Chapter 10

Kenji had the window down and his arm out. He was half listening to Ashley talk, which was about the right amount of listening for what she was saying.

“Brittany thinks she’s all that because of Kevin, but Kevin was talking to me at the Kroger last week and she saw it. That’s why she didn’t invite me to her party Saturday. Whatever, I didn’t want to go anyway.”

He made a sound close enough to agreement and watched the flat green landscape move past the window. He hadn’t been out here in two years, and it still looked exactly the same—which he supposed was the point of a place like this.

He glanced over at his cousin. Years ago Ashley had been a skinny little redhead with bony knees who followed him around all summer asking annoying questions. He used to think of her the way he thought of his sisters, but he was finding that harder to maintain. She had on cutoff shorts and a bikini top and flip-flops, and she drove like a maniac, red hair blowing in the wind.

He thought about Uncle Chad, who had been in his twenties and stupid enough to knock up a stripper. His mother said her name was Tanya, the newest dancer at Willie’s. Ashley had been three years old when her mother ran off with the DJ. Nobody had heard from her since. Kenji’s mother said Tanya was gorgeous, the kind of woman who walked into a room and the room noticed. Looking at Ashley now, he could believe it. His uncle had never gotten over it, and Ashley had grown up without a mother. Her dad gave her pretty much everything she wanted, which meant Ashley had learned early that being pretty and a girl got you most of what you wanted. So she used it like he wielded his katana.

She wasn’t a mean person. That was the thing. She was just sixteen, incredibly spoiled, and gossipy.