Page 23 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“Math tutoring.” The lie rolls from my tongue with ease. It’s a defensive instinct, natural as the hiss of a rattlesnake or a gazelle stotting into the air.

“Bullshit. It’s Gracie’s best subject.”

While the nickname makes Grace wince, I burn with jealousy. Grace was Gracie, Harmony was Harmonica, and I was butterfly, most infantilized of all. “Precalculus is hard,” my sister whines.

He doesn’t acknowledge Grace. “Are you telling me the truth, Providence?”

“Yes.”

My father slides a bookmark into his paperback and runs his tongue over the front of his crooked teeth. I worry I’ve only made things worse for Grace by lying and forcing her to participate in the charade. I consider, briefly, pulling her back into the car and speeding away, and then, even more briefly, speeding away without her.

The porch rasps with relief as he descends the steps. “You call me if you need to get a ride home,” he says to Grace. “Don’t call her. Not now, not ever. You understand me?”

“I understand.”

“Good girl. Get in the house.”

She glides into the house without a glance back at me, and I can’t help but feel betrayed to have been left alone with this man. He takes the final swig from his beer and casts the bottleinto the street. When he leans in through the car window, his beer-soaked breath nearly makes me retch. “Fancy seeing you twice in one day, butterfly.”

“I was hoping you’d be passed out on the floor of the pool hall.”

“And I’m hoping this thing’s in park,” he says, drumming his palm against the roof of my car. “You’re not great with cars.”

“You’re a barrel of laughs.”

“Where are you running off to?”

“None of your business.”

“Couple folks saw someone with Missouri plates headed up to the reservation yesterday,” he says. “Indians got an extra teepee for you?”

“It wouldn’t kill you to read less about ancient Rome and more about Wounded Knee.” Rather than striking me for back talk, he manages a tepid laugh, and I relish having the upper hand once again. He can’t hit me anymore. I have the power, and naturally, I let it go straight to my head.

“Am I free to go now, officer?”

“Depends. Am I going to see you at the search tomorrow morning?”

Tomorrow’s search will chip away at the swath of prairie between Annesville and Chadron. Nothing out there but cemeteries, abandoned nineteenth-century military outposts, and enough open sky to make you nauseous.

“I’ll be there with bells on.”

“As long those bells are loud enough to get your mother out of whatever foxhole she’s hiding in.”

“You can’t tell me you think she’s just hiding somewhere for fun.”

My father rakes his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. Whether it’s anxiety or agitation, I can’t quite tell. “Your mother’s always had a flair for the dramatic, just like you.”

He reaches into the car. Reaches for the sleeves of my shirt. Before I can yank my arm away, he hooks his index finger around my sleeve and tugs down. In the midafternoon light, my scars are milky white. Grotesque. Once you see them, you don’t see the tattoos anymore. He may as well cleave open my chest and expose my insides to the world.

“Make sure you keep those covered up. They’ll scare people—and I don’t mean the tattoos.”

CHAPTER

7

August 12th

12:32AM

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