Page 5 of The (Maybe) Murderer Who Knocked Me Up

In addition to the checks Georgina gets from the government to feed and clothe me, she also needs me to fix her nephew’s cars to make ends meet. She pretends to not know they’re stolen, and I pretend with her.

Bills are bills. I live here, so I help pay them. It was the same with my real moms before they went to jail.

She winces. “Dalton didn’t say nothin’ about bringing tires around.”

In other words, he expects us to provide new ones.

“I’ll talk to Gary at the junkyard and see if he’s come across any tires that could do the trick,” I offer.

Gary won’t give me the tires for free, of course. I’ll have to do something for him. But that’s all right. After this week, I’ll be a hundred miles away from this place. No more fixing Dalton’s stolen cars or making shady deals with Gary. I have a real job at a legitimate repair shop in San Antonio. The owner is even letting me rent a room above the garage until I get on my feet. Once I do, I can apply to be my brother Jake’s legal guardian.

I just hope I can get him out of the group home before the cartel sinks their greedy talons into him.

“Well, thank you for taking care of that. Sit yourself down, and I’ll get you some ice-cold sweet tea. It’s hot as blazes out there.”

“I should get going to school,” I remind her.

She waves my concern away. “Nonsense. You should drink something before you go.”

I slump down onto a wooden chair at the dining room table. When Georgina wants to pour me some sweet tea, nothing short of an apocalypse will stop her. She rushes over to the fridge, her long acrylic nails clicking against the door as she opens it.

“I saw you talkin’ to Quin,” she says in a sing-song voice.

I roll my eyes. “It’s nothing. He was just saying hi.”

“It didn’t look like it was nothing to me. He’s a nice boy. That whole family is nice.”

Quinisa nice boy. That’s the problem. There’s nothing I like more than a guy who smells like fresh laundry and always says please. I love getting sucked into their orbit of curfews and homemade cookies.

But I don’t belong there. Their families always know that. Even if I wasn’t about to leave, Quin’s brothers would never let me be with him.

“I’m leaving in a week, remember?” I say.

She pours a tall glass of sweet tea from a pitcher in the fridge and walks it over to me. “I don’t see why you’re in such a rush. You could stay here for the rest of the summer. Save up some money.”

We both know I wouldn’t save any money staying here. There are no jobs this far away from San Antonio. If I stay, I’ll get roped into fixing more cars for Dalton, and Georgina is the one who profits from that, not me. She’s been good to me, so I’d stay a little longer to help her out if I could, but Jake needs me more than she does.

He’s about to turn fifteen. The cartel started coming for me at that age, and I didn’t have a drug habit to feed. He’ll be an easy mark for them.

I gulp down the sweet tea and stand up, handing the glass back to Georgina. “I’m sorry. That job I told you about needs me next week. Can I take the Buick to school? I’ll swing by the junkyard on my way home.”

She sighs. “Sure. But technically, you’re in foster care until the end of the month. Don’t forget that if the social worker calls.”

She’s mentioned this several times. I remind myself that I shouldn’t be annoyed. She’s just trying to pay the rent.

“I won’t forget,” I promise.

Compared to the group home where Jake’s living, this trailer is a palace. I should be grateful. Taking in a fucked up teenage boy from the foster care system is more than what most people are willing to do.

I head for the door without another word.

4

SEQUIN

Over the next few days, relatives from all around the country stop by to give us advice for our Becoming Day. We haven’t seen most of them since last year, so it turns into a family reunion of sorts where everyone camps out in sleeping bags on our living room floor or in Uncle Dagger’s RV. The bathroom situation is a nightmare, but it’s nice to hear Aunt Crystal talk about placing her paws on her mate for the first time, and the magic that overtook them both. I love Uncle Dagger’s big belly laugh, and the way his daughters all sleep in the same sleeping bag in their raccoon forms like my brothers and me. They’re a litter of six, and a few years younger than us.

It isn’t until the day after our graduation that everyone starts to pack up and leave. Mom and I spend the morning in the kitchen baking thick loaves of French bread and big sugar cookies to send with them. She puts on some Dolly Parton after the cookies come out of the oven, and we sit under the chandelier in the dining room, icing each cookie with orange and lemon frosting.

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