profile. It looked more like a big blob, considering I was no artist, but maybe it was legible enough.

“You about ready to head back home?” He asked, eyeing the sky of what clouds were gathering above us. I shrugged. I really didn’t want to. No matter the weather or time of day or season, I was happy in the woods with Dad. Exploring the ridge and carving dicks into trees.

“I guess.”

“I got us some hamburgers to grill when we get back. And, I found an old copy of Beavis and Butthead. Is that enough for you?”

“Maybe,” I sang, and patted the tree a few good extra times and followed him back across the makeshift trail he’d made through the brush.