The Dark Light of Day (6 page)

I remained silent and left my fate to chance.

“Okay. You want to play it that way?” He yanked me forward by my hood and sent me crashing to my knees on the pavement. I barely missed the puddle of my own vomit. He stood behind me and ripped the hood off my head, taking a handful of hair with him. The tearing sensation from my scalp caused me to cry out. He stilled for
a moment before coming around to kneel in front of me. His gun
was still pointed at my head, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was staring at the clump of red hair he was clutching in his other hand.

When he looked up from the hair in his hand, his jaw dropped
open. Our eyes met, and even in the poor light from the motion
sensors, his eyes were the most brilliant shade of blue I’d ever seen.

Something deep inside me, something I thought to have been nonexistent, stirred.

He wasn’t much older than me, maybe just a few years. He was
dressed in a tight black t-shirt and dark jeans. The leather jacket he
wore during his earlier activities against the truck was gone. His sandy
blonde hair lay in contrast to all the darkness, grown just long
enough to keep tucked behind his ears. His blonde goatee and eyebrows matched. Black and grey tattoos, designs I couldn’t make out, started
on top of his right hand and ran upward, covering his entire arm,
disappearing under his t-shirt, emerging again out of his collar,
stopping at the base of his neck.

When he spoke, the aggression from seconds before was gone. “You?” he asked in a whisper, which quickly turned to a frustrated
shout. “What the fuck? I could have killed you!” The gun wasn’t
pointed at me anymore. It was resting in his hands instead, like it was an accessory, as unthreatening as if he were holding his keys.

“I know,” I muttered. Part of me hoped he would have killed
me. I stood up and brushed the hair from my eyes. The blonde stranger looked confused. He scratched at his goatee.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked as he tucked the
gun into the back waistband of his jeans.

“Nothing. I’m not doing anything,” I said. I reached into the
truck, grabbed my backpack from the seat, and started walking toward the fence. The blonde stranger kept pace beside me, eyeing the truck and then my bag.

“Are you...are you
living
here?” he asked. Now, he was just
getting on my nerves. I didn’t know this guy. He had no right to ask about
my business, gun or no gun. “Answer me. What are you doing
here?” He grabbed my shoulders and turned me to him.

Even with the layer of clothing in between us, my skin started to
burn instantly. I shrugged out of his grip “
Let me go!
” I screamed.
When he recognized the panic in my eyes, he did just that.

“Just tell me why you’re here,” he said, in a softer, less
demanding
tone. He smelled like leather and wind, and he kept rubbing his
hand over his facial hair. I wondered if he always did that when he was trying to figure something out.

“Why are
you
here?” I asked, turning the tables on him. The best way to not answer a question was to ask one.

“This is my dad’s yard, and I’m in town running the shop out
front for a while. I’m staying in the attached apartment, so
technically, I
live
here.” He tucked his hands in his pockets the way any boy at my
high school would do. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-
three, but when his face was set in that hard expression, with his forehead creased and his lips set in a straight line, he looked much older.

“Shit,” I said. I was hoping he was trespassing just like me.
Instead, I’d been caught—and by the fucking owner’s son no less.

I needed to get the fuck out of there.

I side-stepped him, to the left and then to the right, and he
finally let me pass. I ran for the gate and tried to pry it open as fast as possible, but it was at least twelve feet high and extremely heavy. This was the reason I had cut the hole in the fence to begin with. I heaved and heaved until finally it gave way. Then I turned and found the stranger who, just moments ago, held a gun to my temple, was now helping me open the gate.

“You didn’t think you were that strong, did you?” A smirk
played on his lips.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I stepped through the gate and hurried down the road.

“Hey, wait,” he called. I froze. I thought he was going to tell me he was calling the cops or his father, or someone who would end up sending me back into the devil’s lair of foster care. Instead, he asked, “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

He hesitated. “Jake,” he finally said. He leaned up against the
gate
on one arm, crossing his legs at the ankles. I barely noticed I was
biting
my lower lip. I stopped when I realized I was openly gawking at
him. He would be one hell of a good looking guy... for anyone who might like the creepy, angry, violent type.

I don’t know what compelled me to tell him my name. For all I knew, he’d use it to file the police report. “Abby,” I said as I turned again to walk away.

“Hey, Abby?” he called to me. “Next time just come through the gate. Or better yet, knock on the door.” He nodded toward the main building, and then gestured to a small garbage can hiding where I’d cut a hole in the fence. “No more cuttin’ holes, okay?”

Holy shit.

Just when I thought I could finally walk away, he had to add one
more thing. “If I’d known you were sneaking in for the show, I
would
have made sure you had a better seat.” He raised his eyebrows
suggestively and smiled. I felt the redness creep up from my neck to my cheeks. He started to slide the gate shut. I turned and
ran before he had it closed, hiding the evidence of my
embarrassment.

I’d never been so irritated, disgusted and intrigued by someone in all my life—and I’ve met a lot of warped motherfuckers. It was the intrigued part that had me worried the most.

Things would have been so much easier if he’d just shot me.

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED
when I got home was the junk, a huge pile of debris collected up in the center of the small gravel
driveway. My heart fell into my stomach when the realization
washed over me that it wasn’t junk. It was
our
lives.

Mine and Nan’s.

Our clothes, our furniture, all of our pictures and memories had been mangled and thrown into a huge heap. I climbed up the pile and knelt down in the center, running my hands over the matted red hair of Nan's favorite collectable doll she called Daphne. Nan used to tell me the doll reminded her of me. I thought it was just because of the red hair, until one day she told me otherwise.

“It’s because she’s resilient," she had said. "That doll has been through two house fires, one front yard burial by wayward dog, and an accidental toilet bowl drowning.” She leaned across the counter on her elbows and whispered, “She was saved. All Daphne needed was a little sprucing up and a good dose of love. Every single time,
she would come out okay, sometimes even better than she was
before.” I may have been only thirteen, but I knew she hadn’t been talking about the doll anymore.

In Nan’s own way, she was trying to explain to a thirteen year-old kid that even though life hands you a big pile of shit, you don’t have to roll around in it and make shit angels.

My version of her logic.

I climbed down the mound, still clutching Daphne in my hands.
As I approached the front porch, I spotted a very official-looking
bright green paper with bold lettering tacked to the screen door. I
couldn’t make out the words until I was right on top of it. The paper shouted:

THIS PREMISES HAS BEEN EVICTED BY THE

CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF COURT ORDER IN REGARDS TO THE FORECLOSURE OF

4339 PINEPASS ROAD

Case #4320951212102013

First Bank of Coral Pines vs. Georgianne Margaret Ford

ENTRANCE BY ANYONE WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM

THE CALOOSA COUNTY SHERIFF OR THE OWNERS:

FIRST BANK OF CORAL PINES

WILL BE REMOVED AND PROSECUTED

BY THE PROPER AUTHORITY

SIGNED: SHERIFF COLE FLETCHER

Special Notes:
LOCKS HAVE BEEN CHANGED

I ripped the eviction notice from the door and sat down on the
rickety wooden steps of the porch. They creaked and groaned under my every move, making me feel as unwelcome as the paper I clutched. I turned it over and over, hoping to see a “gotcha”, or some
other punch line—maybe even a loophole that would make it all go away.

There weren’t any.

This one little piece of highlighter green paper just determined everything, and that everything, was that I had nothing.

Why hadn’t Nan told me she was losing her house? I could have helped. I would have quit school and gotten a job.

I’d just answered my own fucking question.

Of
course
she didn't tell me. She wanted me to graduate. She
said it
all the time, every day if she could squeeze it in. It was like the
woman
had a one-track mind. “Do you want pie—graduate from high
school.”

“The sun is sure beating down today—graduate from high
school.”

“I sure miss your Popop—graduate from high school.”

I think Nan believed that as long as I had a high school diploma my life would somehow end up okay.

With the letter of doom in one hand and the Daphne doll in the other, Nan’s obsession with me graduating from high school was laughable, in a sad, twisted kind of way.

Nan had gotten her wish. I had graduated and received my high school diploma.

I know she couldn’t ever have imagined I wouldn't have
anywhere to hang it.

***

I went around back and grabbed a blue tarp from the toolbox on the dock and draped it over the mound on the driveway in case of
rain. As I finished covering the contents of mine and Nan’s life together, Sheriff Fletcher pulled up along the road in his police
cruiser. He didn't bother getting out. I’d have sworn if someone were murdered, he’d probably have just snapped a picture of the crime scene with his phone without so much as stopping the car on his way to Bubba’s.

Sheriff Fletcher rolled down his window. "Thanks for the heads up," I spat at him. After all, it was his official signature gracing the bottom of the eviction notice.

"Darlin', we don't get no advance notice on these things. They’re sent to us from the state with orders to carry out the eviction on the same day. I didn't know until yesterday morning it was your Nan's house we was guttin’ up.” He paused. “It’s not like I could’ve gotten a hold of you anyway. Seems you up and disappeared on us." Gruff and unapologetic. Same as every other day.

"I assume by that comment that Dan has stopped by to see you?" I asked as I finished tucking the tarp under the bottom of the mound in case the rain decided it wanted to seep through the sides.

"Who?"

"Miss Thornton," I clarified.

"Oh yeah. Told her the truth, that I didn't know where you was.
She'll be back soon, though, so you might want to figure out what
your plan is." Sheriff Fletcher offered no assistance, but he also didn’t haul me back to Miss Thornton. For that, I was grateful.

"I'll have Owen help you move some of that shit." He grumbled, waving to the crap in the driveway. He pulled out his cell phone and mumbled into the receiver before clicking it shut. He put the cruiser
in drive, but before the car moved three feet he stopped again and
leaned out the window. "You got any green on ya?" he asked, not
bothering to look around to see who might hear him.

“Sorry, that whole keeping myself fed and sheltered thing has
really been a drag these past few weeks.” I may have been grateful, but I sure as shit wasn’t sharing the last of my weed with him.

The sheriff rolled his eyes and waved his hand dismissively.
“See you ‘round, kid,” he muttered. Then he was gone.

A half -hour later, I was lying on the small patch of grass you
could hardly call a front lawn, my legs crossed at the ankles,
dreaming
of a time not long ago when Nan had first taken me in. We were
sitting in the living room, and she was working on her knitting.

"What are your dreams, Abby?" Nan asked. When she saw how confused I was, she clarified the question. "What do you want to be
when you grow up?" I’d never been asked that before, so naturally I’d never thought about the answer. I’d thought a lot about running away, but my dreams for my life had never gone beyond getting away from my parents, then from foster care, then from the memories that plagued me. I never dreamed about what I’d do afterward.

Getting away had become my everything.

My dreams were of being left alone.

When I didn't answer Nan, she said, "Any answer is a good answer, Abby."

I told her the first thing that came to my bitter mind. "Dad
always said I wasn't good for nothin' so I guess that’s what I’m gonna do: nothin’." Hope had been stripped from me at every minute of every
hour of every day for my entire life.

Nan had tried to give it back to me.

She shook her head. "No honey, your Daddy was a sick man. He didn't know what he was sayin’. You’re a beautiful young lady, and
you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You can be a
singer, a dancer, a doctor, a lawyer—even the president." I thought she was lying to me. I got angry. Why would she tell me I could be anything when we both knew it wasn’t true?