The big truck’s tires crunch over dirt and gravel as Chelsea turns in to the empty fairgrounds. These places are made for thousands of people to come together and ride brightly colored rides or cheer for cowboys or judge quilts and sheep, maybe even pull up a table and sell some antiques or iguanas. Without those people, exposed to the light of day, it’s just a big, barren space, ugly and used-up and dried-out, baking in the Florida sun.
Out in the field beyond a crooked fence topped with barbed wire are two tour buses, the kind they use for bands or seniors descending en masse at Medieval Times, as well as tractor trailers. They’re parked in a loose sort of circle with several RVs, set up with extended awnings and lawn chairs and large barbecue grills, one of which is puffing smoke. People are moving around over there, but the day is bright and it’s far away. Something about the scene feels private.
A handwritten sign by the gate says VFR RECRUITMENT and points to the nearest of the cavernous metal buildings. Chelsea steps down from the truck in a puff of dust, feeling the grit seep between her toes. She was supposed to wear “clothes that allow movement,” and technically hers do, but flip-flops are never an advantage at a job interview, and there’s no way she could run in them. She wishes she had options, but all her clothes are back in her minivan with Jeanie’s corpse.
Her lips tremble at the thought, at the image that flashes in her head, her last glimpse of what she did to her only friend.
She can’t think about that now. What’s done is done. It wasn’t her fault. They both knew the risk when they got in the car together. It could’ve easily gone the other way, could’ve been Jeanie standing here, willing herself to stop shaking and not walk into the interview covered in snot as well as blood.
At least she has her wallet in her back pocket, plus the old man’s phone. His name is George, and his phone is unlocked, and all of his texts are to other guys his age with names like Ed and Rick and Dan, mostly about fishing, lunch plans, and libtards. No wonder they didn’t get along in their brief interaction.
She can’t do much for her appearance just now. She did the best she could with the baby wipes, and she smells less like car cleaner. There’s no way she’s going to use the greasy black comb she found in the center console, and the red splatters on her shirt are undeniably blood, but she has literally nowhere else to go, so she just locks the truck, pockets the keys and the phone, and follows the sign. There are other cars parked in the lot, most older than the truck and her minivan, both, but she doesn’t see any actual people. Jeanie said it was an open call that lasted all day today and tomorrow, so at least she isn’t late. At least she hasn’t missed it. Whatever this is, it feels like her lifeline, like the only thing that could save her.
The building’s glass front wall shows about a dozen people waiting inside, but Chelsea stops and slides into the shade under an overhang before joining them. She opens the phone and clicks the green CALL button and stares at the keypad. Ella’s phone got stolen last year, and she got a new one with a new number, and this is the very first time Chelsea has been forced to realize that she has no idea what her daughter’s number is. She knows the area code and seems to think it has a bunch of sevens and fours, but that’s it. She stares so long that the phone goes dark, and she flicks it on again.
She has to remember this.
It’s the only connection she has with her girls.
She doesn’t know her mother’s number, either, but that’s one she’s never even considered memorizing. It’s just how life works these days, choosing a contact and hitting CALL. Or, in most cases, texting, because calling now feels strange and awkward.
“Goddammit,” she murmurs.
She starts pressing numbers, but they don’t look right. There are thousands of variations, and she’s not going to find the right one randomly while standing outside a big metal shed at an abandoned fairground while covered in someone else’s blood. An intrusive and unwelcome thought crosses her mind: I’m a terrible mother. But it’s localized to not knowing her daughter’s number. She’s not ready yet to list all of her errors, every wrong turn and bit of bad luck that led her to here.
She tried, dammit.
She tried so hard it hurts.
And it still wasn’t enough.
Her shame and guilt turn to rage as if she’s flicked a switch.
Rage is so much easier.
All of this is David’s fault, not hers.
The shame and the guilt—they don’t belong to her. She’s a victim.
She’s doing the best she can.
But it’s insidious. Everything David has ever said to her about her own inadequacies lives under her skin. She’s stupid, she’s bad with numbers, she’s not a decent cook, she’s selfish, she’s slow, she didn’t teach the girls how to behave, she’s not a good mother.
Over time, they built up until she just assumed they were true.
But what if…he’s been wrong all along?
Tires crunch on gravel, and she whirls, brain screeching back into panic mode because that is what victims do, that is what prey animals do, that is what people who black out and wake up holding their friend’s dented Yeti cup covered in chunks of brain do.
They react. They spin and prepare to fight for their lives.
But it’s not David in a Mad Max car, roaring toward her with a flamethrower. It’s not George in her minivan, ready to perform a citizen’s arrest. It’s just a beat-up SUV with a beachy-looking guy in his twenties who gets out, walks to the building in his own flip-flops, gives her an up-nod, and goes inside as if it’s the most normal thing in the entire world. She gives the phone one last, hateful stare, shoves it in her pocket, and follows.
Inside, the air is frigid. A Black woman in her forties with her hair under a colorful turban sits at a folding table with a pile of papers and a jar of cheap pens. She smiles at Chelsea with a mischievous look in her eyes, and Chelsea smiles back.
“You trying out?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Chelsea says.
In the quiet way that things come to mind after a major trauma like killing your last friend, Chelsea is vaguely aware that it might be weird to call someone just a little older than she is ma’am, but everything feels pretty unreal right now and the woman doesn’t seem to take offense.
“Just fill this out. Sorry we don’t have any clipboards. You know how it is.”