11

Night Lives.

The Creekville tell-all would be Blue’s ticket to stardom. It was going to be a hit, she knew it in her bones. How did she know this? Because America, above all else, liked to be shocked. This great big, lumbering, confused, color-streaked colossus of a country had conquered the world, put a television in every house, and provided access to the information highway on every laptop. Like all great empires from history, it had nowhere left to go but down.

Blue, of course, knew all too well how flawed the popular narrative was. She knew firsthand how the other half lived. But the other half weren’t the ones who bought shit.

And the half who did?

They liked to be titillated. Force-fed. Abused.

She planned to release her masterpiece straight onto the Internet, because she knew no one was ever going to give her a chance. She had to go and rip her opportunity right out of its smug fortress. She would release her film, and then she would do whatever it took, whatever it took, to help it go viral.

Naked videos of her neighbors. Cheating spouses revealed. Domestic violence caught on camera. Every single piece of latte- encrusted dirt on the holier-than-thou residents of Wild Oaks brought into the light. Every lurid detail of the lives of Blue’s trailer park neighbors exposed. Honey Boo Boo? Duck Dynasty? Hollywood producers clearly had yet to discover the Carolina sticks. She had stories to tell that would make Jerry Springer’s toes curl.

She didn’t care if she went to jail for invasion of privacy. The notoriety would be a blessing, because she would be famous. And in today’s world, in the Roman Empire of the digital age, that was all that fucking mattered.

Only one problem stood between Blue and her destiny. A terrifying, implacable, knife-wielding problem named Cobra.

People in the trailer park were scared. Desperate. Alibis were being revealed or invented, laid at Cobra’s feet like an offering to appease some brutal young god.

Thinking about what to do occupied her every waking moment. She had gone so far as to consider investigating David’s death herself, so she could give the police the evidence needed to find the killer and get Cobra off her back. The desperation of that thought made her laugh out loud. What did she know about investigating a homicide? She would only get herself picked up by the police or killed by the murderer.

But she couldn’t sit around and do nothing. The noose was tightening. She estimated she had a week, at best, before Cobra eliminated all the possibilities and zeroed in on her. He, and whoever he worked for, knew there was a witness out there. The only witness. They would do whatever it took to find her.

Someone knocked at her door, and a chill swept through her. Her hands shook as she went to the bedroom and pulled back the blinds, just an inch, enough to see that it was one of her neighbors. Old Billy Flynn, a retired plumber who eked out an existence on Social Security and Medicare, a useless drunk if ever there was one. A pedophile too. He had given Blue the eye ever since she turned ten.

What the hell did he want ?

She opened the door, flinching at the stench of alcohol and cigarettes and unwashed flesh leaking from his pores. His long gray hair, stiff and shiny with grease, fell like oily strands of rope atop his bony shoulders.

“My mom will be home soon” she said, her first line of defense against the predators in the trailer park. Mention an adult. Get them thinking.

“It ain’t your mom I’m after.”

She started to close the door, but he stuck a wiry hand out, holding it half-open. “Just wait.”

She tried to force the door closed, but he was stronger than he looked. After casting a furtive glance to either side, he hopped inside her trailer and shut the door behind him. Blue screamed and backed away, looking for a weapon. Trailer walls were thin. Someone could hear her, she was sure.

But would they care ?

“Shush, girl. I ain’t gonna hurt you.” He put his hands up and stayed by the door. “See ? I won’t come no closer.”

She fled into her bedroom, yanking her phone out of her pocket as she ran. She managed to unlock it just as Billy stepped inside the room, his eyes whisking greedily over the unmade bed and pile of undergarments on the floor.

“Put it down,” he said, stepping closer. “If you do, like I said, I won’t hurt you.”

She started to dial 911, and he smacked the phone out of her hand. When she started to scream again, he said, “Shut up. Shut up or I’ll call Cobra right now.”

Blue slowly closed her mouth.

“That’s right,” he said, a nasty grin spreading across nicotine- stained teeth. “I know it’s you he’s looking for.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I seen that keychain before. That Ghostbusters one. Yeah, I seen you with it.”

Her first thought was that he was lying. She almost never took the keychain out, unless she was in her bedroom. Then she looked out of the window and saw his trailer parked a hundred feet away. She almost always closed her blinds, but maybe she had left them open once or twice, when she was depressed or really tired.

She saw the knowledge in his eyes.

“I seen that and more,” he said.

The leer on his face made her wish she had a gun. “Get the hell out of here. I’m not kidding, my mom’s on her way.”

“You think I ain’t lived here for twenty years ? Your momma gets home after eight, when she gets home at all.”

Again Blue looked around the room, her eyes resting on an old baton in the corner. Not the best weapon, but if she could poke him in the eye . . .

“Even if it was mine” she said, “which it’s not, you can’t prove it to Cobra.”

“It ain’t a court of law. And I got nothing to gain from lyin’. I seen you leave the night that boy disappeared. I seen you go in the woods with that camera. What do you think Cobra will do when he hears about that?”

“If you don’t get out of my house right this goddamn second, I’m going to scream until my throat gives out.”

He put his hands up. “I ain’t gonna force myself on you, if that’s your worry. But you listen up and listen good. Next time that wetback killer comes around, and I’m guessing it’ll be soon, I’m telling him what I know. That is,” the sly grin returned, “unless you and I can work out some kind of arrangement.” He backed toward the bedroom door, slowly, his eyes roving up and down her body. “I’ll stop by real soon, and you can tell me what you decide. Ain’t no one gotta know but us.”

After he left her trailer, Blue choked back her vomit and walked straight to the kitchen. She reached for the whiskey again and took two quick shots, welcoming the burn. Anything to help wash away the stench of that foul man.

She curled up on the stained cloth sofa, hugging her knees and staring at the brown paneling on the wall. Knowing what she had to do, a cherished remembrance sprang into her mind, a memory of sitting beside her father on Christmas Eve and watching The Christmas Story. She hadn’t laughed so hard since. If only life were that corny, and a little mishap with a BB gun was the worst thing that could happen. That same night, her mother, in a rare moment of domestic inspiration, had made reindeer sugar cookies and hot chocolate while snowflakes as big as silver dollars had drifted down from outside, mesmerizing Blue, transforming her little world into a winter wonderland.

On that night she had been sitting on this very same couch, in the same mobile home, in the same grimy trailer park. Yet back then, when her daddy was still around and magic was real and the rusted swing set by the creek was all she ever needed, life couldn’t have seemed any better.

Blue knew it wasn’t the food stamps, or the sagging couch, or even the trailer park that was the source of her unhappiness. The immediate problems, yes. But not the foundation. She imagined people in North Korea or Guatemala would kill to have what she had.

Her problem, the problem with all of America as she saw it, was one of expectation. She saw the wealth that existed all around her and knew how low on the ladder she was.

Even worse: She had known a father’s true love, and because she once had, she felt her loneliness all the more keenly.

Expectation.

She was ready to start her masterpiece, aching for it, but it would have to wait a while longer. She wasn’t about to make a deal with disgusting Billy Flynn, and she had no doubt he would make good on his promise. And once that dirty old man told Cobra about her, the gang assassin would never leave her alone. Not until she, too, was rotting in a swamp.

Her decision was simple now. She had to lower herself even further, into the streets. As much as she despised the trailer park, it was all she had ever known, all the memories she had. She had no idea where to go next or what to do.

But if she wanted to live another week, she knew she had to leave Creekville.