Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night by Lisa Morton and Eric J. Guignard Page A

I’ll tell the gang.”
    He left.
    Mom dropped. Or at least she
dropped as far as the chain would let her. I made sure CJ was gone, then knelt
by her. “I’m sorry, Joey, I can’t do this…”
    “You’ve got to.” I took her
hands and pulled her back up. “Just until I can figure out how to get us out of
here.”
    When she looked at me, her eyes
were haunted. “Did CJ kill Marge?”
    “No. Debbie did.” That was
almost true. I didn’t mention that CJ was probably the one who’d thought of the
oh-so-clever way to dispose of Marge’s leftovers.
    “I don’t understand…what’s
happened here?”
    “I don’t know, Mom. We just
need to focus on our own stuff right now. And that means doing what CJ wants
for at least tonight.”
    Mom glanced at the bloody pool
the filet had left on the floor. “I can’t, Joey…”
    I grasped her hands as hard as
I could and saw her wince. “ You have to .”
    She didn’t nod…but she opened
the refrigerator, reached in, took a gulp from a bottle of vodka, pulled out a
bag of onions, and started chopping.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 17
     
     
     
    Three hours later, CJ had Larry and
two other boys I barely knew seated around our big redwood table in the
backyard. I was playing waitress, bringing the food out to them, keeping them
supplied with drink. They’d shown up with a couple of crates of beer; I didn’t
ask where they’d found them.
    They laid into Mom’s cooking
with relish. There’d been half a dozen slabs of meat in the bag, and Mom and I
had turned ourselves to stone and cooked them up.
    “God damn , CJ, but your
mom can cook,” Larry said around a mouthful of rare steak.
    I was just setting down the
last of the cooked meat when CJ fixed an eye on me and said, “There’s only one
thing wrong with this dinner: little sis isn’t joining us.”
    The boys all laughed and
agreed.
    I nearly puked.
    “I ate already,” I said. It was
a bad lie, and CJ saw through it.
    “Oh, c’mon, there’s always room
for a little housewife !” His audience roared.
    CJ held out a half-finished
plate to me. He jabbed a fork in a piece the size of a Ping-Pong ball and put
it up to my mouth. The rest stared, waiting.
    Larry leaned forward. A trickle
of saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth. “Hey, CJ, I’ll give ya twenty
bucks for your sister.”
    CJ snickered. “She’s twelve ,
man.”
    Larry’s eyes crawled down over
my body. “I know.”
    I was going to end up as
Larry’s dessert if I didn’t do something, so I grabbed the fork CJ held up and
bit into the speared portion.
    I won’t tell you what it tasted
like or what the texture was, because I made a deal with myself as I chewed
that I would never think about those things. Ever.
    Instead I chewed and swallowed
and smiled. “Not bad. A little heavy on the tobacco for my taste.”
    They laughed again, and CJ
clapped me on the back as he handed me the plate. “You’re all right, kid. Here,
you can have the rest.”
    He turned back to the guys, already
forgetting me. I took the plate and walked back into the house. I forced myself
to walk slowly and steadily, one foot in front of the other, up for the step
that led into the house, right around the corner of the door. I set the plate
down on the kitchen counter by the sink.
    I ran into the bathroom.
    I waited, but I didn’t vomit. I
even wanted to. I worried that something was wrong with me if I didn’t. My
stomach roiled, but the food stayed down.
    An hour later, CJ and his
buddies were all passed out in the backyard, crumpled beer cans in the grass
around them. I deliberately dropped a heavy pan in the kitchen to see if it
would wake them. It didn’t.
    Mom watched as I went through
the kitchen cabinets until I found what I wanted: her heavy wooden rolling pin.
It was solid enough that I had a hard time holding it up long. It was what I
needed.
    “What are you doing?” Mom
hissed at me.
    “I’m going to get the keys to
that lock,” I told her, nodding