He was folding it. Paper airplane, fan, sailboat. I couldn't take my eyes off it while he talked, couldn't remember what he said, all I saw was the faded red and white fifty dollar bill being turned over in Caleb's fingers while he talked in those soothing tones he mastered from high school.
It was the biggest bill I had ever seen and I don't know what it is about him with money, he has always had it and I have always been fascinated, almost hypnotized by him with it. I'm ashamed of that but at the same time I have accepted the choices I have made. Hell, I've had to defend everything I have ever done at this point, may as well check everything off, or as much as I can before I step off the curb and that truck comes along and I fail to hear them yelling and BOOM.
Game over, princess. Oh, I should be so lucky as to never see it coming. However, with my luck I know there will be no such thing.
Oh, right, Caleb was talking about food, some place in town he had gone to with some of his college friends and how good the chicken was, and the mashed potatoes and endless bread. My belly growled, my mouth was wet. The thought of actual hot food was something that I thought about twenty-four hours a day, salivating over and I tried to understand when Lochlan would spend money on beer and he always told me it had a lot of calories, because that's the wisdom of seventeen-year-olds. That's the priority of seventeen-year-olds. Beer before food. Only I wasn't going to be seventeen for years, and I was still growing. I was still needing more than I was getting and I was always gaunt and sickly and tiny and tired. So tired all the time. If only I could just have toast with butter and honey and maybe a big glass of cold orange juice I would feel so good but then he would hold me and tell me next town maybe we would stay in a motel and order room service and maybe three plates because the next town was rich and everyone came out to the show.
The next town was always a lie. I wanted this fifty dollar bill. I would take it to the place Caleb told me about and get the food and bring it back to Lochlan and we wouldn't be hungry. Plus there would be enough change left for maybe two more nights and we would be ahead instead of always behind. Maybe I would have a second beer even though not only did it cost extra but it put me to sleep and then I would wake up with a headache and the whole next day would be harder and slower and fuzzyish and awful.
I'm daydreaming again and I'm so hungry and I almost miss what Caleb is saying.
What?
He repeats himself and this time I am listening closely. There is this money and then there is more. All I have to do is NOT tell Lochlan where it came from.
I am nodding. I'm so hungry I would have agreed to anything. He is incensed things have gotten this bad. I went from a nice little middle-class girl to a circus rat, an always dirty, hungry, poor, wild, slightly feral girl who can pick pockets and has to be dragged off the Ferris wheel when it's time to shut off the lights. Oh, and I am not permitted to actually pick pockets, Lochlan is scared that someone will catch me and he will never see me again.
I finish the first beer and Caleb passes me a second one, smiling. I get to work on it too. It's better than nothing in my belly. That much I have learned, along with the fact that it's William Lyon Mackenzie King on the fifty.
