“Thank you,” he said, taking a big bite off the top as he walked back to his truck.

The other guys weren’t as polite, and most of them didn’t even look me in the eye. I was used to that, though. Growing up with a mom who had seen the inside of a jail cell more than once, the other parents weren’t shy about keeping their children from being corrupted by Gina Easter’s daughter. My mother wasn’t always so messed up though. She was Blackwell’s homecoming queen in 1995. I knew that only because I’d come across the photos. She was beautiful, with her blonde bangs teased to one side and her full, healthy cheeks pushing up her big brown eyes into slits.

Like Frankie, Gina got pregnant young. Unlike Frankie, she let the resentment of trading her dreams for an unplanned baby become so unbearable, she turned to alcohol. And weed. And as the years added disappointments to the growing pile, any drug was good enough if it helped her forget what she could have been. I wouldn’t have minded so much if it did numb her anger, but most nights adding a case of Keystone Light to her rage just made it worse.

Every night when Frankie shut off the lights and said her favorite phrase, I cringed, knowing it was time to go home to Gina.

“Adios bitchachos!”

“Don’t forget I have a senior class meeting tomorrow after school, so I’ll be a little late.”

“I remember,” she said, grabbing her purse and keys. She held open the door for me. “Ride?”

I shook my head. Every night she asked me, and every night I said no, which is why she barely made a question of it. I lived only five blocks behind the DQ anyway, and the first day of spring was right around the corner.

The soles of my shoes crunched the loose gravel next to the curb as I walked along the dark street. Only random areas around town had sidewalks, and the shortest path to my house wasn’t one of them. A few cars drove by, but it was an otherwise quiet Thursday night. No church traffic, no game traffic. Thursdays were my favorite nights to walk home.

I climbed the concrete steps to the porch, and the screen door whined when it opened. I could hear Gina’s music from the other side of the door, and hesitated just long enough to psych myself up for whatever awaited me on the other side. When the door swung open, and I saw that the living room was empty, I hurried to my room and shut the door.

The music was coming from her bedroom, down the hall from mine. I could smell the weed as soon as I walked in, so she was probably smoking and relaxing in her bed, which was always preferable to a drunken rage.

The loose strings of my apron untied easily, and I peeled off the rest of my clothes, throwing them into a full hamper. Most nights I was too tired to do laundry, so it piled up until I hauled it to the Laundromat a few blocks south of the Dairy Queen. Being alone at the Suds & Duds was creepy at night, so I preferred to wait until early Saturday afternoon. Gina was awake then, and it was a good excuse to get out of the house before work.