Page 5 of No More Secrets

But so far, lucky.

She prays that luck won’t run out.

She looks up the road, trying not to freak. She’s anxious to return to the sandy lot of abandoned cars. It had taken her less than two days to discover where the drifters slept, and another three to find an empty car of her own. But if she runs there now, she risks getting caught. There isn’t any cover. Market guy could turn around. Then he’ll know where she’s been living. He’ll take back what she stole. He might even turn her over to the police, who’ll send her home. The one place she knows she isn’t safe. Her mom chose her boyfriend over her own daughter. Harmony believed him, not her. She even called Shiloh a liar when she told her mom Ellis had been touching her.

Shiloh watches movies and reads a lot of books. She knows what heartbreak is, that crushing, hollow feeling when someone you love, someone you look up to, dismisses you, rejects what you say is true. But she’d never felt it firsthand until then. Betrayal hurts. Bad.

She needs to get to Finn in California, but what she wants more than anything is for her mom to put her first for once. Not Ellis, and not her addiction.

Shiloh looks at her hands. They’re grimy and reek of filth. Chipped purple paint peels off dirt-caked fingernails. She spits in her palms and rubs her hands, smearing the dirt, cleaning them the best she can, then wipes them on her jeans. She tallies her winnings: a pack of JuicyFruit—she was desperate; she hasn’t brushed her teeth in two weeks—a jerky strip, three packs of mixed nuts, four fruit strips, and a Snickers bar. She rips the wrapper and bites off a mouthful before the chocolate melts. The other snacks will hold in the heat.

This morning wasn’t the first time she’s cased the Dusty Pantry. She’s been able to avoid going when the guy is there. He’s too observant. His watchful eye too keen. The old lady is clueless. Shiloh steals right under her nose. And she’s been there enough times to know where everything is located. Before she goes in, she plans exactly what she’ll steal.

But this morning she grew impatient. She hasn’t eaten in two days, so she took the risk and she almost lost everything. Her loot and her dreams. Getting caught also meant no Finn. No Finn meant no place to live in California.

Ten minutes pass, then another five, and the truck hasn’t returned. Shiloh tosses the candy wrapper into the dumpster, brushes dirt off her rear, and runs the mile back to her car through a dirt field speckled with tumbleweeds and spurge. She keeps away from the road but watches for market guy’s truck, ready to dive flat among the brittle growth if he comes back before she makes it.

Of all places to be abandoned, this one sucks. There isn’t a single tree for cover or shade. But the one thing Shiloh has in her favor is her speed. Five years of pickpocketing has taught her to haul ass when she needs to.

She’s drenched in sweat when she reaches the lot, her flared jeans coated in a thick layer of dust to her knees. She runs her fingers through her hair, scooping it off her damp face, and twists the tangled mess into a topknot with the rubber band on her wrist. She whacks at her jeans until a cloud billows. Her white Chucks are up the creek. They’ve turned the color of the sand that wants to bury this town before the sun set on her first day here. She doesn’t even try to clean them. It takes toomuch effort, energy she doesn’t have, not after that run. She barely had enough energy for the sprint here.

Close to thirty cars in various states of disrepair and decay are scattered over several acres, each one occupied. Shiloh’s is near the back, a four-door gray Ford Fiesta from the eighties she found by chance. When she first stumbled upon this lot, she followed the woman who used to occupy the vehicle, curious about her comings and goings. They don’t teach Homelessness 101 in high school. But she’d seen the woman around town and trailed her back to the car, desperate to learn how she was surviving. Overnight, Shiloh learned to blend into her surroundings to avoid danger, and to sleep on top of her backpack with it still strapped to her back so it isn’t stolen. She learned to avoid other homeless so they don’t exploit her because she’s female and young.

But most of all, cops hate the homeless, especially when they’re teenage runaways. And if she isn’t careful, or causes trouble, other homeless will report her.

The two most beneficial things she’s learned are to use the library during the day and to walk neighborhoods the night before garbage collection. Bins are free pickings, and that night she followed the homeless woman, Shiloh found the sweatshirt she’s wearing and a blanket she keeps stowed in the car. Also that same night, the woman she’d trailed had stood over a bin she’d been riffling through, made a strange gurgling sound, and keeled over. She collapsed right there on the road.

Shiloh tried not to panic as she checked for a pulse. In another life she might have tried to revive the woman. Under other circumstances she would have alerted a neighbor to call an ambulance. But Shiloh was one hair shy of losing it. And she’d already lost so much: her home, her mom, her security. She couldn’t lose her head. But if someone found her with the woman, they’d find out she was a runaway; then they’d send her home.

She checked the woman’s pockets, disgusted with her own actions. But she picked up a few crumpled dollar bills and a smashed trail barbefore sprinting back to the lot, where she cleaned the waste and filth from the car the woman had been living in. Then she cried herself to sleep over the woman nobody would miss, for the meager food and cash that felt tainted yet she badly needed, and for the mom she lost. Not the version she left, but the one Harmony was when Shiloh was a young girl. Loving and nurturing and secure. Shiloh’s world.

Catching her breath, Shiloh walks the perimeter to avoid Ricky’s henchmen, as she’s come to think of them. Ricky and the two men who never leave her side live in a trio of cars in the middle of the lot that circle a firepit. They keep the flame low at night, blocked from view by Ricky’s Camry. The three of them sit in worn beach chairs under a lean-to of sorts made from plastic pipes and old sheets, sharing a bottle of JD.Ricky wears nothing but a red bikini smudged with dirt, her crepey skin on full display. Her face collapsing in on itself, her nose and chin protruding, she waves at Shiloh, her triceps flab swinging like a kids’ jump rope in the schoolyard. Henchman Bob throws a bunch of lewd gestures her way while Barton, the one who creeps her out, stares. His eyes follow her. Fear nudges her to hurry along.

Shiloh looks away and jogs to her Fiesta.

Door wide open, her neighbor Itchy Irving sits in the torn front seat of his Chevy Caprice wearing the same saggy, dull-brown tighty-whities that have taken on the hue of the desert she met him in a couple of weeks ago. He complains anything else he puts on irritates his skin. He’s always scratching.

Bent over his legs, his hair pulled back in a colonial ponytail, his gray-speckled beard reaching his navel, he preps the dirty syringe he uses daily to shoot up between his toes.

“Hey.” Shiloh shouts to get his attention. She veers over to him and grabs the syringe. “You want to get high, not comatose.” And she needs him somewhat coherent. His presence keeps away the creeps.

When she first met Irving, he offered her a hit off the joint Ricky passed around the camp. Shiloh gagged at the thought of sharing,shaking her head. She’s indirectly been high before on several occasions when her mom smoked weed. She didn’t like the feeling or what it did to her mother. Irving just laughed and invited her to sing “American Pie” with him. He got one verse in, and she broke down crying in the dirt. The song reminded her of her mom. When Shiloh was young, Harmony would play it on repeat. They’d dance, spinning as they circled the room until they fell to the floor and gazed up at the popcorn ceiling, pretending the pockmarks were stars.Make a wish, her mom would whisper. Shiloh had made many. Only recently did she learn she couldn’t rely on her mom to help her make them come true. She was on her own.

Her tears irritated some from the encampment. Ricky wanted to turn her over to the cops, believing Shiloh had a home to return to, since she’s young. But Irving didn’t pester her. He just let her cry and continued to sing. He smelled. The joint stank. But his presence oddly didn’t frighten her. If anything, she felt better having him near. When she calmed, he pointed at a star and told her NASA sent him there on a top-secret mission. She laughed, feeling a little less sad.

Since that first night, he insists she check in with him whenever she leaves the encampment. She reminds him of his daughter, Daisy Ray, he’s told her. She married some wealthy tycoon who stole her away. They live in a compound somewhere in the Mediterranean. He also told her he’s an astronaut and has flown with Richard Branson and Elon Musk to the moon, and that he’s dated Halle Berry, but she dumped him for Daniel Craig. His stories are outrageous, but she enjoys them. They make her forget how scary her life has become.

Irving’s head falls back. His yellow-stained smile spreads wide and slow. “Too late, Daisy Ray.”

Shiloh looks at the empty vial and swears under her breath. Irving already took a hit predawn before she left. He melts back onto the seat, legs dangling over the side, hands on his chest, fingernails scratching at the wiry silver hair. Eyes closed, he hums a Radiohead song Shilohrecognizes as another one of her mom’s favorites, “Fake Plastic Trees.” She misses her mom, but not enough to return home, not while Ellis is still around. With Irving out of it for the day, there isn’t anything she can do about it other than leave until the euphoria passes. She’s on her own for now. The camp isn’t safe with Bob and Barton watching her so intently, and they’ve always made her feel uneasy.

She returns the syringe to the tin box on the front seat floorboard. Irving smells of stale sweat and something sour she can’t place that burns her nostrils. The car reeks of rotten fruit, but she leans in to get the cardboard pieces he stores in the back seat. She presses them against the windshield, holding them in place with the visors, so he doesn’t burn as he sleeps off the drug, and leaves a pack of mixed nuts she stole in the cupholder. Then she turns to her car and freezes. The four side windows have been smashed in.

“No!”No, no, no.She runs over to her car in a panic.

The windows blocked the wind. They made her feel safe from the other vagrants. She could lock the doors and keep them out. Now anyone can get to her while she sleeps. They can steal her things. Harm her.

She grips the door where the window had been and bites into her bottom lip. Shattered glass covers the seats. Her blanket is missing. She wants to scream. Then she remembers the backpack she stowed in the trunk.

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