Chapter 1

The itch was terrible. It sank its claws deep into her flesh and drove her slowly crazy. It didn't seem to matter how she scratched or how many showers she took, it was always there, just below her skin.

But it was just the first of her symptoms. The itch subsided and she breathed a sigh of relief. For Kismet Anne Thomas, an eighteen year old senior at North Clinton High School, the relief didn't last long. A month later and the itch was back. There was a strange heat below the surface of her skin and her bones creaked and ached. She didn't understand what was wrong with her or what she should do about it.

"Kat!"

She lifted her head and stared at the woman she called mother who stood in the door of her room. "What?" She ducked her head back down to her pillow and wished that just once the woman would understand without her having to go into a huge discourse of how she felt or what was wrong with her.

"Are you sick? You aren't coming down with that bug that's going around, are you?" Tabitha Thomas' litany of rage usually coincided with the level of gin missing from the bottle in the kitchen. "Wait, didn't Jimmy Mason come down with mono? You ain't been kissing that boy? It would be something a little bitch like you would do."

Tabitha's tone was harsh and she strode through the room toward Kat's bed to grab a handful of her glossy black hair. "Was it Jimmy? Is he the one you've been fuckin'? You got that mono and you'll be out of my house. I don't put this roof over our heads so that you can whore yourself around with all them boys."

Kat pushed herself up and dropped her feet over the side of the bed and stood. She ducked around the older woman. She just was not willing to listen to it today. "I'm not whoring around with anyone." She grabbed her set of keys off of her dresser and shoved them into the pocket of her jeans, then scooped up her sweatshirt off the doorknob. "I'll be back later."

"Kat! Don't you even think of running out of this house!" She followed her daughter down the stairs and to the front door. "You need to learn to show me some respect, young lady. I can't believe that I took you in and you treat me like this! You walk away now, kid, you just keep walking."

Kat spun on her heel and marched toward the shorter, plumper woman. Before she would have walked into her, the woman screeched and backed away. She held her hands up in front of her as if to ward off a blow. Kat ignored her and took the stairs two at a time. She was back almost immediately, a backpack and a roll-bag in her hands.

"Where do you think you're going?" The older woman screeched the words and reached out to grab Kat and spin her around.

With a glance down at the hand upon her sleeve, Kat turned an inscrutable glare on the older woman. "Tabatha, if you'd like to keep that hand, I'd suggest you take it off me."

The older woman, a blousy blonde whose color came from a bottle and a cheap bottle at that, shrieked. "I am your mother and you will show me the respect I deserve!"

A humorless chuckle was her answer. "Trust me, mother I am. Considering how little you've done for me, I've given you all the respect you deserve. Let go of me!" A sneer curled her lip and a flush of color tinted her pale cheeks. The itch under her skin seemed to double in intensity until she wanted to scream and to lash out at the woman who kept her in this cheap apartment. With a quick jerk, Kat pulled away from Tabitha's hands, ignoring the nails that scored her skin. "I'm leaving and I won't be back."

"I can't get that lucky." Tabitha stuck her nose up in the air and went to turn away from Kat. She'd meant it to be a classy exit, ruined only by the unsteady gate of her drink induced rage. She fell against the wall which earned her a sneer from Kat.

"Just tell me one thing, Tabitha. Why did you take me in? Why did someone consider you fit to care for a child? Where are my parents?" It was the same questions that she asked over and over and never got an answer.

But Tabitha wanted to put the girl in her place. "I was paid to put up with you. I never wanted kids." She pushed her thinning hair behind one ear and then slid her hand to her waist. "I didn't want to ruin my figure to have to chase around a screaming, obnoxious brat for eighteen years."

"So why me? Why'd I get so lucky?"

She sneered. "Money, why else? I got paid a good check for watching over you."

"Who?" Kat realized that she was playing to Tabitha's sense of the dramatic. If that was what she had to do to finally get some answers, that was what she would do.

Tabitha's lips twisted and she turned to open the hall closet door. She reached inside and felt for the light cord then gave it a tug to turn it on. Then she went up on tiptoe and pulled down a shoe box and then closed the closet door. She patted the top of the box and then held it out to Kat. "This is who. The son of a bitch brought you here and used his golden tongue into talking me into keeping you."

Kat reached out an eager hand to take the box from Tabitha. She pried the lid off of the small box and stared at the papers that made up only part of the contents. She jerked back when Tabitha stuck a hand into the box and pulled out a many times folded piece of paper.

"Here, this is what you want. Now take it and the rest of your shit and get out. You are eighteen, I have no more obligation to you." She turned away from the girl and moved toward the kitchen, the thick glass tumbler already to her lips as she swallowed what was left in the glass.

Kat stared at the paper in her hand and down at the cases at her feet. With a quick nod, she pushed the paper back down with the rest and stuffed the box into her roll bag. Then she picked up the bag and her backpack and left the house.

The street that she walked out to could only politely be call squalid. The trash built up in the scrub grass and dirt that comprised the area between the sidewalk and the road. The side walk was pitted, parts crumbled away and blades of yellowed grass pushed through the concrete. Houses were built too close to both the road and each other and gave the area a feel of badly crooked and rotting teeth in a mouth too small to comfortably hold them.

She didn't notice the road or the crumbling sidewalks. Instead, she walked with a natural grace up the street, ducking into the small diner she'd been lucky enough to get a job at. Jo Beth's Diner was like an oasis to a traveler parched for water. It was clean, almost painfully so, each of the old tables scrubbed ruthlessly. Signs dotted the walls, one of which proclaimed today, Friday, as being Jo's meatloaf special day. The smells of that meatloaf was mouth watering and Kat couldn't help but feel her stomach cramp with hunger.

"Kat honey, what are you doing in here today? You ain't on the schedule..."

Kat moved toward the tall redhead that had spoken to her. "I'm moving on, Jo. I was wondering if you got paychecks done yet?"

"Moving on to where? You and that mama of yours fighting again?" Jo reached out and easily enveloped the thin girl in her strong arms. "Now you know she'll be sorry when she sobers up, Kitty. You can't take anything she has to say at face value. That woman could out mean the devil."

"She's an evil bitch." Kat barely got the words out before tears were streaming out of her eyes. She tried to pull away from Jo but the woman refused to let her back away, rubbing Kat's back while she fought for composure. "I just ... I can't stay there anymore."

"No, of course you can't." Jo reached down and picked up both of Kat's bags in one hand and wrapped her arm around the girl with the other. With a tug, she gently led the girl toward the kitchen.

"Jo! Them orders are stacking up!" Pete, the cook at Jo's diner, was a huge man, each of his arms wider around than Kat's waist. They were decorated in obscene tattoos, the most decent was a large one on his left arm that was an image of a fist with its middle finger sticking up. Under it, the words—I Salute You—were printed in bright red. He had two outfits he wore to work. Dirty white shirts and khaki or green draw-string pants.

"Geesh Pete, give me a minute, would you? Have Frankie take them orders out for me. Our Kitty had another fight with her mama." Frankie was their busboy. He was a man in his late thirties. He wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box, but he was earnest, and he never turned his nose up to whatever jobs Jo and Pete might have for him.

"No, Jo, you can't do that to Pete. If ... If you don't have the checks ready, I can come back when I figure out where I'm going and get it then." She rubbed at her cheeks, viciously ridding herself of the trails of tears that didn't want to stop leaking out of her eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous, Kat. That boy is perfectly capable of handling the couple orders we got in." Jo gave Pete a telling look and continued to drag Kat through the kitchen and down another hallway. Across from an ancient time clock, a door was open that led to the miniscule manager's office. It was barely big enough for the desk and two chairs as well as shelves along the back wall. A big, ancient safe sat in the corner next to the visitor's chair. Jo pulled Kat in and pushed her down in the chair. She closed the door to the office and sank her lusciously curved ass down on the desk. "Okay, baby girl. Tell mama Jo what happened."

The whole story bubbled slowly out of her.

Jo was quiet until Kat finished. "Well, hell. That's a relief. I never figured out how such a sweet girl as you could possibly come from that frigid bitch, Tabitha. So ... What's in the box?"

Kat stared up at Jo for a moment and then she burst out laughing. "I love you, Jo. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Jo grinned. "I love you right back, baby girl. Have you looked at any of the papers?"

"No, I just wanted to get out of there before Tabitha decided to strip search me or started yelling that I was stealing her possessions. I ... I planned to look at them tonight. I was going to get a room down at the Ho Jo on Fifth Street for the night and then figure everything else out tomorrow."