Stoner took off his reflector sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. The funeral shirt and tie had gone back to whoever he borrowed them from, but the sunglasses indoors he seemed to be keeping as his new look. The grieving husband thing. Given the shaved head and leather jacket, though, the shades just leaned it all in more of the criminal direction.

  “She could of been real happy,” he said, out of nowhere. “Her and me. If things were different. Gal was a spitfire, all said and done.”

  Why I needed to hear my own mother called any name at all, by a guy that had mostly pissed on her flame, was a question. If things were different. The existence of me having screwed up his wonderful marriage: there it sat. Same pile of crap waiting to be stepped in. I looked over at Miss Barks again and was shocked to see her looking straight at me. I rolled my eyes towards the door like, Please? But she ratcheted her eyebrows together, that thing she did, meaning, You’ve got some fish to fry here, young man. Which I did, she wasn’t wrong. The main one being, what the hell comes next for me, and will Stoner have anything to say about it.

  The DSS had been on the fence at first, but now were coming in on the side of yes, Stoner could have a say, if he wanted to. He’d shown up to counseling with Mom, and acted agreeable to helping support me. What about my busted lip, what about my black eye, what about getting locked in my room for days at a time? Questions were asked. But Mom always took up for him, claiming I was a hard kid to handle. She said she was the one doing the child abuse, more so than Stoner. This fairy tale, reported to me by Miss Barks, made me so mad at Mom, I wanted her back just for the purpose of calling her a goddamn lying bitch. Which was not happening unless I meant to go dig her up out of Russell County clay. What I did instead was come close to busting out Miss Barks’s passenger-side window, the day she told me. This chat of ours taking place in her car, parked out on Millers Chapel Road. All that got busted though was my knuckles. And my cred, I guess you could say. As far as being a kid that was hard to handle.

  I wasn’t forgiving Mom for it, but after Miss Barks talked me down, I could see the reasoning. No part of the Stoner deal was ever supposed to happen to me, and I’d told Mom that. Like, daily. A mother is supposed to protect a kid from being made to lick a man’s boots and take his punches. Mom screwed up, and she knew it. I’d never in the past been a hundred percent on all her moral inventory blah-blah-blah, but I was getting it now.

  The upshot of her taking full responsibility was that no charges were ever filed against Stoner. Leaving the two of us free to discuss our feelings in a burger place on 58. Normally with a stepdad I guess nothing is set in stone, as far as child support for the kid of the dead wife. But legal-guardian-wise, I was short on options. Not a great time for him to lose interest entirely.

  I was waiting for him to ask about school, or anything else. Was I making progress in the discipline-and-respect-for-others department. Nope, nobody home, Stoner boot camp had closed up shop. This probably sounds nuts, but I started wishing he would make some insult of my character, to show interest. I was blurting out any random thing that might make me sound like a worthy person, which to be honest there wasn’t much. Even my drawing, the one thing I was pretty good at, was over and out since Mom died. I couldn’t even open my notebooks to look at my older stuff. Too sad, I guess. I was the opposite of Tommy, as far as sadness and drawing.

  And now I was embarrassing myself, trying to dig up bones for Stoner. I said I was going out for JV football. And had started weight training. Which was not a complete lie, Fast Forward was psyched about me and football and was letting me use his free weights, teaching me the body parts lingo some guys had: quads, triceps, lats. Those words did get the tiniest spark of attention from Stoner. For about ten seconds, before he went back to opening up the layers of his Quarter Pounder and separating out all the pickles.

  I decided to let Stoner make the next move. A boring game, since he didn’t seem to notice I’d stopped talking. He ran out of anything fascinating to eat, and was looking around like maybe somebody better had showed up. It was mostly just parents with kids eating their value meals in what you had to assume were happier situations. Our table was by the door, so we got a fresh blast of December whenever anybody came in. Freezing rain type of thing. I didn’t have any winter coat that fall. Mom kept meaning to get me one, but never did.

  I said nothing, Stoner said nothing. I turned up my Coke and drank it down. I needed more ice in me right then like a hole in the head. Now my whole chest hurt. A couple came in with a kid, one of those good-looking families you just want to believe in, like a commercial. The little guy was in a puffy jacket and boots and looked like a tiny moon man, walking on his toes. The mom had on a purple coat and tall boots, cheeks red from the cold, young looking. Like Mom whenever she first had me. The husband or boyfriend went to order and she squatted down on her boot heels to unzip the kid out of his coat, flicking her shiny hair over her shoulders, talking to this kid, smiling in his face like there was no place else she wanted to be. I wondered if Mom was ever that thrilled with me. She’d fought tooth and nail with her fosters about not giving up the baby, and ended up having to move out on her own, pregnant, broke, and boyfriendless as she was. She always said I was the first good thing that ever happened to her. And seemed that thrilled about baby number two, even if Stoner wasn’t.

  He was running his fingers around the inside of the paper sleeve that his fries came in, and licking the salt off his fingers. I could see little grains in his black beard. I wondered if he ever thought about the baby he was going to be the dad of, or if he’d forgotten it completely, as part of his total reset. At the funeral no mention was made about this being a two-in-one, meaning probably nobody else knew. So now, in the entire world, there was only me left to lie in bed at night thinking about those two being dead forever. It seemed like a lot for one person to be responsible for. The whole life of my brother that never got to happen.

  Miss Barks got my attention, pointing at her watch. Shit and hallelujah.

  I folded the dead-meat mess of my lunch back into its foil, laying it to rest. Or on second thought, to save for later because I’d be starving in an hour. “So, report cards are coming next week and I’m looking good,” I said. “Possibly honor roll.” Even for a Hail Mary, this was dumb, Stoner giving no particular shit about school. Plus not true. But not totally false, either. I told him I’d busted my butt trying to make up a ton of work, due to missing a month of school.

  He looked up at me from his little salt project, with no exact expression.

  “October,” I said. “I was cutting tobacco.”

  “Huh,” he said. “So the foster parents don’t care if you lay out of school?”

  “Jesus fuck, Stoner.”

  He sat up like I’d kicked him, and looked all around for whatever Sunday school teachers might be present. “There’s no call for language.”

  I glared at him. “There’s no parents. It’s one old guy running a slave farm for homeless boys. You know where I’m living. Miss Barks told you about it, and so did Mom. What were you, unconscious? I hate it there.”

  “Fine, sorry.” He spread his hands.

  “Anyway, I won’t be there much longer because the work is pretty much done for now. He doesn’t keep boys on the farm through the winter months.”

  Stoner just nodded, like I was explaining how my sock drawer was full and I needed some place to stash my extras. Not at his place, was a good guess. I was wishing so hard for him to give a damn, and also for him to disappear from the planet of Earth. I wished both those things at the same time. And wish number three, not to be the eleven-year-old redheaded boy that everybody saw crying at the burger place on Route 58.

  I had one weapon left. “So it looks like I’ll be hanging out with Maggot. The Peggots invited me to go with them to Knoxville after school lets out. Next week. Over Christmas break.”

  Stoner looked blank. Did he not know schools let out for Christmas? Had his reset button truly erased everything, even the unrepeatable-word son of a jailbird next door?

  “You all have a nice time,” he said. And the bottom fell out of my stomach. That’s how far he was willing to let things slide, as regards the kind of people we were in this family.

  That was my last shot. The Peggots going to Knoxville, that was true. Me invited to come with them, that was not. But I would go. Because where else was there.

  18

  So I lied. On the last day of school, before the bus came for the Lee Lady Leaders Christmas party they give for the poor kids. Which is shaming in and of itself. Some of the kids at this thing are old enough to be boning each other, but still the Lady Leaders have one of their husbands coming out all fake-fat jolly in his cotton beard and we’re supposed be like, Yay, Santa! One of these situations in life where you suck it up and eat your turkey and gravy. I did wonder how we got picked. Did the Leader Ladies ask our teachers to name the three topmost skanks and food-stamp kids of each grade? Okay yes, there are the Gola Hams of this world, and the Houserman kids that all six turn up with lice every year, rain or shine. But most of us do a fair job of passing. Then comes the day they call your name over the intercom to go get on the Christmas party loser bus, lucky you. That’s what I was waiting on while we ran out the clock in homeroom. Me and Maggot were playing hangman. He asked where I would be on Christmas, did they do presents in fosters, and the story just rolled out. I said I’d be at the Salvation Army shelter or some church that takes in homeless. To be honest I had no idea, homeless church basement not likely. I just wanted that passed along to Maggot’s higher-ups.

  He was totally on board with me coming to Knoxville. Who was not was Mrs. Peggot. On the day we drove down there, I could tell something was changed. At Mom’s funeral she’d been as much family to me as I’d ever had. But Maggot told me she’d had to debate on it overnight before she finally said all right, let him come on. Now the ride in the truck was too quiet. Mr. Peg ran the heat, and it got as stuffy as a closet. Maggot asked him to put on the radio, and he wouldn’t, and that was that. Something was going on, to do with me. I realized I might not smell great due to barn cleaning the day before, and not getting my turn for the shower. I put my face to the window so nobody would see, if I tore up. Was this me now, for life? Taking up space where people wished I wasn’t? Once on a time I was something, and then I turned, like sour milk. The dead junkie’s kid. A rotten little piece of American pie that everybody wishes could just be, you know. Removed.

  Emmy Peggot, Christ Jesus. In the months since summer she’d gone full Disney channel. Neon windbreaker jacket, bouncy ponytail, boy-band posters taped up all over her room with their pretty hair and pouty faces, to the point where Mrs. Peggot said she didn’t feel right changing her clothes in there. Which confused Mr. Peg because of him thinking they were girls.

  The evening we got there, Aunt June was still at work, so Emmy met us in front of the building. Shocking new development: Emmy stays home by herself now. I couldn’t believe this girl, all hands-on-her-hips, telling Mr. Peg where to park his truck. Helping to carry up all our stuff in the elevator, saying “Make yourselves at home,” and “Mom is thrilled to death you all could come.” Aunt June now going by a new name, which was Mom.

  So that was Knoxville again, more surprises. On the drive in, we’d passed this park with people skating on solid ice, even though they’re having a warm snap. Sun blazing, people running around in track jackets and shorts. In any normal place, just try walking out on an iced-over pond on such a day: sorry friend, you’re dead. But in a city, the rules do not apply. It’s like everybody is bored of all the normal things, out looking for the weirder option.

  This extended to people doing things that ended them up in the ER, and Aunt June had had enough. She was moving back home. Big shock. We’d waited up for her to get home because Emmy said she had something to tell us. Did she ever. We sat at the kitchen bar eating barbecue wings she’d brought us for a midnight snack. Aunt June laughed and cried, blowing her nose with wads of Kleenex. She was done with being stuck out there in Knoxville, so far from everything. If she was going to work as hard as she did patching up nincompoops that had hurt themselves, she might as well patch up the nincompoops she grew up with, because everything a person could want was in Lee County. She was fed up with the head ER doctor mocking her in front of the other nurses, calling her Loretta Lynn. She’d finished some course at UT and got hired for a new job in the Pennington clinic that would be an assistant doctor type of thing. Mr. Peg slapped his leg and said he’d be damned, and Mrs. Peggot cried, both for the same reason which was happiness. Aunt June was the apple in their eyes. Her senior picture had the top spot in their living room. She was legend: June Peggot that broke all records by getting herself higher-educated instead of knocked up, and employed at the largest trauma hospital in the tristate area.

  So that was the news. Aunt June had spent her life so far trying to kick the Lee County mud off her shoes, and come to find out all she really wanted was friendly faces and the smell of hay getting mowed and to have a dog she could take for long walks in the woods. Maggot wanted to know what she would name her dog. She laughed. She said maybe Rufus.

  Emmy would be moving back too. They’d finished up the paperwork and she was adopted, Aunt June said, so the secret was out. She put her elbow around Emmy’s neck and pulled her close, both of them just beaming, and damn if they didn’t look it. Like blood.

  I kept quiet, eating wings and getting my mind blown. To think life could turn around so. Being a dead person’s child, then in seventh grade start calling somebody Mom. It gave me the strangest feeling. I just kept reaching in the box and taking more without a please or thank-you, forgetting for that short while to feel like the person nobody wanted.

  A murder was all over the news that Christmas, and Emmy was possessed. She’d park herself on the floor in front of the TV and wait for the latest. It was a whole family dead. Their neighbors got interviewed and said what neighbors always say on TV after a shocking crime, about the victim or murderer either one: totally unexpected, you never saw a nicer person. In other words, they’re paying zero attention to their neighbors. Not so where I come from, considering just for example how the Peggots had their eye out for me on numerous bad occasions of my life, starting day one.

  What tore Emmy up was this baby that survived the ordeal. The killers left him for dead along with the rest of the family, on the shoulder of a highway where they got carjacked in the worst way. The police found him crying in the arms of dead Mommy, next to shot-to-hell dead Daddy and dead big sister. Every night on TV they showed the same photo of this family, all smiles, matching outfits, taken obviously prior to the shit road trip. You could tell they were something over the top, religionwise, like Jehovah Witness. But that little blond baby. You’d think he was Emmy’s own. She’d asked Aunt June to find out what hospital had him so she could call about his condition. Answer: No ma’am, that was not happening, and Emmy needed to find something more appropriate to occupy her mind. She was not supposed to be watching the news, this being the permanent top story, but Aunt June on her evening shift was in no position to stop us. Then Mr. and Mrs. Peggot got interested, almost to the same degree as Emmy.

  I’m going to say though, the news was bad all around, murders being only one aspect. From TV, I’d always thought people in cities have it made. Not true. The cold snap finally hit while we were there, and the news showed all these hard-luck cases trying to get in the library, bus station etc. To sleep. Like they didn’t have relatives. I mean, it sucks to barge in on people that don’t really want you. But you’ve not seen the like of these sad individuals with nobody to barge in on, and nothing to eat. Because where are you even going to steal an apple off a tree? In the city if you’re out of money you are screwed, no two ways about it. Giving rise to mayhem, such as carjackings.

  After Aunt June put her foot down on the murder-baby talk, Emmy needed somebody else to talk to. She picked me. It started a couple of nights after we got there. All the shit I had to think about had turned me into not the greatest sleeper, so I was awake, flopped on the sofa cushions with Maggot sawing logs. He slept like a dead person, only louder. Emmy, being too grown up now for sleeping with boy cousins, was bunking with Aunt June, while Mr. and Mrs. Peggot shacked up in her room with the Backstreet Boys.

  Quiet as a cat, she slipped into the living room. Came and stood over me in the dark, little skinny thing in her white gown, like she’d crumple and leave dust on your fingers if you touched her. Where was Miss Salute-My-Shorts now? Was daytime Emmy a fake, I wondered, and this little moth-wing girl the real person? Was I supposed to say something? She sat down on the floor and started crying. Really quiet except for little gasps, like getting surprised over and over.

  “Is it still about the murder thing?” I finally asked.

  She didn’t turn around but nodded her head.

  “Sucks,” I said. “People dying for no good reason. I hate that for them.”

  “He’s so little, and all alone. I can’t quit thinking about him. I know I should.”

  “It’s not your fault. You can’t really help what’s in your brain.”

  She turned around and looked at me. I sat up. “I know everybody says that. Clean out your juvenile little head and put something nice in there. I get that all the time, and I’m like, Seriously? Just spray around brain-Lysol and get over it? How’s that work?”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Your mother. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She sounded like an adult. I was surprised she knew about Mom. I told her thanks, and I was sorry about hers too. “Before Aunt June, I mean. If there was a real one at some point.”

  “My birth mother. Yeah.” She shrugged. “I can’t really talk about her.”

  “But now you’re adopted. So maybe it turned out for the best.”