The Deepest Roots Read online

  Lux stands and waves me over to our usual table. She must have been watching me and knows I’m about to make a break for the library before anyone realizes I don’t have lunch money.

  I slink over to the table, throwing myself on the bench next to her and dropping my bag on the floor by my feet.

  “Forget your lunch money?” Lux asks, raising one eyebrow.

  “I’m not hungry,” I reply.

  “Have some of my pizza,” she says. “We can share it.”

  I hate handouts. Hate, hate, hate them.

  “You’ll never believe it,” Mercy says, sitting down next to me with a loaded lunch tray. “The boy in front of me had to leave, so he gave me his pizza and chocolate milk.”

  I eye the extra pizza and chocolate milk before I can stop myself.

  “Do you guys want it?” Mercy asks. “I’d already paid for mine, but it seemed like such a waste for him to throw his away.”

  Lux’s eyes find mine. “It just so happens that Rome forgot her lunch money.”

  Mercy smiles and tosses her shoulder-length black hair. “Good,” she says. “Then it won’t go to waste.” She hands me the plate with the wedge of pepperoni pizza on it, and follows it with the carton of chocolate milk.

  My stomach rumbles in response. Lux grins her catlike smile and mouths the word Enough.

  “Miss Galveston,” a woman’s voice calls over the din of clattering plates and conversations. I look over my shoulder and see the school’s elderly office assistant standing behind me with a note in her hand. My mind immediately panics, thinking of Mom and Steven.

  She thrusts the note into my hand. “In the future,” she huffs, “please tell your family that I don’t take personal messages for you.”

  I scramble to unfold the note. Need somebody for 3–8 at the shop today. Uncle Red.

  Lux reads the note over my shoulder. “Uncle Red,” she laughs as the assistant walks away. “Remind me to call him that when I see him next time.”

  Extra shifts mean extra money. I feel a loosening of the tension in my shoulders, the same feeling I get when I’ve Fixed something that is particularly problematic.

  “We can find our own way home,” Mercy says, giving my arm a squeeze.

  “Yeah, the bus,” Lux hisses, narrowing her eyes. “With the cretins.”

  I grin at her, too happy that I’m getting an extra shift to feel bad for her. “Maybe you can share makeup tips with the other passengers,” I offer.

  “I hope you choke on your pizza and die,” Lux returns, taking an elegant sip of her chocolate milk.

  She reminds me that I have lunch now, and I eat the pizza with far more enjoyment than the quality deserves. “Thanks,” I remember to tell Mercy when I pick the last pepperoni up off the plate and toss it in my mouth.

  When the lunch bell rings, I can hardly wait. I am getting an extra shift, and extra money. If I pick up a shift last-minute to help Red out, he always pays me under the table in cash at the end of the night.

  Cash. I am going to have cash by the end of the day.

  I can buy gas. I can buy lunch tomorrow. I can . . .

  I cannot pay the other half of the rent. The reminder nags at me like a hangnail that’s been worried until it’s pink and sore.

  Four

  WHEN I PULL UP TO Red’s shop, four vehicles are waiting in the bay. Red wipes his hands on a greasy rag as he says, “Answer your damn phone next time so I don’t have to pretend to be your long-lost uncle. Get your uniform on and let’s get to work.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” I reply, giving him a sassy salute. I grab my worn blue coveralls from the hook near the door and head to the tiny bathroom to change.

  When I emerge, Red is waiting with a verbal list that he counts off on oil-stained fingers. He’s close to forty, with a shaved head and some questionable tattoo choices on his forearms. “One of the guys called in sick today so we’re running behind. I need an oil change on the minivans, spark plugs and cabin filter on the sedan.”

  “Got it,” I tell him, getting to work. Each mechanic is supposed to bring his own tools, but Red lets me use the odds and ends he’s gathered over the years. He even “found” an old black toolbox on wheels that I suspect he actually purchased secondhand somewhere. My name is airbrushed on the back in pink, courtesy of one of the guys who used to work here. Most of the work I do doesn’t require any of my talents as a Fixer, just basic mechanical know-how.

  I like the rhythm of the garage. I like the smells of grease and metal, the cranking of engines that need new starters or the squeal of an alternator that’s going bad. I like the sound of men cursing and tools clattering against the cement floor when something goes awry. Beneath it all, there’s the steady beat of country radio, wailing out tunes that Red hums under his breath as he shuffles around the shop with a barely perceptible limp.

  At the end of the night, I meet Red at the till in the office and he pulls out fifty bucks. “Here you go, Rome,” he growls. “You earned it.”

  “Thanks, Red,” I reply, crumpling up the bills and shoving them into my backpack. I’ve changed back into my school uniform and am ready to head home. My stomach is growling, and as tempting as it is to take some of this cash and hit a drive-through, I know I should go home and try to talk to Mom.

  I am just to the edge of Evanston, about to turn onto the highway instead of taking the county roads home, when the Mach shudders and dies. I ease it off onto the gravel shoulder of the highway, my hands suddenly clammy on the steering wheel.

  Damn.

  I forgot to get gas, and there’s no Mercy in the car to help me make it home.

  Two cars whiz past, shaking the windows of the Mach as I sit inside.

  This has not been a good day. It has not been a good couple of days, to be honest. A tornado, no rent money, no lunch money, no gas.

  I lean forward and put my head on the steering wheel. I close my eyes. I think back to a time when things weren’t this hard.

  No, wait. Things have always been this hard.

  Someone taps on the window, loudly. My head shoots up. I am staring straight into the crotch of some kind of white sports uniform.

  “Hey,” the owner of the crotch and uniform says. “You okay in there?”

  “What?” I shout belligerently as I roll down the window, although I heard him perfectly.

  “I said are you okay in there? You need a ride?”

  I look up. The crotch and the sports uniform belong to the boy in my first-period class who’d smiled and winked this morning. Jett. Of course it’s him. This is going to be a fantastic story for Mercy and Lux later.

  “No, I’m fine. I just ran out of gas,” I reply, opening the door and sliding out of the car. I pull my backpack out with me and sling it over one shoulder. He backs up, giving me room to pass by him and get to my trunk. I’m struck by the immediate largeness of him even as he moves to get out of my space. There’s an empty gas can in the back of the Mach, and I pop the trunk and get it out.

  “Are you sure?” he asks, eyeing the Mach dubiously. Now that I’m out of the car, I realize that he’s wearing a white pinstripe baseball uniform. When he turns around to look at the Mach’s front end, I see that the back of his jersey says Rodriguez 47.

  “I’m sure.” His car is parked behind mine, not that I could see it very well out of the rearview mirror. Machs are made for going forward, not for looking back. He’s got a late-model Dodge Challenger R/T, a beast of a muscle car with all the bells and whistles, painted bright orange with black racing stripes down the sides.

  “Can I take you to the gas station?” he asks, still standing there on the gravel shoulder of the highway with me as I ponder the distance to the nearest gas station. It’s at least two miles.

  “I can walk,” I reply. Getting in cars with strange Evanston boys is a bad idea. If Mercy were here, she would tell me to get back in my car and lock the doors. She would tell me to call her, and then yell at me because I’m out of minutes and can’t c
all anyone anyway.

  “It’s getting dark. And it’s at least a couple miles back to the 7-Eleven.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I shrug, moving around him. He’s a few inches over six feet tall, and built like you’d expect for an athlete. Big shoulders, muscular thighs, and a tight ass hugged tighter by his baseball pants. He’s got black hair and dark eyes. Somehow he seems to be radiating heat, as if he’s got a nuclear core.

  “Look,” he counters. “We have first period together, so it’s not like I’m some weird creeper trying to pick you up. It’s Rome, isn’t it? I’m Jett. Jett Rodriguez.”

  “Jet like the plane? That’s your real name?”

  “Like the plane with two t’s,” he replies with a look that suggests this isn’t the first time someone’s asked him about his name.

  “Can I have your bat?”

  “What?”

  “Your bat. Since you’re obviously some kind of baseball player. Can I have your bat?”

  “Why do you want my bat?”

  “I’ll let you give me a ride to the gas station and back if I can have your bat.”

  “If you can have my bat?” He echoes the words as if that might make the request understandable.

  “Yeah. So if you try anything funny, I can bash your brains in.”

  He laughs, his eyes crinkling up.

  “Okay,” he says. “You can borrow my bat.” He trudges back to the trunk of his car and pulls out a wooden bat. I follow him and he hands it to me, grip first.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking it in my free hand. I give him the gas can and then take a few practice swings with the bat, once coming closer to his head than I intended.

  Jett looks up from the trunk. “You’re taking this bashing-my-brains-in thing really seriously,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “Better to be safe than sorry, right?”

  Jett nods, pursing his lips thoughtfully. “I guess so. But you might want to choke up a little on the grip if you want to get in a really good swing that close.”

  He opens the passenger door for me, which surprises me, and sets me slightly off-kilter.

  “Thank you,” I say warily as I sit in his passenger seat with the bat between my knees. The car is nice. I mean, black-leather-and-working-air-conditioning nice. I flick a careful glance over the sporty gauges and the slick radio. But more than that, it’s an R/T model, which means it has a beefy 5.7 liter Hemi under the hood, not far off from the 340s the Challenger had back in the seventies. It could definitely give the Mach a run for its money. I would swoon, if that’s what Cottonwood Hollow girls did. But we don’t. We hold bats.

  “So you’re a junior, right?” he asks as he expertly whips a U-turn on the highway so we’re heading toward Evanston.

  “Yep.”

  “Me too.”

  I nod, casting an admiring gaze at the gauges on his dash that I hope he doesn’t notice.

  “You’re from Cottonwood Hollow, aren’t you?”

  I spear him with a glance, still clutching the bat, waiting to see where he plans to go with that question. “Yep.”

  “That’s cool. I’ve heard people out there are kind of . . .” His voice trails off.

  “If you mean we’re not rich, stuck-up assholes, then yeah, we’re kind of different.”

  Jett laughs.

  I feel a little guilty, since he is giving me a ride, and decide I could give him slightly better answers in return for his kindness. “I mean, you’re probably okay. Except for this car and everything.”

  “What’s wrong with my car?” he asks, sounding defensive for the first time.

  “It’s a rich-boy car. Costs more than the house I live in. Has airbags and stuff.”

  “I think airbags are pretty standard.”

  “Depends on the age of the vehicle in question.”

  “But at least the rest of me is probably okay.” He offers me an affable grin. It’s too bright, I think. Like he should be in a toothpaste commercial.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Tell me about your interesting sports-person things. What kind of balls do you play with?” I can’t resist the chance to needle him a little.

  Jett colors a little beneath his coppery skin. “I’m the pitcher for the Evanston baseball team.”

  “Do people still watch baseball? Is that a thing?”

  “Baseball is America’s favorite pastime.”

  “I thought America’s favorite pastime was reality TV.” I examine the bat more closely. “This is nice.”

  “Thanks. It was a gift from my dad.”

  “Did he come to your game tonight?”

  “No. He’s away on business for his law firm.”

  “Oh.”

  “How about your parents?”

  “My mom is a waitress.” That’s probably a lie now.

  “And your dad?”

  “He’s a ghost.”

  “A ghost?” Jett’s eyes leave the road to check my face for signs of humor.

  “Yeah. He’s been invisible since before I was born.” I’ve been working on that line for years now. Usually it shuts people up, and I’m about ready for this conversation to be over.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Sorry for asking.”

  “Awkward moments are something I excel at. Go ahead, ask me something else that’s really personal.”

  Jett doesn’t take the hint and keeps going. “Why do they call the girls from Cottonwood Hollow freaks?”

  I bristle. “We have talents.”

  He raises his eyebrows as if to say, and? So I add, “Talents that can shut people up if they ask too many questions.”

  He pensively quirks his mouth to one side, as if he’s considering whether or not I’m screwing with him, and if I might use his bat to remove his head from his body if he keeps asking questions. The 7-Eleven is only a block ahead, the sign shining brightly in the twilight. “I can pitch pretty well,” he offers finally, as if that makes us equals.

  I actually laugh this time, because I don’t think anyone has ever tried to relate to the girls from Cottonwood Hollow. “Our talents are a little different.”

  We turn into the gas-station lot, and Jett slides the Challenger in next to a pump. He gets out and pops the trunk for me, acting like he’s going to put gas in the can.

  “Hey,” I interrupt him, taking the gas can. “I can do it myself.”

  He holds his hands up like I’m waving a gun at him. “Got it. I’m going to run in and grab a drink. Do you want anything?”

  “No, I’m good,” I tell him, which is a lie. I’m starving. And thirsty. I peel off a crumpled five from the wad of cash that I pull out of my bag. I don’t want to go into the gas station and smell cooking hot dogs. “Here’s for the gas.”

  He takes the bill and manages not to make a face at its deteriorated state.

  When he’s prepaid inside, I fill up the gas can. It’ll be enough to get me home. I can get gas in Cottonwood Hollow in the morning.

  I’ve capped the gas can and put it back in the trunk when Jett comes back. His arms are full of gas-station provisions. He hands me a fountain drink in a giant Styrofoam cup and a package of beef jerky.

  “I don’t know what Cottonwood Hollow girls eat,” he says. “And I didn’t want to ask you any more questions. But I bet you could use a snack. I’m starving.”

  “We drink the blood of virgins, usually, but beef jerky is okay.”

  Jett’s mouth opens a little, like he’s warring between being surprised or impressed, as I circle around to the passenger side of the car. He doesn’t bother trying to open my door this time, just gets in and wedges his own soda into the cup holder. I put the bat back between my knees, open the bag of beef jerky, and try not to shove a handful in my mouth as he pulls out of the gas-station lot. Instead, I take a big gulp of soda out of the cup he gave me and offer him the first piece of jerky that I pull out of the bag. With his eyes still on the road, he grabs at it carelessly, his fingertips brushing against mine.

  Then I shove a discreet
handful of jerky into my mouth.

  When he’s chewed and swallowed a couple of pieces, he forgets we’re done with Q&A time and asks, “So were you going home from work?”

  “Yep.”

  “You have a cleaning gig or something?”

  “No,” I answer, annoyed. “I work at Red’s Auto. As a mechanic.”

  “Really?” he asks, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

  “What? Are you surprised that girls can be mechanics?” I’ve taken a lot of shit from new mechanics for being a teenage girl. Unless it gets nasty, Red usually lets me handle it myself.

  “No, I just thought maybe you were cleaning because you’ve got a smudge of dirt or something on your face.”

  I flip down the visor to see my face in his mirror. There’s a smudge of grease along my jaw. I washed my hands before I left, but I hadn’t looked closely at my face in the bathroom mirror. I rub the smudge with my fingers until it fades a little. Then I snap the visor back up, still annoyed.

  I change the subject, since Jett is such a chatty fellow. Let him talk about himself for a while. “So you’re on your way home?”

  “Yeah, we live just a mile outside of Evanston. We used to live in town, over in the Heights neighborhood.”

  I can barely keep a straight face, because I’ve seen the Heights and its palatial stone houses with their ivy-covered walls and gated driveways.

  Jett continues casually, “But my mom had this big thing where she wanted to live on a few acres and have chickens and goats and stuff, and so we moved out here last semester.”

  “And do you?” I fiddle with the handle of the bat to keep myself from shoving more beef jerky into my mouth.

  “Do I what?”

  “Do you have chickens and goats?”

  He laughs. “Yeah, we do. No more mowing the yard. The goats keep it pretty well trimmed down.”

  I recall the jungle of grass growing around our trailer’s plywood skirting. I need a goat.

  We pull up behind the Mach, and I get out, sad to leave the bag of beef jerky behind in his car. But it would probably be rude to take it. At least, I’m assuming it would be. I stare at it, hesitating a moment before I shut the door and tuck his bat beneath my arm.