I found Lee in the kitchen. On the table he’d spread out a bunch of bowls, a Bunsen burner and various household chemicals that belonged under the kitchen sink. His laptop was wedged between the mess. As I walked by, I saw the browser window open to an underground forum where people discussed tips on how best to cook meth.
“Why the hell are you getting Andre high?” I demanded.
“He’s a customer.”
“He’s ten.”
Lee chuckled, his hands flying over the table, twitching like wounded birds over his makeshift meth lab. He and the gang of assholes he called friends had the brilliant idea to turn themselves into a club of Walter Whites. They’d make a fortune, they declared, just like on TV. Morons.
“And now you’re cooking?” I said. “Right here at the kitchen table, in broad daylight?”
“Mind your business, Jo,” Lee said. I could tell he was coming off a high. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy. His dark hair fell in a stringy mess over his face and his clothes stank of sweat and gasoline. He was a tall guy but had lost a lot of muscle mass thanks to the drugs.
It was only thing I could thank the drugs for.
He’d been doing too much lately. The highs never lasted anymore, which was why he was out to make his own.
He looked at me then. I could see his thoughts rework themselves into suspicion and accusation. I knew what was coming.
“Hey!” he said, as if I’d just walked in the door. “Where the fuck you been, anyway? Ma said you left the diner at three.”
Goddamn Patty. Lee scared her as much as he did me and the only way to protect herself was to use me as a human shield. I couldn’t blame her: we all did what we had to survive. In Patty’s case, it meant pushing others down to keep her own head above water.
“I was out,” I said.
“Who with?”
“No one.”
He snorted and pushed himself off his chair to stagger toward me.
I backed up. “I was grocery shopping. Your mother and the guys are coming over to dinner tonight, remember?”
“Don’t test me, woman,” Lee snarled. “You’re a liar. I smell it on you. The lies.”
You can’t smell lies, asshole.
I held up my bags from the grocery store. “You going to let me cook or not? Food, I mean.”
He glowered with watery, hate-filled eyes. I didn’t back down.
“You talk to the cops about our little disagreement this morning?” He brushed his thumb over the cut on my lip, making it sting.
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. The one and only time I’d gone to the station, bleeding and dizzy from a “disagreement” with Lee, I’d been hustled to an officer’s home where his wife patched me up and gave me a lecture about how secure Lee was—what with his popular diner—and how lucky I was to have him. She said all this as she held a bag of frozen peas to my swelling eye from where Lee hit me for buying the wrong brand of beer.
That damn diner made Lee a big fish in the little pond of Dolores. He’d known the sheriff up in Claiborne since he was a kid and the local officers were all his drinking buddies. Some of whom were going to come over tonight to participate in their new drug enterprise.
“I didn’t talk to the cops,” I said. “But if I did, the first thing I would say was that you were getting a ten-year-old fucked up on—”
Lee’s backhand struck me across the upper cheek. Pain exploded through my face. My head whipped to the side and the grocery bags dropped from my hands, but I kept my feet.
“That’s for backtalk,” Lee snarled. His fist came up. “This is for making threats…”
He swung clumsily. I dodged.
“Fuck you!” I cried and shoved him as hard as I could with both hands. It was a gamble: the last of my strength against the last of the drugs slugging through his blood.
I won.
Lee staggered backwards and then fell on his ass. I bolted from the kitchen and dashed upstairs. I slammed the bathroom door and locked it as Lee pounded down the hall like a rabid dog, barking vile threats. I slid down to the floor with my back against and the door, bracing my feet on the toilet to form a barricade. The reverberations shuddered against my back as Lee pounded and kicked and cursed.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Evan. Where are you? Come back to me. I can’t breathe…
The doorbell rang. Patty was here. Or Lee’s friends.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” Lee said, smashing his fist a final time, and then his voice retreated down the stairs. “Come down here and make dinner for our guests like you’re supposed to.”
I would’ve preferred to stay in the bathroom forever, but I heard Patty shriek as Lee barked at her about the dinner that I had been supposed to cook. If I didn’t come down, she’d be left to deal with that pack of hyenas, alone.
Trapped again.
Trapped by fear, by the streets, by Lee and his swinging fists and his threats.
I thought I was becoming more numb, but instead I felt ready to burst. At some point, I wouldn’t care if I shattered into too many pieces to put back together.
But not yet.
I hauled myself off the bathroom floor and went downstairs to cook dinner. Fried chicken, extra crispy.
Just how Lee liked it.