She walked around the room, appraising everything from the chord leading up to the lamp to the base boards. She wasn’t much older than I was. “Did you know that two thirds of all cases of food poisoning aren’t actually food poisoning at all, but just the side effect of some little murderous, single-celled, bullshit organism waiting on your hands to jump onto your food and then into your mouth and digestive track to cause you, if you’re lucky, hours of indigestion and spastic colon problems, and if you’re not lucky, your sudden and untimely demise?” She shook her head. “Death by diarrhea.”

I was getting a headache.

Country-slow was a term I was sure was invented in Jessep, where life moved along slower than a tractor driving down the main road. This girl was motoring around the room at such a high rate of speed that she looked and sounded like she was stuck in fast forward.

“Rage!” King snapped. The girl spun around from where she was inspecting the doorframe of the bathroom. “Do you think you were followed?” he repeated.

The girl scoffed as if what King was suggesting was impossible. “If I were being followed, I would have thrown them off. If I were being followed, I wouldn’t be standing in this disgusting motel room right now wondering what microbial being is going to do me in.” She rested her hands on the strap of the bright blue duffle bag slung across her shoulder, that read LEE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL across it in big white block lettering. She looked up at the old popcorn ceiling. “You know me better than that.”

“Your name is Rage?” I asked, trying not sound as surprised and confused as I was. She was barely over five feet tall. She wore a pink fitted T-shirt that said something about wearing pink on Wednesdays, cutoff white shorts, and white Keds. “Are you a friend of Bear’s?” I asked, trying to put together what the fuck was going on.

The girl turned her attentions from King to me like she was just realizing I was in the room. She looked me over and smiled sweetly. It wasn’t the kind of smile that screamed friendly or outgoing as her casual attire and perky personality would suggest. This was a pageant smile. A rehearsed smile.

Badly rehearsed.

She looked as if she were in pain.

Rage moved back to the door and opened it. I thought at first that she was leaving but she unhooked the plastic do-not-disturb sign hanging from the inside of the door and moved it to the outside, before closing it again and turning back toward us. “Yes, my name is Rage, and no I’m not a friend of Bear’s. I’m a friend of whoever pays me the most, which right now is King and Bear.” She pointed her thumb to King. “And by the way, Rage is short for Ragina.”

“No, it’s not,” King said, calling her out.

“Okay, it’s not,” she said, dropping the fake smile. “The truth is that my name might or might not have something to do with a possible minor-to-major extreme anger management issue I may or may not have had at one point, or possibly still have now.”

I looked at her but didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t. I was stunned into silence.

“We aren’t staying here are we? I’m not a fucking gross biker. I can’t just snuggle up and sleep in a bed that I know is breeding living and breathing organisms and is full of crusted leftovers of failed impregnations.” She shuddered. “Don’t even get me started on the fucking towels.

“You sleep now?” King asked.

“No,” Rage answered flatly, still searching the ceiling. She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe I should tell you I was being followed so I can get the heck out of this Bates motel situation over here.” Her eyes went wide. “Oh my God, I see mold!” she exclaimed, pointing to a few black specs around a crack in the corner by the door. She bent over at the waist and put her hands around her throat like she was suddenly suffocating. Each intake of air sounded like a very loud, very phlegmy struggle to breathe. “I can’t breathe. The mold triggered my asthma. I’m having an attack! I need my inhaler!”

“What can I do?” I asked, springing up and over to her, in hopes of saving her life.

“The warehouse explosion in Ocala. That you?” King asked, unfazed by Rage’s predicament.

Rage stood up straight and smiled, and I had to lean to the left in order to avoid being whipped by her ponytail. Her asthma attack suddenly forgotten and her eyes turned dark, her pupils grew large, like she’d just snorted a line of something. “That was beautiful wasn’t it?” she said excitedly, jumping up and down, clapping her hands together. “My best work yet. A symphony if you will. It was magical.”

“You blew up a building, Rage. You’re not fucking Mozart,” King said sarcastically.

She looked off dreamily into the distance. “Mozart was a visionary. His brain saw things, the world, differently.” She raised and lowered her arms, holding an imaginary baton as if like she were a conductor, instructing her orchestra, “And so do I.”

It was King’s turn to roll his eyes.

Rage dropped her arms and tapped her foot. She held her bag tightly to her chest. “I don’t know you, but unfortunately if we stay here any longer, I am going to blow up this fucking motel, and you might be collateral damage if that happens, and I super love your hair so that would be a real shame, since I’ve been put in charge of keeping you safe and all.”

“Her?” I asked King, not caring if she could hear me. King’s knuckles were white and it looked as if it pained him not to set the girl in her place after she’d insulted him.

“Oh. My. Shit,” Rage exclaimed. “I think some of the mold in the corner just moved. Let’s motor before I decide that babysitting Jem over here is a really fucking bad idea.”

King opened the door and we filed out.

“This is going to be fun!” she announced sarcastically, as she got into the truck and tossed her bag to King who set it in the truck bed. She shifted to the middle as I got in beside her and we headed off to Jessep.

Bear was in jail for me, because of me. If he wanted me to go home and he wanted Barbarian Barbie to accompany me, then I would do it.

Rage popped her gum in my ear, and I bit my lip to the point of almost drawing blood. “It smells like sweat in here,” she complained, turning all the air conditioning vents toward herself.

Trust, I reminded myself.

After all, it wasn’t like it was going to be that long.

I mean, it couldn’t be that long because Bear was going to get out soon and everything would be okay.

I started saying it over and over again. By the time we breezed into Jessep it almost sounded believable.

Almost.

CHAPTER NINE

Thia

IT WAS ANOTHER lifetime ago when I was last in Jessep. At least that’s how it seemed, although in reality it hadn’t been very long at all.

Yet the stench of rotting oranges was more pungent than I remembered, so strong that Rage covered her mouth too just as we passed the WELCOME TO JESSEP sign. If possible, the dirt roads had gotten even harder to navigate, as evidenced by the truck bouncing from side to side as I tried—and failed—to dodge crater-like potholes and large rocks.

Home.

Is that still what this place was?

It didn’t feel that way.

We passed the small cross on the side of the road marking where Kevin Little rolled his John Deer, trapping himself under the shallow water of a retention ditch. I never knew Kevin, but I knew his family. The cross had been there for as long as I could remember. Wilted wild flowers were piled up on the ground around it. Limp balloons tangled with each other, the strings were probably the only thing holding the warped wood upright.