Page 1 of Stupid Dirty

Chapter One

Iknow I should be used to this, but I’m still so fucking pissed that I nearly rip the door off its hinges when I open it.

Which would be perfect. Because this trailer is falling apart as it is, and I’ll be the one who has to fix it.

“Mom! Get your ass out here!”

I slam the plywood door behind me, but the crappy bolt doesn’t catch, and it swings open again, letting more of the oppressive August heat in. Anger squeezes my chest and creeps up my throat until I have to stop in the doorway to take a deep breath, reining in the urge to cause as much destruction as possible.

I will not turn into my father.

Blowing a breath out slowly, I turn around and grab the cracked, ill-fitting door, closing it firmly but not slamming it. My heart is still hammering in my chest, but I feel under control enough not to cause property damage. I’m still holding on to my sister’s hunting bow, and my fingers are clenched so tightly thatit’s hard to let go. I have to relax them one by one before I can set it down on the kitchen counter and move deeper into the house.

‘House’. Trailer.

Whatever.

My shithead father, as his last act before abandoning this family for good, scavenged up two half-rotten double-wides, cut out the usable parts and basically glued them together. So the layout doesn’t make any sense, and it looks like Frankenstein fucked a Winnebago and this is their spawn, but it’s better than nothing.

The front door opens directly into the little corner that functions as a kitchen, and then a narrow hallway covered in uneven, water-stained linoleum leads me past the bedrooms and bathroom. I’ve spent every one of my twenty-two years living in this ugly beast, and each dip in the floorboards or sag in the ceiling feels like it’s mapped out in my DNA. The hallway takes me to the open space at the back, which has a couch and a TV and everything else a living room should have, but because there aren’t enough rooms for everyone, it’s also where my mom sleeps.

Or, in this case, passes out.

“Mom!”

Thank fuck the girls are at school, so there’s no reason to tamp down on my anger. I’m bellowing, but she doesn’t flinch. The trace of white powder on the coffee table tells me everything I need to know. Mom has been doing well lately. She’s stuck to her softer vices like booze and nicotine, but it looks like now we’re back to theft and oxy and all that progress is in the past.

Judging from the peaceful expression on her face, she’s still high enough to be blissfully numb to the guilt of her shitty actions.

Not on my watch.

It seems harsh, but this is about the thousandth time this has happened, and I’m over it. My job pays the bills around here because she’s burned bridges with nearly everyone in this town. And now the prize money I won from the race last weekend is in the pocket of the pawnshop owner instead of buying groceries, because Maddi woke me up this morning sobbing when she realized her bow was missing, along with our mother.

Most people would think thirteen is young for a hunting bow to be your prized possession. Hunting is still a way of life in rural areas like ours, though. Not to mention, she’s kicking ass in the archery competitions at school.

Our trailer is set on the back corner of a plot of woodland that used to belong to my nana. When she sold it to move into a nursing home, her only requirement was that the rancher who bought it keep renting the space to us for pennies on the dollar. Which makes it affordable, thank fuck, but also means we’re miles from anywhere and my sisters have grown up with a lot more bow hunting and wood chopping than other kids their age.

Either way, thirteen years old is definitely too young for her first assumption to be that her mom stole from her, and for that assumption to be correct. I remember the feeling, and it’s something I’ve spent my entire life trying to protect my little sisters from.

Sitting on the table, there’s an old gallon jug of water, still two-thirds full. Without stopping to second-guess myself, I pick it up, flip off the cap and turn it upside down over her head.

It doesn’t take long before she’s awake and sputtering under the stream, scrabbling away from me until her ass hits the floor. “Mother of fuck!” she shrieks, pushing wet, dark hair out of her face and shooting me a glare.

I’d be more inclined to feel bad about it if my dad hadn’t been the one to teach me that little trick. Before he skipped town, he used to love waking me up with a bucket of water to the facewhile he filmed it on their shitty digital camera and laughed his ass off. Mom was always too high to stop him, I guess. At least the water I used wasn’t ice cold.

I point at her, looking her in the eye so she knows I am absolutely not fucking around right now.

“Get up. Get dressed, and go beg for your shifts back at the Dollar Tree. I just spent my entire prize from last weekend getting back Maddi’s bow, and you’re paying me back this time. She saved all year to get that bow, and she doesn’t have much longer to practice if she wants to qualify for state finals this year. Do you want your daughters to have a better life than you? Or do you want them to be stuck here with you and me in this shitty trailer, rotting away?”

She groans and rubs her hand over her face. It takes her a while to pull herself back up onto the sagging couch that’s such an ugly shade of brown it could only have been made in the seventies. A lifetime of poor choices and worse nutrition has left her body much smaller than her personality, but she still looks tough: all short, sharp lines with sun-damaged skin drawn tightly over bony edges. But today, something about her looks frail.

For a second, I’m about to cave, and let her off the hook again. But I can’t. She’s got kids to feed.

“Get. Up.”

My arms are crossed over my chest as I take a deep breath. I’m waiting for the screaming to start, because my mother has never been one to back down from a fight. Yelling is our primary form of communication around here, and normally I don’t care. But sometimes when shit gets serious like this, she has a way of making me feel like I’m eight years old and four feet tall again, and I can’t afford to back down right now.

Of course, then she starts to cry.

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