RECYCLED MEMORY Page 4

  “I, um…I live with my dad, and he…um…works a lot himself, so it’s sort of easier that way.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember those days. When my Rachel was a toddler, just after my husband passed away, I worked three jobs just to make ends meet. We were comfortable enough, I suppose, but my baby deserved the best of everything. I suspect your father feels the same way about you.”

  “Sure, Ms. Betty… I’m sure he does.”

  Ding.

  “Well, sounds like the cookies are finally ready. I’m sure Buck is waiting for you to get back, so I’ll just put them in a bag, so you can be on your way.”

  “Awesome. They smell delicious, Ms. Betty.”

  “They were my Rachel’s favorite.” She beamed. “Chocolate chip with walnuts. She’d eat them by the handful whenever I made them for her.”

  “She…” He cleared his throat. “I’m sure you miss her very much.”

  “Every day of the week and twice on Sundays.”

  Hearing my grandmother mention my mother’s name was not something I was prepared for. Sure, she’d tried to get me to talk about my feelings when I’d first come to live with her, but I’d declined her offer every time. No thanks. I didn’t want to talk about my parents or how their deaths affected me. Really, what was the point? In the end, they’d still be gone, and I was stuck in a new home to deal with it by myself. Plain and simple. Listening to her fawn all over that asshole and using my mother’s memory as a talking point sent my hatred for him into outer limits. She’d clearly gotten over her daughter’s death well enough to laugh about it, and with a virtual stranger, no less. He didn’t deserve to hear about my mother’s goodness; she belonged to me, in life and in death. My hands flexed of their own accord as the resentment I felt towards their jovial conversation regarding my fuckin’ mother slammed into my gut and rendered me highly irrational. I stomped my way back into the kitchen just as my grandmother had bagged up the cookies and glared at Range with pure malice in my heart.

  “Get your dirty ass out of my house, and don’t you ever come back,” I hissed.

  The little snot didn’t back down, nor did he make a move to swing on me. I heard the sharp intake of breath from my grandmother above the rush of blood echoing between my ears. She was appalled by my behavior, but at that moment, I didn’t give a shit. He had to go. He stood slowly from his chair, accidentally knocking it over in the process with a loud thud. Inches away, Nan watched in horror through misty eyes filled with grief and embarrassment while she held the bag of freshly-baked cookies in her pale fingers. My mother’s favorite.

  “Thanks for your kind hospitality, Ms. Betty,” he told her.

  “Range, I’m so sorry. I…” she tried to console that bastard.

  “No worries, ma’am. Not your fault.”

  He spoke to Nan, yet his eyes never left mine, neither one of us ready to back down. The kid was stuck on stupid. He had to know I could kick his ass anytime I wanted to without even trying. He might have been as tall as me, but I outweighed him by at least sixty pounds of hard muscle. Nan made sure we ate a well-balanced meal every night, whereas this guy? He’d obviously missed a few judging from his oversized head and gangly arms. I’d be the first to admit I was surprised by his little show of bravery considering the odds against him, but it didn’t mean shit if he couldn’t back it up.

  I wasn’t done with him yet.

  “Be sure to tell your boyfriend Buck I said hello.” I smirked, twisting the knife in his gut.

  He reached for the bag of cookies from Nan and walked toward the door with me hot on his heels. The last thing I needed was for him to try and steal something valuable and hock it at the local pawn shop. That stupid biker probably had a chop shop or fenced stolen goods out of that miserable junkyard anyway. How else could he afford to stay in business? Not by giving oil changes for cookies, that’s for sure. The quicker he got the fuck out of my house, the better his chances were of leaving without me going upside his head with my fist.

  “You know what?” He stopped short halfway outside the doorway. “Buck was right.” He looked me up and down. “You wouldn’t last five minutes at the junkyard.” I slammed the screen door right in his face, but not before I heard his parting words. “I’ll catch you later… PUSSY.”

  I watched him trot down the steps, lace-less tennis shoes flapping as he headed toward the direction of Buck’s Junkyard. That whole time I’d thought I was coming out on top, yet he proved me wrong when he’d called me a pussy. I’d show him. I’d make him eat his words along with my damn fists. He didn’t get to leave happy with my mother’s cookies. Fuck that. Dirty bastard.

  “That was a horrible thing to do, Marcus. Range came here as a favor to Buck, and you made him feel like shit, excuse my French. I don’t know what has gotten into you, but I won’t stand for such blatant disrespect in my house, especially to someone who was a welcomed guest.”

  “Disrespect? You wanna talk about disrespect, Nan? How about you and that asshole laughing and talking about my mother as if you had the right!” I yelled.

  “Oh, Marcus, that wasn’t what—”

  “Save it, Nan. I know what I heard, so don’t try and talk your way out of it. I hate you for making fun of my mother, and I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  I ran back toward the kitchen and picked up the figurine that was sitting on the counter. I threw it against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. The crashing sound drowned out my grandmother’s horrified cries as she covered her mouth in shock. It was all just too much. I had to get out of there before I went completely ape shit, something I might later regret. The back door was my quickest means of escape, so I took it without a single glance over my shoulder.

  “Marcus, please don’t leave like this!” Nan shouted hysterically.

  I didn’t bother to acknowledge her calls and slammed out the door, fuming with barely contained resentment. I tried to keep it in check, channel it elsewhere, but the burning in my gut would not be ignored. That dirty douche had crossed the line, and it was time for him to pay up in blood. He wouldn’t be hard to find. I knew exactly where he’d slithered off to. I just hoped for his sake that old biker didn’t try and get in my way, or they’d both be going down.

  SIX

  Maribel

  THIS EXTRA CREDIT ASSIGNMENT was going to be the death of me. Collecting and categorizing several immature larvae for my entomology course work was a dirty job, but someone had to do it. I had been digging around in these woods all day, and to say I was sick of it would be a huge understatement. Broken tree limbs, spider webs, and the carcasses of dead animals were enough to send the average girl screaming for cover. I, on the other hand, found it all quite fascinating to witness the circle of life firsthand. The hours I spent walking alone in the woods were so peaceful, cathartic even, the sheer beauty of it in all its vastness. The birds perched above the green foliage sang a sweet lullaby while the cool air and woodsy scent tickled my nose with its earthy freshness. What I lacked in human companionship was more than compensated by spiny lizards, fluffy squires, and, of course, a passel of wild rabbits that were just too cute for words.

  I happened along the flattened land closest to the tree line and pulled up short. Steel fencing, at least six feet tall, surrounded the adjacent property. A heady warning that outsiders were not welcomed, No Trespassing signs hung securely along the row in bright yellow could not be ignored by onlookers, lest they wanted to get shot. I followed the fencing for the next thirty minutes, never once seeing an end to the cordoned-off expanse of land that was separated from the rest of the woods. Whoever owned that property knew what they were doing when they secured the area; nothing and no one was getting inside without an invitation. The deeper I followed, the more frightened I became that I might have gotten lost. I was just about to have a complete panic attack when a main road finally came into view and relief washed over me. Thank God.

  I took a few moments to catch my breath and tried to take stock in wh
ere I was. I caught a glimpse of someone walking on the side of the road in a hurry to get somewhere. He was too far away to make out his face, but it was a boy around my age and hopefully not a serial killer. He couldn’t see me from my position in the thick brush, so I took a chance and ran over to see if he could point me in the direction of home. Once I was close enough to see the back of his shirt and muscled arms, he looked strangely familiar, but I shook it off as wishful thinking. He wasn’t happy with my sudden appearance judging from his red face and tight jaw. Sucked to be him ‘cause I needed help, and he was the only show in town.

  “Hey, could you help me? I seem to have…” Jiminy Cricket. It was him.

  Get your shit together, Maribel. You’re lost, remember?

  “Ohmygod! I’m so happy to see a familiar face.” I inhaled with relief. “I was walking in the woods and got lost… Well, maybe not lost, but it was scary as hell.” I was out of breath and barely able to finish my sentence, and what did he do? Kept right on walking.

  “HEY! I’m talking to you, fuckface!” I screamed at his back.

  Big mistake… Huge mistake.

  “I don’t have time for this shit, kid,” he growled. “Piss off. I’m busy.”

  Well, that was just… rude. What type of boy leaves a girl high and dry in the middle of nowhere without at least attempting to ask if she needed any help? Technically, I was still stranded, although from this vantage point I could see the sign that pointed in the direction of town. Whatever had his hackles up, he certainly wasn’t slowing down for the likes of little ol’ me. Chivalry had died and gone to hell around these parts. The nerve of that jerk acting like he didn’t know who I was, or that I wasn’t worth a minute of his time to lend a helping hand. I was a Laine, for fuck’s sake. I’d saved his goddamned life, and he refused to return the favor? Well, I had a trick for his ass. I’d just follow him without his knowledge, and when he finally stopped, I’d give him a piece of my mind. Ha! Take that, tough guy.

  I gave him a wide enough birth, careful to stay hidden behind the cover of the forest whenever possible. I zigzagged along the small shrubs and oversized bushes. If he saw me, he made no attempt at slowing down or acknowledged that he knew he was being followed. The crunch of the broken tree limbs hadn’t given it away; my only worry was the flashes of white from my lab coat in contrast with the greenery of the woods. I had no time to take it off; I had to keep moving, or I was gonna lose him. He took a sharp left unto a dirt road, but it wasn’t a dead end; it was an entrance to a business. There was a huge sign that read Buck’s Junkyard with an arrow pointing around the side to a different way to get in. It had the same metal fencing that was all along the woods, but surely, it wasn’t part of the same property. We walked a mile, if not more, before we ran across this entrance. Why would a junkyard need so much space? He was walking so fast I wondered if he knew he was going inside the wrong way and should follow the sign to the front. There was only one way to find out.

  “HEY! Hold up a second!” I shouted. “You’re going in the wrong way. Didn’t you see the sign back there?” I jumped out from behind a bush and rushed down the embankment to where he stood. “Didn’t you see the sign?” I asked again, pointing over his shoulder.

  “What the fuck are you doing here? Did you follow me?” he hollered.

  “Well, yeah, silly. I wanted to see where you were going.”

  There were so many things wrong with this picture. I really should’ve thought this whole stalking thing through before I made a fool of myself. I’ll start with my hair; a complete mess of unsightly strands stuck to the sides of my head by twigs, feathers, and dried leaves. The next time I decided to follow a complete stranger through the woods, a little thing like a hair brush would certainly go a long way towards making things less awkward. My clothes? Well, under normal circumstances, it wasn’t so unusual to find me walking around in my lab coat; it was simply a matter of convenience. But out in the open outside of school hours? Yeah, it just looked weird. There’s no way I could overlook the crazy and downright obvious fact that I was a looser who had nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon than traipse through the woods alone. I’d followed an unsuspecting boy to an undisclosed location simply because he’d refused to stop and give me directions. And the winner for the biggest dork in Remington Township goes to the stooge in the lab coat.

  “I’m Maribel, by the way. Do you remember me from the other day at school?” Of course, he does, you idiot. That was two days ago.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he grilled. “Why the fuck are you following me?”

  “I…” Shit. What could I say that didn’t make me sound like a lunatic?

  He stood over me like a newly freed rabid dog, drooling at the mouth and boiling mad. When we’d met just days ago, his eyes had been a vibrant blue like the tropical seas of the ocean. A blue so intense it was like looking at the sky on a clear summer’s day. Today, those same eyes were bloodshot, hard, and unyielding as he studied me intensely while we stood outside the rear entrance to the junkyard. The long walk over here had done nothing to cool his pissed-off demeanor, and my presence only heightened his annoyance to volcanic proportions. I wasn’t the cause of his vexation, but I certainly wasn’t doing him any favors by being a smartass.

  “It’s customary to introduce yourself when you engage in conversation with a stranger. It’s considered rude in every state of the Union and was also a law originally written into the Constitution.” I made that part up, but he doesn’t know that.

  “Did I ask you to follow me? Did I invite you to come along for the ride? Did I ask you what your fucking name was?”

  He fired off the questions so fast I didn’t get a chance to answer a single one before he turned and walked away again. I tried to let it go, forget about his aggressive and cold responses. I really did. Truthfully, he was right about everything he’d said, but was that really the point? What was so goddamn important in that junkyard that he couldn’t take one second to introduce himself and point me in the right direction? Were all cute boys that surly with girls? If so, I’d doubt I’d ever get asked out on a date. Assholes definitely weren’t my thing, and this guy was definitely a major butt face. He was exactly the sort of boy who always went after my sister, balls of puss full of testosterone. They were a dime a dozen. Sandy blond hair perfectly trimmed on the sides but longer on the top, athletic build without too much muscle, and the pièce de résistance… a dimple in his chin. He was exactly the type that drooled all over the golden princess, a fool she could lead around by his penis whenever she wanted. It was exactly the excuse I needed to unleash my one character flaw that could save some semblance of my dignity.

  “Kiss my ass, motherfucker!” I screamed as loud as I could with my hands cupped to my mouth like a makeshift megaphone. “I hope one of those old cars falls on your head and crushes you into the dirt like they do on the Bugs Bunny cartoons. I hope your teeth fall out and you have to eat baby food for the rest of your life. I hope your dick falls off…” I made my point.

  He stopped in his tracks, but I wasn’t afraid of what he might do. He took his sweet time walking back over to where I was. He even shook his head as if he couldn’t believe I had the gall to stand up to him. His irises were back to their normal shade of blue, and he was no longer working his jaw back and forth in anger. He had a swagger to his walk, a calmness that hadn’t been there just a few moments ago; it shook me to the core, and I froze. I was prepared to deal with his backlash, his angry comeback. What I wasn’t prepared for were his actual words.

  “I’m Marcus.” He leaned down and whispered, “Now, go home, little pocket.” He turned me around by the shoulders. “Town is that way.

  SEVEN

  Marcus

  RUNNING INTO THAT LITTLE pocket-sized hellion almost threw me off my game. I wasn’t looking to stop for a little chat; I was looking to beat someone’s head in. What was she doing out here in the middle of nowhere AGAIN? Where were her parents? I never would�
��ve spotted her if it weren’t for that stupid lab coat and that godawful red hair flying all over the place. The color reminded me of blood from one of those gory horror movies I used to watch with my parents. The kid had some set of balls on her, following me around when she wasn’t invited. As pissed off as I was, I’d nearly barked out a laugh when she called me all those names. She had one dirty little mouth on her for such a tiny thing. Boy, could she dish it out. Twice I’ve run into her, and both times she was a ballbuster when she got pissed. That much we had in common and was the reason I was such a dick to her without cause. She had a knack for taking me out of my head, distracting me from my real mission. I made a vow to find her and apologize for my behavior, but not until I took care of some unfinished business.

  The rear entrance to the junkyard was pretty quiet; most of the activity took place out front near the office. I slipped inside and looked around, surprised at just how large of a place it really was. From this location, it was hard to see where the junkyard began and where it ended. Rows of neatly stacked cars and tires weren’t the only items populating the mass of land. There were brick buildings that could almost be mistaken for small houses had they not been encased in barbed wire. Separate bays housed a fleet of muscle cars, everything from Chevy Impalas to Ford Mustangs, as far as the eyes could see. I wondered for the second time if Buck Calhoun was running a chop shop and these were part of the precious cargo acquired for his criminal enterprise. My perusal of the stolen merchandise was interrupted by the gleam of chrome coming from one of the last bays in the column. One look, and my mouth opened far enough to touch the ground before I could close it again. Motorcycles, polished to perfection and lined up three rows deep, sparkled with a beauty the likes of which I had never seen before. They called to me, dared me to abandon my quest for blood and approach them for a better look. I couldn’t help but be amazed by the sheer power that anyone of the fifty or so bikes possessed. It was a dream that my father and I had shared to one day purchase a matching set of cruisers and take a trip across America, just the two of us. My mother hadn’t been so keen on the idea, but my father and I had planned in secret to take off the summer I turned eighteen and graduated from high school. The make and model we’d agreed would be best for our journey sat longingly against the far wall of the bay; its license plate read PSYMGT, and it was beautiful. My hand reached out to touch the polished paint of the jet-black gas tank of the Harley Davidson Dyna Glide, and I marveled at its smooth feel. I was in awe of its brilliance, and a wave a sadness struck me hard, harder than anything I had ever imagined. My eyes began to mist over; I fought to keep the sudden tears from falling down my cheeks.