The Deepest Roots Read online

  When Mercy releases Mom, she says, “Oh, I almost forgot. I hope you haven’t eaten yet. My mom made way too much lasagna, so she sent some along.” She leans down and picks up one of the tote bags, which has what looks like a casserole dish in one of Mrs. Montoya’s hand-knit cozies to keep it warm. And a loaf of garlic bread. And a large plastic bowl with a lid that probably has salad to make this a well-balanced meal.

  I immediately bridle at the thought of handouts, but Mom takes the bag. “Thank you, Mercy. Be sure to tell your mom that we appreciate it.”

  Mercy beams, and Lux’s eyes threaten to roll back into her head.

  When we go inside, Steven jumps joyously at our return, and the arrival of visitors only escalates his enthusiasm. His stump of a tail looks like it will wag right off his butt at any moment. “Steven!” I greet him in the doggy voice he loves. “Were you a good boy? Do you want some lasagna?”

  Steven barks what I can only imagine is yes.

  Mom sets the food down on the kitchen counter and then drifts back to the couch, unsure of what needs to happen next. Marisol’s empty casserole dish from Sunday night is soaking in the sink, waiting to be washed and returned to her.

  Thankfully, Mercy takes charge, sliding the lasagna into the oven to heat it back up. She’s rummaging through the cupboards next, making tut-tut noises as she observes our meager supply of ramen noodles and what looks like a couple cans of SpaghettiOs that she digs out from the back.

  “Oh, put those up at the front,” I say, my stomach beginning to ache from smelling the lasagna as it heats. “I didn’t know we still had those.”

  Mercy begins sliding out a few other odds and ends from the bag, which must be limitless in its capacity. There are some canned vegetables, a box of cereal, three boxes of macaroni and cheese, a half gallon of milk, and more peanut butter.

  “Your mom cleaning out her cupboards?” I ask. I fight back the edge that tinges my voice. I wish I’d never told her the truth. I love Mercy, but I can’t be one of her charity projects and still be her best friend.

  Mercy puts her hand on her hip again, and even though she’s a pixie, she fills the kitchen when she speaks. “Rome Galveston, if you don’t stop being a bitch and say thank you, I’m going to kick your ass.”

  It’s exactly what I need right now, and the hot pricks of tears I feel behind my eyes ease a little. “Thanks,” I tell her. “I get paid on Friday. I can pay you back.”

  “Shut your stupid face and get out some bowls for this salad.”

  I do as I’m told, making faces when Mercy commands me to dig salad from the plastic container and arrange it in the small bowls. Lux wanders in, changed out of her school uniform and into an old T-shirt and shorts.

  “You got comfy quick,” I tease, because she gave me crap for wearing my pajamas out just last night.

  “This is a slumber party, FYI,” Lux replies, tossing her long hair over one shoulder. It clouds behind her in a strawberry-blond mass.

  “Got it,” I answer, picking out what looks like death in the form of a green pepper from my salad bowl. “You staying?” I ask Mercy, who is now rearranging the lonely condiments in our refrigerator to see if she can locate any more of what she considers acceptable food.

  “Not on a school night,” Mercy calls back from the innards of the fridge. “My parents said I could stay until ten.”

  “Wow, ten,” Lux croons. “That’s late for you.”

  Mercy climbs back out of the fridge and shuts the door while holding what might be the only bottle of salad dressing Mom has ever purchased. I think it might have actually been purchased by her last boyfriend, now that I see it more closely. “I’d check the expiration date on that,” I tell Mercy.

  “It’s better than nine, which is what they usually say,” Mercy replies haughtily to Lux, ignoring me. “So feel blessed to have my presence for an extra hour.”

  “We are very blessed,” I tell Mercy, knowing that she must have begun negotiations for a ten o’clock curfew at about five to have achieved it. And she must have told her parents my mom and I were in financial trouble and starving in our beat-up trailer. I try not to let that last part sting, but it does, and I push myself away from the counter where I’ve been leaning and get out a glass for water.

  “What about you?” Mercy asks Lux. “What’s up with the Tuesday-night sleepover?” She’s slicing bread as she talks, comfortable in the kitchen.

  Lux licks her lips before answering. “Aaron’s truck died on his way to work at the plant this morning, and he’s furious. He thinks someone did something to it. He swears he’s going to find the little shit and beat the crap out of them. Mom thought it would be best if I went somewhere else tonight while he drowns his troubles in baseball and Budweiser.”

  It’s what she doesn’t say that sticks with me. Tina wants Lux out of the way so that if Aaron gets mad and hits somebody, it’s not Lux. I think back to the other times Lux has randomly popped up at our trailer, and I wonder how many of those times she had been hiding from Aaron. I wonder how often Tina has to hide from Aaron.

  “His truck died?” Mercy asks. She looks to me. “Are you going to offer to Fix it?”

  “No,” both Lux and I say in unison, and with much more force than necessary.

  Mercy’s eyes widen, her brows shooting up.

  “He’s having it towed to a shop in Evanston. Not Red’s,” Lux adds, looking at me.

  Lux doesn’t know that I’m the one who did it, I tell myself. She doesn’t know that I put bleach in Aaron’s gas tank. It will run again, but the inside of his gas tank is going to be covered in rust, and his fuel system might have to be completely replaced. It was for you, I want to tell her. It was revenge for you. But it’s better if she doesn’t know anything about it. Plausible deniability.

  “Okay,” Mercy says, holding up her hands like we’re about to attack, her thin scar visible on her palm, like a white flag of truce. That white scar twists something in my insides, because I know what it means to all of us. She casts one more glance at us both, as if she can tell there’s something we’re not telling her. We should not have so many secrets. The guilt sits low in my gut, warring with the hunger I feel.

  Lux notices her scar, too, and I catch her eye, tilting my head slightly as Mercy turns back to the stove. I want her to end this, to honor the promises we made by ratting out her jerk of a stepdad. But Lux looks away, and I guess I can’t blame her, because I have secrets of my own.

  When the food is ready, Mercy loads up plates with far too much food and delivers one to Mom and hands the other to me.

  Then we go to my room and pile onto my bed. While I eat, I retell the story of what happened today, all except the part about Mom almost going to the bedroom with Garrett.

  “You talked to an Evanston boy?” Mercy asks when I tell them about Jett wanting to grab dinner sometime.

  “Don’t kill me, Mom,” I reply around a mouthful of garlic bread.

  “Good for you,” Lux says. “I thought you were naturally man-repellent, but it must not be true. He’s cute, too.”

  I make a face that might repel Lux.

  “So are you going to go out with him?” Mercy asks. She’s only ever had a crush on Sam Buford, but he doesn’t seem to know she exists outside of the holy trinity or holy water or whatever it is that they do at church.

  I shrug. “He seems nice, but I don’t know. I don’t really want to get him involved with all of this.” I wave a hand around the room.

  “He shouldn’t be in your bedroom—” Mercy begins.

  “No,” Lux spits out, laughing. “She means Cottonwood Hollow.” She frowns darkly, probably thinking about her curse. What was meant to be a blessing.

  “I mean I don’t want to explain to him why I can’t meet him somewhere in the Mach. I don’t want him to pick me up at this trailer in his fancy car that his daddy bought him.”

  “You’re right,” Lux agrees. “It makes much more sense to hate him for the socioeconomic status
he was born into.”

  “Nice use of vocabulary,” I retort. “But it is sort of awkward with Jett, isn’t it? I mean, they have goats just for the hell of it. People here don’t have goats unless they’re going to eat them or make cheese in their back shed.”

  “The Rome I know doesn’t care about what anybody thinks,” Mercy answers, stroking my hair affectionately. “It’s one of the things I admire about her.”

  Lux adds, “And if he does care, kick him to the curb. You’re Rome fucking Galveston.”

  With a remarkably straight face, Mercy says, “Don’t eat his goats, though. That would be embarrassing for all of us out here in Cottonwood Hollow.”

  We all laugh, and Steven comes to see what the cackling is all about, pushing open the cracked bedroom door with his jowly face.

  “Okay,” Lux says, abruptly changing the subject as Steven comes nudging his snout against her legs, waiting for Lux to pet him. “Where the hell is the diary? I looked for it earlier when I came in here to change, and I couldn’t find it.” She sits up and gives Steven a good petting.

  “It should be in my backpack,” I recall, heaving myself and the three pounds of lasagna I’ve just ingested off the bed. On my way to the kitchen, I stop by the couch to pick up Mom’s plate and take it with mine to the sink. She’s got her nose in the book about using office programs, and she’s absolutely fixated. I’ve never seen her this focused on a goal before. It’s almost like she’s pulling her head out of the sand and really, actively trying to make things better. But she’s also gotten out the emergency box of wine and her glass that says It’s Wine O’clock Somewhere, which means she’s still recovering from Garrett’s visit this morning, too.

  Mom looks up when I approach and, noticing that I’m alone, says, “I’m glad the girls came over tonight.”

  “Me too,” I agree.

  “I’m sorry about this morning,” she tells me, closing the book on her index finger to hold her place. She looks serious, and somehow older tonight, like the day’s events have aged her. “I want you to know that we’re going to get your car back, okay? I’m going to get a good job. A better job. And we’ll get it back.”

  But I know that the best we’ll do for a long time is just survive. And that has to be enough for now. This is just like the promises she made when I was little, back when I believed every word that came out of her mouth. But what I know at seventeen that I didn’t know at eleven is that sometimes we need those little lies to get by. We need them to survive, to believe that there’s a future beyond just getting by. There’s a future beyond just making ends meet.

  I nod, because for once I don’t want to make some clever quip, some smart remark to tell her I know better. I want her to have what always seems to be missing from this rusting old trailer.

  Hope.

  I leave the plates in the sink, impressed that Mom has already gone to the trouble of putting away the leftover lasagna and bread. I make a mental note to take a stroll over to Mrs. Montoya’s soon and see if she needs anything Fixed.

  On the counter on a plastic-wrapped plate is a half-dozen chocolate cupcakes that Mercy somehow produced out of her tote bag. Enough, I remind myself. Mercy could have produced all kinds of things from that bag if she tried hard enough. I hazard a peek in the cupboards, and what was once two cans of SpaghettiOs is now four. I close the cupboard door, briefly touching my forehead against the cheap wood, which is cool against my skin. Enough. That seems more like a gift than a curse to me, too.

  I grab my backpack off the kitchen table and go back to my room. Lux is still massaging the many wrinkles of Steven’s loose skin, and she and Mercy are arguing about where Emmeline’s dowry chest might be. “It could be anywhere,” Mercy points out. “She may have sent it back home to her family.”

  “There’s got to be more information in the diary,” Lux says. “Get it out, Rome. We need to do research. I need that dowry chest.”

  “What do you need it for?” Mercy asks.

  “I just want the money, okay? What’s wrong with that?” She can’t look Mercy in the eye, but I know exactly what she’s thinking. She wants it so that Tina can kick Aaron out. She wants to be financially independent from him.

  “Maybe we should donate some of it if we find it,” Mercy chatters, smoothing the worn comforter on the bed as she talks, unaware that anything strange is going on with Lux. “Start a fund for girls from Cottonwood Hollow to go to college or something. I mean, it wouldn’t have to be that much, but if we invested it . . .”

  Lux grimaces at the idea of giving the money away. “Just find the damn diary.”

  I dig around in my backpack, but it’s not there. There’s the history book, the novel, the notebooks, pens, the mostly eaten jar of peanut butter and the dirty spoon that I shared with Jett. (It’s still in there because I haven’t taken it out, not because I was saving it like some creepy stalker.) But the diary isn’t in there.

  “Where is it?” Lux asks, taking the backpack and upending it over my bed. She shakes it out for good measure. A broken pencil and some gum wrappers fall out.

  “Maybe I took it out and I don’t remember,” I mutter, lifting the comforter on the bed like it could be hiding there.

  “Do you think it fell out in your mom’s car? At school?” Mercy gets up off the bed. “Come on,” she says, beckoning us to move. “Let’s search the house.”

  We look all over, even asking Mom if she’s seen the leather diary with a cottonwood leaf tooled on the front. She hasn’t seen it, of course, which makes me wonder if I left it at school. We reconvene in my bedroom after a thorough search of the car with only the weak, buttery glow of the dome light to illuminate our search.

  “Rome,” Lux says suddenly, plopping down on my bed. “You said you fell asleep on the bleachers at school. Could someone have gotten into your bag while you were asleep and taken it?”

  “Yeah, right, looking for what? Cash?” I scoff. “They’re not going to go through a Cottonwood Hollow student’s bag looking for that.”

  “Looking for anything. Pot. Pills. A banged-up-looking diary that could be used to embarrass you.”

  “Didn’t you see Jett there?” Mercy asks, her eyebrows hinting at something dark, something only an Evanston boy would think to do.

  “You think Jett took the diary out of my bag? I was awake when I saw him, remember?”

  “That doesn’t mean he didn’t take it while you were asleep,” Lux says, crossing her arms. “And then come back and be all ‘hey, girl,’ laying on the charm later.”

  “Just ask. Nicely,” Mercy adds. “Maybe it fell out of your bag somewhere on the steps and he picked it up. He wouldn’t have known it was yours. It’s not like it has your name in it.”

  “Or he went through your bag while you were snoring,” Lux teases.

  “I don’t think he took it,” I say airily, as if the possibility doesn’t hit every button in me that says liking an Evanston boy is wrong and this is going to be the evidence I need to prove it. Damn him and his baseball bat.

  “Well, at least ask him if he’s seen it,” Lux says.

  “We’ll look for it at school tomorrow,” Mercy adds. “But it’s almost ten and if I don’t get home on time my parents will slay me.”

  “Yeah,” I say, keeping the tone light despite the gnaw of guilt. I should have kept more careful track of the diary. Lux is dying to find that dowry chest. And so am I. I need more than just the rent money now. I need enough to buy back the Mach before someone else does.

  I give Mercy a ride home in Mom’s car, and when I return, Lux has changed yet again, this time into a pair of tight jeans and a deep V-neck T-shirt. She’s redone her makeup and is fluffing out her hair by hanging her head down between her knees and shaking her head.

  “Is it date night?” I ask, flopping myself down on the bed and watching her work. “If so, I’m underdressed.”

  “Morgan texted while you were out. Do you mind? She said we could go for a drive. Get some ice
cream or something.”

  “Or something,” I trill, knowing it will annoy her.

  Lux stands back up and rolls her eyes. “You’re such a perv. But yes, I hope some of something.”

  “I don’t mind,” I tell Lux as she leans forward toward the mirror above the dresser and checks her lip gloss, using her pinky finger to catch a bit that’s smudged too far. Too far. How much will it take to push Lux too far? How long until she can’t tolerate it here in Cottonwood Hollow anymore?

  I sit up when there’s a honk out front. “Lux,” I say, and this time it’s urgent, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Because it’s hit me like a fist in the gut. I reach out and grab her wrist with my hand, and she grimaces a little because I’ve grabbed her too tightly, and my hands are much stronger than hers. Fixer hands.

  I place my other hand to hers, palm to palm, scar to scar.

  “You’d tell me, right? If you were going to run again, you’d tell me? You wouldn’t just leave without saying good-bye.”

  Lux’s face softens from irritation to melancholy, losing that predatory fierceness that she so often wears. “You know I wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  Nine

  LUX AND I HAVE PLENTY of time before the first bell to find seats in the back of the classroom before either Morgan or Jett show up, since we had to ride the bus. Lux is still moony from her date the night before, and the only cognizant sentences she can come up with this morning start with the name Morgan and end with the word love. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but I have to wait for Lux to shift back into Stone Face before we can ask Jett if he took the diary.

  I spent a lot of time thinking last night, since Lux didn’t get back until three in the morning, and I think the diary came to us so that we can find the dowry chest and I can buy back the Mach and Lux and her mom can kick Aaron out for good. Why else would Emmeline deposit the diary right to us if she didn’t want to help us out financially? She’d spelled it all out in the diary, No one should have that dowry chest or the land but a daughter of Cottonwood Hollow.