Ava’s frown was reactionary and instant. She was going into the fourth grade in two weeks, and every time she thought about it, her stomach tightened with dread. “No,” she said into her juice. “I hate school.”
Maggie’s lips pressed together; the little grooves around her mouth deepened. “But baby, you love school.”
She loved reading, and writing, and art, and talking about weather patterns and the migration habits of hummingbirds. But last year, in the third grade, she’d learned there was a big difference between liking education, and liking school.
“Not anymore.”
“Ava.” Maggie pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead, her eyes bright with worry. “You have to forget about what happened. Just throw it away and keep going.”
But Ava knew she could throw away all she wanted, and it would keep coming, the ridicule, and would worsen with time and age.
Back in the spring, just days before the big end of year party, the Knoxville Lean Dogs returned home from a two-week run up the east coast. They’d gone to Maine and back, making a delivery that Ava had been told she “didn’t need to know about.” It was something that had caused her dad to sit up nights, studying maps and talking about speed traps and police checkpoints with Hound and James. Whatever they were running, they hadn’t wanted to meet with any sort of law enforcement. Ava’s childhood was punctuated by bizarre games of Cops and Robbers, ones in which it was the unlucky child chosen to play the cop.
When she walked out of school that afternoon, it hadn’t been her mother’s battleship Cadillac Seville waiting at the curb, but Ghost on his Harley, in full Dogs regalia, flying his colors and wearing his fingerless leather gloves. In sheer delight, she’d squealed and run to him, leaping into his arms when he knelt to catch her. She’d ridden home on the back of his bike that day, thrilled and oblivious.
The next day, Mason Stephens had stopped her outside the cafeteria. He’d stood with his two best friends, Carter Michaels and Beau Ericson, his auburn hair parted on the side and arranged just so, his Ralph Lauren clothes spotless. Beau had been picking at a scab on his knee; Carter had been staring at the floor, shifting his weight from foot to foot, giving Ava a nice view of the top of his blonde head. But Mason’s eyes had been laser-focused on her.
“Teague,” he said in that nasal voice of his she hated. It was a whiny, sucking-up-to-teacher voice. “Was that you leaving school on a motorcycle yesterday?”
Every internal alarm she possessed went off. Danger. Danger. But she said, “Yeah. That was my daddy.”
Mason had smiled, a nasty smile. “Your ‘daddy’? He’s one of those Lean Dogs?”
Pride – oh, she was a proud girl, like her mama, and that always got her in trouble – swelled in her voice as she said, “He’s the vice president.”
Mason’s smile had grown nastier. “My daddy told me all about your daddy and his dogs. They’re trash. They sell drugs and guns and get people killed. When Dad wins the governor race, he says he’s gonna take all your dirty Dogs to the pound.” He’d laughed, delighted with the joke.
Mason’s father, Mason Stephens Sr., had plastered his face on every bench and bus stop canopy in the city, his winning, orthodontic smile plying the citizens of Knoxville for a vote in the fall. Politics was an area of study in which Ava had little interest; her family ignored it. Most of the Dogs, she knew, weren’t able to vote, thanks to a criminal record.
Mason’s words, so unexpected, had ripped across her skin, leaving a physical pain behind. She gasped. Stammering, feeling incapable, she said, “They’re – they’re not dirty.”
“Yeah they are. And you are too. Biker whore. That’s what Mom says – all you women who run with those Dogs are biker whores.”
At age eight, she was called a whore for the first time in her life. She would learn the hard way that it was far from the last time. It was also the first time the club caused her pain. Again, not the last.
By the time the end of year party arrived, Mason, a good politician like his father, had amassed a contingent of followers who joined together in chanting “no more biker whore” on her last day of school. Sobbing, she’d sought refuge in the girls’ room. Her mother had been called, and when Maggie arrived, Ava had heard her shouting all the way down the hall. With a volley of curses and threats, Maggie had let the principal and vice principal, and anyone else in hearing, know that she would sue “all their asses” if they allowed her “sweet girl” to be taunted and humiliated. A photo of the chief of police escorting Maggie to her car had made the next morning’s paper.
On the patio at Stella’s, Ava said, “Do I have to go, Mom? Can’t you home school me?”
Maggie’s smile was sad, and full of regret. “I wish I could, baby, but I’m not as smart as you. I don’t think I could teach you anything.”
“But they have manuals,” Ava said. “And work books. You could learn. Mom, you could–”
Maggie shook her head. “The world is a mean, scary place most of the time. Trust me, I know that. But if I let you hide from it…that’s not helping you. You’ll have to learn to live with bastards like Mason.”
Ava loved the way her parents didn’t baby talk her; they cursed and looked her straight in the eye and treated her like an adult. But in this moment, she wanted to be bundled up like the child she was and told she could seek shelter at home, away from the mean, scary world she wasn’t sure she wanted to be a part of anymore.
“It isn’t just Mason,” she said. “It’s everyone.”
“Well, that’s not true, because Leah’s always in your corner.”
One friend was plenty, but wouldn’t hold up against the onslaught of shame. How long would it be, Ava wondered, before Leah grew too embarrassed to be associated with her and drifted away to join the girls who weren’t called whores?
Their food arrived on heavy white plates and Julian set it before them with a flourish and the assurance that it would be heaven on their tongues. Stella had made for them berries in heavy cream, butter-slathered toast on her freshly made bread, and a hearty casserole of Italian sausage, shaved potatoes and sautéed peppers and onions.
Ava spooned sausage onto her toast and nibbled at the edge.
“You’re scowling,” Maggie said.
