A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [60]
“What do you want?”
“No, it’s not me, man. It’s Marvella. She’s like flipped out over there. She’s knocking the kid around, she’s gonna call the cops, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing, so that’s why.” Each phrase was punctuated by his open hand across his chest. “I’m just the messenger, that’s all. She’s a weird kid, you know, like way too . . . well, you know what I mean, so just don’t be . . . don’t be thinking, you know, cuzza Marvella, it’s okay or anything.” His cold eyes fixed on Gordon’s. “Cuz it’s not. It’s really, really not.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, horrified.
“Like I said, I’m just the messenger.”
“I gave her food for the dog.”
“That’s what she said, but that Jada, she’s got more stories. Like, she says you’re always tryna give her things.” Feaster’s eyes narrowed. “Just don’t try giving her that thing. Okay?”
“Hey, wait up!” Jada called the next morning. He walked faster. He didn’t want Marvella Fossum to come screaming out her front door. “Wait! I gotta tell you something!” The girl ran after him. “Guess what today is,” she said, catching up. Her quick smile had a glare to it. Like light in a dingy room, it made her young face seem haggard and gray.
“I don’t know,” he said, relieved to be turning the corner. “What day is it?”
“My birthday!” That’s why she was going to school early. To tell all her friends, she said in that glass-bright, too easily shattered voice that was held together by lies and hope. He thought of Rodney Swift, whose high-pitched, breathless tales of wealth, fame, and thousands of sex partners ringing through the night only brought him threats and kidney punches the next day. No matter how they bruised and bloodied him, nothing could ever make Rodney sad. His irrational joy only seemed to thrive on the abuse.
“Happy birthday. How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Well, that’s a good age, thirteen.” He didn’t remind her that she’d told him a few weeks ago she was thirteen.
“How come?”
He tried to think why. “Well, now you’re a teenager. That’s a big step.”
“Yeah, but I still can’t do anything.”
“What do you want to do?”
When they got to the drugstore, she scurried around grabbing handfuls of scratch tickets from the sidewalk. She peered closely at each one, discarding them as she talked. “Like go in there and buy my own cigarettes. Jeez, one more spade and I’d have a free one,” she said with the next toss.
“You smoke?”
“Yeah, sometimes. But now I gotta buy them from Thurm.”
“Thurman? He sells cigarettes?”
“Yeah, in the parking lot, but not whole packs. Just like fifty cents a butt. I used to sneak them off my mother, but I can’t now. She keeps them on her all the time. Bummer!” She threw the last card into the gutter. “There was this guy once, he won a million bucks off a card he found. He just picked it up and next thing you know he’s got like a chauffeur and a butler and this big mansion with a heated pool.”
“Really?” He wondered if Thurman was stealing the cigarettes from the Market.
“Yeah. And a stretch limo and his own jet.”
“He certainly was lucky.”
“Yeah, like me. I’m lucky. I’m wicked lucky.”
“You win things?”
“Yeah! I win stuff all the time. Like Leonardo. I won him.”
“Where? Where’d you win him?”
“From a pet shop! Where the hell do you think?” She laughed. “They had this humongous jar in the window. It had like all these . . . these dog-bone biscuit things in it and the person that guessed how many won. Every day I went by that window and I couldn’t figure it out, and then one day I’m walking by, and all of a sudden my brain goes—9,834 dog bones. And guess what? That was it! The exact right number. I couldn’t believe it!”
“Good-bye now,” he said when they came to the Market. The new line was being delivered today. PREMIUM GOURMET COMESTIBLES, read the gilt-edged black lettering on the door of a small red van in front.