Teardrop (6 page)

The truth was, when Eureka’s teenaged mother got
knocked up, she boogied out of Louisiana quick. She drove west in the middle of the night, outrageously violating all of her parents’ strict rules, and ended up in a hippie co-op near Lake Shasta, California, which Dad still referred to as “the vortex.”

But I came back, didn’t I?
Diana had laughed when she was young and still in love with Dad.
I always come back
.

On Eureka’s eighth birthday, Diana took her out there. They’d spent a few days with her mother’s old friends at the co-op, playing spades and drinking cloudy unfiltered apple cider. Then, when both of them got to feeling landlocked—which happened fast with Cajuns—they drove out to the coast and ate oysters that were briny and cold, with bits of ice clinging to their shells, just like the ones bayou kids were raised on. On their way home, Diana took the Oceanside highway to the city of Eureka, pointing out the roadside clinic where Eureka had been born, eight years earlier, on leap day.

But Eureka didn’t talk about Diana with just anyone, because most people didn’t grasp the complex miracle that was her mother, and struggling to defend Diana was painful. So Eureka kept it all inside, walled herself off from worlds and people like this boy. “Ander’s not a name you hear every day.”

His eyes dropped and they listened to a train heading west. “Family name.”

“Who are your people?” She knew she sounded like all the other Cajuns who thought the sun rose and set on their
bayou. Eureka didn’t think that, never had, but there was something about this kid that made him seem like he’d appeared spontaneously next to the sugarcane. Part of Eureka found that exciting. Another part—the part that wanted her car repaired—was uneasy.

Car wheels on the gravel road behind them made Eureka turn her head. When she saw the rusty tow truck jerk to a stop behind her, she groaned. Through the bug-splattered windshield, she could barely see the driver, but all of New Iberia recognized Cory Statutory’s truck.

Not everyone called him that—just females aged thirteen to fifty-five, almost all of whom had contended with his roving eyes or hands. When he wasn’t towing cars or hitting on underage or married women, Cory Marais was in the swamp: fishing, crabbing, tossing beer cans, absorbing the marsh’s reptilian putrescence into the crags of his sunburnt skin. He wasn’t old but he looked ancient, which made his advances even creepier.

“Y’all need a tow?” He leaned an elbow out the window of his cloud-gray truck. A wad of chewing tobacco sat lodged in his cheek.

Eureka hadn’t thought to call a tow truck—probably because Cory’s was the only one in town. She didn’t understand how he’d found them. They were on a side road hardly anybody drove on. “Are you clairvoyant or something?”

“Eureka Boudreaux and her five-dollar words.” Cory
glanced at Ander, as if to bond over Eureka’s strangeness. But when he looked more closely at the boy, Cory’s eyes narrowed, his alliance shifted. “You from outta town?” he asked Ander. “This kid hit you, Reka?”

“It was an accident.” Eureka found herself defending Ander. It bothered her when locals thought it was Cajuns versus the World.

“That’s not what ol’ Big Jean said. He’s the one said you needed a tow.”

Eureka nodded, her question answered. Big Jean was a sweet old widower who lived in the cabin about a quarter mile off this road. He used to have a hellish wife named Rita, but she’d died about a decade ago and Big Jean didn’t get around too well on his own. When Hurricane Rita bulldozed the bayou, Big Jean’s house was hit hard. Eureka had heard his hoarse voice say, twenty times, “The only thing meaner than the first Rita was the second Rita. One stayed in my house, the other tore it down.”

The town helped him rebuild his cabin, and even though it was miles from shore, he insisted on propping the whole thing up on twenty-foot stilts, muttering, “Lesson learned, lesson learned.”

Diana used to bring Big Jean sugar-free pies. Eureka would go with her, play his old Dixieland jazz 78s on his floor console hi-fi. They’d always liked each other.

The last time she’d seen him, his diabetes had been bad,
and she knew he didn’t make it down those stairs often. He had a grown son who brought his groceries, but most of the time, Big Jean stayed perched on his porch, in his wheelchair, watching swamp birds through his binoculars. He must have seen the accident and called for the tow. She glanced up at his elevated cabin and saw his robed arm waving.

“Thanks, Big Jean!” she shouted.

Cory was out of his truck and hitching Magda up to his tow. He wore baggy, dark-wash Wranglers and an LSU basketball jersey. His arms were freckled and huge. She watched the way he connected the cables to her undercarriage. She resented his low whistle when he surveyed the damage to Magda’s rear.

Cory did everything slowly except hook up his tows, and for once Eureka was grateful in his vicinity. She still held out hope she might make it to school in time for the meet. Twenty minutes left and she still hadn’t decided whether to run the race or quit.

Wind rustled the sugarcane. It was nearly
fauchaison
, harvest time. She glanced at Ander, who was watching her with a focus that made her feel nude, and she wondered if he knew this country as well as she did, if he knew that in two weeks farmers would appear on tractors to sever cane stalks at their base, leaving them to grow for another three years into the mazes children ran through. She wondered whether Ander had run through these fields the way she and every bayou kid
had. Had he spent the same hours Eureka had spent listening to the arid rustle of their golden stalks, thinking there was no lovelier sound in the world than sugarcane due for its reaping? Or was Ander just passing through?

Once her car was secured, Cory looked at Ander’s truck. “Need anything, kid?”

“No, sir, thank you.” Ander didn’t have the Cajun accent, and his manners were too formal for the country. Eureka wondered if Cory had ever been called “sir” in his life.

“Right, then.” Cory sounded offended, as if Ander in general was offensive. “Come on, Reka. You need a ride somewhere? Like to a beauty salon?” He cackled, pointing at her grown-out dye job.

“Shut up, Cory.” “Beauty” sounded like “ugly” in his mouth.

“I’m teasing.” He reached out to tug her hair, but Eureka flinched away. “That the way girls style it these days? Pretty … pretty
interesting
.” He hooted, then jerked his thumb toward the passenger-side door of his truck. “Okay, sister, haul it in the cab. Us coon-asses gotta stick together.”

Cory’s language was disgusting. His truck was disgusting. One glance through the open window told Eureka she did not want a ride in that. There were dirty magazines everywhere, greasy bags of cracklins on the dash. A spearmint air freshener hung from the rearview mirror, leaning on a wooden icon of Saint Theresa. Cory’s hands were black with axle grease. He
needed the kind of power wash reserved for soot-stained medieval buildings.

“Eureka,” Ander said. “I can give you a ride.”

She found herself thinking of Rhoda, wondering what she’d say if she were sitting in her shoulder-padded business suit upon Eureka’s shoulder. Neither option constituted what Dad’s wife would call “a sound decision,” but at least Cory was a known phenomenon. And Eureka’s sharp reflexes could keep the creep’s hands on the wheel.

Then there was Ander.…

Why was Eureka thinking about what Rhoda, instead of Diana, would advise? She didn’t want to be anything like Rhoda. She wanted to be a lot like her mother, who never talked about safety or judgment. Diana talked about passion and dreams.

And she was gone.

And this was just a ride to school, not a life-changing decision.

Her phone was buzzing. It was Cat:
Wish us luck leaving Manor in the dust. Whole team misses you
.

The race was in eighteen minutes. Eureka intended to wish Cat luck in person, whether or not she ran herself. She gave Ander a quick nod—
Okay
—and walked over to his truck. “Take the car to Sweet Pea’s, Cory,” she called from the passenger door. “My dad and I will pick it up later.”

“Suit yourself.” Cory heaved himself into his truck, annoyed.
He nodded toward Ander. “Watch out for that dude. He’s got a face I’d like to forget.”

“I’m sure you will,” Ander muttered as he opened the driver’s-side door.

The inside of his truck was immaculate. It must have been thirty years old, but the dashboard shone as if it had just been hand-polished. The radio was playing an old Bunk Johnson song. Eureka slid up on the soft leather bench and fastened her seat belt.

“I’m supposed to be back at school already,” she said as Ander started up the truck. “Would you step on it? It’s faster if you take the—”

“Side roads, I know.” Ander turned left down a shady dirt road that Eureka thought of as her shortcut. She watched as he gunned the gas, driving with familiarity on this seldom-traveled, maize-lined road.

“I go to Evangeline High. It’s on—”

“Woodvale and Hampton,” Ander said. “I know.”

She scratched her forehead, wondering suddenly if this kid went to her school, had sat behind her in English for three years in a row or something. But she knew every one of the two hundred and seventy-six people at her small Catholic high school. At least, she knew them all by sight. If someone like Ander went to Evangeline, she would more than know about him. Cat would be absolutely all over him, and so, according to the laws of best friendship, Eureka would have his
birthday, his favorite weekend hangout, and his license plate number memorized.

So where did he go to school? Instead of being plastered with bumper stickers or mascot paraphernalia on the dashboard, like most public school kids’ cars, Ander’s truck looked bare. A simple square tag a few inches wide hung from the rearview mirror. It had a metallic silver background and featured a blue stick figure holding a spear pointed toward the ground. She leaned forward to examine it, noting that it bore the same image on both sides. It smelled like citronella.

“Air freshener,” Ander said as Eureka breathed in a whiff. “They give them out free at the car wash.”

She settled back in her seat. Ander didn’t even have a bag. In fact, Eureka’s overstuffed purple tote spoiled the tidiness of the truck.

“I’ve never seen a kid with such a spotless car. Don’t you have homework?” she joked. “Books?”

“I can read books,” Ander said curtly.

“Okay, you’re literate. Sorry.”

Ander frowned and turned up the music. He seemed aloof until she noticed his hand trembling as it moved the dial. He sensed her noticing it and clamped the hand back on the steering wheel, but she could tell: the accident had shaken him up, too.

“You like this kind of music?” she asked as a red-tailed hawk swept across the gray sky in front of them, looking for dinner.

“I like old things.” His voice was quiet, uncertain, as he took another fast turn down a gravel road. Eureka glanced at her watch and noted with pleasure that she might actually make it on time. Her body wanted this run; it would help calm her before facing Dad and Rhoda, before she had to break the news about the crumpled heap called Magda. It would make Coach’s month if Eureka raced today. Maybe she
could
go back—

Her body lurched forward as Ander slammed on the brakes. His arm shot across the cab of the truck to hold Eureka’s body back, the way Diana’s arm used to do, and it was startling: his hand on her.

The car squealed to an abrupt stop and Eureka saw why. Ander had hit the brakes to avoid running over one of the plentiful fox squirrels that threaded through Louisiana trees like sunshine. He seemed to realize his arm was still pinning her against the seat. His fingertips pressed into the skin below her shoulder.

He let his hand drop. He caught his breath.

Eureka’s four-year-old twin siblings had once spent an entire summer trying to catch one of these squirrels in the backyard. Eureka knew how fast the animals were. They dodged cars twenty times a day. She’d never seen anyone slam on the brakes to avoid hitting one.

The animal seemed surprised, too. It froze, peering into the windshield for an instant, as if to offer thanks. Then it darted up the gray trunk of an oak tree and was gone.

“Say, your brakes work after all.” Eureka couldn’t stop herself. “Glad the squirrel escaped with tail intact.”

Ander swallowed and hit the gas again. He stole long glances at her—unabashed, not like the guys at school, who were sneakier with their staring. He seemed to be searching for words.

“Eureka—I’m sorry.”

“Take this left,” she said.

He was already turning left down the narrow road. “No, really, I wish I could—”

“It’s just a car.” She cut him off. They were both on edge. She shouldn’t have teased him about the squirrel. He was trying to be more cautious. “They’ll fix it up at Sweet Pea’s. Anyway, the car’s no big deal to me.” Ander hung on her words and she realized she sounded like a private school brat, which was not her style. “Believe me, I’m grateful to have my own wheels. It’s just, you know, it’s a car, that’s all.”

“No.” Ander turned down the music as they entered town and passed Neptune’s, the horrible café where Evangeline kids hung out after school. She saw some girls from her Latin class, drinking sodas from red paper cups and hanging over the railing, talking to some older guys with Ray-Bans and muscles. She turned away from them to focus on the road. They were two blocks from school. Soon she’d be out of this truck and sprinting toward the locker room, then the woods. She guessed that meant she’d made up her mind.

“Eureka.”

Ander’s voice reached her, interrupting her plans on how to change into her uniform as quickly as possible. She wouldn’t change her socks, just yank her shorts on, toss off her shirt—

“I mean I’m sorry about everything.”

Everything? They had stopped at the back entrance to the school. Outside, past the parking lot, the track was shabby and old. A ring of unlaned, uneven dirt surrounded a sad, brown, disused football field. The cross-country team warmed up here, but their meets took place in the woods beyond the track. Eureka couldn’t imagine anything more boring than running around a track over and over again. Coach was always trying to get her to join the relay team in the spring track season, but what was the point of running in circles, never getting anywhere?