They all watched her approach. Olivia wished she recognized the music that was coming from one of the cars. Familiar music would soothe her. But this—a woman shouting above an electric guitar—was even more unsettling than the fact that these kids, up close, looked like they might have guns or switchblades. They looked stoned. They looked angry.
“I’m looking for a pregnant girl with reddish brown hair and freckles,” she said, stopping in front of them, placing one hand on her hip. And she was pleased by how her voice sounded—strong and tough.
None of them answered.
A girl—one of the waifs—lay flat on her back on the asphalt, her eyes half-opened, a thin line of drool at the corners of her mouth. Before she asked the crowd if the girl needed help, Olivia watched the girl until she was certain she was breathing.
They all laughed at the question.
Olivia thought she heard raccoons in the dark area behind the teenagers. But it was two kids, rooting around in the trash bin, handing half-eaten french fries and bits of hamburger buns to the others.
The girl on the asphalt made a strange sound, a kind of laugh, and Olivia realized she was simply stoned, so out of it that she could not hold herself upright.
“Look,” Olivia said, wanting nothing more than to get the hell out of there, “this girl, Ruby, she has something of mine and I want it back. She can keep everything else.”
“Gee, lady,” one of the big girls said, “we don’t know no pregnant teenagers.”
“No, ma’am,” another one said. “We practice safe sex.”
“We practice abstinence,” still another one added, and everyone laughed.
She wanted to be forceful and threatening. But these kids didn’t care about her. About anything, she supposed.
“If you see her,” Olivia said, “tell her Olivia is looking for her.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” one of them said from the darkness. “You bet.”
They were still laughing—even the girl on the asphalt was laughing in an odd stoned way—when Olivia turned her back on them. Someone came running up behind her, and Olivia let out a little yelp, turning around fast to face off whoever it was. But it was just one of the waifs, a little skinny girl who didn’t seem to be more than thirteen.
“They’re bad, aren’t they?” the girl said. She wore a gauze dress with a soft floral print that Olivia liked—pale blue and orange flowers floating on an off-white background. Still, she turned her back on the girl and kept walking. The girl hurried to catch up and walk beside her.
“That girl on the ground,” she said to Olivia, her voice squeaky. “She did crack for the first time and it knocked her down. That’s what it does the first time.”
Olivia glanced over her shoulder and saw the girl getting shakily to her feet.
She slowed down and looked at this girl beside her.
“Crack?” she said, feeling stupid. She remembered her mother’s horror at discovering she was smoking pot in college. “Marijuana?” her mother had gasped.
“Oh,” the girl said, shaking her head, “they’re bad.”
“You should stay away from them,” Olivia told her. “You should go home.” She glanced back again and saw the girl leaning against two of the boys. For an instant, Olivia wished she were that girl, numb and oblivious, here but not here.
“I know who you’re looking for,” the girl said. She walked right in front of Olivia, forcing her to stop. “Ruby.”
Olivia swallowed hard. Her heart raced. Ruby, Ruby, she thought, but she didn’t want the girl to see how important this was to her. So she said, “What about her?” as casually as she could muster.
“I can find her for you,” the girl said, and Olivia saw in the brighter light that the girl was not sweet or innocent or any of the things her little flowered dress and squeaky voice made you think.
“Okay,” Olivia said.
“Twenty bucks,” the girl said.
Olivia pushed past her. “Forget it,” she said.
But the girl didn’t leave. She walked right beside Olivia, matching her step for step.
“Look, kid,” Olivia said, weary now, “just leave me alone. Okay?”
They had reached the car by then, and Olivia wanted nothing more than to be inside it, heading home. The girl said, “I guess you don’t want to find her very bad.”
Olivia opened the door, climbed in. “Oh,” she said, “I’ll find her.”
The girl stood under the restaurant lights, looking small and, from this distance, young again. The lights shone right through the thin fabric of her dress. She didn’t have on any underwear; Olivia saw her flat breasts, dark nipples, a thatch of blond pubic hair. She needs a flesh-colored body suit under there, Olivia thought, turning the car toward the road. That’s what she used to wear under a dress she had like that. She stepped on the brake, then sat there, watching the girl in the rearview mirror.
“Shit,” Olivia said, pushing the shift in reverse. That was her dress the girl was wearing.
Her tires squealed when she turned around and jerked into the same spot she had just left.
“I’ll give you ten,” Olivia said.