With seven kids, I’d heard my parents gripe many times about having to fill out scholarship forms for this or that. But they’d always done it. “How’d it go?”
She shrugged. “I mean…I’m pretty good at carrying water bottles, and I can operate that scoreboard like a boss, but Chuck is gonna have to be the one to teach them to do fancy stuff like hold a bat or catch a ball.”
I chuckled. “Whatever. They’re lucky to have you.” Opening my mouth, I made a motion for her to throw a piece of popcorn in the air. She did, and I caught it, snapping my jaw shut before grinning in victory.
Dios, the microwave stuff tasted like shit.
It was no shock to realize I’d spent my morning sleeping off a massive hangover while Cori had been volunteering. I admired that she seemed to have different priorities than everyone else but still knew how to get along in the neighborhood. Her red hair made her stand out—no help for that—but she did her best not to attract attention. She knew how to avoid a beatdown from other girls in our school by staying off their radars. Yet, somehow, in keeping herself safe, she hadn’t grown hard.
I worried about that. It was dangerous for her to have such a big heart.
But not so big it stopped her from throwing a piece of popcorn at my eye.
“Ouch!” I put my hand to my chest and would have fallen over dramatically, except there was no room to do so.
With only two bedrooms in the double-wide, Johnny slept on the couch. His things were everywhere. I flicked a pair of boxers off a chair so Cori and I could sit down at the tiny round table that passed for a dining area.
“Sorry it’s messy,” Cori said, closing some schoolbooks and stuffing them in her backpack.
“It's fine. I know Johnny is basically a tornado.” I winked, and her cheeks turned red again.
An ear-splitting sound wafted through the hallway. At first, I thoughtBastardohad gone into heat and prowled too far from our house. But it wasn’t my demented cat.
Cori groaned as her brother’s voice rose over the noise of the shower. “Is he…singing Beyoncé?” She put her face in her hands as Johnny botched a high note. “Why is he such a weirdo?”
I laughed. “And tone deaf.”
“And loud.”
We listened, silently consoling one another when Johnny launched into Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” As we finished off the popcorn, my eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door at the back of the trailer.
“Your mom been around?”
Cori flicked the zipper on her backpack and shook her head slowly. “Nope. She might have come by while we were in school, but I haven’t seen her in a few days. She has afriendshe’s been staying with lately.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
It was an open secret that the Raneys’ mom, Jill, was an addict who tricked when she needed to. Johnny never tried to hide it. He usually played it off like it was hilarious, but I knew he and his sister worried about her. Jill had gotten clean and taken decent care of her kids plenty of times over the years. She just couldn’t seem to make it stick. At least Cori was close to Rosa, not to mention my parents, so she had other people if she needed someone.
And Johnny had me, Cruz, and Eliazar. We were boys. Brothers for life.
“What are you reading these days?” I attempted to change the subject.
Cori rolled her eyes. “Do you really want to hear? Or are you just asking because you know I don’t want to talk about my mom?”
Now that she asked, I realized I wanted to hear. “I like it when you talk to me about what you’re reading. It’s hard for me…the words…you know. But I like it when you tell me.”
She still didn’t seem too sure. “Do you want to know what I’m reading in school or for fun?”
Fuck. This girl. She readfor fun. “Both?”
Cori nodded. “Well, for school, my honors class is readingGreat Expectations. I wish I liked it a bit more, but we just started, so maybe it’ll pick up.” She glanced downward. “For fun…don’t laugh at me, okay?” I made thecross my heartgesture with my finger. “I guess you’d call it a…small-town romance. With cowboys and stuff…” She took a breath before adding quickly, “It’s not like porn or anything. Not even close. I got it in the teen section at the library. But, yeah, it’s, um, it’s…good.”
I didn’t laugh as she stammered through her description—I’d crossed my heart after all—but I did smile and bite my lip.
We lived in a neighborhood where couples regularly shouted at each other in the streets, and you had to kick over a couple of meth heads to lock your bike at 7-Eleven, so of course Cori was reading about small-town cowboys.
