Lola on Fire Read online

  * * *

  There was a twenty-four-hour CVS on Century Road. Brody swung into the lot and parked out of the spotlight. He fished the paper bag loaded with cash from the passenger-side footwell, dug his hand inside, and took out a sheaf of mixed bills—enough to cover Molly’s prescriptions. He reached for his wallet with his other hand, but it wasn’t in the pocket he thought it was in. Brody frowned. He remembered it being there, snug beside the replica. Hell, he’d felt it as he strode toward Buddy’s.

  “What the—”

  Brody’s heart dipped. A cold, unpleasant feeling leaked to the balls of his feet. He checked his other pocket. Maybe he’d switched it at some point—a little detail he’d forgotten in all the excitement.

  No wallet.

  “Shit.” Brody tossed the bills into the passenger seat and rooted in both pockets again, going as deep as the stitching would allow. He found a candy wrapper and a bottle cap and an old receipt for breakfast at Applebee’s. He bounded from the car, rifled his jeans. There was a firm rectangle lodged into his back pocket. A second’s relief washed through him, but no, that was his phone.

  “Jesus Christ, no.”

  Brody checked the car next: beside and beneath the seats, the center console, the glove compartment. He even checked the backseat. There was no sign of his wallet, which meant he’d dropped it, probably while pulling the replica from his pocket, but maybe while tussling with Ant. It was somewhere on the scene, and he couldn’t exactly go back to look for it. His only hope was that it hadn’t been found, but he thought it more likely the cops had it in their possession and were comparing the face on the driver’s license with the clumsy, half-masked assailant on the store’s surveillance video.

  * * *

  He bought Molly’s pain management, antidepressant, and antispasticity medications, pulling the crumpled bills from the front pocket of his jeans and handing them over with trembling hands. The pharmacist asked if he was okay. Brody vaguely replied that he’d just come off a night shift and was dog-tired.

  Two long miles to Palm Street, to the shotgun house he shared with his sister and teddy bear Tyrese. He expected to see police parked outside, two cruisers blocking the tight driveway, lights beating. The street was quiet, though, accented by a colorful wisp of morning light in the east.

  Brody sat for a while, then gathered his things and went inside.

  Chapter Two

  The house was laid out like a trailer, and not much bigger. The living room backed onto the kitchen, then a tiny bathroom, then two bedrooms fronted by a narrow hallway. Brody and Molly shared a room. A curtain divided the space, affording each of them a degree of privacy, although it was, altogether, too confined a house for secrecy.

  Brody snuck in just after six a.m., faced with the challenge of hiding the bag of cash somewhere Molly or Tyrese would never find it. He didn’t want their questions or accusations. Dealing with the police would be enough. His lame strategy, when they came, was to deny everything, let his public defender fight the battle. It was likely a losing battle, but denial was all Brody had. He’d already dumped the ski mask—threw it into a storm drain at the edge of town. Now he had to hide the cash.

  He tipped the armchair and used the replica’s barrel to punch a hole through the gauzy fabric beneath, then stuffed the cash and replica inside. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do for now. He then walked as silently as possible into the bedroom he shared with Molly and placed her meds on the shelf above her headrest. He watched her sleep for a minute. She had two melted ice packs and a damp towel wrapped around her left leg.

  Brody wanted to sleep, too—God, he was exhausted—but knew he couldn’t. His mind was too active. He went back into the kitchen instead, made himself coffee, peered through the living room blinds as the day warmed, checking for cops. Tyrese woke at seven-fifteen, poured himself a monstrous bowl of Cheerios, dropped his considerable ass into the armchair in which Brody had stashed the cash and replica pistol.

  “I want to see some money today,” he grumbled.

  “I’m on it.”

  “Better goddamn be.” And a moment later Tyrese narrowed his eyes and asked, “What are you looking at?”

  Brody lowered the blinds and stepped away from the window.

  Molly hobbled in after Tyrese had left for work. At twenty-one, she was three years younger than Brody. Sometimes she seemed like a kid to him still, with a glimmer in her eye and a hopefulness in her demeanor. Other times she looked older, wearier. This was one of those times, and not only because she’d just woken up. She stood in the kitchen, propped on her crutches, looking at the stacks of dirty dishes, a bundle of laundry on a folding chair, the overflowing garbage, a calendar that hadn’t been flipped since June.

  “This shithole,” she said.

  “I’ll clean today.”

  She nodded, went back to their bedroom, and returned a few minutes later with her medications. She set the boxes down hard on the kitchen table and for some time Brody couldn’t look at her.

  * * *

  Molly had been born with the umbilical cord knotted around her throat and was deprived of oxygen for two and half minutes. MRI scans indicated mild brain damage. At age two, she was diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy. Brody had an early memory of visiting his little sister in the hospital, her legs wrapped in casts from the knees down, still drowsy after what would be the first of her five surgeries. As Brody sat at Molly’s bedside and cupped her small hand in his own, he knew that she would one day be strong enough to walk on her own, but that if she ever needed someone to lean on, he would be there.

  She fell often. She picked herself up. The walker she used until she was six years old became a hated thing. She graduated to forearm crutches, which she still used. Molly was capable of walking unassisted, but not very far, and falling, she said, became tiresome. The left side of her body lacked response, but her ambition had no boundary. She could skateboard, drive a car, ride a horse. “Disabled?” she’d say. “It’s just a matter of perspective, right?”

  She was Brody’s world. His whole damn world.

  “You want to explain this to me?”

  Molly took a seat at the kitchen table, opposite Brody, who regarded her with raccoon-black eyes and a not-now expression. His gaze jumped to the three boxes of medication—Motrin, Lexapro, Lioresal—on the table in front of her.

  “I picked up your meds,” he replied dryly. “Three cheers for Brody.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “The money?”

  “Yeah, the money.” She sat back in her seat, arms crossed. A vein in her forehead pulsed. “Tell me you didn’t steal it.”

  “I didn’t steal it.” He looked at her briefly. “I won it in a card game.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What can I say? I got lucky.”

  Her speech was slurred, the left side of her mouth pulled downward. Her words were often incomplete—the result of muscle weakness, not lack of intelligence, as many people thought. Brody understood her perfectly, always had. As he often said, he was fluent in Mollyese.

  “You need money to win money.” She had no problem conveying attitude. Skepticism, for instance, or outright disbelief. “Even scratch cards cost a dollar.”

  “Threw my car keys into the pot.” Brody had thought this lie out. “That old shitbox is worth a hundred bucks. Probably.”

  The kitchen window was broken, wouldn’t latch, so they heard more neighborhood sounds than they wanted to. TVs and cell phones, conversations, fights, sometimes gunshots. Now they heard a car turn onto Palm Street and drive toward their house, slowing as it approached. Brody tightened inside, his hands clenched beneath the table. He imagined a Rebel Point cruiser easing to a stop outside, doors opening, two broad-shouldered cops stepping out and heading toward his front porch. He held his breath, but the car passed by and was soon out of earshot.

  They would come, though. Surely.

  “You’re not in trouble, are you?” Molly asked. “
Jesus, Brody, I couldn’t stand to lose you, too.”

  * * *

  He reached across the table and took her hand, and would wonder later if this was more for his comfort than hers.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Moll.”

  She pressed her lips together, her fingers tightening beneath his palm. Brody thought she would pull away from him but she didn’t. Her eyes dropped to the medications. She’d already taken the Motrin and Lioresal, and that was good.

  “I came into some money.” He cleared his throat, looked reflexively toward the armchair, then the window. “Enough to get Tyrese off our backs. Enough to make ends meet until I get another job.”

  Now she pulled her hand away.

  “It’ll be an entry-level job. Shitty hours. Minimum wage.” Brody spread his hands, looked at her earnestly. Whatever it takes, sis. His jaw trembled. “But I’ll keep my head down, stick at it. We’ll get out of here—get our own place.”

  “It’s hard to believe you.”

  Their mom had bailed on them in 2007. Brody—a deer-eyed twelve-year-old—had kissed her good night, as usual, and when he woke up in the morning she was gone. His starkest childhood memory was of trying to pacify Molly while she bawled, banging her crutches against the wall, blaming herself. Their father had shouldered the extra load, and he never complained, never faltered. Brody believed him superhuman.

  Seven months ago, Ethan Ellis leaped from the roof of the Folgt Building—fourteen stories, 160 feet—and hit the road below like a moth hitting the headlight of a speeding Mack truck. His suicide was too much to come to terms with, not least because it made no sense. “If the world made sense,” the police officer who’d delivered the death notification said to Brody and Molly, “I’d be out of a job.”

  Brody had been working at Wolfe Aluminum in nearby Racer, a non-unionized catch basin that had him pulling twelve-hour shifts for chump change. He buckled, understandably, after his old man’s death, and found solace at Rocky T’s—a dive bar on Carbon Street. His boss at Wolfe held his job for all of a week, then cut him loose. Brody bounced then from washing dishes at the Watermark to serving coffee and donuts to delivering Domino’s. His last job was working the drive-through at Chili Kicks, but he got fired after launching a Hot Tamale Burger at a customer who’d flipped him the bird.

  He was a young man—he’d turned twenty-four in August—who struggled to balance his grief with the responsibility of looking after his younger sister. Evidently, he’d made some bad decisions. Robbing a convenience store—dropping his goddamn wallet at the scene—was just another.

  A mud dauber buzzed at the kitchen window, trapped between the torn screen and the glass. The sky beyond was metallic blue scuffed with cloud. Brody looked at it wistfully, then wiped his eyes.

  “Not just out of here,” Molly said. She gestured at the cramped, dirty kitchen and everything else. “I want out of this town. Somewhere brighter. Cauley, maybe. They have the river.”

  “Buster’s Ice Cream.”

  “Parade Park.”

  “Dad used to take us there.” They said it at the same time, then found their smiles, which, despite Molly’s palsy, were identical.

  “Can we?” she asked.

  “Sure.” If the cops don’t bust my ass. “We set our legs. Balance.”

  “One-inch punch this.”

  Molly had suffered a succession of bullies, from the moment she took her first awkward steps, spoken her first awkward words. The worst was Trevor Hyne, with his barbed-wire attitude and broad neck. It was hard to call a kid heartless, given they’re always shaped by their nearest and dearest, but if ever a child was born with a hole in his chest, with nothing to influence, to warm or nurture, then that child was Trevor Hyne. It wasn’t just that he mimicked Molly’s way of walking, ridiculed her way of talking. He would elbow her, pull her hair, kick the crutches out from under her. Brody stood up to him several times, but Trevor—heavier and so much stronger—mowed him down like dead grass. “I want to learn karate,” Brody had said to his dad. He was ten years old at the time. Too young to get into fights, but old enough to look after his little sister. “I need to get tough.” But his dad insisted that fighting was never a solution. His mom apparently disagreed, and directed him quietly toward a YouTube video that offered step-by-step instructions on how to master Bruce Lee’s one-inch punch. Brody watched the video over and over, learning how and where to position his body, how to twist his hips and flick his wrist upward a millisecond before impact. He practiced on a pillow duct-taped to a post in their backyard, gradually generating more and more power at extremely close quarters. “Strike just once with this punch,” the grandly mustachioed instructor said, “and if you get it right . . . your opponent will think twice before confronting you again.” Brody never got to use the punch on Trevor, though, because Trevor was crushed to death by a fifth-wheel trailer when Hurricane Ernesto cut across Salamander County (hard to argue with the gods on that call). Brody never forgot the instruction video, though, and the phrase—“one-inch punch”—had become his and Molly’s euphemism for rallying against the odds, for making something out of nothing.

  * * *

  Midday rolled around and still no sign of the cops. Brody started to believe he’d dropped his wallet a safe distance from the store, and experienced the first sliver of hope, although he couldn’t keep from peeking between the blinds every time he heard a car on Palm Street.

  Molly had a part-time job at Arrow Dairy, punching sales data into a Mac. It earned enough for her to contribute to the bills, pay for her cell phone, and make occasional—but always practical—clothing purchases. She left for work shortly before one p.m. With the house to himself, Brody grabbed the bag of cash from inside the armchair, made some space on the kitchen table, and spread the notes out. He counted $2,360. There’d be no wolves at the door for a couple of months, at least. Molly would get her prescriptions, perhaps a few physical therapy sessions, which she hadn’t had since Dad had died. Tyrese would get his rent. If Brody found a job quickly, he might even have enough for the deposit on a place in Cauley.

  He counted the take again. Still $2,360.

  Brody pushed $400 in tens and twenties into the front pocket of his jeans. He put the rest in the paper bag and found a new hiding place, beneath a loose floorboard at the back of his closet. He stashed the replica there, as well. Brody had no plans to use it again, but couldn’t bring himself to toss it in the trash. It had cost sixty bucks, after all.

  With that sliver of hope broadening, Brody sat on the front porch with one of Tyrese’s beers and watched Palm Street breathe. Tiredness caught up with him, though. He dozed while the sun inched westward and the shadows grew—woke up to the sound of the bottle slipping from his hand and hitting the porch boards.

  It was after four and still no cops.

  * * *

  “I ain’t even asking, man.” Tyrese counted the money, his deep eyes throwing quick, mistrustful glances at Brody. “Shit.”

  “It’s all there, T. I even threw in a little extra for your troubles—oh, and because I helped myself to one of your beers.” Brody jammed his hands into his back pockets and exhaled. “Think you might get off my ass now?”

  “Well, you know, I been thinking, man.” Tyrese peeled off the last twenty, considered for a moment, then started counting again. “This is the third month in a row you been late. Shit, man, you only paid on time once since you been here.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I had some bad luck.”

  “I hear you, brother, I do. But your bad luck is becoming my bad luck, and that shit don’t seem fair to me.”

  “Right, but”—Brody pointed at the notes in Tyrese’s hand—“things have really turned around for me. It’ll be better from here on out.”

  “Heard that song before.”

  “I know, T, but—”

  “All things considered,” Tyrese interrupted, “I think it’s time you find yourself another place to live.”

  Bro
dy nodded slowly, feeling something cold swim through his gut. He told himself this was no big deal. He and Molly were going to ditch this shithole, anyway. It was just a question of when. He had a little money now, and that was good, but he’d never secure an apartment in Cauley, or anywhere, without first getting a job. He’d need to prove earnings, to build his credit rating. It would take time.

  “You’ll, um . . .” Brody puffed out his cheeks and looked up at Tyrese. “You’ll wait until I’ve got a new place first, right? I mean, you’re not going to throw me out on the street . . .”

  “You got until October tenth.”

  “Shit, T, that’s two fucking weeks.”

  “And that’s what happens when you’re two weeks late with your rent.” Tyrese finished counting the notes for the second time. He nodded and tucked the bills into his pocket. “I warned your dumb ass time and again. You only got yourself to blame.”

  “I’ll give you another month’s rent today,” Brody countered. “Like, right fucking now. That’ll give me until November.”

  “Not happening.” Tyrese shuffled into the kitchen, pulled a jumbo bag of Cheetos from the cupboard, and poured them into his mouth. Bright orange crumbs popped from between his lips when he spoke. “I’m tired of your shit, Brody. It’s over.”

  “Jesus, Tyrese—”

  “I’m sorry as hell to be doing this, with your sister and all. Maybe that’s why I gave you so many chances.” More crumbs exploded from his mouth and peppered his sweatshirt. “I just can’t afford to carry your ass no more. Shit, man, I work at Starbucks.”

  * * *

  Brody helped himself to another of Tyrese’s beers. He’d paid for it, after all—given the son of a bitch an extra ten bucks, for all the good it did. He drank it in a gloomy corner of the living room, mind pinwheeling, his anxiety amped.

  Two weeks, he thought. His fingers tapped a mad rhythm on the bottle neck. Out on our asses, if I’m not already behind bars.

  Brody knew only a tiny portion—five percent, maybe—of his anxiety could be attributed to Tyrese. The rest was down to the missing wallet. Sure, the police hadn’t come knocking, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. They were probably trying to make him sweat. He’d be easier to break that way.