Such a Rush

“It’s beautiful in Sava

“Tonight?” Grayson asked sharply, sending a cold chill down my neck.

I turned to them. Alec and Molly whispered with their heads bent. Grayson watched my mom in disbelief. In his world, families didn’t move to a different town on the spur of the moment. They didn’t need to. And that’s when I realized what must be going on.

“What’s wrong?” I asked my mom suspiciously. “Why were you suddenly hell-bent on driving to the Indian casino last week?” Usually it took at least a couple of days for her to hatch that plan. A sudden turnaround reeked of desperation. Like, she needed a lot of money fast.

“Nothing’s wrong!” she exclaimed, her cheeks two spots of pink, and not from a day at the beach. “I just wanted to have a little fun. It’s spring break!”

Spring break was for students like me, not unemployed waitresses like her. I wondered whether she still qualified as an unemployed waitress. She’d gone so long without working that at some point she’d stopped being an unemployed waitress and became just plain unemployed.

I put my hands on my hips. “How far behind are you on rent?”

“That’s not why we’re moving,” she snapped. “Roger’s cousin says—”

“That’s why we moved from Golden to Equality,” I said. “That’s why we lived in every shithole in Equality at least twice. That’s why we moved from Equality to the Army base, and from the Army base to the Air Force base, and from there to Heaven Beach.”

“That is not why we moved here,” my mother yelled back at me. “Billy told me he was going to get a job for me. He didn’t do it, but that’s what he told me.”

Grayson was speaking soothingly in my ear. I didn’t care what he said. I wasn’t done.

“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 Sava

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 ru

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 Sava

“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 fucking 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.