Page 17

FIFTEEN

When you’re only seventeen, and your plan for the evening is to score some weed from your dealer at midnight, it helps to have a father who puts in a fourteen-hour day, comes home at eleven, showers, and is out like a light by eleven fifteen.

I left the house at eleven thirty and drove to the Pits, a huge abandoned rock quarry about five miles out of the jurisdiction of the Heartstone Police Department.

The line to get into the parking area moved slowly, and as I got closer to the front, I could see why. Johnny Rollo was directing traffic. Some cars got waved through. But some stopped, the driver’s window would go down, Johnny would reach in, and in seconds his hand would come back, and the deal would be done.

Business was brisk.

He gave me a noncommittal head toss when I rolled down my window. “Welcome to my world,” he said. “Glad to see you made it.”

He tossed a bag of weed on my front seat, and I pulled some money out of my wallet.

“You’re in luck,” he said, pushing my hand away. “We’re giving away free samples to every honor student who rolls in. So far, you’re the only one.”

I knew better than to argue. “Thanks,” I said. “I knew all that studying would pay off one of these days.”

“Park over there by that Jeep,” he said, pointing. “Stay in your car, lights out till it starts.”

“When’s that?”

“You’re an honor student. You’ll figure it out.”

He smiled. He needed dental work, but that only added to his earthy sexiness.

“See you later?” I asked.

“Probably not. It’s my busy season. But there’s a lot of assholes around here, and they get ass-holier as the night goes on. If anyone gives you a hard time, call me. My cell number is in the bag.”

He stepped away from the car and waved me on. I pulled up next to the Jeep and turned off my lights.

Dozens of cars were parked nearby, and I could make out the shapes of the passengers, lit only by the glow of whatever it was they were smoking.

Outside my window, the world was deathly quiet. But the thoughts inside my head were clanging like a runaway pinball machine. My dead mother. My despondent father. My college applications. Sex with Johnny Rollo. “There is no us,” he’d said. “Never will be,” he’d said. “One and done,” he’d said. Then why did he give me his phone number? Why did he give me free weed? Why did he say, “If anyone gives you a hard time?—?”

The silence was suddenly shattered by the aggressive sound of Metallica exploding through the cavernous space. Then the night lit up as hundreds of cars circling the quarry’s upper rim turned on their headlights.

My honor student brain figured it out immediately. Party time. I got out of the car.

“Maggie!” a voice called out.

I turned around. “Misty,” I said, happy to see a familiar face.

Misty Sinclair and her family lived at 822 Crystal Avenue, across the street and half a block away from my house. They’d moved to Heartstone when Misty and I were both in fourth grade, and the two of us tried to be friends at first. But we had nothing in common.

I loved school. Misty got by, but she’d much rather have fun, and by the time we were in seventh grade we’d completely drifted apart. I was focused on academics, sports, and extracurricular activities, while Misty was more into music, hanging out with her friends, and—somewhere around the age of eleven—boys.

“I haven’t seen you since your mom’s funeral,” she said. “How are you doing?”

Normally, I’d have said, Pretty good, looking at colleges. How about you? But nothing about my life felt normal. “Not so great,” I said. “I’ve spent the summer washing dishes, I’m worried about my depressed, widowed father, and I just found out that my boyfriend got married because he got some girl in Korea pregnant.”

“Van got...? Oh, you poor thing. No wonder you went and jumped on Johnny Rollo.”

She’d blindsided me. “I... I didn’t... who told you that?”

“Nobody told me. Johnny’s the biggest weed dealer in the entire school, and he’s not half bad-looking. He bangs any girl he wants, and then he tells her to meet him someplace public so everyone can see the latest notch on his bedpost. I got to go to a basketball game.”

“You slept with him too?”

“Welcome to the club, girl. This your first time here?”

I nodded.

“Why don’t I help you lose your rock quarry virginity. We’ll get some beers and dance our brains out. This place totally rocks, and the sheriff usually gives us about an hour before he sends out the troops to chase our asses out of here.”

She was right. About everything. We drank some beer, danced our brains out, and had fun—a lot of fun. The cops showed up an hour later.

“Time to blow this pop stand,” she said. “Can you give me a ride? I came here with Tracey and Melissa, but you live right down the street from me, and besides, you’re a lot more fun.”

We got in my car, cackling like a couple of drunken schoolgirls.

“We’re on a roll,” Misty said. “Let’s not quit now.”

She opened her bag, pulled out a pint of vodka, unscrewed the cap, lifted the bottle in the air, and offered up a toast.

“Girl power!” she bellowed—two words that had started as the Spice Girls catchphrase and had swept the globe to become the official feminist battle cry of our era. She took a swallow and passed the bottle to me.

“I hate to sound like the class nerd,” I said, “but here’s to our senior year and getting into the college of our choice.” I tipped the vodka to my lips and took a swig. “Mine is Penn. What’s yours?”

“I’m not going to college,” she said, downing another drink.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I know you hate sitting in a classroom, but college is so much more than that. You’ll have a blast.”

“Maggie, I’m not applying to college. My family doesn’t have the money. I’m not even sure I’ll finish high school, and if I do, it won’t be at Heartstone.”

“That’s crazy. You’re drunk.”

“No, I’m broke. My father doesn’t have a nickel to send me to college.”

I handed her the bottle and tried to clear my head. I knew her father. Arnold Sinclair owned a busy dry-cleaning store, and as far as I could tell, he was well-liked and well-off. The Sinclairs lived in a nice house, they bought Misty a car when she turned sixteen, and they went on a skiing vacation to Aspen over Christmas. There was no way they could be broke.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You know the new fifteen-story apartment complex on Crosby Avenue?” Misty said. “It’s called the Commodore. Last winter my father signed a lease to open up a dry-cleaning store in that building.”

“I heard that.”

“It’s expensive. Our original store does pretty well, but it costs a lot to open a second store with all new equipment in a lah-dee-dah building like the Commodore. He sank a shitload of money into it—a lot more than he expected. Once he got started, he couldn’t pull the plug, and he wound up having to borrow from the bank, but he was sure it would pay off. He was going to open the new place in September, but it all went to hell. In July he went out of business.”

How did I not know that? I thought. And then I realized that my mother had always been the one to let us know if someone in the neighborhood got divorced, had a knee replacement, or won a hundred dollars on a scratch-off ticket.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Minna Schultz happened. Do you know her?”

“No.”

“She’s a real estate agent and a total cunt. When the Commodore was ready to start selling apartments, she went to one of the owners and tried to get an exclusive listing. He wouldn’t give it to her. So, she went to the guy’s partner and tried to get it from him. She thought she could play one owner against the other, but it backfired, and they gave the listing to another real estate agent.”

“Serves her right,” I said, trying to be supportive.

“Yeah, but then the bitch went totally ballistic. She decided to totally trash the Commodore and make it impossible for them to sell anything.”

“How is that possible?” I said. “The place is beautiful. It’s in a great neighborhood.”

“But it’s got a dry-cleaning store as part of the complex.”

“That only makes it more attractive.”

“Not when Minna launches a campaign to say that the cleaning solvents my father uses are toxic.”

“Are they?”

“They’re the same chemicals all dry cleaners use, but that didn’t stop her. She printed up flyers—thousands of them. They were everywhere—in mailboxes, stuck under windshield wipers, she even had them taped to the swings and the jungle gym in the park.”

“What’d they say?”

“There was a skull and crossbones on the top. On the bottom was a chart from the EPA showing how one tablespoon of dry-cleaning fluid can contaminate two Olympic-size swimming pools, and a gallon can pollute an entire reservoir. In the middle was a big box that said Sinclair Dry Cleaners is poisoning the air and the water at the Commodore, and that buying an apartment there would be like signing a death warrant for your family.

“The building tried to save its own ass by running an ad campaign to say that they are safe, but my father’s reputation was ruined. He never opened the new store, and he owes the bank a fortune that he can’t pay, so they sued for anything they could get. They now own the original store, and they’re going to auction it off to recoup some of their losses. Meantime my father is wiped out.”

“What are you going to do?”

“My father has the perfect solution—booze. He drinks all day and all night. My mother can’t stand it anymore. She’s taking me and my brother Charlie to live with my grandparents in Colorado. She’s going to tell my father tonight. That’s why I came to the Pits. I didn’t want to be there when it happened. The poor man is going to go to pieces.”

I slowed down as I came to the edge of town and stopped at a red light on Main Street. We were less than a mile from home. She handed me the bottle, I put it to my mouth, tilted it up, and drained it dry.

I heard the siren and turned around. A cop car was coming up on us fast, its red and blue turret lights spinning. I shoved the empty bottle under the driver’s seat and managed to eke out two words.

“Oh, shit.”