Unlovable (2 page)

“
Was she able to give us a
description?”

“
She guesses Alan to be
about six feet tall and Bill to be a couple inches shorter. Both
men were dressed in black polyester shirt and pants, and Alan had
on shiny black ankle boots with silver zippers.”

“
They’re definitely not
fashion icons,” I said. “How about hair and eye color?”

“
Slicked-back, dirty blond
hair for both men. As for their eyes, is bloodshot considered a
color?” he frowned.

“
So they were high.” That
was not unusual, selling was how most of dealers supported their
own habit. “Anything else?”

“
Only that Alan wore a one
inch silver disk in his right earlobe” Booker flipped the notebook
shut and tucked it back into his pocket.

“
Is she willing to work with
a police sketch artist as soon as she’s feeling stronger?”
Hopefully, this was the break we’d been looking for.

“
Yes, I’ll run the drawing
through the files, and maybe we’ll find a match.” He slid the next
photo onto my desk.

“
Meet Barbara Brown. This
old driver’s license photo is the only picture we have of her. I’m
still trying to find something more recent,” Booker said, before
swiping a drink of my now warm soda. He winced and set it back
down.

“
Haven’t you ever heard of
ice, kid?” Ignoring him, I looked over the photo. The woman’s blue
eyes looked familiar.

“
It seems she’s somewhat of
a recluse,” Booker said. “We’re not even sure how she’s involved
yet. We do know that Hoffman’s been over to her house almost daily
for the past few weeks, and he doesn’t come
empty-handed.”

“
Drugs?” I asked, scanning
the info beneath the photo. It stated she was only twenty-five
years old when the picture was taken, yet she looked much older. I
didn’t pay it much heed since it was a DMV photo, and when have
they ever been flattering?

“
Again, not sure. Some days
he brings over a few grocery bags full of something and leaves an
hour later empty-handed. Other days he comes with nothing more than
a bottle of vodka, but when he leaves, he has the weighted-down
grocery bags from before. We thought about bringing him in for
questioning until he was spotted with the guys in the park. Now
we’re hoping he’ll lead us to them. Something tells me they’re the
big time players we’ve been after.”

“
What makes you so sure
there’s a drug connection between him and Barbara Brown? Hoffman
could be her boyfriend.” I didn’t doubt Booker, I just felt bad for
the poor woman.

“
Because of her.” He dropped
the last photo from his file onto my desk. “Ma—”

“
Maggie.” I sat up sharply,
picking up the photo. “I know her. She’s a senior at Port Fare
High. What does she have to do with this? Is she this woman’s
daughter?” I knew the answer before I'd asked the question. The
eyes, they held the same pained expression.

“
Yup. Physically she’s a
textbook case, kid. She’s gaunt, with jutting bones, and she has
dark rings around the eyes. She could be the poster child for
Heroin Chic.”

“
You’re wrong about Maggie.
She’s brilliant. She has a 4.0 GPA, and she spends her lunch hour
in the library most days. No one’s mentioned that her mother does
drugs, but I have heard she drinks a bit.” That was a mild
exaggeration. I’d overheard Maggie’s ex-boyfriend Zack Finkle
telling some of the guys in the locker room that her mom was an
all-out drunk.

“
Maybe I’m wrong, but look
at the photo, kid. Something’s going on with her.”

I absent-mindedly ran my thumb across
Maggie’s cheek in the glossy eight by ten before realizing Booker
was watching. I grabbed my warm soda and took a swig. Yuck! His
face was split wide in a grin.

“
So, you’re sweet on
her?”

“
No… I… well, she’s nice.
The other students genuinely like her. In fact, she was dating this
obnoxious kid until last week, and he’d been whining about her
being a goody-goody because she wouldn’t smoke grass with him.
Supposedly, that’s why they broke up. I sincerely doubt she’s doing
heroin. Or cocaine,” I added before he could.

“
Does she seem out of sorts
when you talk to her?”

I cleared my throat. “I haven’t
actually talked to her.” I dropped my gaze, wanting to hide my
anxious expression.

“
She makes you nervous, huh?
Must be love. Puppy love, anyway.”

“
Shut up,
Booker.”

“
Kid, you’re in the presence
of a master. Here’s what you have to do, my callow friend. You joke
around with her, tease her a little, you know, get her to laugh.
Make it so
she’s
the nervous one. That, my friend, is how you’ll win the lady’s
heart.”

“
This coming from a guy who
hasn’t had a date in years.”

“
Because I
choose
not to
date.”

“
Yeah, right,” I laughed.
“Look, she seems nice, that’s all. I’d hate to think she’s involved
in this mess.” I began casually spinning the pen on my desktop
again hoping my lie wasn’t too obvious.

“
I guess you’d better put on
your game face, I’m adding her to your assignment. Pull back a
little on the kids you’re currently working with and refocus most
of your energy on Ms. Brown. Make her your new best friend.
Something’s going on at her house, and only time will tell whether
she’s involved or not.”

I dropped my head back against my
chair and groaned. Booker laughed. “I have every bit of confidence
in you.” He slipped the photos back into the file and set it on the
desk. “She sure is skinny. Anorexic, you think?”

“
I don’t know,
maybe.”

“
Ask her out. The girl looks
as if she could use a good meal… or three. Check her arms for
tracks while you’re at it.”

“
And how exactly do you
suggest I do that? 'Hey, Maggie, you want to go get a burger? Oh,
by the way, do you mind if I check you for needle
marks?'”

“
I’m sure you’ll think of
something.” He got up and headed for the door. “One more thing,
kid. Be
very
careful,” he warned soberly. “She’s only 17, which means she’s
still considered jailbait.”

I chucked my pen at him, missing his
head by no more than an inch. He chuckled and darted out the
door.

Slumping back in my chair, a
sickening feeling crept into my gut.
Maggie couldn’t be on drugs, could she?
Scrubbing my face in frustration, I looked down at the photo
of the pretty girl with the sad blue eyes and prayed that my
partner and lifelong friend had it wrong.

However, he seldom did…

2

MAGGIE

“
Absolutely pathetic!”
Sadly, pulling the comb through my hair again did nothing to
improve it. The dull brown strands fell lifelessly down the center
of my back. Of course, technically, hair was already dead, yet
somehow mine seemed deader than most. I carefully set the skinny
comb on the edge of our avocado green sink. The bathroom was much
too small for a counter-top so the retro sink had to pull double
duty.

“
I wonder if Hillary ever
has a bad hair day.” I asked my reflection in the chipped mirror
above the sink. “Probably not.” Hillary was the cheer captain at my
school, Port Fare High, and every boy’s fantasy girl.
Whatever!

I wasn’t an ugly girl. I had nice
eyes, sort of. There were huge shadows around them anymore thanks
to too many late-night study sessions, but their blue color was
somewhat pretty. I had a good nose. It was straight and short,
though it did turn up a little too much at the end, but my skin was
clear, this week anyway.

I jabbed my fingers through my hair
again in hopes of infusing some life into it.

Nope.

I dropped my hands back down onto the
sink’s edge, forgetting about the precariously placed comb and sent
it plunging into our pink toilet. Yet another great day in my dull
boring life! I fished the comb out, poured bleach on it and left it
in the sink to soak. I wrapped a rubber band around my dead hair
and went to my room.

The back seam of my one and only
winter coat had ripped out right before Christmas, and I now had to
dress in layers to keep warm. I pulled on a tank top and two tee
shirts before grabbing my beige sweater off the bed and heading
into the kitchen to pack some lunch.

Scooping up the mail off the
wobbly kitchen table, I thumbed through it while standing next to
our trash bin. “Hmm, junk mail.” One was addressed to me:
Maggie Brown, You may already be a $1,000,000
winner!

“
Goodie, my troubles are
over.” I tossed the envelope into the dilapidated orange bin and
gathered the peanut butter and the last of the bread from the
cupboard before continuing.

The next letter was
addressed to my mother.
Barbara Brown, you
are invited to join the Wine of the Month club. Call
1-800—
“Oh, yeah, exactly what my mother
needs.” I ripped the invitation into several small pieces and filed
it alongside the $1,000,000 advertisement. The only other piece of
mail was the overdue electric bill. “Shoot!” I set it beside the
tattered dish drainer to remind myself to write out a check after
school.

With only one slice of bread left, I
made up half a sandwich for my mother. If anyone needed food, she
did. I packed up my book bag and walked over to where her skeletal
frame laid sprawled across the couch sleeping off last night’s
dinner: a bottle of vodka. I swept back a matted strand of gray
hair from her prematurely-lined face—no one would have guessed her
to be only 34 years-old—and kissed her cheek, something I’d have
never done if she were coherent.

“
I lo … bye, Mom.” I wanted
to tell her I loved her, but she’d never made our home a safe place
for expressing emotions, and even though she was asleep, I still
couldn’t do it. I’d learned from an early age to keep my feelings
buried deep inside, training myself never to cry in front of her.
Having to endure her ridiculing if I were to show her my true
emotions would have killed me.

I thought back to when I was just
seven years old. I’d fallen out of an apple tree and hurt my arm.
Lying on a rotting heap of wormy apples, I screamed out in pain and
within seconds, my mother was at my side.

“
Shut up! You’re
embarrassing me.” She jerked me up by my injured arm and dragged me
into the house. “Stop crying and go to bed!”

I remembered rubbing the tears dry
from my cheeks, and forcing myself to stop crying. “My arm hurts,
bad!”

“
Good! Maybe that will teach
you to be more careful, cry-baby.”

Two days later the school nurse
noticed my swollen, misshapen arm during recess and tried calling
my mom for over two hours but she never answered so the neighbor
listed on my emergency contact card drove me to the hospital
instead. It turned out my arm was broken in two places. And the
reason my mother never picked up the phone? She was passed out from
her liquid lunch.

Social services showed up at our home
the next day. My mother was sober by then and was able to lie her
way out of trouble, but she went ballistic on me after they’d
left.

“
If you ever pull a stunt
like that again, I’ll stick you in a foster home so fast your head
will spin, then you’ll no long be a burden to me!” From then on,
all my tears were saved for my pillow.

I turned and gave the room a quick
once-over to make sure nothing was lying around that she might
stumble over and hurt herself on. Quietly closing the door of our
dilapidated blue trailer, I tightened my antiquated sweater as the
bitter cold wind sliced through it. “Oooh!” Spring couldn’t come
soon enough for me, despite the beauty of Upstate New York, the
winters were brutal.

The school was close, only 12 minutes
away if I jogged, something I usually did during the winter months.
It was the first day of school since Christmas break, and I was
looking forward to getting back into a routine.

When I reached the park
near my home, a sporty red Lexus IS F pulled up alongside me. My
heart skipped a beat. I knew the car and could easily pick it out
in a crowd, along with its hot owner. Seth Prescott: beautiful car,
beautiful hair, beautiful… seriously, what
wasn’t
beautiful about him? He even
had a way of making the scruffy brown cowboy boots he always wore
look hot. He’d transferred to Port Fare High from some fancy
private school last summer, and I’d developed a serious crush on
him, along with every other girl in school. I knew he was out of my
league, but it didn’t stop me from indulging in a daydream or two.
I’d heard he lived alone since his parents died a while back.
Rather impressive for a guy who was only eighteen.

“
Want a ride?” He flashed a
to-die-for smile as a gust of wind caught his shoulder-length brown
hair, tossing the silky locks onto his face. His green eyes
sparkled as he brushed the hair behind his ears and
laughed.

Yep, he was freakin’ hot.