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WHAT DO I CARE ABOUT?

Another totally useless question, Mrs I What do you do, sit around reading soet bad kids to talk? I can tell you what I don’t care about How’s that? I don’t care about Oyster Shores or the kids inwaste of time

And I don’t care about faood tiht, btw It’s always the sa about how perfect her kids are Ricky the perfect college student and Janie the girl wonder And Grandpa sits there like a rock while Aunt Winona tells us all how perfect her friggin life is No wonder h the day I’m not supposed to know about that They think I’m an idiot Like because I was a kid I didn’t notice that she used to cry all the time I tried to help her—That’s what I re little But she used to either push ot so I knehat her eyes looked like when she was drugged up and I just stayed away Now she pretends everything is okay because the medicine cabinet is empty and she never cries

I found so else I don’t care about Aunt Winona’s dumb old dock It’s covered with bird shit, so naturally I’ets to scrape it all off You should see the way she watchesto blow any second or come at her with a knife She used to likeI remember from when I was little She’d read one and watch Disneyat me when she thinks I don’t notice

I think she’s scared of ot pissed off at a falass at the wall That was the day Erik Jr told me my dad was a half breed ot home, I asked my mo

And everybody wonders why I get pissed off What am I supposed to do when Brian calls me injun boy and says they shoulda fried my dad for what he did?

The next Friday teased them with the promise of summer A pale, pretty sun played hide-and-seek with the clouds; light came and went across the yard like a capricious child, until finally sometime just past noon it came out and stayed

Winona was busy scrubbing the kitchen floor when she noticed the change in the weather At first she thought nothing of it, figured, in fact, that it was just as likely to begin raining as not, and kept working But when she started to feel heat prickle on her forehead and form tiny moist beads in the curl of her back, she cliloves If it was actually going to stay nice out, she knew she should poash the deck You didn’t squander sunlit days in June around here

She changed into shorts and a baggy, thigh-length T-shirt As she pulled her hair back into a ponytail, she peered through the cloudy glass of her bedroo bird poop off the splintery wooden rails

Honest to God, the dead moved faster

And his pants were so low she could see the waistband of his blue boxer shorts

He’d been working for her for five days and she could barely identify his progress He got here pro and went down to the dock without saying a word to her On the days she went into the office, leaving hi on his ass

“This is so not working out,” shea roll of duct tape

Sheshut behind her Enough was enough She nore his surly attitude and his dirty hair, , but by God, she didn’t have to look at his damn underwear

She walked down the dock The tide was low, so the ray beneath her She held tightly to the bird-ruined handrails, looking carefully for bare wood places to touch, as she made her way cautiously down to him “Noah”