“Bastards.”

The policewoman stopped from standing up to put away her papers and peered through the glass at Dar. “I don’t know. If my kid told me she was queer, I might do the same thing.” She shrugged and walked away.

Kerry turned and met Dar’s eyes, and they looked at each other in silence. After a moment, an inner door opened and the short, male officer appeared, one hand grasping Lena’s arm. The girl was very quiet, her face showing signs of rough handling and her clothes ripped and stained. She looked up and saw the two of them and a look of utter gratitude lit her face.

“Hey, Lena.” Kerry smiled at her. “C’mon, I bet you want out of here.”

“Oh.” Lena closed her eyes, then opened them. “You bet your ass I do.” She paused awkwardly. “Um…I mean…”

“I think you said exactly what you mean,” Dar drawled.

“Let’s get out of this place.” Her eyes drifted and met Officer Funk’s. “It stinks.”

They went out through the large double doors and into the cool night air. Lena stopped on the stone steps and took a breath, tilting her head back to look up at the night sky. “Thank you.” She hugged herself. “I’ll pay you guys back. I’ve got some money in my savings account.” She looked around with a lost expression.

“I’ll have to take it all out anyway. I’ll need clothes before I can go back to work tomorrow.” She paused. “If they haven’t fired me.”

Kerry and Dar exchanged glances. “C’mon.” Kerry put a hand on her arm and steered her towards the Lexus. “The first thing you need is a shower and some clean stuff to wear. We’ve got both back at our place.”

“I can’t ask you to do that.” But Lena looked pathetically grateful.

“You’re not. Let’s go.” Dar keyed the doors open and motioned her inside. The poor kid looked so ragged, and so at a loss, Dar felt like… Like what, Dar? her conscience pricked her. Like you want to go punch her mother? She closed the door after Lena climbed up inside, then walked around and started to get in. She paused and rested her arm on the edge of the windowsill as she Thicker Than Water 29

gazed down the sidewalk.

She remembered walking down it, dressed in her scary, punky best, with parts of her aching from the fight but happy, because her daddy was there next to her. They’d stopped on the corner and leaned back against the coral wall, across from the parking lot where she’d spotted her dad’s truck. Andrew had looked her over and shook his head. “Lord. You are mah kid, ain’t you.”

Dar had stuck her hands into her ripped pockets and just nodded.

“Y’know, they don’t much give medals to folks who do what I do,” Andrew had said, looking off into the distance. “And I sure ain’t got none to give up, but here.” He’d taken off his dog tags and put them around Dar’s neck.

Dar remembered looking up at him, and she knew her face must have shown how she felt, because he’d smiled and cupped her cheek with one callused hand.

They’d just gone on home after that, after a stop at a gas sta-tion mart to pick up a couple of ice cream bars and two bottles of pop. Even her mother had listened to the story and, with a sigh, given her a pat on the knee and told her she’d done a good thing.

It had felt like winning the lottery, that winning of her parents’ praise, and listening to Lena, Dar realized all over again how different it could have been for her.

“Dar?” Kerry leaned over and tugged on Dar’s shirt. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Dar slid behind the wheel and closed the door. “I was just thinking of something.”

Kerry studied the angular profile for a moment, then patted Dar’s thigh and half turned in her seat to address Lena. “You’re doing data entry, aren’t you?”

Lena was running her fingers over the soft leather of the seat.

She glanced up guiltily. “Um…oh, yeah, yeah, I do. It’s a telemar-keting thingie. I put in the orders.” Her eyes dropped. “Or, I did.

My boss hates when people are late. I can just imagine what his reaction was when I didn’t show for work for two days.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kerry smiled at her. “So, what exactly happened?”

Lena pushed some very dirty hair back off her forehead. “Oh, my God, it was like…It was so incredibly stupid.” She exhaled, but her spirit was rebounding a little. “I can’t believe it. It’s like some dumb weird ass dream thing, you know?”

“No. But if you’d tell me, I would,” Kerry replied patiently.

Lena emitted a sigh. “Okay. Like, I told you I was really into this Internet thing, right?”


30 Melissa Good Dar and Kerry exchanged looks. “We can relate to that,”

Kerry said.

Lena was momentarily distracted. “Are you guys on the Internet?”

“We run the Internet,” Dar said as she pulled carefully onto the highway. “So, yeah, you could say we’re on it, under it, inside it, crawling all over it.”

“Wow. For real?” Lena watched Dar’s profile with interest.

“That’s so cool. Are you, like, hackers?”

“No.”

“Sometimes.”

Kerry gave Dar a look. “We are not.”

“You’ve never seen what I can do with a data analyzer, have you?”

Lena started laughing. “You guys are funny.” She relaxed into the leather seat. “So, anyway, I’m like really into this Internet stuff and I found some really cool places, with people…um...” She hesitated.

“Like us?” Kerry hazarded a guess.

“Yeah,” Lena said. “Anyway, we all get together and we chat, and do stuff, and a lot of them write these story things.” She rubbed her fingers together. “Some of them are okay, and some are pretty good, and some…ew.” Lena made a face. “So, I figured I could try doing it, too, and just see how it went.”

“Stories?” Kerry leaned against the seat and considered that.

“What? Stories about…school and things like that?”

“Uh, no.” Lena blushed. “Not about school. Well, one of them was. This girl wrote this one about her and two other girls and some gym equipment, but—”

Kerry cocked her head. “Gym equipment?” She looked at a laughing Dar. “What?” Her brow knit, then relaxed as she realized what sort of stories Lena was talking about. “Oh. Kind of…romantic stories, huh?”

Lena chewed her lip. “Well, I guess some of them might be called that.”

“So, did your parents catch you reading this lesbian erotica?”

Dar asked in a low, amused tone.

“No way.” Lena shook her head. “I’m way too careful for that, and my parents wouldn’t know what they were looking at in my computer anyway.” She folded her arms. “I wrote my first one, and I posted it, and you know, everyone liked it. It was so cool.”

“Hey, that’s great,” Kerry said.

“Yeah, except I printed out a copy to take to school, to show Casey and them, and it was on my printer, and my mother came in Thicker Than Water 31

and took it.” Lena looked out the window. “Wow, we’re driving onto a boat? Where do you guys live, Cuba?”

“That’d be a commute,” Dar muttered. “I’d say your mother got what she deserved if she walked in and just took what wasn’t hers.”

Kerry sighed. “Some parents are of the opinion that they own whatever’s in the house because they pay the mortgage. Boy, have I been there.”

Dar looked at her sideways, one eyebrow lifting.

“Yeah, you’re absolutely right,” Lena blurted. “That’s exactly what my parents think. My mom took it while I was in the shower and by the time I got out and got dressed, she was…” She fell silent for a second. “She started throwing things at me.”

Kerry took her hand.

“I tried to stay out of the way, you know? Because she does that sometimes, just goes off and shit. But she just kept coming at me.” Lena took a shaky breath. “She chased me into the garage, and…oh my God, everything was falling, and she threw a baseball bat at me. Then I don’t know what happened, something, and a sled we had up in the overhead fell down right on my dad’s car.”

“So that’s what broke the window,” Kerry murmured.

“It broke everything. And that sports car is his, like, best child,” Lena said. “She locked me in there, and the next thing I knew, the cops were there and they took me off.”

The ferry docked and the conversation ended as Dar piloted the Lexus onto the island and turned down the road leading to the condo. Lena slid over to one side and peered out of the window, looking around curiously until they pulled up next to the condo and parked. “Wow. Holy shit, Toto, we’re not in Hialeah anymore.”

They got out of the car and headed up the stairs.

KERRY LED THE way upstairs, leaving Dar to putter around and put on some coffee. Lena crept along behind Kerry, trying not to touch anything as she walked in the very center of the stairs.

“Let me get you something to change into; you can use the shower in there.” She gestured to the guest bathroom, tucked in neatly next to its attendant bedroom.

“Wow.” Lena peeked inside, then hurriedly followed Kerry into her own bedroom. “This is a way amazing place.”

Kerry pulled open a drawer and rooted around inside it. “It’s pretty big, yeah.” She removed a shirt and a pair of shorts. “Here.

These’ll be big on you, but not too bad. They’re old ones of mine from when I was a lot smaller.”


32 Melissa Good Lena took them gingerly and eyed Kerry. “You’re not fat.”

Kerry smiled. “No, but I used to be a lot lighter before I started all this wall climbing and weight lifting.” She turned Lena around and pointed her towards the guest bathroom. “There’s lots of soap, and everything you need in there. Help yourself.”

“Okay.” Lena carefully folded the clothes over her arm.

“Um…thanks, Kerry. I thought I’d be all tough and that, and just stay in there. You know, like—wow, so this is jail.”

One of Kerry’s pale eyebrows cocked. “Why? You’re not stupid.”

Lena fingered the clothes. “There were some really fucked up people in there. I figured I’d better find a way to get out before something stupid happened.” Her eyes lifted. “So, thanks.”

“No problem, but one thing is puzzling me,” Kerry said as they walked down the hall. “I don’t remember giving out our phone number here.”

“Oh.” Lena managed a wan, but cheeky grin. “Casey got that out of the church Rolodex. We were all, like, curious to see if we could figure out where you lived and stuff.”

“Ah,” Kerry replied. “I thought that was locked up in the office.”

Lena grinned again. “And?”

Kerry sighed. “That’s supposed to be private information.

You could have just asked.” She folded her arms.

Lena looked nonplused for a moment. “I didn’t…I mean, we didn’t think of that. It’s just that, like, no one tells you anything when you’re our age, you know? It’s like everything’s such a big secret, and if you want to know stuff, you have to go find it out yourself.”

“Mm.” Kerry understood that, having grown up in a very political household.

“What is up with adults?” Lena asked. “It’s like, even in school, they say they don’t teach things so we don’t get ‘ideas.’ I thought the whole thing school was for was to, like, encourage us to get ideas. So they don’t tell us about important shit, like what sex is all about. How brainless is that?”

“Very brainless,” Kerry acknowledged wryly.

“Um…listen.” Lena cleared her throat. “My cousin’s got a place right down from the ferry base in Miami Beach. I can stay with her, if you can give me a ride back over there. I feel kinda bad about getting you guys all out at night and stuff.”

Kerry pondered. “If you’re sure that’s okay, yeah, we can do that.”

Lena shrugged. “I’ve been, like, talking to her anyway. After you said all that stuff about being out and all that, I figured Thicker Than Water 33

maybe I’d give it a try.” She scowled a little. “Didn’t work out as good as it did for you, though, huh?”

Kerry exhaled. “Go take a shower. It didn’t work out well for me in the beginning either.”

“People suck,” Lena commented. “I guess.”

“Yeah. Sometimes they really do,” Kerry said quietly, remembering waking up in a cold, sterile hospital room. “But that’s why getting away from those people is sometimes the best thing you can do.”

Lena nodded, started to turn, then stopped. “But hey, you know? Sometimes it’s okay. Look at what happened to Barbara, yeah?”

Kerry blinked. “What happened to Barbara?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess you didn’t hear. That guy at work likes her. He made her, like, an assistant manager. How do you like that shit?” Lena seemed amazed. “So I guess you were right.”