Page 2 of Stupid Dirty

Not big, dramatic sobs, like I’ve seen her do when she’s trying to get her way. This is the quiet crying, when she actually feels like shit.

“I’m sorry, Cade.” Her voice cracks, and she sniffs and sobs between the words. “I wanted to get the girls some stuff for the new school year, and I thought I had enough to cover it, but then the check bounced and they were going to take me back to County if I didn’t pay them back. I didn’t know what else to do. I was gonna find the money to get it back before it got sold, I swear.”

There’s nothing I can do but sigh. Today wasn’t supposed to be a real feelings day.

Anger is like an old friend that always has my back. I can do anger in my sleep. Anger keeps me safe. Other emotions are dangerous, and I don’t have the bandwidth for them right now. But my mother is the one person who’s been consistent in my life, even if it’s consistently shitty, and she always knows how to get under my skin.

Crouching down in front of her, the last of my rage dissipates and leaves a profound sense of exhaustion in its wake. I put myself at eye level with her where she’s huddled on the couch, before reaching out to touch her face and wipe away some of the snot and tears.

I swear, sometimes the moments where she tries to be a mom, but does it in the most chaotic way possible, are harder than all the other shit. It’s too much of a tease.

“We’ve talked about this. You have to tell me first, and I’ll figure something out. You can’t keep taking away the girls’ stuff, even if you are getting it back. They’re too young to get it. Tell me first, okay? No more breaking into the girls’ room. Promise me.”

I hate how soft my voice is right now. But she’s my mom. She’ll never win any parenting awards, but she protected me from a lot when my dad was still around, fiercely, when she could. And nomatter how much of a wreck things were, she always made me feel loved.

That counts for something.

She nods at me, still looking kind of pitiful.

“I promise. I just wanted to take care of it myself, for once.”

Sighing one more time, I release the last of my anger. “And spare change goes on food, not fucking oxy, okay?”

Suddenly, the carpet is really interesting to her. I decide that’s enough fighting for one day, so I kiss her on the forehead and let her go back to sleep.

My mom had just about the shittiest childhood a person can have. The kind of childhood that gets written about inTime magazine articles or made intoLifetimemovies so the middle class can get their vicarious thrills over the woes of American poverty. And my dad didn’t keep us all chained in the basement or anything, but he was no prize, either.

She’s been through a lot, and she’s never stopped trying to take care of us. I owe her for that, in spite of all this shit.

I wander back into the kitchen, running my hand through my hair and taking deep, slow breaths to get my frustration under control. My hair is thick, dark and curly enough to always look messy, so I shave the sides to keep it at least a little under control, but it’s too long right now and falling in my eyes. My best friend Wish calls it my “fuckboy haircut”, which annoys the shit out of me. I’m tempted to shave it all off for the thousandth time.

But I know I won’t. I like it when girls tell me I look like a model. It’s not like I’m even getting them into bed, it’s just a nice little ego boost once in a while. I have almost no worldly possessions apart from this trailer, my decrepit old truck, and my dirt bike, so I let myself cling to my vanity more than I should. Sue me.

A quick survey of the kitchen shows a depressing lack of food in the fridge, and it’s almost the end of the month, which means bills. EMTs in this county get a paycheck every other week because we’re on hourly. I got paid three days ago, so I won’t get anything else for a week and a half, and my prize money is already drained.

One day, I’ll be able to race because I want to, and not have to care about the win. I love everything about it, from the smell of fresh earth mixed with gasoline to the punch of an engine starting up beneath me. I love feeling like I’m flying. But until the girls grow up or mom gets her act together, the money is always going to come first.

There’s another race this weekend. I hadn’t been planning on going, because Jasper County is four hours away, which means I’ll need to crash with someone and come back the next day. I already leave the girls alone with Mom overnight when I go to my actual job. I try not to add to it for motocross. But it looks like this time I don’t have a choice.

I’ll have to enter, and winning that prize money isn’t going to be optional.

Chapter Two

The water stain on the ceiling over my bed looks exactly like a possum. At least, I thought it did when I was a kid. I remember lying here, staring at it for hours when I couldn’t sleep, tracing all the little whorls and patterns in the flaking paint, convinced that it was a magical manifestation of the town’s namesake.

It’s been six years since we left this house, and it’s still here. I’m kind of surprised that the ceiling hasn’t collapsed yet, to be honest. The house was already sagging with neglect when Dad sold all our furniture and boarded up the front door, and neither of us had set foot in it until last week, when we both showed up with our tails between our legs. My motocross career was supposed to be our ticket out of this town, but it didn’t take much for that to collapse like a house of cards.

My childhood home, which was his childhood home before that, is a two-story clapboard house, sitting on a small lot of weeds that are trying to strangle the last drop of life from it, ona street of other decrepit clapboard houses on weed-choked lots, running along the edge of town.

Dad insists he didn’t sell it for sentimental reasons, but I suspect that’s bullshit. It’s because the property value has only gone down since we left. He’s hoping that one day the meth dealers will move on and it’ll be worth something to sell. I sincerely doubt it, but good for him for being optimistic.

Possum Hollow is a decaying town built around agricultural products that are becoming obsolete. It has a population of less than 2,000 and the tallest man-made structure is the Dairy Queen sign. If you want a job that’s not in a store or on a farm, you’re shit out of luck.

People aren’t exactly flocking here to buy real estate.

Personally, I think we should have taken the loss to get rid of the house and all its ghosts as soon as we left the first time. Dad never wanted to come back here, and neither did I. The air has been suffocating since the moment we stepped inside.

But here we are. It’s not like we have any other options. Dad’s fondness for ‘investment opportunities’ means we’ve never been able to keep savings for long. As soon as my license was suspended, I lost the ability to enter national races. No races means no prize money, and definitely no sponsorships. Not that I was rolling in those to begin with. That’s a cold, hard guillotine on all my sources of income, all in a matter of hours.

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