Shine - Lauren Myracle [51]
“I don’t know,” she said. “When the paper mill shut down and all those folks lost their jobs, I guess. That’s when my mama started seeing more tweakers showing up in the ER. She said the Mexicans were running it through Atlanta, and from Atlanta to here.”
“The Mexicans?” We didn’t have any Mexicans living in Black Creek. I didn’t know that I’d even seen a Mexican, period.
“I don’t want to talk about it. It’s depressing,” Bailee-Ann said.
“I know. It’s just—“
“And anything I do know, I know from my mama.” She looked at me hard.
I nodded. “Of course. Yeah.”
“Well, I guess what they were selling was crap, and then the dealers in Black Creek—down-and-out mill workers, what have you—they got the stuff from Atlanta and watered it down even more. Not watered it down, but you know.”
Yeah, I knew. They’d stepped on it by adding baby powder or something. Destiny had taught me well.
Bailee-Ann found a stray piece of yarn and pulled it repeatedly through her fingers. “It wasn’t good business, so eventually people in Black Creek learned to cook it themselves.”
“Wally,” I supplied.
Her face registered slight surprise. “Among others. Apparently, it isn’t that hard.”
“Until you blow yourself up.”
“Yeah. But until then, it’s easy money.”
“And that’s why people got into it,” I filled in. “People from here. People we might even know.”
The yarn in Bailee-Ann’s fingers grew taut. “Maybe. But like I said, this is all secondhand.”
“Must be a lot of gossip at the hospital, huh?”
“Almost as much as at church,” she said.
I laughed. It broke the tension. “I sure wish you’d come back to church, speaking of.” She rarely came these days, because her mama had Sundays off and wanted to sleep in. “Without you, I don’t have anyone to pass notes with.”
She half-smiled, perhaps remembering all the scribbling we used to do on the church bulletins. It perked her up, and she said, “Hey. Wanna go to Tommy’s and catch a movie on his flat-screen?”
I shifted. “Um, thanks for the offer, but movies aren’t really my thing.”
Her half-smile turned into something worse: a false smile. “Of course they aren’t,” she said. “Silly me, whatever was I thinking?” She wound the piece of yarn into a neat bundle, placed it on the coffee table, and said, “Well, it was nice chatting. Thanks for stopping by.”
I felt my cheeks heat up. I got awkwardly to my feet.
“Why did you stop by?”
“To talk about Patrick.”
She raised her eyebrows, wanting more.
“I’m trying to make sense of it, that’s all. And I guess I was just wondering . . .”
“Spit it out, Cat,” she said dryly. “I promise I won’t take it the wrong way.”
I splayed my feet so that my weight was on their outside edges. I stared down at them and said, “Beef said he drove y’all home. On Saturday night.”
“And?”
“He said he dropped Tommy off first, with Dupree. Is that true?”
“Yeah. And?”
“So Tommy was home by one thirty.”
“Oh my God,” Bailee-Ann said, blinking her patchy eyelashes. “Is that what this is about? Seriously?”
Adopting a dumb blond voice, she said, “Tommy was home by one thirty, and I was home by one forty-five. Beef made me feel like a slut when I kissed him, because he pushed me away and said I smelled like a brewery. But he made sure my truck was back in my driveway by the time I woke up the next morning. He even washed it for me. Wasn’t that sweet?”
“If you say so,” I said. I hesitated. “Are you and Beef doing okay?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”
Well, let’s see. Because he quit school, and because he was possibly selling and/or using meth. Most of all because of the “slut” reference Bailee-Ann threw into her recitation.
“No reason,” I said. Anyway, Bailee-Ann didn’t say Beef actually called her that, just that he made her feel like that.
“Don’t listen to me,” Bailee-Ann said. “I’m just weird. I’m sure Beef didn’t kiss me because Patrick and your brother were waiting in the truck.”
“Uh, okay.”
“He hadn’t dropped them off yet. It would have been gross to make out in front of them. Plus, Beef was mad at them in a big way. That’s why—“
She broke off, zipping her lips