Nadine says she knows a guy who’ll buy them Wild Turkey and Southern Comfort, and he won’t even charge extra for the trouble. All he wants is to watch them skate at the Roller Palace.
“That don’t sound right, Dine,” Jess says. “Him being a grown man and all. What’s he want to watch a couple of girls stumbling around on skates for?” She slides the sole of her sneaker across the bottom slat of the wooden fence they’re leaning on at the end of Nadine’s road, pressing the tread of her shoe into the soft, wet part that has almost rotted through.
Nadine blows a big pink bubble with her Bazooka gum, then sucks it back in without any of it sticking to her lips or chin. “First off, he’s only 22,” she says, the gum making a cracking sound between her teeth as she chews. “And second, there’s only one of us stumbling around on the rink, and it ain’t you.” This time, she blows a bubble within a bubble, something Jess has never learned to do.
Jess doesn’t like to think high on herself, but Nadine is right. Something happens when she steps onto that polished-to-slick floor, her feet held up by nothing more than eight orange wheels. She’s not the girl from Green Pines Mobile Home Park, Trailer 8, or the girl who lived in the Red Roof Inn for 6 months before that, after the house she lived in burned down. On the rink, she glides, she heel-toes, she crossover turns. She can do the moonwalk and the 4-wheeler, figure eights backward and forward. On the rink, she’s Queen of the Roller Palace.
Jess looks sideways at Nadine. “And you think just having them two bottles will get us into that party?” She doesn’t really want to go, except she heard Tommy Adams might make an appearance. Tommy Adams was the star of Hibriten High’s basketball team and is about to start his freshman year at Western Carolina on a full scholarship. He has never even looked in Jess’ direction. She has a notebook in her beside table drawer filled with “Jessie Sue Adams” and “I love Tommy” in her best handwriting.
“Hell yes!” Nadine says over the compact she’s using to check the teased poof of hair that is her bangs. “The cheap shit gets you drunk the fastest; everybody knows that.” She glances over at the Circle K across the highway. “There’s Billy. Come on!” She tosses the mirror into her denim hobo purse and hops the fence, headed toward a lanky guy who’s tapping a cigarette out of a brand new pack of Salem’s.
Jess follows at a distance, feeling equal parts revulsion and admiration as she watches Nadine pull a $10 bill out of her cut-offs and extend it toward the guy, the money perched between her middle and index fingers somehow as coy as the way she’s tilting her head to look up at him. Jess tries to remember how Nadine even knows him, something about her cousin and the U-Store-It on the edge of town. Billy stuffs the ten in his pocket, fishes out a lighter with a bald eagle taking flight emblazoned on it.
“This the one?” he exhales a cloud of smoke and nods at Jess. She bites her lip to try to keep her eyes from watering. Her folks go through two packs a day each, but she still tears up at the first whiff of smoke.
“Uh-huh. This is Jess. “ Nadine gives her a little lop-sided smile. “She’s the shit. She’s going to win the Roller Palace Royal this summer.”
“Oh yeah?” Billy narrows his eyes while he takes a drag, takes Jess in, too. “Well ain’t that something.”
“Dine,” Jess says, quietly, her face flushing, “I ain’t decided yet…”
“You’re doing it, Jess,” Nadine says. “We done practiced all summer.”
Nadine and Jess go to the “All-U-Can-Skate for $1.88” at Roller Palace every weekday afternoon that they can scrape up a couple of dollars. It runs all summer from noon to 7 pm. If Bud, the owner, is there, he’ll let them keep skating until closing time, and he gives them free pizza. He tells Jess she’s a natural, and he wants her to try out for his roller derby team, the Queen Dreams, when she’s older. Before this summer, Jess had only skated down the flat top road in front of her Mamaw’s house a half dozen times, until she could no longer stand the way the too small Strawberry Shortcake skates her mama found at the flea market pinched her toes. The Roller Palace Royal is Labor Day weekend, only two weeks away. First prize is $300. If Jess wins, she’s going to use part of the money to pay for the TI-85 calculator she’ll need for AP Calculus. She’s the only rising 10th grader in the whole school who was invited to skip Pre-Calc and go straight into the advanced level.
Her mama works double shifts at Granny’s Kitchen six days a week, but she barely makes enough to keep them fed. Sometimes, she has to decide whether to pay the power bill or get behind on the rent. If the water gets disconnected, Jess has to go over to her Mamaw’s to wash her hair. So far this summer, the water has stayed on because her brother, Dorsey, has a job at Tastee-Freez and pays for some of the utilities, but there still won’t be any extra to buy that calculator.
“You’n’s going over to the rink later?” Billy flicks ash, looks Jess up and down again, takes another drag.
“Maybe. If we ain’t got nothing else to do,” Jess says, and Nadine nudges her in the ribs.
“We’ll be there,” Nadine purrs, and slides her red fingernails down the front of his Dale Earnhardt tee shirt.
“Why do you do stuff like that?” Jess hisses as they cross the parking lot.
Nadine scowls at her. “Like what?” She swings one leg over the waist-high concrete blocks that separate the Circle K from the overgrown property on the other side. The way Nadine’s straddling the wall makes Jess uncomfortable. She glances back at the convenience store, where Billy is lighting a fresh cigarette, a smirk lifting one corner of his mouth when their eyes meet.
Jess quickly drops her gaze. “You know what,” she says. “Flirting with him like that. It ain’t right, Dine. He ain’t no boy.”
Nadine cackles. “What the hell do you know, Jess? You’re a virgin who ain’t never even been kissed.”
Jess’ cheeks go up in flames. It’s the truth. Even her little cousin, Amy, who’s twelve, has swapped spit with a boy named Dennis who lives in Jess’ trailer park. She walked up on them herself, down by the brick wall at the entrance to Green Pines, while they were playing Ghost in the Graveyard a few weeks ago. Nadine has already done it with four guys that she’s told Jess about, and from the way she’s acting with Billy, Jess won’t be surprised if it’s soon one more.
Nadine’s shoulders slump. “Shit, I’m sorry, Jess. I don’t know why I said that. It don’t matter. And it ain’t nobody’s business but yourn.” She fools with the fringe at the bottom of her Myrtle Beach tee shirt.
Jess hoists herself up and over the wall in one fluid motion. She isn’t going to be caught dead sitting on it like Nadine. She looks like that stray cat everybody in the trailer park calls Pearl, her hind end up in the air every time she’s in heat. She has a litter of kittens every few months.
Nadine lands on the ground beside her. “Did you hear? I said I was sorry.”
“Ok,” Jess says, but that’s all. She doesn’t want to let her off too easy.
They take wide steps through the dense brush that used to be the tidy grounds of a restaurant called the BBQ Pit, the tall grass swishing against their thighs. The building has been vacant for years. Spray-painted stars enclosed in circles cover the brick exterior and the roof is caving in on one side. A couple of windows have been smashed, no telling how long ago, the shards of glass still in the piles where it shattered.
Jess rubs some of the yellow film covering an intact window off with the side of her fist and peers inside. All she can see are red plastic booths and wooden tabletops, stripped of the red gingham tablecloths and condiment caddies that used to adorn them.
Jess came here with her family once, when her daddy was home and her mama was happy. She and Dorsey wore BBQ-Pit bibs and did word searches on paper menus shaped like pigs. Jess ordered ribs and got sauce all over her, despite the bib. Her mama licked a napkin, fussing as she tried to clean Jess up, but her daddy just laughed. “Leave that young’un alone, Lura,” he said. “Ain’t no shame in her enjoying her meal.”
Nadine leans against the window beside her, her hands cupped around her eyes. “This place is spooky as hell. What if there’s a dead body in there?”
“There ain’t no dead body in there.”
“How do you know? It could be.”
“There ain’t no dead body in there,” Jess insists, but she starts picking her way through the weeds again, this time heading toward the road.
“Wait for me!” Nadine calls.
As the girls near the highway, a shirtless boy in a muddy truck honks the horn and whistles. Nadine flips him a double bird and screams, “Asshole!” but the roar of the diesel engine drowns her out, the blast of air that hits them in his wake mussing their hair and making their clothes flap against their bodies.
“Want to go to Kmart?” Nadine asks, smoothing her shirt fringe back into place. “’All-U-Can Skate’ don’t start for another hour.”
Jess shrugs. “I guess.”
The girls head south, stepping around empty beer bottles and crumpled soft drink cans, shattered bike reflectors, a foam sofa cushion, a child’s dirty tennis shoe, the laces covered in brambles. The hills loom on all sides, their evergreens stretching tall above the lush thickets of rhododendrons growing below. On one hill, “Repent! Or burn for eternity” is scrawled in black across a rough piece of plywood plunged into the red clay earth.
Nadine climbs up on the guardrail like it’s a balance beam. She holds her arms out to her sides, giggling, one foot poised to take a step even though she’s wobbling like crazy and cars are zooming past not more than a yard away.
Jess winces. “Dine, get down from there!” A girl in Dorsey’s History class got hit while walking drunk down this same highway last year. The car struck her so hard, it split her body in two, or at least that’s what people said. They said the force of the impact popped all the blood vessels in her eyes, and made her shit herself, too. Jess can’t think of a worse way to die. She reaches for Nadine’s arm, but Nadine swats her away.
“Don’t be such a killjoy, Jess! You ain’t gonna act like you’re my mama at the party tonight, are you?”
“I don’t know. Do I need to?”
Nadine makes a face and hops down. “There, you happy now? Come on, we ain’t got all day.”
In Kmart, Jess sits on a bottom shelf amid cotton balls and finger nail polish remover while Nadine picks up tube after tube of Maybelline and Covergirl lipstick and twists the top off to peer at the color. A large woman in a blue housedress frowns at them from further down the aisle, her ample forearms covering up the cart handle she’s leaning on.
“Do you think Spellbound is my color?” Nadine says. She’s smeared some of it on her bottom lip with her forefinger.
“Dine!” Jess whispers, glancing at the fat lady, “You ain’t supposed to do that!”
Nadine glances over her shoulder, and says in a loud voice, “What? You worried about that heifer back there? She won’t say nothing. “ She turns to face her and the woman whips her cart around, her enormous backside jiggling as she hustles out of sight and onto the next row. Nadine goes back to considering lipsticks. “See? I told you.”
Jess gets up, wipes her sweaty palms on her cutoffs. “Come on, Dine. You done looked long enough. Let’s get out of here.”
“Hold your horses. I’m still deciding.” She runs her finger along the rows of tubes, selects one with a bright red dot on the top, and closes her fist around it. She reaches over and grabs a shimmery blue eye shadow and a compact of blush from their hooks, too. They look awkward in her small hands as she struggles to hold all of them.
“Why didn’t you get a buggy if you was getting so much?” Jess asks, but Nadine acts like she doesn’t hear her.
“Attention Kmart shoppers,” a woman’s monotone voice comes over the loud speaker. “For the next 15 minutes, we’re offering a Back-to-School Blue Light Special in our boys’ department on pullover shirts for $1.50…”
The fat lady who’d been eyeing them hurries down the main aisle along with a half dozen other matronly looking women in quest of a bargain. When they’re gone, Nadine drops the cosmetics she’s got into her purse.
“Dine!” Jess gasps.
Nadine jerks her by the elbow. “You better not say nothing. Or I’ll tell everybody you want Tommy Adams to pop your cherry.”
“That ain’t true!” Jess says through clenched teeth.
“It ain’t?” Nadine says. “The way you stared at him with them puppy dog eyes of yourn every time he come down the hall, you could’ve fooled me.” She twists the chain of the gold-plaited locket around her neck back and forth. It’s the only thing Nadine’s daddy ever gave her. “Well, it don’t matter. If I tell everybody, they’ll believe it sure enough, so don’t test me.” She jerks Jess by the elbow again, and pulls her toward the back of the store.
A boy named Walter is stocking bedspreads near the “Employees Only” entrance. He wears black glasses with thick lenses and has a chin covered in acne. He sat behind Jess in English. Sometimes, she could feel him touching her hair, but she pretended not to notice.
Nadine sidles up to him. “Hey Walter,” she says, pressing her breasts against his arm. The red splotches in his cheeks get bigger.
“Hey, Nadine.” He pushes his glasses up and repositions one of the plastic encased bedspreads. It is a mess of bright colored flowers and looks like something Jess’ Mamaw would buy and then sell, brand new, for a fraction of the price in one of her many yard sales.
“Listen, there’s a couple of real bitches in the little girls’ room. They’re hogging both stalls and I really have to go. Could me and Jess use the employee bathroom?” She plays with the nametag pinned on his red Kmart shirt. “Please?”
“We ain’t supposed to let anybody back there,” Walter says.
Nadine’s hand travels down to fondle his crotch. “Aw, you sure? I’d owe you. Big.” Her fingers squeeze and release and stroke. He sucks in a sharp breath and grabs hold of the shelf in front of him.
Jess can’t stand to watch. She goes down the towel aisle and selects the softest one she can find to hold against her face, but it doesn’t block out the sound of Walter’s groan or take away the sour taste in her mouth. She knows it’s over, but she waits until Nadine whispers her name and motions for her to follow.
Walter avoids making eye contact with Jess when they meet him at the swinging black doors. His shirt is now untucked, but the hem doesn’t completely cover the wet spot on the inseam of his khakis. He looks both ways before he pushes one of the doors in and the girls slip through. They tiptoe past the manager’s office and through the shelves of overstocked weed eaters and washing machines and motor oil and bags of Frito-Lay chips.
“You ain’t even going to pretend to go to the restroom?” Jess says when Nadine heads straight for the open delivery area.
“What for?” She jumps off the truck bay and runs halfway up the hill behind the alley before she turns back. “Well, you coming, or you waiting around for him to figure things out?”
They run most of the way to Roller Palace. The whole time, Jess expects a Kmart employee, if not Walter himself, to come riding up beside them in a police cruiser, blue lights flashing, but this time, not because of a Kmart special. Jess drops her hands to her knees when they make it to the Palace parking lot. Her lungs and legs are burning. She hasn’t run like that since the time her mama found out about Tammy, one of her daddy’s lady friends. All she remembers about that afternoon are the sounds coming out of her mama as she flung her fists into her daddy’s chest, and how she struggled to keep up with Dorsey’s green jacket that seemed miles ahead of her as they ran through the holler to Mamaw’s house.
Nadine is barely winded. She’s already swinging wide the heavy tan door of the skating rink and disappearing inside. She ran track in middle school, but got kicked off the high school team because she showed up to a practice with alcohol on her breath. She told everybody she didn’t care, she was thinking of quitting anyway, and maybe some of them believed her, but Jess knows that’s bullshit.
Skate Palace smells like popcorn and anti-fungal spray. Brown stains make plumes in the ratty red carpet. The mirror ball rotates on its axle, reflecting prisms of light on the handful of skaters that got here before them. Def Leppard blasts through the speakers, and Jess can feel the bass in her chest, like a second heartbeat. Bud’s in the sound booth, scanning through his shelves of 45s. He looks up as Jess walks by and gives her a salute. She grins and waves.
Nadine’s sitting on one of the round carpet-covered benches, loosening the laces of her skates. Jess drops down beside her.
“Now, don’t have a shit fit, but Billy’s already here,” she says, her voice tight.
Jess whips around.
“Not behind us. He’s in the snack bar.”
Jess spots him at a brown Formica table, stuffing a handful of popcorn in his mouth and following it up with a large gulp of soda. When he sees Jess looking at him, his lips spread into that same grin he gave her at the gas station. “Don’t look like he’s got them bottles with him.”
Nadine rolls her eyes and pops her gum. “Well, of course not, retard! He ain’t going to bring alcohol in here to a couple of underage girls! It’s out in his car! God, to be so smart, you sure are stupid sometimes.”
Jess twists her fingers around themselves and buries them between her thighs.
“Well, what you waiting for? Go get your damn skates so he can beat off under the table watching you and we can get our shit.”
“He won’t really do that, right?” Jess says. “Dine, I’m not going out there if he’s…”
“Of course he won’t!” Nadine snaps. “Bud would throw his ass to the curb if he tried that in here.” She takes a tube of lip-gloss out of her purse and swipes the wand across her bottom lip. “Now go get your skates.” The way Nadine looks at her, Jess would think she was begging if she didn’t know her so well.
Jess holds the bottles of liquor beside Billy’s rusted out Thunderbird while Nadine gives him an overly long hug and doesn’t move away when his hands cup below the back pockets of her cutoffs. Billy stayed for the entire All-U-Can-Skate, even rented a pair of skates and staggered around the rink, his legs repeatedly stretching in unnatural directions before they gave out and he skidded across the slippery wood. Nadine would always help him up, holding tight to his waist and laughing up at him like she’s doing now.
“Jess!” Nadine says. “Get in! Billy’s going to give us a ride to the party.”
“But, I thought we was going back to your house first. Get your sister to take us.”
“Don’t need to. I got changes of clothes in here.” She pats her hobo purse.
Jess peers into the backseat. A Carolina blue elastic hairband is on the floorboard along with an empty bag of Cheetos and a pair of dirty tube socks, one of them completely inside out. She creeps past the items and pulls her feet onto the cracked vinyl seat beside her. Beastie Boys vibrates through the car’s rattling structure when Billy sticks the key in the ignition. Nadine laughs and puts her feet up on the dashboard, like she’s just having the best time.
“So where we headed to, ladies?” Billy says, and Jess gets the feeling that Billy doesn’t plan on just dropping them off.
“The old Atkins farm.” Nadine blows a big bubble with her gum and Billy pops it with his pinky finger, making it bust on her face. “Billy!” she squeals, trying to sound like she’s upset about it.
The sun looks soft now, spread out wide behind the mountains. “Like eggs over easy,” her daddy said once while they were sitting on the back stoop together, watching the sun drip past the horizon. She wonders if he ever thinks of that evening, if he’s thought of her at all since he’s been locked up.
“Here,” Nadine says, tossing a pink tube top and a black leather skirt to her. “Put them on.”
Jess stares at the clothes in her hands like they’re diseased. “I ain’t doing that in here.”
“Lord God, Jess, ain’t nobody looking!” Nadine twists around in her seat. She’s already yanked off her tee shirt. Her breasts jiggle like Jell-O in the demi cup bra she’s wearing.
“I don’t care. I ain’t changing,” Jess insists.
Nadine glares at her. “Jess…”she says so low it sounds like a growl.
“Lay off, Diney,” Billy says, steering with his knees so he can tap out a cigarette. “If she don’t want to, she don’t have to. She looks fine the way she is.”
Jess relaxes a little and sits back. She wasn’t expecting to find an ally in Billy, but she’s not going to argue if he’s taking her side. Nadine includes him in the dirty look she’s been giving Jess, but she doesn’t say another word.
When they turn down the dirt road that leads to the old farm, they can see the bonfire already blazing and dark forms moving around it, their laughter carrying through the crisp night air. Just as Jess suspected, Billy pulls the T-bird off into the tall grass and cuts the ignition.
“You’n’s ready to party?” He grins over the headrest at her before letting out a loud whoop.
Outside the car, Nadine adjusts the side mirror to get one last look at her hair and makeup. She’s wearing a green half shirt and a white denim skirt that’s so short, Jess can see her blue polka dot panties when she bends over to fool with the zipper on one of her ankle boots. Jess bets Nadine raided her sister, Sherry’s, closet while she was sleeping.
Nadine has left Jess in charge of the booze since Roller Palace, but now she turns and wraps her fingers around their necks. “I’ll take them bottles off your hands,” she says, giving Jess a wicked smile, probably still pissed Jess didn’t change into the clothes she brought for her.
The entrance is two pickups backed within a few feet of each other and a guy named Rusty standing in front of them. Nadine wastes no time sashaying up to him.
“Hey Russ,” she coos.
“Hey there, Nadine,” he says, his eyes moving over her outfit in unchecked appreciation. “What you got for me tonight?”
She runs her tongue slowly across her top lip. “Well, that depends. You talking about alcohol, or something else?”
He gives her a wide grin. “Let’s start with the booze, baby.”
She brandishes the bottles she’s had tucked under her arms. “Here you go.”
Rusty takes his time sliding them out of her hands, that same stupid grin still plastered across his face. Then he places them in a Red Rider wagon that’s about two thirds full with the offerings of other partygoers and hands Nadine a couple of red Solo cups. “Have fun,” he says, stepping aside to let them pass.
Nadine and Jess move through, but Rusty puts his forearm against Billy’s chest. “Hold up, man. You got booze?”
“I’m with them two.”
“That was for them. Two bottles ain’t enough for you, too.”
“That’s bullshit!” Billy snarls. “Diney, tell this asshole I’m with you’n’s!” He struggles to see around Rusty, who is twice his size.
Nadine turns, hands on her hips. “Sorry, Billy, them’s the rules. “ She cocks her head to the side and waves. “Thanks for the ride!” she calls, then grabs Jess by the arm and tries to pull her into the crowd.
“Dine! Do something!” Jess glances back. Billy is still arguing with Rusty, but he’s backing away.
Nadine stops pulling and glares at her. “Don’t act like you give a shit about Billy. You’ve been on my ass all day about him.”
Nadine’s right, Jess can’t stand him. She has no idea why she’s sticking her neck out for him. “How we going to get home?” she says, trying a different approach.
Nadine snickers and stares at Jess like she can’t tell if she’s for real or not. “Don’t worry, Jess, that ain’t going to be a problem.” She shoves a Solo cup into Jess’ free hand, then dissolves into the mass of sweaty bodies surrounding them.
Jess stumbles out from the tree line where she went to relieve herself again. Alcohol goes straight through her. She’s already been a half dozen times. She lost her red Solo cup on the trip before this one, which is probably for the best, since her vision is blurry and she‘s having trouble staying on her feet. As if on cue, the toe of her shoe catches a dip in the ground and she topples over.
Nadine isn’t where she said she’d be, which is by what’s left of the incinerated barn.
She sees Rusty stoking the bonfire and staggers up to him. “You ain’t seen Nadine, have you?”
He snaps a branch over his knee and grins. “You mean since she sucked me off in the silo?” Jess balks visibly, and Rusty looks pleased with himself. “I’m just messing with you. I ain’t seen her since you’n’s got here. You check the silo? She’s probably sucking somebody off.”
“You’re a pig,” Jess says. She takes a few steps backward, and almost loses her balance again, before she turns and runs. Rusty’s laughter follows her back into the darkness.
Jess goes by the card tables covered in empty bottles, beer case boxes torn open at haphazard angles, discarded solo cups and crushed up cans littering the ground on all sides. She musters up the courage to check the silo, but Bobby Miller is the only one in there, passed out next to a puddle of puke.
A crowd of kids is headed toward the jumble of cars parked along the dirt road, and she follows them, trying to make out a familiar voice among the drunken chatter, maybe even catch a glimpse of Nadine’s short white skirt. “Hey, you seen Nadine?” she calls when she’s almost caught up. They glance behind them with little interest and shake their heads.
Jess pivots in a futile circle, her eyes searching in every direction. “Dine!” she shouts, the word catching in her throat.
“She ain’t here,” someone says. She whips around.
Billy’s rusty Thunderbird is still where he parked it hours before, and he’s smirking in the driver’s seat, smoke fanning out into the night from the cigarette dangling between his lips.
Jess narrows her eyes. “How do you know she ain’t?”
“I done seen her leave. I been sitting out here since that prick wouldn’t let me in.”
“Well, who was she with?”
Billy takes one last drag, flicks the butt out the window. “Hell if I know. People. You want a ride or not?”
Jess watches the butt smoldering against the high grass for a few seconds before it goes dark. She’d about rather shrivel up into a pile of cold ashes herself than get in the car with him. “Yeah, ok,” she says. “Sure.”
“Was she on foot, or did she get in a car?” Jess asks after they’re on the road, the first chords of “Stairway to Heaven” quivering into the silence.
“On foot. At least, far as I could see.” He fishes a new pack of Salem’s from his jeans pocket. “You want me to take you to her house or yourn?”
She pictures herself showing up at Nadine’s house without her, Nadine’s mother, with her sunken eyes and those holes in her arms, wanting to know where her baby is. “Home, I guess,” she says. “I’m in Green Pines.”
He nods into the flame of his lighter.
Jess shifts in her seat and plays with the loose weather stripping on the passenger side window for a minute before she says, “Them people Dine was with: it look like she wanted to be with them, or they was forcing her?”
Billy gives her an impatient look. “Hell, I don’t know! Probably she wanted to! I wouldn’t put nothing past that little bitch; she left me with my dick in my hand at that party! She knowed she was going to do it, too. Just used me for a damn ride.”
Jess gives him a sideways glare. “Well, if you hate her so much, why was you still out there waiting?”
“Wasn’t waiting on her,” he says, and shoots her that smile again.
She turns herself as far away from him as she can and stares out at the black hills stretching beyond the highway, and then at the white line marking the edge of the winding roads until the Green Pines sign comes into view. Billy turns the Thunderbird onto her gravel road, the rocks grinding loudly against his tires.
“It’s the white one with the red trim,” she says quietly, not sure why she suddenly cares if he sees that the astro turf covering the cinderblock stairs is disintegrating, or that most of the window screens have fallen off the trailer and are lying around their tiny yard like discarded underthings.
“Thanks for the lift,” she says, and tries to open the door, but it won’t budge.
“Aw, that son of a bitch sticks sometimes. You got to really shove it,” Billy says, leaning over her. He smells like stale smoke, and sweat, and maybe motor oil, but it’s a mixture that she doesn’t hate. She watches the muscles in his upper arm flex as he forces the door open.
“Thanks,” she says again, and steps out.
“See ya around.”
Inside, the trailer is dark and still. Only the exposed bulb over the kitchen sink is on, her mama’s filthy blue apron draped over the edge of the counter beside it. Dull flashes of light pulse from the crack under Dorsey’s door. She can just make out David Letterman’s voice, but not what he’s saying, and then muted laughter.
She undresses in the dark of her room, curls herself around the Funshine Bear Care Bear she’s had since she was seven. When she drifts off to sleep, she dreams of Nadine. She’s competing in a track meet, but when the gunshot sounds, and the other girls take off, Nadine stays crouched in the start position, letting everyone get yards ahead of her. Jess shouts to her from the stands, but she doesn’t hear her. She stays firmly in place, as if that is what she was meant to do all along.
Jess has just started her warmup around the rink when Bud signals to her from the floor. She skates over, lets her legs slam into the wall.
“Nadine’s sister’s out front. I told her she ain’t here, but she won’t leave till she talks to you,” he says close to her ear so she can hear him over Toni Basil chanting Oh Mickey, you’re so fine you’re so fine you blow my mind.
Somehow, Jess manages to skate off the rink, even though every nerve in her body feels like it’s on fire. Sherry’s leaning against the wall by the ticket window, arms crossed under breasts that are threatening to explode out of the neckline of her tank top. Nadine has the same dark hair as her sister, the same green eyes that can go from kind to killer in an instant. Sherry’s look is somewhere in between now as she takes Jess in.
“You know where Dine’s at?” she asks.
Jess’ heart starts up a fierce banging in her chest. “She didn’t come home last night?” There’s a pleading in her voice even though she knows the answer.
“Jess, where’s she at?”
Jess looks down at her skates, tears welling in her eyes. “I-I don’t know. We was at a party at the Atkins’ farm. I went to pee, and when I come back, she was gone. I looked everywhere for her. Billy said he seen her leave, but…”
“Billy? Billy Adcock?”
“I don’t know. He was somebody Dine knowed.”
Sherry heads for the door, calling over her shoulder, “You see her, you tell her to get her tail home, you hear?”
Jess nods furiously. “I will.”
She spends most of All-U-Can-Skate trying to work on her Roller Palace Royal routine, but it’s not the same without Nadine. The heaviness in her chest won’t let up. Feels like the mirror ball is on top of her, forcing out every last bit of air inside her lungs.
She tells Bud she’s cutting out early. Though it’s late afternoon when she steps outside, the sun is still scorching. Heat waves ripple slowly over the asphalt parking lot.
Jess heads south toward Sawmills. Maybe she’ll stop by Granny’s Kitchen. Maybe the feel of her mama’s cool hand on her forehead and a coke will calm some of what’s swirling inside her. A stale breeze kicks up, and the scent of the honeysuckle growing along the chain link fence of the yarn factory up ahead fills her senses. It was the honeysuckle that she climbed the hills behind her Mamaw’s house to steal the nectar from whenever Mamaw’s friend, Preacher John, came to visit. The waft of his hair pomade almost overpowered the stench coming from the back bedroom where her papaw lay, his gray body contorted against the white sheets of his hospital bed. She couldn’t stand the sound of the ice clinking in their glasses of lemonade or the squeak their legs made on the plastic covered furniture as they moved closer together or the weak mewl of “Gerry Lynn!” coming from her papaw over and over without answer. She runs her hand along the thick vines, selects one of the yellow blossoms, and pops the end off. Since Papaw died and Preacher John moved in, Jess hardly goes over to Mamaw’s at all, and never to where the honeysuckle grows.
Jess is still leaning against the fence, a pile of dismembered honeysuckle blooms lying at her feet, when she sees Billy’s Thunderbird pull into the Roller Palace parking lot. She considers ducking back for a minute until she’s sure he’s inside, then double-timing it the rest of the way to Granny’s, but she remembers the way his upper arm muscles looked opening the door for her last night, and that she almost likes how he smells, and decides to go back. Maybe he’s not looking for her, but maybe he is, and maybe that doesn’t upset her.
Billy’s coming back out when she makes it to the parking lot. One look at his face and she knows he’s not there to watch her skate.
“Did Dine turn up?” she asks. “She all right?”
He puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the sky, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his scrawny neck. “I come looking for you as soon as I could. Dine’s dead, Jess,” is all he’s able to get out before she thrusts herself against him.
The savagery of her sobs sounds primal even to her as she clings to him, fistfuls of his Pepsi t-shirt in her hands. “Why?” she screams. “Why?” Billy just holds her tight, his lips pressed into her neck. Somebody passing by calls out that he’ll go get Bud, and soon after, Bud appears, transferring her into the fleshy folds of his arms.
“I’ll call her mama,” he tells Billy, and guides her inside to his office. She can still hear Kool and the Gang crooning Let’s all celebrate and have a good time even after he’s closed the door. She collapses onto one of the metal chairs against the wall. Bud crouches down in front of her. “Her cousin called right after you left. Some fishermen found her body in Lake Rhodhiss this morning. Damn neck was broke. Floating around out there in nothing but her britches. It’s a damn shame,” Bud is saying, but she can barely hear him over that wounded animal sound she’s still making. Bud pats her knee, hoists himself back to his feet. “Lura still working at Granny’s?” he asks, and Jess manages a nod.
By the time her mama gets to Roller Palace, she’s quit wailing and taken to rocking silently in her chair. Her mother bursts through the door, Bud close behind her.
“Oh, sugar,” she clucks, dropping beside Jess and pulling her head against her shoulder. She smells like cornmeal and lemons, and also, always, like cigarette smoke, but today, that suffocating odor doesn’t bother her. Jess can’t remember the last time her mama held her this close. Maybe when the police came with a warrant for her daddy while they were still living in the Red Roof Inn, but all she really remembers about that night is how she wrapped herself around his leg as they were cuffing him, refusing to let go, and how the officer with a scar across his brow had to forcibly remove her. “Let’s us go home, honey,” her mama murmurs against her ear now, and she nods eagerly.
This time, when the police come, the officers are in plain clothes. They come in an unmarked Cutlass the next morning and sit across from her and her mama at the kitchen table. The younger of the two writes notes on a small notepad that he takes out of his shirt pocket. The other one is heavyset and clears his throat after every question he asks. How long have you known Miss Jeffries? Ahem. Can you take me through your activities leading up to the disappearance of Miss Jeffries? Ahem, ahem. Would you say the behavior that Miss Jeffries exhibited at the party was typical of her character? Ahhhh-em.
“Dine wasn’t no party girl whore, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Jess snaps, even though she knows anyone they’ve already asked or still might, will say different. She can feel the heat rising up her neck, overtaking her face. “And Dine didn’t kill herself, neither, so you can mark that off the list, too.”
“What do you think happened to her, then, Miss Cunningham?” the younger one speaks up. He’s stopped scribbling notes and is leaning forward, his eyes fixed intently upon her.
“Ain’t it your job to figure that out?” Jess says.
“Jessie,” her mama hisses. “Answer him!”
“I don’t have nothing else to say! Somebody took her from the party and then they killed her! There ain’t no other explanation!” Jess is on her feet now, backed against the kitchen sink and trembling like a cornered animal.
The detectives exchange a long look before they rise from the table. “Thank you for your time ma’am,” the older one says to her mother.
“If your daughter thinks of anything further, don’t hesitate to call the station and ask for Detective Harrison,” the younger one tells her, and slips a business card into her palm.
Her mama stares at the door for a moment after the men leave, then flips open her cigarette case and lights up. “Jess, if you knowed something you didn’t tell them…”
“I don’t know nothing, Mama!”
Her mother lets out a long breath, and a plume of smoke with it. “They’ll know if you did…they always know…”
Jess shakes her head in disbelief. “I ain’t a suspect, Mama.”
“Not yet, you ain’t!”
Jess shakes her head again and goes to her room. She’s digging her sneakers out from under the bed when her mama appears at the door.
“Just where do you think you’re going?”
Jess shoves her feet in without untying the shoelaces. “All-u-can-skate. I got to work on my routine.”
She shoots Jess a disapproving look. “Well, I missed three shifts between today and yesterday to be with you. If I’d knowed you was so fine and dandy, I would’ve went in!”
“Go on in if you got to, Mama!” Jess says. “Ain’t like me needing you’s ever stopped you before!”
Her mother’s palm comes across her face. “You’n’s got no idea what…” her words trail off. Her hands clench and unclench. “You watch your smart mouth,” she says, and leaves the room. Jess bites her lip against the stinging of her cheek.
Ain’t nothing but a little blood, her mother said when she called her at work and begged her to come get her in the 6th grade, the bright red stain blossoming across the seat of her white denim jeans. Mrs. Robeson, her math teacher, let her borrow a sweater to tie around her waist, but that didn’t stop the boys. The boys, who came up close to her ear and made sniffing noises. The boys, who looked at her crotch and laughed. The boys, who whispered loudly, Jess Cunningham is on the rag on the bus that afternoon. She wonders if her mother even remembers.
She’s back in the kitchen with a lit cigarette when Jess comes out of her room. “You think I don’t know what you young’un’s think?” she says, her back turned to Jess. “You’n’s think I liked being away from you? I had to work!”
“I’m going now, Mama,” Jess says softly, and pushes out through the sagging screen door before her mother can reply.
Jess isn’t surprised when Billy shows up just as All-U-Can-Skate is ending, or when he asks if he can give her ride a home. Tonight, it’s Johnny Cash helping to drown out the shuddering sounds Billy’s car makes. Tonight, the smoke mingling with the fresh night air and her hair whipping around her face as they pick up speed are the only things stopping the screams in her throat. His hand finds hers across the gearshift, and she doesn’t pull away.
Bud followed her around like a mother hen all afternoon, refilling her Dr. Pepper from the soda fountain anytime it was empty, slipping her another piece of pizza, telling her she could have whatever she wanted from the candy bar. He must have asked her if she was ok a dozen times. Billy doesn’t say anything at all, and it’s in this absence of words that Jess feels heard. She leans her head back, eyes closed, and exists only inside the tangle of their fingers.
Dorsey’s sprawled across the couch watching Unsolved Mysteries when Jess gets home. The episode is about a young girl who disappears after leaving a party, her body found strangled in the woods a week later.
“Cut that off!” Jess hisses, lunging for the remote, but he grabs it before she does.
“Why? It ain’t like that’s what happened to Nadine.”
“Close enough!” she screams. She crosses the room to the TV and slams her hand against the power button.
Dorsey stares at her. “You ain’t heard? Hell, I thought the whole town knowed, the way people was buzzing about it at the Freez. Caleb Winters and Alan Trivette done come forward and told the cops what happened.”
Now it’s Jess’ turn to look incredulous. “What?”
“Yeah. It was a whole bunch of them, jumping off that big cliff near where we used to fish at with Papaw. Bunch of dumbasses, drunk as hell and out there in the dark. It’s a wonder Nadine’s the only one got killed.”
“But”, Jess shakes her head, her whole body shaking now, too, “but her neck was broke. Like somebody broke it.”
Dorsey sits up long enough to take a swig of his Mountain Dew. “Nah. The drop off that cliff’s every bit of 40 foot. You hit the water wrong from that kind of height, it’ll snap your damn neck.”
And then it’s like she’s there, like she’s watching Nadine, or maybe she even is Nadine, as she makes her way to the edge of the cliff, the boys, some of them dripping wet and breathless from the jump and long climb back up, hooting and hollering when she turns stripping down to her skivvies into a show. Somebody passes her a bottle, and she takes a healthy swig. And then, she jumps. But her foot slips, and she ends up hurtling toward the lake headfirst instead of leading with her feet. The cracking sound the kids hear when she hits the water is not like the clean sloosh of solid entering liquid, like all the ones who jumped before her. The group holds the rope while a couple of them climb down and search the immediate area for her, but the water’s so black and bottomless, the night sky so thick, and finally, they give up and scatter, exhausted and terrified, leaving Nadine to swallow the lake as it coaxes her beneath its dark surface.
Dine is a girl who’s dead to the world. She ain’t in the ground yet, but soon, by the end of this afternoon. Jess shakes her head, trying again to rid herself of this rhyme she’s made up. Dine is a girl who’s dead to the world…
Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens is a series of rolling hills and towering firs and spruce pines, the Smokies a purplish blur in the distance. The sky is gray with only peeks of blue after the early morning shower, but translucent rays of sun are already streaming through, promising another thick, muggy day that has been the norm this summer. The extended family and close friends are standing under the funeral home tent, Nadine’s mama, sister, and grandmother seated in front of them, the coffin held by a brace over the fresh hole they dug to put her in. She ain’t in the ground yet, but soon… Jess is on the outskirts, standing with Billy and a few kids from school who were also at the party. Bud tried to get her to stand under the tent with him, but she refused.
After Nadine’s mama took one look at her at the church and started crying, and Sherry glared at her so hard, if it hadn’t been for Billy putting his hand over hers, she would’ve gotten up and bolted, she just wants to stay out of their sight. Probably they blame her, somehow, and somehow, she doesn’t blame them. Dine is a girl who’s dead to the world…
The preacher lifts his arms over her coffin. “Lord, we commit this Child of God to the ground, her time on earth is through, but Lord, we just rest easy knowing she is in the arms of Jesus, Amen.” A cacophony of “Amen” from those gathered under the tent, some of them with a hand raised skyward, erupts. “Brothers and sisters, death comes for us all. Get right with the Lord before that time comes for you’n’s. Repent of your sins and spend eternity, like Nadine, with our Lord and Savior, or burn forever in the fires of Hell.”
“If Nadine got into Heaven, ain’t nobody going to Hell,” Sally Simpson, one of the girls she’s standing with, says under her breath and Jess gets a bitter taste in her mouth thinking about how Nadine spent her last day alive. The sun has driven the clouds away, and its heat throbs, unobstructed, against the back of Jess’ neck.
Nadine’s aunt launches into “Beulah Land”. She’s only made it through the first stanza when Nadine’s mama gets up from her seat and throws herself on Nadine’s coffin, and then sinks to the ground like she’s nothing but hair and soft tissues, no bones in her body to hold her up.
Billy flicks the butt of his cigarette into the grass. “Let’s split,” he whispers in her ear and she nods, glad she won’t have to wait around while they scrape Nadine’s mama up and try to decide if she’s overdosed again or if it’s just the grief, glad she doesn’t have to listen to the rest of “Beulah Land”. She hates that song. They sang it at Papaw’s funeral, and she hated it then, too.
The group from school follows, and when they get to their cars, Sally calls out, “You’n’s want to go up to the lake? Out on the cliff? We was thinking about having us a little party. You know, for Nadine.”
Jess is about to tell them what a shitty idea that is, but Billy pipes, “Hell yeah!” and that settles it in everyone else’s mind. Jenny Peterson and Keith Baker get in Sally’s Buick while Sally tells Billy she’ll lead the way.
“Why’d you say yes?” she lights into Billy as soon as they’re in his car.
He frowns at her, a fresh cigarette dangling from his lip. “What the hell else did you want to do today? I ain’t working, you can skip a day at the skating rink.” The eagle lighter flashes open, its flame licking the end of Billy’s cigarette, and Jess has to look away, it reminds her so much of that last day with Nadine. He sticks the key in the ignition and the hunk of scrap metal rumbles to life. “And don’t tell me you ain’t a little curious,” he continues, cranking up Hank Williams, Jr. They pull away from the cemetery in a cloud of gray gravel dust.
The yellow crime scene tape is still up even though the official report ruled Nadine’s death an accident. The kids slip under it, tiptoe onto the craggy terrain.
Keith pulls out several mason jars of moonshine from a knapsack he brought and sets them on the ground. His uncle distills it up in Roan Mountain. Jenny checks out the drop off from the cliff, looking gingerly over and then wrenching herself backward. Sally sneaks up behind her and gooses her, letting go an evil laugh when she screams and smacks at her. She drops down beside Keith and helps herself to one of the jars, her flabby midsection straining against the buttons of her shirt.
“I heard Nadine’s little body was all swole up from all the water she took in, like she done got as fat as me,” Sally says, passing a jar to Billy.
“That ain’t true,” Jess counters. “They found her in less than 24 hours. Takes longer than that for a body to bloat.” Her ankles wobble as her heels sink into the moist dirt. She’s the only one who actually dressed up for the funeral. Billy, Keith and Sally have on jeans; Jenny has on a ruffled mini skirt. Jess feels ridiculous and out of place in the hounds’ tooth dress and black pumps her brother’s girlfriend, Carla, let her borrow.
“Ain’t what I heard,” Sally maintains, wiping her hand across her mouth after tossing the fiery liquid down her throat. “Don’t matter no how. She’s gone and ain’t nothing changing that.”
Jenny joins the other two in front of the moonshine, tugging on the hem of her skirt as she tries to find a way to sit without exposing herself. Jess stays off to the side, refusing the jar when Keith tries to pass her one. “Well, at least Nadine got to bang Tommy Adams before she died,” Jenny says, finally sinking her knees to the side. “That sure ain’t a bad way to spend your last few minutes on earth.”
“What?” Jess hisses. This time one of her ankles gives out on her and she lurches into a nearby tree. “He wasn’t even there.”
They all stare blankly at her and then exchange glances.
“Him and his brother showed up late to the party because he was fixing to leave for Western the next day. Ain’t nobody mentioned he was with them to the cops so’s he don’t lose his scholarship,” Keith says gently.
If Tommy was there, Nadine would definitely leave her behind. She couldn’t let Jess have anything, not even a crush on a guy, that she wouldn’t try to take. The only reason she wasn’t competing in the Roller Palace Royal was because even Nadine knew she couldn’t beat Jess at skating. But there wasn’t a boy in the entire western part of the state that Nadine couldn’t get if she wanted him.
“It ain’t true,” Jess says, so quietly, she doubts any of them even hear her.
She yanks her heels up from the ground and starts walking through the woods back to the road. Best friends since 7th grade, when Jess moved to Lenoir from Beech Mountain. Now, she can’t stop picturing her best friend writhing underneath Tommy Adams, the basketball star, her basketball star. It ain’t true, it ain’t true, it ain’t true, she chants in her head.
She’s almost to where they left the cars when someone grabs her elbow, and she screams and whacks the person in the chest. Billy coughs a couple of times and staggers back.
“Holy shit, remind me not to never sneak up on you again,” he says.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I should’ve went with Bud after the funeral. I knowed it was a bad idea for me to come out here.”
Billy taps out a cigarette. “Nah. I knowed it was, too. Those bitches are just saying shit to get a rise out of you. Don’t pay them no mind.”
“Yeah?”
The eagle lighter flicks open again and soon the tip of the cigarette glows orange. Billy nods, blowing the smoke down so it doesn’t go in her face. “Yeah.”
She covers his mouth with hers before he can put the cigarette between his lips again. Billy’s taken off guard at first, but he recovers quickly, ditching his smoke to pull her closer. Then his hands are on her thighs, and they’re stumbling the rest of the way to his car, scrambling into the backseat. She lays her head back and endures his kisses on her jawline and neck. The empty bag of Cheetos and the dirty tube socks are still on the floorboard, along with the Carolina blue hairband. Billy shoves the front of her dress up to her waist and the seam on one side splits. She worries for a moment that she’ll have to ask her mama or Mamaw to fix it, but later, when scrub after scrub won’t get the blood stain on the back out, the split seam won’t be the reason she can’t return Carla’s dress, or why her mother screams about the week’s worth of tips replacing it will cost her when Jess tells her that she got her period early, when she says ain’t nothing but a little blood.
The weather turns over the next week, bringing the summer long heat wave to an end. The air is brisk the morning of the Roller Palace Royal. Jess takes her time walking Cajah’s Mountain Road, trying to get a handle on her nerves. Bud said there were 32 contestants in the Royal this year, the most there’s ever been. It’s a lot of people to have to outskate, to win that $300, to get that TI-85 calculator before school starts on Tuesday.
The start of school makes her think of Nadine and how they used to walk to the Exxon up the street after school and get Snickers and Sun Drops. If it was a special day, like Nadine’s birthday, they’d go to Hardee’s and get double cheeseburgers. Jess’ birthday was three days ago. Her mama made a chocolate pound cake and gave her a shirt from The Limited, but it didn’t feel like her birthday without Nadine there spending the night, the two of them making fortune tellers and playing Truth or Dare until they fell asleep somewhere near dawn. Daddy didn’t call, but an envelope came in the mail yesterday, addressed to her, Mountain View Correctional Institution stamped across the front of it. Inside was a twenty-dollar bill and a state of North Carolina keychain that she’s got hooked to her beltloop.
The Roller Palace parking lot is as full as she’s ever seen it. Even a WBTV news truck is here, the reporter lady and her cameraman doing a few practice runs. Inside, Bud is sweating so bad the beads are rolling down the sides of his face and disappearing somewhere under his chins.
“Where you been?” he says when he sees her, flipping her around to pin a number on her back. “Damn thing’s about to start and you ain’t even got your skates on!” She lifts her shirt at the neck and peeks over her shoulder. She’s #32. She doesn’t know if it’s because she’s the last contestant to arrive, or if Bud planned it that way, but she’s grateful.
Most of the contestants are out on the rink warming up, and she hurries to the counter to get skates. She’s almost laced up and ready to get out there when a familiar pair of work boots comes into her line of vision.
“I just wanted to tell you good luck or break a leg, or whatever the hell it is,” Billy says. “I’ll be cheering for you.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She keeps her head down. She’s been avoiding him since the day of the funeral. For the past week, Bud’s been keeping him from coming into the rink area by telling him she’s not there, but Bud’s too busy to be watching for him today. One of the Queen Dream girls, Debbie, is running the ticket window for the Royal.
“Listen, about the other day, when we…you know…” he stammers. “I didn’t know that was your first time.”
She gets to her feet and stops him with a hand to his chest. “It ain’t nothing,” she says. She forces a smile as she skates past him.
After more than three hours of watching her competition, it’s finally her turn. Bud calls her name over the loudspeaker, and she skates onto the rink. She smiles at the panel of judges, gets in her starting position, waits for the pulse of the music to begin. The mirror ball is spinning, casting both shadow and light with each rotation, and it’s in one of these prisms of brightness against dark that she thinks she sees her. Nadine, standing in the crowd, so clear she can make out the fringe on her Myrtle Beach tee shirt. But the mirror ball keeps turning, and in the next instant, she sees it’s just a girl with dark hair in a tank top with airbrushed letters she can’t even read at this distance, and she looks nothing like Nadine.
And then the music starts, and she glides into action, feeling only the wood beneath her wheels.
Beth Garland’s work has appeared in Military Spouse, O-Dark-Thirty, Germ Magazine, Ariel Chart, Eunoia Review and East by Northeast Literary Magazine.
