1. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“ Y ou’re late,” came the familiar greeting to the background of the door chime. The scent of stale coffee and lamp-heated hot dogs filled my nose before the top of Del’s head could be seen through the scratched and worn plexiglass barrier.
“For all you knew, I could have been a robber. Or the sketchy dude who feeds the rats by the dumpster.” I unlocked the office door and shut out the soft crooning of smooth jazz that the franchise owner demanded we play on a loop.
Years of working Christmas at the mall one town over, where the exact same twelve songs were played all day, had honed my skill of completely tuning out jazz.
“Could have. But you’re not. And you’re always late,” Del bit back.
I shrugged and clocked in. She wasn’t wrong. Despite the seventeen alarm clocks and two different apps on my phone, I was, in fact, always late. None of them ever seemed to ring on time or even at dependably irregular amounts of time. I could consistently count on all of them going off at the wrong time or not going off at all. I’d once tried a wake-up call service that ended with my phone magically finding legs and leaping into a glass of water I didn’t even remember putting by the bedside.
She crossed her arms and glared at me as I shoved today’s shabby excuse for a purse and coat into my cubby. I’d given up on keeping an actual purse three years ago when both sides of the strap broke as the bottom gave out. I was lucky enough to have it explode all over the busiest intersection in our Detroit neighborhood when the light turned green. I got quick at finding some sort of pouch to stuff my lunch into. My boobs, tiny as they were, served as the only semi-reliable wallet I could keep.
“Dan wants you to call him when you’re done clocking in.”
Fuck.
My eyes flicked up to the bedraggled calendar hanging above the time clock. Friday. I had learned to hate Fridays, the day everyone did their firing and had come to be a day full of dread. Would today be the day I’d get fired? Spin the wheel and find out!
I exhaled and picked up the phone, dialing the store manager’s cell phone. I knew what was coming, so I was already pulling my keys off my ring and getting my work property out onto the desk by the time he answered.
“Hey, Sonny.” Dan’s voice chirped on the other end of the phone.
“Hey, Dan.”
I didn’t let the disappointment and resignation leak into my voice.
“Del said you were late again. This is the fourth straight day you’ve been late, Sonny. We talked about this last week. You promised me that, with a later start time, it wouldn’t happen again. I took your word on that.”
The two store keys and my timecard were already assembled into a neat little pile, and I was pulling an envelope out of his stack to seal them by the time he finished his thought.
“I know, Dan. I’m sorry.”
“No, Sonny, I’m sorry. I thought this would work out for you. I thought we could get you back on your feet and help you out. It looks like that’s not going to happen. I wish I could help more, but Del can’t be punished for your irresponsibility.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d never held a job for longer than eight months. Not once in my entire miserable life. I told myself that if I ever made it to a year, I’d be sure it was a sign of the end times. So, I’d witnessed countless firing techniques. Dan here had chosen the style I hated the most, the guilt trip “it’s not you, it’s me” route .
I don’t know why this was such a popular style—what were they looking for?
“I understand, Dan.” What was there for me to say? Nothing, really. I’d learned that, by the time this phone call happened, all the paperwork had been signed, the decision written in stone. There was no point in fighting it. I’d tried a few times. But it was already decided. “I’ve got my keys, timecard, and badge all in an envelope for you already. It’s in the top drawer of your desk. I’ll send you a video of me leaving the store with it in the drawer when I hang up.”
“Is that all you have to say for yourself, Sonny?”
I paused. No, Dan, I have a lot to say for myself. I want to tell you that your breath smells like overcooked, moldering brussels sprouts, and you have the intellectual capacity of a rutabaga, but what’s the point?
“Excuse me?” he barked back. I swore that was my inside voice and not my outside voice.
Apparently not.
Welp. Time to full send it.
“I saaaiiiddd . . . your breath smells like overcooked brussels sprouts, and you’ve got the intellectual capacity of a rutabaga. You’re built like a walrus who had an unfortunate accident with a meat grinder, and the three slimy hairs on the top of your head called. They’d like to be put out of their misery.” When in doubt, Sonny Rule #7: commit to the bit. “Oh, and wash your beard, my dude. I didn’t even know a human could grow mold, but you somehow fucking managed it. Deuces, Dan!”
I heard him yelling that I had to work my full shift before leaving as I slammed the phone onto the cradle and looked up into the aghast face of Del—Delilah Mickens. Dan’s side piece.
“As for you, Delilah, a little on the fucking nose, eh? I’m sure Mrs. Dan would love to hear about how you let him shove hot dogs up your ass and eat them out last week. Top-notch performance, by the way. Sasha Grey would be proud. Next time, maybe don’t do it in the beer cooler, where the camera is directly pointed at you, with other people in the store. ”
I smirked and shoved my things into my pockets as I sauntered out, waving my favorite finger as a goodbye.
Sonny Rule #20: Burn it all on your way out.
I texted the promised video to Dan—and an oopsie text to his wife Cheryl with the beer cooler video. It soothed the burn of once again being back on the hunt for another garbage job that would at least pay the rent on my tiny hovel I called an apartment.
Normally, I would wait for the bus at the stop a few blocks away from the gas station, but today, I wanted to walk. I needed to feel the wicked bite of the Detroit fall creeping in. I could almost see it slithering against the shattered, dimpled sidewalk. Its belly low and scraping the pitted path, long haggard nails digging into it as it pulled itself along. Trash gathered in its hair and crunched beneath its chilling body. A broken-toothed, sinister grin spread across cracked lips.
I shuddered. I’d always had an overactive imagination, even as a kid. It had gotten me in all manner of trouble when I swore that the little man with skin that blended in with the hardwood floors in the Wilson’s home had stolen Greg Wilson’s beer. Or the incident in the now-crumbling, rotting Victorian home of Anne Harrison, foster mom number twenty-one. The great puddles of black sludge crawling up the rickety stairs was that of the very woman who walked the paths in the woods.
I’d stopped seeing them, “The People Between” as I called them, after Crystal Valentine, adopted daughter of foster parents number thirty-six, beat my head into the door of her bedroom. She’d told them I freaked out and kept hitting my head until I passed out. It wasn’t the first time I had been hospitalized, nor would it be the last, but it was the last time I acknowledged The People Between.
Crystal had accused me of being evil. The evidence of my alleged wickedness? Missing dolls she venomously charged me of stealing.
She had always hated her altruistic parents and their need to help other kids. She had done everything in her power to shove me out the door as fast as possible. Everything from trashing the garage when I was supposed to be home alone to lighting small brush fires. I had blamed them all on The People Between, unable to grasp the diabolical nature of a sixteen-year-old girl who had seen the worst of the dregs of the foster system. I had been so fucking na?ve. So young and stupid.
Just my luck, Molly and Brian Valentine were the nicest people I’d ever met in my eleven years of life. It was the first time I had felt like I was loved. It was the first time someone had hugged me, held me, brushed my hair back and kissed my forehead, when no one else was watching.
I was used to the performance of good parenting. I was used to what it looked like and what it felt like when fosters performed for the courts and the social workers who would randomly drop by. But Molly and Brian were different. They had made me feel something. They had made me want to throw the trash bag out. They had made me want to have something aside from a couple pairs of clothes and a good pair of running shoes. They’d made me want a blanket of my own, a door of my own, a brand name toothbrush, a side of the bed, a routine, a habit, something, anything to signify I was finally settled . . . They’d made me want a home. Crystal saw that and decided it was her life’s mission to take that away from me. The day she put my head through her door, I had found the dolls. The brat had pulled up one of the floorboards in her room and had been secretly stuffing them in there. I’d only found it because she had tripped me when I came to drop off her laundry and my hand landed on the right section of the floor to tip the board up.
I’d known all along I hadn’t been taking her dolls. The bleak reality of life had swallowed the childhood whimsy that Crystal still clung to long before I had come to the Valentine house. I might have the shittiest luck in the entire world, but I hadn’t had any black outs. The only explanation I had was that maybe The People Between had taken them. I had been so desperate to believe it that, even when smacked in the face with her crime, I kept trying to blame them. I kept shouting, “See! See! They took your dolls!”
It never dawned on my young self that another girl with the same background as mine, someone who had lived the same rough life as I had, could want to take it from me. It never occurred to me that someone who had experienced all the trauma and horrors I had would want to bring that on someone else. But there she was, screaming at me that I was a weirdo and that I had stolen her dolls.
She kept screaming that as I cried, and when I finally realized what the score was and told her I was going to tell the Valentines, she attacked.
Sonny’s Rule #2: The sheep are just as deadly as the wolves.
That was the last night I spent in the Valentine home. Two days in the hospital, and I was back on the road to another. I never saw the Valentines again.
I think about them once a year, though. February had become one of those months that was a long line of disappointments. It was only fitting that it was my birth month. Leap-year baby. I wasn’t even lucky enough to have a birthday every year. What sort of shit was that?