“That’s right,” I shouted. “At least half those times, your boyfriend’s brother’s boss’s cell mate thought he might be able to get your boyfriend on at the bullet factory. And y’all broke up fifteen minutes after we moved. But it took me longer than fifteen minutes to adjust, Mama. Moving doesn’t fix everything for me like it does for you. I’m graduating from high school in six weeks and I’m not moving again!”
“—wouldn’t be moving at all if it wasn’t for you!” My mom was yelling back at me now. “We can’t pay the rent with what you make. If you would work more hours, we’d be fine.” She turned to Grayson. “Aren’t y’all back together? Isn’t she working for you now? Can’t you give her more hours?”
Grayson and Alec and Molly all must have been doing the math in their heads. They knew I’d been lying to my mom, holding out on her. They knew I was working every hour I could at the airport office. But I needed so much money to keep flying. There was no way I would let that go now.
And I was absolutely horrified that my mom was exposing herself as exactly the bad mother Molly had implied she was that night at her parents’ café, in front of Alec and Grayson. Molly had been right, and I was wrong.
I shouted, “I’m in school, Mama. You want me to get a second job working third shift when I’m still in high school? That’s not fair when you’re not working at all!”
“It’s not fair I pay the rent when I don’t even stay there!” She turned and headed for the hangar door, pushing Roger ahead of her. In the doorway she called back over her shoulder, “We’re leaving for Savannah in a minute, and you can come or not.” She slammed the door behind her. The noise echoed like a Chinook around the metal walls.
Grayson’s arm slid from around my shoulders. That’s when I realized he’d had his arm around me the whole time—but not anymore. He was firing questions at me, and so were Molly and Alec, stupid shit that rich people would ask, and I kept saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was puzzling through what was about to happen. “I think in the next few days I’m going to get evicted.” I hadn’t gotten the telltale business-size envelope in the mail, but maybe my mom had been staving off the landlord by phone. Until now.
“How is that possible?” Grayson demanded. “And why does she think I’m your boyfriend?”
“And why did you want her to think he’s still your boyfriend?” Alec added.
I looked to Molly for help, but she watched me with her eyes wide, just as curious as the boys were.
“I’ve been telling her for a long time that Grayson was my boyfriend.” After I’d said this, I realized it didn’t explain anything, and in fact made the whole situation sound worse.
I said, “So, I’m going to follow my mom and make sure she doesn’t take the refrigerator. Or the air conditioner.” I walked out the hangar door.
I was thinking so hard that I didn’t realize I’d walked the entire length of the airport until the pit bull cussed me out. Through the trees and across the gravel road, Roger was sitting in the Trans-Am with the motor running. The door of the trailer was wide open like a crime scene.
My mom had checked the mail for once. On the kitchen counter was a pile of junk mail and a business-size envelope. I unfolded the eviction notice and read it. Even after we moved out, we would owe all of the back rent, or we would be reported to a collection agency.
I found my mom pawing through her closet, stuffing clothes in a garbage bag. “We have two weeks before we’re evicted,” I said dryly. “Why are y’all in such a hurry?”
“His cousin in Savannah is having a party in a couple of hours.” Her head was inside the closet, her voice muffled by the clothes. “Sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“No, I want to stay here and finish high school.”
“You could just get your GED,” she said.
“Mama!” I yelled at her. “That doesn’t make any sense!” She straightened then and put her hand on my shoulder. “Baby, if you want to stay here by yourself, that’s fine with me. You’re eighteen years old, and you’ll be fine. Grayson is such a hunk! You did good on that one, much better than Mark. I didn’t trust Mark.”
The obvious question, Then why did you invite him to move in with me?, only tickled the edges of my brain. I might ask this if I could use logic to persuade my mom of something. I might be indignant or outraged if these emotions would have an effect on her. But I didn’t bother. For all she cared, she was standing in a trailer by herself.
“Just ask Grayson to give you more hours,” she was saying. “Or move in with him if you need to. Come here, girl. I’ll miss you.” She set her garbage bag on the bed and pulled me into a hug.
The Admiral’s Beechcraft swooped low overhead, engine growling, coming in for a landing. She pulled away from me and looked up at the stained ceiling of the trailer, like she could see through it to the little white plane grazing the treetops. “I won’t miss those f**king airplanes, though,” she shouted. “I don’t see how you and your boyfriend stand working over there.”
I followed her to the doorway and watched her from the cement-block steps as she and Roger drove away. I blinked against the hot cloud of dust.
And continued to stand there in the doorway. I couldn’t go out. Where would I go? I couldn’t go in. That would mean the trailer was mine. I stood there for a long time, listening to the pit bull, with the expensive air-conditioning seeping out around me, the life leaving me as well. I hadn’t felt like this since I heard through the grapevine at the airport that the Admiral had found Mr. Hall’s body.
I stood there so long that the pit bull got tired and, with a final whine, lay down.
The trailer park was so quiet that I could hear someone’s TV several trailers over, and cars swishing by out on the highway.
Then the pit bull jumped up and barked ferociously again, and Grayson appeared through the palm trees.
His shades glinted in the late-afternoon sun as he crossed the dirt yard without hesitation and climbed right up the cement-block steps. He stood in front of me on the top step, looking down at me, perspiration darkening the blond curls that peeked from underneath his cowboy hat. He said sternly, “We have to talk. Let me in.”
“No.”