To add insult to her injury, her uncle hadn’t been able to pick her up from school that Friday. To her, there was nothing as humiliating as walking along the side of a road. People had no choice but to stare at her as she went past, and she could almost hear what they were all thinking. “I wonder what happened to her. Why does she walk so funny? Why is she wearing jeans when it’s one hundred degrees outside?” She could see their curious stares as they drove past, see them forming the judgements in their heads.
She kept her head down as she walked, her eyes on the hot, rough pavement of the shoulder. Her pack began to pull on her back, weighed down with new books, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. A red car roared past, honking as it went, but she didn’t give them the satisfaction of her looking up.
“Hey, Ellie!” a voice called out from behind her. She stopped and turned, her blonde hair swirling around her face.
It was Camden McQueen, her only friend in this godforsaken town. She smiled as he trotted up to her, his figure tall and dark against the stark desert landscape.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked, his voice quietly hopeful against the sound of the cars. Even though he looked deeply disturbed with his long black hair, ghost-white face, thick glasses, and lips painted the color of tar, he was grinning at her, causing dimples to pop out on his gaunt cheeks. Looking contradictory was his game.
“If you want,” she said, sounding as blasé as possible. The truth was, she was thrilled. Not that she liked Camden in that way, after all he was her only friend and she wanted to keep it like that, but when he wasn’t in the deep boughs of manic depression, she enjoyed his company. She also felt like people never stared as much at her when she was with someone else, especially someone like Camden. He was the only person who had a worse week than she did.
“So how was your day?” he asked as they walked side by side.
“Oh you know, Vicky Besset told everyone in history class that I walk funny because I used to weigh three hundred pounds and broke my ankles. Now I hear ‘Crippled Cow’ everywhere I go.” The girl said all this as breezily as possible, trying hard to hide the shame and embarrassment that was ripping her apart. It was better to laugh than cry, even though only the latter would be honest.
“Ah, Vicky. The other day she told the teacher that I had a gun in my backpack. She’s a special little bitch.” And like the girl, he had that same tone in his voice, the one that refused to let the other know how badly these things were tearing them apart.
“She’s probably afraid of you,” the girl told him.
He looked straight ahead at the distant mountain, his expression darkening like a shadow. “She has a right to be afraid of me. Girls like that never get the karma they deserve. If she’s not careful, I’ll deliver my own karma.”
The girl fell silent, her mouth closing into a hard line. She’d only know Camden for a month but during that time, she was surprised at the things he’d thought and said. She had always assumed she was the only one with such righteous anger, but she was very, very wrong.
She made a mental note to never cross Camden McQueen.
Now
Talking to Camden felt surprisingly easy. I never had a problem getting along with people when I needed to, but I was sure I’d feel vibes of resentment coming off of Camden as he sipped his matcha tea and I gulped down my coffee. But I couldn’t detect anything. He was open and relaxed, his hands coming dangerously close to mine each time he lowered the cup of tea on the table. I felt hyper aware of him and his body, brought on by my own guilt and memories, I’m sure.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He placed his hand on mine—no sparks—and my eyes flew up from the empty coffee cup where I’d apparently been hypnotized by the sediment at the bottom.
“Sorry,” I said sweetly. “I’m just…”
“Overwhelmed?”
“That must be it.”
“The memories…” He trailed off. His hand was still on mine. I was conscious—too conscious—of the weight of it. What it meant. Whose hand it was. My hand was going to start twitching at any moment.
“So,” he said, removing it and wiping at his chin. He leaned back in his chair. “So then I became a tattoo artist.”
I realized I had been totally spacing out for most of our conversation. That wasn’t like me at all. Then again, he was a guy from high school, not a mark.
“Really?” I asked, and my eyes immediately went to his tattoos. Upon closer inspection I found a method in the madness of shapes and colors. Scorpions, skulls, snakes, wings, and pin-up girls all met each other on blue ocean waves. Tiny inscriptions ran throughout.
“I take it you never heard of my tat business?”
“Should I?”
He nodded at my arm where I had a band of music notes inked all around. “Where did you get that?”
“Some parlor in Mississippi,” I said, then quickly clamped my mouth shut.
But he didn’t ask me why I went back to the state I lived in before I moved here. Instead he said, “It sounds familiar. The tune.”
“Did you just hum it in your head?”
He beamed at me, looking proud over impressing me and lazy at the same time. If he could have leaned any further back in his chair, he’d be on the ground. “I told you, I play guitar. What song is it?”
“It’s nothing,” I told him. “Anyway, so you’re a tattoo artist. I’m guessing you got pretty big.”
“Big enough,” he shrugged with false modesty. “I was one of the top artists in LA. I was even on LA Ink. Ever watch that show?”
“I only watch Netflix.”
He nodded, as if he could deduce something about me from that. “Well, you weren’t missing anything. You know I’m going to keep humming that tune and eventually I’ll figure out the song. Maybe then you’ll tell me the meaning.”
I frowned at him. “I think you overestimate your skills of persuasion.”
“I got you to sit down and have coffee with me when you were ready to bolt out the door.”
Yes, well it helps that you’re hot, I thought. “So what are you doing here if your business is in LA? Visiting the ‘rents?”
From the way his eyes shifted—changed—I could have sworn a cloud passed over the sun, putting the whole shop in shadow. But it was only in his eyes and it disappeared as soon as he smiled.
“No. Not my parents. Though they still live here. Dad’s still the sheriff, you know.”
How could I forget? He ran my parents out of town.
“I actually have my business here. I own a tattoo shop. Sins and Needles,” he said. “It’s just coming into town from the east. Maybe you saw it? It’s in an old house with replicas of Bela Lugosi and Swamp Thing on the porch.”
Charming.
“My shop’s downstairs, I live upstairs.”
“And you make enough to live on?” Despite the proximity to LA and the facelift, Palm Valley still wasn’t a place for culture, or sub-culture as it were.
His smile went from charming to shit-eating. “I sure do. You’d be surprised how much money a tattoo shop can rake in.”
I would have found his cockiness to be off-putting, but the truth was I knew nothing about tattoo parlors. All the ones I’d been to looked half-dead, with an artist who looked like he’d been regulated to piercing young girls’ ears in order to keep the lights on.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at it. “In fact, I have an appointment in twenty minutes. Want to come see me in action?”
Normally, the thought of watching someone get jabbed with an inky needle would have turned me off, but there was something so earnest and open about his handsome face that I found myself nodding. There was also the whole guilt thing over how horrible I was to him in high school. And, let’s be honest here, I was curious to see how successful this guy was.
In my business, you had to stick to successful people like glue.
CHAPTER THREE
Twenty minutes later, I was pulling up Jose in front of a quirky, two-story house, Camden McQueen at my side. The drive was short and he alternated between pointing out what had changed since I left town and cooing over the car.
“How much was it, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked as the wheels crunched to a stop over loose sand.
A smile tugged at my lips as I took the keys out of the ignition. “I wouldn’t know. I borrowed it.”
He opened the door and paused, giving me a suspicious look. “Borrowed it like you used to borrow the teachers’ books before a test?”
I matched his suspicious look, wondering how much Camden knew about what I did. After my parents became fugitives, everyone in Palm Valley knew they were con artists. People used to point at me and whisper, and I figured it was either over my injury (which was usually the case) or they were placing bets whether I was in on the con. I hadn’t been, not at that time. That didn’t stop me from pulling a few tricks in high school, but they were just minor things. I’d never gotten caught—teachers just looked the other way when they saw me. I think it’s because they felt sorry for me and they were right to.
“I always gave them back,” I told him and got out of the car. The sun had somehow gotten hotter. On days like this, I hated that I couldn’t wear shorts.
He was staring at me, his hand shielded over his eyes. I’d forgotten how much he used to stare. Now it was a bit easier to take since I didn’t think he was going to pull the rug out from under me, but it was still unnerving.
I turned my attention back to the house. It was clapboard and a bright yellow with cobalt blue accents. There really were life-sized replicas of Dracula and Swamp Thing on the porch as well as an intricate wooden sign that said “Sins & Needles.” The garden was of your standard rock, brush, and cacti variety, something that lazy people like myself would fall back on. It was a hell of a lot cheaper than maintaining a lawn in the desert.
“Like what you see?” he asked, his gaze following mine. “The house was built in the 1950s. I think it used to be at the air base, then they moved it over here when the town got started up. It even has a bomb-proof bunker.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “Well, Audrey will be here soon.”
I guessed she was his client. I followed him up the path, stepping only on the stones as if the ground was lava, and had a nice view as we climbed the creaking steps to the porch. Camden sure had one hell of an ass. That was something I thought I’d never say.
He unlocked the door and flipped over the “open” sign as we stepped in. The place was kitschy as anything. It was like walking into Graceland if it was owned by Jon Waters. The walls were an obnoxious green, the suede couch was orange, and the coffee table was pink and made out of alligator skins. I had to do a double take. A 1930s scuba diving suit hung in the corner by a paper maché Speed Racer. There was a stack of shiny guitars underneath a flatscreen TV that was showing Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Asian subtitles.