Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School was twelve miles outside of town, down a winding road off the highway that hid it from view. It served the kids of the entire spread-out county, some riding the bus more than an hour each way to sit in an old, drafty building without enough teachers or anywhere near enough funds. They’d renamed the school a few years ago in a nod to diversity. When I’d attended, the county had been virtually all white. But nowadays, with the chicken-processing plant perched on the edge of the county line, the kids of immigrants roamed the halls, their parents taking jobs no locals would touch, even when other steady employment was almost impossible to come by. I’d listened to plenty of bitching about the name change while serving coffee in the diner, endless complaints about political correctness or, as one old-timer put it, “this bullshit idea that everybody’s got to be equal.” People around here didn’t like being force-fed progress, even when it could be argued that a mouthful was long overdue. I somehow doubted the name change did much to alter the reality for those kids, who were always going to be outsiders. Junie had hated the place, couldn’t wait to start high school in another year. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that Harry S. Truman High School wasn’t much better, maybe even worse. Too many kids without a lot of hope for the future crowded into an even smaller space. From my graduating class, only a handful of kids had gone on to college. And of those, the majority had come back to Barren Springs without a degree. It’s hard to move up in the world when you’ve never seen it done.
I counted myself lucky that I’d graduated at all. Seventh grade was the first time I’d set foot in an actual school. Cal and I were “educated” in the holler. My mama taught us our ABCs and not much else. Our closest neighbor, Miss Eileen, taught us to read and to do basic math in exchange for cigarettes from Mama. Seventh grade was the first time I’d realized that there was poor and then there was poor. And we were the second kind. Most people around here aren’t exactly rolling in dough, but there’s a difference between the people who live closer to town and the ones who stay hidden in the hollers. We were the ones who learned to read from the meth addict down the road, if we learned at all; the ones who wore not just hand-me-downs but clothes that didn’t fit or came covered in stains of unknown origin. We had a hungry, feral look about us, even on the rare times our bellies were full, which made us instantly recognizable targets. Or it would have if our mama’s reputation hadn’t preceded us. Our status as the poorest of poor white trash trumped only by our mama’s penchant for casual violence. Everybody remembered the kid who’d thrown a rock at Cal down by the river one day. No one could say if he’d actually meant to hit Cal or it had been an unlucky throw. Hadn’t mattered to our mama, though. Next time we’d seen that kid, he’d been sporting a busted-up hand and scared, skittish eyes. Never would come within a country mile of either one of us again.
Usually Junie rode the bus home from school, often going home with Izzy on days I worked past dinnertime. On the few occasions I picked her up from school, it had always been controlled chaos when the bell rang, and today was no exception. Kids spilled out of the doors like marbles shot from a cannon as I slid into a parking spot. I noticed a few security guards near the buses, and I wondered if they were a new addition or if I never had a reason to notice them before. Either way, I guessed they wouldn’t look too kindly on an adult approaching the kids, even if I did appear relatively harmless. Which meant I needed to intercept Hallie before they noticed me.
Junie and Izzy had been an almost closed loop of friendship. A fact that always made me nervous. I told myself my anxiousness stemmed from worrying about what might happen if the friendship blew up and Junie was left adrift and alone. Or wanting her to have more friends so she wasn’t isolated. Growing up, Cal had been my only anchor, and now, as an adult, I still had trouble broadening my circle. Felt unmoored without Cal close by. I didn’t want that for Junie. Those reasons were both true. But they weren’t the truest one. Still, Junie and Izzy’s friendship wasn’t completely impenetrable. There were a few girls who hovered on the outside edges, who received birthday party invites or sat with Junie and Izzy at lunch. The one I knew best, Hallie Marshall, had been to the apartment a few times, had shown up in social media pictures next to Junie and Izzy.
I stood near my car, eyes scanning the doors of the school until I saw Hallie walk out, her reddish hair covered by a gray beanie. When I called her name, she pivoted, brought one hand up to block the sun as she peered at me.
“Hi, Hallie,” I said as I approached. “I’m Junie’s mom. We’ve met a few times.”
“I remember,” she said, voice cautious. She clutched a notebook to her chest like a shield. Around her, kids peeled off toward the buses, eyeing us with curiosity but not slowing down.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked.
Hallie glanced at the buses and then nodded. “For a second. I don’t want to miss my bus.”
“Okay, sure.” I stepped away from the doors and Hallie trailed behind me. When I turned around, she was biting her bottom lip, her eyes on the ground.
“I’m really sorry about Junie,” she whispered. “And Izzy, too.”
I knew people were trying to be kind, but I was already tired of this ritual. Did people actually think their being sorry helped? That my hearing an endless litany of worthless words over and over and over again made anything better? But Hallie was just a kid, I reminded myself, the same age as Junie. I swallowed down what I really wanted to say and managed a thank-you instead.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “Was Izzy dating an older guy?”
Hallie’s eyes flew up to mine, and I knew right then she hadn’t been raised in a house like the one where I grew up. She had no poker face. My mother would have eaten her alive. “What?” she managed to stumble out, her cheeks flaring red. “No. I don’t know.”
I raised my eyebrows at her and waited. I figured it would take twenty seconds of silence to break her, but it only took ten. “I mean, she wasn’t like dating him. But she liked him.” Hallie paused, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “They messed around some.”
“Who was he?” I asked, my heart a steady drumbeat pounding got him got him got him.
Hallie shrugged. “I don’t know. Honest,” she added when she glanced at my face. “Izzy would never say.”
“Did Junie know who it was?”
“Yeah, I think so. But she always kept Izzy’s secrets.” Hallie took a step closer to me, lowered her voice. “They fought about it, though. Junie was threatening to tell someone if Izzy didn’t stop. She seemed really worried about Izzy.”
“Do you know how old this guy was?” I asked. Eighteen, I was thinking. Please say eighteen and not something worse.
“Old,” Hallie said. “I don’t know exactly. But maybe thirty?”
“Why would you say that?” I tried to keep my voice steady even as my stomach bottomed out.
“Just the way they talked about him. He wasn’t a teenager. Not even close.” Hallie looked over her shoulder, started shuffling backward. “I gotta go. I’m gonna miss the bus.” When she met my eyes again, I could see it there, something she wanted to say but wasn’t going to. Something that was trapped behind her clenched teeth.
“Hallie, wait.” I reached forward and snagged at the sleeve of her sweatshirt, but she pivoted away from me.
“I can’t. I have to go.”
I watched her walk away, her eyes on the sidewalk. Frustration pounded through me, and I could feel the part of me that belonged to my mama wanting to race after her and grab a handful of her red hair in my fist. Jerk her bald-headed until she talked. Someone yelled to her from the bus, and she picked up her pace, grabbing the handrail on the bus steps to swing herself inside. Just before she disappeared, she looked back at me. “Talk to your brother,” she called, barely loud enough for me to catch the words. By the time the syllables had sorted themselves out inside my head, the door was closing. As the bus pulled away, I caught a glimpse of Hallie’s face in the window, her eyes skating away from mine.
Cal. Who loved Junie like his own. Who’d grown up breaking the law—stealing food when I was hungry, fighting kids who wronged me, running drug errands for Mama so I didn’t have to—and now lived to follow it. Cal, who all the women wanted but could never seem to catch. He always said it was because he was focused on work or they were too needy, wanted too much of him—a shudder ran through me—but maybe they were just too old.