Crossfire Creek Page 7

  * * *

  Aroostine’s an apple, an apple … the hoots and calls of the kids in the loose community of Eastern Lenape where her grandfather had lived rang in her ears.

  The Higginses had only wanted to do something kind for her. After they’d adopted her and she’d moved to their house in town, they would bring Aroostine back to her grandfather’s community for programs and classes, so she’d stay connected to her culture, to her people, to her friends.

  But the others kids made it clear she no longer belonged. Apple, apple … she’d ignored the chants and had kept them from the Higginses. Until the day her new father picked her up from an archery class and noticed her puffy, swollen eye.

  She’d been beaned in the face with a Red Delicious, courtesy of Ellen Barclay.

  “But why, Roo? Why would this girl hit you with an apple?”

  She’d looked into Bill Higgins’ kind blue eyes and sighed.

  “Because I’m red on the outside and white on the inside, Dad. Like an apple.”

  * * *

  Terry’s quaking voice pulled her back to the present. “It got a damn sight uglier than that, though. Some of those girls made a fake Peekagram account for the Glasser girl. The rest of them started spamming the account and posted a, uh, Live Poll, I think, asking whether Joy-Lynn should kill herself. Of course, they all voted that she should. One of them even made an account pretending to be the Reynolds boy and had ‘him’ post, urging her to do it. It went viral, or whatever. I guess it blew up with the kids at both schools.”

  Terry shook her head, bewildered, but Aroostine was sufficiently plugged into social media to know how widely and quickly the vitriol could have spread.

  She went on, “Some of the girls at Joy-Lynn’s school hung a big banner across the row of lockers that said, ‘Sorry You’re Not Dead, Joy-Lynn.’”

  A rock of pain dropped into Aroostine’s belly and wedged itself into place. Being whacked in the face with an apple had felt like the end of her world. She tried to imagine if it had happened in front of an audience of hundreds, maybe thousands.

  “Did Marlene tell you all this?”

  “No. Like I said, we aren’t close. Another one of the gals at work cleans for the Reynolds family. Carson’s mom told her all about it. And word spread.” She glanced down at her watch. “I really have to go. I can’t be late. I’m on thin ice as it is seeing as how I’m the one who got Marlene the job.”

  Aroostine stood and unfolded the map of the county that had been in her welcome packet at the campground. “Of course. Thank you so much for your time and for letting me look around. Could you do me one last favor and circle the area where most of the lightning buggers’ cabins are?” She held out the map and a pen.

  Terry Marsden turned down her lips but took the map and pen. She flattened the paper against the wall and squinted at it. “Here. And here.”

  She drew two sloppy circles and handed the map and the pen back to Aroostine, who dropped them both into her bag with a smile.

  “Perfect.”

  She followed Terry out, already planning her next move.

  8

  Marlene plugged in her Beauty by the Box-issued laptop and waited for the machine to come to life. The job itself was mindless work, hour after hour of entering customer information into the BbyB database. But it checked all the important boxes: she could do it from anywhere, which meant she didn’t have to leave Joy-Lynn alone anymore; her interactions with her supervisor were all email-based, which meant her crappy people skills wouldn’t get her into trouble the way they usually did; and it paid better than her last two jobs.

  BbyB paid for her internet access because they needed her to upload the files on a weekly basis. Because coverage in Crossfire Creek ranged from piss-poor to nonexistent they’d even given her a fancy little box called a jetpack. It automatically connected her to the best data provider within range no matter where she went. Despite Joy-Lynn’s great disappointment that the jetpack couldn’t be strapped to her back and launch her into the air, Marlene knew the small rectangular box was the most important item in her life. Especially now.

  After she uploaded this week’s tranche of data, she’d do what she did every time she connected to the internet—log in and check her bank account balance, in case her second direct deposit paycheck had, by some miracle, hit her account early.

  The computer emitted a series of chirps to let her know she’d accessed the BbyB database. She glanced across the one-room cabin and watched Joy-Lynn’s chest rise and fall evenly.

  Good, she’d be able to finish up while Joy-Lynn slept. Then she’d wake her daughter and they’d figure out a way to spend the daylight hours. Given her need for electricity to charge the laptop, she’d had no choice but to break into another empty vacation cabin.

  Marlene had no qualms about trespassing. She’d do what she had to do. But after the last close call, she’d decided that they should spend as much time out in the forest as they could. If he, whoever he was, came back and stumbled on the cabin, she didn’t want to be cornered like a rat.

  Once her second paycheck joined the one that had been deposited two weeks ago, she’d have a tidy little sum. More than enough to cover bus tickets from nearby Bryson City all the way west to Barstow, California, with a little bit leftover to start a new life. She’d checked and tripled-checked the prices.

  She wasn’t sure about California but she figured she’d get the tickets. If they got off to stretch their legs in Oklahoma City, or Tucumcari, or Phoenix, and decided they wanted to stay, they’d stay. If not, maybe they’d go all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

  Marlene closed her eyes and saw herself dipping her toes in the blue waters off the West Coast. Even though the only beach she’d ever visited was Virginia Beach, a million years ago, when she was younger than Joy-Lynn, she could feel the hot sun kissing her bare shoulders while she dug her toes into the cold, wet sand where the land met the sea.

  She treated herself to a moment to feel the breeze in her hair and hear the squawk of seagulls and Joy-Lynn’s high, delighted laughter before she forced herself back to the reality of the dim and musty cabin. If only she’d started the new job two weeks earlier, she thought for the thousandth time.

  BbyB paid every two weeks, but policy was to hold the first check for a month to make sure new employees stuck around long enough to cover the company’s investment in technology for them. Marlene understood their reasoning. And under ordinary circumstances, the delay would have meant tightening their belt, having eggs and toast for dinner, paying a few bills late. But these weren’t ordinary circumstances. And sticking around Crossfire Creek until that money hit meant she was risking Joy-Lynn’s life.

  Bile rose in her throat and she forced it back. Upload the blasted files, shake Joy-Lynn awake, and get the heck outside, she told herself. Fresh air and sunshine would chase the demons away.

  She opened the database. Her fingers flew over the keys as she typed in the commands to pull up the data files she’d completed. She tapped the ‘Upload’ button, watched the progress bar march from the left side of her screen to the right, and held her breath until the ‘You’re Beautiful! Success!’ message appeared on the screen.

  She closed the program and powered down the laptop. She stood, stretched, and yawned. Did she ever envy Joy-Lynn’s ability to sleep soundly, anywhere, anytime, no matter the chaos that raged around her like an out-of-control fire.

  Marlene knew her own insomnia was understandable. It could be easily explained away by their current situation. But she also knew the truth. She had never slept well, not in her whole life, not even when she was a girl.

  At night, the darkness outside crept into her mind, the shadows advanced, threatening to engulf her. And the only way to keep it all at bay was to stare, wide-eyed and unblinking, at the ceiling until the first faint hint of morning light broke through the cracks in the darkness. Then she could close her burning eyes for a few short hours.

  It had always be
en like that. But after Joy-Lynn was born, the dangers hidden in the gathering darkness seemed more powerful, more intimate. Something bad would happen to her daughter if she allowed herself to relax into sleep. So Marlene grew more vigilant, less restful. And after Joy-Lynn was diagnosed, and the doctors explained what face blindness meant, the need to protect her always, from everyone, stoked the small fire of anxiety that rested in her chest, building it into a bonfire that never died.

  She rested her head on her arms. The mid-morning sun was high in the sky. Nobody knew they were in this cabin. According to the stack of mail she’d found rubber-banded together on the dusty top of the refrigerator, the owners of the getaway lived in Indiana and hadn’t visited since early June.

  Lightning buggers, almost certainly. Tourists who traipsed into the area every year during the height of firefly mating season, hoping to see the display of synchronous flashing. As she’d once learned from a helpful park ranger, the Photinus carolinus was the only species of firefly found in the United States that could flash in unison. And, boy did they.

  Swarms of people came. Sometimes it seemed there were more people than fireflies. You couldn’t even reserve a spot in one of the national park campgrounds. There was a lottery. Even though fireflies didn’t keep calendars or wear watches and there was no telling when they’d sync up for their light show, people would apply for a spot a year in advance and hope that timing would be on their side. The truly devoted bought cabins or small plots of land to camp on and used them only during firefly season, letting them stand empty and abandoned to the dust.

  And thank goodness they did; it meant she had lots of cabins to choose from, she thought drowsily. They could move around as needed until they left town. She yawned again.

  She decided she should rest, just until Joy-Lynn stirred. She allowed her heavy eyelids to drift down and cover her eyes. She knew the slightest noise or movement would wake her with a start.

  That was the other half of her sleeping problem: not only did she have terrible trouble falling asleep, but if, by some miracle, she managed the feat, she slept lightly, was easily disturbed—startled, really—into wakefulness, and woke less rested than she’d started.

  A man whose face she couldn’t see smashed through the glass in the kitchen door and roared with rage, pointing a rifle at Joy-Lynn.

  She jolted upright and opened her bleary eyes to scan the room and reassure herself she wasn’t in Crossfire Creek. There was no shattered glass glinting in the moonlight on her kitchen floor. She was in the lightning buggers’ cabin with the early morning sun streaming through the high, small windows.

  Joy-Lynn slept in the narrow log-framed bed, so close Marlene could reach out and touch her. She reached over and skimmed her finger across Joy-Lynn’s forehead to smooth back her hair while she waited for her heart to stop racing.

  She soothed herself with the thought of the bottle of sleeping pills tucked away in one of the pockets of her backpack. It was a promise to herself: When she and Joy-Lynn got to California, the second thing she was would do, after she stood in the ocean surf, would be to find a safe place for them to stay. Then she would take one of the pills and sleep. Sleep all night long in a cocoon that couldn’t be penetrated.

  Joy-Lynn sighed in her sleep. Her eyelids fluttered open. She stretched and pushed herself up to sitting.

  “Morning, sunshine,” Marlene sing-songed.

  “Good morning, mama.” She locked her eyes on Marlene’s face for a long moment, the way she did every morning, as if this day might be the day she recognized her mother effortlessly.

  And, as it did every day, Marlene’s heart tightened with the knowledge that the day Joy-Lynn was praying for would never come.

  After a beat, the girl turned her head and surveyed her surroundings. Marlene saw her shoulders droop.

  “Something the matter?”

  “What? No. I … I dreamt we were on the Qualla. I wish we really were.” Her voice was small.

  Marlene sighed. “I know. I do, too.”

  Joy-Lynn shook her head, suddenly fierce and angry. “I don’t understand. Why can’t we go there? They’ll help us, you know they will.”

  She was right, Marlene knew. Ellis and the others would help them. They’d ask no questions and would hide them if the police … or anyone else … came looking for them. And, even if she couldn’t risk sending Joy-Lynn to school, Joel Pine could work with her on her art. They’d be safe while …

  While what exactly? Their problems weren’t going away.

  They needed to get far away from Crossfire Creek. As soon as her paycheck hit her bank account.

  Joy-Lynn stared at her, thin-lipped and flushed, waiting for her to explain for the twentieth time.

  Marlene exhaled. “It’s not right to bring so much trouble to their doorstep, honey. We’d be putting them in danger, too.”

  “They don’t care about the police! The police can’t even do anything if we’re on their land. They don’t have jurisdiction. They can’t touch us!”

  Joy-Lynn spoke with conviction, and, for all Marlene knew, her daughter was right. That Cherokee school taught the kids what it meant that the Cherokee Nation was recognized as a sovereign nation. Could they simply step foot on the Qualla Boundary and declare themselves out of reach of the county prosecutors and the police? Like in the movies, when the heroes were being chased in a foreign country and they raced within the gates of their country’s embassy and the bad guys just gave up and walked away. Would that apply to the federal investigators, too?

  Maybe. But maybe it didn’t work that way. And she couldn’t risk finding out.

  “Joy-Lynn,” she began, stretching out a hand to cup her daughter’s cheek.

  Joy-Lynn yanked her head back, her arms folded over her chest, angry tears glistening in her eyes.

  Marlene swallowed around the lump in her throat. She could spend the whole day trying to reason with Joy-Lynn, but she knew her daughter well enough to know the girl would still be angry with her.

  Instead, she waited until she was sure her voice would be calm, then she said, “I made some peanut butter toast. Eat something, get dressed, and pack up your paints.”

  She saw the interest that sparked in Joy-Lynn’s eyes before she was able to hide it and smiled to herself. Gotcha.

  “Which paints? The tempera ones or watercolors?”

  “Whichever ones you think you’d use to paint an old growth forest in its full autumnal glory. I saw the perfect spot yesterday when I was out in the woods.”

  A smile wormed its way on to Joy-Lynn’s face and she turned to meet her mother’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry I got mad.”

  “I know you are.” She leaned over the bed and wrapped her arms around Joy-Lynn’s shoulders. She held her tight against her chest for a heartbeat. She wished she could hold her forever, but she released her. “Now go on and get moving. You don’t want to lose the morning light.”

  Joy-Lynn kissed Marlene’s cheek. “I love you, mama. I just wish I could talk to Mr. Caine. It helps me keep everything straight in my mind.”

  “I love you, too, bug. And I know this is hard. I wish you could talk to Mr. Caine, too, but it’s not safe. You know you can talk to me about anything, right? I do understand.” She did, more than anyone, even the counselor.

  “I know.” She slid out of the bed and slipped her feet into the worn, soft moccasins lined up at her bedside.

  Marlene sat on the mattress and pressed her hand against the warm imprint of Joy-Lynn’s small body until the sheets cooled.

  Joy-Lynn studied her palette, envisioning the precise shade of fiery orange shadowed with burnt brown at the leaf tips that would bring the tree on her page to vivid life. She glanced back up at the real tree. It stood on the opposite creek bank, taller than its neighbors, stretching toward the sun. The light wind stirred among its branches and, every few minutes, a single leaf would lose its grip on the tree and float down to the water below. After a slow, acrobatic descent,
the leaf would land in the water and swirl away on the currents, leaving the tree behind.

  Like a kid running to her bus stop on the first day of school while the mom watched from the window, she thought as she added a bold orange stroke of color to her tree.

  Or like a mom, her mom, watching from the front steps, her old blue cardigan draped over her shoulders and a glass of fizzy water in her hand, as Joy-Lynn took off on her bike, heading toward the bowling alley, her red and gray backpack thumping against her back as she pedaled and her excited heart thumping even faster in her chest.

  Her hand froze and a blob of orange dripped from the brush. She didn’t notice. She kept her head lowered over the page and studied her mom from under her eyelashes.

  Mom was sitting on a wide, flat rock with a book propped up on her knees, reading. She was always reading. She used to read fiction with matte covers and the titles in swirly fonts, usually with a sticker or badge on the cover announcing that the book was some famous actress’s book club pick of the month. But lately she’d been reading travel guides, learning all she could about Southern California. Of course, the change in books could’ve been the luck of the draw. They couldn’t exactly show up at the library and they definitely couldn’t waste money buying books. So Mom read whatever she found in the cabins they … borrowed.

  Mom must’ve felt Joy-Lynn watching her because she put a finger between the pages and lifted her head.

  “Everything okay, honey?”

  “Huh? Yeah. Just … trying to decide on a color.”

  Mom smiled and returned to her book while Joy-Lynn studied her profile, wishing she could draw her, just once, the way she looked.

  She remembered that night, the night of the murder, when she’d been so mad at Mom. Her heart stabbed in her chest now and she stole another sidelong glance at Mom. It wasn’t Mom’s fault. Not really.

  She dragged her eyes back to her painting. But instead of an orange maple, she was looking down at a fresh page in her sketchbook where a faceless figure loomed on the back steps to her house, his hand punched through a window.