My Best Everything Read online

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  For my mother, who asked the question.

  (This is not the answer.)

  1

  The ingredients for moonshine are ordinary. Innocent.

  Corn. Sugar. Yeast. Heat and time.

  They could be the makings for something simple and forgettable. Like corn bread, bland and boring without butter and honey. But the same ingredients, thrown together in a particular way, lead to dangerous results.

  You say it was all meant to be. You and me. The way we met. Our secrets in the woods. Even the way it all exploded. It was simply a matter of fate. Maybe if you were here to tell me again, to explain it one more time, then maybe I wouldn’t feel so uncertain. But I’m going back to the beginning on my own. To see what happened and why.

  The night you and I met, Roni and I sat on a crumbling stone bench in the graveyard behind Saint Jude’s. We’d picked a spot beyond the church lights to mix our drinks. The tombstones already looked a little tipsy, crooked and lopsided under the dogwood trees. Bucky was inside, cleaning the floors. You were in there too, only I didn’t know that yet. I didn’t know the why until even later.

  Drinking was supposed to be one of my last preparations for college. I’d let Roni convince me it was a necessary skill. “This way you’ll have options, Lulu. You might actually want to take a break from studying sometime.” She grinned. “Besides, everyone expects a hillbilly girl to know her way around a bottle.”

  I’d avoided alcohol all through high school, despite drinking being the main source of entertainment in town. I’d just said no, the way I’d been taught. I’d followed the rules. Kept my eyes on the future, my reward for being a good girl. With school over and done, I was stuck in Dale, Virginia, for one last summer. Then I’d be gone.

  “I need to see the measuring line,” I said, leaning in to read the markings on the plastic dispenser cup from a Children’s Tylenol bottle. I poured precisely one tablespoon of vodka.

  Roni laughed. “I guarantee you won’t know exact measurements at a wild college party.” She added a splash of juice, then handed me the cup. “This might taste strong. We need to get to the point.”

  The point was me gathering data. Figuring out how much I could drink. If I was going to do this, I was going to be good at it. I’ve always been an overachiever. The tangy juice felt both cool and warm going down. I said, “At least this juice is good for us. It has vitamins and antioxidants. Pomegranates and blueberries are both wonder foods.”

  “And you’re a wonder dork,” said Roni.

  She was right, but I tossed a pebble at her anyway.

  Roni pointed across the dark space. “This would be a good place for a wedding.”

  “In a graveyard? That’s awfully pessimistic of you.”

  She laughed. “I meant Saint Jude’s. The church is pretty, and there’s that nice reception hall that leads out to the patio. The band could set up by the fence. It’d be sweet.” She sighed. “But Catholics have too many rules.”

  I held out my cup for a refill. I liked the way I felt. Lighter and looser. Like I might float away as I walked barefoot through the dark graveyard, over and around the sinking stones. I knew the ghostly residents wouldn’t be shocked by our experiment. Roni was right—Catholics have plenty of rules, but not when it comes to drinking.

  Roni said, “I suppose we could have the reception at Monty’s, like everyone else.”

  I stopped. Peered at her through the dim light. “Are you pregnant?”

  “No!” Roni shook her cup at me. “I wouldn’t be drinking. I’m not that dumb. But Bucky and I have been talking. We might get married anyway.”

  “Married? You can’t get married.” Maybe the vodka had blocked my censor button, but I’d always felt sorry for the girls who got married right out of high school. It seemed so dead-end, such a giving up on the future.

  “Why not? I love Bucky.”

  That wasn’t a why that made sense to me. Not then. I didn’t believe in love.

  Roni added, “I’m ready for real life. It’s not like I’m going off to college.”

  I heard the missing in her voice. Knew she dreaded me leaving, but even more, Bucky. He’d been in all my AP classes, quietly earning grades almost as good as mine. He was only headed two hours down the highway to Virginia Tech, but Roni knew there were more than miles between here and there, more than hours between now and what might come. Bucky was way too smart to stay in Dale and pump gas so that other people could go places.

  As I took another swallow, Roni said, “You better slow down, Lulu-bird. What happened to your scientific evaluation of the drinking process?”

  We busted up laughing. Because that’s really and truly how I’d described our plan.

  Roni joined me on the tombstone where I’d settled. She said, “Beau Queen’s been asking about you.”

  “What could he possibly need to know about me?” I heard the buzz in my words.

  She smirked. “I was thinking maybe he could help with that other part of your education that’s been sadly ignored.”

  I shook my head. “I’m done with redneck Virginia boys, Roni. I’m saving myself for California.”

  “You’re such a snob, Lulu.” She laughed as she said this, but she was right too.

  I had my sights on the horizon. I was ready to ride off into the sunset. Away. Far away. Across the country and into another world. I was leaving the gritty mountain holler of Dale and going to college in San Diego, a land of sun and sea and palm trees.

  My restless anticipation kept me up at night. I’d lie in bed, listening to the downstairs clinking of Mom’s all-hours baking, counting down the days until my escape. Eighty-five to go.

  “I have to leave, Roni. I can’t get stuck here. I just can’t.”

  Roni knew me, knew my mother hadn’t left the house once in the last three years. She understood that when someone’s favorite place is an ancient graveyard on the forgotten side of a quiet town, that’s a pretty solid sign they don’t belong. All she said then was “You’ll forget all about me when you’re gone.”

  I threw my arm around her. “Impossible!” Then we lost our balance and tumbled backward off the granite stone, shrieking and laughing all the way down.

  When we finally untangled our arms and legs, I stood up and picked graveyard moss from my curls. That’s when you appeared. And I knew for sure and for certain, I was drunk.

  The light shone behind you, hiding your face in the shadows. Something about your baseball hat in that orb of light looked like a halo. I grabbed Roni’s arm. “Is that an angel?”

  “Add hallucinations to your notes,” she said, laughing again. Everything was hilarious.

  Bucky’s familiar wider frame appeared beside you in the shadows. He called out, “Hey, y’all done being miscreants?”

  Roni leaped across the graveyard and threw herself into his arms, leaving me to pick up our trash and stumble toward the light. Where you still stood.

  Bucky held Roni, who’d wrapped her arms and legs around him. He said, “Roni, Lulu, meet Mason. He works with me at the club.” Bucky always worked several jobs—cleaning the church, helping at his daddy’s gas station, and now that it was summer, at the Country Club.

  You probably said he
llo, but I was too busy concentrating on standing in one place to notice.

  “Mason’s bike is messed up, so we’re giving him a ride home.”

  I pulled Roni into the backseat as you loaded your bike into the bed of Bucky’s truck. “Sit with me,” I begged. I wasn’t in any state of mind to sit beside some strange boy.

  “How’d the scientific experiment go?” asked Bucky, climbing in.

  He was making fun of me, but I didn’t mind. At the time, I didn’t mind much of anything. I just said, “Further experiments may be required.”

  “Lulu’s drunk, Bucky,” said Roni. “Really and truly. She didn’t chicken out. And she’s a fun drunk too.” She sounded so proud of me.

  We dissolved into giggles.

  “Lulu’s first time drinking,” Bucky explained to you.

  I can’t remember much about that ride. At first Roni and I acted silly in the back while you and Bucky talked in the front. I remember when Bucky asked about your truck you said, “Piece of junk needs a radiator.”

  That’s when my junkyard-girl instincts kicked in. I leaned forward and said, “You should come by Sal’s. I’m sure we have what you’re looking for.”

  You turned and looked at me then. The way your eyes bored into mine, it felt like you were trying to read my deepest thoughts. I think that’s the moment you reached inside me and changed the rhythm of my heart. Back then I thought I was simply drunk.

  I talked over the rush of heat in my face. “You know Sal’s. The junkyard? Sal’s Salvage.” That was another thing that sounded hilarious. Sal’s Salvage. Especially when slurring.

  Roni scooted closer beside me. Said, “Salvage might be your salvation!”

  I added another one of Sal’s junkyard wisdoms: “One man’s junk is another man’s saving grace.”

  “Junk is all in the eyes,” agreed Roni.

  “Junk is a matter of thunk,” I said.

  “I thunk it was junk, but it just needed a second chance.”

  “Sorry,” Bucky said to you, shaking his head.

  I said, “Really. Come by sometime. We’ll find you a radiator.”

  “You work at Sal’s?” you asked.

  Roni said, “We both do.”

  When we first started working at Sal’s, I didn’t advertise the information. Being a junkyard girl was not something I put on my college applications. I guess for some guys it’s tough and sexy. That night, what with the way my eyes were wandering and mixing things up in my soggy brain, I couldn’t read your reaction. I didn’t care what you thought. I was already gone.

  As we hit the town line, where the road turns rough and bumpy, I choked out, “How much farther?”

  “Uh-oh,” said Roni. “I think Lulu’s going to puke.”

  Bucky stopped his truck, and I stumbled out, gasping for fresh air. Even through my wobbly vision I could see the stars, so many stars, now that we were a few miles away from town. The ground tipped beneath me. I staggered in circles.

  Roni said, “Let it go, Lulu. Don’t fight it.”

  I wish I’d listened. Instead, I willed myself not to get sick. Only some cheap white-trash hillbilly girl would puke on the side of the road. After a few minutes my stomach felt better, and I was more embarrassed than queasy. I was sure that meant I was sobering up.

  We climbed back in, but I sat in the front and opened the window all the way, like you suggested, while you climbed in the back with Roni. I stuck my face in the rushing air and let the wind blow my curls any way it wanted.

  Before long, there was no fighting it. You knew somehow. You leaned over the seat and shoved something into my lap. You even grabbed my hair away from my face. Then the puke came, bright and purple, right into your bike helmet.

  You should have steered clear of me after that. But maybe you wanted to fix me. I was like a piece of wood, something to sand and shape. Or maybe the smell on my breath, the way I staggered and slurred, felt familiar. Maybe I reminded you of something you missed.

  Like I miss you, right now.

  There’s a fine line between toxic and intoxicating.

  2

  I knew hangovers in theory but hadn’t realized I’d feel so plain-and-simple awful the next day. I woke up in Roni’s basement on the same lumpy sleeper sofa we’d always used for sleepovers, but I’d never felt like that before. I didn’t know my brain could feel bruised. Like sloshing around in vodka had made it hit the walls of my skull. My eyes felt crooked and skewed, as if they’d fallen out and someone had put them back in the wrong sockets.

  Roni was dressed and drinking a Coke by the time I rolled out of bed. Literally. I couldn’t make myself go vertical. I didn’t trust my tender stomach to make any sudden moves. From the floor I said, “Tell Sal I’m sick.”

  “Hello, but hell no,” said Roni. “Today’s going to be madness.”

  As much as I might want to, no way could we blow off Sal. Not with the losers from the Christiansburg Demolition Derby scheduled to be delivered that day.

  On our way to the junkyard, Roni giggled. “Lulu Mendez fell off a tombstone last night.”

  “’Cause of you.”

  In a high and dreamy voice, she said, “I’ve had approximately four sips of alcohol, and now I’m floating.” She swerved her Camaro back and forth across the empty road. Then she held up one finger and switched to her nerd voice. “Uh, I believe gravity is still working.”

  “I didn’t say that!” I laughed, then whimpered. “Don’t swerve. My stomach.”

  “Are you going to puke again?”

  I suddenly remembered I’d thrown up in some boy’s helmet. Again in his driveway. I vaguely remembered apologizing and asking for a hose, but I didn’t remember actually using one. I hated the holes in my memory. “Did I mess up Bucky’s truck? Is he going to kill me?”

  “Nope. It all went in the helmet. Oh, lighten up, Lulu. It wasn’t that bad. And it’s not like Mason Malone is any angel. No matter what you thought last night.”

  I groaned and caught a whiff of my breath. I grabbed a piece of gum from Roni’s purse. I looked in the rearview mirror and wiped the mascara smears from under my eyes. I managed to fix my makeup, but my tangled curls were hopeless. “Who is that guy, anyway?”

  “Mason? He’s a couple of years older than us.” She frowned, thinking. “He used to be heavier and had long hair. Kind of a waster. His girlfriend was the one who drove into the tree in front of the elementary school.”

  “He was Cindy D’Angelo’s boyfriend?” Cindy had gone to Saint Jude’s. I was on the flower committee when she died. Rumors said her accident looked like a suicide. Catholics say you aren’t supposed to have a proper funeral if you commit suicide. It’s a mortal sin and hard to fix with a penance. Especially since she might have been pregnant.

  I’d been mesmerized by Cindy’s death. All the stories—how you’d always been wild and crazy, but when she died you completely lost it—were both tragic and romantic, back when I was fourteen. Fast-forward to that particular morning, I figured you were simply messed up. A waster, like Roni said. At least there wasn’t any reason to see you again. Any reason except what you call fate, that is.

  Ten minutes later, as we officially left Dale and turned down the county road, we joined the line of cars headed to Sal’s.

  It’s one of my theories that Sal’s is what keeps people living in Dale. Seeing as it’s on the main road heading away from the river, people leaving town almost always go past it. The view from that road, no matter the time of year, is so pretty. Especially that spot coming out of the last long curve, where the silvery beech trees grow all lithe and graceful with the somber, steady hills behind them. That’s a view that feels like hope and goodness, as if the whole world is right and strong. But then, all of a sudden, there it is: Sal’s Salvage. Heaps of rusty cars. Noisy machinery. All of it ugly and old and worn out, and all wrapped up with harsh chain-link fences and barbed wire.

  People must look back at Dale and think that’s as good as it gets. So the
y turn around. They never get to the highway only one more half mile along. Just never see what else might be waiting. Mr. Palmer, who owns Corner Drug and is in charge of the Dale Chamber of Commerce, ought to pay an appreciation fee to Sal. Wouldn’t surprise me if Sal set that up years ago.

  By the time Roni pulled into the junkyard lot, the driveway was lined with tow trucks bearing beat-up, broken-down skeletons of vehicles.

  Stepping out of her car was like entering a sensory battlefield. The blinding sun hit my eyes while the crusher and the dump trucks growled out of harmony. The heat and thick humidity boiled the smell of oil and grease mixed in with the years’ worth of dirt and funk.

  I made my way across the lot, squinting and wobbling behind Roni as we passed Sal hollering at a group of customers. “Y’all can let my girls know if you’re looking for something in particular. But remember…” He paused before adding a bit of junkyard philosophy: “It ain’t junk if it’s the fix that takes you home.”

  Hearing that Sal-ism triggered the silly of the night before. Roni and I looked at each other and, despite the pounding in my head, I burst out laughing.

  Inside the cashier trailer, the ancient air conditioner wheezed and strained to cool the air tinged with the smell of Sal’s tobacco habit. Roni unlocked the service window, and we began the day.

  When we first started working there, Sal called us Sugar and Spice. I thought it was because we look so different. Roni, blond and skinny, me more brown and round. But we balanced each other out in other ways too. Sal says Roni can sweet-talk any old grease monkey, and I keep them honest.

  We’d been hired mainly because Sal and Mom grew up together, but we earned our pay. My brother, Paul, had worked there too, as one of the Muscles—the guys who lift, move, and actually handle the parts. This summer he’d stayed at school. Like I planned to do next summer and every year on out.

  Our job was to look cute and flirt with the greasy customers while answering the phones and keeping approximate inventory logs and precise records of sales. We handled a lot of cash, especially on days like that one. The separate impound and repo lot gave Sal his steady money, but salvage is way more lucrative than most people think. Seeing as the leading businesses in Dale are Sal’s, the tow trucks that bring him his products, river dredging, and the funeral home; misfortune is what keeps Dale’s economy running.