“You should save that. You owe Boseman,” she says.
He drops the bag in his lap and reaches into his coat. “Just a pinch. Your knuckle-job cousin won’t know the difference.” His head hangs down, twisting the joint, flicking away seeds with fingernails that I know are dirty. Liv ignores him, gazing into the woods, not unlike the way she did that morning last November. I wonder what she’s thinking about. Is she imagining what I went through? Remembering what she went through? Shane lights the joint and sucks, then exhales through pursed lips.
“Harsh,” he gasps, but it doesn’t stop him from taking a second drag, then a third. After a while he notices Liv. “What are you staring at, girl?”
“Nothing.”
Shane stubs out the roach on the stair and considers it, then flicks it into the woods. “Wait. I know. You’re thinking about the boogeyman in the woods. Your personal boogeyman. Look out, hot runner girl! I’m going to hunt down you and your friend!” He lets loose a grating cackle.
“Not funny.”
“He’s dead, babe! He can’t get you now!” Shane stands, his legs and arms rangy. “Unless you’re afraid of his fat ghost?” he asks, tickling her roughly.
“Stop.” She tries to slap him, but he dodges her, laughing. He catches her by the waist and holds her. They rock for a second, Shane nuzzling the back of her neck, Liv still staring down the trail. She breaks free and spins round. Her face is different, flushed and excited.
“You know what I just realized?” she says. “We never talk. Just, talk.”
Shane drags his hand down his mouth and laughs, unsure. “You want to talk? With me?”
Liv takes his wrist and pulls him down until they are seated on the railroad ties. His head bobs slightly.
“Like, what’s your favorite food? Or, what’s the best concert you’ve ever been to?” she says, downright bubbly.
Shane leans in, about to speak, but Liv puts her finger against his lip. “Shh! I know a topic. You’ve never told me about your birth mother.”
He backs away from her finger. “I don’t know my birth mother. Dang, Liv. Why are you bringing that up?”
“She was a prostitute, right?” Liv says, smiling brightly. It’s so bizarre, I crawl up an inch more to see better.
Shane makes a pshaw noise and turns away, his leg bouncing.
“I mean, it must be a Russian thing, because all those girls who get brought over here for prostitution rings are Russian. Or Eastern European, anyway,” Liv says.
“A Russian thing, huh?” He takes the bag from his pocket and removes a package of rolling papers, slipping out one and tossing the pack to the ground. He folds the paper and drops in a pinch of weed, licking the paper sideways and twisting it over itself.
“Generally they’re total skanks. Not remotely attractive, just young, with faces like sheep. Except, have you ever heard of the Russian Barbie? She’s this woman who’s had a ton of plastic surgery to look just like a Barbie doll. Her name is Valeria something. Her skin is matte—matte means not shiny. In this case, plastic-looking. And her waist is the size of your wrist. Oh, oh: and her blue eyes are opaque! They say she does that with contacts—”
He blows the joint dry, his eyes slanting at Liv above it.
“It must be a DNA thing, the way all these Russian people are desperate and oversexed.”
“Oversexed, huh?” Pocketing the joint, he cocks his head, smiling, and gets close to her nose. Sinister. “Maybe you can help me with my genetic defect.”
Liv doesn’t blink. “My mother’s no picnic, don’t get me wrong. And she’d be the last person to turn her nose up at going under the knife. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’ll try to use my college fund for a complete overhaul when she turns fifty. But at least she’s not a whore for hire. I don’t know if I could deal with that.”
What is Liv thinking, saying this stuff?
“You’re lucky she didn’t pass chlamydia on to you,” she continues. “Newborns exposed to chlamydia get terrible eye infections. I’m thinking about this because your eyes are super-red right now. Or syphilis. Syphilis is easily transmitted from mother to child. The mothers go crazy, like Al Capone and Hitler, and the babies end up with problems with their brains, skin, and teeth. They’re often premature. Wait: you were a preemie, right?”
“Shut the hell up.”
“Surely she had HPV. I mean, everybody has HPV, so a hooker definitely had to have it. Sometimes the hormones from pregnancy can make the genital warts grow big enough that they block the birth canal. Then the baby has to be delivered by cesarean section. Were you a C-section?”
Shane glares, baring his teeth. “Enough!”
My fingers float to the lip of the window and do a nervous dance.