Page 13 of Together We Rot

Mrs.Clearwater dubbed us that shortly after she started hanging out with me. After I started “influencing” her to be her own person. It was never meant to be a compliment, but it sounds too cool to be anything but.

“How could I forget?” I grin—a real one this time. “Anarchy Sisters for life. Drive home safe, okay?” I smile until her car fades from view. Then I’m left with my own racing thoughts and what Sheriff Vrees lovingly described as the “money pit.”

From an outside perspective, I definitely see why. The family motel is a portal to the seventies. Everything in this place is determined to stay old. No amount of Febreze chases away the musty scent hanging in the air. Wipe off the furniture all you want, but the dust will always come crawling back.

You can hardly even see us from the main road anymore. With every passing year, the Morguewood creeps closer. Vines tangle up the walls, scratching the sides like it might tear us apart if it tries hard enough.

We didn’t always live here. The idea of having an actual home is so long gone, so distant now, that it doesn’t even seem real. The memories are there, but they feel transplanted, fed to me. Like a story you heard all the time growing up. You might remember it by heart, but the story itself doesn’t belong to you.

The only employee we can afford to keep is nursing a cigarette at the door.

On second thought, I’m not sure if we ever pay her. Dad doesn’t pay for a lot of things.

Maybe Cherry’s here out of the sheer goodness of her heart. Maybe it’s pity. My mother and her were so close, you’d think they were mother and daughter. With my real grandma dead and Cherry’s son in jail somewhere, maybe that’s what they became to each other. Family.

“Before you ask, no, you can’t have one,” she says without even looking at me. I’m surprised the strong winds haven’t blown her cigarette right out. She protects it with an ungloved hand. Each finger is jammed with rings, and her nails are yellowed where the polish has chipped.

“What makes you think I was going to ask?”

“Because you always ask.” There’s a faint smile on her lips.

“Touché.” I snort.

She may be older than dirt, but she’s never got gray hair to show for it. She dyes her locks a fire-engine red, sprucing it up every week. She told me once she swipes the box colors from the corner store by distracting the cashier with a bone-rattling cough and “accidentally” knocking them into her purse. If I gotta put up with growing old, I need to have some fun every now and again, right?

At the moment, though, she looks exactly how I feel: frustrated, worn out, and in dire need of a yearlong nap. Her signature red lipstick looks like it was reapplied in the dark with her left hand. She’s bundled so tight in a sequined scarf that it makes my own throat itchy.

Her nose scrunches, and I’m sure she can smell the heavy stench of alcohol riding along my breath. “So, what’s a girl like you up to on a Friday night?”

I shrug, carrying my eyes over to the sign. The neon lights burn. “Drinking. Partying. Making reckless adolescent decisions.”

“All that, huh?” she prods before laughing and taking another puff. I watch the way she holds the smoke inside and shudders with it like a dragon’s breath. It reeks.

“Nah, I had one beer and then Ron and I drove home. That was it.”

“Shouldn’t be drinking.”

“You shouldn’t be smoking.”

She grunts, but I see the hint of a grin. “Touché.” One more puff and she’s tossing it in the ashtray. “So, your dad finally told you, huh?”

“He didn’t tell me shit. I read the paper myself.” My body burns at the memory and the anger is almost enough to warm me up.

“Your father isn’t the best at handling things, but can you blame him for being nervous?” she asks, her words breaking in a telling smoker’s cough. “You’re not exactly sunshine and rainbows around him. You’re a real spitfire like your mom. Let me guess, you ripped into him for it?”

I avert my eyes. “A bit.”

You’re selling to the fucking Clarke family? How could you?

What else would you have me do? There’s nothing left for us, Wil!

I might not be good at much, but I’m great at drawing out rage. For a couple wonderful seconds, he came alive. He was more than a hollow husk of himself. A guy who was a father to me once but nothing to me now.

But then he disappeared again.

I tell her the same thing I told him: “This is all we have left of her.”

The look she gives me is nostalgic at best and tragic at worst. Eyes drooping low, lips pressed tight. I dislike pity, but I’ll take it any day over the way Dad reacted. His emotions wiped away as easily as they came, soaked up until there was nothing left.

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