Family Law by Gin Phillips (phonics reading books .txt) 📕

was. The truck backed into the road and sped away, but Tina and I kept wondering—What if we hadn’t gotten inside? What then?

I thought of my mother. Anyone could be out at this time of night, she’d told me in my roller-skating days. You could be kidnapped or crammed in a van or who knows what. It had been the things she wouldn’t name that scared her.

As the light from the headlights spread across the street, I lunged behind a Jeep parked in the closest driveway. Hunching over, I balanced on the balls of my feet and told myself no one ever had to know that I’d thrown myself to the ground just because of a car coming down the street. Or maybe they would know: maybe tomorrow I’d tell everyone about how I’d been such a baby, terrified of headlights and a few giddy-up-a-oom-poppa-oom-poppa-mow-mows, and it would be hilarious, this picture of myself.

I couldn’t see anything but the Jeep, the dark glass of the taillights and the grimy rubber of the bumper. I could see light, though, spilling under the car.

The car had slowed down, and I knew they’d seen me. The music shut off.

I heard their voices. Boys. They were still in the car, and one of them was laughing. I waited for a door to open. I waited for them to get out. I waited for them to come for me. My breath caught, and I choked on nothing but air.

“I thought she—” one of them said.

“Did you—”

I couldn’t make out all the words. It was worse because I could only imagine how to fill in the gaps.

More laughing.

I peeked around the bumper. The car was stopped in the middle of the road. Surely they would pull over and park. I was no more than ten steps away, so easy to find, and it was foolish to stay here, practically trapped between the Jeep and the garage door.

I could run. If they were going to come for me, I should run, and I should scream, and someone would help me. Lucia and Evan would help me, even. But the boys were still in the car, and once I moved, they might catch me before anyone could come, or too, they might drive off and I would be running and screaming through people’s front yards for no reason and everyone would throw open their doors and see me, and that was a whole different kind of fear.

I did nothing.

I kept my head down, and my thighs started to tremble. Maybe the boys suspected I’d gone inside the house. Maybe they’d seen my shadow, but they’d thought I was a fox or a deer or something else worth spotting, and now they were sitting there, harmless, hoping for a flash of yellow eyes in the dark. A thousand things were possible, and some of them were terrible and some of them were fine, but all I could do was wait and keep quiet. Was this how my mother felt every single day?

The music came back, full volume. One of the Oak Ridge Boys singing about how his heart was on fire.

The engine revved, and the driver hit the gas hard enough that the tires squealed. Then the driveway went dark again, and they were gone.

I stayed where I was for a little while. Breathing. When I stood, I watched the road. They had probably been my age, I told myself. The worst they would have done was to make some comment about my butt. They’d have asked if I wanted to go for a ride and they’d have hooted at me when I said no.

That’s what would have happened.

The streets were empty again. I was steps away from Lucia’s. Now the idea of peering through the glass and seeing her there, sunk into the couch, seemed so necessary that I was sure I would find that exact scene. I would tell her what happened, and she would bring me a ginger ale.

I didn’t get to the window. I didn’t get to the carport. I only got as far as the edge of the yard, which is when I saw the for sale sign.

I stared at it for longer than I should have, as if there could be some explanation other than that Lucia and Evan were going to move. The sign said for sale, not sold, but there wasn’t much difference. She was leaving. She would leave and I would have no idea where she was going, and she would be gone.

Lucia was not longing for me to knock on her door. She was, actually, arranging it so I would never knock on her door again.

Lucia

I.

As usual during the first rounds of March Madness, every chair and stool in Rhonda’s was filled. Glass bowls of peanuts and pretzels lined the bar. The lights were low and the smoke was heavy. The TV screens flashed above the liquor shelves, reflecting off the gloss of the bar. It was a massive slab of blond and dark wood, which conveniently matched beer and pretzels almost exactly.

“Settle down,” said Evan, raising his palms to the television. “Still plenty of time.”

Lucia didn’t agree. It was looking like Ohio State was going to crash and burn in the first round, and James Madison was miraculously going to head to the Sweet Sixteen.

“They need bigger TVs,” Evan said. “You can’t hear worth a damn in here. Yes! Did you see that? Did you see it?”

Clark Kellogg had hit a shot, but it was surely too little, too late. Neither he nor the other guy—Campbell—showed any signs of getting hot, and it was the fourth quarter.

“I did,” Lucia said. “I’m sitting right here next to you. And you can never hear anything in Rhonda’s.”

Evan was doing that thing he did with his palms, rubbing them against the bar, back and forth. Lucia supposed he found it soothing, but she had seen the rags that the bartender