Katie McGarry - Red At Night

A car honks and a woman slips out the driver’s side of the beat-up, multitoned, two-door piece of crap. She’s a thin bleached blonde about my older sister’s age, except this lady doesn’t scream stay-at-home mom with two kids.

“Stella!” she yells. “Let’s go, girl.”

Stella. This is Stella. How could I frigging forget Stella? “I do know you. We go to school together. In third grade, you sat beside me and Cooper Higgins and...”

Her spine visibly straightens. “You were saying?”

...and Cooper Higgins called her Trash Can Girl. I mumble a curse and wonder how I can somehow rewind the conversation. I meet the one person who’s been able to block the images of blood pumping out of an artery and I almost call her trash. Slick, moron. Real slick.

Stella stands and brushes off the dirt from her butt. “See you at school tomorrow, Jonah. Or maybe I won’t since I’m so memorable.”

She knew who I was the entire time. The black sludge inhabiting my veins forms fingers and grips my soul. I had this feeling a few times before in my life—before James Cohen.

One of them was when I spotted Stella crying underneath the slide on the playground in third grade. I told myself she wasn’t crying because Cooper had made fun of her clothes and because I had laughed at his joke, but deep down I knew I was wrong. And as I was back then, I’m paralyzed as to how to atone for it.

Stella eases into the passenger side of the car and I wait, hoping she’ll look once in my direction. The car vibrates as it turns right onto the narrow road, and Stella keeps staring straight ahead.

When am I ever going to learn? Or change? Or...I hate this. I snap off my baseball cap and cram my fingers into my hair. The ground beneath me feels unstable and I’m tired of walking on sinking sand. Why did everything have to change?

Stella

Careful to avoid the fifth step of the outdoor metal staircase, I hop onto the sixth step, and rust sprinkles to the blacktop below. Joss walks in front of me and she’s slow going up the steps because she’s doing that stupid hip sway to catch the eye of the guy who lives in the apartment below her. The sad part is, he’s watching, but I don’t think he’s the kind of guy she should aim for.

“He doesn’t have a job,” I tell her when she reaches the second-floor walk and stops the stupid butt roll.

“You don’t know that. He could be a superstar living off residual checks.” Joss slides the key into the lock of her apartment door, but it’s a meaningless gesture since the lock broke last month and the door will open with the slightest push. We both agreed to continue with the show of unlocking and locking for security reasons. “There are many theories as to why he’s always home.”

“Like he sells crack?” I mumble under my breath.

“Heard that,” she sings. Joss nudges the door open and struts into her one-bedroom apartment. “Anyway, he doesn’t have enough class for crack. I’m leaning toward meth.”

“My mistake. I get the dealer’s social classes mixed up.”

Joss laughs and begins to root through the cupboards, pulling out boxes of crackers and Pop-Tarts to assess expiration dates. “Hungry for dinner?”

“Sure.”

It’s a tiny place that’s five code violations beyond being condemned. Last year, the stupid landlord painted the lone window shut, making our little ant trap a fire hazard. The living room slash kitchen is the same size as most walk-in closets and the only bedroom barely fits a twin-size bed. My knees hit the sink when I sit on the toilet, but unlike the other units, Joss keeps the space homey thanks to her fascination with carousels. She’s found several paintings of them at yard sales.

“I talked to that guy at the car dealership today,” says Joss. “He said if you can enter that co-op program at school that he’d get you on part-time during the day and then you can have a full-time job as soon as you graduate.”

“Awesome.” Though internally the awesomeness of it is lost on me. It’s as if someone’s wrapped a plastic bag over my head and air is no longer a privilege. “Thanks for setting it up.”

“No problem.” Joss pitches a box of crackers into the garbage. “A girl’s gotta work.”

“Yep.” It wasn’t until this moment that I realized I was buying into that college crap the guidance counselors cram down our throats.

I plop onto the gray couch and dust scatters into the air along with the scent of mildew. Joss and I salvaged this fine piece of furniture near the dumpster on eviction day last month. I bet the great Jonah Jacobson doesn’t smell mildew when he lounges on his couch. He and his little group of friends have tortured me since elementary school and I hate them for it.

Well, not exactly Jonah, but more his friends. They tell jokes with me as the punch line and I’ve seen him laugh...and sometimes not laugh. No one’s tormented me since last year—the same time that Jonah shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked the ground when Cooper asked if I bought my jeans at a sale at Goodwill.

I flipped Cooper off and told him that I heard his girlfriend was cheating on him. Which it turns out was true.

Even though Jonah didn’t laugh, he’s as bad as everyone else. He never tells anyone to back off. The weird part is, for about five minutes today, I almost felt like I made a friend. “Do you think people can change?”

“No.” Joss opens a box of wannabe Frosted Flakes. “That’s why I’m throwing my business around for the jerk downstairs. Your daddy is going to be around soon.”

My head snaps up and my heart squeezes to the point of pain. “You heard from my dad?”

Joss points a newly painted fingernail at me. She may not have money for a better apartment, but she does pay for manicures. Guys, she says, notice those things. “Nope. Don’t do it, Stella. Don’t go getting sentimental over the man. He abandoned you...again.”

It’s the again that stings. My dad, he’s the only thing besides Joss I’ve got, and I’m not a moron about why Joss lets me stay. We both suffer from the same delusional issue: we love a man who doesn’t or can’t or is unable to love us the same way in return. Joss keeps me around because if I’m here, Dad will eventually roll into town and into her life.

“So...” I take a deep breath then hedge, “Dad’s coming back?”

“I hear hope,” says Joss. “Kill it and kill it now. Hope is a deadly snake with fangs of poison.”

“How literary,” I reply.

The evil glare she throws me shuts me up. “I mean what I said, but yes, your dad called me at the club last night and said he’s heading back.”

I bite my bottom lip, not wanting to ask, and yet I do. “Did he ask about me?”

One heartbeat goes by. Another. Each one is like a shard of glass ripping through my chest.

“Yes,” she finally answers. “And he’s called a couple of times over the past few months to make sure I’m still giving you a place to crash, but this is the first time he said he’s returning. But it could mean nothing. He could have sobered up and forgotten he called.”

A large rush of air escapes from my mouth. He’s been gone six months this time. Maybe the next time he won’t be away as long. Where he goes or what he does when he leaves, I’ll probably never know...or want to know. Sometimes he returns looking like he barely escaped the grim reaper. The last time, he detoxed from something so bad that he shook for two out of the three weeks he was home.

The expression on Joss’s face mirrors my balled-up and twisted insides, so I kind of change the subject. “What’s my dad coming back have to do with the male crack whore downstairs?”

“Here.” Joss drops into the spot beside me and offers me the box of cereal. “It’s only a month past expiration.”