Ratliff took a cloth from his desk drawer and slowly cleaned his glasses—his way of keeping her talking by forcing her to fill the silence. Shannon didn’t care. It felt good to talk to somebody, even if it was the ignorant school counselor who told everybody to go to technical school no matter how good their grades were.
“The worst part was he had his girlfriend in the car. I could see her in the side mirror. She has really long fingernails and this weird color hair.”
Shannon couldn’t tell if Ratliff was impressed or stunned. He raised his eyebrows and said, “He brought his girlfriend when he moved out?”
“Yeah. I thought that took balls.” She waited for a reaction, and getting none, she continued. “Momma sat in the porch swing moving back and forth real slow. She looked cool as a cucumber.”
What Shannon didn’t say was that after her daddy’s turquoise car pulled away, Virginia Lemmons walked inside and slammed the storm door so hard that all the birds flew out of the tree in front of their house. Shannon sat on the steps for a couple of hours watching the glass door crackle slowly from the center out into a giant spider web.
Virginia spent the rest of the summer reporting whore sightings. “I saw that whore driving your daddy’s car,” she’d tell Shannon. “I ran into that whore in the Big K, but she went down another aisle to avoid me.”
After Ratliff said his door was always open, Shannon thanked him, and instead of going back to home ec, she went upstairs to the girls’ restroom to wait until classes changed. Shannon was usually excited at the start of a new school year—her blank notebooks and freshly sharpened #2s ready weeks in advance. But this year, she dragged into school. She couldn’t memorize the combination to her locker and her books seemed unusually heavy. Even after two weeks, she kept referring to her class schedule because she couldn’t recall her next subject. The junior class was planning their float for the homecoming parade, but Shannon wasn’t interested in helping this year.
The bathroom door opened. Shannon’s best friend threw a crocheted purse in the sink, and a can of hairspray rolled out.
“I hate school already,” Pam announced.
“What a surprise.”
“I gotta pee.” Pam left the stall door open as she crunched her peasant skirt around her waist. “I got Roots for biology. Pretty funny that the biology teacher’s name is Roots.”
“Ironic.”
“What was your last class?”
“Home ec.”
“I thought you smart ones didn’t have to take home ec or shop like the rest of us morons.”
Shannon looked out the window, down at kids sneaking smokes between cars in the parking lot. Band members straggled out to the football field behind the school, their polished instruments flashing in the sun. A newly painted sign at the field entrance read, HOME OF THE BAYLOR COUNTY CARDINALS, KENTUCKY DIVISION 5 CHAMPS, 1978. Shannon watched the action below, but she was thinking about the past weekend. She had been standing outside The Brown Jersey when her daddy’s dusty Trans Am pulled up. At first, her heart gave a flip; then Shannon saw who was driving. The woman strutted up to the little window in four-inch Candies, a strip of leather and a silver buckle across her toes to hold them on. Even in those shoes, she was so short that she didn’t have to bend down to place her order. She fished for money in a back pocket of her taut jeans.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”
“What?” Shannon said.
The woman put her hand on her hip and tapped her foot impatiently. “Never mind. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You know who I am?” Shannon asked.
“Yeah, honey, I know.” The service window slid to the side and the woman flung money on the counter. “I got her,” she said and motioned that she wanted to pay for Shannon.
“I can pay for my own stuff.”
“Suit yourself.”
The T-tops were out of the car and the woman leaned through the driver’s side and came up with a long cigarette. The boys inside the front glass window of the hamburger stand made lewd noises. She perched on the top of a warped, gray picnic table, adjusted a bra strap, lit the cigarette, and crossed her legs. Her every move designed for effect.
Shannon tried to act nonchalant while she waited. She kicked at hickory nuts collected in low spots in the parking lot. The smell of fried onion rings was strong.
“Your name’s not really Bootsie, is it?” she asked.
“Justine.”
“Where you from?”
“Louisville.”
“Why’d you come here?”
“Is this going to be the Inquisition?”
“No.”
The window slid open again and arms reached out with two milkshakes and a bag of food. “Two shrimp boxes.” Shrimp boxes were her daddy’s favorite.
“I thought she was younger than Momma until I saw her up close,” Shannon told Pam as they groomed in the wavy mirror. “She had so much base on that her face was ready to crack.”
“I guess you’d wear a lot of makeup, too, if you ran a beauty shop,” Pam said.
Shannon bent over at the waist and brushed her curls out. In one fluid motion, she stood upright, flipped her hair behind her, and shook her head to settle fine layers of blond.
“Good feathers,” Pam said.
“Thanks.” Shannon sprayed a thick cloud around her head.
“You going out to her house?”
“Why not? She can tell me to leave if she doesn’t like it.”
“I can’t believe he went all summer without calling or nothing. Here, let me do that.” Pam brushed blue eye shadow onto Shannon’s lids.
Shannon blinked at her reflection. “Don’t you think that’s too much?”
“No. Looks good. Same color as your eyes.”
She closed her eyes again and Pam brushed more color on.
“The longer I talked to Ratliff, the more I thought about going out there,” Shannon said. She opened her eyes. “I want Daddy to look me in the face and tell me he’s not coming back.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“I need a ride.”
“I’d take you but I don’t have the car today. What about Will?”
“He’s got ball practice. Besides, he’s so mad at Daddy that he’d never take me out there.”
“Kerry Rucker would take you,” Pam said. She rolled frosted pink gloss on Shannon’s lips. “Everybody knows he likes you.”
“I’d feel bad. Besides, the last thing I need right now is Momma on me because of some boy. You know what she’s like.”
Shannon’s mother had rules. Rules intended to keep Shannon from dating too early, except what she didn’t understand was that her approach kept Shannon from having girlfriends, too. On the one occasion Shannon managed to lure other girls to her house for a sleepover, her mother had ruined the night. One of the girls dropped the needle down on her scratchy Nazareth album, and before “Hair of the Dog” was over her mother was at the door. Virginia insisted on seeing all the music they had brought. She rejected AC/DC and Ozzy Osborne based solely