The Animators by Kayla Rae Whitaker

Author:Kayla Rae Whitaker
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

THE GIRL WHO SHOWED

THE JURY HER TEETH

I wake at noon dizzy, aching from knees to neck. Mel is on the back deck with coffee and a cigarette, a years-old copy of the Faulkner Gazette in her hands. I get a look at the front page. It is my senior portrait—she’s rereading the story written when I won the Ballister scholarship.

She snaps the paper and sniffs. “You’ll be gratified to know,” she says, “that hog prices have risen two dollars per pound since your high school graduation. However, poultry rates have remained steady.”

“Mom and Kent gone?”

“Yeah. Kent made us coffee before he left. Said there are biscuits in the freezer. Nice guy.”

“I agree. Shame Shauna gives him so much shit.”

“I’m guessing your sister doesn’t change her opinions so easily.”

“That’s a kind way of putting it.”

“She loves you.” Mel hides behind the Gazette.

I shift. “Dude. This chair is really fucking hard.”

“She wouldn’t get so freaked out about the Honus Caudill thing if she didn’t. She was genuinely disturbed by that. That’s what you all were talking about while I was in Walmart. Right?”

“Was it that obvious?”

“Yep.” She rattles the front page. “Get dressed. We got places to go.”

—

I’m not supposed to drive yet, but I offer to take the car down the mountain. Mel stares straight ahead, lips pressed together as I crane my neck and steer us in reverse down the hill to the main road. “Okay,” she says. “Switch back.”

“What, no thank you?”

“Thank you for scaring the bejesus out of me. Now scootch.”

We take U.S. 60 to the interstate. A long line of kids riding ATVs cruise along the road shoulder. A few lift their arms in greeting.

I-64 west winds up and down through the hills, flattening as it passes Lexington. Two bathroom breaks and three carside jogs later, we arrive at 75’s midsouth fork-off—St. Louis in one direction, Nashville in the other, Louisville in the cradle—get turned around taking a downtown exit, then ramble out Muhammad Ali Boulevard through blocks of fried chicken joints and Chinese takeout, houses with single red bulbs by the front door. “Did we just get teleported back to Brooklyn?” Mel says.

We make a turn, find ourselves on a block of Victorians, where we stop to photograph a jockey statue that has been painted pea green. Cut through Cherokee Park, nearly collide with an SUV on a turnabout, and emerge onto a tree-lined thoroughfare. The sidewalks are populated with kids in skinny jeans and square sunglasses. “Holy hell,” Mel says. “Sorry, but if that was East New York back there, then this looks like—”

“Williamsburg. This is it. Bardstown Road.”

“Jesus. Everything’s a microcosm of New York now. It’s ruined America for us.” She rolls her window down and lights a cigarette, checking out two girls in cowboy boots at the light. “I spy with my little eye…an ironic mustache,” she mutters.

And that’s when I see it: a large, spray-painted marquee reading WEIRDO VIDEO. Above that, an R. Crumb–style fiend hovers, tongue lolling out, one eye askew, horny hand grasping at old-school VHS cassettes.

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