Page 6 of Devil

Her hair was nearly to her waist, and mine was only just below my shoulders—long enough to wear it back but short enough that two pencils could hold it in place. She had tattoos up and down her arms, a septum ring, and a piercing in her lower lip. And while we were both too thin for what our bodies were built for, there was something rangy about her body now, something that spoke of nicotine and vodka and potential felonies.

She reminded me of a stray cat, underfed and mean, and every now and again, you could catch it in her eyes, a reflected stare from the back of a wet alley, a creature that would survive no matter what it took.

“Relax,” she finally said, uncurling her legs and letting her feet drop off the desk. She bounced the thick heels of her boots against the metal front of the desk.Clung. Clung.“I won’t stay long. I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Can we catch up after class? Tonight?”

She blew out some smoke as she tapped her cigarette on the coffee cup. “At darling Kaitlyn’s house?”

“No, but maybe a Denny’s or something. A Waffle House.” I could afford that, especially if I only got coffee.

“I can’t do tonight, I’m afraid,” she said.Clung.“I’ve got to be on the road to Odessa by eight or nine.”

“Odessa.”

“Midland. Whatever. I’ve got a job there. But I need gas money.”

I didn’t want to be cynical; we are called to share everything we have after all. But it took a second to force out the answer I knew God would want me to give. “Of course,” I said. “How much do you need?”

She gave me a small smile. It was real and apologetic. “It’ll probably be a few hundred to get down there.”

A few hundred.I tried not to blanch. “I’ll need to stop by the ATM,” I said. “After class.”

“I guess I can come back around then.” She tapped her cigarette again, hopped off the desk, and, still clutching the pomegranate in one hand, walked over to me. She was slightly taller in boots, enough that I had to look up the slightest amount. “I really am sorry to ask. But you know, if you moved back to the farm, you’d have whatever you’re paying Kaitlyn to live in her shitty house.”

“The farmhouse is basically a ruin,” I explained for the hundredth time, my hand coming up to press against my chest. “And I don’t want to live in the hill house any more than you do.”

The farmhouse had been our grandparents’ when they’d been alive, passed down from farmer to farmer since our family had immigrated to Kansas in the 1880s. But before my grandparents had inherited the farmhouse from the previous generation, they’d built another house on the family property, a long ranch-style rectangle that was called simply the hill house. It wasn’tonthe hill, where the farmhouse was, butinthe hill, all the way at the bottom, almost to Stranger Creek, which twisted through our farm like a vein dodging tendon and bone. The nearly windowless hill house was where Busy and I had grown up, the house she’d run away from at seventeen, the house I’d made myself stay in until last year, when I finally decided it was time to sell it all. The farm—or more accurately the handful of unsold acres left around the farmhouse, the hill house, and barn—had been left to me, and the trailer at the lake had been left to Busy. It had been smart of our father to put that plan in place before he died, and our mother hadn’t been in any state to change it when she died two years later. Not that she would have cared to. It was Cooper land, and by the end, she’d become convinced that the Coopers had never wanted her, had always resented her for not being the practical, cheerful farmer’s wife their son should have had. In those final, miserable months, she’d believed that even the hill itself hated her, even the trees, even the creek.They call this place Stranger because I’m here, she’d laugh bitterly before lighting another cigarette.

“Still no luck finding a buyer then?” Busy asked.

“The real estate agent thinks it’s the farmhouse,” I answered tiredly. “It’s a liability, and it’s not cute enough to be worth the work to renovate. The hill house is dated and dank and…you know.”

Busy’s mouth twisted up around her cigarette. She knew.

“Mom sold all the productive land after Dad died, so all that’s left are the hill and the trees and our stretch of the creek. And who wants to move out to where we grew up?” People wanted to live in Kansas City or Lawrence or Topeka, not in a town whose most visible business was a tombstone shop run out of an old gas station.

“Then they need to pay you better here,” Busy said, pulling her cigarette away from her mouth and exhaling. “You’re worth so much more than whatever tiny paycheck they’re giving you. But still, thank you. I think this Odessa job is going to be really good. Turn my luck around, you know?”

“Of course,” I said—a habit because I didn’t really know. And then I was pulled into a hug of creaking leather and wreathing smoke, awkward because she was still holding her cigarette, the pomegranate in her other hand, and even more awkward because I could feel her shaking, like she was terrified.

I went still. “Busy? Are you okay?”

She jerked back. “I’mfine,” she snapped.

“Hi,” came a clear voice. “Sorry, I’m know I’m early, but the coat closet is officially closed for the season, and…”

Busy and I turned to the door at the same time, and with some degree of mortification, I realized it wasn’t just any student witnessing my cursing, smoking sister. It was Bell. Sunny, friendly Bell, who’d paused, his eyes bouncing between the two of us in a way Busy and I knew well. A brain puzzling over similarities that should not exist and then remembering the uncommon solution to the puzzle.

Then his face creased into that mile-wide smile, and he came forward with his hand extended. It was so warm and mannerly that Busy—who thought shaking hands was for funerals and politicians—reflexively accepted the gesture, tucking the pomegranate into her armpit and taking his hand. The stacked rings on her fingers glimmered in the slowly fading light of the April afternoon.

“Ryan Bell,” he said.

“Mary Geraldine Cooper,” she answered. “Named after one grandfather while Birdie was named after the other. You can call me Busy.”

“Busy and Birdie.” The corners of his forget-me-not eyes crinkled as his smile grew. “Like a children’s story.”

Busy let go of his hand and took a drag off her cigarette, the ash of which was now growing dangerously long. “Sure,” she said.