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STONE AND PAPER AND VINYL AND SKIN hen Libby’s last check from the bike shop came around, their rent was already two weeks past due. The guys offered to buy her lunch at the Crown and Anchor, but she told them she had to go, had to get moving, was afraid if she didn’t she might never. She gave them one-armed hugs, the envelope still in her hand, and she rode the five miles home, crossing the Colorado at the Longhorn Dam, blasting through Lakeshore Park and down Pleasant Valley Road to Riverside. At the bank, she found they had included a farewell gift of a hundred dollars in stiff twenties. It made her regret not going to lunch with them for a longer goodbye. She curled the bills into her pocket, cashed the paycheck, and went to the Taco Cabana for bean burritos. She read a few pages from her paperback before phoning a thank you. “Don’t forget about us. You come back, you call us.” “I will.” “Alright. Go get it.” She dumped her tray and rode around the corner to the row of townhomes. They had moved in with Trevor the month she started high school. Now she’d been out of high school a year, and her mother and Trevor were missing. What the detective meant was her mother and Trevor were dead. Three weeks and no word from them. She took the pictures she wanted out of their frames and slipped them into one of Trevor’s old record jackets, Pink Floyd, leaving the black disk on the rug below his stereo. He wanted her to love his records, like he did, so she listened politely with him, for her mother’s sake. Last week she had decided the stereo
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Untitled by Jerry C. Smith © 2014
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