Hello Girls by Brittany Cavallaro

Author:Brittany Cavallaro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

One Thousand Dollars and Twelve Cents, a Box of Donuts, and an Argument

Lucille woke up from the kind of sweaty, sour-mouthed sleep that she’d tried, over the years, to avoid at all costs. It wasn’t a hangover, at least not the way they looked in the movies—it was a kind of slowness, a forced reckoning. The Cliffside. It was always the Cliffside’s fault. She reached out to the bedside table for the glass of water she’d left there and frowned when she couldn’t find it. A rookie mistake. She had to quiet the buzzing in her head before AP Calc, or Mr. Erwin would give her the stink-eye.

Gently, Lucille pushed herself up on her elbows, her head humming with static. Or was it the white noise machine next to the bed? It sounded like a dentist’s drill in the background. She blinked at the painting over the television: a child’s teddy bear, the ribbon around its neck unwinding. In the corner, a puppy waited to disembowel it.

Where the fuck was she?

All at once, Lucille was devastatingly awake. The sheets were scratchy against her legs and the bathroom door was open to its murky, damp insides, and they had maybe killed someone last night and definitely picked up a drifter and carried him across state lines in their stolen convertible and Winona was not there.

Winona, the only responsibility she hadn’t given—wouldn’t give up.

Lucille wasn’t someone who panicked. Today was no exception. She pulled on sweatpants, a tank top. Twisted her hair into a topknot, washed her face, filled her water bottle and took it over to the window. These were important things to do: she was priming her mind like the pump for a well, or like a gymnast stretching out her legs.

It hadn’t escaped Lucille that Silas was gone too, and that his bed hadn’t been slept in at all. That baby-faced piece of shit gangster, Lucille thought, twisting the top of her water bottle with shaking fingers. The night before, she had slept pretzeled up next to Winona in their ridiculous two-seater convertible, jerking awake every few minutes before falling back down into sleep. She’d caught only a few words: jail, prom, arson, Stormy. Winona always using her father’s first name like some kind of talisman, like naming the demon stripped it of its power.

Silas who had run off with Winona like she was a machine he could strip and sell for parts.

With a single furious hand, Lucille pushed the slatted blinds across the window and let the light come streaming in. This motel, wherever they were—the only way it was really different from the Cliffside was that the doors for each room faced the parking lot.

Their space was empty, the ROOM SEVEN PARKING ONLY sign flaking away on the asphalt.

Lucille squinted. Was it flaking?

Or was there something in pieces, scattered across the words?

She shoved her feet into her slide-ons and slammed outside, the front door thudding back against the still-open dead bolt. It was shockingly hot outside, and

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