To Outwit an Angel

2. An Entirely Serious, Fully Tragic Dirt Bike Accident That Ruined a Sleepover

Loretta's POV:

Poverty isn't gray and sparse, not in America anyway. That misconception is rooted in the great depression, with its grainy veil of dust griming up cracked wooden tables.

 But Kentucky isn't like that, especially for kids. It's running around the holler with your friends and loosing track of time- and your parents. It's the lingering cigarette smoke on everything you own. It's an empty house and a key dangling from your hand after a long day of school. What's for dinner tonight? Kraft macaroni or microwaved chicken nuggets with ketchup?

 And it's your mom's tousled hair and forgotten cup of coffee, as she scrambles to get you ready for school and herself ready for work. It's vanilla perfume on your pillow and a train whistle blowing right before you fell asleep.

 It's riding your bike to a sleepover in frigid October winds because your mom was at work and couldn't drive you. Why the hell did she have to be working the day of Halloween anyway? 

 I drove up Sharlene's driveway and lifted my bike over her porch steps.

 "Happy Halloween!" Sharlene threw her arms around me. "I was watching from the window for you. Thought I'd surprise you at the door."

 I pressed an arm around her, then pulled away to lean my bike against her porch rail.

 "It's not a sleepover without insane amounts of sugar!" I unhooked the Dollar Tree bag of candy from my bike handle. "Be thankful. If Jinjer had got her hands on this stuff, we'd never see any of it again."

 "My favorite." Sharlene said, pressing a box of Sno-Caps to her heart.

 "They're just chocolate chips with sprinkles."

 "Lori, I eat chocolate chips from the bag."

 I laughed, shivering under my thin windbreaker.

 Sharlene joined the bubbly laughter, saying, "you do it too!"

 I stopped abruptly and erupted into a fit of coughs from the cold air.

 "Are you okay?" Sharlene patted my back.

 "Yeah, fine." I hiccupped.

 "Oh! Come inside. It looks like rain."

 Sharlene and I came inside to her warm living room. I plopped down on her sofa and rubbed my hands against the brown couch cover, warming my chapped fingers.

 "I'll go make some hot chocolate. My mom even bought the kind with the little marshmallows."

 Sharlene disappeared into her kitchen. 

 Just the same as always, my favorite place on earth. A prayer candle with Jesus' face printed on it was the mood lighting, which released a charcoal and beeswax scent. The television played quietly in the corner. The reality TV show plastered across the screen was all women in embroidered jeans and hoop earrings yelling at each other about something crazy. Even with the manufactured television drama, the whole aura of the room was calm and comforting, a far cry from my mom's house.

 "Uh— Loretta! Do you know what this weird... melon is?"

 "Weird melon?" I clarified.

 "Yeah, come see for yourself."

 Two mugs of hot chocolate steamed in the low kitchen light. On the counter was definitely some kind of weird melon. It was a troublingly dark shade of yellow. Sharlene puzzled over it, prodding the thing with a knife.

 "Any ideas?" She said, as she flicked her brown hair out of her eyes.

 "An alien lifeform."

 I leaned against the counter to get a better look.