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I guess my outfit is kind of basic, but who dresses nice to ride the Greyhound across the county?
“Yo, Oz,” a male voice calls, right as the front door on the house next door to the one Oscar is walking toward swings open and a giant man steps out.
“Danny,” Oscar calls back, his scowl melting away and instantly replaced with a wide grin. The change in his demeanor is startling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Oscar smile. The only time he was ever happy was when he was making me miserable, but even then, he didn’t smile, he leered.
Right now, he looks genuinely pleased to see the hulking beast of a man from next door. I try to hold in my surprise, but I know he notices my reaction because he snaps his head in my direction, and all of his happiness dissolves and is replaced with hatred in the blink of an eye.
Sucking in a sharp gasp, I step back, crossing my arms over my chest in a futile attempt to protect myself.
“Hey, you must be Henrietta,” the guy from next door, Danny, says with an easy smile as he jogs over to me and holds his hand out to me to shake.
Oscar is tall, but Danny is even taller, closer to seven feet than six. His shoulders are broad, and he clearly spends a lot of time in the gym because the fabric of his shirt clings to his bulging muscles like it’s stretched so tight it’ll rip apart any second.
It takes me a moment to realize that he’s still holding his hand out to me, and I’m just staring at him. My eyes move quickly to Oz, and I find him once again scowling at me. “Sorry,” I mutter, turning to focus on Danny again. “You can call me Etta, I haven’t used my full name in years,” I say quietly, managing to force the words out of my mouth despite how shaky I feel.
“Etta,” Danny says, rolling my name over his tongue in an oddly appealing way. “Cute. So, how was your trip? I don’t think Oz mentioned where you were coming from. It can’t have been far if you rode the bus,” he says, sounding genuinely interested, his smile so bright and wide that I find myself relaxing a little and smiling back at him.
“It wasn’t too bad. I came from Las Vegas,” I tell him, trying to force some confidence into my voice despite Oscar’s looming angry presence behind me.
“Vegas?” Danny barks, his brow furrowing. “Fuck, that’s a hell of a drive. Could you not afford the plane?” His question is so blunt, I actually blink.
“I don’t…I don’t like to fly,” I admit meekly, surreptitiously glancing at Oscar from the corner of my eye and grimacing when I hear him scoff.
“So, you rode a bus for twenty hours instead? Were you on your own? That doesn’t seem safe for a tiny little thing like you,” Danny says, either not noticing or simply not commenting on his friend’s annoyance.
“It was just over twenty-six hours, but it could have been worse,” I tell him, not mentioning the weird man who was so pushy, asking for my cell phone number and where I was going, that I pretended to be asleep for six hours until he finally got off the bus.
“Well, I was going to suggest we go out for dinner to welcome you to Jumpers Row, but I’m guessing you’re probably not interested in going back into town if you’ve been stuck on a bus for so long,” Danny says, glancing at Oscar, then back to me.
“Jumpers Row?” I ask.
Danny’s brow furrows, and he turns and looks at Oscar before focusing his attention back on me again. “Oz didn’t tell you? That’s what we call this place.” He spreads his arms wide, motioning to the cul-de-sac of houses. “Jumpers Row.”
Unwilling to look at the man who has barely uttered a word to me since he stole my case and dragged me to his truck, I just shrug. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Oh, well, obviously it’s on account of everyone who lives here being smoke jumpers,” Danny says, like he’s expecting me to understand what that means even though I still have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Smoke jumpers?” I question.
2
OZ
Danny glances at me, flashing me a what the fuck look.
“Smoke jumpers are specialist firefighters, that’s what we do,” I say, not looking at her and instead choosing to glare at my friend. I have no idea what the fuck Danny thinks he’s doing, acting like he’s the fucking welcome wagon for my very unwanted fucking guest.
“Best job in the world,” Danny hoots enthusiastically, his lips spreading into a wide grin again. “We get to jump out of planes into fires, and they pay us to do it.”
“That sounds kind of dangerous,” Henrietta whispers, her voice just as small and pathetic as it was the last time I saw her.
I fucking hated this girl as a kid. Truthfully, I still hate her, even though I don’t have any real reason to. Rationally, I know that apart from being a bit of a brat, she never really did anything to deserve my hatred, but when I think back to the awful few years after my asshole of a dad left my mom, every toxic memory I have of that time has her in it.
She was there the first time I saw my dad after he moved out. She was there when he announced that he’d fallen in love and was getting married to Maureen. She was there when he first took me to the big new house he’d moved into with them, even though me and Mom had been forced to move into an apartment because Mom couldn’t afford to live in the house I grew up in on a single income.
Henri-fucking-etta was there when Dad announced he was having a baby, then another, then another. She was there for every argument and every toxic moment where my dad forced me to be a part of his brand-new happy family.
The truth is, I don’t think she actually ever did anything to me specifically, but she’s so intrinsically linked with the feelings of anger and resentment I felt for so long that I can’t separate her from that period of my life.
