April worked Hector’s hair into pigtail braids. “I fucking love you,” she said and then hated herself for sounding cheesy as bullshit TV, like burnt sugar on her tongue. She’d unplug every TV, yank a million miles of cable wires, just so she could be the only one saying stupid things.
She finished the second braid and told him to take off her underwear. She bit his neck. His sweat tasted metallic, tasted like a fizzed-out sparkler stick. She tugged his hair, wanted to fuck as hard as hating her town called Alma, as hard as hating her parents and their house served with eviction and this winter and this world.
“Someone’s watching,” Hector whispered.
Behind her, some horror was playing out: Her father waving a claw hammer. Or it was her mom, who could do nothing but gawk and worry. The queen of the crumbling castle.
April pulled on her jeans. Outside the door she’d left cracked, slippers shuffled against linoleum.
“That fucking weirdo.” She pulled an inside-out Suicidal Tendencies T-shirt over her head. “She just stood there watching.”
“What should she have done? You want her to yell? Or, what, slap you?”
“Yes,” April said. “Fuck yes. That would be doing something at least.” She felt her face reddening down to the freckles on her chest.
“She’s losing her home, too,” Hector said.
“Why are you taking her side?”
She sat on the edge of her bed, back to him. She wished he’d tuck her body against his again, but not fucking this time, just staying close.
The bedroom door swung all the way open. April’s little sister tromped into the room. She wore royal blue gym shorts and a white tank top. Her hands were wrapped in fingerless red-leather fighting gloves, and she had a shovel slung over each shoulder.
“Mom says you need to help.”
“Jesus, Elise. Know how to knock?” April passed Hector his underwear. “How about everyone just comes into my room to stare.”
“She says I gotta dig, and I said, bitch, if I gotta dig so does April and her screw buddy.” Elise’s leather knuckles pushed a shovel at April.
“Why aren’t you in school?” April asked.
“School’s been over for like an hour,” Elise said. “Where were you?”
“I’m done with that place. What’s the point?” She’d skipped the last three days, and she might never go back.
“Is that Hector?” Elise’s shovel tracked down his neck to hover over his heart like an accusation.
“Who the hell else would it be?” April said.
“I’ve never met this dude. How do I know?”
April snagged the shovel out of her sister’s hand. “No one meets anyone around here. Might as well hide from the world like Mom.”
“Not me. I’m taking shotput all the way to a freeride from some sucker college. Then I’m going to fight as many bitches as I can knock out until UFC starts up a league just for me.”
“You’re a moron if you think anyone’s going to give you anything for free,” April said.
“Maybe UFC will broadcast me kicking my sister’s ass.” Elise shadow-boxed jabs at April’s stomach. She finished with a fake palm-heel aimed at her nose. April didn’t flinch. She rolled her eyes and drove a shovel spade into her bedroom floor, chipped it because it meant nothing, because soon some other assholes would own it and now, they’d own this scar too.
*
Outside, April watched Hector and Elise foolishly pang shovels against frozen dirt. Elise stabbed with rhythmic violence. This was just another workout for her. Hector hopped on his shovel and struggled to unearth more than a frozen shaving. No one had any idea where to dig. For years, their mother had buried cash. She’d slip slim rolls of tens and twenties from Dad’s wallet and into Campbell’s Soup cans and empty shampoo bottles. Then she’d bury them in the backyard. Dad used to laugh about it, told them it made Mom feel safe. Besides, Dad would say, we have plenty of money so long as houses need painting and I have hands to swing a brush. That had been true in the fat summers, when just enough paint peeled off rich people’s siding to pay the bills.
“Why isn’t Dad helping?” April asked.
“Gone-zo.” Elise shovel-stabbed the earth. “He’s working.”
Their house was sided in vinyl. April’s dad installed it himself, was proud his own house would never need paint. Her dad had bought this riverfront one-story after the flood of ’86. They couldn’t have afforded it if the basement hadn’t filled with water and mold. Dad installed a sump pump in the basement and, at the age of five, April had helped tear the moldy walls down to studs. Gutted and born again perfect, he liked to brag. This was their house. Except it wasn’t anymore.
“It won’t be enough to stop anything,” April said. “Neither will this.”
Elise’s shovel clinked and she dropped to claw out a rock. She rolled onto her back and chucked the rock at the iced-over river, then did twenty push-ups before she resumed digging.
After a few minutes of digging ice, April gave up. She tried to remember watching her mom dig in those summers before she stopped leaving the house altogether. Through the window, she’d be wearing hideous gingham dresses she sewed herself. The ankle-length skirt would be crusted in mud, her pits sweat darkened. She’d wave at her daughters spying through the window, the setting sun and river twinkling at her back. She was beautiful, sure, but beautiful didn’t stop her from getting crazier.
April javelin-threw the shovel back toward the house, where her mom now watched from the window’s yellow kitchen light. April hoped she hated herself for burying all that money. She hoped she felt like dirt for not helping, for being helpless. She was probably thinking about the move, trying to calculate how she could seal herself inside a cardboard box so she wouldn’t have to encounter the outside world. Locked in a box would never be April’s way.
Hector was still at the same spot, still digging straight down when April touched his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here before you hit a gas line.”
“I think I’ve almost found something,” he said.
“Let’s go far away, somewhere no one we know has ever been.”
“Almost there. See.” Hector’s shovel spade dredged up tiny crumbles. There was nothing to see.
“Let’s steal my dad’s truck, then fuck and drink and do whatever we want without anyone watching.”
“Or we could stay.” Hector chuffed steam breath.
“He find something?” Elise pirouetted into more shadowboxing aimed at Hector’s sunset-stretched shadow.
“Almost,” Hector said. They both stared into the nothing hole.
“Let’s go.” April tugged Hector’s jean jacket. The sun was almost down, but they could still ride into it and turn into balls of fire.
“Quit nagging him, bitch,” Elise said.
“Quit encouraging this ridiculous shit.”
“Quit bitching about every little bitch thing.”
April slid her leg behind Elise and dropped her. Elise popped back up and tried for a headlock. Then they were both on the ground, and April felt how small her tough-as-nails little sister was. Elise didn’t understand how she couldn’t win this fight, how they wouldn’t find Mom’s money, how their home was already gone. Elise was making muscles and dreaming big and half of April wanted to punch all the hope out of her twerp face and the other half wanted to hug her so close.
“There we go.” Hector dropped to his knees, reached bicep-deep into his hole. April expected another rock, but Hector lifted a can of tomato soup. He held it up against the last sunlight. It was poisonous hope. If they dug all through the night, they wouldn’t find another. Elise counted out each of the thirty-six dollars with a yell that sailed across the river. Hector and Elise clinked shovel spades together, and then Elise ran the can into the house.
“I told you I’d find something.”
“Stupid luck,” April said.
“We can go now.” Hector was beaming. “I won.”
“My fucking hero.” She smiled too. But she was becoming as frozen as the ground, every petty treasure buried and irretrievable.
He jogged into her house, didn’t even notice she stayed outside to kick dirt into Hector’s hole, patching up the lawn nice for whoever would own the house next.
