I nodded and clenched the paper tight in my fist. Then he started the bike and the heavy thump thump turned to a roar as he pulled away. I watched the big bike until it was out of sight and then turned and ran back to the house before someone missed me.
When I was fifteen, my mom died. I thought maybe our grief would bring my step-dad and me together but instead the resentment started to build. He’d invited my mom into his house but he’d never really wanted me.
And as I started to get older he started to look at me in a way he never had before. He never did anything. Not once. But the staring and the resentment built until the two were twisted together like choking ivy around a blackened, scarred tree. He hated me; he wanted me.#p#分页标题#e#
I’d long since memorized the phone number Carrick gave me but I didn’t call. Calling the number would take its power away. As long as I held onto it, like a talisman, I could pretend that he could still come and rescue me.
He grew in my mind, becoming larger-than-life. I remembered those blue eyes and that hard, strong jaw: I’d only been a kid at the time but now I was sure he’d been gorgeous. As I got older, the fantasies changed: I thought of hard abs, of tanned biceps under a tight white t-shirt. Beneath the covers, I thought of that Irish voice growling Annabelle and I gasped his name in return.
Even when I hit eighteen I still couldn’t move out: my waitressing job barely made enough to pay the bills and my step-dad kept reminding me that he’d put a roof over my head for years so I owed him. My grades were good but there was no way I could afford college.
But I found that my weird mind was good for something: I could fix things. People would bring me lawnmowers and chainsaws to mend. I was like a doctor with a patient: a machine that was out of whack felt wrong to me, the sound made me itchy and jumpy and I couldn’t leave it alone until I’d fixed it. In my head, the machines just sort of came apart into shining pieces and I could sift through them and figure out what was wrong. I was happier around machines than around people: machines didn’t laugh at how cheap my clothes were or make me feel like a freak. It brought in a little extra money but my step-dad was starting to run up debts with his drinking: first to bars, then to banks and then to loan sharks.
I didn’t know how to talk to guys: I’d mumble and flush...and who’d want the weird girl from the farm way out of town, who still lives with her dad and has grease under her fingernails? I worked a seven day week as a waitress because at least that got me out of the house, then stayed up late fixing.
The years stretched ahead of me, inevitable and identical. I thought life couldn’t get any worse.
And then, one night, it did.
2
Annabelle
Now
I came home to find my dad talking to a guy I didn’t recognize: a biker. For an instant, my mind went to Carrick...but this guy was much older: forty or more, with a bald head and a thick, dark beard shot through with gray. The front of his leather cut had a shining metal spider the size of my hand on the chest, positioned as if it was scurrying upwards towards the man’s face. It had been made with jointed legs so that it seemed to tense, ready to pounce, every time the man moved, the metal clinking and rattling. It made my skin crawl. The patches on his cut said Blood Spiders and President.
“Go upstairs,” said my step-dad, as if I was still a teenager. But he had that drunk, don’t argue with me tone, so I climbed the stairs, feeling their eyes on my ass the whole way. Instead of heading into my room, I hunkered down behind the handrail and listened.
“How many are coming?” my step-dad muttered.
“About thirty,” the biker told him. “Enough you’ll get a good price.”
He’s selling drugs, I decided. But I couldn’t imagine him as a drug farmer. He had no knack for growing things. Meth? When would he cook? He barely left his armchair. He must have gotten hold of a package of something cheap and was hoping to sell it on….
My step dad’s voice again. “Is that guy coming?”
“Let’s hope so. I sent him the photo.”
What photo? Why would he take a photo of drugs?
My step dad went quiet for a moment.
The biker’s voice grew low and hard. “You got second thoughts,” he said, “you tell me fucking now. People show up, there ain’t no getting cold feet: there’d be a riot. And if Volos turns up and you try to back out, he’ll kill you. He’ll kill me, too. The guy’s serious. Protected. You gotta be sure.”#p#分页标题#e#
I heard my step dad knock back some whiskey. “I’m sure.”