Notes from Ghost Town by Kate Ellison Read Free Book Online

away. Cassidy, along with several other girls I knew in middle school, sit on a blanket in the grass, smoking clove cigarettes. I can smell the bittersweet bite of them from here. Raina and I were close, weekly-sleepover-type friends with Cassidy in sixth grade, before she dumped us for a “cooler” group of friends who take pills and razor-shave shapes into the sides of their heads. Raina’s competitive streak has been in hyper mode ever since.
    Sometimes I even think Raina’s competing with me:to be cooler, funnier, more unique. I don’t know why she bothers. There’s no contest. Raina’s effortlessly cool. Her mother’s Cuban, Dad’s Minnesotan, and wherever she goes, and whatever she does, people stare at her. She’s a hard person to disagree with; when she says something, it sticks.
    A spurt of hyena laughter explodes from their circle.
    “Silicone, right?” My head throbs when I speak. Every sound—Raina’s voice, the achy creak of the swing set, the thrum-buzz of insects—feels like a little knife blade to the back of my skull. The tiniest vibrations make me feel a little bit like hurling.
    Eight days until Mom’s sentencing. Eight days until she leaves the holding cell where she’s been caged for the past ten months like some snarling animal. Eight days until she pleads insanity before the judge and she’s shuffled off to the coldness of a different cage.
    I scan the park, keeping an eye out for people who might try for a free ride on the carousel I’ve been charged with monitoring. Most of the kids who hang around here try at least once—leap right past me and onto one of the ancient porcelain horses hoping I won’t notice they’re freeloading. It’s my sole job this summer—collecting the two-dollar-and-fifty-cent charge, ripping tickets, and yelling at people who violate the Miami-Dade Parks and Rec rules. That should have been the job description when Dad encouraged me to apply:
Carousel Bitch
.
    I hug my knees into my chest. The fray of my cutoffs stickto my thighs and my dumb Parks and Rec T-shirt seems to choke me, the neck so tight, so high-cut. Annoyed, sick, sticky, I pull the rubber band from around my wrist and move my hair off my neck and into a messy bun.
    “You okay, babygirl?” Raina asks. “You look a little pale.” Raina, like Dad, like pretty much everyone, doesn’t know about my eyes. After Dr. Levine’s knee-jerk
see-a-psychiatrist-you-nutjob
reaction, I can’t risk having anyone else know, too. So, I’ll hide it—as best I can, as long as I can.
    I don’t know how to respond. All I can think about is last night—alone on the beach, the cold radiating from his fingertips across the sand, from Stern’s fingertips. Why did he seem so
real
?
    “I’m just …” Before I can think of a way to complete the sentence, two guys I recognize from some beach parties over the past couple of summers—major burners, always reeking of weed—leap onto the carousel without paying and start pretending to ride separate horses, smacking their sides and groaning, porn-star style. Disgusting.
    “Ooh! Go get ’em, girl!” Raina says, thumping me on the back.
    I stand up from the bench. The pounding in my head is getting worse. “You have to buy a ticket first!” I call out. “Or you have to get off. Not my rules.” It’s pretty much the same dumb lines every time.
    Thankfully, they don’t resist. One of them—short, stocky, greasy-haired, Bob Marley T-shirted—squints at me over his sunglasses. “Olivia, right?” he asks, wiping the sweatfrom his forehead onto his baggy shorts. “You party sometimes at Beast Beach, right?”
    I nod. “Yeah. I used to.”
    “Thought you moved or something.” He pauses. “Did you come back because of your …?”
    The other guy coughs; Bob Marley Wannabe abruptly trails off. Mom. He knows. They both know. And it almost seems to give me some weird kind of authority or something: when a girl with a murderer mom asks you to do