“No, no, no,” she says. “You’re just dicking around. You mean to tell me that John ‘Fourth Reich’ Elvis and Pretty-Boy Mitchell there attacked you together?”

Coyne’s face is as somber as a lost puppy. “Them and two others. One of them a girl.”

The skinhead and the student-council member. Buddies in hatred.

Ain’t that just a peach.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

She’s not sleeping when she hears her mother’s scream. The Adderall makes sure of that. The drug is like a clean, warm finger thrust into the center of her mind. Once in a while, the finger wriggles, keeps her awake, keeps her focused. Until the scream.

When she hears the scream, it’s like the finger’s got a sharp, chipped fingernail dragging across her high. Atlanta’s blood pressure goes up: she can feel the tightness in her neck, wrists, temples.

Heading down the steps, she almost falls—her feet are moving faster than her brain. But it’s like she doesn’t care, and before she knows it, she’s through the kitchen. She slams her hip into the counter. Clips the fridge handle with her elbow. Then she’s throwing open the door to the garage, where her mother’s been sleeping.

Lights on. Mother in the middle of the room, crying. Not far from her feet: broken glass.

In the middle of the glass: a cement block with a dead cat wound around it with barbed wire.

Atlanta’s first thought is that this is the handiwork of John Elvis Baumgartner and Mitchell Erickson, the Odd Couple of teenage homophobia, but that doesn’t make a spit-bubble of sense. Unless the two of them have honed their homophobia to such an edge that it grants them psychic powers, she shouldn’t even be on their radar.

No, suddenly she has a pretty good idea.

Jonesy and Virgil and maybe that other one with the big teeth.

Mama backs up to the cot, then sits down on it hard and heavy. She’s struggling to light a cigarette, but her lighter isn’t catching a spark.

“Someone threw a dead cat through our garage window,” she says, blubbering.

“Yes,” Atlanta says, her voice sharp with sarcasm. “Thanks for figuring that out, detective.”

“Detective,” her mother says, as if it pings something inside her thought process. “We should call the police. Is this about what happened? Oh, Atlanta, this might be about—”

“Shut up, Mama!” Atlanta barks.

Her mother gasps. At least it quiets her down.

Atlanta can’t quiet her own heart, though. It’s like an itchy jackrabbit thumping its back legs. She can hear her own blood. A rush in the deep of her ear.