Night Beast by Ruth Joffre

Author:Ruth Joffre [Joffre, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802146274
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

I’M UNARMED

Andie was my only friend in Prospect, Oregon. It was a small town with four churches and six hundred residents in just a few square miles. When my mother and I arrived, it was six o’clock in the morning, and my uncle wasn’t expecting us. He hadn’t seen my mother in years—not since he got wasted at her wedding and told her marrying my father was a mistake—but he wasn’t surprised to hear that she’d left him and that now we had nowhere else to go. My uncle agreed to help us out until we got back on our feet. He ordered my cousin to make the bottom bunk, because we’d have to share a bedroom. I knew then that I was in trouble: his room was small, cold, and male. There was no light, no moon. I wouldn’t be able to see his hand if he reached for me, but for the first week there was no threat of that. He was too scared to try anything, always pausing at the slightest sound. In his moments of ecstasy I wanted to shout, “Your mother hates you! All the way from Heaven.”

My only respite from this was Andie. On the first day of school, we ran into each other in the halls, and though I was new in town and my cousin gave her a look that could’ve cut a lemon, she found me after our last class and asked if I wanted to hang out. I’d just spent the day avoiding my cousin’s friends, who had taken to pinching their noses whenever they passed and saying P.U. as if they could smell the street on me, so naturally I hesitated, glancing all around in case it was a trap. When I confirmed that no one was watching us, I leaned in close and said, “What do you know about fortifications?”

We circled back to Andie’s for provisions, double-checking to make sure her father’s dark green truck wasn’t in the drive. She’d promised sodas, chips, and fruit, and if not for her mother, I think she would’ve taken the whole fridge. When she ran out of the house, she was carrying a BB gun and her backpack. A voice said, “Andrea, when will you be back? I’d like to know where you’re going.” But Andie just kept running. She didn’t stop until she turned the corner and had to double back. “That’s my mother,” she panted, as she fell in beside me. Her cheeks were flushed, and she slung the gun over her shoulders like a yoke. “I’ll get the third degree when I get back.”

I shrugged. We both did. “Why do you have that gun?”

“Oh this? It just shoots BBs.” Her father had given it to her for Christmas, and she’d been practicing ever since, getting good with it. “I’m practically the best shot in this county,” she said, shrugging like it was nothing. On our afternoons out, Andie always brought her BB gun with her. She’d shoot at snakes, rabbits, once or twice into the river.

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