I ducked out of her grip. “I do not have a death wish.”
“Not you, that boyfriend of yours.” She paused. “Ex?”
I nodded.
“Good. Your mom and I are flipping a coin on who gets to help him find Jesus.”
“Would it make you feel better if I told you he just drove his car into a mail truck?”
Her eyes flicked past me, toward the house. “Did he, now. No one’s dead, I hope? Or maimed?”
“He’s fine. He messed up his face, though. Just like me.”
She smiled slightly, though her eyes stayed flinty. “Payback’s a bitch.”
I nodded at the tote. “You brought Mom the gross tea?”
She pulled a little unmarked tin out of her pocket. “And salve for your lip. To be used sparingly.”
“Thanks, auntie,” I said, giving her a hug. Whatever was in the salve, it would work. She was the brain and hands behind the herbal remedies sold at the Small Shop, her and my mom’s fancy-people headshop in downtown Woodbine. Her stuff had a cult status that kept the lights on.
She headed inside and I followed after, to try out the salve. It smelled like the underside of a log and tasted like Satan’s ballsack, so I wiped it off and put the little pot in the medicine cabinet. Hopefully Hank would think it was lip balm.
When I went upstairs I could hear them talking through my parents’ bedroom door. My mom let loose this free, throaty laugh that made my stomach clench. It was a sound only her best friend could get out of her.
Sometimes I thought, if I didn’t love Aunt Fee so much, I might be jealous of her. Sometimes I wondered if my dad could say the same.
I was waiting for her when she left, pretending to read a magazine.
“Hey.” I lay the magazine over my chest. “Did Mom tell you how long I’m grounded?”
Aunt Fee tipped her head. “Into The Economist now, are we?”
“Yes,” I said defensively.
“However long they ground you, it’ll be fair.”
“But it’s summer break!”
“I can’t hear you when you’re whining,” she said automatically, one of her favorite lines when I was little. Then she relented. “How about this. If it’s longer than a week, I’ll talk them into letting you have a city day with me.”
“A week?”
“Just wait till you have kids, and one of them comes home bleeding from the mouth at four in the morning.”
I flipped a page of the magazine. “What else did you talk about?”
“You, mostly. Your brother.”
“Then why did she sound so happy?” I muttered.
Aunt Fee’s mouth tightened. She worried about us, I knew she did, but she was too faithful to my mom to ever acknowledge it.
“Why don’t you go up there?” she said instead. “Just … go visit with her. What’s that game you two used to play, the one you made up? That rhyming game? She’s feeling better now, you could go play it.”
“Game?” I frowned at her. “What game?”
She tapped her middle finger to her thumb, uncertain. “Oh, what am I thinking of? I’m thinking of someone else.”
“Who?”
“Use the lip salve, Ivy-girl. Sparingly. Eat something with iron, too, you’re running low. And stay away from boys who don’t treat you right.”
She kissed my hair and let herself out into the heat.
I remembered, then, when my mom last had a migraine. The scent of vinegar on my aunt’s clothes must’ve knocked something free in my head. It was just over two years ago. I could pin it to the day because of what happened the night before: the high school talent show. Aunt Fee had brought over the gross tea, and we’d talked about what went down with Hattie Carter.
Hattie Carter. The name landed in my brain like a black bird touching down on a wire. I hadn’t thought about Hattie in a long time.
My temples ached dully. There was something I wanted to consider, some train of thought whipping past me too quickly, disappearing into a silvery fog.
I rubbed the ache away and went to my room, where I couldn’t smell the vinegar.
CHAPTER FOUR
The suburbs
Right now
I didn’t see my mom again that day. She must have felt better, though, because when I woke up the next morning she was gone. It was the first Monday of summer. I was grounded, carless, and alone.
By ten a.m. I was standing in the bathroom in an old bikini, painting bleach onto my hair. I’d had the stuff for a while, but not the guts.