Age of Consent by Marti Leimbach Read Free Book Online Page A

them,” Bobbie says, though this isn’t the case. She knows exactly what she will tell them.
    “So it is true, what he said about the money?” June says.
    “I suspect not, but it doesn’t matter.”
    “Craig says everything matters. Oh, I do wish you’d talk to him.”
    But she won’t talk to him. June tries everything to get her into the house. She tells her that Craig will be angry if she returns without her, that she cannot walk and needs assistance. She tells her there is no need to bring family business into a public arena, tries to shame her into cooperating. But Bobbie isn’t having it. In the end, Bobbie gets out of the car and goes around to the passenger side. It is a clear, pretty night with stars that seem to hang low in the sky. She opens her mother’s door, then pulls June gently by the arm until she is standing in the night’s soft glow, surrounded by the sound of crickets and the frogs that chirp (Bobbie knows) from the marshy grass behind her mother’s house.
    “Are you just going to leave me here?” June says, as though she is being stranded on a desert island. “And take my car?”
    “I’ll bring it back later.”
    “But darling—” Her mother doesn’t move. Bobbie gets back behind the steering wheel as her mother stares in shock.
    “Go to bed, Mother,” Bobbie says through the open window. “Nothing is changing my mind.”
    “But why not? Why on earth?” June says.
    She shoves the Chevy into reverse just as her mother comes toward her again with another plea. “Because,” she tells June, “the man nearly killed me.”
    Then she reverses, driving away even as June stands, baffled by what is happening. Bobbie doesn’t look at the house she has not seen since 1978, does not allow herself to think about Craig inside. She pauses a little at the very edge of the property, glancing at a specific tree that had once meant something to her. For months before she ran away from home, it hid a jam jar full of money.

CRASH
    1978
    C oming out of the motel and getting into Craig’s car with the money plunged deep in her pocket felt like climbing into a bull’s pen. Bobbie sensed that as with a bull she must keep watch but not look at him directly. The car smelled like old bong water and burger wrappers and pot resin. His clothes, the ones he had on and every stitch he owned, carried that same green-weed smell. They drove out of the motel parking lot and she thought what she needed now, other than the newly found money folded against her thigh, was a little luck.
    He said, “What were you really doing in there anyway? Smoking cigarettes, I bet.”
    She didn’t answer and he gave her a look.
    “I don’t have any,” she said. “I told you.”
    “They make you taste like an ashtray.”
    “I was fixing my hair.”
    “That was a hell of a long time for hair.”
    She smiled and hoped that smiling would end the discussion. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. She looked down at the cotton pocket of her blue jeans and hoped he wouldn’t feel around in that area. Keeping the money from him felt like a greater betrayal than hiding from him on the school bus had been. She wondered what he would do to her if he found out about the money, other than take it off her, that is.
    “What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you sick?”
    Not sick, she thought, but not exactly right, either. The night was inky, with a moist heat that liquefied the air. Her hair was wet at the nape, her blouse damp under her arms. No matter how many times she ran her tongue over her lips, they were dry, while the rest of her was sweating, not just from the heat. If he found the money, she would need an explanation for why she hadn’t mentioned it. But she couldn’t think of anything. Her brain raced like the images on a slot machine, but when she summoned it to slow down and give some answers, nothing came up. Nothing she could win with.
    “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s that test tomorrow making me