Citrus County Read Free Page A

going to happen. These eggs were on their own and they’d run up against bad luck. Toby removed them one by one and slung them against the tree trunk. They didn’t shatter like he’d hoped, just left splotches and rolled to rest on the ground. A shiver of joy ran through Toby, then immediately he was disgusted with himself. No matter how many speeches he gave himself, he couldn’t keep himself in line. He was no match for his lesser urges. He was as much a junkie as those people who left empty gas cans and used rags all over the woods. He had about the same amount of purpose.
    Toby lived with his uncle Neal on a few dozen acres in a concrete-block house. The property was lousy with sinkholes, but Uncle Neal said in a race between a sinkhole swallowing the house and nuclear destruction, he’d take the nukes. Toby entered the house and was enveloped by the familiar smell of fish sticks. Uncle Neal sat on a stool, clipping his nails. His hair was lopsided and his eyes watery. He always looked like he’d been shaken awake by a stranger.
    “You’re like a dog,” he said to Toby. “Rattle your food bowl, you appear.”
    Toby sat at the table and took out his math homework. He could’ve done it in Mr. Hibma’s detention, but Toby always made a point, when he was being disciplined, to stare at the nearest clock or out the nearest window. Toby did nothing in the bunker and he did nothing in detention, but the bunker was his nothing and detention was Mr. Hibma’s. Detention sapped him and the bunker built him up.
    “I’m sick of eating,” Uncle Neal said. “Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.” He put on an oven mitt and took out the fish sticks. He divided them onto two plates and slid one of the plates to Toby.
    “I have to work tomorrow.” Uncle Neal filled his mouth with steaming fish stick and swallowed after one chew, getting it over with. “It’s an all-day thing—semi-trailer of old fruit. Two brothers owned the company and they got in a fight and halted all shipments. Back in, like, the ’80s.”
    As far as Toby could tell, Uncle Neal’s business was to clean things that nobody else would clean, from grimed old engines to abandoned slaughterhouses. Toby’s uncle, it was safe to say, was a pariah. He lived in a world of regret, if not remorse—about what, Toby couldn’t say. Toby’s uncle always joked about killing himself, and Toby had begun to suspect he wasn’t joking. He didn’t have much incentive to stay alive. Uncle Neal, like everyone else, believed Toby was a run-of-the-mill punk, another angst-ridden adolescent. He had no clue what Toby was capable of.
    Another week of school had passed, more quizzes and study halls and, in the case of Mr. Hibma’s class, more games. Shelby wasn’t the new kid anymore, and she was grateful for that. She’d settled in and was more or less slipping through the days. People had their own problems. Shelby had been fooled about Florida, but that was okay. She wasn’t the first. She’d imagined a place that was warm and inviting and she’d gotten a place that was without seasons and sickeningly hot. She’d wanted palm trees and she’d gotten grizzly, low oaks. She’d wanted surfers instead of rednecks. She’d thought Florida would make her feel glamorous or something, and there was a region of Florida that might’ve done just that, but it wasn’t this part. It was okay, though. It was something different. It wasn’t the Midwest. It wasn’t a place where you could look around and plainly see, for miles, that nothing worthwhile was going on. Shelby would travel to better places when she was older, when she could chart her own course. She’d go to India and France. Shelby could see the mornings of her future, the foreign pink sunrises.
    The sunrise this morning, in Citrus County, had been the color of lima beans. It had been a color you might see under peeled-off paint. Shelby had stuffed one pocket of her army pants with bagels, and