“God damn, April!” he screams, and then there’s an awful crack. Just one. Loud and sharp and it stays in my ears even after it’s done and I know I will hear it for days.

“There, I took something that’s yours. How do you feel about that, April? How do you feel about that?” he says.

I palm the ring box and drop it in the bag with the cheese puffs as I carry it over to my pile. It’s the last bag. The cheese puffs crunch when I set it down. I take his jacket off and drape it on the front seat of his truck.

“Fine,” I say, and toss him his keys.

— Chapter 4 —

I don’t have jack shit to do, so I pace the motorhome singing Should I Stay or Should I Go. The singing starts so low it’s only in my head, but once I get going I’m loud and bouncing around and the whole motorhome shakes.

Since I swiped the ring from my dad a few days ago, I’ve been expecting him to come back for it. The suspense is making me crazy. Anytime I hear a noise—Mrs. Varnick closing her car door, or a tree branch falling, or buckshot—I jump out of my skin and my heart starts up fast like someone hit it with jumper cables. We learned about fight or flight in science class. It’s like your instinct to deal with a situation. I’m not sure what my instinct would be if my dad came for the ring. It’s not even a fair trade. His ring is still in existence. My guitar is a pile of broken wood. I had to cancel my gig at Gary’s Tap Room, but I’m guessing my dad isn’t sitting around thinking that I’m the one who got wronged.

There’s a hole in the carpet on the floor, right by the sink. I kick the edges while I dance, making it a little bigger every time I pass. No extra shifts at the diner, and Matty is grounded because of the other day when one of his neighbors saw us going at it in his driveway. Plus, his parents don’t want him hanging out with a high school dropout.

“Do do do do do do trouble! Da da da da da da double!” I shout more than I sing. I just need noise. I’m doing this move where I shake my butt and then jump and spin around when I see a car through the slats in the blinds. It’s Mrs. Ivory’s big beige Mercury. Sometimes she gets confused when she’s visiting Mrs. Varnick and ends up in our driveway instead. The thing that really gets me is that Mrs. Varnick lives in a double wide. I live in a motorhome. It’s easy to tell the difference.