No Use For A Name (19 page)

"Alarm. Activated. Please enter a security code."

I jumped about a foot in the air and nearly dropped Kaia. My eyes flew around the room wildly. There, on the wall opposite the door, was a little box with a blinking red light. The ridiculously loud automated voice was coming from it.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP. Please enter a security code."

I dragged Kaia through the door. "Kaia, what's the security code?"

"Mmmm
…
" Her knees gave out and she sagged to the floor.

"Oh for the love of god, what's the code Kaia?"

"BEEP BEEP BEEP. Please enter a security code."

I charged over to the little box and started pounding on the buttons. I put in the last four digits of Kaia's cell number.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP. Please enter a security code."

I pounded on the buttons some more, my hysteria rising. From the box, I heard the sound of a phone ringing, then a live human's voice called out through the speaker. "Hello?"

"Hello," I said in a loud whisper. "Can you tell me how to turn this thing off?"

"What is your security phrase please?"

"Christ on a fucking cracker!"

"Ma'am, I'm calling the police," the voice crackled.

"The security phrase is 'Joanie loves Chachi,'" a man's voice said from the top of the stairs.

"Thank you sir," the woman's voice said through the box. "Are you in any danger?"

"No, we're fine here, thank you."

"Thank you." The voice clicked off, the beeping went silent, and the color on the alarm box changed from red to green.

The man tightened the belt of his robe and descended the stairs, his eyes on Kaia. He came over and stood above her, his face pinched. He blew air out of his nostrils before focusing his attention on me for the first time. His eyes widened and he held his breath. He looked back and forth between me and Kaia for a few seconds, then his eyes rested on me again, but they flicked away when a woman's voice came from upstairs.

"Mark? Mark, what's going on? Is it Kaia? Is something wrong honey?" Kaia's mother jogged down the stairs, her bare legs flashing below her knee length nightgown. "Is she
…
" Her voice stopped abruptly as she caught sight of me, and just like the last time I saw her, her face twisted and it looked like she wanted to vomit.

"What are you doing here?" she whispered through her clenched teeth.

"I drove Kaia home." I said, inching toward the door.

"Get out of my house," she seethed.

Kaia's dad stepped in front of me. "There are two girls in this house. One of them is extremely drunk, and the other one got her here safely. Please don't do this Laura." His voice held a note of warning, but I don't think she heard it.

"Yes, and one of them's our daughter. And one of them
isn't
. My god, I've never been more proud of
our
little girl." Kaia's mom's voice rose hysterically. "And you?" She whirled around and turned her wild eyes on me. "How did Kaia get into this condition? Where the hell have you two been? You are a terrible influence, Baby Anderson. I knew the moment you started hanging around Kaia that she'd relapse. I never want to see your face again, do you understand me?"

I stepped around Kaia's dad, my eyes blazing. "I wasn't even at that party tonight. Someone called me and told me Kaia was in trouble so I went and found her. I saved her ass tonight,
Aunt Laura
. You have no idea what would have happened if I hadn't gotten there when I did."

I turned on my heel and stalked to the door, tearing it open. I put one foot across the threshold but turned back before I left. "And my name is not Baby." I paused, meeting her blue eyes, eyes that looked just like my mother's. "It's Athena."

I slammed the door so hard on my way out, the entire house rattled.

I stomped down the driveway, so mad I didn't know what to do. I reached the road and kicked a rock in frustration, then crossed my arms and jabbed myself in the chest with something pokey.

I'd accidentally stabbed myself with Kaia's car keys, clenched in a death grip in my left hand. I looked back up the driveway at Kaia's car and shrugged my shoulders carelessly.
Grand theft auto? What the hell? She's not going anywhere tonight.

I was surprised that as mad as I was, I didn't kill the car once on the way back to my house. I was just about to pass Mrs. Dutton's house and turn into my driveway when I saw someone on the side of the road, standing where Kaia usually picked us up for school.

I pulled into Mrs. Dutton's driveway instead of my own and got out of the car. "Hey Joe," I said when I stood in front of him.

"Hey."

"Were you waiting for me?"

Joe's mouth turned up in a sardonic smile, and I thought he probably wanted to make fun of me for asking such an obviously stupid question, but he restrained himself. "You don't want to go home tonight," he said instead.

"Why, what's going on?"

"Dad's moving out."

I sucked in my breath. "He already has another place, you know."

Joe nodded. "I know."

Clucking my tongue against my teeth, I tugged on the ends of my hair. "Of course you did, didn't you? It's easy to hide out from us when you've got a whole other home to go to, isn't it? And I thought you were so stealthy."

Joe had the decency to look uncomfortable. "Listen, it wasn't my secret to tell. Yeah, I've stayed at the apartment before, but not very often. Dad hasn't had many chances to be happy. He's happy with Oliver
…
Grady's dad. I didn't want anything to blow that."

Now I was the one who felt uncomfortable. I looked down at the dry grass at my feet and kicked at a dirt clod before I spoke. "So when you were telling me to stay away from Grady, you were just trying to protect Dad?"

"Yeah." Joe shrugged. "Grady's a good guy. His dad, Oliver, he knows about our family, but Grady never did. And, well, it just got to the point where Dad didn't feel like he could come clean. Too many lies."

I huffed and flung my hands in the air. "Yeah. Lies, right. You know, you keep calling him Dad, but Grady says there's no way he could possibly be our father."

Joe shook his head. "He's Phoebe's dad for sure. That's why he married mom. Dad played football, and the guys started giving him shit for being a virgin, so he got a decoy girlfriend—Mom. He didn't want anyone to find out he was gay, so he figured if he went out with the school slut, everyone would think he was having sex with her. He slept with her a couple times so that his locker room talk would be more realistic. She told him she was on the pill."

"But she wasn't." As fucked up as my relationship with my mom was, I still knew her pretty well. "She got pregnant on purpose to trap him."

Joe nodded. "Uh huh." Screaming erupted in our trailer. We shrank back into the shadows of Mrs. Dutton's property and watched as Dad strode down the stairs with an open cardboard box in his hands. My mother clung to him, alternately grasping at his clothing and then hitting him, screaming obscenities so fast that her words blurred into a buzz of static. Dad stared straight ahead, paying no attention, his back erect. He tossed the box into the rear seat of his Toyota, then turned and marched into the house for the next load.

Joe picked up where he left off. "So I doubt Monica and Rachel are his kids, but I might be. Dad tried to 'cure himself' a few times, I guess."

It was too dark to tell, but from the look on his face, I was sure Joe's cheeks were pink, he looked pretty embarrassed. He must have gathered from my expression that I wanted him to keep talking, because he continued. "I don't know if he's your dad or not. But he likes you, Barbie, and that's more than I can say for the rest of them, even Phoebe, the one he knows is his."

I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at Joe stony-eyed, but stayed silent.

Joe took his hands out of his pockets and started to walk away, toward the trailer.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I'm going to help Dad. Now that everything's out in the open, I'm moving in with him." Joe turned and looked over his shoulder at me. "Think about giving him a chance, Barbie." He walked the rest of the way to the trailer, opened the door, and stepped across the threshold. The sounds of my mother's screaming cut through the night until he closed the door.

I buried my face in my hands. What the hell was I going to do now? I might have asked Mrs. Dutton if I could stay at her place, but it had to be three in the morning. I wasn't going to pound on her door in the middle of the night. Sighing, I lifted my head and reluctantly made my way back over to Kaia's car. I guess I could just drive around until the sun came up, or until I ran the car out of gas, whichever came first.

I had my hand on the driver's door and was about to climb in when Mrs. Dutton's front door cracked open, shedding warm light onto the stoop. "Barbie," she said in a loud whisper that carried across her small lawn, "where are you going?"

I hadn't realized how depressed I was by this whole night until I saw Joanna's concerned but friendly face peeking out her door. She waved me over and ushered me inside, shutting the door firmly behind me.

"I've been waiting for you to come knock on my door all night," she said, pulling me into a quick hug. "I thought you were trapped in that awful trailer until I saw you pull up in your cousin's car. Were you honestly going to leave without asking me for help?" She kept talking, not waiting for my response. "I've been listening to your mother scream all night, but your father's been yelling too. To tell you the truth, up to now I thought he was mute."

I laughed shakily. "It's been a rough night."

Joanna clucked sympathetically and smoothed a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, a move that brought tears to my eyes. "Can I get you something? Water? Some coffee? Anything?"

I shook my head. "Honestly Joanna, I'm totally beat. Would it be okay if I crashed here tonight?"

"Of course, of course. You can stay in Rose's room."

"Rose?"

Joanna laughed lightly, then covered a huge yawn. She was obviously pretty tired too, and once again I couldn't believe she'd waited up for me. "Oh, it's just an old habit. Todd and I, we always wanted a little girl. If we'd had one, we would have named her Rose, and this room would have been her room, so I always just think of it as Rose's room."

Dread filled my stomach as we walked down the hall. I was sure that she was going to open the door and I'd walk into some dusty shrine to the baby who never existed, with a creepy empty crib and dead eyed teddy bears lining the walls.

I nearly wept with relief when instead the room was filled with craft supplies, a sewing machine, and a bunch of half finished jewelry projects. She motioned me to a cushy looking sofa crammed into the corner of the room. "It's not much, but it's comfortable. My sister sleeps there whenever she comes to visit, she says it's better than her own bed. I'll get you a pillow and blanket."

She bustled off and I sank down onto the couch, laying my head on the soft cushion and pulling my knees up to my chest in the fetal position. I was so, so tired.

Mrs. Dutton returned and clucked again when she saw me. I watched her, bleary-eyed, as she plugged in a nightlight, placed a pillow under my head, and laid a blanket over me, tenderly tucking it around my shoulders. "Goodnight, sweetheart," she whispered, pecking a light kiss on my temple.

She turned out the lights and shut the door. Fat tears rolled down my face. It was the first time I'd ever been tucked in. I cried myself to sleep. In a good way.

* * *

Daylight was pouring in the windows when I finally woke up the next morning.
Afternoon
, I realized, when I stumbled out to the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave. It was nearly one o'clock.

There was coffee in a carafe and a note on the table.

Dear Barbie,

I have to work today, and I'm driving to my sister's place in Oregon tonight. Sorry, can't get out of it. You're welcome to anything you want or need, and I hope that you'll feel free to stay here as long as you'd like.

She'd drawn a smiley face at the bottom of the page and written her name underneath. Under that was a house key, which I took and slipped into my pocket.

I sat at the Formica table in the sunny kitchen for a long time, brooding and nursing my coffee. I stared for a while at the framed wedding photo Joanna had hanging on the wall across from the kitchen table. Todd's hands rested lightly on her waist, his blue eyes laughing at the camera. Joanna smiled radiantly, her hands on top of his. I was glad to see that her fingernails were a light pink instead of the bright green she always wore now. They looked so young. So happy. It was totally unfair. And I was sick of unfair.

I could see the front of my trailer from the kitchen's side window. There was zero activity over there. Finally coming to a decision, I rose and headed back to the craft room. I rummaged around in the sewing table's drawers until I found exactly what I needed.

I was pretty sure my mom would be zonked out all day after her long night of shrieking. When I got there, the trailer had a deserted feel. It looked like my sisters had cleared out for the time being. Even the dogs were unusually quiet.

I let myself into the shed behind the trailer and eyed the tubs and tubs of unopened mail. I knew exactly which one had held my social security card and birth certificate, and I went straight to it. Using the seam ripper I'd grabbed from Mrs. Dutton's sewing supplies, I tore through every official looking envelope I saw, until I finally found what I was looking for. I put the envelope in my back pocket.

I was just about to leave, but then I remembered Grandma's twenty-five dollar check.
Why not?

I turned back to the tubs, but this time, instead of looking for envelopes with the state seal on them, I searched for anything shaped like a card. And I didn't just look in the tub from my year. I went through them all. There was so much mail piled up, I worried that the slightest shift could bury me alive, but I kept going. By the time I was done, the shed was a rats’ nest of paper and I'd found nearly nine-hundred dollars in congratulatory cash. That was a hell of a lot of money in fives and tens to stuff in my pockets, but I managed.