Kaitlyn was the only one Missy would regret leaving. But while Missy couldn’t wait to leave, Kaitlyn wanted no such thing. “It’s beautiful around here,” she’d say. “It’s home. Why’d you wanna go anywhere else?”
“Because everywhere else is better than this, Katie! Can’t you see that?”
But by then, Katie had been swallowed into the druggie kids, and nothing Missy said could make her see the error of her ways. By the time Missy hit her senior year, she knew Kaitlyn would be trapped here, nothing good in her future.
On her eighteenth birthday, Missy-Jo went to the county courthouse and changed her name to Melissa Grace Spencer （as in Diana, just to get back at her mother）。 Missy could be a nickname for Melissa, after all, and it pinged her heart to give it up completely. It had been Kaitlyn’s first word. But Missy-Jo was not a name that would help her, and just like that, she felt like she was moving up in the world. Melissa Grace Spencer sounded like someone with class.
There was obviously no college fund, so Melissa cast about for a scholarship and work-study program. She found one at Kansas Wesleyan University, a Christian school that was impressed with her college essay—“Bettering Myself through the Lord” （tell the people what they want to hear, folks）。 It worked. And didn’t she do that? She believed in God, of course, and that He would absolutely want her to get out of this Podunk town. The Lord’s hand guided those nice people at Kansas Wesleyan to give her a beautiful financial aid package.
At the end of August, Missy-Jo, now Melissa, packed up the beater car she’d bought with her earnings from babysitting and working at the Dollar General for the past five years. Her parents gave her listless hugs and speculated on how long she’d last before she dropped out.
She hugged Kaitlyn, whose eyes were glassy from weed. “Don’t get pregnant,” Melissa said.
“Live your own life, Missy,” Kaitlyn said, scratching at the scab over her most recent tattoo. “Don’t be worryin’ about me. Love you.”
Melissa called home twice a month, but she didn’t go back. Why would she? Salina, Kansas, home of her college, was practically a metropolis （word of the day!） with restaurants and boutiques and art galleries. Cafés even, where people would sit and sip and order six-dollar coffees.
During Melissa’s sophomore year, Kaitlyn called to say she was pregnant. “Is that safe?” Melissa asked. “Are you . . . you know, still using?”
“No! Give me some goddamn credit, Missy Jolene Cumbo. I’m not usin’。 Jesus. You’re supposed to be happy for me.”
Happy? Her sister had been arrested three times as a juvenile, once as an adult—shoplifting, vandalism, DUI, trespassing. The last arrest had been when she broke into someone’s house, shot up and passed out. The family had found Kaitlyn unconscious on the eight-year-old daughter’s bed, the syringe still in her arm. She was only eighteen.
When the baby was born, Melissa drove the fourteen hours to the hospital to see her sister and niece. Blond hair, same as Kaitlyn and Melissa; rosebud mouth. “Inn’t she beautiful?” Kaitlyn asked. “Name’s Harminee. Spellin’ it different to be special. Harminee Fawn.”
Well, that would just about guarantee the baby would become a stripper, Melissa thought. Harmony was a beautiful name. Harminee, though? Gosh.
Kaitlyn managed to stay sober for ten months after Harminee was born. After she was found high on meth with the baby crying in her crib, Harminee’s paternal grandparents got custody, as the father was in jail. It was probably better that way, Melissa thought. Her sister was on a road that was hard to get off, and hopefully the baby would be safe with the grandparents. She tried not to think about it.
Her junior year, Melissa fell sort of in love with a fellow student at Kansas Wesleyan, and they stayed together for the rest of college. Unfortunately, Tom was studying to be a middle school teacher, and she was so not going to become a teacher’s wife. “We just want different things,” she told him as he cried the week before graduation. “I want a bigger life.”
“What does that even mean?” he’d sobbed.
Money, she thought but didn’t say. Money, elegance, prestige, art openings and charity event sponsorships, vacations. She’d never even seen the ocean. Never been on an airplane or a boat. She wasn’t going to stay in the heartland. Tom had been a nice boyfriend, and she’d lost her virginity to him （using the pill and two condoms）。 She knew she’d need some sexual experience to get where she wanted to go. He’d served a purpose, was a good kisser, let her feel what the fuss over sex was about. It was nice to be adored, and she did feel a little bad when she dumped him.