seventeen
Duke Dolce
Baron and Mabel have been gone for hours.
They don’t even bother checking in, and they have my car, so I can’t leave.
After a while, I start to wonder if they’re coming back.
They could just leave me in Faulkner and go, say it’s for my own good.
After all, I don’t have classes to return to, a degree to earn.
They could ditch me and disappear. They wouldn’t even have to give me a cut.
What am I going to do, go to the police and tell them I got stiffed the money I’m owed for cooking drugs for a year?
I’d run out of money soon enough. Most of my inheritance was in Dolce Sweets stocks, and I signed all of mine over to Olive. Even if Mr. Delacroix could reverse that, I’d never ask him to. She deserves that money after what I did to her sister, and to her.
I’d blow it all on drugs anyway.
I’m probably just being paranoid. Just because Baron and Mabel don’t need me, that doesn’t mean they don’t want me around. Just because I’m a liability doesn’t mean they’ll get rid of me. I’m not Jane.
Except you were , my demon reminds me. Before he found her, you were the one he experimented on, testing the early versions of Alice, before they took the user to Wonderland.
I push that idea down. Like Baron says, we made Alice together. I was his assistant.
More like his guinea pig.
When he won’t shut up, I leave Crys and the babies and wander downstairs. There must be ten kids in the living room, all sitting around Olive. She’s holding her hair back with one hand, separating it with the other to show the scar that runs along her forehead and back onto her scalp.
“That’s where he cut my head open.”
A few of the other kids make faces and turn away, but most of them lean closer, their eyes wide.
“Whoa,” says a boy who looks about ten, obvious awe in his voice.
“Told you,” Olive says, beaming. “It’s the same guy who took out Preston Darling’s eye. He keeps it in a jar in his lab. One time, he let me hold it.”
“Whoa,” says a whole chorus of voices this time.
“Mad scientists aren’t real,” says a girl, looking skeptical.
“Well, he’s not totally mad,” Olive says. “But he said he wanted to open up my skull and look at my brain because it’s so interesting. So I think that makes him pretty mad.”
“Why is he mad?” asks an Asian boy who looks a few years younger. “Did you do something to him first?”
“Not mad like that,” Olive says, running her finger along the scar. “Mad like, crazy.”
“Like the Mad Hatter in Alice and Wonderland ,” says the older boy.
“Exactly,” Olive says, then widens her eyes so you can see the whites all around and whispers, “We’re all mad here.”
“Okay, Olive, stop scaring your guests,” Royal says, stepping into the doorway with Harper, both of them carrying big bowls of popcorn. “Next thing, I’ll be getting calls from angry parents, and I’m not dealing with that shit today.”
A couple girls look shocked and then giggle, like they’ve never heard a swear word before.
“Yeah, let’s keep it light,” Harper agrees. “This is a birthday party, not Halloween. And you want them to come back, don’t you?”
“If any of them don’t want to be my friends, I’ll just have Royal kick their dad’s ass,” Olive says smugly.
“My dad’s in jail, so he can’t get him,” says another girl.
“Then Harper will beat up your mom,” Olive says, like it’s the simplest solution.
“I don’t know,” the girl says, eyeing Harper. “My mom’s a lot bigger.”
“She’s small but mighty,” Royal says, setting down a bowl of caramel popcorn on one end of the coffee table and a bowl of buttered popcorn on the other.
“No one’s beating up anyone,” Harper says, handing out two more bowls to the girls.
Then she turns to me. “Are you staying? I think they’re going to watch Back to the Future after this.
None of them have seen it, and Olive wants to prove to them that there’s a car that goes back in time.
I’m not sure if she actually believes it’s a time machine, but telling her it’s not seems like telling a kid there’s no Santa, so we’re tiptoeing around that until we know for sure. ”
I look at Olive to see if she wants me to stay, but she’s busy fighting over the caramel popcorn with two other kids. She didn’t even notice I was here. She’s with her friends—the ones her own age. She doesn’t need me.
No one needs me.
“No,” I say. “I’ll go.”
I’m outside before I remember I don’t have a fucking car. I go back in, but Harper and Royal are busy with the kids, and Crystal is napping with the baby.
I find Devlin out back, putting up a tree swing.
“Hey,” I say. “Let me borrow your car.”
He straightens and squints at me. “You been drinking?”
“No,” I say, scowling at him.
“You smell like you’ve been drinking.”
“Fuck off,” I say. “And stop knocking up my sister. She needs a break.”
I turn and head around the other side of the house. I sit on one of the curving staircases out front and call Maverick.
“Hey,” I say. “I need something.”
“Yeah?” he says. “Pull up. I’m at the shop.”
“I don’t have a car,” I say. “Come get me.”
“Needy little bitch, aren’t you?”
“Fuck you.”
“Been trying for years, pretty boy.”
“I’ll make it worth your time,” I say.
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ll pay you double what you’ll make at the tattoo parlor.”
“I don’t make house calls.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “You make them for Colt.”
“Colt’s my friend.”
“I’m your friend.”
“You’re barely a client.”
“Pick me up,” I say. “I gotta get out of here, and it’s not two in the morning this time.”
“Where you at?”
“My house. And bring some bitches. I wanna fuck.”
“I fuck.”
“You can fuck them too.”
He laughs quietly. “You owe me.”
I go inside and grab a couple beers, then peek into the living room. The kids are all piled onto sofas and chairs and pillows on the floor, watching Olive kick some kid’s ass in a car racing video game. He spins out and crashes, and the game ends.
Olive throws down her controller and jumps up and starts doing a victory dance, which is really just twerking. “Oh yeah!” she yells, bouncing her non-existent ass up and down. “Suck my clit, loser!”
I duck outside again, my head spinning. Where did she learn to talk like that?
Or move like that? It’s disconcerting, but then, maybe all kids talk like that.
I was only a couple years older than her when Dad brought home two girls from our class and showed us how to fuck them.
Thinking about Olive doing that shit in only two more years makes me think maybe her sexy dancing and language aren’t so premature.
It’s not like I know anything about kids.
I sit on the front steps again. It’s the exact place I was sitting when Olive came bopping up the driveway the first time with her skinny ankles showing and her uncombed hair.
She sat here and drank a beer with me, and that was a year and a half ago, so I guess she’s always been pretty mature for her age.
But I haven’t noticed anyone giving Harper and Royal shit about how she talks or acts like she’s already a teenager.
I’m sure Crystal and Devlin wouldn’t allow any of that shit around here, but Harper said she made a promise to Blue and she wasn’t going to break it, so they took Olive to New York with them.
Maverick pulls up in his sick, restored El Camino, interrupting my bitter thoughts. Colt said I didn’t know anything about cars, but that’s just because I didn’t spontaneously ejaculate at the sight of his shitty old truck. I can appreciate an old car when it’s actually cool, like Maverick’s.
I climb onto the passenger side of the bench seat.
“You have little sisters, right?” I ask when Maverick starts to back down the drive.
He stomps the brake. “Yeah, and they’re way too fucking good for you, so if you’re going to even speak of them, you better get the fuck out of my car before I make your throat smile from ear to ear.”
“Whoa, I’m not saying shit,” I say, holding up both hands. “I just wondered how old kids are when they start twerking and talking about sex stuff.”
“Eighteen, unless they want to get sent to a convent,” Maverick says. “But my family’s a little traditional. The girls aren’t gang-bangers like us. Our dad’s protective.”
“Yeah, same,” I say, then realize a second too late that I spoke about Dad like he’s still here.
Suddenly, my throat hurts so bad I can hardly swallow.
“You got the pearls?” I rasp, sliding him an envelope.
Maverick leans back and digs around in the pocket of his jeans. I watch him, remembering how Colt always did that, taking his time to drag out his lighter, loving the way I watched him. That crease in his jeans at the hips that made me want to fucking kill the guy.
“Twenty dances with the devil,” Maverick says, handing me a baggie of little blue pearls. “Or the Pearl Lady, if that’s what you call her.”
Twenty. It looks like barely anything. I count them discretely so as not to offend him.
“You counting?” he asks, shaking his head.
“No,” I say, shoving the baggie in my pocket. “I know you wouldn’t short me.”
“I’d do the same thing,” he says. “It’s all good.”
I tell him where to go, and a few minutes later, he pulls up.
“You want to take a couple?” I ask, pulling out the baggie again.
“Nah,” he says. “I got to get back to the shop.”
He has his seat tipped back and his wrist resting lazily on top of the wheel, tattoos swirling over his light brown skin from the backs of his fingers to the sleeve of his black tee stretched around his muscular bicep.
He reminds me of Colt, all tatted up like that.
His skin is smooth, though, not all fucked up from burn scars, and he’s got all ten fingers.
“You sure about that?” I ask, wetting my lips.
He just shakes his head, a little smirk playing on his lips. “You and me and Alice? That sounds like a dangerous threesome.”
“I thought you were a big bad gangster,” I taunt. “Since when do you run from danger?”
“Since it started looking like you, pretty boy.”