Splendor County Crime Log

Thursday, April 15

1:02 AM Merlin's Magic Pizzeria was broken into for the seventh time this month. A sheriff responded but did not arrive in time to apprehend the suspect.

Friday, April 16

3:43 PM Staff at the Splendor Recreation Center pool reported a father and son having an altercation by the deep end. Everything was OK. 

11:22 PM A 22-year-old Splendor man whom a sheriff's deputy spotted being pulled along on his skateboard by a dog was arrested Friday for being under the influence of heroin, a sheriff's report says.

Saturday, April 17

9:41 PM Reporting party called about loud noise coming from her neighbors in 1600 block of Woodland Dr. Investigation revealed domestic abuse situation.

Sunday, April 18

7:03 AM Woman from 1600 block of Woodland Dr. reported missing.

 

            Tonight Annie's chosen the Golden Bull. Seedy, even for her, and me and Luce are in the parking lot behind it. But we have to be. She always leaves out the back, because some gross guy always leans in real close and beery and shouts Wanna get out of here, I know a way, and his knowledge of the back door is so monumentally impressive to drunk Annie, she follows him, and then Mom kicks her out of the house when she comes around still drunk the next morning. Sometimes I can stop it. I follow her most nights, with Luce cause Luce has the pickup.

            It was better when she used to go to Clearman's. They don't card girls there, so I could go in, find her, hold her hand, walk her home. But once Annie realized they were letting me in she stopped going there. I guess she felt some sisterly responsibility.

            So me and Luce, sitting on a concrete ledge near the door, waiting. People keep offering us drinks, asking what we're waiting for, and it's making me antsy saying no all the time. Luce never answers, just does this head to toe to head slow gaze and raises her eyebrows. She's practiced this on me for a couple weeks now and I don't have the heart to tell her it looks less like she's mysterious/aloof/dangerous and more like she's sexually propositioning everyone.

            But the bouncers everywhere know me now, so when people get too close I can call them over. Sandy's on tonight. Seven feet tall and three wide. He tells people he was born that size. When he came out apparently the doctor said his destiny was either bouncer or dump truck. 

            Sandy is one of the better ones, forever linked with the way he supported Annie's head as he carried her, gently turned her on her side in the back of Luce's pickup. The first night he took her from my arms, it occurred to me how much harder it is to carry someone when they're not trying to help you, when they're just dead weight. Like the body gets heavier when you're unconscious. It makes no sense. You should be lighter, when you're not there.

            Luce jingles her car keys. I hit them out of her hand. She looks at me. "Ask Sandy if we can go in tonight. I got shit to do."

            "Like what?" I say.

            "Will you just ask so we can go in and grab her?"

            "No. She won't come."

            "It's midnight, I'm sure she's drunk enough to be dragged a little." She smiles out into the lot and I don't say anything until I do.

            "You're free to go, Luce."

            "Oh yeah, leave you alone here, without a car, so you can walk Annie home? That'll go over real well with Rhonda."

            "Why do you always say my mom's name like that? It's just Rhonda. It's not Rawanda."

            "I didn't say Rawanda."

            "Whatever."

            "Whatever." She pushes off the ledge, paces. Last time we were here we got giggly about the sixteen year old boy, all sinew and too tan, who was flirting with Sandy. Laughed when he got close and Sandy stepped back into the wall, laughed driving her home, Annie rattling in the backseat. I woke her up to drink some water and accidentally poured it on her face, but she was too drunk to care, so Luce and I laughed as we locked the room from the inside and climbed out the window. We both slept in Luce's truck that night and went to school the next morning with sore stomachs and mussed hair.

            I pull out my map and start memorizing capitals of South American countries for Spanish. Luce is back, peering over my shoulder, her long black hair all over my capitals.

            "Luce…I can't see Chile..."

            "Look, California and Nevada are like, spooning." Her eyelashes brush my cheek. Feels kind of like moths. I turn my head, look at the cramped text of the East Coast.

            "Vermont and New Hampshire are head to foot in a hotel bed."

            "Probably with unresolved sexual tension. Like Vermont's feet keep caressing New Hampshire's head."

            "Probably they can't act on it cause they're second cousins."

            Luce sighs. "How long was Annie sober before tonight?"

            "Twelve days."

            "Yeah?"

            "Yeah. She's just having a bad night tonight."

            "Is Rhonda going to kick her out again?"

            "Only if she finds out." I suddenly feel bad. Luce was just sitting next to me in English and reading the crime log from Splendor's two-page local paper under Ethan Frome, highlighting her favorite ones. I kept staring and eventually when class got loud enough to talk she said, Isn't it great, to have these things happen here, about the liquor store robberies and stabbings, and I said not really and she said I want to be in here. She was awful. But I think that's why I told her about Annie. And she didn't do the whole pity thing or the whole  "you're making this up for attention" thing.

            Luce helped me. At first it had been fun, kind of exciting, kind of an adventure trying to get into the bars to find her every other night. The pickup had a volume dial that didn't quit and we liked the bad roads at night.

            "I want to get out of here, you know?" she says.

            "Yeah." Weird swell of happiness, picturing it. "Let's go somewhere nice." I smile, but she's looking off, maybe at the pickup.

            "But I think I would want to be alone. I just want to go somewhere with a beach and be alone and just figure things out."

            I shrug. She seems to be deciding something. Saying anything feels like losing a game I didn't know I was playing until right now. "Yeah, but…"

            "What?"

            "You're not actually going to leave. None of us are." From the corner of my eye, I see her get up and go over to Sandy before I can say anything and I'm frozen as she talks fast, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and goes in. He stands there, sees me gaping, shuffles a little. His cheek has a bright coral spot.

            "Looks less like she kissed you and more like she wiped her mouth off on your face," I offer as I follow her, and though I don't turn around I know he's blushing.

             "I'm not …happy," Annie slurs from the backseat, head lolling. Her face is completely obscured by her swinging hair. When she took her door off the hinges in seventh grade and put the bead curtain up, I broke every string trying to be Tarzan. "Don't… take me back."

            "She's not happy," Annie's bar friend says loudly, arm around her. He's less drunk which makes me hate him a lot more. Wouldn't leave her side, but at least he convinced her to come with us. Our plan for getting rid of him right now is to play psycho as soon as we get Annie in bed. Luce has some knives on her and I sort of patted him down in the bar. I have high hopes.

            "Annie, we're going home." I lean my face against the cool window and close my eyes.

            "Nope," Luce says, and makes a sudden left.

           

            "Merlin's Pizzeria?" I ask as we pull into the lot. Luce doesn't answer. She's pulling a key out of her back pocket. She doesn't look around, just heads straight for the building. Annie's friend is helping her out of the car. Luce has the door open in under two seconds, and as I follow her in I hear another voice greet her, male, and see a scrawny man holding a large dog in his arms. She walks towards him, hugs him tightly. The dog barks, and they both laugh.

            "How did you get the key?" I ask.

            "Alice," Luce says, "this is Merlin. We're going to move to California."

            For a second I think she's referring to the dog, but the man grins.

            "When?"

            "June. My dad gets to leave the Woodland place, and I get to leave here. I just wanted you to meet Merlin first." Luce beams at me, back at him.

            Annie and her friend are wandering around the tables, knocking over salt and throwing it over their shoulders in the dim light from the kitchen.

            "Bye, Luce," I say, and wave, and grab Annie, attached to her friend. I walk out holding their hands, in between my sister and her past.

            Once we're two blocks away I see the cop car pull up, and yes I could call Luce, tell her to run. Maybe she—maybe they'd make it, together.

           

            Once, when I was little, I saw a mother opossum trying to get all her babies safe across the schoolyard. Can't play dead when you're covered in your babies. She only lost one. I mean, she didn't lose it. She was probably going to come back for it but I put it in my sweater pocket and brought it home, kept it warm until I forgot and then Annie's cat brought her its little body when we were all in the living room watching Scooby-Doo, and if I remember right it was the one where Shaggy betrays all of them and robs a hospital and Fred cries into his ascot and Daphne stabs Shaggy twice, in the heart.