BooksBarbecue
Back The Heathens
Chapters (33)
  1. ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
  2. Dedication
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  33. What’s next onyour reading list?

Of all the dumb things Holly had done in her life, throwing in with TJ and Ladarius had to be the King Turd of them all. Just to run down a short list: aiding and abetting murder suspects, stealing her momma’s Dodge Grand Caravan minivan, ducking out on Phil Jr. over at the Captain’s Table, and taking the Lord’s name in vain at least sixteen times since leaving the Tibbehah County line. Now she was walking into the cold wind right at this very moment, trying to make her way back to Hot Springs, and hopefully on back to Mississippi before she started down a stretch of road that she could never come back from.

“Holly!” someone yelled.

She glanced quick over her shoulder and saw TJ hanging out the passenger window of that white Kia.

“Come on,” TJ said, yelling some more. “Get in. We’re gonna get busted if you don’t check yourself.”

Holly lifted her hand and extended her middle finger again, a salute to freedom and sanity, continuing her walk north along Highway 67. She was prepared to walk all the way back to Tibbehah County if necessary and would just as soon hop in a hot rod with the devil himself than climb in that car with TJ and that ridiculous girl who went by the name of Chastity. Wasn’t nothing chaste about that girl, running after both TJ and Ladarius at the same time. Holly shoved both hands in her coat and kept on walking ahead, Ladarius riding up behind her now, honking the horn. TJ and Chastity yelling to her now to come on and get inside.

“Leave me alone,” Holly said, screaming.

She figured she might run for it. Maybe make a break for the trees and lose them for good. The thought of finally tearing away from TJ left a hard feeling in her heart, like something real bad inside her had got rotten, meat going spoiled. As she walked, she started to cry, and goddamn, she hated to cry. All the feeling of being kids with TJ and playing on the monkey bars or swimming in Choctaw Lake, sitting with TJ as she tried to work on her dead daddy’s Monte Carlo, acting like a miracle had been performed when that motor turned over not once, but twice, that old black piece of shit not being worth nothing other than playing those old cassette tapes of Cheap Trick and Bon Jovi. “Livin’ on a Prayer.” What a shitty lie that had been.

“Get in the fucking car,” Ladarius said. “You’re gonna get our ass caught.”

Holly stopped walking. Ladarius pulled up beside her, both TJ hanging out the front window and Chastity hanging out the back, smiling so big it looked as if her big rosy cheeks might break.