Nate’s classroom spilled light to the empty hallway.
Bridget immediately turned toward it. She’d been withholding the mill adventure from him, just until she was sure what was going on, but Nate always had a unique perspective. Thoughtful. Maybe he’d even heard from Lucia; he’d been worried about her, too. Bridget knew that Lucia talked to Nate, at least more than she talked to anyone else. He’d had her as a junior and again as a senior, repeating algebra and electing a statistics class. Not that Lucia was dumb, far from it. Bridget couldn’t imagine her home life lent itself to any kind of study habit.
If nothing else, Nate might listen. Plus, she wanted to rib him about the flowers for Ginny. What a suck up.
His door was partly closed and she silently nudged it open with one hand. She almost walked right in but stopped and hovered in the doorway, blinking.
She saw Lucia first, the fine, downy hair the first thing she noticed. Nate sitting in his desk chair, and Lucia leaning against his desk. His hand resting on her shoulder and her hair, covering her face, fanning out, spilling over Nate’s outstretched arm.
Bridget stood frozen in the doorway, dumbfounded, but exposed. If either had looked up, they would have seen her.
Lucia leaned forward and pulled at a handful of Nate’s shirt, hovering over him, his knee between her legs, her hair covering both of their faces.
Then she kissed him.
CHAPTER 10
Lucia, March 31, 2015
Her Goodwill shift ended at nine and she stuck around with Randy for a while, just shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes on the stoop after they closed.
Randy was twenty-two, almost as poor as her, lived with his mom in a trailer. They’d taken to going to his place while his mom worked. He’d roll a joint with his thick fingers and seal the paper with his tongue. They’d play Xbox, stupid war games she didn’t care about. Sometimes she let him do things to her, his hand between her legs, his fingers sliding around inside her, his tongue in her ear, licking, his stubble scratching her cheek. Once she climbed on top of him, his jeans pulled tight across his thighs, boxers bunched up under the buttoned waistband. She lifted her skirt and took him in, just for a second until he pushed her off, rough, and came all over the brown velvet couch, the wet spot combining with all the other stains to form a pattern.
This time, she shoved him off, and he blinked, hurt and rejected. When he dropped her off later he gave her a half wave. She could tell he wanted to come in, but she eyed her house, never knowing if Lenny was inside or not.
Lenny.
The hitting started not all that long ago. Shortly after Jimmy left, long after their mother left. Their house—owned by Jimmy’s father, then Jimmy, and now, apparently, Lenny—stood, slowly biodegrading into the dirt, like paper in a landfill.
She tried not to come home until late, after Lenny had retreated to his room. She tried to not turn on any lights. Because of this, she could tell by the smell the house was growing things: mold, fungus. She could hear the scrabblings of mice late at night. Squirrels in the ceiling. Coming for the food rotting in the kitchen sink.
It was only ten o’clock.
She opened the door, the smell hitting her in the face like a wall. Goddamn it.
In the kitchen, Lucia flicked on the light to the audible skittering of cockroaches. Her father would have died. Before he became a drunk, when she was a kid and the mill was still open and her father had a job, he was a decent father. Not a great one. But he was there. He kept them fed.
This would have appalled him.
She dumped half the dishes straight into the trash can. Under the sink, behind crusted bottles of cleaning solution, she found rubber gloves and donned them. She hadn’t eaten here in weeks, instead grabbing on the go, out of her own paycheck, stealing food from the caf, and sometimes Randy even bought her McDonald’s. She didn’t need to eat a lot, so she didn’t.
When the garbage was cleared out, she ran hot water in the sink. Found an old rag and some dish detergent and let the water scald her skin red, her arms zinging with the burn. Things weren’t always this bad. This was neglectful and disgusting and she couldn’t live like this. This was squalor. Worse than Randy’s trailer.
Lucia closed her eyes. She envisioned Andrew’s bedroom, that warm vanilla candle smell. Taylor’s family room, the softness of the sofa beneath her bare thighs, exposed by silky track shorts. She imagined Mr. Winters’s home, his cozy townhouse living room. She’d never seen it, of course, but she saw the outside once, drawn there like a magnet, driving by in Lenny’s truck. A row of townhomes, mums on the stoop, in a cul-de-sac filled with kids. Quaint.
When she opened her eyes, she was still there, in her kitchen, the garbage stinging her nose. She pulled a plate up out of the sink and at first she thought it was rice. Then the rice moved.
She screamed, threw the plate, which shattered against the wall.
“What the fuck is going on?” Lenny stood behind her, for how long she didn’t know. When she turned to look at him, she knew.
She wasn’t an idiot. Lenny was a drug addict. Heroin, mostly, she thought, but she steered so clear of him she could never be sure. His usual high was dopey, slow, falling asleep so hard and fast she thought he’d died. Sometimes she’d hoped he’d died. Lately, it had been something else. Something up, jumpy and angry, a flashing behind his eyes and in his voice that scared her. A new kind of violence. Him hitting her, only a few short months ago had been new.
“This is disgusting. How can you live like this? How did I let it get like this?” She lived here, too. How long had it been since she’d even entered the kitchen? Weeks?
“Shut the fuck up. You’re never here, what do you care?” His voice was gravelly, broken, and his eyes darted around at the sink, the garbage, the maggots on the plate, then at her face. He sucked a cigarette and blew smoke at her.
Without thinking, she smacked it out of his hand and it rolled to the linoleum. She dropped the garbage bag.
He closed the distance between them, his palm striking her cheek, quick and biting. It wasn’t a hard hit—he was too messed up for that—but it still stung. Brought tears to her eyes and a pulse to her face. She covered the spot instinctively with her hand and took a step back.
“Fuck you.” She spat, unable to tame the anger that crested in her throat, her head. She had to get out of there, not just for the night, but permanently, but how? He came at her and she pushed him away, hard. When they fell to the ground, her on top, she punched at his chest.
The fight was slow, almost childish. She, weak from lack of solid sustenance and exercise, and he, feeble with the chemicals in his blood. Her hands around his neck, a rapid pulse beneath her thumb. Too rapid for heroin. Was it coke? Meth?