Missing Mom

Audrey is fifteen and she lives with her dad. That is important, she thinks, as her black Converse crunch along a deer path. Levi follows behind her.

“Audrey,” he mumbles. She grits her teeth.

Levi is her best friend. That is important, she thinks.

She steps into the little field and lets her teeth unclench. A deep breath, and she is running through the grass gone to seed, the brambles that pick at her shoes.

Rust crawls across the truck’s body. The bed is full of dropped pinecones and broom-straw needles. Audrey usually brings a towel or blanket to sit on, but today she simply heaves herself into the truck’s bed and stands for a moment as her breathing hitches. She scrubs a hand under her eyes, gazing over the cab’s roof. The truck’s hood is missing, a piece of skull removed by a brain surgeon too lazy to put it back. Pokeweed stalks have somehow managed to wriggle their way around the shot engine and whatever else used to make the truck run. Their red stems sway, green leaves and tags of ripened do-not-eat berries jostling, as Levi climbs in to plop himself down.

Mom could have fixed this, she thinks. Except this truck is not Mom’s to fix.

The truck isn’t parked on a patch of land Audrey’s dad owns. It’s just outside the range of trees wearing yellow spray paint rings like wedding bands and matching Posted-sign veils. She and Levi had been with her dad when he put those signs up years ago after some hunters built a deer stand and tried to pretend they hadn’t known which acres belonged to who. Her dad had pointed out the used-to-be-blue 1964 Chevy slumped under a huge Virginia pine.

“It ain’t ours,” he’d said through a mouthful of nails. “Don’t touch it.”

She and Levi had been making the trek ever since, edging closer and closer to the truck until it became their playground. Now it was their hide-away, a stolen scrap of privacy claimed just for their whispers and secrets.

“I guess we’re all a bunch of criminals, huh?” she says.

Levi is quiet.

“What an idiot. Only my mom would be dumb enough to get a felony just doing her job.”

Her fingers curl into fists. She feels the pad of Levi’s thumb skim across her knuckles before his hand circles her wrist.

“C’mon, sit down,” he says. She glances at him. He is a soft-faced boy, even though he is her age. His eyes are dark, the corners puckered just a little. Would he look so sincere, she wonders, if his mom was in prison? If I was the lucky one?

Probably. She huffs and turns so she’s facing the dented tailgate, slides down the back of the cab until pine needles prick the backs of her thighs.

Levi’s shoulder brushes hers. “They only put her away for a few years, right?”

“Yeah,” Audrey says.

“Then she’ll be back before you can miss her.”

I won’t miss her, she thinks. I won’t. She got what she deserved, fixing cars with hot parts. Every mechanic knows not to be part of a chop shop. She’s hardly family, anyway, for as much as I know her. She couldn’t even take care of me. Why didn’t she take care of me?

“Only my dad will be at my graduation,” she says.

Levi’s fingers twitch against her wrist. “But at least you’ll know why she isn’t there. And I’ll be with you when we graduate.”

A wood ant, body like three black peppercorns strung together, zigzags over one of her jeaned knees. She jerks her wrist from Levi’s grasp to flick the insect away.

Her mother is a non-custodial parent. That is important, she thinks.

Audrey hasn’t told anyone, but she’d been banking on her mom being at her high school graduation. She’d decided that, if her mom was going to show up for any family thing, Audrey wanted her mom to see her get her diploma.

A high school diploma would be one of the few things she shared with her mom.

Audrey sighs. She turns toward Levi. He’s got those sad eyes on her still.

There’s a mockingbird calling. A blue jay on the ground tosses pine needles into the air. She snatches Levi’s hand in hers.

But at least Dad and Levi are here with me.

That is most important, she thinks.