Back Roads Read Free Page B

satellite dish used to be. I tapped at it with the toe of my boot and reminded myself I needed to get rid of the rest of the pipe before someone got hurt on it. The dish had gone the way of the dogs, leaving us with only four channels. Jody lost Disney. Misty lost Nickelodeon. Amber lost MTV and Fox. At the time they had all been too depressed about Mom and Dad to care, but now they weren’t and I had to hear about it every day.
    I went inside and wiped my boots on the mat by the door, but I didn’t take them off the way I used to have to.
    “Did you get my fortune cookie and umbrella?” Jody asked from the living room.
    On my way through, I told her Misty had the bag. I tossed the stuffed dinosaur over the back of the couch, and Jody’s head popped up from the cushions.
    “Sparkle Three-Horn,” she cried. “I lost him.”
    “I know. I found him.”
    “Where?”
    “My truck.”
    The head disappeared and the couch said, “Thanks.”
    I walked into the kitchen and found the Thursday pot of boiling water on the stove and five hot dogs laid out on a paper plate ready for nuking in the microwave. I opened a cupboard and grabbed a bag of pretzels. Misty came in after me, eating her egg roll.
    I hadn’t noticed from a distance that she was wearing some of Amber’s purple eyeshadow again. Mom wouldn’t have approved of her wearing makeup already, but I had surrendered control of everything female to Amber the day Misty came to me the year before and told me she was pretty sure she had started her period.
    I looked at the hot dogs again and did the math: one for Jody, one for Misty, three for me.
    “Isn’t Amber eating?”
    “She’s got a date.”
    “What?”
    Misty tore open the Kraft box, pulled out the cheese packet, and dumped the macaroni in the pan. The water foamed up, and she adjusted the heat.
    “She said you’d be mad. But I can watch Jody. I’m old enough.”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “I know. Amber said the main reason you’d want her to stayhome is because you want to ruin her fun. Not because of the baby-sitting.”
    I threw the bag on the counter, and pretzels spilled onto the floor. Elvis lunged for them as I stormed out. Misty pushed one aside with a blue-polished big toe and kept stirring the pot.
    I pounded on Amber’s door so hard her Indian dream catcher fell off the wall. She was holding it in her hand when she opened the door. She had on a red lace bra and hiphugger jeans, and her pinched expression of annoyance changed into a satisfied smile when she saw me looking at her.
    “You’re supposed to watch the kids tonight,” I yelled at her over the music blaring from her radio.
    She turned her back on me and walked with exaggerated hip thrusts over to her dresser, the top of her hummingbird tattoo peeking at me over the waistband of her jeans. He seemed to be waving a green wing at me.
    She grabbed a brush and bent over.
    “Misty’s twelve. She can baby-sit a six-year-old,” she said upside down from behind a curtain of reddish-blond hair.
    “They shouldn’t be alone in the house late at night,” I said.
    “What is your problem? Why is it okay to leave them alone during the day and not at night? I swear you’re afraid of the dark.”
    She finished and stood up, tossing her hair behind her with her throat arched and exposed, a female gesture that always cut right through me.
    I stood at the doorway not wanting to go in. Every inch of wall space and ceiling was covered with tie-dyed scarves and pieces of sheets done mostly in purples and blues. Her only window was hung with strings of midnight-blue star-shaped beads. The shelves behind her bed were packed with psychedelic-colored candles, most of them lit. The combination of the colors and the dim lighting gave the place a half-digested feel.
    I walked through it quickly and arrived at her stereo sittingon a cinder-block shelf next to a stack of Glamour magazines worth at least two hundred pounds of dog food.
    I turned off