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Seacrest shrugged. “It don’t look healthy. And I was only joking when I called her stupid. You know that, right Becky?”
Becky nodded, but looked unsure.
Erica studied Seacrest. There was something in the girl’s eyes that bothered her. Not just her uncouthness or the fact she seemed to be a bully, or the haughty way she carried herself, or even the anger she could tell the girl kept inside. There was something else.
“I mean it, Seacrest,” Haley repeated. “Whether you’re kidding or not. Don’t call her names.”
“Don’t cawl huh names!” Sasha squealed, his finger now pointed at Seacrest. He giggled, thinking Haley’s words were hilarious.
Seacrest raised an eyebrow. “Whatever.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, then stood and stretched. Her gray and pink low-rise shorts that read Angel in bold red letters dipped low on her hips, exposing a long, olive torso and silver belly ring. The girl walked to the door and stepped into the sticky evening air.
“You hate her, don’t you?” Becky asked her sister when she was gone.
“Yes,” Haley said. “And I don’t understand why you put up with—” She hiccupped loudly. “Put up with her. She’s mean.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Becky said quietly. “Sometimes I don’t like her either. She seemed really cool at first, but I think she lies a lot.”
“Then why do you waste your time with her?” Haley asked.
She shrugged. “I don’t have any other friends.”
***
ERICA WENT OUTSIDE and found Seacrest sitting cross-legged in one of the two rocking chairs on the small porch. She dragged on a cigarette and its cherry glowed against the darkness.
Erica sat in the chair next to her and silently lit up. She rocked slowly back and forth as she dragged, a warm breeze hitting her bare shoulders. She thought of how her mother used to sit out on their own porch and rock facing the water. The nights she’d caught her crying uncontrollably.
Erica looked out at the bayou. She thought about the mud on its bottom, the mucky mess she sometimes dreamed was eating her up.
An egret took flight from the pecan tree above the house, its wings flapping loudly across the bayou. It quickly vanished into the shadows of the moss-draped cypress trees.
What was this Seacrest girl all about? she wondered. If she were a real writer, she told herself, she’d find out. She’d ask questions. There was no room for shyness or discomfort when your happiness completely depended on your success as a novelist. She’d have to suck it up and talk to people, even if some were vermin.
Setting her cigarette on top of an empty Pepsi can, she cradled the glass of Jack Daniels between her hands. “So, where do you live?” she asked.
The girl was quiet for a long moment. “Weston,” she said finally.
Erica nodded. “Seacrest is a different name. Kind of odd.”
“Yeah? Well, if you knew me, you’d probably say it’s fitting.”
Erica kept rocking, wondering where she should go from there. Sasha was crying inside the house, screaming about not being allowed to go outside. Becky was shouting for him to be quiet.
“Your mother drive you out here?”
Seacrest shook her head. “I usually take my bike. Sometimes I hitch.”
“Your mother doesn’t mind that you hitch?”
“She doesn’t know. She’s always working.”
“So why do you come all the way out here?”
“There’s no one in Weston,” Seacrest said, tapping ash into the can. “The place is a ghost town.”
Erica had been through Weston plenty of times since it touched most of Grand Trespass, but she’d never stopped. There’d never been any reason for her to. It was a town not much different than Grand Trespass. You blink a second too long and it’s gone.
A few months back, her father had dated a woman that lived in Weston. Pearl. She cringed just thinking about her. Her big hair, too dolled-up makeup, the smelly dollar store perfume she wore. Once she’d overhead Pearl telling her father that Weston was just a dead end, a no good swamp and she wanted to escape. What Pearl didn’t understand is that Grand Trespass was no different. Who cared if it was a mile closer to civilization? A mile was nothing. Everyone seemed to want to get out, but hardly anyone would. Erica would be an exception.
“What does your mother do?” Erica asked.
“Sells Avon.”
Avon. So she was one of those women. Loud, pushy, always trying to sell you something you didn’t need.
“Your father?”
“Salesman.”
“Any brothers or sisters?”
Seacrest shook her head.
“They happy together?”
“Who?” Seacrest asked, and snubbed out her cigarette.
“Your parents.”
Seacrest’s eyes shone against the night. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Can’t you see I’m trying to relax?”
Seacrest reminded her of herself in some ways. The anger. The sarcasm. The unwillingness to be the Stepford equivalent of everyone else.
“You have a hard time being nice to people, don’t you?” Erica said.
“No.”
“Think it was nice making Becky feel bad about herself tonight? Embarrassing her? Telling her and Haley that someone could be watching this house?”
Seacrest regarded Erica, her eyes slits. “I was telling Becky the truth. I don’t just say what I think other people want to hear. I think she’s pale. So the fuck what? And if I think she’s pale, I’ll tell her.”
She kicked off her sandals and stood. “And some sicko keeps calling this house and hanging up. I think it could be a killer. Becky thinks so too, she’s just too afraid to say it. The girl’s too fuckin’ afraid of everything.”
She sauntered down the concrete steps, to the pier.
Erica stood so she could see Seacrest over the tall bushes. When the girl reached the rotting wood of the pier, she stopped and pulled off her t-shirt and her shorts. Then, fearless of the gators and moccasin that overran the dark water, she dove in.
Chapter 39
IT WAS MIDNIGHT and Mac had just shown up.
“Jesus. You’re falling into a trap, Hale,” he said when he realized she was drunk. “The same damn trap just about everyone in this town’s fallen into. You’re too smart for that. You get too dependent on that shit and it’s a mighty tough road gettin’ back.”
“Back to what?” she asked sarcastically. She threw her arms in the air. “Oh, you mean this? My oh so happy reality? My father’s dead, my best friend is. . . um, probably dead. . . my mother is losing her mind. . . and I just find out that my dependable boyfriend, my rock, who I felt I could always count on and would never lie to me—” She stopped to catch her breath. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. “Anyway, I don’t know if I care too much about living in reality just now.”
Haley heard the words she’d said, but she hadn’t meant to say all of them. Mac had already apologized and she had accepted. But an unfamiliar anger had snowballed inside of her. An anger so intense it crowded out the hurt and sadness and made her want to lash out.
Mac stared at her.
“Having a drink or two brings me some peace,” Haley said softly. “Sometimes I just can’t bear to feel any more pain.”
“You’ll feel it no matter what. Hell, yore supposed to feel it so you can get past it. Besides, this isn’t you, Hale. I don’t know who this is.”
Earlier in the night, she’d thought back to her conversation with Tiffany at Provost’s before she disappeared. Her friend had said she had a crush on someone.
She knew Tiffany’s type. Unavailable. And she knew how her friend flirted. She also knew she loved it when someone was hard to get. While thinking about this, a thought had hit her. . . and hard.
Could Tiffany have made an advance on Mac at some point? Could there be more to their relationship than she knew about? Is that why he had seemed so uncomfortable talking about her since she disappeared?