usually in the car after he’d picked her up after softball or field hockey. He got her to do it the first time partly by scaring the shit out of her and partly by seducing her. Of course, the “how” doesn’t really matter. As a kid, once you do something like that, you’re kind of stuck. You feel ashamed and you feel violated and you feel like the worst daughter on the planet. She was eleven years old that first time. She would do it for four more years before she would finally hit the wall and go to her mom. And her mom—who was spineless and pathetic and clearly freaking terrified of her second husband—accused her of lying. Yup, took her husband’s side over her daughter’s. Claimed that Lida was making the whole thing up. As they say, the River Denial is wide. Anyway, once you put something like that out there, you’ve pretty much torched any chance of a relationship with your mom, at least if your mom claims she doesn’t believe you. So Lida ran away.
Poacher’s boys tended to come and go a lot more. Trevor. Joseph. PJ (for Poacher Junior). Trevor and Joseph were older than I was, but PJ was younger. Maybe fourteen. We called him Poacher Junior because his eyes became the same slits as Poacher’s when he was stoned, and his arms got as wobbly as those Styrofoam tubes little kids play with in swimming pools. It was like he had a garden hose for bones. The boys—and they really were like boys; sometimes it was like us girls were their babysitters—could sit around playing Poacher’s Xbox for days. They really could. I think they were as beyond help as the girls, but they didn’t show it. Not really.Teen boys are often more chill than teen girls, but inside they can be just as fucked up.
The big difference is that most of the time the boys could only bring in money by stealing, especially once the teen shelter wouldn’t let them back into the life skills classes. But we girls could actually earn cash. We could earn our keep and our drugs because we had something we could sell. (I know now that boys can do what we did, but back then I didn’t realize there was a market for underage male hookers. In some ways, I guess I was weirdly naïve.)
But once in a while we did break-ins with the boys, which brings me back to Andrea and sleeping in eyeliner and the robbery. The robbery, the one where we all almost got ourselves killed. We’re talking a Bonnie and Clyde kind of cataclysm, minus the guns, because only the police had guns. But it was pretty bad. You get my point.
As I said, Andrea didn’t sleep in eyeliner because she wanted that zombie smudge look. Usually she did it because she just crashed. Boom. Wilted. Out. And the downside to sleeping in eyeliner, aside from the fact that you look like you just got dumped at the prom by your boyfriend and have been sobbing for hours in the bathroom—See? Sometimes I can come up with analogies that are “age appropriate” and not batshit crazy—is that you can get eye infections. And eye infections just suck.
The plan was to break into Missy’s aunt and uncle’s house in Shelburne. Shelburne is a very swanky suburb just south of Burlington. When Missy first left Concord, she was supposed to live with them. That’s how she wound up in Vermont in the first place. The family thought that a change of place might straighten Missy out. (There was another girl like that at the shelter. Like Missy, she needed a lot more than a change of place and a different roof over her head.) The house where her aunt and uncle lived was kind of like mine back in Reddington: unapologetic meadow mansion. It was on a hill that looked out at Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains, and it had these awesome ports for iPods on awall in almost every single room. It was two years old, but it still smelled brand-new. The floors were a beige wood and still shiny as glass. There were white throw rugs and blue throw rugs and huge black-and-white photographs of leaves over the
Poacher’s boys tended to come and go a lot more. Trevor. Joseph. PJ (for Poacher Junior). Trevor and Joseph were older than I was, but PJ was younger. Maybe fourteen. We called him Poacher Junior because his eyes became the same slits as Poacher’s when he was stoned, and his arms got as wobbly as those Styrofoam tubes little kids play with in swimming pools. It was like he had a garden hose for bones. The boys—and they really were like boys; sometimes it was like us girls were their babysitters—could sit around playing Poacher’s Xbox for days. They really could. I think they were as beyond help as the girls, but they didn’t show it. Not really.Teen boys are often more chill than teen girls, but inside they can be just as fucked up.
The big difference is that most of the time the boys could only bring in money by stealing, especially once the teen shelter wouldn’t let them back into the life skills classes. But we girls could actually earn cash. We could earn our keep and our drugs because we had something we could sell. (I know now that boys can do what we did, but back then I didn’t realize there was a market for underage male hookers. In some ways, I guess I was weirdly naïve.)
But once in a while we did break-ins with the boys, which brings me back to Andrea and sleeping in eyeliner and the robbery. The robbery, the one where we all almost got ourselves killed. We’re talking a Bonnie and Clyde kind of cataclysm, minus the guns, because only the police had guns. But it was pretty bad. You get my point.
As I said, Andrea didn’t sleep in eyeliner because she wanted that zombie smudge look. Usually she did it because she just crashed. Boom. Wilted. Out. And the downside to sleeping in eyeliner, aside from the fact that you look like you just got dumped at the prom by your boyfriend and have been sobbing for hours in the bathroom—See? Sometimes I can come up with analogies that are “age appropriate” and not batshit crazy—is that you can get eye infections. And eye infections just suck.
The plan was to break into Missy’s aunt and uncle’s house in Shelburne. Shelburne is a very swanky suburb just south of Burlington. When Missy first left Concord, she was supposed to live with them. That’s how she wound up in Vermont in the first place. The family thought that a change of place might straighten Missy out. (There was another girl like that at the shelter. Like Missy, she needed a lot more than a change of place and a different roof over her head.) The house where her aunt and uncle lived was kind of like mine back in Reddington: unapologetic meadow mansion. It was on a hill that looked out at Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains, and it had these awesome ports for iPods on awall in almost every single room. It was two years old, but it still smelled brand-new. The floors were a beige wood and still shiny as glass. There were white throw rugs and blue throw rugs and huge black-and-white photographs of leaves over the
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