The Priest's Graveyard Read Free Page A

extra pickles and mustard but no mayonnaise,
     please.
    An orbital shift had tilted my psyche off its axis during the last twenty-four hours. I was aware that I might be overdosing
     on the heroin that Cyrus Kauffman had helped me shoot up. But something else was pushing me.
    I was seeing ghosts. Hearing voices. I was living through one long, uninterrupted panic attack. As a matter of fact, although
     I didn’t know it at the time, I was suffering from a minor but real psychotic break that would only get much worse. My mind
     had finally crumbled under the weight of its circumstances.
    I was on my face and my palms were on the wet concrete, pushing down as if they, along with my scrawny arms, expected to lift
     me up, too stupid to realize that even if I did get to my feet, I didn’t have a clue where to run, assuming I could get my
     legs moving.
    We’re gonna eat you, Renee. The monsters were whispering. When we get ahold of you you’re gonna wish you had turned that trick for Cyrus.
    Fear came in waves, down my neck and back, to my heels. The rain on my back felt like stabbing icicles. No good, no good, no good. He’s gonna squash you .
    My body started to spasm, but I pushed anyway and managed to lift my belly off the wet ground. I dragged my knees forward,
     one at a time, and I shook like a rat stranded on a high wire.
    Why was I here?
    A few memories rolled around me like fog, but I wasn’t sure if they were true. My dad left me and my mom in Atlanta when I
     was thirteen. My mother died in a car crash, and that was why I had come to California to go to school and make something
     of my life. Maybe.
    I whirled back to see the monster who’d rasped that, but my head moved only a little. Then more, until the walls were spinning
     past me. I lost my balance and dropped to my right elbow but managed to keep from falling flat thanks to the brick wall next
     to me.
    My dark hair hung over my face. No wonder my dad didn’t want me. I was nothing but a scrawny mop head. A proper haircut at
     a real hairstylist in downtown Atlanta was the first thing I’d done with the money my mother had left me in her will.
    I spent another thousand dollars on clothes, leaving me almost fifteen thousand of the twenty-thousand-minus-court-fees payment
     to apply toward a bus ticket, the deposit on my very own studio apartment, some living expenses for a while, and cosmetology
     school in Burbank. Beautiful Styles Cosmetology. I wanted to find a school in Hollywood because acting was my real passion,
     but the prices were too high.
    The plan had been simple, something I’d talked to Mother about before the drunk driver slammed his black Dodge Ram into her
     blue Honda Accord.
    “What about cutting hair?” I’d said one Sunday afternoon.
    My mother, Susan, nodded absently. “Sure. Cutting hair is respectable enough.” She was a cocktail waitress and made good tips.
    “I mean, while I’m looking for a job,” I said. “You know, acting.”
    Mother’s eyes shot up. “Uh-huh.” Only it sounded more like, Yeah. Right. Fat chance.
    “I mean, in Hollywood. I could wait tables or something until—”
    “Don’t be ridiculous, Renee.”
    “Why not? I’m pretty enough.”
    “For starters, you don’t even have the money to get to Hollywood. What’re you gonna do, hitchhike?”
    I should have dropped it then. But I’ve never been the kind to leave well enough alone.
    “Maybe Dad’s got some money.”
    Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be an idiot. Even if we knew where he was, he’s broker than a doormat. That much’s a foregone conclusion.
     And if he does have a couple bucks, you’d be the last person he’d give it to.”
    That hurt. I couldn’t just let the words sit there.
    “So then he’s not much better than you, I guess.” I turned, knowing the words cut her deep. “I’ll just find my own way.”
    I still feel guilty for the way I said it, and I certainly didn’t mean for her to die so that I could get out to