LITMIR.BIZ

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were free if you were poor enough. You knew how to glue the soles of your shoes when they started to come off, how to keep an eye on the Salvation Army thrift shop. You might even know how to shoplift.

      Things like ski trips or island vacations, dinners out and hotel stays...that was foreign territory for the Dunns. Bad enough that Jess’s father couldn’t keep a job, and Mom had four prescriptions for Vicodin from four different doctors. Add to basic poverty Davey’s special programs and doctor’s appointments and new meds that might help with his outbursts but were never covered by Medicaid...there was always less than nothing.

      But Jess had almost a thousand dollars saved. Her job at Hugo’s earned her more than her father made, and when Davey needed a helmet so he wouldn’t hurt himself during a head-banging rage, she was the one who’d paid for it. The private summer program that gave him something to do—away from their parents—ditto. His clothes, bought new, also funded by her, because while she’d been able to handle the middle school mean kids who’d make fun of her wearing Faith Holland’s hand-me-downs, Davey deserved better. He already had a big strike against him; he wasn’t going to wear used clothes, too. She bought groceries and special vitamins that one doctor thought might help raise his IQ. She paid the gas bill last March when the cold just wouldn’t let go and they had no heat, and she’d paid for the repair on the crappy old Toyota that got her to and from work.

      Even so, she’d managed to stash $987.45 in the three years she’d been working at Hugo’s and, for once, she was going to spend some of it on herself. She was a senior, and college was out of the question. For one, she couldn’t leave Davey, and for two, well, she had neither the money nor the grades for a scholarship. She’d try to take a class at Wickham Community College, but her plans for the future were pretty much her plans for today. Work. Take care of Davey. Keep her parents from getting into too much trouble, and when that failed, bailing them out or paying their fines.

      But this trip...something in her rose up at the thought of it, something bright and clean. She could see another part of the country. Picture a future, magical version of herself, working in the city, living in a townhouse, holding down a great job. No parents, just her and Davey. The Mid-Atlantic. It sounded exotic, so much cooler than western New York.

      Whatever the case, she ran all the way home from the bus stop, fueled by excitement and...well, happiness.

      “Hey, honey-boy,” she said as she came into the kitchen, bending to smooch Davey’s head, then frowned. “Did you cut your own hair again?” It was practically shaved in spots, making it look like he had a disease.

      “No,” he said. “I let Sam do it.”

      “Honey, don’t. I’m the only one who cuts your hair, okay?” That little shit Sam would be getting a talk from her, and if he peed his pants in terror, that’d be fine. The boys were eleven, for God’s sake. This wasn’t innocent “let’s play barbershop” stuff. This was bullying, and it wasn’t the first time Sam had decided to pretend to be friends with Davey so he could humiliate him.

      “What’s for supper?” Davey asked.

      “I don’t know. Where’s Mom?”

      “I don’t know.” He bent over his coloring book. Still loved Pokémon.

      Jess glanced in the living room, where her father was in the recliner, watching TV. He seemed to be asleep.

      Good. She went into the bedroom she shared with Davey and closed the door quietly. Pulled the bed back from the wall, bent down and stuck her fingers in the hole.

      No tin.

      It must’ve fallen back, even if that had never happened before. She stuck her whole hand in, groped to the left, then the right.

      It wasn’t there.

      Her heart felt sticky, its ventricles and valves clogged with dread.

      On the wobbly plastic table next to his bed, Davey had a keychain with an LED light on it, in case he got scared in the middle of the night. Jess grabbed it and pointed it at the hole.

      No tin. Not to the left, not to the right. It wasn’t below, and it wasn’t above. It was just gone.

      She went back into the kitchen. “Davey, honey, did you find a metal box in our room? In a little hole behind the bed?”

      “There’s a hole? What’s in it?” he asked. “Is there mice in it?”

      “No. I had a little metal box in there.”

      “What color?”

      “Red and silver. And there was some money inside.”

      He chose a blue crayon, its paper soft and furred from use. “I don’t know where it is.” Davey didn’t know how to lie. “Will you make me supper tonight?”

      “I have to work.”

      “But Mom’s not home!”

      Jess took a deep breath. “Okay.” She glanced at the sink; the dishes from breakfast and lunch were still there, waiting to be washed. Seven empty beer cans, too.

      So she wouldn’t be going on the class trip. She’d just say she had to work. Or that Davey had a thing and she couldn’t go. No, she couldn’t blame Davey, even if he always did have an appointment and a fear of being left alone. She’d just say the trip wasn’t her thing.

      Except it was.

      Well. She probably didn’t deserve it, anyway. Selfish, to be thinking about leaving her brother for the weekend.

      She put on some water to make spaghetti and opened a can of tomato sauce. Not much nutrition, but that was about all they had. She’d have to go grocery shopping tomorrow. Then, glancing at the clock, she did the dishes as fast as she could. She had to go to work soon.

      Dad had probably taken it. Mom was a little more decent that way. Every once in a while, Jess’s grandmother would send Jolene some cash, and Mom would take Jess and Davey out for ice cream...then head for the Black Cat and drink the rest away. If she’d known about Jessica’s stash...well, it was hard to believe that she would’ve taken it all, in one fell swoop. It’d be more Mom’s style to filch it bit by bit, just enough to buy a few vodka nips and get her through the day.

      So it wasn’t Mom.

      That left Dad, and he wouldn’t admit it with a gun to the back of his head. The money might still be around, but he was too smart for Jessica to ever find it. And he’d never give her an honest answer if she asked, just feign ignorance and blink his big blue eyes...and then go out and buy a hundred lottery tickets or go to the casino. If he ever won something, he always managed to find a way to blow that, too.

      She’d bet her life he wasn’t sleeping, even though he just lay there, eyes closed.

      Sometimes, she wished he’d just die. Without him being a bad influence, such a casual drunk, maybe Mom could get sober. Without him, Davey wouldn’t have such a shitty role model. Without him, there’d be one less mouth to feed.

      A few days later, Jeremy Lyon gave her a ride home in his expensive little convertible. It was raining, so the top was up, and it was so cozy and clean and pretty in that little car that Jess wanted to live there.

      With Jeremy. She loved him. Everyone did.

      But boys like Jeremy didn’t go for Jessica Does—as in Jessica Does Anyone—class slut, poor white trash. Sure enough, Jeremy had fallen hard for Faith Holland, otherwise known as Princess Super-Cute, one of the rich girls—a little dim, it seemed to Jess, and someone who never wanted for anything.

      “So I heard you’re not going on the trip,” Jeremy said.

      “Oh, right,” Jessica answered, pretending it had slipped her mind. “I have something going on that weekend.”

      “Well, here’s the thing,” he said. “You know how I am. Incapable of having fun if my friends aren’t all with me. Curse of the only child or something. So I was thinking, if

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