Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick Read Free Book Online Page A

beneath her wheels.

Cherry’s alarm chirped at 5:05. Her pre-dawn run was comatose. Her eyes passed over the pavement without seeing it, her ears filled with the rush of her breath. She showered, dressed for school, and was pulling on her sneakers when the previous day began to climb her like ivy. The sun was bleeding through her blinds. It was a new world out there. Or maybe she was new. Or both.
    “Can I drive the Spider to school today?” Stew asked. He stood in the hallway wearing nothing but a towel. With the toothbrush in his mouth, it sounded like, “Cahwah dah da shaydah wa oolooway?”
    “No chance.”
    He removed the toothbrush.
    “I hate you.”
    She patted his cheek.
    Pop was at the kitchen table. Red Sox mug. Sports section. His mustache was dusted with white powder.
    “You’ve been eating donuts.”
    “Good morning to you, too.”
    She checked the fridge. The Entenmann’s box was half empty. “Jesus, do I have to start putting a padlock on these?” She turned with a grin. “It’s fine. Everyone deserves a treat once in a while.”
    Pop fluffed the paper. “Uh-oh.”
    “What oh?”
    “I never get off that easy. What did you do?”
    Cherry took a seat, folded her hands, and assembled her most winning grin. She worked in some daddy’s-little-girl eye gleam for good measure.
    “Don’t freak out.”
    Pop lowered the paper. “You’re pregnant.”
    “No!”
    “Thank Christ. All right, out with it.”
    “Lucas asked me to marry him. I’m getting married!” She opened her arms for a hug. Pop didn’t budge. Cherry waited.
    Pop continued not budging.
    “Nope.”
    “What do you mean,
nope
?”
    “That’s not happening.”
    Her smile tightened. “Yes, it
is.
”
    “Oh, yeah? And where’s the reception? Mel’s Diner?”
    “This is
good news.
I’m
in love,
” she said, hating how childish that sounded.
    Pop puffed his mustache. “I’m waiting for the ‘good-news’ part.”
    Cherry pushed back from the table. “You’re an asshole.”
    “You’re a moron.”
    “Why are you being this way?”
    Pop folded his hands over the table just as she had done, except minus the hopeful grin.
    “So what, you’ll just be a housewife?”
    Something inside her turned to poison. “Yeah. Cook, clean, shop. You know, all the shit I do now. Really, not much’ll change.”
    “Like hell it won’t.” He stuck a fat finger in her face. “You are going to
college.
You are going to
do
something with your life.”
    “Having a family
is
doing something.”
    “No, it
ain’t.
”
    “Is that what you told Mom? Maybe she would have stuck around if you didn’t think her life was bullshit.”
    The Red Sox mug exploded against the wall, chunks pinging and skittering over the counter and tile. A sliver of glazed ceramic executed a pirouette on the sink’s edge and tumbled in with a deafening
clink.
    Cherry was frozen, her bluster vaporized. The mug hadn’t been aimed at her, but she felt its shatter in her spine, the shards under her skin.
    His voice was still. “That was clever, the way you turned that around on me.” She met his eyes, and they were exhausted. He seemed so
old.
“
You’re
clever. And you’re wasting it. You think I
want
you to work until you die? If I could give you a
mansion,
I would. I can’t. But I’ll tell ya something else.” He pointed to the backyard, to Lucas’s trailer. “Neither can that guy.”
    He took his paper and made for the back door. The screen door slammed, bounced once, and slammed again.
    Stew rushed in, pulling on his shorts. He took in the coffee running down the wall. He gaped at her.
    “Holy shit, are you
pregnant
?”
    She took the Spider to school.

At 7:55, Cherry pulled into the Aubrey Public parking lot with “Superb Ass,” the new single from Cynthia Sundae, buzzing through the Spider’s modified speaker system. Nothing vented aggression like hip-hop played at eardrum-splitting volume. Swarms of kids slowed, stopped, and turned to watch her